This is a pedestrian, predictable ghost/revenge story that would be too boring for Creepy comics. Its supernatural logic is half-baked and ridiculous. (Look, I'm a ghost now, so I can snap a sturdy man's neck with one hand!) The attempt to invoke the 17th century is puerile. The incessant ritornello of "sleep, wake, walk" is irksome. The narrator needs an accent coach. This episode is perfectly dreadful.
Reviews
17 Reviews
Flirting with incoherence and bad maths.
12 October 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Absolutely agree that supposed Brits talking about "the math" is jarring; as is Mr. Thomas's pronunciation of "enn-velope". But more troubling is the inconsistent, silly logic surrounding ghostly possession and mediation of "tucked away" memory-dreams... dude, just use flashbacks.
I can't help thinking this "Haunting of..." thing is just a slightly less lurid AHS. It seems to have a similarly kitchen sink approach. If that's what all TV horror is going to be based on from now on, I'ma say a prayer to St. Stephen (King) and just snuff it.
I can't help thinking this "Haunting of..." thing is just a slightly less lurid AHS. It seems to have a similarly kitchen sink approach. If that's what all TV horror is going to be based on from now on, I'ma say a prayer to St. Stephen (King) and just snuff it.
Breathtakingly stupid
30 January 2018
Warning: Spoilers
By far the worst episode of The Good Wife I've seen so far (I'm watching in chronological order). In terms of plotting and dialog, it's hard to fathom a more likely explanation than that the writers all decided to try bath salts on the same day.
First we have a judge who is advertised as "playing it by the book"-this is coming from Kalinda, an investigator whose time in court is limited, so this judge must have a seriously loud reputation for being straitlaced-but who nonetheless engages in a drunken tirade in a public bar, hollering before witnesses that Will Gardner is going to lose the case he, Judge Straitlace, is currently adjudicating. Also that Mr. Gardner is a liar and a thief who doesn't deserve to practice law ever again. That much is fine; the judge just got divorced and fell off the wagon, so I'm fine with drunken personal insults-but commenting outright on the *outcome* of a case in progress? Nupe. NO judge. Especially not a by-the-book judge.
We have Mr. Gardner and co-counsel planning and calling for an independent judicial review of that judge's obvious bias on the case-without once considering that it might aid their argument to call the main witness to the judge's tirade, a woman sitting with the Judge Straitlace at the bar-with whom, OBTW, Mr. Gardner was once involved. (Are there any women in the legal profession in Chicago with whom Mr. Gardner was not once involved?) We have Mr. Gardner finally-after a courtroom reversal makes everybody go "duh!"-approaching that witness... and having sex with her before mentioning he and the Cause of Justice both need her help.
We have the universally idiotic walking contrivance of "tow-truck magnate Nick Savarese" a.k.a. "Mr, Kalinda" a.k.a. "hey let's remake Clockwork Orange!", obsessing on Cary Agos, absolutely dead certain Mr. Agos is sleeping with his wife.
And we have two insipid side-plots involving each of the Florrick teens:
(1) Zach successfully lies about his identity to take a volunteer IT job at his dad's campaign headquarters-and nobody recognizes him as the candidate's son. Then the newly hired IT lead pleads with Eli Gold because she really, really NEEDS this one specific after-school IT volunteer to, I don't know, hack the Pentagon or something, but he won't stay. Of course, once Mr. Gold finds out it is Zach, now Zach really, really WANTS to stay, but he's afraid to even ask his mom about helping out at HQ. Because for some reason both parents treat the campaign trail with the same child-protective horror as an opium den, alligator pit, or witness box at an organized crime trial.
(2) For no reason and with no convincing in-show rationale, Grace obsesses on a boy at school whose girlfriend, also called Grace, just killed herself. "It's sad but I'm good," she tells her mom on the phone-a typical utterance, as if this wildly privileged, coddled, and engaged private school teen has never learned any polysyllabic adjectives. Even if we concede the moronic premise that this human child of normal(ish) intelligence is worrying, "Hey, my name is Grace too! That could have been me!", the sequitur is ridiculous: in the space of a few days she stalks the boy, accosts him, befriends him, BFFs him, SWFs him, invites him to her house, asks him about the sex he used to have with Dead Grace in the bushes and whether that's what he intends with her (Live Grace). And possibly takes up smoking cigarettes.
And through all this insulting rubbish there is not a bit of acting required of the luminous Ms. Margulies to relieve the painful stupidity of the episode.
First we have a judge who is advertised as "playing it by the book"-this is coming from Kalinda, an investigator whose time in court is limited, so this judge must have a seriously loud reputation for being straitlaced-but who nonetheless engages in a drunken tirade in a public bar, hollering before witnesses that Will Gardner is going to lose the case he, Judge Straitlace, is currently adjudicating. Also that Mr. Gardner is a liar and a thief who doesn't deserve to practice law ever again. That much is fine; the judge just got divorced and fell off the wagon, so I'm fine with drunken personal insults-but commenting outright on the *outcome* of a case in progress? Nupe. NO judge. Especially not a by-the-book judge.
We have Mr. Gardner and co-counsel planning and calling for an independent judicial review of that judge's obvious bias on the case-without once considering that it might aid their argument to call the main witness to the judge's tirade, a woman sitting with the Judge Straitlace at the bar-with whom, OBTW, Mr. Gardner was once involved. (Are there any women in the legal profession in Chicago with whom Mr. Gardner was not once involved?) We have Mr. Gardner finally-after a courtroom reversal makes everybody go "duh!"-approaching that witness... and having sex with her before mentioning he and the Cause of Justice both need her help.
We have the universally idiotic walking contrivance of "tow-truck magnate Nick Savarese" a.k.a. "Mr, Kalinda" a.k.a. "hey let's remake Clockwork Orange!", obsessing on Cary Agos, absolutely dead certain Mr. Agos is sleeping with his wife.
And we have two insipid side-plots involving each of the Florrick teens:
(1) Zach successfully lies about his identity to take a volunteer IT job at his dad's campaign headquarters-and nobody recognizes him as the candidate's son. Then the newly hired IT lead pleads with Eli Gold because she really, really NEEDS this one specific after-school IT volunteer to, I don't know, hack the Pentagon or something, but he won't stay. Of course, once Mr. Gold finds out it is Zach, now Zach really, really WANTS to stay, but he's afraid to even ask his mom about helping out at HQ. Because for some reason both parents treat the campaign trail with the same child-protective horror as an opium den, alligator pit, or witness box at an organized crime trial.
(2) For no reason and with no convincing in-show rationale, Grace obsesses on a boy at school whose girlfriend, also called Grace, just killed herself. "It's sad but I'm good," she tells her mom on the phone-a typical utterance, as if this wildly privileged, coddled, and engaged private school teen has never learned any polysyllabic adjectives. Even if we concede the moronic premise that this human child of normal(ish) intelligence is worrying, "Hey, my name is Grace too! That could have been me!", the sequitur is ridiculous: in the space of a few days she stalks the boy, accosts him, befriends him, BFFs him, SWFs him, invites him to her house, asks him about the sex he used to have with Dead Grace in the bushes and whether that's what he intends with her (Live Grace). And possibly takes up smoking cigarettes.
And through all this insulting rubbish there is not a bit of acting required of the luminous Ms. Margulies to relieve the painful stupidity of the episode.
Bah! Humbug!
27 July 2016
This is a middling effective tearjerker marred by a few specific things: First, the absolute insistence that everybody and everything is Christian. (How do you actually tell someone you don't know over the phone to tell somebody else you don't know "Merry Christmas"? How rude is that if they are any other religion?) Yes, some scientists have religious faith, but two thirds of a given group of scientists believing in the actual divinity of Jesus of Nazareth? Please. Which brings us to the scene where Booth and Brennan argue about faith; the scene ends with Booth saying, "You don't know if you're sick, but you're more than willing to take drugs just in case. Seems to me you should give the man upstairs the same benefit of the doubt that you do an invisible fungus." And he walks away while Brennan looks contemplative, like she needs to think about that argument. But the argument is complete rubbish: the fungus might be invisible to the naked eye but its presence has been tangibly established by evidence nonetheless; and even if it were a fair comparison, the best it amounts to is Pascal's wager, the argument that one should believe in God just in case he's real and wants to send non-believers to hell. This show clearly wanted to side with theists—not just theists but Christian theists—over atheists, and it uses bogus rhetoric and tear-jerking to do so. Bad! Bad TV program! ((Smacks 'Bones' with newspaper.))
Finally, this episode is marred by the most egregiously awful rendition I ever hope to hear of "Have Yourself oh! Merry Little Chruhmuh", courtesy of Tori Amos. No doubt Ms. Amos has considerable talent and appeal as a musician—I remember liking a thing or two from "Little Earthquakes"—but this performance was a catalog of WTF ARE YOU DOING TO THIS SONG?! moments: mangled pronunciation, bad microreadings, worse vocal habits... Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Stinky! ((Smacks Tori Amos with newspaper.))
Finally, this episode is marred by the most egregiously awful rendition I ever hope to hear of "Have Yourself oh! Merry Little Chruhmuh", courtesy of Tori Amos. No doubt Ms. Amos has considerable talent and appeal as a musician—I remember liking a thing or two from "Little Earthquakes"—but this performance was a catalog of WTF ARE YOU DOING TO THIS SONG?! moments: mangled pronunciation, bad microreadings, worse vocal habits... Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Stinky! ((Smacks Tori Amos with newspaper.))
Clue
(1985)
What species is this?
14 December 2015
Warning: Spoilers
The near-universal public acclaim for Clue is the strongest evidence I've found to date that I am not actually one human among several billion on a planet called Earth, but a lone brain, or computer program, in a laboratory run by an evil scientist, or possibly a very sick teenager.
Vox DOT com just published an "ode" by Caroline Framke to the best 30 seconds in Clue, which of course is Madeline Kahn's rhapsody on her hatred of Yvette. "It was also the only improvised moment in the entire movie," Ms. Framke reports. It is also very nearly the only funny thing in the entire movie. Go figure.
But Ms. Framke goes on to credit "...writer Jonathan Lynn's quick wordplay and absurdist twists..."
Whut. See, I would have said "writer Jonathan Lynn's incessant clunkers and idiotically stilted non-dialog" but that's just me. Seriously, how is this exchange "comedy gold"?: "What are you afraid of, Peacock, a fate worse than death?" / "No, just death, isn't that enough?"
Because WHO F***ING TALKS LIKE THAT? Who would offer that set-up line? It's f***ing imbecilic.
"For Clue, Kahn takes what Lynn later admitted was a two-dimensional character and settles into the role with a detached grace, like a cat stretching on a cushion, barely deigning to acknowledge anyone else's presence." Yes, please, you can praise Madeline Kahn all the day long, as far as I'm concerned; she was a gargantuan talent and I still weep for her loss.
But they are all 2-dimensional characters in Clue. They are uniformly uninteresting and unsympathetic. They are terse and suspicious and rude to each other from the start, and not in the amusing way that I'm sure was the author's intent. And the sources of their supposed funniness—Leslie Ann Warren's seeming turpitude, Christopher Lloyd's repugnant lechery, Martin Mull's ... military buffoonery, I guess?— none of them are inherently funny; it would take a skilled satirist to make them work, and Johnathan Lynn seems to me *singularly* unskilled. I am personally, unconsolably affronted by this unpleasant little man having tarnished my otherwise pristine love for Ms. Kahn, Mr. Mull, Michael McKean, and—most fiendishly ill-used—Eileen Brennan.
Lynn's script is not sharp; it's pointy-headed. It's not rapid-fire; it's rapid-misfire. It's not even wordplay most of the time; it's word drudgery. Word torture. Cruel and unusual pun-ishment. Worderboarding.
*Sigh* No one will find this review "useful" among the pages and pages of paeans proclaiming this "THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER MADE!!!" by people who grew to love it when they were five. I just want to tie all these people down and show them Murder by Death.
Vox DOT com just published an "ode" by Caroline Framke to the best 30 seconds in Clue, which of course is Madeline Kahn's rhapsody on her hatred of Yvette. "It was also the only improvised moment in the entire movie," Ms. Framke reports. It is also very nearly the only funny thing in the entire movie. Go figure.
But Ms. Framke goes on to credit "...writer Jonathan Lynn's quick wordplay and absurdist twists..."
Whut. See, I would have said "writer Jonathan Lynn's incessant clunkers and idiotically stilted non-dialog" but that's just me. Seriously, how is this exchange "comedy gold"?: "What are you afraid of, Peacock, a fate worse than death?" / "No, just death, isn't that enough?"
Because WHO F***ING TALKS LIKE THAT? Who would offer that set-up line? It's f***ing imbecilic.
"For Clue, Kahn takes what Lynn later admitted was a two-dimensional character and settles into the role with a detached grace, like a cat stretching on a cushion, barely deigning to acknowledge anyone else's presence." Yes, please, you can praise Madeline Kahn all the day long, as far as I'm concerned; she was a gargantuan talent and I still weep for her loss.
But they are all 2-dimensional characters in Clue. They are uniformly uninteresting and unsympathetic. They are terse and suspicious and rude to each other from the start, and not in the amusing way that I'm sure was the author's intent. And the sources of their supposed funniness—Leslie Ann Warren's seeming turpitude, Christopher Lloyd's repugnant lechery, Martin Mull's ... military buffoonery, I guess?— none of them are inherently funny; it would take a skilled satirist to make them work, and Johnathan Lynn seems to me *singularly* unskilled. I am personally, unconsolably affronted by this unpleasant little man having tarnished my otherwise pristine love for Ms. Kahn, Mr. Mull, Michael McKean, and—most fiendishly ill-used—Eileen Brennan.
Lynn's script is not sharp; it's pointy-headed. It's not rapid-fire; it's rapid-misfire. It's not even wordplay most of the time; it's word drudgery. Word torture. Cruel and unusual pun-ishment. Worderboarding.
*Sigh* No one will find this review "useful" among the pages and pages of paeans proclaiming this "THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER MADE!!!" by people who grew to love it when they were five. I just want to tie all these people down and show them Murder by Death.
Gack Gack
(2003)
Profoundly disturbing, at least to me.
25 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
This is, quite simply, a horrific little film. I cannot pretend that it is enjoyable to watch. It is brutal and utterly bleak. And yet I find myself thinking about it frequently, weeks after having viewed it.
Collected in Spike and Mike's 'Unprotected' DVD, 'Gack Gack' (I'm assuming this is what chickens say in German since the alternate English title is 'Cluck Cluck') pursues a single nasty scenario: a henhouse-office in which ranks of chickens sit at typewriters all day doing nothing but typing 'Gack Gack Gack Gack Gack Gack', filling pages with the single word. (Already existential hell, right? And appropriate from the culture that brought us 'Arbeit macht frei'.) Worse, this operation is presided over by an astonishingly foul office manager: a hippo whose rage over a mistyped 'Gak' invariably results in the murder of a hen (the culprit? a hen picked entirely at random? it is not clear that the boss knows whose 'Gak' is it); and who exalts in working his bovine secretary's udders for his own pleasure, even as she weeps at being so used. A ray of hope--the hippo's death by heart attack--is introduced specifically to be smashed down when the iguana (tuatara?) replacing him, a superficially pleasanter personality, ends up being more of the same: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Spike and Mike program humor almost exclusively in their collections, and it is quite possible that they found this short funny in that 'sick and twisted' way of theirs. I don't find it funny in the least; I think it is desolate and desperately depressing; and the horror it evokes in 7 brief minutes is precisely why is it very nearly a great film.
Collected in Spike and Mike's 'Unprotected' DVD, 'Gack Gack' (I'm assuming this is what chickens say in German since the alternate English title is 'Cluck Cluck') pursues a single nasty scenario: a henhouse-office in which ranks of chickens sit at typewriters all day doing nothing but typing 'Gack Gack Gack Gack Gack Gack', filling pages with the single word. (Already existential hell, right? And appropriate from the culture that brought us 'Arbeit macht frei'.) Worse, this operation is presided over by an astonishingly foul office manager: a hippo whose rage over a mistyped 'Gak' invariably results in the murder of a hen (the culprit? a hen picked entirely at random? it is not clear that the boss knows whose 'Gak' is it); and who exalts in working his bovine secretary's udders for his own pleasure, even as she weeps at being so used. A ray of hope--the hippo's death by heart attack--is introduced specifically to be smashed down when the iguana (tuatara?) replacing him, a superficially pleasanter personality, ends up being more of the same: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Spike and Mike program humor almost exclusively in their collections, and it is quite possible that they found this short funny in that 'sick and twisted' way of theirs. I don't find it funny in the least; I think it is desolate and desperately depressing; and the horror it evokes in 7 brief minutes is precisely why is it very nearly a great film.
Denied
(2004)
A very bad movie, and that's a damn shame.
1 May 2008
I was rooting for this movie, even as my every hope was smashed the whole way through: all the elements of a truly engaging, affecting, sophisticated picture are here, but they are botched beyond belief. Maybe somebody could give director David Scott a bigger budget and a staff and they could try it again from scratch.
The basic premise of the movie--requited but unacknowledged love--will ring true with a lot of queer folk: "You make love to me all the time. Why can't we just be boyfriends?" (That may have been one of the lines, actually, but the sound on this movie is so very dreadful I suspect I caught less than a third of the dialog.) There's no reason this film shouldn't resonate with anyone who's been in the position to rue their beloved's denial of acceptable, respectable, publicly avowed togetherness. And I suppose it does, with those more forgiving of its many distracting flaws. Am I unrealistic in expecting a certain basic level of competence from a movie?
The young actors are not without talent; or, at any rate, they are much better at what they do than the director, who frames extremely long static shots (such as that of Troy and Merrick discussing their issues in the living room) with no visual relief, no character movement, and no particular tension-building purpose. Not to mention the astonishing percentage of frames in the movie that feature Troy's obliquely downcast, unchanging stare-into-the-abyss! (Perhaps we should be thankful that Scott did not devote equal time to capturing the abyss staring back into Troy.) One is reminded of The Brown Bunny, which was built of 8 sentences, a blow job, and 80 minutes of Vincent Gallo alone and looking like he's just eaten a fistful of bear scat.
Our writer-director allows his protagonist the dignity of doing the only responsible thing by the end of the movie: growing up and getting over Merrick. He even permits a cloudy, ambiguous split between them, in which the lingering affection is just as obvious as the need for separation. All this could turn a film golden, win awards, and jerk tears like nobody's business--if only there were the tiniest shard of coherent film technique backing it up.
The basic premise of the movie--requited but unacknowledged love--will ring true with a lot of queer folk: "You make love to me all the time. Why can't we just be boyfriends?" (That may have been one of the lines, actually, but the sound on this movie is so very dreadful I suspect I caught less than a third of the dialog.) There's no reason this film shouldn't resonate with anyone who's been in the position to rue their beloved's denial of acceptable, respectable, publicly avowed togetherness. And I suppose it does, with those more forgiving of its many distracting flaws. Am I unrealistic in expecting a certain basic level of competence from a movie?
The young actors are not without talent; or, at any rate, they are much better at what they do than the director, who frames extremely long static shots (such as that of Troy and Merrick discussing their issues in the living room) with no visual relief, no character movement, and no particular tension-building purpose. Not to mention the astonishing percentage of frames in the movie that feature Troy's obliquely downcast, unchanging stare-into-the-abyss! (Perhaps we should be thankful that Scott did not devote equal time to capturing the abyss staring back into Troy.) One is reminded of The Brown Bunny, which was built of 8 sentences, a blow job, and 80 minutes of Vincent Gallo alone and looking like he's just eaten a fistful of bear scat.
Our writer-director allows his protagonist the dignity of doing the only responsible thing by the end of the movie: growing up and getting over Merrick. He even permits a cloudy, ambiguous split between them, in which the lingering affection is just as obvious as the need for separation. All this could turn a film golden, win awards, and jerk tears like nobody's business--if only there were the tiniest shard of coherent film technique backing it up.
The Life of Reilly
(2006)
A remembrance
29 May 2007
Well, it is the end of May 2007 and Mr. Charles Nelson Reilly has recently died. I just learned of it today and, while I know it's silly, I've been sitting here at work getting teary-eyed. Sure, as a kid I knew him only from The Match Game, but when I saw "Life of Reilly (Save It for the Stage)" last fall I understood at last what a fascinating person and enormous heart lay behind the outrageous public persona. And, finally, it seems that even the game-show Charles Nelson Reilly was not really ever a mere persona, that he was never anyone but who he was, histrionic and unapologetic and, if you took the trouble to look, enormously dignified. The movie shows both the man and the artist, a veteran stage actor whose craft at storytelling never ebbed, even as his final years slowed him down physically.
As it happens, I ran across the "Jose Chung" episode of the X-Files, with Mr. Reilly in the title role, last week, just before he passed. That long, serialized interview scene with Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully is just a delight; I think you can see the fun Ms. Anderson is having playing off him. And it surely contains some of the series' best comic writing.
*Sigh.* Mr. Reilly, I shall miss you greatly.
As it happens, I ran across the "Jose Chung" episode of the X-Files, with Mr. Reilly in the title role, last week, just before he passed. That long, serialized interview scene with Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully is just a delight; I think you can see the fun Ms. Anderson is having playing off him. And it surely contains some of the series' best comic writing.
*Sigh.* Mr. Reilly, I shall miss you greatly.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie
(1987–1995)
Wonderful, including extras
3 January 2007
Having never seen ABOFAL on TV, I've now watched all of Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. To be fair, one should note that not every sketch delights--some are perhaps a shade too random and give us little to hang on to or identify with; but when Fry gets going on his "overly-florid-speech" character, with Laurie as the increasingly put-out straight man, we're in LOL territory. A particular highlight of Season 2 is the extended sketch in which an effete, reticent Laurie is charged by Fry's menacing spy/terrorist with planting a bomb in a local restaurant--then this scenario plays out alongside two or three other situations in the restaurant--each one terrific--with Fry and Laurie playing multiple characters.
In addition to the six episodes of Season 2m the DVD includes a 45ish-minute "Cambridge University Footlights Revue" that, while inconsistent in tone and quality, shows off Fry and Laurie and some of their contemporaries (including Emma Thompson) at college-age, looking freshly scrubbed and adorable. Fry, in particular, had yet to gain his extra poundage--his slender face is beautiful and he is a veritable panther in terms of physical grace. He, solo, also has the best piece in the "Revue," a recitation called "The Letter" that recounts, with raucously funny wordplay, his Harkerian visit to Transylvania to respond to the legal needs of one Count Dracula. ("The journey through Eastern Europe had passed pleasantly enough. I'd picked up a little German on a previous visit, and he and I had met up again at Ragensberg. Now, night was just falling as I knocked on the mighty oaken door, and heard the answering echoes ring through the castle. After what seemed a cliché, iron bolts were drawn back..." "I tried to question Travolta as to the nature of the Count's business as I dressed for dinner, but he made the sign of the cross and said nothing. I asked him why there were no mirrors in the castle, but this time he made the sign of the very cross indeed, and spat." "The wind whistled all through the night, and other Welsh hymns. I arose early, made my toilet, sat on it, and then came down to breakfast.")
In addition to the six episodes of Season 2m the DVD includes a 45ish-minute "Cambridge University Footlights Revue" that, while inconsistent in tone and quality, shows off Fry and Laurie and some of their contemporaries (including Emma Thompson) at college-age, looking freshly scrubbed and adorable. Fry, in particular, had yet to gain his extra poundage--his slender face is beautiful and he is a veritable panther in terms of physical grace. He, solo, also has the best piece in the "Revue," a recitation called "The Letter" that recounts, with raucously funny wordplay, his Harkerian visit to Transylvania to respond to the legal needs of one Count Dracula. ("The journey through Eastern Europe had passed pleasantly enough. I'd picked up a little German on a previous visit, and he and I had met up again at Ragensberg. Now, night was just falling as I knocked on the mighty oaken door, and heard the answering echoes ring through the castle. After what seemed a cliché, iron bolts were drawn back..." "I tried to question Travolta as to the nature of the Count's business as I dressed for dinner, but he made the sign of the cross and said nothing. I asked him why there were no mirrors in the castle, but this time he made the sign of the very cross indeed, and spat." "The wind whistled all through the night, and other Welsh hymns. I arose early, made my toilet, sat on it, and then came down to breakfast.")
The Wicker Man
(1973)
A wonderful thriller with dreadful music (possibly spoilers?)
23 October 2006
I think The Wicker Man 1973 is probably the single most dissonant movie I've ever seen in terms of soundtrack music versus the rest of the film (although the song over the opening credits of The Ninth Configuration really tries, momentarily, to wrest the title away). TWM is an effective, creepy flick, regardless of whether the showcased pagan beliefs & customs are unsettling (and i think we're mostly meant to identify only remotely with Sgt. Howie's growing horrorhe really is a right prude and the flick was made in very libertine times; though, after all, immolation can really spoil one's afternoon). And to my way of thinking, Edward Woodward's francophonic pronunciation of "turquoise" is itself worth the price of admission.
But the true, immutable, almost Lovecraftian horror of the movie is its music, from the "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs" song over the credits to the truly loathsome balladization of the circle of life around the maypole to the pub music to which Britt Eckland ostensibly makes love to a wall. Awful, awful stuff, and all the worse for being so obviously new-writ for the movie, instead of sounding like (or actually being) traditional music, such as the residents of Summerisle would undoubtedly sing and play to accompany their millennia-old rites and ceremonies.
But the true, immutable, almost Lovecraftian horror of the movie is its music, from the "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs" song over the credits to the truly loathsome balladization of the circle of life around the maypole to the pub music to which Britt Eckland ostensibly makes love to a wall. Awful, awful stuff, and all the worse for being so obviously new-writ for the movie, instead of sounding like (or actually being) traditional music, such as the residents of Summerisle would undoubtedly sing and play to accompany their millennia-old rites and ceremonies.
Elephant
(2003)
befuddling.
30 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
i mean, i can see how some folks could find this movie rhapsodic or hypnotic, but i just found it soporific. it's not that i wanted a big nasty violent movie, but all the advance publicity led me to believe this would be a disturbing, moving experience. i was moved to yawn, and greatly disturbed when the credits ran over more clouds without anything having been achieved in the movie. look: i'm not a tough sell. i don't even insist that things be explained neatly away in movies; certainly not in movies of this nature, where we are, almost by definition, searching for answers where there are none. however, if you're going to give me a big, unexplained horror like these Columbinish shootings, you might at least try to keep me interested in the characters and guessing at motivations.
the ONLY thing in this movie that kept me rapt was the kid's playing of Fur Elise--though others have complained about van Sant having "ruined" Beethoven, having learnt to play Fur Elise some 30+ years ago, i was struck by how very "real" the kid's mistakes were. (for example and to be geeky, he plays E-B-E in the left hand instead of E-E-G# exactly once and does it right every other time--this is, without question, a previously correct mistake that crept back in). anyway, it was a spot-on "learning" rendition.
as to the characters, there is a reason fiction movies are made a certain way: there are shortcuts and accepted "code" to get an audience to care about characters. van Sant's staunch avoidance of all such smacks of gimmickry without any kind of payoff: all we see are regular kids, like the ones we went to high school with--except they're NOT the ones we went to high school with, so we do not love them or hate them or feel any other strong way about them. that they end up with bullet holes in them sucks, but only in a sterile way of nameless corpses in police blotters.
re homosexuality, as a gay man i find van Sant creepy. back with My Own Private Idaho he used (uber-creepy) Udo Kier to great comedic effect, but that film was wholly redeemed by River Phoenix's exquisite portrayal of a haunting and haunted gay character. i'd like to believe van Sant merely tries to show that stereotypes do not tell the whole story when he does things like getting the two shooters naked and kissing in the shower the morning of the slaughter, but finally i suspect he's a little wrong in the head and it just slimes out into his movies.
the ONLY thing in this movie that kept me rapt was the kid's playing of Fur Elise--though others have complained about van Sant having "ruined" Beethoven, having learnt to play Fur Elise some 30+ years ago, i was struck by how very "real" the kid's mistakes were. (for example and to be geeky, he plays E-B-E in the left hand instead of E-E-G# exactly once and does it right every other time--this is, without question, a previously correct mistake that crept back in). anyway, it was a spot-on "learning" rendition.
as to the characters, there is a reason fiction movies are made a certain way: there are shortcuts and accepted "code" to get an audience to care about characters. van Sant's staunch avoidance of all such smacks of gimmickry without any kind of payoff: all we see are regular kids, like the ones we went to high school with--except they're NOT the ones we went to high school with, so we do not love them or hate them or feel any other strong way about them. that they end up with bullet holes in them sucks, but only in a sterile way of nameless corpses in police blotters.
re homosexuality, as a gay man i find van Sant creepy. back with My Own Private Idaho he used (uber-creepy) Udo Kier to great comedic effect, but that film was wholly redeemed by River Phoenix's exquisite portrayal of a haunting and haunted gay character. i'd like to believe van Sant merely tries to show that stereotypes do not tell the whole story when he does things like getting the two shooters naked and kissing in the shower the morning of the slaughter, but finally i suspect he's a little wrong in the head and it just slimes out into his movies.
Around the World in 80 Days
(2004)
Reprehensible
12 March 2005
Not a remake of the 1956 classic--itself probably the worst film to have garnered the Best Picture Oscar--but instead a ludicrous attempt at a feel-good, charming, silly adventure. Like so many recent period movies, this is chock-full of anachronistic ideas and distortions of Victorian mores. Messages about the redemptive power of friendship or the unexpected fighting skills of women have no more business in this story than a female evil Chinese warlord, or jokes about Queen Victoria's butt. To top it off, the screenwriters seem positively obsessed with semi-naughty jokes about homosexuality, having the principals needlessly aver their own staunch hetero manliness every five minutes.
The script and the plotting are so very dreadfully bad from start to finish. The script is populated with gags so obvious and strained they would cause the very worst sort of TV sitcom to quietly die of shame. The best thing one can say about this movie is that it is basically a Jackie Chan fight movie disguised as a classic story.
Good GOD, this movie rots.
The script and the plotting are so very dreadfully bad from start to finish. The script is populated with gags so obvious and strained they would cause the very worst sort of TV sitcom to quietly die of shame. The best thing one can say about this movie is that it is basically a Jackie Chan fight movie disguised as a classic story.
Good GOD, this movie rots.
Noah's Arc
(2004)
Queer as Bruthas
17 October 2004
Three promos and the pilot episode of Noah's Arc just screened last night at Washington, D.C.'s 14th Annual Reel Affirmations Film Festival, and it was a sold-out house--just like when director Patrick-Ian Polk showed his feature film "Punks" at RA in 2000. The hype behind this showing was all about "At last we get stories of gay Black men!" And indeed, whereas other films at this festival are attended overwhelmingly by gay WHITE men, Noah's Arc attracted a larger African-American gay audience than most of us light-skins ever get to commune with. Who knew? Are all these guys out? Where do they hang out? Not the same clubs my friends and I frequent... It's incredible that in wonderfully diverse D.C. we're still so damn segregated.
Anyway, the shorts and the pilot were wildly appreciated at the fest. I cannot help but surmise that this was due at least in part to the aforementioned thirst for gay Black stories in film. Noah's Arc is definitely entertaining, but apart from being the first gay Black (soon-to-be-) cable network show, there's really nothing new here. It's Queer as Folk, translated to African-American L.A. I liked the characters; but that's because I was supposed to like them. I like the issues they deal with--relationships, sex, family--but there are no real challenges or surprises here. The central dilemma of the pilot--Noah falls for an acquaintance who has historically been hetero but seems to have some more-than-friendly feelings for Noah--is NOT an exclusively (or even a primarily) Black phenomenon.
Don't get me wrong--the production is great (though the sound could use some editing) and the cast are uniformly talented (and for the most part drop-dead gorgeous). But the characters are all *upscale* L.A.--even the "struggling" screenwriter Noah drives a convertible--and apart from a few Black street terms ("downlow" and, yes, "nigga"), there's little in Noah's Arc to distinguish this group of gay guys from the cast of Queer as Folk, or of any mainstream sex- and romance-themed feature film of the last few years.
So my question, then, is: Is it enough to take a recent, successful formula for a TV show, change the race of the characters but little else, and resell it? Is it really all my Black neighbors want, to be able to see Queer as Black Folk? From the reception Noah's Arc received at the Reel Affirmations fest, the answer seems to be yes... but I'm personally doubtful.
I know this was just the first episode, and I'm totally willing to give the series the benefit of the doubt. I very much wish for the success of this project as a cable series, and I look forward to seeing future episodes, in the hope that we get to see (a) further exploration of what, in all its diversity, "Black gay America" means, and (b) examinations of more of the weightier issues barely touched on in the pilot. For example: the family situation of Noah's friend Chance, who has just married a partner who has a young daughter. So far that daughter is nothing more than a political prop and a running joke regarding her name ("Kenya"), which the "diva" friend can never remember. I have no doubt that Mr. Polk's heart is in the right place, so I look forward to seeing where he takes these characters--hopefully someplace we haven't all seen before!
Anyway, the shorts and the pilot were wildly appreciated at the fest. I cannot help but surmise that this was due at least in part to the aforementioned thirst for gay Black stories in film. Noah's Arc is definitely entertaining, but apart from being the first gay Black (soon-to-be-) cable network show, there's really nothing new here. It's Queer as Folk, translated to African-American L.A. I liked the characters; but that's because I was supposed to like them. I like the issues they deal with--relationships, sex, family--but there are no real challenges or surprises here. The central dilemma of the pilot--Noah falls for an acquaintance who has historically been hetero but seems to have some more-than-friendly feelings for Noah--is NOT an exclusively (or even a primarily) Black phenomenon.
Don't get me wrong--the production is great (though the sound could use some editing) and the cast are uniformly talented (and for the most part drop-dead gorgeous). But the characters are all *upscale* L.A.--even the "struggling" screenwriter Noah drives a convertible--and apart from a few Black street terms ("downlow" and, yes, "nigga"), there's little in Noah's Arc to distinguish this group of gay guys from the cast of Queer as Folk, or of any mainstream sex- and romance-themed feature film of the last few years.
So my question, then, is: Is it enough to take a recent, successful formula for a TV show, change the race of the characters but little else, and resell it? Is it really all my Black neighbors want, to be able to see Queer as Black Folk? From the reception Noah's Arc received at the Reel Affirmations fest, the answer seems to be yes... but I'm personally doubtful.
I know this was just the first episode, and I'm totally willing to give the series the benefit of the doubt. I very much wish for the success of this project as a cable series, and I look forward to seeing future episodes, in the hope that we get to see (a) further exploration of what, in all its diversity, "Black gay America" means, and (b) examinations of more of the weightier issues barely touched on in the pilot. For example: the family situation of Noah's friend Chance, who has just married a partner who has a young daughter. So far that daughter is nothing more than a political prop and a running joke regarding her name ("Kenya"), which the "diva" friend can never remember. I have no doubt that Mr. Polk's heart is in the right place, so I look forward to seeing where he takes these characters--hopefully someplace we haven't all seen before!
Tin Men
(1987)
An old friend
20 March 2004
TIN MEN is certainly among the dozen or so movies that I have watched more than a dozen or so times, so I have no claim to being objective about critiquing it. It's just one of my favorite movies. Beyond the obvious praise it's due for its period detail and its terrific supporting comedic cast and the balancing act Levinson achieves between its overall tragic arc and its genuinely funny script, what keeps me coming back to this movie time after time are its many "perfect" moments, most of which come courtesy of Barbara Hershey.
I don't know if Ms. Hershey is indeed one of our best actresses... it's quite possible that her performance in THIS movie for THIS director in THIS setting is brilliant out of sheer serendipity, but her quiet, unmannered performance here is one of my Favorite Things in This World. Her chemistry with Mr. DeVito is pitch-perfect, and their scenes together serve as the movie's thermometer. The dialog she is given and what she does with it are marvels. When her house is repossessed and she encounters her husband on the front porch, she complaints that her husband doesn't give a damn about her or about the many things of hers still in the locked-up house: "The headboard, that was given to me by my Aunt Josephine, that's gotta be at least a hundred... you know, 50 years old, or... you know, it's OLD." If reading this bit doesn't convey the idea of "perfect moment" understand that Ms. Hershey's character is a person who so values honesty, in the midst of a life surrounded by professionally dishonest people, that she self-corrects on a trivial point. So much information is telegraphed in that brief stutter--and in similar moments throughout the movie... I've seldom fallen so hard in love with a movie character as a result.
Elsewhere, when Richard Dreyfuss's character professes his love for her in a rain-soaked scene, it culminates in: "I wanna... ... ... you know?" And the thing is, you DO know--again, all essential information about this character and his situation is telegraphed in the elipsis.
These moments have become part of my personal movie mythos: they serve as the nearest-in-reach examples of what a great movie is made of. Certainly more--a lot more--is needed for a great movie, and whether Tin Men has all the other elements in place is a question I'll leave to the professional critics. But I'm sure of the many moments of greatness in Tin Men. This movie is NOT a guilty pleasure.
I don't know if Ms. Hershey is indeed one of our best actresses... it's quite possible that her performance in THIS movie for THIS director in THIS setting is brilliant out of sheer serendipity, but her quiet, unmannered performance here is one of my Favorite Things in This World. Her chemistry with Mr. DeVito is pitch-perfect, and their scenes together serve as the movie's thermometer. The dialog she is given and what she does with it are marvels. When her house is repossessed and she encounters her husband on the front porch, she complaints that her husband doesn't give a damn about her or about the many things of hers still in the locked-up house: "The headboard, that was given to me by my Aunt Josephine, that's gotta be at least a hundred... you know, 50 years old, or... you know, it's OLD." If reading this bit doesn't convey the idea of "perfect moment" understand that Ms. Hershey's character is a person who so values honesty, in the midst of a life surrounded by professionally dishonest people, that she self-corrects on a trivial point. So much information is telegraphed in that brief stutter--and in similar moments throughout the movie... I've seldom fallen so hard in love with a movie character as a result.
Elsewhere, when Richard Dreyfuss's character professes his love for her in a rain-soaked scene, it culminates in: "I wanna... ... ... you know?" And the thing is, you DO know--again, all essential information about this character and his situation is telegraphed in the elipsis.
These moments have become part of my personal movie mythos: they serve as the nearest-in-reach examples of what a great movie is made of. Certainly more--a lot more--is needed for a great movie, and whether Tin Men has all the other elements in place is a question I'll leave to the professional critics. But I'm sure of the many moments of greatness in Tin Men. This movie is NOT a guilty pleasure.
X-Men
(2000)
so much fuss!
26 December 2000
having come to this movie with only the scantest of info about the comix and other preceding media (i.e., there's mutants in them thar hills), i thought this was a decent action flick with decent characters. i don't see it as worthy of either the earthshaking kudos or the flat dismissals it has garnered here as elsewhere. but the important question is, am i the only person who thinks hugh jackman has a career because he looks an awful lot like clint eastwood, circa "the good, the bad, and the ugly"?
Dead Man's Curve
(1998)
Lillard is the evil creep of the future
25 May 1999
Warning: Spoilers
Has anyone else gotten the impression that those most bitterly critical of _The_Curve_ must have had some gimmick of their own to get through school? Seldom have I seen a collection of criticism so clearly divided by such markers as incomplete sentences and unsubstantiated claims (such as the one that the plot "collapses like a house of cards under close examination", but that then fails to mention how). Most memorable is the person who found the plot "confusing ... and predictable"; I think it's time to change medications, don't you? Then there's this gem: "I mean it had no real plot to speak of. I mean trying to kill someone to make it look like a suicide to pass a class, come on that sucks." Uh, sure. I trust an opinion like that implicitly. Shoulda read it before I wasted my time on the confusingly predictable collapsing plotlessness of this movie. Yep. Without getting into spoiler territory, I think this flick is cleverly plotted. It lets you think you're keeping up with it (banging a pot on your head, shouting, "I am so smart! I am so smart!") while in fact it remains a step ahead. True, the ending is a bit much, but it certainly is a lot of fun getting there. Matthew Lillard, whom I have been watching since his first thus-billed role (in _Serial_Mom_) is honing his skills to be The Creepiest Man in Movies. He's already more menacing than Vincent Price ever was, or Peter Lorre, for that matter. That he pulls this off, here and elsewhere, precisely by feigning a boisterously friendly character, is credit to him: he's like Batman's The Joker, all homicide and smiles. Whether he'll ever venture into straighter, or more subdued roles, time will tell. For the moment, though, his schtick is entertaining as hell. Rosen isn't a blinding talent, but the direction's not bad for his first time out. As others have mentioned, the entire movie is nicely set up while the credits are rolling. There are cool subtle touches (e.g. the progression of the school psychologist's smoking habit throughout) and kinda clumsy ones (e.g. a stagy spotlighting of Lillard while he's telling a particularly mean-spirited story in a bar). And Rosen's writing (as well as Lillard's acting) are absolutely dead-on in spots: watching Lillard's Tim bull**** in a crucial "he's having a breakdown" scene, neither his roommate nor we believe the routine, but a tiny doubt creeps in: Damn, what if he is for real? What if his coming unhinged is the next plot twist? The suspense doesn't engross so much as fascinate, peppered as it is with high-stakes cruelty: think _Les_Liaisons_Dangereuses_ with a bit of _Gaslight_ thrown in. Frankly, I was impressed with the effort.
Pi
(1998)
Bad Math in a Math Thriller?
7 May 1999
if you haven't seen it, 'Pi' is probably the first thriller about math ever made. the title character gets drawn into a weird confluence of computer self-awareness and jewish mysticism, centered around one 216-digit number that represents (in hebrew characters) the true name of god. the gist is, when the high rabbi speaks the name in a ceremony within the holy of holies, the world is set right and the messianic age comes closer, or some such vague happy outcome.
now for the most part, it was a creepy and effective movie, full of migraines and hallucinations... and math. i guess it was intended to impress non-math-geeks, but even only semi-math-literate viewers should have caught this egregious slip-up... late in the movie, our protagonist says to the assembled rabbis who are begging him to cough up the 216-digit magic number, "i'm sure you guys have tried out all the 216-letter words, right? spoken them aloud and nothing happened, right?"
uh-huh. ok, let's ignore the fact that only the first ten characters of the hebrew alphabet can be represented by single digits (thereafter the characters have values of 20, 30, etc). let's assume that only one out of every million of the resulting 216-letter words is pronounceable, and that some computer program has already weeded out the unpronounceable ones. let's assume that you can pronounce a 216-letter hebrew word in one second. let's assume that every one of six billion human beings on earth was actively working through the permutations, without sleep, 24/7. let's assume, by virtue of murphy's law, that the name of god is the absolute last 216-letter word pronounced. this whole process would take approximately 1.13 x 10 to the 192 power years, or 5.7 x 10 to the 181 power *times the supposed age of the universe*. that's 57,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000 times the age of the universe.
not the kind of gaffe a number theorist is likely to make.
now for the most part, it was a creepy and effective movie, full of migraines and hallucinations... and math. i guess it was intended to impress non-math-geeks, but even only semi-math-literate viewers should have caught this egregious slip-up... late in the movie, our protagonist says to the assembled rabbis who are begging him to cough up the 216-digit magic number, "i'm sure you guys have tried out all the 216-letter words, right? spoken them aloud and nothing happened, right?"
uh-huh. ok, let's ignore the fact that only the first ten characters of the hebrew alphabet can be represented by single digits (thereafter the characters have values of 20, 30, etc). let's assume that only one out of every million of the resulting 216-letter words is pronounceable, and that some computer program has already weeded out the unpronounceable ones. let's assume that you can pronounce a 216-letter hebrew word in one second. let's assume that every one of six billion human beings on earth was actively working through the permutations, without sleep, 24/7. let's assume, by virtue of murphy's law, that the name of god is the absolute last 216-letter word pronounced. this whole process would take approximately 1.13 x 10 to the 192 power years, or 5.7 x 10 to the 181 power *times the supposed age of the universe*. that's 57,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000 times the age of the universe.
not the kind of gaffe a number theorist is likely to make.
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