“Nobody digs your music but yourself!”

The Scoop: 1984 R, directed by Albert Magnoli and starring Prince, Apollonia Kotero and Morris Day

Tagline: None

Summary: Two crazy kids are struggling with their dreams of becoming singers, and a little thing called love, in that music capitol of the world – Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Eunice’s Rating: Purple Rain is a good album. Even today it’s still pretty solid. What’s that? “What about the movie?”…

Eunice’s Review: You know it’s a good thing you don’t have to be a good movie in order to be a cult movie. Because this one’s bad, and rarely in the fun way.

This is a singer vehicle and usually the protagonist in such a movie would be an underdog with a heart of gold struggling to make it in the biz, and end up finding love both for themselves and others while playing up the their vocal talent and getting in some positive press. But this is where Purple Rain sets itself apart. You see our main character here is The Kid played by Prince, and Prince seems determined to prove that giant egomaniacal jack asses can come in small packages. A jack ass who kinda puts off a serial killer vibe. He whines and divas and tantrums and bullys his way through the whole movie. We learn his band’s about to walk out on him because he’s a paranoid jerk. Which won’t matter anyway as he’s about to lose his gig at a hot club because he doesn’t want to be successful (You see he’s one of Lissa’s Bohemians). Instead of him needing to stick to his own music and be true to himself, the message here is his music sucks and he should listen to everyone else. Personally, I think that last one is funny and at least different.

Our female lead is Apollonia, played by Apollonia (pronounced “Apple own ya’”). For some reason she’s left New Orleans, bypassed Nashville, and opted out of going to either New York or LA to start her music career. Maybe it’s some sort of Minneapolis in the 80s thing I’m missing, but I suspect she just threw a dart at a map. In any case, she finds herself broke and trying to get her big break at the same club as The Kid. He does his hottest creepy weirdo impersonation and woos fair lady’s heart.

Honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen chemistry this bad, and the middle school level acting and script doesn’t help. For their first date he pulls a horrible prank on her, the second he shows her his parents making out before taking her down to his love nest in the basement of said parents’ house (I can’t make this up), and the third one he smacks her. To give an idea of how hot their banter is, here’s a sample piece of seductive dialogue:

“Who gave it to you?” “A person.” “Male or female?” “Huh?” “You’re lying, I can tell just by your reaction you’re lying. So you gave it to me, it’s not yours anymore.”

Rowr.

But, wait, what about the rest of the movie? Well, almost no one can act (Clarence Williams III is the exception), there are leaps of logic so big you’d need an Olympic gold medalist to jump them, the writing isn’t only awful but repetitive (and I’m not talking just about the flashbacks), and while I realize technically the directing is probably worse it’s the jumpy editing that really stands out… which is the problem.

Also, the movie suffers from schizophrenia. It’ll segue from the comedic antagonists doing an homage to Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First’ routine to a straight faced scene of domestic violence. You’re obviously supposed to root for The Kid, but he’s such a douche. The movie is about showcasing the music, but it takes itself so seriously and has all these characters and plotlines that go nowhere. It’s too dark to be funny, and too goofy to be a real drama, and too mean spirited for either.

So is there anything good about it? It has a great soundtrack. Um, it’s a very 80s time capsule. Morris is actually pretty funny. Erm, Apollonia’s amazing breasts. Lots of purple, you know, if it’s your favorite color. That’s all I got.

Just stick with the soundtrack.

And this was BEFORE he got weird

Didja Notice?

• An early, simpler, version of the unpronounceable symbol that Prince changed his name to during his dispute with Warner Bros. Records is painted on the side Prince’s motorcycle’s gas tank.
• Everyone except Prince is called by their real names? Always a sign of excellence.
• Most of the songs were recorded live.
• Staring holes into the back of someone’s head from three inches away is, like, totally smexy?
• For all the slapping around going on in this movie nobody ever has any bruising?
• I’m not a guy, but I’m not sure it’s wise having someone who you’re fighting with that close to your crotch.
• The old church lady rocking out to Apollonia’s set?
• No blood by the outline? Oh, wait, there wouldn’t even be an outline.
• Morris’ quiet moment in the hallway at the end.
• Purple Rain! *breaks out lighter*

Groovy Quotes

Morris: Your lips would make a lollipop too happy.

Matt Fink-The Revolution: God got Wendy’s periods reversed. About every 28 days she starts acting nice. Lasts about a weekend.

Morris: I have a brass… waterbed.

Dad: You got a girlfriend?
The Kid: Yeah, I got a girlfriend.
Dad: You gonna get married?
The Kid: I don’t know.
Dad: …Never get married.

Apollonia: Where’s Jerome?
Morris: In his skin!

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Graffiti Bridge
• Cool as Ice
• Rock Star

“Mom, I’ll call you back. The day’s repeating.”

The Scoop: 1993 NR, directed by Jack Sholder and starring Jonathan Silverman, Helen Slater and Jeremy Piven

Tagline: Every day at a minute past midnight the sci-fi adventure begins… again.

Summary: Man gets stuck in an infinite time loop, resolves to solve the issue the only way a MAN can — duct tape!

Justin’s Rating: Time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future…

Justin’s Review: Barry Thomas isn’t having a great day.  His boss demotes him, his best friend pulls a string of practical jokes on him, and he falls in love with a girl who’s gunned down after work.  But that’s not the worst part – the worst part is that Barry’s stuck in an endless time loop (or “time bounce” as the movie puts it), doomed to repeat the same day over and over again.  Nothing changes, except that Barry, for reasons unknown to him, can remember it all.

Sound a bit familiar?  A bit… Groundhog Dayish?  Or pretty much from every science fiction show ever made?  Time loops are a standard scifi plot that writers can’t resist pulling out of the dusty box of tropes, mostly because it’s usually interesting to watch, and it’s very easy on the budget.  12:01, a TV movie on the Fox network, might not be the first nor last to use that sort of plot, but it had the incredibly unfortunate luck of releasing the same year as the immensely popular Groundhog Day, which had the cool time loop theme AND a groundhog AND Bill Murray on its side.  12:01 had Jonathan Silverman (Weekend at Bernie’s) and a Martin Landau.  Which is sort of like a groundhog, just older.

Overshadowed though it was, 12:01’s made a comeback in the cult circuit, mostly due to the fact that it’s pretty funny and clever in its own right.  While Groundhog Day posed a zen-like situation of repeating a day endlessly for no real reason, 12:01 is essentially a mystery movie with several unknown factors that are gradually uncovered over the course of the repeating 24 hours.  Barry may have begun the first day as a feckless loser, but his transformation to confident, determined hero is more gratifying to watch than Bill Murray take piano lessons.

While it could’ve been played pretty straight, the charm of this film lies with Silverman and Jeremy Piven, who both add a lot of memorable zingers (”Don’t think that I can’t do it — I’m in personnel!”) and hilarious little moments.  What’s more is that both my wife and I thought we had the whole mystery figured out early on, only to have our expectations dashed as the film threw a few clever twists in here and there.  It’s also a zippy 94 minutes, so no “500 days later…” delays here.  Straight on to the good stuff!

The only thing that fell short was the romance, which should’ve been the central hook but was flat from start to finish.  It went from the girl absolutely hating on Barry at the beginning to him being able to woo her with a series of stalker-like statements that “only she knows” by the final days, and his continued professions of love and adoration came across as a silly schoolboy crush more than Twue Wuv.

It’s certainly not better than Groundhog Day, and may be a tired scifi staple, but 12:01 is sharply crafted, and deserves your hot, sweaty hugs and completely inappropriate nuzzles.

ED-209 -- now in cute clock form! I want one!

Groovy Quotes

Barry Thomas: Mom, I’ll call you back. The day’s repeating.

Lisa Fredericks: [amused] Where are you usually locked up?
Barry Thomas: Oh, I’m just an experiment gone horribly awry in the Personnel Department.
Lisa Fredericks: I see. I’m Lisa Fredericks.
Barry Thomas: I’m Barry Thomas.
Lisa Fredericks: [not sure how to take him] What is it that you do?
Barry Thomas: Oh, nothing. I just sort of boost morale in between threats of being fired.
Lisa Fredericks: Ah. Well, you seem to have a mind. That doesn’t usually fit in this system. Nice to meet you.

Barry Thomas: You know what’s funny? If today was really today, I woulda quit by now.

Lisa Fredericks: Are you saying that you, that we, I mean – Did you get lucky? Oh my God. You got lucky!
Barry Thomas: You got lucky, too!

Barry Thomas: The Time Bounce. We’re in it. The Earth has stopped as we know it. Children don’t grow up. People don’t stay dead. We’ll never have another holiday, and you’ll never see another flower bloom.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Groundhog Day
• Run Lola Run

The Scoop: 2009, PG, directed by P.J. Hogan, and starring Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, and Krysten Ritter

Tagline: All she ever wanted was a little credit…

Summary Capsule: Pretty girl shops too much, writes about saving money, and falls in love along the way. Yeah, you men know you want to see this one.

Lissa’s Rating: If only getting a writing job was really that easy….

Lissa’s Review: So, we live near this mall. The King of Prussia Mall. It’s not just any mall. It’s a huge, giant, hundreds-of-stores mall. And, like lots of girls, I enjoy shopping so I go there when I get a chance. But this mall is different from the ones I grew up with. This mall has the designer stores: Louis Vitton, Hugo Boss, Gucci, Hermes, Coach, and Neiman Marcus, to name a few. You know- the kind where there are only a few items on tasteful display and when you walk in, the salesladies kind of look at you and wonder “what the heck are you doing in here?” (Or at least, that’s what I imagine they’re wondering.) Granted, I never go into these stores, with one big exception.

Neiman Marcus has the nicest bathroom in the entire King of Prussia mall. It also has a mothers’ room, with comfy chairs and places to sit, and a low traffic flow. And the toilets are generally clean. It’s a great place to set your bare butt or to feed a baby, and it’s my bathroom of choice, followed by the ones in Nordstrom’s and Bloomingdale’s- two other stores I never actually patronize. Anyway, whenever I walk through Neiman Marcus to get to their mecca of a bathroom, I find myself glancing at price tags, just for the fun of it. And as hard as I’ve tried (which, admittedly, is not very hard), I’ve never found anything with less than three digits before the decimal place.

I have to confess, I don’t get it. I mean, I do get why people spend more than my mother would on clothes. My mom would die if she ever knew how much I spent on bras, but a good bra makes all the difference in the world. I’ll pay reasonable money for jeans, or for a coat, and I will always get the best running shoes possible, no matter what the price tag says. And I appreciate that some stores sell better quality merchandise than others. However, even when I go to the King of Prussia mall determined to spend a little money on myself, nine times out of ten I end up back at J.C. Penney’s.  I certainly don’t understand how people could spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on an item of clothing (erm, unless it’s a wedding dress).

The thing is – and this is a fairly ugly confession – I do judge women by the clothing they wear. I see a woman in designer clothing, and I’m almost positive we will not be friends. I’ve made progress on this – there was a time I was convinced every woman in designer clothing was a Mean Girl. But I’ve learned that’s not true, and now I’m just convinced that we won’t have much in common. There is a definite stereotype that comes with high fashion, and I certainly follow it, whether it’s right to do so or not.

So Confessions of a Shopaholic already had one big strike against it: I wasn’t sure I’d be able to empathize with the heroine. Strike number two was that it was a romantic comedy. I have nothing against a good romantic comedy, but those elusive beasts are few and far between. And strike three was that it was a total chick flick, so getting my Y-chromosomed husband to watch it was completely out of the question. But he traveled and I needed a girly fix (and a movie to review), so I bought it from On Demand, grabbed some chocolate, and watched.

It was an odd movie. The basic premise is that Becky (Isla Fisher), an aspiring fashion journalist, gets a job writing a column for a financial magazine. Her column becomes incredibly popular because she actually writes about money in terms that non-economists can understand, despite the fact that she doesn’t take any of her own good advice. Becky is a shopaholic, and that dependence on shopping actually impacts her life in terms of debt, her relationships, and her career. And, of course, as this is all a romantic comedy, mushed in with all this is the fact that she meets the man of her dreams.

As a romantic comedy, frankly, it sucks. I can suspend disbelief to a point, but I couldn’t here. A girl gets involved with her boss and everyone smiles indulgently? No one ever points out to either of them what an incredibly bad idea this is? And of course we have the obligatory misunderstanding, the bonding montage, the dramatic reclaiming (although it wasn’t so bad on that one)… it just… no. Everything you hate about romantic comedies? It’s here.

But.

Confessions of a Shopaholic is two movies rolled into one, and if they’d cut out the romantic comedy part and kept the parts about Becky actually being a shopaholic and addicted to the thrill of acquisition, it could have been a reasonably good movie. I know an addiction to shopping seems laughable, but as someone who’s battled with compulsive eating for years can tell you, not all addictions are gritty and needle-injected or alcoholic. But I have to admit, I kind of snorted at the idea of shopping being an addiction as well. Then I started listening to what they were saying, and I started getting it. Shopping isn’t an addiction for me, but I certainly have those days when I feel like only a brownie can make me feel better, and it does… for a few minutes. And then it wears off and if you aren’t careful, the urge comes back again and again and again… So yeah. I really, really got that part of the movie, and it was fairly well done.

In addition to the addiction storyline, I really, really liked the friendship between Rebecca and her best friend Suze. Aside from the fact that they actually acted like friends, I actually kind of really liked both girls. Suze (Krysten Ritter) comes across as a ditz but genuinely sweet and truly caring for her friend Rebecca, and Rebecca is just… I mean, I didn’t want to like her. I totally want to mock her, I really do. But Isla Fisher has this odd charm that’s half Clueless-era Alicia Silverstone, half Amy-Adams, and she’s really kind of funny and adorable and I can’t quite point and mock because she really did do a good job.

But although there was some good in here, the romance part really kind of overwhelmed it. I found myself cringing in horror more often than I was laughing, and I am quite sure I will forget this movie very quickly. (At least, there are parts that I’m really hoping so.) If you’re a fan of the book, it might be worth it to you, but otherwise, give this one a pass, even if you’re looking for a girly movie. There are definitely better ones out there.

Cruella D'Ville's dream coat finally hits the stores.

Didja Notice?

• Rebecca’s insult of the Finnish advertiser is actually quite clever. If he says she mistranslated what he was saying or that she’s lying, it’s hard to know if he’s telling the truth or covering his own behind.
• There are actually some funny spots. Wow.
• John Goodman and Joan Cusack make a very entertaining married couple.
• But apparently she had her daughter when she was 14.

Is It Worth Staying Through the End Credits?

Nope

Groovy Quotes:

Rebecca Bloomwood: When I was 7 most of my friends stopped believing in magic. That’s when I first started. They were beautiful, they were happy. They didn’t even need any money, they had magic cards.

Rebecca Bloomwood: When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again.

Rebecca Bloomwood: Men like you are the reason I left Finland.

Rebecca Bloomwood: They said I was a valued customer. Now they send me hate mail.

Tarquin: Why do so many of your excuses involve Finland?

Rebecca Bloomwood: Because nobody checks up on Finland, Tarkie.

Graham Bloomwood: Your mother and I think that if the American economy can be billions in debt and still survive, so can you.

If You Liked this, Try:

• Clueless
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Legally Blonde

“I’m trying to tell your wife that I’m in love with her.

The Scoop: 1994  R, directed by Rory Kelly and starring Meg Tilly, Eric Stoltz, and Craig Sheffer.

Tagline: A romantic comedy brave enough to say those three magic words.

Summary Capsule: Sex ruins everything.

Al’s Rating: These three so completely deserve each other.  I’m just gonna go hang out with their friends while they whine.

Al’s Review: There’s a famous scene in Sleep with Me.  Not ‘horse head in a bed’ famous or anything, but well-known enough that it makes the rounds on the internet every few months.  It features Quentin Tarantino at a house party, explaining the brilliant subversiveness of the script to Top Gun.  Top Gun, he proclaims, is not simply about jets and testosterone, but is, in fact, a metaphor for a man coming to grips with his own homosexuality.  It’s funny and clever and delivered in Tarantino’s typical 90-miles-a-minute-without-slowing-for-crosswalks style.

It’s a shame that the rest of Sleep With Me can’t keep up with it.  The movie’s actual story follows a love triangle of best friends Joseph (Eric Stoltz), Sarah (Meg Tilly), and Frank (Craig Sheffer).  As the film opens, Joseph and Sarah get engaged during a road trip after much poking and prodding from Frank.  The day before the wedding, however, Sarah admits to Frank that once, a few years ago, she considered going after him while she and Joseph were fighting.  This sends Frank spiraling out of control as he wrestles with feelings he thought he had put to bed a long time ago.

It’s a solid romantic comedy premise, marred only by the creeping realization that you want desperately to throttle the characters onscreen.  Frank rapidly devolves into an emo schlemiel, vacillating between being anxious, irritable, and creepy, while Joseph and Sarah do nothing but argue and sulk and give each other stinkeyes from across the room until they can barely stand to be around each other.  They’re great performances; I just don’t actually want to sit through them.

The good news, however, is that Sleep With Me is from the early nineties, placing it smack in the middle of the post-Clerks/Pulp Fiction ‘slacker comedy’ boom.  As a result, Frank, Joseph, and Sarah have a Greek chorus of loser/philosopher friends who sit around drinking, smoking, and playing poker while snarking about life and relationships.  They are funny, weird, and partially composed of Parker Posey and Joey Lauren Adams, so I instantly award cool points.  The banter never quite reaches Kevin Smith levels of fascinating banality (ooh, college words) but really does a good job helping you forget that our protagonists are so earlobe-tearingly awful.

So, do I recommend Sleep With Me?  I don’t really know.  It’s got some funny dialogue in it.  It’s got Top Gun being outed in public.  It’s got Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey.  Maybe it’s worth a watch when you’re in one of those moods where you just want to wear lots of flannel and listen to Beck.  For those of you who don’t get in those moods?  Youtube is this way; check out Quentin Tarantino and Top Gun, and then you can probably get back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Want another opinion? Check out Kym, Justin, and Mark’s reviews here!

This man was nearly Marty McFly. Personally, I think we dodged a bullet.

Didja Notice?

• Frank’s beret?  With the moustache, too?  And a scarf?  Oh, man.
• Nothing dates a movie as fast as gas prices.
• The Clerks title card thing?
• Vanessa Angel as Frank’s date?
• Joseph remembering being born?
• Leo is way too serious about poker night?
• June Lockheart as the horribly boring mother-in-law?
• Parker Posey?  Rowr.
• Leo is randomly in a wheelchair in the last scene?

Is It Worth Staying Through The End Credits?

Just for the funky soundtrack.

Intermission!

The premise of Sleep With Me was divided into six parts and written by six screenwriters, all friends.

Groovy Quotes

Joseph: You’re telling me that the reason you’re named Frank is because your mother slept with Sinatra? What about your father?
Frank: My father never slept with Sinatra. Just my mother.

Joseph: You’re always teaming up with him.  You’re supposed to be on my side.
Sarah: But then I would always be wrong, too.

Duane: I know I teased you both about the pitfalls of marriage over the years.  I just wanted to say… why didn’t you listen?

Duane: I perceive a homoerotic subtext here.

Deborah: I think you would like men a lot less if you were married to one.

Joseph: What the hell is going on here?
Frank: I’m trying to tell your wife that I’m in love with her.

Duane: You know what she said to me?  She said I was full of “inner rage.”  Can you believe that?  I should have popped her right then.  Bitch.

Leo: Congratuations, Rory, you’ve picked an emotion.

Nigel: I think you two should kiss and make up.  Or beat the crap out of each other.  That would be interesting, too.

Caroline: I’ll not stay in this house a minute longer!
Nigel: I’m timing you!

QT: And what is the last f—ing line that they have together? They’re all hugging and kissing and happy with each other, and Ice comes up to Maverick, and he says, “Man, you can ride my tail, anytime!” And what does Maverick say? “You can ride mine!”

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Radio Inside
• Empire Records
• Knocked Up

“Have a mental margarita”

The Scoop: 1988 PG, directed by Julien Temple and starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans

Tagline: An out-of-this-world, down-to-earth comedy adventure.

Summary capsule: There’s aliens, girls in bikinis, and Julie Brown. I’m sorry, did you think there was a plot?

Heather’s Rating: Earth girls (Earth girls!)are easy (are easy!)! Whatcha wanna do, little buckaroo, come ooooon!

Heather’s Review: My method for picking movies is pretty off-kilter. Your average person picks something featuring one’s favorite actor/actress, something from a preferred genre, or something that looks good or was recommended by a friend.

Many times I’ll watch a movie, good or bad, based purely upon it being referenced in pop culture. I’m the kind of person who wants to “get” every reference made in every movie, TV show, book, and song that I like. I might never have paid Earth Girls Are Easy any mind if it hadn’t been for the film’s inclusion in the lyrics of one of my favorite songs off of the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. When I first heard the song I barely knew that movie existed. Once I ran across it on (say it with me) Netflix! I decided I had to see it.

That being the case, I couldn’t have expected this movie to be a Citizen Kane or Mr. Hollands Opus, and it certainly wasn’t.

I want to preface the meat of this review with a little marinade, if you will (Oooh, that was a bad metaphor. Sorry).While I love goofiness when goofiness is the intention I do NOT tolerate goofiness in the form of fifth grade humor and slapstick (read: most Will Ferrell films). I can appreciate a film like Earth Girls Are Easy while simultaneously being miffed at Pale Rider, simply because of one very important difference: a film trying to be silly is laughable in a good way. A film taking itself so seriously that it becomes silly is laughable in a bad way.

Now when I say I appreciate EGAE, I’m not saying that it’s a good movie. It’s got a few major hits against it: A silly, sex-centered plot, the inclusion of a Wayans brother… but it manages a charm that actually makes you want to watch the goofball story, bright colors and ridiculous musical numbers. Said musical numbers only add up to a blessedly small amount (around three) and make this movie an even better choice as the background for your 80’s-themed party.  All of your guests will be singing along with “‘Cause I’m a Blonde”. If they don’t then throw them out immediately, lest their sourpussness infect you.

EGAE’s plot is the kind of thing people were only putting out in the eighties: Mac (Goldblum), Wiploc (Carrey), and Zeebo (Wayans), a trio of furry and colorful sexually frustrated aliens, crash land into a pool belonging to a cute, naive Earth girl named Valerie (Davis). She shows them around and has her friend give them makeovers to make them look human. All the better for them to go out and par-tay! Wackiness and abominations against nature ensue. There’s plenty of garish clothing and hair, your standard dance-off scene, and the kind of sexual situations that would make a professional uncomfortable.

On that note, am I alone in the feeling that Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum were a perfect romantic couple in this movie in that they are both inexplicably attractive? Geena Davis at times has a very old Hollywood kind of beauty, and at the right times is quite good-looking. At the same time she has this weird lisp-like quality to her voice and her face tends to look like a misshapen Cabbage Patch doll. I applaud that kind of versatility. Jeff Goldblum’s sex appeal, on the other hand, is more difficult for me to come to terms with. His silky voice, his Jame Bond-like charm, and not at all unpleasant body are definite turn-ons. And yet I know of hardly a picture of him where he doesn’t look like a cross between a lemur and an elf. I always feel kind of wrong inside for finding him attractive, especially in his shirtless “hey look I’m a sexy, nearly hairless human now!” scene.

Ack, movie! Why must you confuse me so?

Want a second opinion?  Check out DNA Error’s review here!

Oh, Dr. Love? Somebody needs a dose of your hot chicken legs and a cold, cold stethoscope!

Didja Notice?:

• Could be I just have a dirty mind, but that’s some awfully phallic landing gear.
• “Dr. Love” needs to pay a visit to “Dr. Gym” to get rid of those spindly chicken legs.
• Geena Davis was horrendously skinny here! Somebody help me: Is it really attractive to be able to view a woman’s first five ribs in such horrific detail?

Intermission!:

Two of the cars from Death Race 2000 appear in this film. Calamity Jane’s car is visible at the gas station, and Frankenstein’s car can be seen on the road while Carry and Wayons’ characters are driving backwards.

Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis also played a romantic couple in the remake of the sci-fi classic The Fly.

Groovy Quotes:

Candy: I see split ends are universal. Lost in space with no conditioner, eh?

Woody: Waste your brain, wax your board, pray for waves.

Mac: Are we limp and hard to manage?

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension
• Mars Attacks!
• Spaceballs

“I hate you for making me want you so much.”

The Scoop: PG-13 2008, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Billy Burke

Tagline: When you can live forever what do you live for?

Summary Capsule: The new girl’s first day at her high school introduces her to all the usual teenage angst, including the boy/man destined to be her immortal vampire boyfriend

Kyle’s Rating: I could fall asleep at night as a rock’n’roll star

Kyle’s Review: Setting the merits or lack thereof in the Twilight book series and blockbuster film adaptation, one really must blame the Harry Potter phenomenon for breaking down the walls between ‘adult entertainment’ and ‘stuff for kids’ and making it perfectly acceptable and commercially encouraged for ‘old people’ to read books about teenage wizards, vampires, and so on. Growing up a voracious reader of comic books, I personally found it difficult in the years before the whole Harry Potter thing to convince people that comics were worth reading as literature. Nowadays, anything goes. Whether that indicates a wider appreciation of the arts or further evidence of increasing levels of idiocy amongst the populace depends upon your own personal perspective on our progress as a society.

I find if one isn’t obviously included in the primary intended audience for something like Twilight, subsequently the possibility for enjoyment depends upon a quirk of taste and one’s current in life. If you’re a teenage girl, Twilight was designed to strike your fancy with razor-sharp precision. If you’re anyone else, you’ll need a little/lotta open-mindedness, a penchant for teenage vampire romance, or some mysterious other variable that renders you ready and willing to say “Hey, this isn’t so bad.”

I am in no way ready and willing to say that Twilight isn’t so bad. Circumstances when Twilight hit the DVD scene were perfectly attuned for enjoying it ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’-style: I was early in my third and most promising serious relationship of 2009, we and a group of like-minded cynical and witty friends had made plans to drink and mock Twilight, and it had at least the power of Kristen Stewart to render it ‘worth seeing once.’ My girlfriend and I watched it ahead of time, just to see what all the fuss was about, then we watched it again during our little viewing party.

While I found Twilight to be perfectly adequate and not as offensive as I expected, I will admit that I recall very little of the film itself. There was a lot of teenage-y angsty conversation, plenty of ‘man kids are stupid nowadays’ moments of mockery to fuel our MST3K party, and jaw-droppingly bad special effects that made already-dicey vampire elements rival the lame-ness of the mechanical shark effects in the Jaws sequels. But overall, I was left much more entertained than I expected. I think the film, and admitted-ridiculous ‘heartthrob’ Robert Pattinson, finally won me over when Edward and Bella pull into the school parking lot for their first appearance as a couple. The whole ‘the entire school is looking at US!’ scene, done literally a MILLION times before, worked perfectly, and Pattinson’s goofy yet sincere attempt to calm down a mortified Bella by trying to find the one person NOT looking at them drew an amused smile out of me. From then on, I was no longer rooting against the film for its perceived pop culture sins, and saw it for the meaningless and cheesy fun it had to offer.

I guess I feel about the Twilight film like I do about the Harry Potter film series. I have tried and failed to sit through the first two HP films; they seem really overdone and too focused on the OMG! elements of magic as a child would view them (at least as Hollywood, and specifically Chris Columbus, views children. Modern children would more likely view magic, post-video gaming, a lot differently than old-fashioned thinking would suggest. But I digress.) to be worth my time. But then, based on some enthusiastic reviews, I checked out the third HP film and haven’t looked back. Though no film since has rivaled Prisoner of Azkaban in quality or assured storytelling, they have been satisfying enough to leave me looking forward to the next installment.

What saved the Harry Potter series, it seems, was bringing in different and increasingly talented directors. Not to knock anyone in particular, but the universe and acting dynamics of the Twilight film series seem ripe for a great or even good director to come in and tell a legitimately interesting story. I don’t know that that will happen, and having learned a bit more about how the story progresses in the Twilight books has me slightly skeptical on that front. Regardless, I remain convinced that deft direction and a little bit of luck could converge and help create a Twilight sequel where Pattinson’s dorky charm and Kristen Stewart’s unsurpassed ability to sketch twitchy, vaguely emo female heroines meld perfectly with the setting and secondary cast to catch some so-called “movie magic.” I don’t know for certain it’ll happen. But I’ve seen enough promise to have hope.

I’ll never read the books, though. Lame!

Want a second opinion?  Check out Sue and Justin’s review here!

Vampires: awesome at staring contests TOO!

GROOVY QUOTES!

Isabella Swan: How old are you?
Edward Cullen: Seventeen.
Isabella Swan: How long have you been seventeen?
Edward Cullen: A while.

Isabella Swan: Are you going to tell me how you stopped the van?
Edward Cullen: Yeah. Um… I had an adrenaline rush. It’s very common. You can Google it.

Jessica Stanley: Hey you’re from Arizona right?
Isabella Swan: Yeah.
Jessica Stanley: Aren’t people from Arizona supposed to be like, real tan?
Isabella Swan: Yeah, maybe, that’s why they kicked me out.

Edward Cullen: And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.
Isabella Swan: What a stupid lamb.
Edward Cullen: What a sick, masochistic lion.

Edward Cullen: I only said it would be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t want to be.
Isabella Swan: What does that mean?
Edward Cullen: It means if you’re smart… you’ll stay away from me.
Isabella Swan: Okay, let’s say for argument’s sake that I’m not smart.

IF YOU LIKED THIS MOVIE, TRY THESE:

• The Lost Boys
• Adventureland
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The Scoop: 2005, M, directed by Ron Oliver and starring Chad Allen, Sebastian Spence, and Jack Wetherall

Tagline: A gay detective who always gets his man.

Summary Capsule: A detective takes on an attempted murder case for a client he can’t stand, and opens more cans of worms than he ever thought he would.

Lissa’s Rating: That’s not Albany. Where’s the Egg?

Lissa’s Review: One of the points of MRFH is to bring those obscure, how-the-heck-did-you-find-that, I’ve-never-even-HEARD-of-it movies to light. The thing is, this can get exhausting, because so often those movies are obscure for a reason. And as much fun as a bad movie can be, sifting through the dust to find the diamonds can get old. Personally, I haven’t found a good one in ages, so I’ve forgotten how exciting it is to find a movie that no one’s ever heard of that you really enjoyed and then run out and tell everyone about it.

The movie is Third Man Out. It’s a made for TV Canadian movie based on the Richard Stevenson novel of the same name. It’s not my normal genre in that it’s a detective movie (of course, I couldn’t discover this one before Noir Week), but for some reason (aka Sebastian Spence), I watched it anyway.

Donald Strachey (played by Chris Allen) is a private detective living in Albany, New York with his partner Timmy (the aforementioned Spence). The fact that he’s gay – and the only gay PI in Albany, according to the movie – often gets him onto cases involving the gay community. In this case, he’s hired by John Rutka (Jack Wetherall), a journalist who runs a website forcibly outing gay men in positions of power. Donald despises his client and what he does for a living, but he needs the money and so he takes the case. What follows is a fairly entertaining, occasionally convoluted mystery where I didn’t guess the culprit until 5-10 minutes before they revealed it. And even though I’d guessed another aspect of the ending, when it happened, it still surprised me. Good stuff.

Although I’ve never been into mysteries, I’ve never been opposed to their existence. I just usually find them forgettable. This one I didn’t, largely thanks to the character of Donald Strachey and Chris Allen’s portrayal of him. Despite the fact this is a made-for-TV movie, they managed to get some real talent in Allen, and I really, really enjoyed his performance. Donald is flip, a little irreverent, a little bit of a jerk but in an endearing sort of way, self-aware, and has a very intriguing past which is explored more in the next movie, Shock to the System, which I fully intend on watching as soon as I can.

The other huge attraction for me was the relationship between Donald and Timmy. It is so, so rare in movies to find a couple – and I mean this about heterosexual couples, too – that go through a movie happy and supportive of each other. It wasn’t that they didn’t fight, because they did have a couple, normal-couple like arguments (Timmy really doesn’t like Donald taking the case, and then later their positions reverse). But usually when the couple are happy in a non-romance, one side of the couple gets shoved off to the side. In this case, I wouldn’t say that Timmy was an equal presence to Donald, but I would say that he deserved the second billing that he got. But more than that, watching these two… you could see why they considered themselves married (the legality of the situation is never addressed). They actually enjoy being with each other, they joke, they flirt, they bicker, and they understand each other. They were absolutely charming as a couple. And I very much enjoyed Sebastian Spence’s performance, although he kept reminding me of someone as I watched it. (I finally figured out that it was Sam Seaborn from West Wing.)

The big thing, however, about Third Man Out was that it got so, so freaking preachy at times. Oh wow. Not from Donald and Timmy, but from the character of John Rutka and the people associated with him. In certain ways, it made sense given that Rutka was meant to be a gay rights activist. It fit the character that he got preachy and passionate about his views. But for the most part, a lot of the movie was a bit light-hearted, and when you hit these scenes it was suddenly all anger and passion, and that made the preachy aspect stand out all the more. Plus, I thought they were trying to cram in as many issues as they could. I know that there are a lot of issues that the gay community faces and that people may or may not know about, but we don’t need to put every last one of them into the same movie. At times I felt like a cat watching a ping pong ball being tossed around the room, because they’d zip from issue to issue. Rutka annoyed me to no end, and I could very much see why Donald and Timmy just didn’t like him. I didn’t either. However, I hear that Shock to the System is much better about this, so I really look forward to watching that one.

The low production values also show, and of course, there are obvious spots for commercial breaks. The one thing that highly amused me about Chad Allen was that every now and then his Canadian accent would slip through. I don’t know if I would have been so amused, except I’m from the Albany area, and our accents are most definitely not Canadian. (By the way? That wasn’t Albany. Not just that it was filmed in Canada, but it wasn’t Albany. Although I imagine a non-Albany person would buy that it was just fine. It was weird how I didn’t.) Some of the acting definitely reflected the made-for-TV movie nature of this, although I found that was more in supporting parts.

Overall, though, I really, really enjoyed Third Man Out, and I’m glad to finally have a chance to review a movie I’d never really heard of, but can honestly recommend.

"We made it to the Mutants. Cheers!"

Didja Notice?

• Seriously, now that the Sam Seaborn similarities have entered my head, they just don’t go away.
• The Egg? Where’s the Egg? Seriously, I’m really stuck on the Albany thing here.
• Also? Definitely not Albany med. I’ve spent enough time in there to know. Although I suppose there are other hospitals in Albany.
• My little BSG actors game comes up with at least two- Sebastian Spence played the Pegasus Viper pilot Narcho, and Colin Lawrence (aka the very hot fireman) was Skulls.
• The Pyscho reference at the car lot.

Intermission

One of the things I found really interesting about this- although it might be a total coincidence- is the name of the politician Bruno Slinger. Bruno is a pretty big surname in Albany-area politics, with Joe Bruno being the biggest one I can think of. Joe Bruno was active in New York politics when Richard Stevenson wrote the novel, but a quick glance at Bruno’s Wikipedia page doesn’t suggest any obvious connection.

Groovy Quotes

Timmy Callahan: Oh good! So maybe you won’t feel obliged to destroy her and I’ll get to keep my job.

Donald Strachey: O-kay. Timmy, I think maybe you need to take Doctor Watson for a walk.
Timmy Callahan: I just did.
Donald Strachey: I think he needs to go again.
Timmy Callahan: Okay. Excuse me, while I out my dog for the good of us all.

Detective ‘Bub’ Bailey: Always that subtle, Donald?
Donald Strachey: No. Usually, they hit me.

Donald Strachey: [Whispered] Just go talk to him!
Timmy Callahan: [Whispered] Why can’t you do it?
Donald Strachey: [Whispered] Because the last time he saw me he tried to beat my brains in with a tire iron and he may want to finish the job! Just go!

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Shock to the System
• LA Confidential
• The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Scoop: 1994 R, directed by Ben Stiller and starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller

Tagline: A comedy about love in the 90’s.

Summary Capsule: If you’ve never seen a mid-90’s movie, allow me to summarize for you: a group of twentysomething friends live, philosophize and sleep together while damning the Man and avoiding work. Set to a good soundtrack.

Drew’s Rating: Really, that’s the best tagline they could come up with? I mean, for true?

Drew’s Review: You can always tell a movie made by Gen Xers, can’t you? They all feature tragically hip, ironic people hanging around coffeehouses, smoking cigarettes and doing the exact opposite of whatever a character in an 80’s movie would do. If an 80’s character would concoct a kooky scheme to dump liquid heat on the principal’s head while keeping developers from bulldozing the local hangout, a 90’s character will happily drop out of school, write a soulful guitar ballad about how the system’s keeping him down, then watch the hangout get demolished and promise the owner he’ll rebuild it using the money he makes opening for Nirvana. I’m not saying one’s better or worse than the other, but Reality Bites is unequivocally a 90’s movie, one of the cornerstones of the genre. Don’t expect to see anyone having a montage or wearing bras on their heads, is what I’m saying.

Recent valedictorian Lelaina (Ryder) wants to be a filmmaker but is stuck as a lowly production assistant, nursing a growing suspicion that academic excellence means exactly squat in the real world. Vickie, by virtue of being played by Janeane Garofalo, is her cynical, too-cool-for-school best friend who keeps a written tally of every guy she shtoinks. (Current score: 66, a higher total than some entire soccer teams I’ve known, not that I am judging.) Meanwhile, Troy (Hawke) epitomizes Gen X as the brilliant slacker who reads advanced psychology texts while manning a newsstand, and who just might turn his mutual attraction with Laina into something if he were only capable of not being an ass for five minutes. And Sammy is… uh, also in the movie. (Sorry, I love Steve Zahn, but it’s a pointless role.) Our story really kicks off when Laina meets and begins dating Michael (Stiller), a thoughtful if not terribly bright TV executive who is everything Troy isn’t — nice, motivated, successful, well groomed. Suddenly Troy is even snarkier than usual, while Laina has to deal with not only his jealousy, but also figuring out whether she’ll actually be able to make a difference by 23. (If so, she’s got me beat… I didn’t become a Mutant Reviewer til I was 24.)

So, Reality Bites. One of those movies you know by name and strongly suspect everyone but you has seen, but just never got around to. In my case, it sat in my DVR unwatched for almost a year. (It’s the entry right before Michael Phelps’ races from Beijing, if that tells you anything.) It took being unemployed to finally bring me around to watching it, and now that I have, I can safely report: yeah, it’s not bad. That probably sounds underwhelming, but honestly, it is a decent movie. It just doesn’t pack the humor of a Clerks or (stepping back a decade) the depth of a Breakfast Club, and that’s kind of what I was expecting, so it suffers a bit in the comparison. Taken as its own movie, though, you could do a lot worse. If nothing else, it’s an excellent case study on the fashions and attitudes of the early to mid-90’s.

My biggest problem with Reality Bites is the whole Lelaina/Michael/Troy love triangle, which unfortunately is the driving force of the film. More specifically it’s that for 95% of the movie, we never, ever see Troy do anything nice. Yes, it’s 1994 and he has greasy long hair and plays guitar, so naturally he can bed any woman he wants, but we’re given to understand that Laina is above all that. Believe me, I understand not wanting to be with someone who isn’t as bright as you- I once dated a very sweet girl who was cute and affectionate and came from a good family, but who I had to explain every joke to, and it just never would have worked. (As opposed to my wife, who gets the jokes but just doesn’t think they’re funny.) But Laina’s problem with Michael doesn’t seem to be that he isn’t smart, simply that he isn’t Troy. I know, the heart wants what it wants, and I give them credit for not making Michael, symbol of ladder-climbing corporate consumerism, secretly a jerk while the free thinking, brilliant-but-unmotivated Troy is really a teddy bear underneath all his cynicism. But it does make it hard for me to root for Troy and the life of missed job interviews and lung cancer and unpaid rent he can offer Lelaina, as opposed to the awkward, dopey but dependable Michael. Which, I suppose, highlights the difference between the early 90’s mindset and today.

But when all’s said and done, it’s a fairly ordinary romantic comedy that breaks the mold just a bit through the inclusion of the gay friend, the slutty friend, the douchebag love interest, and various other 90’s trappings. Take it for what it is, a somewhat interesting reminder of the Generation X mentality circa 15 years ago, and try not to think too hard about where Troy would be right now. (Filling up your tank at the local Gas N’ Go and bitching about his dolt of a manager, John Bender.) It doesn’t take as many risks as some of its 90’s brethren, but there are some good lines and you probably won’t hate most of the characters, though you may wish some of them had gotten more screen time. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, but that’s the way it goes. Reality doesn’t bite, but it doesn’t knock it out of the park either.

Didja Notice?

• Am I the only one who looked at Vickie’s sexual tally and immediately thought of Mallrats? Too bad you didn’t include rankings, Vick, or that could’ve been a book deal.
• Cameo alert: Ben Stiller’s sister voices the phone psychic, and Soul Asylum frontman Dave Piner (Ryder’s boyfriend at the time) appears briefly in the background of Laina’s documentary.
• Cameo alert 2: Renee Zellweger makes her film debut in a minor role.
• I know you’ll join me in condemning the filmmakers for unforgivable sloppiness over the fact that the characters are shown drinking Big Gulps, but there weren’t any 7-11’s in Houston in 1994. Amateurs.

Is It Worth Staying Through The End Credits?

There’s one funny scene that plays midway through the credits, which shows Laina’s documentary reinterpreted by Michael’s network, Melrose Place-style.

Intermission!

This is Ben Stiller’s directorial debut. The scriptwriter, Helen Childress, wrote it while still in college. In France it was retitled “Generation 90.” Aaaand… that’s all I got.

The real mystery is how Garofalo managed to find 66 dudes willing to do her with that hair.

Groovy Quotes

Vickie: Here’s the deal- I’m gonna take Sam, against his will, and straighten him out. Because I truly believe that if we can get two women on the Supreme Court, we can get at least one on you, Sam.

Lelaina: Oh yeah, look who’s mocking. All you do around here, Troy, is eat and couch and fondle the remote control.
Troy: I am not under any orders to make the world a better place.
Lelaina: Well, then what good are you?
Troy: You’re a pathological optimist.
Lelaina: You’re pathological.
Vickie: Oh, why don’t you guys just do it and get it over with, I’m starving.

Troy: There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a… a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know… a quarter pounder with cheese, those are good. The sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain. The moment where your laughter becomes a cackle. And I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.

Vickie: All right, we’re just trying to pay bills here, okay? So Troy, if you’ve got any money…
Lelaina: Money? Oh, but what’s money to an artist? To a philosopher? It’s just green-colored paper that floats in and out of his life like snow. It’s not anything you actually have to, I don’t know, work for, is it Troy?
Troy: No, not if you have daddy’s little gas card.
Lelaina: You shut up, I busted my ass to find a job, any job. You won’t even bother showing up for interviews.
Troy: What is it that you want from me, huh? You want me to get a job on the line for the next 20 years til I’m granted leave with my gold-plated watch and my balls full of tumors because I surrendered the one thing that means [crap] to me? Well, you can just exhale because it’s not gonna happen, not in this lifetime!

Vickie: He’s weird, he’s strange, he’s sloppy, he’s a total nightmare for women… I can’t believe I haven’t slept with him yet.

Sammy: Ma!
Vickie: I’m right here, son.
Sammy: Ma, I have to tell you some… thing. I am a homos-… sexual.
Vickie: Oh… Christ. Is there a support group that I can join to help me come to terms with my own homophobia?
Sammy: Yes, there is a group which is named PFLAG. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
Vickie: Oh… oh, PFLAG. I’m beginning to like the sound of that.
Sammy: What you just witnessed here is a preenactment of events that are about to take place.

Michael: Have I stepped over some line in the sand of coolness with you? Because excuse me if somebody doesn’t know the secret handshake with you.
Troy: There’s no secret handshake. There’s an IQ prerequisite, but there’s no secret handshake.

Troy: Besides, everyone dies all by himself.
Michael: If you really believe that, who are you looking for out here?

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Singles
• Clerks
• Rent

The Scoop: 2005 PG, directed by Clare Kilner and starring Debra Messing, some guy named “Dermot”, and Amy Adams

Tagline: Love doesn’t come cheap.

Summary Capsule: I mean, seriously, “Dermot”? How very much did his parents want him beaten up every day at school?

Justin’s Rating: “Durrrrrrrrrmahhhhhht” Okay, I’m done now.

Justin’s Review: If you were ever to visit our house, particularly if you were a sparkly vampire who only dropped in during the middle of the night, you’d probably be overwhelmed to the point of speechlessness at the sheer number of romantic comedies on our DVD shelves. It isn’t that I have some weird, crippling addiction that calls for an intervention; I’m simply married. This is the “for better or for worse” part, the “you take my movies and I take yours” that you endure to strengthen your relationship.

And you want to hear an odd statement? They’re not all bad. I don’t mind soaking my brain in some piece of cutesy perfect-boy-meets-perfect-girl fluff, not only because it makes my wife happy, but because these films can be amusing, they’re pretty upbeat, and I like to imagine what they would be like if, at any moment, the zombies started their uprising in the middle of all this wooing.

So when I unleash the full power of my mighty Mutant anger upon The Wedding Date, it’s not Justin picking on an easy target meant to represent the entire romcom genre. It’s meant to say that, right here, this film – it’s root canal-achingly bad. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the entire movie was designed by committee, none of whom unified behind a single vision.

The setup is… workable, I suppose. It’s kind of a reverse Pretty Woman: a flustered, single Debra Messing hires a pricey male escort (”Dermot” Mulroney) to accompany her to her sister’s wedding in oh-so-charming Britain. One might expect a series of unlikely yet overly cute scenarios culminating with the hooker teaching the single chick what it is to love. And also, that she should probably get to a clinic before the rash spreads, totally his fault, but that’s what you get.

Seriously — what goes wrong here?

• This movie wants to be a blend of My Best Friend’s Wedding, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Made of Honor and pretty much every other wedding-type movie that takes place in England. And it achieves none of those other films’ charm.

• The editing is often abrupt, throwing us from scene to scene without much in the way of the previous scene’s resolution or any transition to speak of, which makes me wonder just how horribly this movie was shot that necessitated such ruthless editing techniques.
• Mulroney’s acting method: eyes half-lidded, voice deep but emotionless, tolerating this plot but just barely.
• Messing’s acting method: look wide-eyed, full-lipped and as innocent as a schoolgirl, unreasonably naïve for a woman who just hired a gigilo.
• None of the other characters, other than a sassy female sidekick, are given anything but the faintest echo of a personality. For instance, Messing bumps into a bartender who used to be a great friend and a previous boyfriend – who obviously is wistful because of it – but then that’s promptly dropped and he’s not seen again until the end credits. Okay… then why show him in the first place?
• The head-thumping assumption of “sex = romance”.
• There’s never any reason given why these two hook up, other than they’re the leads. No great conversations or bonding moments or ever-so-delightful misunderstandings.
• Amy Adams is just wasted here. In all meanings of the phrase.
• For a “comedy”, there are precisely two laughs and a whole lot of strained smiles. That’s not enough to sustain interest from the male quarter.

Perhaps the thing that irks me most is that this typifies the stupid female fantasy of taming that wild hunk that just so happened to wander into your life – without adding any depth or seasoning to it. It’s all sorts of wish fulfillment, with the odd message prompting older female viewers not to find any sort of inner strength and self-confidence, but to hire male escorts in the vain hope that they’ll end up looking like this guy, sans STDs, and will be persuaded to leave the business to settle down domestically, because the alternative – remaining single – is too horrific to contemplate.

Listen, I’m no expert of scriptwriting or the romantic genre, but I know that if studios took the following advice, they’d start pumping out much more watchable flicks: if you’re going to do a romance, treat both lead characters equally, giving them depth, interesting qualities and a real reason to fall in love. Don’t have the interesting guy and the vapid woman, or the fascinating woman and the hollow man; I’m far past being interested in such uneven hookups. Movies that do that sort of thing tell me that they’re not for the gender that’s being underrepresented, and we should just flee elsewhere. So I shall.

Can you be sexually harassed by a hooker? We're about to find out!

Didja Notice?

• Without the end credits, the movie’s running time is a short 78 minutes. Maybe if they went to 80 minutes, they’d have actual character development.

Intermission!

The filmmakers tried to use artificial flowers as often as possible because Debra Messing is allergic to real flowers.

Groovy Quotes

Nick Mercer: Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close… your… eyes. You’re safe. You can relax. I’m not going to kiss you. He’s gonna be so sorry he lost you, so stop worrying. Forget the past. Forget the pain. And remember what an incredible woman you are. You do that and he’ll realize what he lost.
Kat Ellis: Holy crap. You’re worth every penny.

Nick Mercer: I’d rather fight with you than make love with anyone else.

Nick Mercer: The hardest thing is loving someone and then having the courage to let them love you back.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Pretty Woman

• My Best Friend’s Wedding
• Four Weddings and a Funeral

Let’s start with the necessary introduction for any of you sane/lucky enough to steer clear from the Twilight trend: it’s a crappy romance between a high school girl and a century-old vampire I’m calling Cedward for obvious reasons. I got dragged into it by a couple friends who insisted I give it a chance. And I gave it a very generous chance. Because I read the whole dang series, which is pure crap. The first book is crap, each book after that is crap, and the movie is crap. I mean, it’s not just that Stephanie Meyer is a terrible writer and the story sucks; I was actually deeply offended by it’s message. But it’s got some great comedy material, so I think this is going to actually be fun!

01:32 – Words can’t describe how much I hate Bella. Who calls their mom “erratic” and “harebrained?” People don’t talk like that.

02:34 – Forks is a terrific name for a town.

08:45 – And now we meet the Cullens. Cue dramatic music.

09:08 – Why does everybody think Cedward’s so great when Emmett’s right there next to him? Kellan Lutz is such a dreamboat! I think I’m in love.

If this guy was stalking me in my sleep, I might not be that mad...

09:49 – Here comes Cedward. Excuse me while I swoon.

10:34 – Nice effect with that fan blowing her hair. That doesn’t look over the top at all.

11:08 – He looks so pained sitting next to her. That’s how you know it’s love at first sight!

14:00 – The voiceover in this movie is completely pointless. Play music instead.

15:40 – Oh, Bella’s clumsy and not at all glamorous! I so relate to her now!

16:50 – “Let a playa play!”

17:35 – “Ladies first.” What a gentleman. I bet he thinks women should get the vote, too! Swoon.

20:29 – Ew. Don’t be a Creepy McCreepster. Stop asking her probing questions.

23:31 – Bella’s being really reasonable by getting mad at Charlie. If I was almost crushed by a VW van and miraculously saved by a vampire with super human agility and my dad told my mom about it, I’d be angry too.

25:10 – Cedward’s a stalker. Swoon.

32:32 – Yeah, Angela! You’re a strong, independent woman! Unlike Bella, who would literally rather stop living than be separated from her first high school crush.

33:43 – Jacob’s adorable. If Taylor Lautner was like 5 years older, I might be in love with him.

34:19 – Just looked him up on IMDb. He’s 4 years younger than me, and at an age where it makes a difference. I’m a creeper.

35:07 – You know these are the villains because they don’t look like they stepped off the pages of an LL Bean catalogue like the well-kempt Cullens. And the girl’s a redhead, which equals evil. Just take a look at me.

37:41 – The girls are dress shopping and Bella isn’t into it. Which is weird, because what girl doesn’t absolutely love shopping, you know? She’s so different!

40:36 – And now they’re mocking seatbelt safety. Good role models.

46:44 – Mace will stop all kinds of wild animals and bloodsucking demons. Good thinking, Charlie!

49:33 – Good to know that Forks High School celebrates diversity.

50:28 – “How long have you been 17?” “A while.” Winning dialogue!

52:16 – Oh, sparkles! Swoon.

53:13 – Nothing about Cedward draws me in. Guess nature kind of flubbed up the design there.

They're young, beautiful, and brooding. And people wonder why I loathe them.

54:36 – Bella’s thought process as Cedward reveals that he vants to suck her blooood: You wanted to kill me? That’s so sweet! And I’m heroin to you? OMG, romance!

55:55 – “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.” Who says that?

1:00:24 – Vegetarians don’t kill animals, stupid!

1:04:33 – Kellan actually has some lines in this scene! Hooray!

1:05:11 – Rosalie’s shoes are ridonkulous. I must own them.

1:06:16 – Not to be mean, but the girl who plays Alice is a dreadful actor.

1:07:41 – No, Bella. Cedward does not have a bed. You know why? Because he’s a freakin’ vampire!

1:09:30 – “You better hold on, Spider-Monkey!” …what?

1:10:58 – Of course. He plays piano. Swoon.

1:15:53 – I have to admit – that is a marvelous kiss.

1:17:55 – Cocking the shotgun. Way to go, Charlie.

1:20:01 – The baseball game is the only good part in the movie. But it’s kind of beyond awesome. The effects don‘t look to bad, the costumes look great, and the song rocks. I legitimately enjoy this scene.

1:23:58 – “You brought a snack.” Yup! Kettle-corn for everyone!

1:25:45 – So all of a sudden she’s Model Daughter? I detest this girl.

1:33:12 – What good is the gift of prophesy if the future’s always changing? Doesn’t that render it pointless?

1:36:51 – Don’t make a video, James. Just kill her. Please.

1:37:34 – Because I’m a Potterhead, I have to ask: Battle Royale between the Cullens and Dumbledore’s Army – who wins? My money’s on the DA, provided that they‘ve mastered Occlumency. After that, it’s just a “sectumsempra” here, an “incendio” there. Done deal.

1:39:51 – “Remember who you are!” I like how Carlisle stops Cedward from killing James, but he has no problem with his other sons tearing him to shreds and burning the pieces. Somebody’s playing favorites!

1:41:48 – Kill her, Cedward! KILL HER!

1:42:31 – Shut up, Voiceover!

1:45:19 – Bella has to choose between sunny Jacksonville (which is sure to be filled with hot college guys and baseball players) or boring Forks, where all she has is a bloodthirsty boyfriend with no personality to speak of. And she chooses Forks. This girl’s a smart one.

My prom shoes. The white-balance is thrown off by my vampishly pale skin.

1:47:37 – Fun Courtney Fact: Like Bella, I wore Chuck Taylors to my prom, but I spray-painted mine gold to match my dress.

1:53:52 – Victoria’s so badass right here. I hope they change the end of the series to her killing all of them. It would be a vast improvement over the real ending.

1:54:19 – I really do not like Twilight. I don’t get how it’s popular. The movie is at least kind of fun and really funny, but the books are just terrible. Why do they exist? They are a plague upon literature!

1:54:47 – I do like this soundtrack, though. My sister just downloaded it for me and I’m pretty happy about it.

Okay, it’s over. And I have to say, I had a really good time watching it! I may have to do this again someday. But for now, I think I’m gonna go rent season 1 of True Blood. I hear that’s pretty good. Anywho, thanks for joining me! Hope everybody enjoyed the movie as much as I did, whether it was in “the right way” or not!

The Scoop: 1985, R, Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Moriarity

Tagline: Hell has come home.

Summary Capsule: The Man With No Name saves a mining settlement with no hope

Heather’s Rating: Two out of ten overblown egos

Heather’s Review: I’ve been home for a visit for two weeks and, even wrenched from the bosom of my beloved Netflix account, I’ve been able to get in quite a lot of movies. The beauty of cable (which I am too miserly to buy for myself) is that there’s always a movie on. Last Sunday ABC was running a marathon of movies featuring Hollywood’s iconic heroes. My nephew and I were just being lazy and hanging out for the afternoon. We caught the end of Two Mules For Sister Sara and made the unfortunate decision to watch Pale Rider, which came on right after.

I reviewed TMFSS a while back and, having never seen a Clint Eastwood movie before, I fell in love and decided I had to watch everything that he’s been in. Except for Every Which Way But Loose. I just don’t think I can get behind that. I should have gone with something tried and true like Dirty Harry or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Instead I got stuck with a shameless Clint Eastwood vanity project.

Pale Rider (an allusion the Biblical description of Death upon a pale horse) tells the story of a small settlement of miners who are being bullied out of their land by a greedy landowner and his son (who looks like a cross between Elijah Wood and Toby Maguire). Their salvation comes in the form of a nameless preacher who shows up while one of the miners is ganged up on by six of the landowner’s thugs. Our hero, known only as “Preacher”, halts the attack by pulling out some fancy karate gimmicks with a hickory axe handle and handily dispatching of the group. Hull (Michael Moriarity) thanks Preacher and asks him to come back with him and help the miners. Preacher agrees and sets in motion a wave of awe and google-eyes from everyone he encounters.

Honestly, folks, I don’t know where to start. I knew my nephew and I were in trouble when, five minutes into the movie, we were treated to a young girl burying her dog and saying The Lord’s Prayer over the fresh grave, inserting her own commentary after every line. She says things like “The Lord is my shepard. I shall not want. But I do want”. I don’t know what Clint was going for, but the result was just forced and weird and the audience has to suffer through a whole prayer’s worth. We would have changed channels at this point, but this was already proving to be excellent fodder for the MST3K treatment.

This Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Preacher flick relies on Clint Eastwood’s ability to be awesome to carry the goofy scenes and implausible romantic triangle involving the aforementioned fourteen-year old girl and her mother. I wish I were joking, people. Hardly a scene went by that didn’t have my nephew and I cringing or guffawing. Halfway in we watched Preacher take a sledgehammer to a man’s cashews and then help him back to his horse. The man, who is the landowner’s main muscle, thereafter becomes “good” and helps Preacher throughout the rest of the film, leading me to believe that the man is either a complete idiot or is into some seriously weird kink.

I can’t begin to describe the stomach-shrinking creepiness of the scene where the fourteen-year old professes her love to Preacher and tries to seduce him. Yes, you read that correctly and no, I will not relive my horrible memories by explaining. Might I add that the scene begins with the girl saying to him “This is where I buried my dog”? I don’t know what drove you to think up that scene, Mr. Eastwood, but I know that there’s professional help available for what ails ‘ya.

All of this was so distracting that I can’t even recall whether or not the acting was any good. It wasn’t distractingly bad, except in the case of Megan (the…erm…driven teenaged daughter). Maybe Clint’s intention was to make everything and everyone else so secondary that the audience would focus only on him, hoping for some bloodshed to break the tedium and idiocy. Whatever the case may be, I think I’ll be steering clear of any future films directed by Mr. Eastwood unless I get some very convincing arguments for them (and a dose of Vicodin).

Clint Eastwood was trained by Shaolin monks in the arts of axe-kickery

Didja Notice?:

• Eastwood can kick eight dudes’ butts with a stick but can’t put out a match with a tub full of water?
• “This is where I buried my dog” actually surpassed the level of awkwardness acheived by “This is where the fish lives”?
• What on earth is that thing sitting on the steps when Preacher steps out into streets?
• Who’s idea was it for the marshall to call out “Prrreeeeaaaacherrrrr…” over and over, echoing into the  moonlight, through the mountains. What, is he a coyote?

Intermission!:

• The train station built for production was used again late in 1988 for Back To The Future, Part III

Groovy Quotes:

Preacher: Good gun for buffalo. The problem is there aren’t any hereabouts.
Hull: I’m going with you.
Preacher: No buffalo where I’m going, either.

Eddie: It was him. Him and his men. They shot him. Forever. The bullets kept hitting him. Forever.

Sarah Wheeler: Who are you? Who are you… really?
Preacher: Well, it really doesn’t matter, does it?

Megan Wheeler: Preacher? Preacher? We love you Preacher… I love you!… Good-bye!

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• A Fistful of Dollars
• 3:10 to Yuma
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Interestingly, it’s not always the sad moments that make me cry. I wrote this list before I wrote the introduction, and only three are officially truly sad moments. The other seven are bittersweet, some even more sweet than bitter. A few are even downright happy (well, by tearjerker standards). What can I say? Strong emotion makes me cry.

So, my ten moments I cry, no matter how many times I’ve seen the movie (and with #7, that one feels like it’s the triple digits.)

1.) Homer Hickam tells his father that he’s his hero in October Sky.

The relationship between Homer and Jack Hickam is one of the foundations between the movie. It’s complex, subtle, and beautifully acted by both Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Cooper. I love this moment because the two of them spend the entire moment not getting what the other is saying (mainly because they’re not listening to each other), but this is when the deep love that is there boils up through, and they both get it. It’s a lovely, tender moment, and it makes me cry every time.

2.) Satine dies at the end of Moulin Rouge!

When I think of tragic death scenes that make me cry, this one tops my list. It’s impressive that it works, because you know she’s going to die from the very beginning. I mean, that’s how the movie starts, with the quote “The woman I love is dead.” But what I think really tips this over the edge is the way Christian/Ewan McGregor just completely breaks down.

3.) The Schindler Jews give Oskar Schindler his ring in Schindler’s List.

All of Schindler’s List is a heartbreaker, especially the first time you watch it. The brutality and cruelty shown in the movie… well, come on. It’s the Holocaust, graphically portrayed. But while that got me the first time through, I think my mind sort of took defenses when I’ve watched the movie in subsequent viewings. However, the moment Schindler truly realizes what he’s done and thinks he could have done more never, ever fails to twist my guts.

4.) Wat tells his the newly named Sir William “your father heard that” in A Knight’s Tale.

I’m a sucker for redemption stories, and also a sucker for parent child bonds. This is a fun movie where I don’t expect deep emotion, but when William realizes his father just had a life long dream he never expected to happen come true… there go the waterworks again.

5.) The entire ending of Life As a House.

When I was 16, my father passed away from leukemia (a disease I still cannot spell the name of without help from my spellchecker, even though it’s been eighteen years). This movie is about a sixteen year old losing his father to cancer. If you need more of an explanation, I’d be happy to direct you to the Midvale School for the Gifted.

6.) George Banks reflects back on his daughter’s life the night before she gets married in Father of the Bride.

Re-read #5, and then apply. But at the same time, I almost always cry at weddings. It’s so nice to see people celebrate something so happy.

7.) Dory tells Marlin that “when I look at you, I’m home,” in Finding Nemo.

Okay, enough of my Daddy Issues. Sheesh. This is just a great little moment in a great movie, when Dory’s trying to convince Marlin not to leave and go off alone. It’s just such a wonderful summation of what love- any love- is, and delivered with such earnestness from a character whose previous deep lines included “the sea monkeys have my money” and “Es-cap-ee! That’s funny, it’s spelled just like the word escape!”. Perfect moment in a great movie.

8.) The boys stand on their desks to say goodbye to Mr. Keating in Dead Poet’s Society.

Like with Schindler’s List, the big obvious moment (in this case Neil’s suicide) doesn’t really choke me up so much after the first viewing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still horrible, but it doesn’t make me cry. But much like the moment Schindler gets his ring, the moment that the boys stand on their desks is a total tearjerker. And the beautiful bagpipe music and the boys still sitting hunched over don’t help keep me from crying.

9.) Matt reads the poem at Gareth’s funeral in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

This is one where yes, the death is sad, especially since Gareth’s one of my favorite characters in the movie. John Hannah does an amazing job playing the grieving lover without overdoing it. But I think it’s the poem, “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden, that just really gets me every time.

10.) Sam insists on going with Frodo at the end of Fellowship of the Ring.

Self-sacrificing hobbit bromance. Do I REALLY need to say more?

So, yeah. For all the death and chick flicks I’ve probably seen, those are the ten moments that stand out in my mind as making me cry. What can I say? When it comes to movies, I take tissues. It’s a good precaution.

The Scoop: 2009 R, directed by Greg Mottola and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Ryan Reynolds

Tagline: It was the worst job they ever imagined… and the best time of their lives.

Summary Capsule: the summer before going off to graduate school, a young man’s parents can no longer provide him with the money they promised so he has to take any job he can: welcome to Adventureland!

Kyle’s Rating: Kristen Stewart can do no wrong EVER

Kyle’s Review: Although I surely would have enjoyed Adventureland without it, having seen I Love You, Man helped enlarge Jesse Eisenberg’s lead performance immensely. Paul Rudd, already enshrined in the Comedy Hall of Greatness, delivered above and beyond what was expected in his role. Yet Rudd couldn’t overcome his script’s inability to sketch a wholly believable male not only born without the skills to form normal male friendships but seemingly incapable of even attempting to fake the behaviors allowing her to “fit in” socially. I Love You, Man is very, very funny, don’t get me wrong. But there is a consistent distance throughout that, basically, never let you forget you’re watching a fictional comedy film. Is that a bad thing? Not at all.

Adventureland, by contrast, had me physically wincing in my seat at certain points. At one point, not coincidentally involving Kristen Stewart, I was hugging my legs in a fetal position. Strip away the film’s kitschy 1980’s setting, a couple background characters with traits seemingly designed just to bring in some easy laughs, and plenty of audience-friendly illicit narcotics humor, and there is a definite heart at its core. Raging emotions under the surfaces, painfully honest displays of vulnerability, and way too many of those instances of complete helplessness against the tides of Real Life.

Whether you’ve lived through any kind of whack summer job such as Eisenberg’s James Brennan is forced by the circumstance of his parents’ dwindling fortunes to seek out at skuzzy yet charming Adventureland, it doesn’t exactly matter. You should be fully able to feel James’ disbelief at where he finds himself, and his growing infatuation with Kristen Stewart’s Em Lewin. Just as you should be able to feel essentially every other character, even the guy whose idea of emotional communication is punching old childhood friend James in the genitals at least once a day. They all resonate as “real” people, working away the summer in Adventureland for a wide variety of reasons but able to bond over a general sense of being way overqualified for their jobs (mostly) and a true love for booze and pot. And who among us can’t empathize with that?

I could go on about the minor characters, who are great, and the major supporting players, who are just as necessarily great in their strong support roles. Ryan Reynolds especially manages to make what would be an utterly antagonistic role in another (probably lesser) film into a not only believable but very sympathetic character. The movie soundtrack pretty much rules as well, even for those who didn’t grow up in the ‘80s. But my strongest applause is reserved for Eisenberg, who seems to specialize in the type of role Michael Cera excels at though Eisenberg’s domain is much farther along the dramatic spectrum than Cera’s, and his love interest, Stewart.

Kristen Stewart is a controversial figure in modern cinema. Beyond arguments over whether she can actually act or simply play herself compellingly over and over again, her involvement in Twilight polarizes a lot of cinemaphiles outside of their teens, and Stewart’s real-life penchant for either acting stoned or being photographed getting stoned upsets plenty of regular gossip magazine readers.

As far as I’m concerned, Kristen Stewart is to film as Grant Morrison is to writing. Her facial quirks are completely charming, the habit of extreme hairplay she brings to her every performance are the stuff legends are made of, and her consistently aloof mumbling vocal delivery places her above any other current female actor. Even those with so-called “Academy Award” wins on their resumes. Adventureland’s quality construction would have alone guaranteed a good film, but its performances make it great. Stewart, whose tandem lead narrative is the more emotionally-convoluted and, in its slight contradictions, more inherently human, helps the film transcend time and space. Decade and location are interesting here, to be sure. But what matters is Eisenberg and Stewart’s relationship. If you don’t feel its rawness, I’m not sure you’ve ever lived!

Adventureland certainly hit a pretty sensitive spot within me, based on current circumstances. But I’m just as certain you’ll enjoy it regardless, if not for the painfully real central relationship and nuanced performances, then for the amusingly observed quirks that characterize any summer job-from-hell and the bizarre decade of the ‘80s. Never too over-the-top and never going for the ‘wasn’t big hair funny?’ type of idiot humor, I found Adventureland a refreshingly honest theater experience. So much so that even with scant minutes before the end, I remained unsure of any kind of impending happy ending. It speaks to how involved I was in these characters, though, that I found myself desperately hoping for one.

'So... how about a game?'

DIDJA NOTICE?

• Hairstyles in the ‘80s were like the cars: way too big and completely ostentatious

• Thanks to some revelatory scenes we all now know why we have never won anything more than a dying goldfish from any standard theme park carnival game

IS IT WORTH STAYING THROUGH THE END CREDITS?

Not past those first couple minutes for the cool characters shots and the cool soundtrack tunes

INTERMISSION

Greg Mottola apparently worked at a real Adventureland, located in Farmingdale, New York on Long Island, and had hoped to actually film this film there but decided not to because it had changed so much from what he remembered.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Empire Records

• Superbad
• Wet Hot American Summer

The Scoop: 1944, Unrated, Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson

Tagline: It’s Love And Murder At First Sight!

Summary Capsule: An insurance salesman with a taste for someone else’s wife gets mixed up with a rotten dame that might be the death of him.

Heather’s Rating: When will they every learn that someone who’d kill their spouse to be with you is probably has a unique view of the word ”love”?

Heather’s Review: How did it come to this? How did my life come to the point where my computer crashing is such a melodramatic punch to my soul? About three years ago (ago, weeks, but it feels like years) my laptop died in my very arms. I cuddled it, stroked its keys, tried in vain to rouse it with my vain please of “ALT-F10! ALT-F10! You can’t die on me. I won’t let yoooouuuu!” Sadly, in the words of Little Britain’s Carol, “Computer says no.”

No, indeed.

At first I worried about my ability to write for MRFH. I could hardly fathom the thought of not having lappy right beside me, smiling back at me as I busily typed my sarcasm-laden critiques. Eventually I faced the hard truth: I would have to handwrite, then find a place to later type, my reviews. Use a pencil? And, and paper? Madness!. That madness carried me through my Chinatown review and I could have considered my Noir Week duty done. Alas, I can’t let my Noir Week contribution rest with a movie that I didn’t even really care for. It just isn’t fair to a genre I love so much.

So here I sit at the library, the smell of high-schoolers all around me (they smell like sandalwood, fruit, and Axe deodorant if you must know), intensely aware of my 60-minute time limit. 

Thusly, without further adue, here be my thoughts on Double Indemnity, on of the most notorious examples of film-noir.

As Kyle so rightly pointed out, there is an inherent silliness in noir film. I don’t contribute that quite so much to the genre as I do the decade. Noir is full of melodrama. Fist-biting, scenery-chewing, “John! Maaarrrsshaaa!” melodrama. So is nearly everything else put out from the late thirties to mid-fifties. I do pretty well holding back the laughter until the leading lady, swept into an embrace, throws back her head, exposing her neck (made of pudding, apparently) in what looks more like an invitation to Nosferatu than the desire to be kissed. Also remember, anytime you’re having a passionate discussion involving how things will never work between you, be sure you’re both looking over your left shoulder at all times. Never face each other. That would just be weird.

I loved Double Indemnity. It’s everything you could want in your noir film: Narration, an easily duped and cunning man (Walter), the best friend who’s just a little too close to figure out what’s really going on (there was no private eye in this movie but Keys was sharp enough that he might as well have been one), a grouchy, loveless husband/victim du jour, and a femme fatale so marvelous that one can hardly read anything about the character type without seeing the name “Phyllis Dietrichson”.

I got here what I was missing in Chinatown: A real chemistry between our doomed couple, a great sense of romance. Not that “Oh I love you darling, the way your eyes pierce the darkness, the way the Brill-O-Creme catches the light…” but this smoldering, dangerous kind of attraction that soon carries things out of control until they’re just stuck with each other for the rest of the ride. Even better than Phyllis and Walter’s relationship is the dynamic between Walter and his best friend, Keyes. The most suspenseful scenes, and the most touching, are the ones with just those two guys on screen.

The dialogue is corny at parts, but that’s to be expected with any film from the our fledgling era of filmmaking. Those corny parts didn’t dominate this script. Instead we get some great witty banter and a cutting observations by our characters.

I’ll be honest with you, as much as I like the film-noir/mystery genre, I get frustrated with the extent that some of these movies/novels go with their twisted, intricate plots. Some try so hard that it can be too much to enjoy. Double Indemnity is a movie that’s basically easy to predict, especially if you get the noir forumla. Even so, it gave me some genuine moments where I grinned and said  ”Wow, that was good!”

Double Indemnity is my personal favorite of the genre for its refusal to be boring, too over the top, or sappy. If for nothing else, I love it for the end. They pulled off the noir heart-tugger just right.

Tum tee dum. Just buying groceries, tum tum. While we talk to ourselves. Seperately and not at all together.

 Didja Notice?:

• ALWAYS check the backseat of your car.
• We never do find out the name of Mr. Dietrichson.
• That’s one really bad wig.

Is It Worth Staying Through The End Credits?:

No.

Intermission:

Silver dust was mixed with some subtle smoke effects to create the illusion of waning sunlight in Phyllis Dietrichson’s house. Boy, the forties was working hard to create inventive ways to kill people, wasn’t it?

Groovy Quotes:

Phyllis: I’m Mrs. Dietrichson. Is there anything I can do?
Walter Neff: The insurance ran out on the fifteenth. I’d hate to think of you getting a smashed fender or something while you’re not… fully covered.
Phyllis (with a little smile): Perhaps I know what you mean, Mr. Neff. I’ve just been taking a sun bath.

Walter Neff: The insurance ran out on the fifteenth. I’d hate to think of you getting a smashed fender or something while you’re not… fully covered.
Phyllis: (with a little smile) Perhaps I know what you mean, Mr. Neff. I’ve just been taking a sun bath.

Neff’s narration: It was mid-afternoon, and it’s funny; I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that block. I felt like a million. There was no way in all this world I could have knownthat murder sometimes can smell like honeysuckle.

Keyes: How you doing, Walter?
Neff: I’m fine, only it seems somebody moved the elevator a couple of miles away.

Neff: And now I suppose I get the big speech, the one with all the two-dollar words in it. Let’s have it, Keyes.
Keyes: Walter, you’re all washed up.
Neff: Thanks, Keyes. It was short, anyway.

Walter to Phyllis: It’s just like the first time I came here, isn’t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.

Neff: Know why you couldn’t figure this one, Keyes? I’ll tell ya. ‘Cause the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from ya.
Keyes: Closer than that, Walter.
Neff: I love you, too.

Neff: Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money – and a woman – and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?
 
Phyllis: I think you’re rotten.
Walter Neff: I think you’re swell – so long as I’m not your husband.
Phyllis: Get out of here.
Walter Neff: You bet I’ll get out of here, baby. I’ll get out of here but quick.

Walter Neff: Who’d you think I was anyway? The guy that walks into a good looking dame’s front parlour and says, “Good afternoon, I sell accident insurance on husbands… you got one that’s been around too long? One you’d like to turn into a little hard cash?”

Soundtrack Review: It’s basically the same little piece over and over throught the entire film, except in a couple of more tense scenes.

DVD review: I wouldn’t know. I watched it on Netflix.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Sunset Blvd.
• M
• The Maltese Falcon

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”

The Scoop: 1974 R, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway

Tagline: No tagline

Summary Capsule: More twists than that party game with all the colored dots

Heather’s Rating: Further proof that the vast majority of Oscar winners serve no purpose other than to get more use out of the STOP button on your remote.

Heather’s Review: I really don’t think I could be a private investigator. My number one worst job imaginable is a police officer or a doctor who has to break the bad news that a family member has died. Slightly less traumatic would be private investigator, a job where one has to sneak around like a criminal and invade someone’s privacy who at best is innocent and at worst is baking their cakes in someone else’s oven. The thought of having to break the news to some heart-broken man or woman that their deepestr trust has been shattered makes my skin crawl. I don’t like seeing people hurt, and I’m not a voyeur, so really there’s nothing in it for me. But where would our noir films be without this mainstay of the genre?

Our movie opens with private eye J.J. Gittes (Nicholson), fresh from breaking bad news to one client, walking straight into a plea from a beautiful woman to spy on her spouse, whom she suspects is cheating. This is not just any jilted wife, though. This is Evelyn Mulray, wife of the city’s rich water and power engineer, Hollis Mulray.  At first Gittes tries to talk Mrs. M out of having him spy on her husband (Why? That’s how he makes his money!) but she’s having none of that and assures him she will pay him well.

A couple of days later Gittes gets a visit from another woman who turns out to be the real Mrs. Mulray (Dunaway) and demands that Gittes stop spying on her husband or she will sue. Gittes decides to talk to Mr. Mulray in order to figure out what’s going on, but that turns out to be a problem, as he turns up with a nasy case of “drowned”. Deceit, incest, and chases through orange groves ensue. Gittes is determined to pursue this mystery as curiousity gets the best of him and about half of his nose.

I’ve never watched any newer films done in the noir style, and the only reason I decided  to review this movie instead of my original choice, The Maltese Falcon, is because I like Jack Nicholson. Mostly I like listening to his voice (and watching his insane eyebrow contortions, which are rivaled only by Jack Black and various Muppets).  I’m a sucker for a unique voice, a la Sean Connery, and I’ll sit through nearly any movie if it has a mellifluous orator. I’m sure you’re all dying to know my top talkers so here they are (in no certain order): James Earl Jones, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, ANY male with an Australian or British accent, and Hugo Weaving’s fantastic “V” voice.

Mmmm… V…

Huh? What? Oh, sorry. So anyway had it not been for Nicholson I probably wouldn’t have given Chinatown a second glance, as I like my noir films like Ashton Kutcher likes his women. I took the plunge and I have to admit I’m disappointed.

We watch noir for its manly men and voluptuous femme fatals, the mystery that keeps us guessing, the funny-looking old cars and intriguing characters with cigarettes surgically attached to their mouths. The cars and the smoking were there, but the feel that I love about noir films just wasn’t there.

The pacing in this film was painfully slow, to the point that I found myself clipping my cats’ claws and cleaning their litter boxes in the middle of the movie. Now one would think that with a pace that slow the plot would be easy to keep up with. Yet, like any murder mystery, there are layers of twists and little clues that make it crucial for the viewer to keep ze eyes glued to ze screen. You can guess how well I was able to keep up with that kind of plot in a movie that I found less entertaining than scooping up cat droppings. Note, movie: If you’re going for suspense and action, do NOT have your plot revolve around some scheme involving the city’s water supply and real estate.

Also I have no idea what was going on with the sound in this film, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard such misplaced effects. Just off the top of my head, I remember a scene where Gettis and Mulray are in bed, all post-coitus, and loud footsteps can distinctly be heard. At first I thought it was intentional, and that they were about to be attacked by someone. Nope. Just random, heavy, offscreen footsteps. Even worse than that was a scene were Gettis and Mulray are in a car together, windows rolled up, and when she shouts it echoes like she was standing in a hangar bay or something. Really? How could you miss something like that during editing?

What really turns the movie into such a mess is the feeling that things were just tossed in here and there. Pointless twists, extra characters, and settings were thrown in and then forgotten to the point that my friend and I were constantly saying “What? Well, who was that guy? What was the point of that? Who’s friggin’ house are we at NOW?” And for that matter, I still don’t get why this movie is called “Chinatown”! There were half-hearted hints at Gittes’s previous life working for the DA there, but that’s no foundation for the title of a movie.

To add to the confusion we have a sex scene seemingly sparked by Gettis’s butchered nose and Mrs. Mulray’s black speck in her iris. I don’t know about you, but nothing gets me hotter than lacerated flesh and eye imperfections. On that note there’s no chemistry at all between the two main characters, much less anyone else in the cast. I cared about no one in this film. The only feeling I had for any of the characters was empathy, because they all seemed as bored by the this movie as I was.

Doh my dose is dot ruddig, you jerk!

Didja Notice?:

• Eye flaws are sexy!
• Exciting orange grove chase action! Gruesome crutch beatings!
• Roman Polanski’s cameo.
• Alright, so Roman “Man with Knife” Polanski threatens to cut Gettis’s nose off and feed it to his goldfish. Since when are goldfish carnivores? Also, a goldfish? Really? I mean an angry kitten would be more threatening than a goldfish.

Intermission:

This was Roman Polanski’s last American film before statutorily raping a 13-year old girl and fleeing to France for safe exile rather than be sent to prison. SPOILER: That adds a whole ‘nother level of creepy to the rape/incest thing in the plot. Brrr…I need a shower now.

Groovy Quotes:

Jack Gittes: But, Mrs. Mulwray, I g—-n near lost my nose. I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you’re hiding something.

Lt. Escobar: [pointing to a graffito on the wall] Isn’t that your phone number? 
Jack Gettis: Is it? I forget. I don’t call myself that often.

Yelburton: My goodness, what happened to your nose? 
Gittes: I cut myself shaving. 
Yelburtong: You ought to be more careful. That must really smart.
Gittes: Only when I breathe.

Gittes: There’s no point in getting tough with me. I’m just… 
Evelyn Mulray: I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does.

Soundtrack:

Noir-esque, but nothing special. Although I did like when Nicholson was humming “The Way You Look Tonight”

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Casablanca
• The Maltese Falcon
• M

The Scoop: 1971 R, directed by George Lucas and starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie

Tagline: Visit the future where love is the ultimate crime.

Summary Capsule: George Lucas’s horrifying vision of a future where love and sex are forbidden, people are expendable and there’s nothing on TV but reality programming.

Heather’s Rating: Making the transition from food to pills won’t be all that difficult for many people these days.

Heather’s Review: Ah, THX 1138: The movie whose title can be said dripping with nerdy awe or with total uninitiated confusion and still come out sounding like something one might order at NAPA.

Jokes about auto parts franchises aside, THX 1138 is a film that geek society will allow no rabid George Lucas fan to be ignorant of. Lucas’s student short film project titled “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB” (proving to us all that one can make a title more laborious than THX 1138) garnered the man enough attention to get American Grafitti made, the success of which allowed him to make some of the most iconic films of all time. So basically, this film based on a student film project is responsible for Star Wars and Indiana Jones. In a way it’s also responsible for Episodes 1-3. You take your good with your bad.

I’m not trying to say that this film holds no merits beyond being the launching pad for some of the world’s most well-loved movies. Perish the thought! THX 1138 is an animal all its own. Lucas’s more well-known films are great adventures of fantasy and imagination that lift the spirits of young and old. THX 1138 is dark and dreary, disturbing and at times offensive. It has no whimsy and fantastical elements (although I swear I saw an Ewok in there. Darn you, Lucas!). Instead, be prepared for Lucas’s dark side. (HA!)

It’s your standard dystopian idea, really. Our protagonist, THX 1138, lives in a oppressed world where emotions are illegal, sedative use and the state sanctioned religion are mandatory, and all is aglow in sterilized white limbo splendor. His roomate LUH decides to break them both free by switching out their medicines. Much odd, clumsy bald-people sex ensues. The two are found out and seperated. THX must find out what has happened to his beloved LUH and, with the help of an eccentric hacker and a rogue hologram embarks on a mission to be free or die trying.

What is it that makes a dystopian future so fascinating to us? Is it because we fear a future so different from what we know? Do we see it as a warning for us to change our ways before it’s too late? Is it because so many people can relate, feeling trapped, lonely and held back in their own lives by the government or the people closest to them? For whatever reason mankind has always envisioned a terrifying future for itself and seems to enjoy it. Myself included.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this movie, it being made in ‘69. I’m not saying that nothing good came to theaters in that time period, but a lot of it was grainy, sluggish and devoid of soundtrack of any kind. I want to make it clear that I do not appreciate my movie being a vehicle for whatever talentless pop crooner is big that year, but too much silence between dialogue and action and you end up with something that feels like one awkward moment. Like Napoleon Dynamite, but worse.

Now that I’ve sucker-punched the sacred cow of cult movies I’ll attempt to rectify my credibility before I’m attacked by the pitchfork-wielding hordes and their leather-clad behemoths. THX 1138 is a very good movie. It’s not what we’re used to with today’s attempts on the same genre. It lacks a lot of action, there is no rebellion against the overlords fueled with sweet semi-automatic arsenal, no rallying of the troops with an inspirational speech. There is a definite lack of PVC. If you can’t see your future-gone-awry movie without these elements then you will be sorely disappointed. As for me I enjoyed the subtlety in this film. Simple, yet chilling announcements made over the speakers, disorienting sets and background images made this one unsettling future. I didn’t miss today’s blockbuster flashiness of the scenery and dialogue that smacks the audience over the head with “We’re trying to be epic! And meaningful! Social commentary!! Syyyymbolismmmm!!!”

If anybody makes even ONE Styx joke you'd better pray to OMM that I don't hear it!

Instead we are left with scenes like the confessional box where THX goes to talk to the image of the state sanctioned deity. He’s lost control of his emotions and breaks down, sobbing and begging for interaction and conversation. All he gets in return is a flat voice recorded on a loop, repeating the same empty phrases over and over. It’s been a long time since anything in this genre moved me like that. If you’re a fan of dystopia then I suggest that you check this one out. It’s refreshing in its constant creepiness and ability to pull you in rather than waiting for the next big robot explosion.

Now if you’ll excuse me I hear the pounding of a mace on my door amidst rhythmic chanting and shouting. That would be my cue to take my underground exit to the beach where I will escape on my man-made raft.

Didja Notice:

• Those police robots were so friendly and polite I almost wanted to like them. Creepy.
• Shell Dweller=proto-Ewok? Anyone?
• Okay, when did he learn to drive?
• Monks are really easy to push down.

Intermission:

A cropped version of Hans Memling’s Christ Giving His Blessing (1478) is used as the visual representation of the state-sanctioned deity OMM 0910

Some of SEN’s dialogue was taken from Richard Nixon’s speeches.



This is exactly how I feel whenever I work with our new Wordpress blog.

In the same manner of the epic Han Shot First debacle, Lucas messed with THX 1138 as well. I’ve heard that there is no DVD release of the original as of yet. I can see wanting to clean up the special effects, but what is it about the man that makes him compulsively change important elements in his films?

Groovy Quotes:

Male announcer: That accident over in Red Sector L destroyed another 63 personnel, giving them a total of 242 lost to our 195. Keep up the good work and prevent accidents.

SEN 5241: You rate very high in sanitation. I checked.

OHM 0910: Buy more. Buy more now. Buy, and be happy.

Male voice (jet car radio chatter): Hey, I think I ran over some – I think I ran over a wookie back there on the expressway…

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• The Omega Man
• Equillibrium
• Metropolis (Fritz Lang)

The Scoop: 2008 R, directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan, and starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor and Saurabh Shukla.

Tagline: What does it take to find a lost love?

Summary Capsule: Young man becomes a contestant on the Indian ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ to gain the attention of his true love and maybe fulfill his ultimate destiny

Courtney’s Rating: I’m supposed to be doing homework, but this seemed far more important…

Courtney’s Review: So you all know how I kept talking about The Graduate like it’s the greatest movie of all time? (I’ve still yet to review it – ah, well, such is life.) Well, it should be noted that that was before I saw Slumdog Millionaire.

Okay, that’s not fair. I can’t really say that because I’ve only seen Slumdog once so far, so I don’t know how it holds up to repeat viewings. (The Graduate holds up spectacularly, by the way.) I was actually waiting until I could see it again to review it, but then Kyle beat me to the first review (and pretty much wrote what I wanted to say. But whatever. I’m totally stealing all of his extras. I’m incredibly lazy.) Then the Oscars came and there was this huge sweep and Indian child in Mumbai were dancing and crying and I just got really excited and started yearning to review the movie.

It’s been nearly two months since I saw the movie, but whatever. I just really, really wanted to do this now. Also, I’ve been really busy, the only other movies I’ve seen recently are He’s Just Not That Into You and A Very Brady Sequel (review to come soon,) and I haven’t filled this month’s quota yet. So, here you have it.

If I wasn’t a big Danny Boyle fan, I don’t think I would’ve heard about Slumdog until it won the Golden Globe. I also don’t think I would’ve wanted to see it. But as it is, I am a Boyle fan, I did hear about Slumdog, and I did want to see it. Since October I’ve been bugging people about trying to see it. Of course, I was still in Hungary and the movie had barely been released in the US and the UK, so it didn’t happen for a while. But when I came home in December, I was delighted to hear that it was playing at a theatre in my hometown. It was so worth the wait.

It’s almost hard to describe what Slumdog’s about, only because the premise sounds super corny. (”It’s Forrst Gump set in India!”) And it would be, but Simon Beaufoy and Boyle handled the themes delicately. It’s about destiny, which is normally the lazy screenwriters’ answer to unlikely plot points. I hate “destiny” in movies. But here it just works.

I know I’m sounding like Meredith Viera right now, but there really aren’t many lows in Slumdog. The romance between Jamal and Latika is admittedly pretty flimsy. We know that they love each other, but we don’t really know why. This did bother me for a while, but I think it works out. Halfway through, I just decided that it doesn’t really matter why they love each other for this specific movie. All that matters is that they do. Also, I think that the relationship between Jamal and Salim is the important one. It’s more dynamic, and my sister and I spent the entire ride home discussing it.

The story is pretty cliché, but it’s told with a unique voice and vision in a world we rarely see, which is what movies are supposed to do.

And the dance number was kind of weird, but really fun, so it all works out!

What makes this film so good is that you can just tell that everyone who worked on it was in love with it. It really shows through in every aspect, and I think that’s why it had such a major sweep with the Academy.

Slumdog Millionaire has gotten a lot of flak for being really optimistic. If you ask me, it’s all unwarranted. We need happy movies now more than ever, and I’m sorry, but the Dark Knight and Wendy and Lucy just don’t fulfill that need. The happiest movie to win the Best Picture Oscar between 2000 and 2008 was Chicago, a musical about murderers trying to con people into thinking they’re innocent, so I’d say Slumdog’s win was refreshing. And to think that it almost went straight to DVD.

Like most Americans, I love underdog stories. Slumdog Millionaire was the ultimate underdog story, in the universe of the film and in real life as well. I’d suggest it for anyone who likes to smile, or anyone who just loves movies.

Groovy Quotes

Prem Kumar: A few hours ago, you were giving chai for the phone walahs. And now you’re richer than they will ever be. What a player!Prem Kumar: Its getting hot in here.
Jamal Malik: Are you nervous?
Prem Kumar: [audience laughs] What? Am I nervous ? Its you who’s in the hot seat, my friend!
Jamal Malik: Yes, sorry.

Jamal Malik: When somebody asks me a question, I tell them the answer.

Prem Kumar: So are you ready for the final question for 20 million rupees?
Jamal Malik: No, but maybe its written, no?
Prem Kumar: Maybe…

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Millions
• Bollywood/Hollywood
• Quiz Show

Tagline: CLINT EASTWOOD…the deadliest man alive…takes on a whole army with two guns and a fistful of dynamite!

The Scoop: 1970 PG, directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine

Summary: A money-minded gunslinger and a sexy nun team up with Mexico for a showdown against the French, and afterward everyone will eat Freedom Fajitas.

Heather’s Rating: This weekend I’m going to Tijuana to look for one of those exploding piñatas.

Heather’s Review: I’m lucky that my sisters aren’t as mean spirited as I am when picking out movies for someone else to review (ask Drew or Kaleb for more clarification on that). Two Mules For Sister Sara is the second movie I’ve reviewed at my sisters’ request and I enjoyed it just as much as the first. Here’s the skinny for those of you who aren’t savvy to what’s going on:

In order to introduce my sisters, who are not cult fans, to our site and pique their interests I suggested that they each pick any film they would have me review and, regardless of what it was, I would review it. First was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, second was this Clint Eastwood vehicle. I’m happy to report that I came out of the experience unharmed. I was dragged out of my cult cavern into the blinding light of “regular” movies and I didn’t burst into flames, my eyesight stayed intact, and I haven’t been forever scarred. In fact, both were very good movies that I otherwise might not have seen.

Our protagonist in TMFSS is Hogan (Clint Eastwood), a loner who is traveling through the desert on his horse with no name. He comes across a woman, nearly naked and being threatened by a group of men. He neatly offs all three of the men and swaggers over to his damsel in distress, who is wearing naught but a black cloth around her, probably expecting a little “reward”. His swagger is brought to a standstill when he finds out she’s “Sister” Sara. Noticeably frustrated, he wants to know what a nun is doing out there. Sara reveals that she is running from the French, who are after her for helping the Mexican rebellion raise money. She was sneaking her way back to Chihuahua to assist the revolutionaries when the men…er…sidetracked her. Hogan is headed to the same place she is to help with the same cause, albeit for less noble reasons. The only money he cares about raising is for himself. They team up, Sara for protection and Hogan for inside information Sara can give him to help with his mission. This movie follows our unlikely duo as they alternately snipe at each other and save each others’ lives, culminating in a battle against the French garrison and a little surprise about Sister Sara.

There was no lack of action here, what with Eastwood either shooting or exploding something every few minutes. That reminds me…this marks my first ever Clint Eastwood movie, and I have to say “Cripes, but Clint Eastwood was young!”. I can see how he became so iconic. He’s a great actor, and he just defines manly and powerful. Same goes for his character, Hogan. The guy decapitated a rattlesnake, managed to blow up a train while falling down drunk, and had a burning arrow pulled through his chest. I thought I was gonna have to pull out my Swiffer to mop up all the machismo oozing out of the screen.

Trust me, you want to watch this if you’re in the mood for a good, lighthearted movie. And hey, if life’s been treating you good lately then I suggest it as a decent date rental as well. It’s the kind of movie you can really get into, whether or not westerns are your thing. The pace never bogs down, it has a great humorous tone, and both Eastwood and MacLaine give performances that really make you interested and believe in their characters. It’s fun to watch them banter back and forth, not wanting to admit how much they really do need one another. They have a very equal relationship in that way, with each of them possessing strengths the other one could use, and going back and forth saving each others’ lives.

I have but two complaints. One is that horrible soundtrack. It’s some goofy western-ish track with donkey sound effects and brief bits of women singing in Latin. It’s a disjointed mess. Blech. The other gripe is about the fake blood. You see, the thing about shooting an action movie in color is the stuff has to look somewhat realistic. More than once I found myself marveling over just how much that “blood” looked like tempura paint. It’s hard to feel for a supposedly wounded character who looks more like the victim of a daycare finger-paint fight than an arrow through the chest.

If you have been so far unconvinced to watch this film then I ask you: How can you not like a movie that gives you a nun punching a cowboy in the face?

The Church will make allowances for this

• The donkey sound effects punctuating the soundtrack. Hokey, Hollywood. Ho-key.

• If there’s a situation, Clint’s going to find an excuse to use gunpowder in it.
• What were those things that fell out of the train? They looked like gold bars, yet nobody showed any interest in them.
• El Gato Negro. A decidedly unmanly name for a bar, don’t you think?

Intermission:

Elizabeth Taylor was originally supposed to play Sara, but the the salary she was asking for was too high. I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks that would have been weird.

Shirley MacLaine openly fought with both the director and Clint Eastwood.

We'll blow you sky high, la la la! Whoops! I mean Happy Independance Day, France la la la!

Hogan: All the women I’ve ever known were natural-born liars but I never knew about nuns until now.

Colonel: You don’t know my men. They’re tough, courageous…each one of them a Mexican patriot.
Hogan: Idn’t that sweet? Well, I happen to be a Hogan patriot and I’d like to have some dynamite with me.
Colonel: That’s fine. You show me the tree it’s growing on and I’ll have my men pick it.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Paint Your Wagon
• The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
• Dirty Harry

The Scoop: 2008 R, directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan, and starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor and Saurabh Shukla.

Tagline: What does it take to find a lost love?

Summary Capsule: Young man becomes a contestant on the Indian ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ to gain the attention of his true love and maybe fulfill his ultimate destiny

Kyle’s Rating: My most uplifting, non-pickaxe-through-brains favorite film experience of ’09 thus far!

Kyle’s Review: First and foremost Slumdog Millionaire is a love story, full of (im)patient longing and true destiny, so try not to be discouraged by the opening scenes of torture. This is a film that I knew very little about, only saw because my need to find a restroom in Burbank coincided perfectly with an afternoon showing (with enough time thrown in for a big bag of popcorn and a TON of that pump-your-own “butter” topping), and whose most worthy pedigree was that a best friend with similar taste declared it “the best film of 2008” just a few days prior.

Slumdog Millionaire works best, I should think, on that first viewing where perhaps you have only some vague sense of what you’re about to see but aren’t entirely certain how you’re going to get it. Time gets played with, not to the Oscar-baiting extent that I hear goes on in another Oscar-nominated film (which I plan to see next), but you had better be prepared to pay some close attention.

I think what stood out for me as an absolute plus was the dialogue and consequently how major revelations are handled: far from the expected manner of using freeze framing and lengthy close-ups to indicate the ‘important’ visual elements we should be memorizing, there is quite a bit of expectation that the audience is going to be smart to piece some things together on their own. Similarly, the dialogue is written in a very natural way that simultaneously entertains even as it clues us on developments past, present, and future without being utterly blatant. Sort of a sad societal progression that I laud a film that doesn’t treat its viewers as attention-deficient buffoons, but what can I say?

Actually, at this point I should mention something specific about the movie. At its core, it’s a very standard story: kids grow up in hardship, one boy falls in love with one girl and knows from then on that it is destined that they will be together, while the boy’s older brother takes on the leadership role despite probably not being the best candidate for doing so. And then orphan-style madness happens to all of them and it’s bad for a long time, until perseverance and plucky ingenuity resolves everything and everyone gets what they deserve. And, being ostensibly an Indian film, the end credits roll against a Bollywood-style big dance number. Good, happy, uplifting times!

That doesn’t sound particularly appealing or award-winning, does it? Let me sweeten it then: set in India, what most critics refer to as the “real” India, means that all of this standard stuff happens in a setting that is seldom, if ever, used for such a story. There is such decay and squalor that it seems impossible to find beauty within the world these children grow up in, yet from the start Danny Boyle’s worthy direction maintains a view of the proceedings that never allows us to forget that this is some impressively foreign scenery. Whether you’re skeezed out or not, it’s nearly impossible to feel like paying rapt attention to the screen if only to see another piece of our world that you may not have seen before, from a whole new perspective. Absolutely breathtaking depiction of what at times seems like a whole other planet: amazing!

I have friends who get their movies in highly illegal ways. It is difficult to judge them too harshly, if only because of the unspoken benefits for friends of those type of evil-doers. Anyway, to a person, everyone who downloaded Slumdog Millionaire didn’t quite understand the hype. At best, a couple got into the story but remained confused that it could be garnering such awards dicussion. “It’s just another love story,” one girl told me.

There is no “see movies in theaters in order to enjoy them fully” moral going on here. But I would classify SM as a tremendous example of a cinematic crowd-pleaser, so at its best you’re going to be part of a crowd watching it. At least your first time. If you hate being seated by the randomly assembled idiots that make up your theater-going community, or you can’t leave your house without fearing for your mental safety, I understand watching it on your own. Otherwise: see it on a busy movie-going night. Like a sports event or inauguration, you’ll tap into not just your own natural energy but also that of your surroundings.

Or perhaps not. I have enough faith in Slumdog Millionaire, in the accomplished way it uses chronological games and a fresh take on a fairly unexplored setting to tell a classic story in a “new” way, that however you watch it you’ll at least appreciate what it adds to the genre of film. Far from being one of those Best Picture contenders that in a few year’s time will be wondered of “How did that get nominated again?” it will endure. People love an underdog, to be sure, and certainly even your most hardened, anti-cleverness and anti-foreign film type will give the film a chance once they hear the central conceit of the plot: young man gets onto the Indian incarnation of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ so he can reach the love-of-his-life. How American is that?

'Is that the last answer of which you will make final?'

Prem Kumar: A few hours ago, you were giving chai for the phone walahs. And now you’re richer than they will ever be. What a player!

Prem Kumar: Its getting hot in here.
Jamal Malik: Are you nervous?
Prem Kumar: [audience laughs] What? Am I nervous ? Its you whos in the hot seat, my friend!
Jamal Malik: Yes, sorry.

Jamal Malik: When somebody asks me a question, I tell them the answer.

Prem Kumar: So are you ready for the final question for 20 million rupees?
Jamal Malik: No, but maybe its written, no?
Prem Kumar: Maybe…

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Millions

• Bollywood/Hollywood
• Quiz Show

So, squatting in front of my DVD rack, I considered my choices for a long time, until one day, out of the blue, a little fairy with a nasty cough knocked on my door and thrust a copy of The Princess Bride into my hands.

“Here ya go,” said the fairy, hacking a chunk of lung into a hanky. “Stop yer whining and do this. You know you gotta, yadda yadda, do you know where the nearest emergency room is?”

He was right, of course, even if he stopped breathing. How could I be so incredibly blind? It’s been there in front of my nose for years – a long-loved cult favorite with a rich history of viewing pleasure in my life, spanning back to my early teenage years. It’s a “good” movie, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in analyzing it and generally spewing my unique brand of verbal cologne across its surface. And it would allow me to vent even more about the sheer idiocy that is Buttercup.

It’s funny to think that The Princess Bride spans aaaaaaall the way back to 1973, when author/screenwriter William Goldman (All the President’s Men, Misery) created this in the form of a giant shaggy dog tale. Instead of just launching into a subversive twist on the old fantasy/romance genre, he also subverted novel writing itself. Goldman felt the need to make up an enormous backstory of TPB’s alleged writing by a guy named “S. Morgenstern”, and how Goldman took an often-boring novel and boiled it down to what he called “The Good Parts Version”. Thus, like the movie itself, Goldman continually breaks into the narrative of the novel to mention that he took out, say, 29 pages devoted to a woman choosing which hat to wear. If you didn’t know better, it was entirely possible to be fooled by this setup. And that’s the sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude TPB had when it came onto the silver screen.

(Interesting side note number one: when Goldman re-released TPB in a 30th anniversary edition, he included the first chapter of the sequel: Buttercup’s Baby. Naturally, Goldman created an even more complex tale of how he was trying to acquire the rights to abridging that text from, of all people, Stephen King. Shaggy dog again. Then, it gets even better – as the chapter itself ends with a terrific cliffhanger, readers became eager to know when the sequel would finally hit the shelves. The answer? Never. Seriously, as far as we know, Goldman wrote the cliffhanger chapter as one last TPB practical joke on his readers. I love this guy so much, it hurts.)

(Interesting side note number two: Goldman inserted another practical joke into the text, where he mentions that he himself wrote only one scene, a reunion scene between Buttercup and Westley, but his publisher rejected it. He then urges readers to write in asking for the scene, which they did in spades. The readers got back a long – and again, fictitious – letter about some lawyer who has blocked the release of the scene.)

But enough about the book – we’re here for the movie! I’ve been constantly amazed at how TPB has changed for me over the years as my perspective has grown wiser and more amazingly intelligent. Or… I’m just bored and new things pop out at me. As a kid, TPB was nothing more than a fairly funny fantasy flick, but it took a few years before I began to catch on to the extreme undercurrent of satire and goofy weirdness that was going on here. Everyone does everything “straight” in TPB, yet what they’re saying or doing is almost completely ridiculous or stupid. If they did it all with a wink and a jolly skip, it would’ve been forgettable; as it is, the sincerity of the characters is what makes this outright awesome.

Thus, let us go, you and I, back to 1987, and a world filled with large rodents, six-fingered men, and the… * cough * cough * … the pit… of despair!

The Princess Bride, like many other classic films, is not a case of one thing done extremely well, but many things done extremely well. I’ll probably find myself saying, “One of the things I love about this movie is…” quite a bit, and you’ll just have to bear with me through it. Fozzy, Teddy Ruxpin, Smokey or Yogi are your choices.

One of the things I love about this movie is the clever little framing device of the grandfather and the grandson. Sure, they could’ve gone the traditional route of just throwing us into a fairy-tale setting, perhaps with some lame title cards, scrolling text or a narrator who would much rather be back performing Shakespeare on stage, thankyouverymuch. But instead we get a brilliant device that works on so many levels: it eases the audience into the fantastical setting; it provides moments of great comedy when we’re suddenly “yanked” out of the story for some comment or another; and it gives an ally to people who complain about healthy servings of romance and glitzy fantasy into their otherwise bland cinematic diets.

But more than that, more than anything else, it helps to rekindle our love of simply having someone tell us a story. Good storytellers are a rare and cherished breed in our world, people who can spin us a tale and make us care with only the power of their words and our imagination. For centuries, it was the way people across the world passed on their stories, real and imaginary, for future generations to experience. It’s good we haven’t totally lost that.

The movie opens to a shot of Accolade’s C64 “Hardball”. Sports fans are thrown a bone (it’s a hit, and the batter makes it to first!), and little kids in the audience find something to connect to. The camera shows us the player – it’s a somewhat-sick Fred Savage, who’s both a Chicago Bears fan and a shill for Cheetos. He’s got a cool room, one of those setpieces that studio prop departments go nuts for over-decorating with devil masks, toy cars, and posters galore. His mom comes in, feels his forehead and establishes that, yes, he is on the threshold of death’s grim doorway, a mere second or two from pressing that eternal doorbell.

Mom lets the kid know that his grandfather is there to see him; kid is less than thrilled, knowing his grandpappy’s penchant for cheek pinching. Lo and behold, the cheek gets violated. Hey everyone, it’s Peter Falk (Columbo)! As the movie progresses, we get a great sense of their relationship. Like any kid on the verge of annoying adolescence, he’s not a huge fan of old people and their old ways, like walking and communicating verbally. The grandfather knows he’s an embarrassment, but gives it the faithful college try anyhow. Surprisingly, it works – but not without a few bumps in the road.

Grandfather gives the kid a present, which thrills him for the 0.2 seconds opening it, until… “A book?” he says unimpressed, his eyebrows climbing to teenage disbelief. From here on out, grandfather knows that he’s going to be fighting an uphill battle to win over this newfangled generation of gadget geeks. Not trying to oversell it, grandfather describes it as having “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles!” So now we have something to look forward to, I guess. We’ll try to stay awake.

Okay, no matter how cynical I could ever become, the moment when the grandfather begins reading, the scene fades into the countryside, and the music leads in, I get a big ol’ smile on my face. It’s just charming, nothing more or less to it. “Isn’t that a wonderful beginning?” “Yeah. It’s really good.” Haha…

I do appreciate that a bulk of the “getting together” part of the romance is front-loaded into the first ten minutes or so, leaving the rest of the movie to examine what romance is really all about: being hounded and tortured for devoting your life to another human being. More romance flicks need to learn this lesson. Thus, we are introduced to freshly-scrubbed Wesley (Cary Elwes) and snobbish prig Buttercup (Robin Wright). Wesley is a meek farmboy who is the source of amusement for the torments of Buttercup, who barks orders like a dominatrix or a teenage drama queen (same difference?).

Wesley, overcome by what we’ll hope are the toxic fumes of barnyard animals and not hormones, does not instantly crush her skull with a nearby hoe, but instead meekly replies to her demands with the phrase, “As you wish.” Eventually – as in, 35 seconds – she realizes he loves her, she loves him, and death will have to go on to other venues for the time being. Then they start to kiss against the backdrop of a perfect sunset, the moment frozen in time out of respect for their love, and…

“Hold it hold it!” the grandson interjects, taking us away from this Hallmark Hell. “Is this a kissing book?” Good call there, junior. I suspect, without that little protest, about 90% of the male audience would’ve dashed out of the theater doors by this point. Back into the book we go!

So here we have our happy couple, who we literally just met about twenty seconds ago as they fell in love, and the story suddenly has to rip them apart. Because, y’know, we couldn’t just watch two people mooning over each other for a couple hours without taking our fury out on the cat. Or something. I used “cat” there because I’m not very fond of them, and I highly suspect that they see our skin as a forbidden – yet tantalizing – barrier to the pounds of catnip stashed away inside.

Also, Garfield sucks.

“This is true love,” Wesley says with dead earnestness. “Do you think this happens every day?” The answer to that is “no”, since the True Love™ that he’s talking about has the power to reverse death and decay, storm castles, and thwart polydactyly wherever it rears its superfluous appendage.

To escape from Buttercup’s fantasy-romance stereotype and find sultry wenches (more on that later), Wesley leaves to make his fame and fortune on the open sea. Good idea. Except he is instantly (off-camera) killed. Bad idea. “Murdered by pirates is good!” says the grandson. Yes, junior. Yes it is. If only we were all so fortunate.

Buttercup takes the mourning period way out of proportion to the two minutes of true love™ that she had, and begins a mope-a-thon to rival any teenage kid who finds out they have to take advanced calculus. “I will never love again,” she snivels. “Where am I going to find hired help that I can abuse in such a sado-masochistic fashion that they’ll end up falling for me? I mean, a second time?”

I’m not a big fan of Buttercup, for many reasons, but the overarching reason is this: she is beyond useless. Taken seriously, this movie might even be misogynistic. What does she do, other than look halfway pretty, stumble around in a dress, try to attempt at verbalizing anger, and fail in a battle of wits against grown-ups? She does jump out of a window, I think, but that’s hardly in her favor. She’s just a witless pawn being moved around to keep the plot going. I guess that’s true of a lot of romance novels, come to think of it.

Grandfather goes on to read to us that Prince Humperdink (awesome name, +10 character points!) has chosen Miss Mopey to be his lawfully wedded wife. We assume that he hasn’t actually met her at any close range, otherwise he’d find out quickly that her emotions are limited to either spastic jerk or woeful melancholy.

In the “introducing Princess Buttercup” scene, there’s a couple funny things going on in the background that are interesting to notice. The first is that the senile King is doing his own hand-waving, pretending that he’s still in charge. The second is when Humperdink asks the crowd if they want to meet Buttercup, they all raise their fists and shout “YEAH!” in perfect unison. I can’t imagine the logistics behind the practices of the peasant masses in this country.

Buttercup comes in, but she’s not happy. You could even say she’s… mopey? You could say that. Quickly, we switch to Buttercup taking on yet another fantasy-romance cliché, which is The Horse Whisperess. Once, just once, I’d love to see a fantasy-romance chick who is frightened or appalled by these four-legged stomping machines, and prefers to ride a tortoise instead.

Finally, the movie takes us away from the dreadful saccharine plight to get things moving along (just like classic fairy tale stories — if you’re not into the thick of the action by paragraph three, it ain’t worth telling). And the best way to do that is to have a (not so) random encounter on a path with Goldilock’s three bears: shorty, skuzzy and hefty. Shorty is Vizzini, the “brains” of this diabolical criminal syndicate; skuzzy is Inigo, the drunk swordsman; and hefty is Fezzik, the World Wrestling Federation Champion, ANDRE THE GIANT!!!!. Sorry, I felt as if that bit of coolness needed some formatting assistance. Buttercup’s in trouble, but she drinks deep from the well of self-pity, and could not climb out in time to realize that she’s still on a speedy horse, and these three guys have to take turns giving piggy-back rides. Fezzik gives Buttercup the Vulcan nerve pinch, and she’s out.

As they load Buttercup’s worthless carcass onto a boat, Vizzini tries to put the uncomfortable trouser tights he’s wearing out of his mind by offloading some exposition to the others. They’re making it look as if another country kidnapped Buttercup, and a war will soon erupt. Father will turn against son, Yoda will flee to Degobah, and proton torpedoes will be fired into exhaust ports. It’s a prestigious line of work, Vizzini informs us. Fezzik balks at killing Buttercup (this is because he does not yet know her), but Vizzini verbally beats the both of them to the ground. “Do you want me to send you back from where you were? Unemployed? In Greenland?” always gets a laugh from me.

Then begins a little odd moment between Inigo and Fezzik, where we eventually realize that Inigo is teaching his landmassian pal how to think of rhymes. That’s also a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition — moreso if you work for Hallmark. The rhyming drives Vizzini mad. Good.

Later that night, the boys are celebrating their mild villainy on the boat, but Inigo is concerned about being followed. Vizzini demonstrates his love of his Word of the Day Calendar (1448 A.D. edition) by spouting the word “inconceivable” every two minutes for the remainder of his screen time. Buttercup gives them some lip, and Fezzik silently contemplates keelhauling her. Westley? My man? I know the farmland offers few dating alternatives, but I’m sure there were more attractive and less bitter sheep out there than this woman. Just sayin’.

A mysterious ship is following them, and Vizzini gives a plausible theory: “Probably some local fisherman out on a pleasure cruise… at night… through eel-infested waters.” Eel-infested? Sign me up for that cruise!

Buttercup’s had enough — she bails over the side. Her sharp wit has not quite caught on to the fact that (a) she’s trying to swim in a full dress, (b) there’s no land anywhere nearby, (c) she has yet to develop mature gills, and (d) dude just said “eel-infested”. Maybe she has a weird kink for eels, but this being a family-friendly flick, I’m going to carefully lay that thought aside and smash it with a sledgehammer. Inigo cannot swim, and Fezzik (doing charming little hand motions) claims he can only dog-paddle. Buttercup is shocked to learn that the territorial waters she’s now co-habiting with eels are not home to your garden variety toxin-saturated Moray Eels or even the battery-charging Electric Eels. Nope, these are the stomping grounds of the elusive Shrieking Eels, who used to be forum-posting fanboys before their transformation by a witch and dumped into the sea. “No original paint job on Optimus Prime!” they wail, as Buttercup looks anxious. “Greedo can’t shoot first!” One swims closer and closer to Buttercup, opens its mouth (“Uwe Boll should leave video games alone!”) and starts to charge.

I’ll admit it: when I was a kid, this scene made me the most anxious out of any in the movie. I have a life-long fear of the ocean and everything that swims around and under you, and Mr. Shrieking Eel didn’t help my sleep patterns any. However, in a moment of cinematic brilliance (and I am not being sarcastic at all), right as Buttercup’s about to be eaten the scene abruptly cuts to the Grandfather, who looks up at the Grandson and reassures him: “She doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time.” This short interlude, right here, is the best part of the movie for me. Without descending into outright satire and goofy comedy, the filmmakers rapidly shift from tense horror to a moment of pealing laughter — who wouldn’t want to be reassured that their favorite character (let’s pretend, for Buttercup’s sake) would be okay during a scary part? The Grandson is non-plussed: “What?” You can tell he was really getting into the tale (and so were we — by this point, we more or less forgot that it’s being narrated by the Grandfather).

Back into the story. Buttercup’s okay (sigh), the mysterious boat is gaining speed, and Vizzini wishes he had more hair so that he had something to pull out. Question: if they were going to kill Buttercup anyway later on, why not just do away with her now, and lug her blessedly-quiet corpse around for the remainder of the journey? You have a giant, after all, and a guy who’s really really good at cutting big things into smaller things.

Morning breaks over the Cliffs of Insanity, and the criminals break for coffee and crumpets. Then Fezzik is called on to carry all four of them up, while the Man in Black™ follows up from behind. At the top, Vizzini cuts away the rope and is dismayed when the Man in Black™ does not fall to the rocks and rupture his abdomen. A side note: Vizzini has the most girly dagger I’ve ever seen. I have more manly butter knives in my drawer, I swear.

Vizzini leaves Inigo to kill the MIB (Tommy Lee? Fresh Prince?) once he reaches the summit. Nobody thinks to just sit at the edge and have a ball by throwing fist-sized boulders down onto MIB’s head. I can just picture the plunking. “Men in masks are not to be trusted,” Frezzik pontificates. As a kid, this statement blew by me; as an adult, it casts a wicked light on all superhero franchises. After all, would you vote for a masked President or trust a high school English teacher who always wore a scarf around their mouth and eyes? Yeah, me too.

Playing against moviegoers’ expectations, instead of quickly arriving at a fast and furious battle between Inigo and the MIB, the film grins evilly and grinds to a halt. The MIB is taking forever to climb up the cliff. Inigo is impatient. Inigo offers to help. MIB declines. Inigo practices his swordplay a bit on the obviously-not-a-soundstage. MIB climbs more. It’s both infuriating and hilarious. Eventually, MIB allows Inigo to help him up – and pause for a warm heart-to-heart conversation, solely because Inigo made up some Spanish-sounding name to swear by. If I knew that worked, I’d be telling police officers “I swear on the sword of my father Domingo Montoya, I will drive 55.”

During this little verbal tête-à-tête, which is all the more surreal for the fact that these two well-spoken men are about to try to hack each other’s limbs off, we find out a few interesting facts. Mostly it’s about Inigo’s quest for revenge against the six-fingered man who killed his father, but we can’t discount the MIB’s boot full of enormously large rocks. But seriously, Inigo’s monologue about his father is one of the most captivating in the film, and that is saying something. “Next time, I will not fail. I will look him in the eye and say, ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’”

Finally, we get some down and dirty fighting. I won’t be going into great detail, since this is a mutant viewing and not a comprehensive history of Russia, and we need to get moving. With flailing rapiers and wordy exchanges, Inigo is eventually bested and knocked unconscious by the MIB. There’s also a completely superfluous high bar flip that was included because Rob Reiner accidentally budgeted for a gymnast and needed to justify the cost.

With skuzzy out of the way, the MIB catches up with hefty. Andre the Giant gets his biggest part of the movie, which plays against his two weaknesses: his ability to manipulate the English language so that it doesn’t sound like he’s talking through a twenty-foot tube, and his (at the time) serious back problems. Still, with the aid of ramps and his charming smile, we can’t help but root for Fezzik a little more than the huggy MIB. Fezzik’s inquiry about the mask is a snarky barb aimed at hack fantasy writers, as is the MIB’s reply: “They’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.” Eventually, the MIB chokes Fezzik until he passes out and starts bleeding from the nose and ears. Oxygen deprivation! It’s just as fun as it sounds! I don’t know how Andre kept a still face while he’s told to “dream of large women”, but I admire him the more for it.

We cut to Prince Humpbackwhale, hot on the trail of the kidnappers. For a self-proclaimed badass, his frilly skirt and extreme lack of armor make me wonder why his nation hasn’t staged a coup against his lilly-white buttocks yet.

MEANWHILE… the MIB catches up with shorty, who stages a “battle of the minds”. They each cut open their skulls, fling their brains at each other, and pray for a quick resolution before bodily functions shut down. Nah… it’s more along the lines of a poisoned cup of wine Vizzini has to avoid, which he profoundly does not after a long rambling speech that somehow references the Vietnam War (!). Buttercup mute and blindfolded makes this – easily – the best scene she’s in. Vizzini dies, rather abruptly. I know, I know. It’s inconceivable.

A quick aside: since the MIB is the one who comes up with the whole poisoned-wine challenge, it makes me wonder what Vizzini’s plan entailed. After all, he’s managed to set up a rather extravagant picnic feast – wine, goblets, apples, bread, cheese – all on top of a tablecloth. Where was he stashing all of this during his flight from the law?

Team Black intercepts the football from Team Stooge, and makes off for the horizon. Upset at being used as a piece of equipment in a sports metaphor, Buttercup resumes her mouthy nature as the MIB yanks her along. MIB reveals that he’s spent “the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder”, which begs the question: um, WHY? Either he had incredible foresight for this bizarre hostage situation, or he just wanted to win some bar bets.

To keep the suspense up, we get yet another scene of Prince Humperdink analyzing the second fight scene. I spend more time admiring how purple, fuzzy and poofy his ensemble is. It’s like someone abducted Christopher Guest from his bathroom right after a shower and made him latch on a sword belt around his wife’s bathrobe. His horse has no problems being leapt upon (Sue? Do horses like this?)

The MIB yanks Buttercup across the country like a man very late for his Oscar acceptance speech and the woman that he’s towing behind is the reason for that tardiness, then abruptly halts for a few minutes of casual small talk. Is it a spoiler to anyone at this point if I reveal that the MIB is Wesley? Was it ever a surprise to anyone?

Anyway, Wesley is obviously pissed beyond belief at Buttercup (“Ha ha ha, and what is that worth the promise of a woman?”), but he’s still rescuing her. Buttercup must be the only woman on the planet with more than three teeth, considering how much Wesley puts up with her instead of moving on to another motion picture. Wesley even goes so far as to almost slap her. “My hand flies on its own,” he warns. Yes, I’m sure that defense holds up in divorce courts across the country.

A quick cutaway to Humperdink’s mighty morphin’ rescue squad, then we’re right back with the honeymooners. They’ve gone, like, two feet, and Wesley throws Buttercup to the ground again. Geez, man, I don’t like her either, but she’s wearing high heels and a hundred feet of curtain strapped around her – you might want to give her a little bit of leeway on the travel situation.

Buttercup accuses the MIB of being the “Dread Pirate Roberts” (the Dread Pirate Bob?). ‘Tis true. MIB/Roberts/Wesley moans about how hostage taking is “work work work”, and Buttercup sobs, “You mock my pain!” Why yes. Yes he does. Because your tears are so deliciously sweet, my dear. Wesley spouts the immortal line: “Life IS pain, highness. Anyone who says different is selling something.”

Buttercup takes a rare moment away from her self-pity and shoves the MIB down the steep hill. Go Team Mary Kay!

In perhaps the greatest instance of cinematic rolling down a hill, Wesley reveals his true nature with a hearty (and somewhat pained) “Aaaaas youuuuuu wisshhhhh!” Good move, there, Buttercup. I, too, like to start the day by pushing my love off a cliff. “Crap!” she thinks, then launches herself down the hill in the second greatest example of cinematic rolling down a hill. It’s quite the romantic moment. I feel bad for their stunt doubles.

Wesley’s mask and dew rag fly off, but Buttercup’s clothes are fastened with all the tightness that the MPAA provides. Cue a few kissy-touchy-sappy moments of reunited bliss that I shan’t be covering. Instead, I’ll provide you with this picture to test your gag reflex:

Wesley asks Buttercup why she didn’t wait, fool, and she’s all like, “Well, you were a rotting corpse and I’m just not into that, thank you very much.” Tsk, girl, you’re in a romance movie. You should know better. “Death cannot stop true love,” Wesley croons. “All it can do is delay it for a little while.” MRFH dares you to use this line to a grieving widow or widower at a funeral.

More kissing. Grandson objects. OBJECTION!

As they flee into the Fire Swamp, Wesley lays into Humperdink with a witty “Pig Fiancee” remark. The Swamp itself is a pit of vines and roots of the completely artificial variety. Wesley remarks how beautiful it all is, and Buttercup looks at him as if he’s completely mad. Or a man. Strange how often those two things coincide.

The Fire Swamp greets the happy couple by setting Buttercup’s alcohol-drenched dress on fire (yes!), and she unhelpfully kicks at Wesley while he’s valiantly attempting to put it out with his bare hands. As they wander through this terrific set – Justin loves the atmosphere – Wesley explains how he ended up kidnapped by pirates and eventually granted the mantle of “Dread Pirate Roberts”. The concept of deliberately crafting a legend comes into play, which is sort of interesting.

Buttercup’s been physically carried throughout this entire speech, so it goes without saying that as soon as Wesley puts her down, she steps straight into a vat of oatmeal. Seriously, this woman is more death-prone than a dog who’s raised to think of all cars as its “mother”. Wesley sighs, grunts, lets out a healthy belch, reads the sports section of Guilder Today, scratches his rear, then relunctantly goes into the oatmeal pit to pull out his corpse bride. Oh, wait, guess she’s still alive. Hooray.

More hugging. Wesley spots a giant rat, but fails to comment on it. I know exactly the chain of events that he’s predicting in his mind at this point:

1. “Oh, hey, it’s a giant rat!” he says calmly.

2. Buttercup looks, screams, and promptly runs in the opposite direction.

3. Wherein lies the oatmeal vat of death.

4. She falls back into it while making the sound of a rapidly deflating tire (“eeee”).

5. Wesley sighs, grunts, lets out yet another healthy belch, reads the funnies, pulls out a massive wedgie from all that cliff climbing earlier, then goes for round two in Quaker Oats Land.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he thinks, and flat-out lies when Buttercup asks him about the R.O.U.S.s (that’s Rodents of Unusual Size, winner of the most awkward acronym award of 1987). His bold gambit of lying nets him a hefty R.O.U.S. on the chest. Her man in severe, life-threatening danger, Buttercup reaches deep within herself only to find wispy dreams and flights of fancy. She screams. She grabs a stick and pokes – not swipes, mind you, or bashes, but pokes – at the critter. She fails to get Wesley his sword when he’s grabbing for it. There’s also a good two minutes where she just stands around, twirling her hair, like she’s waiting for the mall to open.

Bitten, burned and a bit cheesed off, Wesley shoves the R.O.U.S. into a fireball, then stabs it no less than three times with his pig sticker. A dozen new chest hairs erupt due to this display of incredible manliness.

In summary: Buttercup – pokes things with sticks. Wesley – skewers things with Detroit steel.

The couple casually stroll out of the Fire Swamp into what appears to be the same exact location where Buttercup was kidnapped at the start of the flick. After their fifteen-minute stay in the Fire Swamp, the two are confident that they’ve lost their pursu… oh, hey, it’s their pursuers!

“Surrender!” Humperdink demands. Wesley gets all cute and presents his tail feathers in a valiant attempt at bravado, but to no avail. Buttercup sizes up the situation – she has a difficult time with math, but she’s fairly sure that the bad guys have more numbers on their side than her Team Snugglybear. So here she makes what I consider to be an unforgivable sin: she betrays Wesley and surrenders for the both of them.

Ugh. Now, yeah, they weren’t in the most advantageous position, but Buttercup, baby, you just got your man back from the dead. He’s proven he’s nigh invincible, and you yourself are a decent target decoy. Why would you give him up like that? Even if you were both going to die, wouldn’t it be better to die together than to surrender your One True Love to be tortured to death?

Oh, wait. She naively assumes that Humperdink’s gonna let Wesley go. Because guys love having threats to their manhood running around all willy-nilly if they have a say about it.

I like how Humperdink tells Rugen to go ahead and throw Wesley in the Pit of Despair, not at all quiet-like, and standing about ten feet away from Buttercup. My wife can hear every single under-my-breath mutter I utter, so you’re telling me that Butternuts couldn’t pick up on that slice of deception?

The look on Wesley’s face is near priceless as Buttercup is whisked away. “Dude,” he’s thinking. “I just sailed through a sea of screaming fish, free-climbed a sheer rock cliff, battled three bandits, and plowed through a merciless swamp, and for what? A vacation at thumbscrew central? No woman is worth this. No Swedish female volleyball team is worth this.”

Count Rugen, it is noticed, has six fingers on his right hand. I wonder if that will be on the final exam.

Enter the Pit of Despair. Located in south Harlem, the Pit boasts an impressive array of staircases without handrails, scores of candles and ominous torches, and some fun looking exercise equipment. Wesley is cleaned up by a cheery albino – and what little boy doesn’t dream of that one day? The albino mentions “The Machine”, which I’m assuming doesn’t make smoothies. Wesley looks a tad worried.

Grandpa informs us that the king died that night and Buttercup and Humperdink tied the knot the very next day. I sincerely hope that when I die, my kids skip out on my funeral to go get hitched. Stupid kids. Always wanting a bigger allowance. I’m not made of money, do you hear?!?!?!?

Grandkid is upset with this turn of events, but Grampa states “Who said life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn’t always fair.” and plows ahead to one of the best scenes in this movie:

BUTTERCUP GETS HER COMEUPPANCE

That’s right, ladies and gents. For all her mind-boggling incompetence, for her betrayal, for her infidelity and self-centered whinings, Queen Buttercup (sporting a crown that has to weigh 45 pounds, easy) is visited by a nasty old crone. “You had love in your hands,” she says, “and you gave it up!” Buttercup tries to defend her stupidity, but the crone drowns her out with some well-deserved “BOO! BOO! RUBBISH! FILTH!”

Honestly? This is the moment in the movie where I could shut it off and consider it a happy ending.

Oh yeah, it was all a dream. Again. Buttercup rises from her bed at the Ohio Renaissance Faire, stalks around the booths selling outrageously marked-up prices, and confronts Humperdink about her mistake. She wants Wesley back, which is honorable enough, yet she goes about it in a typical Buttercup way, by going to the one guy who has nothing to gain from fulfilling her proposal. Humperdink promises to send non-existent ships after Wesley, but presents Nutterbutts with a counter-proposal: that she’ll marry him if Wesley doesn’t come back.

Humperdink: [with sincere eyes] If not… consider me, as an alternative to suicide?

I think they need to make that quote and picture into some sort of inspirational poster for high school counseling offices. Buttercup agrees because… well, she’s an imbecile. Haven’t you figured that out yet?

Cut to Rugen and Humperdink eviling it up in the forest as Humps talks about Buttercup’s upcoming murder and Rugen muses on how much he loves to torture. I suddenly get a flash of insight – these two guys must’ve been in the same college dorm room together, probably with a lot of dead birds and cats hidden away in their sock drawers. Urgh. Rugen and his bitchin’ goatee enter the (cough) Pit… of Despair! Humperdink bows out – he’s swamped.

Inside the PoD, Wesley is getting intimately aquainted with a number of suction cups, and Rugen makes himself at home behind his Junior Executive Play Desk. It’s here we get a good look at the Machine, which accomplishes the task of looking vaguely menacing without giving us any proper idea of what it does. Rugen claims that he’s writing his Ph.D. thesis on pain, a common approach that most action hero stars take nowadays. The Machine, he explains, will suck a year or more of your life away in less than a minute. So, it’s like watching Gigli, just an hour and fifty-nine minutes faster.

Wesley is milked by the Machine, and as a kid, I was properly disturbed by this torture. As an adult, I’m just amused all over the place. “Remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.”

Back at the castle, Humperdink is interrupted in the midst of his warmongering by previously-unseen Gillian, the chief enforcer of all Florin. There’s a funny little moment when Gillian kneels by Humperdink’s chair but ticks off the Prince by putting his arm on the rest in place of his liege’s. Humperdink orders Gillian to start clearing the forest of all potential assassins (irony alert!), and Buttercup arrives wearing her Princess Barbie Dream Gown. It’s really, really, really pink. She mews about Wesley a bit, then leaves. Important, that was! Gillian gets orders to form a “Brute Squad” to help him out.

Dude. I want a Brute Squad.

In the Thieves Forest (aka the Renaissance Fair Food Court), the Brute Squad is living up to their name. They’ve recruited Bluto, The Rock, Ving Rhames, Jean Claude Van Damme, Ogre, Biff Tannen, and the entire Cobra dojo. There, that should be enough pop culture references to keep this going. The lone holdout in the forest is a “Spaniard”. Could it be? Wonder of wonders? Miracle of miracles? It’s!

A very drunk Inigo! Even drunk, he’s more than a match for the Brute Squadees, slurring “I am waiting for Vizzini…” while slashing the air with his rapier.

“You surely are a meanie!” I can’t tell you how many times I saw this movie before I caught that Fezzik (for it is he) was continuing the “rhyming” gag from earlier on. Also, Inigo says “It’s you!” and Fezzik slyly inserts “True!” before knocking out the other Brute Squad guy.

Grampa narrates how Fezzik nursed Inigo back to health, with what looks like a spoonful of Campbell’s Chunky Potato soup. Inigo thanks him by passing out face-first into the stew. Fezzik also passes along messages about Vizzini (dead) and Rugen (six fingers), even though Fezzik wasn’t really present for either of these revelations. Maybe he saw the dailies.

Revenge in sight, Inigo despairs that Rugen’s not only locked up in a castle, but the gate is guarded by 30 extras. 10 for Fezzik, 20 for Inigo. Inigo doesn’t like those odds, so he decides to recruit a new strategist: the Man in Black. The where’s and how’s of this don’t concern him!

Buttercup, wearing the fourth outfit that day (robin’s eggshell blue), finally catches Humperdink in a bald lie, as he didn’t actually send out any ships to catch up with Wesley, unless you count the vessels “Censorship”, “Hardship”, “One Upmanship” and “Dictatorship”. Fool Buttercup once, and you’re in the majority. But… ooh, fool her, like, ten times, and she’ll suddenly get mildly more whiny about it! “Wesley will come for me anyway!” she preens.

Yup. Way to get your boyfriend more tortured, there. Why don’t you go ahead and insult the guy holding him by calling him a “coward” and “slimy weakling” while you’re at it? You did? Good.

Humperdink runs down to the Pit of Despair, rants a tad, and shoves the Machine up to 50. Huh, Wesley’s gonna be collecting Social Security after that round, I bet. His screaming – which sounds like a fleet of Tie Fighters swooping down – disturbs the inhabitants of the area, including Buttercup (“did I make a whoopsie?”) and Inigo. Inigo starts to rush toward the sound, but is blocked by milling peasants. Fezzik proves that he’s there for a reason: he’s great at parting crowds and bonking albinos on the head.

Inigo kneels down and prays to his sword (?), which doesn’t work so well in finding the incredibly not-hidden secret door planted in the middle of a tree. But he gets in anyway, and they find Wesley somewhat deceased. Yes, again.

Grandkid has a major spaz-out at this revelation, echoing most geeks in their livingroom whenever a beloved character of theirs dies on a TV show. Grandpa even goes so far as to spoil the end of the book: Humperdink will live. Bummer.

Fezzik and Inigo lug their ripe corpse of a strategist to a quaint little cabin where Miracle Max resides. Miracle Max… how shall I put this? In a movie full of scene-stealing bit parts, Billy Crystal absolutely dominates comedy – and you can take that any way you like – even underneath a heavy layer of old man wrinkles and fluffy white hair. Miracle Max is a cantankerous fellow with an ongoing shpiel about death and gambling and lemon juice and love. Reportedly, Rob Reiner had to leave the set during Crystal’s scenes, since he (Reiner) was laughing so hard.

The long and the short of this is that Inigo doesn’t have much money to pay Max, so Max tries to wiggle out of a good life-injecting miracle. Inigo counters with a bad bald lie (“his wife is crippled… his children are on the brink of starvation”), which Max calls as he sees it. Then Inigo tells the truth: Wesley needs to live for True Love. Don’t we all?

Max reveals that Wesley is only “almost dead”, which are the less frightening version of zombies. He starts to create a story about how Wesley wants to live for gambling… “LIAR! LIARRRRR!” comes the voice of yet another shrill crone (a good fantasy movie has at least two). It’s Max’s wife! The two bicker and futz over Wesley and Max’s inability to “perform” “miracles” since Humperdink fired him.

That’s all Inigo needs: “If you save this man, then Humperdink suffers. Humiliations galore.”

Presto! One magic, chocolate-coated resurrection pill coming up. If Max only had contacts in the pharmaceutical world, you know he’d be living in his own castle by the end credits. Can you imagine what a bottle of resurrection pills would go for? It’d bankrupt the system!

As the pill will take time to do its hokus-pokus, Inigo and Fezzik have to drag a very limp Carey Elwes across the fake forest and to the fake castle. They manage to get on top of the battlements about forty feet from 60 armed troops in broad daylight, which is pretty impressive when you consider that one is dead, one is a drunk, and one is about as large as New Jersey. Take some time to check out how cheesy Wesley’s moustache is. Pop goes the pill, Wesley wakes right back up (probably with a killer of a hangover), and they consider how bad the odds are. Inigo sums up, to which Wesley notes, “That doesn’t leave much time for dilly-dallying.”

By the by, if you’re not laughing at Fezzik’s continued excitement and verbal encouragement of Wesley’s physical healing, I pity your soul.

“What I wouldn’t give for a holocaust cloak,” Wesley complains. Up to this point in my life, this is the single and only place I’ve ever heard of that term, and according to an extensive search of one page of a Google search, that’s pretty much the same for everybody else. In any case, Fezzik immediately whips out a large cloak from under his shirt (what else does he have down there, Brazilian soccer teams?), which he apparently received from Miracle Max even though they were in a hurry and at no time did Fezzik wander away from Inigo… oh, well, we’ll just go with it. Holocaust cloak. Yes. A plan is formed.

A plan that depends largely on Fezzik being set on fire, 60 guards having no spine whatsoever, and the only guy with a gate key being on the outside of the gate. Happily, the script ordered just such an arrangement of events. The boys do a… a whatever you call that thing where you all put your hands in the middle and yell “Go team us!”

“I hope we win!” Fezzik exclaims. Me too, buddy.

Inside the castle, Humperdink and Buttercup are enjoying a night-time ceremony (really? At night?). In perhaps one of the most famous scenes in this movie – and yes, I’ve been saying that a LOT in this viewing – a very pompous-looking priest with impressive sideburns looks solemnly over the crowd… and then opens his mouth to unleash a very silly accent upon us all. “MAWWAGE. Mawwage is what bwings us togethah, today…” Seriously, I wish the deleted scenes had the entirety of this ceremony, because I could listen to this guy talk for a good hour or so. Bet he does a killer homily on Leviticus.

Outside – by the sounds of it, about six feet away from the castle chapel – Fezzik and his Holocaust Cloak™ is wheeled in by a concealed Wesley and Inigo. I’m not quite sure why they had to have a wheelbarrow, as Andre the Giant is already, y’know, a giant. I guess that’s how he just rolls. Inigo sets Fezzik on fire, as Fezzik continues to try to master monosyllabic words. “THE GREAT PIRATE ROBERTS IS HEREYOU’RE YOUR SOULLLLLLL!” Naturally, the guards freak, and the boys storm the castle.

Buttercwup, shrewd as always, chooses the middle of a marriage ceremony, surrounded by guards, a priest and rulers, to antagonize Humperdink further. Sheesh, girl, it’s like you want him to kill Wesley a good ten times before you’ll be happy! Two seconds later, she’s married and in shock that Wesley didn’t come, because every other guy she’s dated has bounced back from the dead sprinting like an Olympic marathoner to return to her presence for more abuse. If Wesley wanted the best revenge on her, leaving her in a loveless marriage and soon to be pseudo-assassinated would be prudent.

In one of the castle’s hallways (probably the only one built, to be honest), Inigo cuts down four guards in record time, spies Count Rugen, and gives his whole “this is who I am, this is what you did, and now you’re gonna get spanked before a theatrical audience” speel. Rugen, who has more smarts than any ten people in this movie, hikes up his skirt and flees. How awesome is that?

Fezzik helps Inigo by knocking down a door, but loses Wesley in the process. In another hallway but definitely the same set, Buttercup mopes alongside the king, kisses him on the cheek, and announces her impending suicide.

Wait, what?

I guess she was really into the Leonardo and Clare version of Romeo + Juliet. Buck up, girl! Be a man! What, you don’t get your way because you condemned your love to be executed and now it’s all about “woe is me and I must end it all”? At least take down Humperdink with you, if you must. The king is just happy he got a bit of lip-action. It’s good to be the king.

Rugen and Inigo run through several sets before Rugen turns around to throw a dagger into Inigo’s midsection. I’ll admit, this whole bit is just excellently done. It’s not expected (the first time around, at least), and you really think the bad guy might just get away with it after all – this being an unconventional flick. However… however, Inigo wards off a killing blow with a flick of his sword, repeats his line over and over again, and finds the will to stand up and fight with renewed vigor, even though we can’t imagine what sort of lower colon trauma is occurring. Watching Rugen unravel under both a physical and verbal assault is one of the great revenge scenes of movie history. Note that Inigo gives Rugen the same exact wounds Rugen gave him (two cheek slices, two shoulder pokes, sword in the belly).

Elsewhere, Buttercup preps to kill herself, which is unfortunately put to a halt by Wesley – why, Wesley, why? – with the awesome line of “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, ‘twould be a pity to damage yours.” And now we know why Wesley keeps her around. But this wouldn’t be a classic Buttercup reunion if she didn’t give him a concussion while making out, and thus she does.

Wesley slowly walks the mentally slow Buttercup through realizing that she didn’t actually get married, even though her eyes lose focus for a minute there. Humperdink walks in, and in one of the best scenes in movie history (okay, okay, last time I’ll say that), Wesley disarms and captures him with only words – scary, terrifying words, I’ll admit. “I’ll use small words so you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon.” It really is a great speech.

Wesley gets up, brandishes his weapon, and growls “Drop. Your. Sword.” I love how Humperdink gets very childlike here – “I knew you were bluffing! I knew it!” A reunion takes place – Inigo runs in (“Hey guys, do you know where the urgent care center is? My spleen just popped out…”) and Fezzik shows up with four horses. Buttercup leaps out of a window into Fezzik’s arms, who then spikes her and does a touchdown dance. Wesley passes on the Dread Pirate Roberts legacy to Inigo, everyone rides into the sunset, and there Wesley and Buttercup…

Hold it! Hold it! Oh, I guess it’s okay to kiss now, says the grandson. They kiss (Wesley and Buttercup, not the grandfather/grandson), and the grandson asks if he could hear the story again tomorrow.

“As you wish.”

And that’s why I’ll be showing this movie to my own grandkids some day.

P.S. – I apologize for the sheer length of this viewing. It took me, no lie, about a year or so to write, not because I was that slow, but just because I took about 8 months between working on it, only to rediscover it recently. Loads of fun – totally reinvigorated my love of this wonderful film.

The Scoop: 2002 PG, directed by Joel Zwick and starring Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, and Lainie Kazan.

Tagline: Love is here to stay…so is her family.

Summary Capsule: A woman introduces the man of her dreams to her family. He survives all their best attempts to Greek him to death.

Heather’s Rating: It’s worth its weight in Windex.

Heather’s Review: My first DVD rental of 2009 was a movie I never imagined I would watch. Anyone who knows my movie tastes at all knows that I like romantic movies the way one might like a Novocain-free root canal. The serious ones are ALWAYS depressing, the whole genre systematically murdering off one or both of the main love interests and sending the audience into a deep depression unrivaled in their day to day lives (at least until their next trip to the gas station). The lighthearted ones are just as predictable as the former, but instead of slow, agonizing deaths the audience must endure slow, agonizing “misunderstandings” wrought from one of the characters holding something back about themselves that their lover later finds out. Some deus ex machina happens, and the whole thing ends in birds singing, puppies romping, and little heart shaped clouds forming above the couple as they merrily traipse along into the sunset, hand in hand, leaving a candy coated trail behind them

This is all why I had successfully avoided this movie like the plague since its release almost 7 years ago. But I made a deal with my sisters and I wasn’t going to back out. I recently got my sisters to check out our site. So far all I’ve done are cult movies, which isn’t their thing (I did point out we do plenty of “normal” movies here, too). So in an effort to involve them and get them more interested I said “Hey, why don’t you two choose the movies I review this month? Pick one each.” I cringed inside when one of the sisters yelled “My Big Fat Greek Wedding!”. A dark cloud settled over my head and I trudged to the movie store looking like a real-life Eeyore. In the aisle I picked up the DVD case the way one might handle a newspaper fresh with spider guts and on its way to the trash can after having disposed of yet another intruder mincing across the bathroom wall.

My horror increased as I saw Joey “N*Sync” Fatone’s Howdy Doody face staring at me from the cover. Once home I dropped the DVD into my player and dragged myself from the tv to the bed, shoulders slumped in defeat and wondering what I had gotten myself into.

And all I can say about that is “Thanks, sis.” This film took the Romantic Movie Template and dumped tzatziki all over it. I was interested, I laughed, and my thoughts were provoked. In short, I was entertained.

Toula Portokalos, our heroine, is a frumpy-looking, unhappy maiden of Greek descent. To paraphrase her words “Nice Greek girls marry Greek men, have Greek babies, and make Greek food.” Toula is at the ripe old age of thirty (practically an old maid to her family) and working in the family restaurant for her loving, but bossy and suffocating, kinfolk. Fed up with it all she goes off to college and finds a job she’s happy with. Then follows the Transformation Montage where she starts wearing makeup and fixes her hair and gets nice clothes, but if you pay attention you’ll see it’s not the same setup as in other romantic movies. This is a woman who starts to be happy with herself for the first time because she’s finally doing what she wants in life. She becomes happy inside and that in turn makes her care about what she looks like outside. At her new job she is noticed by a Fabio-esque, wonderful guy named Ian Miller. He doesn’t fit in with his family either and finds Toula so full of life and intriguing that he just has to meet her. In spite of the problems that they know they’ll run into with their families they become completely enamored with each other anyway. Then comes the time to meet the parents.

It’s awkward on both sides, but it’s real. This was not a huge dramatic point in the movie where the father threatens to disown Toula, or Ian’s White Suburban Parents acted like he was dating some heathen that would be an embarrassment to all of their friends at the country club. What ensued was a great story that made a lot of jabs and good points about what happens when a marriage brings two cultures together. What is really going to throw the romantic comedy poo-pooers for a loop is that this movie is just so real and honest. Nothings is melodramatic, Toula and Ian’s relationship isn’t the end of the world for their families, and there are many beautiful details about the family dynamic. Also none of that “misunderstanding” crap, and no one dies. It’s a just a good representation of two real, very different, families brought together when their kids get married.

Not being Greek myself (I know, hard to believe. You’d never know by looking at me) and having no immersion in Greek culture, I wasn’t sure while watching it just how believable the craziness of Toula’s family was. I found out through the commentary that most of that stuff was a play by play from the life of Nia Vardalos (the writer and star). The fact that someone wrote and starred in a romantic movie about their life is usually cause for me to make a crucifix with my fingers and back away, hissing. In this case, it made the movie so much more hilarious (her father really did use Windex as a cure-all) and Nia’s narration was wonderful (I think she should take up voice acting).

Everyone’s acting was great. Every relationship portrayed in this movie was done well. Joey Fatone’s presence was short and (surprisingly) sweet. So grab a baklava and be ready to be regaled with stories of Aunt Voula’s “twin”.

This is my Windex bottle. There are many like it but this one is mine.

• If a member of N*Sync tells you how to say “Let’s go into the house” in Greek, don’t listen to him! Just hit him. In fact if you see a N*Sync member just hit him anyway.

• I’ve only witnessed rivers and glorified bathtubs for baptizing, but kiddie pools work too.
• Vegetarians can eat lamb.
• Bloodthirsty Turks!
• Guys: In the makeout montage pay CLOSE attention (as if you weren’t, anyway). When making out with Toula, Ian is holding her head. Seriously, guys. That’s all we want. Caress our noggins. It’s a win every time.

Groovy Quotes:

Gus Portokalos: Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek.

[upon receiving a bundt cake from Mrs. Miller]
Maria Portokalos: It’s a cake! I know! Thank you! Thank you very, very much.
[whispering to Aunt Freida]
There’s a hole in this cake!

Gus: Put some Windex.

[Toula's father, Gus, during his wedding speech] You know, the root of the word Miller is a Greek word. Miller come from the Greek word “milo,” which is mean “apple,” so there you go. As many of you know, our name, Portokalos, is come from the Greek word “portokali,” which mean “orange.” So, okay? Here tonight, we have, ah, apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit.

[When Ian ask Toula what her family does for Christmas] Toula: So, what happens is my dad and uncles, they fight over who gets to eat the lamb brain. And then my aunt Voula forks the eyeball and chases me around with it, try to get me to eat it, ’cause it’s gonna make me smart. So, you have two cousins, I have 27 first cousins. Just 27 first cousins alone! And my whole family is big and loud. And everybody is in each other’s lives and business. All the time! Like, you never just have a minute alone, just to think, ‘Cause we’re always together, just eating, eating, eating! The only other people we know are Greeks, ’cause Greeks marry Greeks to breed more Greeks, to be loud breeding Greek eaters.

Also check out PoolMan’s, Justin’s and Andie’s review of this film!

The Scoop: 1987 PG-13, directed by Steve De Jarnatt, and starring Melanie Griffith, David Andrews and Ben Johnson.

Tagline: She’s Blond, Beautiful and Forever Young.

Summary Capsule: Man loses his robot girlfriend to an unfortunate sex mishap, and so goes looking for another, that he may perpetuate further unfortunate sex mishaps.

Kaleb’s Rating: A character named Johnson and an actor named Johnson, in a movie being reviewed by a Johnson.

Kaleb’s Review: I know I’m always bellyaching about having to do the plot synopsis, but I’m going to break from tradition here and do it first thing, for reasons that will become apparent.

In the most unabashedly misogynistic portrayal of the future I’ve ever seen, love as we know it is a thing of the past. Traditional relationships are obsolete, with almost all women having effectively become extremely paranoid prostitutes, with pimps having been replaced by lawyers.

Wage slave Sam Treadwell, the gallant hero of our tale, won’t go for all that paperwork and artificiality, opting instead for just the artificiality, in the form of his smokin’ hot robo-squeeze, the titular Cherry 2000.

See, it seems that if one has the scratch and is in good enough with a shady artificer named Slim (what else?), one can pay a higher one-time fee, and become the proud owner/fiancee of a flawlessly sweet and obedient android babe. Sam’s friends think he’s crazy for not forking out chunks of cash night after night to have strictly-defined, lifeless sex with women who fairly radiate loathing and lack the etiquette to at least pretend the whole thing isn’t a tremendous chore, but Sam rationalizes that his relationship is ultimately no less genuine than theirs, and a fair bit more enjoyable.

Sadly, Sam — and by association, Cherry — falls victim to the old adage, “If you’re going to have a robot girlfriend, you should really get freaky with her in the kitchen.” Sound advice in most instances, except that in this case, soapy water from an overflowing dishwasher infiltrates Cherry’s inner workings through avenues not explicitly stated, and she goes transistors-up. How Sam is not also electrocuted, or why a robot designed to do what Cherry is designed to do would not be able to cope with fluid ingestion (not trying to be needlessly vulgar or juvenile, just sayin’…) is never explained.

Happily, Slim is able to salvage Cherry’s basic memory — her soul, as it were — which can easily be installed into a new chassis. The problem: Cherry 2000 bodies can only be found in The Zone (there’s always one of those) a dangerous wasteland ruled by Lester, leader of the Sky Ranch cult (kind of like Club Med, but with pillaging) and, all in all, the most positive and encouraging psychopath ever.

What’s a robot fancier to do? Why, hire a tracker, of course! Specifically, the spunky and Melanie Griffith-y E. Johnson — rather creepily also the name of my uncle — who is tough as nails and will totally change her shirt in the other room whenever she feels like it, without caring who sees her nipply silhouette!

Anyway, Sam and E. go on a road trip in her sweet car, there is an abundance of bullet-shooting, a really odd sequence involving deliberately getting the car snagged by a Sky Ranch-controlled crane, and Ben Johnson. Yes! Ben Johnson is awesome! My dad had breakfast with him once, and yours didn’t.

Through the course of the carnage — and thanks in large part to that special bonding effect that only carnage has — Sam and E. start to have a thing goin’ on, of the Me and Mrs. Jones variety. This, much to the surprise of absolutely no one. The whole weird love triangle resolves itself in a thoroughly predictable fashion which does not involve a partially-bionic three-way (Am I the only one who knows what sells?).

Okay, so there’s the real plot synopsis, plus harmless ending spoiler. The thoroughly-incorrect, imaginary, cut-n-pasted plot synopsis that I somehow came away with when I first stumbled across this movie goes more like so, relayed in the voice of the dopey stoner I have never been:

“So there’s a dude, who’s, like, this gruff bounty hunter in the future, or whatever, and he finds this robot chick out in a wasteland, or something, and, like, she needs help. I guess. They probably pork at some point.”

Yeah, I have no idea how I came up with that. You can see bits and scraps of the real movie in there, but I must’ve been half asleep or reading the synopsis out of the corner of my eye, or somesuch.

The reason I even bother to bring it up is that my hash-cloud synopsis is one variation on the basic plot structure of every Robot Chick anime in existence. If we were to flesh it out a bit more, the bounty hunter and the robot girl — who is, of course, an amnesiac and/or living under a false identity — would develop either a romantic bond or a father/daughter relationship, depending on the age gap; there would be comical fish-out-of-water moments and unassuming nudity; and the robot girl would ultimately be revealed to be either a) a state-of-the-art killing machine, stricken with conflict and guilt over her dark past, or b) a weapon of last resort against some world-threatening evil. In either case, she would get blowed up for the greater good. Throw in an ambiguous epilogue, and you’re done.

The interesting thing is, while I do love Robot Chick anime — probably my favorite genre, as a matter of fact — my initial discovery of Cherry 2000 happened back in the late 90s; a good half-decade prior to the Great Anime Renaissance of Roughly ‘04; that is, the point at which I really started to get into anime. This means that my eerily-anime-ish made-up synopsis was concocted years before I had ever even seen a Robot Chick anime.

It’s like, I was taking cues from my own future, man! All time exists simultaneously, or something! It’s pretty wicked! I don’t know what’s going on!

So anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting and worth sharing, but now that I’ve taken the time to write it out, I see that I was wrong. I actually lost interest about halfway through while writing it, so I certainly can’t blame you for skimming down to where the review becomes relevant and coherent again. Which is… now:

Cherry 2000: Not the live-action anime I was expecting, the titular Cherry gets maybe ten minutes of total screen time (still time enough to deliver some of the film’s best lines), the ending is kind of meh, there aren’t any standout performances, the plot is at times illogical, and the special effects are total cheese.

All is not bleak, however. I really like Melanie Griffith’s voice. It’s kind of… gooey. And of course there’s the previously mentioned Ben Johnson; he can class up any joint.

Like a grizzly bear made of liquid metal, this one’s kind of hard to pin down. As to where it falls on the Atrocity Scale, I mean. I’m vaguely aware that it’s a terrible movie, but I still enjoy it, and mostly unironically at that. So I guess I’ll give a cautious recommendation, and urge you to keep in mind that I have a mushroom cloud-sized soft spot for anything post-apocalypse.

And also, I dearly hope that everyone realizes that my last name is Johnson, and I was not, in fact, referring to myself as a penis earlier.

Just another day at the office.

• Is that Laurence Fishburne? It is!
• Slim’s shop also contains Gort, and the robot from Lost in Space.
• Recycling portrayed as Orwellian drudgery. There’s a new one.
• E. drives the most complicated Mustang ever.
• It’s difficult not to like Lester.

Is it worth staying through the end credits?

Nah.

Groovy Quotes

Lawyer: You stick your tongue in my client’s mouth, and I’ll sue your ass off!

Stacy: That a Cherry?
Sam: Cherry 2000.
Stacy: Va-voom.

Sam: I can’t see the bottom!
E.: Don’t worry; it’s down there!

Jake: (To Sam) There’s more to love than just hot wiring, Speed.

Lester: We’re counting on you men. Keep the sun out of your eyes, and be yourselves.

Lester: You need to work on your personality.

Cultist 1: Ginger, what are we gonna do now?
Ginger: You guys want some sandwiches?
Cultist 2: Lester’s dead!
Ginger: Well, no sandwich for him.

Cherry: (In the middle of a firefight) Honey, I’d really rather be watching this on television.

Cherry: (Examining the contents of a sandwich) Pretty!

Soundtrack Review

Ennio Morricone meets Paul Hertzog. And if that doesn’t mean anything to you, guess you just aren’t cool enough. Sorry.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Heartbeeps

• A.I.
• Hell Comes To Frogtown

“But things look black, business is slack, there’s no one on the rack but meeeee!”

The Scoop: 1988 PG, Directed by Terry Gilliam and starring John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, and Uma Thurman.

Tagline: Adventure, Comedy, Romance. He was full of it.

Summary: So it’s like that weird uncle of yours getting drunk again at Christmas and telling his usual weird stories, except they’re true and he’s dragging you along on his “adventures”. Only this is much cooler than that would be.

Heather’s Rating: I can’t be bothered. It’s Wednesday.

Heather’s Review: I can’t believe I’ve never seen this before. How many times has that been said in a review, I wonder? Regardless, I mean it one hundred percent. This movie is the best surprise I’ve had in a while.

A friend of my husband’s and mine came over Sunday to store some stuff at our house for a couple of months. Once everything was brought in he plopped down a huge case of DVDs and told me we could keep that at the house, too, knowing how much I love movies. I feel like I won the lottery. Our friend said something along the lines of “I have the Adventures of Baron Munchausen in there, too!” Without much enthusiasm I told him I’d heard of that before, but never seen it. He gasped and began furiously flipping through his DVD case to find it. “You have to see it!” He cried. “Mandatory!” Thus began my forced watching and unforced loving of this film.

As the first scene began I thought “Oh great. He has me watching some depressing period piece. I’m not in the mood for Les Miserables today.” Then we see a girl mark out “son” on one of the many town announcements and write in “daughter”. As her face turns toward the camera the music gets a hit of whimsy and she smiles. So then I thought “Well then this is like Amadeus. Goofy and enjoyable, but still going to be depressing overall. ” I was so wrong. This movie, in fact, was a monster unlike any I could have imagined.

The story begins with a play that pays tribute to the amazing adventures of Baron Munchausen. In the middle of it all a crotchety old man comes storming in (as crotchety old men are wont to do) . Waving his arms about and shouting that he is the real Baron he heads up onto the stage, upsetting everyone and eventually using his sword on a poor, defenseless stage nose. The curtain falls and eventually the geriatric adventurer comes out in full Baron regalia to tell the audience how it all really went down. I won’t go too far into detail. I don’t want to spoil this movie for you. You have to see this play out to fully appreciate it. But suffice it to say this is not your typical “someone interrupts the present to tell us about the past” movie. The past and the present and fantasy and fiction become so intertwined that I promise you you’ll be guessing throughout the movie. It’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Princess Bride had an illegitimate child nursed by The Labyrinth.

The camerawork in this film is amazing. It plays with your mind and emotions, causing you to think and feel something one second and then turning it all upside down the next. I was particularly impressed by the camera work that seamlessly brought the movie from the stage where Baron was telling his tale to the sultan’s palace in Constantinople. The scenery is gorgeous. Imaginative and beautiful. You’ll fall in love with fairy tales again.

Speaking of the Constantinople scene, I cannot ever laugh as hard as I did at seeing Baron’s face while the sultan played “The Torturer’s Apprentice” on an organ. Made of humans. Having knives and anvils attack them at every key he played. The camera just holds on his face and I can’t help but laugh out loud every time.

Speaking of John Neville, who plays Baron, he did a spot-on job a the Baron. The whole cast is fantastic, actually. You have John Neville, Eric Idle, Jonathon Pryce, Oliver Reed (who was also amazing), Uma Thurman…I could go on but you get my point. This was a very good cast. Uma Thurman alone is going to keep this movie alive on youtube. At least for the 60 or so seconds that she’s sans clothing. There! Got all the males to watch this. Half my job is done.

Save for the first time Sally destroys Death, the special effects are great. So impressive that I don’t have to follow that last sentence with “for the time”. Some other reviewers *cough*who use thumbs as ratings*cough* say the effects overshadow the film. They do not! In a fantasy the intention is to make what isn’t real seem real by way of the effects. Be it effects told in excruciating detail by a talented storyteller or effects created through a well talented movie effects team, the result is the same. Your imagination gets to be told/shown what’s going on while trying to fill in the rest.

I love the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality. Probably my favorite example is when Berthold is chasing down a speeding bullet and tries to grab it. Of course when he tries to grab it he yelps and lets go immediately, it being really darned hot as a speeding bullet would be. So we’re to believe a man can catch up with a bullet but not be able to hold it. It’s just the kind of thing that really surprises a person watching this movie. You never know what part of reality they’ll twist and what will stay the same.

For any cult fan this movie is an absolute have-to-see. If you’re like me then a lot of times the quotes can sell you on a movie. And this movie’s loaded chock-full of stuff to relentlessly spout out in any social occasion.

Read Clare’s review of this movie here!

I think I can I think I can I think I CAN!

Didja Notice:

• Vulcan arguing with his workers like a company vs. the union

• Why does old Adolphus sound like Daffy Duck with layrngitis(?)
• Sting as the heroic officer!
• Vulcan created the nuclear missile.

Groovy Quotes:

Sally confronting her father about the playbill: So why does it say Henry salt and son? I’m your daughter.
Henry: I knew I should never have taught you to read.

Baron to the three ladies: You so remind me of Catherine the Great, empress of all the Russias, whose hand in marriage I once had the honor to decline.



'SOFT! What LIGHT Through yonder window BREAKS?!'

Desmond: They all remind you?
Baron: Yes, why not!? Some bits here, some bits there.

Sultan: We begin with the arrival of the eunuch’s chorus, who sing ‘Cut Off In My Prime’

King of the Moon: No, let me go! I’ve got tides to regulate! Comets to direct! I don’t have time for flatulence and orgasms! I hate that face you make me make!

Baron to the sleepy guards: “Gentleman, don’t you think it would be a good idea to silence those enemy cannons?”
Sleepy Guard: No, sir.
Baron: No?
Sleepy Guard: It’s Wednesday.



I had this same look on my face when I saw Epic Movie

Baron: I didn’t fly miles. It was more like a mile and a half. And I didn’t precisely fly. I merely held on to a mortar shell in the first instance and then a canonball on the way back.

Baron: Reality, sir, is lies and balderdash! And I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever!

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Monty Python and The Holy Grail
• The Princess Bride
• Labyrinth