<dl dt_class="field"> Machete (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985694/">6/10</a> This movie is---and I never thought I'd use this phrase---a Danny Trejo vehicle directed by Robert Rodriguez (of <i>Once Upon a Time in Mexico</i> fame), so it's got lots of blood, lots of flying appendages and lots of buxom, armed babes. Machete continues Rodriguez's homage to Russ Meyers and proves relatively entertaining, no thanks to Jessica Alba's wooden acting. Good thing Lindsey Lohan was also in the flick or Alba might have looked bad. Lohan plays a tweaking daughter of a rich daddy (quite a stretch, I'm sure) and looks like she's method-acting. I mean meth-acting. Whatever. Michelle Rodriguez played the same role she always does, which means she's dressed for warm weather. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110074/">9/10</a> <div> Hudsucker Proxy was written, directed and produced by the Coen brothers with Sam Raimi. The dialogue and style of delivery were wonderful and worth the price of entry. The film is set in the late 1950s and stars Tim Robbins as a wide-eyed young go-getter who gets suckered into leading Hudsucker Industries by a conniving Paul Newman who's deliberately tanking the firm to perform stock manipulation. It was perfect to watch in juxtaposition with <i>Network</i>, which also had absolutely majestic dialogue and long-form soliloquies. Jennifer Jason Leigh is fantastic as Amy Archer and Bruce Campbell was a pleasant surprise in a small role as Smitty the reporter. John Mahoney (Martin Crane on <i>Frasier</i>) was also good as a fast-talking city editor which J.K. Simmons must have seen before inventing his J. Jonah Jameson for the Spiderman movies. <bq author="Amy Archer">Only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about.</bq> </div> Network (1976) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/">9/10</a> <div>The writing in Network is phenomenal---what other film delivers lines like <iq>intractible and adamantine</iq>---and it's famous for the second "mad-as-hell" speech by Howard Beale (the first one is not the famous one). However, there are other, more interesting soliloquies in the film and if you're a fan of well-written, philosophically and socially interesting dialogue, this is the movie for you. It's 35 years old and the problems documented in the film have only intensified. We are treading water and going backwards toward the cataract. As an example, here's the speech Max Blumenthal gives to Diana Christensen when he finally leaves her<fn>: <bq>It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.</bq> Another unfortunately timeless speech is that delivered by capitalism incarnate, Arthur Jensen, to Howard Beale, which occurs at the end of the film and is much more interesting than any of Howard's (and also delivered with fire): <bq>You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale.</bq> </div> L'illusioniste (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775489/">9/10</a> An exsquisitely drawn, animated<fn> and scored film by Silvain Chomet (of <i>les Triplets de Belleville</i>-fame) that tells the achingly sad tale of a magician trying to make a living in Paris, then London, then the Scottish countryside and finally Edinburgh. He is joined by a Scottish lass who doesn't understand that he isn't really magic and has no concept of how money works. He does his level best not to have to disabuse her of this notion. The story is told almost entirely without words---there are perhaps two dozen French and English words and the girl speaks what I believe to be Gaelic, though I understood not one word of it. His magical rabbit is cute and chubby and perfectly animated, right down to the snapping jaws (yeah, I'm looking at you, Pierre), although rabbits are not meat-eaters, as depicted. The girl eventually moves on to a more suitable sugar-daddy in the form of a young man ... once she's gotten enough nice things from the magician to attract new prey. Perhaps that's unfair, but I wonder whether her treatment of the illusionist as an ATM was an allegory that was semi-sweet only on the surface. The Magic Christian (1969) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064622/">6/10</a> Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr are an extremely rich father and adopted son who spend the whole movie playing pranks on people, proving that money can get people to do absolutely anything. The ride on the cruise ship, The Magic Christian is a psychedelic romp. Funny enough---and Sellers is always fun to watch---but nothing to write home about. The Infidel (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424003/">7/10</a> A British film about a Muslim family man who finds out that he was adopted and that the first two weeks of his life were spent as a Jew. The son who's trying to marry the daughter of a reactionary Islamic cleric is an insufferable, whining idiot. The lead character and his newfound Jewish-NYC-cabbie-hack-driving friend are both quite likable and the plot has an interesting twist. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1196141/">3/10</a> Clearly, "Diary of a Pathologically Maladjusted Asshole", though orders of magnitude more accurate, did not market well. It wasn't the worst kids movie I've ever seen---far from it---but the lead character was a completely unlikeable pain in the ass. The only halfway amusing character was his older brother; I'm almost certain that the intent was not that one should sympathize with him, but that's what I found myself doing. I shudder to think of a generation of kids raised on the books on which this film is based. Thank goodness most of them are an ocean away. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814255/">6/10</a> An expanded version of Xena/Hercules for the teen set. It wasn't terrible but I'm not looking forward to the sequel as I'm not really the target audience (anymore). Smarter than expected, though, so if you are the target audience, you could do much, much worse. For example, you could get sucked into watching what I can only imagine to be the abomination that is a film based on the atrocious writings of Stephanie Meyer. At least with this flick, you learn something about the Greek gods, which is a pantheon with a bit more richness and depth than "Team Edward vs. Team Jacob". Ip Man 2 (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386932/">8/10</a> This is the second part of the story of Bruce Lee's teacher. It's only semi-biographical, but Ip Man is portrayed very well by Donnie Yen as a classically stoic and both inwardly and outwardly peaceful man who happens to kick absolute ass at Wing Chun Gung Fu. The second half of the film is about his prize fight against an over-the-top obnoxious British boxer---all the British are caricatures of evil; is it supposed to be reassuring that the Hong Kong film industry can portray foreigners as unscrupulous idiots as well as Hollywood? That part kinda sorta reminded me of <i>Fearless</i> with Jet Li where he defeated all Western comers as well. A decent flick but the subtitles were nearly useless although not hugely necessary as there were a lot of fight scenes which were shot so nicely as to need no further explication. Contagion (2011) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/">6/10</a> A remarkably boring film in which a bunch of people get sick but you're never really afraid for the life of anyone because you don't really come to care about anyone. Shot in standard Soderbergh style, which was nice---especially the lab and gadget shots that made everything seem very normal and not over-techy. The best part was that they listed the populations of many of the large cities of the world, so I learned something at least. The reveal of the vaccine test was handled in a pretty ham-handed manner with way too much talking when the scene was self-explanatory. Maybe it tested poorly with audiences who got easily confused. That would explain the ending as well, which ripped away any and all mystery as to the origin and genesis of the virus. A lot of decent actors were wasted, with Elliot Gould phoning it in and Matt Damon just getting stuck with a bad (boring) character. Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet were good as usual, but also didn't have too much to work with. Everything Must Go (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1531663/">8/10</a> Will Ferrell plays an alcoholic salesman thrown out of the house by his wife. When he returns from a sales trip, he finds that all the locks have been changed, his bank account is frozen, his credit card canceled and all of his stuff is on the lawn. This all on the same day that he loses his job. Ferrell does an excellent job of portraying a man who is essentially good, has lost his way and is trying to claw his way forward to something better. This film is proof that the guy can play a serious role even better than he does comedy. Buried (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462758/">8/10</a> The film takes place entirely within a box underground. Well, it's a bit of a spoiler, but the entire film is Ryan Reynolds buried alive somewhere in Iraq. He's a trucker who works for a contracting company. He has a cell phone and the only other actors and actresses are disembodied voices. It was actually pretty riveting and held up surprisingly well. Reynolds is excellent and the screenplay is as well, with several interesting plot points and a very interesting conclusion. 127 Hours (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542344/">7/10</a> This film is an excellent double-feature with <i>Buried</i> above because it's almost exclusively a one-man show starring James France as Aron Ralston, an outdoor adventurer who was famously trapped in a canyon when he went out solo one weekend. His arm was trapped beneath a boulder and, after more than five days, he snapped the ulna and radius on that arm, then sawed through the flesh, tendons and sinews---with a cheap, dull knife---to free himself and walk and rappel out of the canyon, where he encountered other hikers and was rescued by helicopter. You know, like a boss. Barton Fink (1991) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/">9/10</a> A Coen Brothers film about a self-absorbed workers-of-the-world-unite writer whose initial success in Broadway theater is followed up by a stint writing B-movies in Hollywood. Is the pure writer corrupted by the mendacity and greed of Hollywood or were the writer's pretensions at knowing anything about class struggle anything but a hollow sham? Can someone who has no life experience be a writer? Is self-induced isolation and suffering a substitute for the miseries of real life? A tale of idealism gone wrong or right or taking the course that it is nearly always fated to take. Fink can see his own end in the corruption of the spirit that is John Mahoney's portrayal of Bill Mayhew. And Fink's supposed connection to the common man---and desire to write about him---is belied by his complete inability to listen to John Goodman's stories, which he's dying to tell. This failure is all the more ironic as Fink is suffering from epic writer's block and exhibits all the symptoms of a classic procrastinator. The clip and pacing of the dialogue is similar to that in <i>Hudsucker Proxy</i>, with Tony Shalhoub delivering especially well. Inside Job (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/">9/10</a> This film tells the story of the worldwide financial crisis---the one that started in 2007 and exploded fully in 2008 when Lehman collapsed---in an extremely clear and succinct manner. It's narrated by Matt Damon and features interviews with many of the more knowledgeable players (including some very good quotes from Nouriel Roubini) and many highly placed officials and individuals who are confronted quite plainly with hard questions. A must-see for anyone who cares to know what really happened and has 100 minutes to spare. He Was a Quiet Man (2007) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0760311/">8/10</a> An interesting story of a man, played by Christian Slater, whose life is an abysmal, nigh-limitlessly bleak landscape of dullness and drudgery. He has no friends, his job is horrible, his coworkers abuse him and he meticulously plans to "go postal", discussing minutiae with his goldfish and hummingbirds. Even in this, though, he is preempted by another coworker who goes postal first. He shoots this coworker to save the day and changes his life. Or does he? Where does the crazed fantasy end and reality begin? An interesting look at the sheer mindless horror of a life of quiet desperation with no hope of accomplishing anything to be proud of or escaping the cookie-cutter crappy suburban existence promised by modern life. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783612/">9/10</a> <div>A 260-minute documentary about New Orleans and the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane, the "lego" levees, the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers, the storm surge, the flooding, the failure of the federal government to help immediately after the flooding, and further failure in the medium- and long-term. Why is Louisiana so poor? Louisiana is poor because they suffer from all the ill effects of having 25% of America's oil and natural gas come from just off their coasts...but just far enough away that they get nothing for their suffering (it all goes to the federal government, unlike Alaska, Texas and others). It depicts the scattering of families to all corners of the nation just to get them out of New Orleans, but not delivering them to family members, but pretty much anywhere, to live in hotels, and deriding them as refugees. These poor people lost everything they had---which wasn't much---only to discover that they had even fewer rights in America than they thought they had. Federal aid to New Orleans residents is considered charity instead of the least we can do. Whole districts were still not even cleaned up nine months later, with rapacious developers keeping it that way so they can scoop up property deeds from people who can't live in areas with no electricity, no sewer, no water and no schools, and who got no insurance money on technicalities despite having paid premiums for decades.<fn> And these people were still living in tents because the FEMA trailers still hadn't showed up. It would be interesting to see how things stand now, but gentrification is almost guaranteed. Most of the film is interviews and musical interludes with a very interesting cast, including but not limited to Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, Garland Robinette, John Barry, Judith Morgan and Michael Eric Dyson. Highly recommended.</div> Trouble the Water (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149405/">8/10</a> Another movie about the aftermath of Katrina but focused very much on one family, headed (in spirit at least) by an aspiring female rapper. It's not nearly as informative as <i>When the Levees Broke</i> but it offers perhaps a rawer, close-up look at how much the survivors were on their own ... and for how long. <iq>They're still treatin' us third world, man.</iq> precedes a segment featuring an interview with a total bimbo who talks about the <iq>20% of the city that wasn't devastated</iq> being the part <iq>where the tourists are</iq> anyway. Obviously she doesn't mention the possibility that that's <i>why</i> those parts were saved and the others were not. Doesn't matter; her business is booming. American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179947/">8/10</a> This movie is a fitting homage to one of the greatest comedians America has every produced. It covers his standup career from an incredibly early start at 14 years old (with footage!) to his darker times of alcoholism and drug use (during which he was still often funny) to his time of recovery and discovery of purpose and politics and philosophy. His close family and friends were unanimous in their love of him (though that's to be expected of a film produced by them). Though it's entirely true to think that his life and a blossoming career was brutally cut off by pancreatic cancer at age 34, he had been quite successful in the business for 20 years at that point (though his success was much greater in England, where he was worshiped). A better film for Hicks fans than as an introduction, but still provides a taste of what you're missing if you've never heard him (or of him). Man on Wire (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1155592/">8/10</a> The story of wire-walker Philippe Petit, who walked first a wire strung to the Notre Dame, then the Sydney Harbour Bridge and finally, between the Two Towers. For the final feat, he and his ad-hoc team spent months studying the buildings, made several trips from France to New York, enlisted the aid of several others, planned the cable and stays meticulously and finally persevered in what was truly one of the most amazing acts of unique insanity---or trust in skill---the world has ever seen. The film includes interviews with the major players as well as a lot of photographs and videos of practice and training sessions as well as the final act itself. The story is spellbinding: he walked across, saw that there were police on the other side and ran back out to the middle to perform some more; he spent almost an hour out there. The police officers telling the story fail completely to suppress their wonder at the act (<iq>Magnificent</iq>, <iq>Well, you wouldn't call him a wire-walker 'cause he more like dancin'</iq> and <iq>I was witnessin' something I would never see again</iq>). The title is actually taken from the charge written on the official arrest ticket. Warning: some of the interviews are in French, so make sure you have subtitles if you need them. Hanna (2011) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993842/">4/10</a> A movie about a genetically altered girl who, for 15 years, is raised as a killing machine by her super-agent father near the Arctic Circle. When she reaches 15 or 16, she wants to leave and her father tells her that her mission has begun. They both decamp and agree to meet elsewhere. Adventures ensue, but not the action adventures you'd expect. There's a lot of maudlin moping about on Hanna's part and severely bad judgment on her father's part (situational awareness is super-high at one point, then zero at another). Cate Blanchett's accent shoots all over the place, as do her seeming superpowers (she doesn't have any, but she caught up to Hanna, who's ostensibly super-enhanced, while running in the woods and on train tracks in <i>Prada shoes</i>). The German henchmen were ridiculous caricatures and also seemingly super-powered (or super-sneaky, see situational awareness comment above). Not recommended. Fermat's Last Theorem (1996) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1224922/">7/10</a> A short documentary about Andrew Wiles and how he came to be the man to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. He did it all without a computer ---<iq>I <i>never</i> use a computer</iq>---the documentary shows him at a huge desk covered in papers, all covered with equations and squiggles. Big Fan (2009) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228953/">7/10</a> Patton Oswalt plays a guy from Staten Island who <i>lives</i> for the New York Giants. Every waking moment revolves around his team and its quarterback. The fan is confronted with tribulations that should rock his faith. But they do not. They do not. Oswalt is quite good, as is his nearly equally die-hard friend, played by Kevin Corrigan. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/">9/10</a> Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as a mismatched couple in a relationship that's basically good, but fraught with tension because of her drinking and his tedium. In a fit of pique, she seeks out a service that can erase all memory of a person from your mind; he soon does the same. The dream/memory/reality overlap sequences are done quite well and the supporting cast is good. It's not a first-date movie, but it's a great film about relationships and about how well anyone really knows anyone and what it even means to say that one knows someone because which facet(s) of that person do you even know? Vengeance (2009) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1329454/">7/10</a> A French chef with a shadowy past teams up with three locals in Hong Kong to avenge the shooting of his daughter and death of her family. Mostly English, with some French and a fair amount of Chinese (I assume), so get subtitles if you can. As you can imagine, the dialogue doesn't really make a tremendous amount of a difference. Shot very nicely, with the requisite rain scenes, slow-motion flying paper scene and blood misting with bullet-time action sequences. The plot was just weird enough to stay interesting, although Hong Kong police response time to shooting is apparently quite bad. Also, super-henchmen sometimes shoot extremely accurately and at others, when the script calls for it, they can't hit the broad side of a barn. It was like watching the A-Team or GI Joe. Still, entertaining enough with some cool-guy actors. Beat the pants off of Hanna, at any rate. Take the Neuron Express for a brief tour of consciousness (2006) A <a href="http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/the-science-studio/take-the-neuron-express-for-a-brief-tour-of-consciousness">two-hour interview with V.S. Ramachandran</a>, who talks about consciousness, neurology, psychology and a host of other topics, all related to understanding how humans think, what we feel and what it means to even ask those questions. At what level should which issues be investigated? (e.g. can we discover consciousness at the atomic level?) Fascinating, thought-provoking stuff. It could be reasonably well-coupled with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Z5eDXRKzM" source="YouTube">Ask Sam Harris Anything #1</a>, although I thought V.S. had fewer hangups (man, Harris just <i>cannot</i> stop talking about Muslims as a particularly invidious form of evil; my theory is that it's because of his crush on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he also can't stop talking about). The Losers (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480255/">6/10</a> Though this movie has its moments---for example, Chris Evans is pretty funny---it's pretty much sunk by yet another flyweight woman who can kick anyone's ass, this time played by Zoe Saldana. She's absolutely terrible in a way I haven't seen since Halle Berry did her damnedest to ruin the first two X-Men movies. The rest of the cast is OK (though Idris Elba's much better in other things), with Jason Patric making a surprise return as a somewhat humorous evil genius. Production values are pretty high and most of the action sequences are tight. Operation: Endgame (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1268987/">7/10</a> Another comedy/action movie that was much funnier than <i>The Losers</i> (especially the first half). The action was well-filmed and less cartoonish than expected---especially with Maggie Q in the cast. Rob Corddry, Jeffrey Tambor and Ellen Barkin are all decent but couldn't save the flick. The plot turned out to be a convoluted fantasy about recovering all of the Bush administration's secrets and getting them out of the super-secret spy lair before they could be destroyed. Or something like that. It was definitely better than <i>The Losers</i>, though. And both are better than <i>Hanna</i> which---I cannot emphasize this enough---sucked. Righteous Kill (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034331/">5/10</a> De Niro and Pacino team up as cops again (last time was <i>Heat</i> I think) but they're much more...seasoned now. They're on the tail of a serial killer of whose work they wholeheartedly approve because he mostly kills people who "deserved it". Soon, however, the other team assigned to the case begins to suspect that a cop is behind the murders and they even know who that cop might be (spoiler alert: De Niro). It's decent, though some scenes drag on interminably. The luscious Carla Gugino was thrown in as a sexually masochistic fellow cop to keep things spicy, I guess.<fn> Unfortunately, she's with De Niro (at least initially), who's either wearing a girdle in the film, or should have been. Pacino played less stereotypically Pacino, which was nice, but De Niro just can't...stop...making...that...face. Brazil (1985) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/">10/10</a> Director Terry Gilliam's masterpiece of a late 20th-century future where Orwell's 1984 society has, for the most part, come to pass. Gilliam's take is dark, but silly, if that makes sense and delves into the mindlessness and silliness of our society and bureaucracy as well as the evil of it. The soul-draining quality of everyday life that stifles any sort of creativity in the cradle, as it were. His vision of a future world was not that bloody far off in spirit, to what we have today. Jonathan Price is quite good, as is Robert De Niro, both of whom would go on to take much, much worse roles later in their careers. Michael Palin is also quite good in a supporting role. The long final sequence is pure Gilliam, with fantastical elements and the merging of dream and reality that suggests either a very good or very bad drug trip (depending on preference and location within said trip).<fn> </dl> <hr> <ft>The background is that Diana Christenson, played by Faye Dunaway, is a strong woman, who acts as a stereotypical man (much as Jennifer Jason Leigh did in <i>Hudsucker Proxy</i>, also overtly noted throughout that film). In a barely-hidden allusion to this, during one tryst with Max, Diana can't stop talking about work the whole time they're undressing and getting into bed---which Max tolerates and ignores so as not to kill whatever mood there was, which was nascent, actually. Once in bed, she is almost immediately satisfied and continues talking about work throughout.</ft> <ft>It is a delight to watch a cartoon which is a cartoon rather than a CGI approximation. This animation is art.</ft> <ft>And the insurance companies that are aggressively denying claims are probably the same organization that's trying to buy up development rights and land and will move in more well-to-do people.</ft> <ft>And perhaps to assuage any feelings of latent homosexuality on the part of insecure young male moviegoers who wanted to go see the "psycho from Taxi Driver" team up with the "psycho from Scarface" and then realized they were watching a flick about two old guys.</ft> <ft>The inscrutable samurai would reappear in the Fisher King, which dream sequences had many similarities to those of Brazil.</ft>