Bees Love Truth

Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi. Dec 30, 5pm. View count: Two.
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002), Steve Oedekerk. Dec 31, 9:30pm. View count: One.
Grappler Baki (1994), Hitoshi Nanba. Dec 31, 10:45pm. View count: One.
Blazing Saddles (1974), Mel Brooks. Dec 31, 11:45pm. View count: Four?

Evil Dead I found rather lacking, really; I respect it as a student film (which I know it isn't technically, but that's what it feels like to me), but the pacing is so repetitive and uninteresting that I can't go too much farther than that. The effects are fun, and the Raimi touches are always something to love, but I won't be going back to this anytime soon.

Kung Pow I'm actively angry at. Its ratio of funny to not funny is something like 15%/85%. The few actually funny bits usually occurred during What's Up Tiger Lily style dubbed sequences, and I think if it'd been limited to those, it could have upped its funniness to something like 50% with little further effort. I enjoyed the funny voices in general, and there really were a few genuinely amusing bits, but then I had to watch the rest of it. Additionally, looking at Steve Oedekerk's face is an onerous chore.

Grappler Baki is hilarious and overdone, with over-muscled weirdos making weird expressions at each other, the dubbers trying frantically to make sense of the little smirks and 'ah!'s. This is a short pilot for a series. It's about a fighter of some sort, Baki, who is not in fact any sort of grappler, but seemingly a karate master with a preternatural ability to assimilate other people's techniques. It's about punching, and kicking, and the occasional nonstandard technique. In general the action is over-animated, but not to its detriment. Really, the whole thing comes off as somewhat fetishistic, but in an odd and straight-faced way.

Blazing Saddles is still brilliant, with everyone doing a much better job than necessary. Madeline Kahn particularly, whose Dietrich impression is impeccable. I miss Madeline Kahn. Here's the trivia page on imdb, which has a few serious gems (Hedy Lamarr actually sued, a guy Mel Brooks used to work with actually punched out a horse, Barack Obama snuck in to see Blazing Saddles).

Drag Me to Hell (2009), Sam Raimi. Dec 26, 6pm. View count: One.

"If gypsies can curse people so easily, they should be ruling the world. Why didn't she use those powers to make payments or whatever?" -- Someone on IMDB

This isn't a masterpiece, or even a really satisfying unalloyed Raimi bonanza; neither is it complex or very well-plotted, but it's amusing and revels in its style. A lot of people seem to have failed their comprehension rolls on this movie; they assume it's meant to be straight-up horror or a horror-tinged comedy, presumably because they don't know Sam Raimi very well. In this movie he gets to focus pretty single-mindedly on the Madballs-level grossouts which suit him so well. The man also likes his archetypes, and twisting them in simple ways is as far as he goes in this. It's sort of like a 40s horror comic, in a way, unashamed of its intrinsic hokeyness. I appreciate that.

The Departed (2006), Martin Scorsese. Dec 22, 10pm. View count: One.

So, Scorsese. I hadn't realized that this was one of his until I actually watched this. I've seen, well, Taxi Driver of course, Mean Streets (which I deeply respect), Goodfellas (which I think is more successful than the Godfather), Raging Bull back in college, some of the Last Temptation of Christ, and Gangs of New York, which I sort of hated. I don't remember whether I actually watched Casino. Given this timeline (early well-respected works --> later works I didn't like as well or forgot about), it's starting to seem like I'm not really into his more recent stuff. I doubt I have enough data points to really put my finger on why, but maybe that will change.

I wasn't deeply disappointed in this piece, but it did seem sort of sloppy in a few ways. The imdb goofs page stands testament to the apparent fact that Scorsese is not really interested in continuity or pathological accuracy. I'm not going to blame him for this, but I do tend to have a lot of respect for directors who really due-diligence as many aspects of their work as they can get their hands on. Secondarily, Jack Nicholson was allowed to ad lib. Perhaps this is why his character never really developed past 'guy who does whatever he wants.' I am not really a Nicholson fan. Thirdly, there were some goofy-ass plot holes. A major threat hanging over a major character was having his police record deleted, which was implied to be permanent and unrecoverable (not to mention that apparently Mass. cops don't log these things, so no one would ever know who the bad man was who ruined Major Character's job/life). There was a totally baffling triple-agent style move made by a main character, possibly intentionally, but possibly because he was forced to do so? Maybe? Motivations were muddy at the best of times. Police procedures are also hilariously silly or absent. Simple things (fingerprints, lethal force) are ignored and paperwork-free.

The decision was made to keep the characters simple and all but arc-less for the sake of the somewhat confusing setup and situation. Remembering which undercover agent knows what is enough of a job for the viewer without having to remember how each character's (and there were probably too many characters) feelings about frosted donettes changed throughout the film. This is a valid choice, but nevertheless I couldn't help but feel shortchanged, to some extent; when a supposedly character-defining tidbit was thrown out (because there was only room for one or two), I always found it caricaturish and overdone. Maybe Scorsese believes that one can have a compelling action character whose motivations stem entirely from erectile dysfunction, but, good god. There was also a good deal of narrative space wasted on non-useful things that neither advanced the characters nor the plot significantly. It makes me sad.

Another thing that made me sad was the accent. I'm a masshole from way back, so this is a thing I'm pretty comfortable with. Matt Damon is supposed to be from Boston as well, so it's confusing that his accent in this drops out periodically. Sometimes he does it really well, but then, a sentence later, it's back to flat Hollywood base accent. One guy got off a 'What'a you, retahdid?' which did my heart good, but exception/rule. Everyone else was vaguely passable, but not really all that convincing. Leonardo DiCaprio (whom I generally hate) didn't try very hard at this, or really at anything else. I'm still baffled as to how he gets work, because it doesn't seem to me that he can do much other than behave like a callow, impulsive 20-year-old. This served him decently in this movie, but it's usually not a plus.

I should note that JP unfavorably (but mostly fairly) compared this movie with The Wire, which ran away with most of the things The Departed seemed to be trying to accomplish. This is true, and although The Wire has a running time which rather hugely exceeds a movie length, lessons are still there to be learned.

I think removing a few characters so that the ones that remain could be better fleshed out would have been the better tactic for this movie. I also think I'd like to see the original Hong Kong movie on which this was based; all the hard-liners on imdb found it superior.

Gui ma tian shi (AKA Taoism Drunkard, 1984), Cheung-Yan Yuen. Dec 3, 9pm. View count: One.
Crank 2 (2009), Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor. Dec 5, 8:30pm. View count: One.

These two movies totally go together, in retrospect. Taoism Drunkard is a wacky kung-fu thing with a demon (called "Old Devil" in the subs) trying to... kill... some people? but thwarted by a a drunken monk and a powerful grandmother, both played by the same guy. There's a spherical pac-man-like entity whose job seems to be to detect males and bite their crotches. There's a weird group of donation collectors who keep showing up, and who provide the only instance of Fat Lady Kung Fu I've ever seen.

Whereas Crank 2 is more of a Troma-like production (except with a budget, more action, and arguably more style). The tone is really similar, though, as is the subject matter.
It's fairly charming, really; the attitude seldom dips into anything really unpleasant, and the whole thing has a level of cartoonish naivete to it. I would hazard that even GTA, to which I've seen this compared, is more weightily violent.
It also has John de Lancie (Q!) as a newsguy named Fish, which is a brilliant stupid decision. It set the tone.
And I must congratulate the dudes who wrote up the IMDB goofs page. An excerpt:

"Anachronisms: When Chev Chelios borrows a cell phone from his girlfriend, it appears to be an iPhone 3G, released July 11, 2008. According to the Google Maps used in-film, the events are occurring over a year earlier than that."

The Space Children (1958), Jack Arnold (MST3K version). Nov 26, 6pm. View count: One.
Master Ninja I (AKA The Master, 1984),
Michael Sloan (MST3K version). Nov 27, 3pm. View count: One.
Gui da gui (AKA Spooky Encounters, AKA Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, 1980), Sammo Hung. Nov 27, 7pm. View count: One.

Space Children is sort of goofy, but harmless. The MSTing seemed a bit extraneous in some areas, but then there was rather an abundance of plot holes and "wait, what" sorts of moments. As some stranger on imdb puts it, "The dramatic structure of the movie is weak. It starts well enough, with the arrival at the missile base, the landing of the alien, its discovery by the children and its first communication with them. After that, it just meanders all over the place. There is no steady build up of tension and no real climax. Things happen, but for no particular reason."

Master Ninja I'd never actually seen, so this was a thing I'd needed to do. As is pointed out repeatedly, this is the first of a series of seven movie-length compilations of TV episodes. This leads to weirdness as regards characters who show up, engage with a plot, have a wrap-up, and leave after twenty minutes, never to be seen again in the rest of the movielike work. Fortunately it doesn't really matter. Lee Van Cleef is pretty hilarious as White Guy Ninja, and his apprentice is an 80s golem who likes to throw shuriken. The end.

Spooky Encounters is an excellent picture. Pretty much everything in it is awesome. Lam Ching-Ying even has a cameo as a cop! Full-on comedy Sammo Hung in this one. And truly, it is chock full of spooky encounters. Recommended.

Control (2007), Anton Corbijn. Nov 20, 9:15pm. View count: One.

I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly what was wrong with this movie. My best stab at it is that its british detachment went too far into the "impenetrable" side of things, making everyone's emotions (apart from obvious surface ones) impossible to ascertain. I felt throughout as if I were waiting for people's characters to fill out, but they never really seemed to.

Supposedly this was based on a book by Curtis' wife, which could explain the second-degree opaqueness of it all. It had a distinct outside-looking-in quality, which didn't do much for understanding of the protagonist.

Structurally I suppose I'd say that we didn't get to see enough of the grinding day-to-dayness of things; when we were shown difficult situations they tended to be the first we'd really heard of that, or a light-touch callback to a previous event. Weirdly, the simple trope of showing the protagonist walking around aimlessly, fitting poorly in an uncaring world -- that would have been highly appropriate and would have allowed for some "loneliness" time.

Of course, the soundtrack was wonderful, and Anton Corbijn knows his way around a lighting setup. I think the two things that charmed me the most were the situational soundtrack choices and the grey gobbets of food that people ate towards the end. But I simultaneously approved of and was a little leery of the 'clever' soundtrack moments; it's not up to Wes Anderson territory, but, still, putting "No Love Lost" up against the word "HATE" written across the protagonist's jacket? A little cutesy. (It's also true that that particular sequence struck me as a misstep -- defiant punky clothing graffiti hardly looks like the work of a guy who's totally losing it.)

I think that this movie would have done well to note the maxim about making every shot develop character or advance the action. Or indeed to refine the action and character arcs in advance, before trying to portray them.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Stanley Kubrick. August 19, 7:30pm. View count: Five?
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Edward D. Wood Jr. August 20, 8:30pm. View count: Two.
Kaminey (2009), Vishal Bhardwaj. Sept 13, 3pm. View count: One.


Dr. Strangelove we happened to see at our local theatre, the Rafael. It was hosted by Brad Bird, who showed up and took arbitrary questions from the audience at the end. Todd Alcott happens to be doing a writeup of Dr. Strangelove even now, so although his is patently not the type I'd do, it's probably smarter, and certainly longer (although it is true: the "formal structure" of movies seldom interests me seriously).
It was good to see it again -- I don't think I'd ever seen it on the big screen. It was an impeccable new, clean print, really good-looking. We sat next to an awesome middle-aged lady, who talked with me for the hour or so we sat around before things happened (she told me that there had been a high school theatre production of Dr. Strangelove recently nearby, and that a teenage girl had played the part of Major Kong. I find this excellent).

I think my favorite thing about this movie is the way Kong's plane goes from valiant military fellas doing their duty to valiant military fellas doing their duty to blow up the world -- and they're treated the same way, regardless. Against the odds! Suspense! Just doing their jobs.

One of the things Brad Bird brought up was the broadness of the humor, and the tactic of using humor to put forth very serious ideas. He referred to his time on the Simpsons, and how this had allowed them to get away with much more than a live-action show could have. Now, I hardly think that Kubrick had a problem with getting away with things, but there is purportedly a story wherein he realized that it was potentially a very silly narrative, whereupon he decided to go with it.

Finally: it's a little weird to simultaneously feel sorry and pleased that Peter Sellers declined Slim Pickens' role.


Plan 9 we saw in that Rifftrax broadcast that they had going a few weeks ago. It was colorized, which I hadn't been familiar with beforehand (it didn't do much for the film, really). The Rifftraxing didn't do all that much for it either, but it wasn't bad. Scarily, since the broadcast was from Nashville, they had Lowtax come onstage and do something.


Kaminey I didn't find all that compelling, but "it had its good points," as our friend mentioned afterward. The best of these was when one of the twin-brother leads spun around in the rain with his best buddy, singing "Spiderman! Spiderman!" Except he had a fake speech impediment, so it was more like "Fpiderman!" It was a beautiful moment.
The rest of the movie was about Good Twin and Bad Twin, and the girlfriend of the Good Twin towards whom he was fairly ambivalent. There is an amount of action, and a pretty wacky disco scene. (We actually showed up at the theater wanting to see Daddy Cool (which is taglined "Put the Fun in Funeral" or some such), but we were late and for some reason it wasn't subtitled.)

Moon (2009), Duncan Jones. July 4, 4:45pm. View count: One.
Road House (1989), Rowdy Herrington. July 4, 9pm. View count: One.

Well! This is a ludicrous pair of movies.

Moon was pretty charming, really, and did a great job of making its effects work difficult to notice. I had a problem with the ending, though, which I will discuss ( under a cut due to spoilery. ) Wasn't quite as smart as could have been hoped for, but it wasn't stupid, and I'm glad I saw it.

Road House, surprising no one, was the stupidest thing ever. We watched this in lieu of actual fireworks, and I think it was a good decision.

Patrick Swayze is a big-headed weirdo who is apparently some sort of super-bouncer at some bar, when a dude with two lines shows up and hires him away to be a bouncer at HIS bar, because his bar is needlessly rowdy and he is always "sweeping eyeballs off the floor" at the end of the night. Safety hazard, don'tcha know. So Patrick Swayze shows up, does a lot of pointless things, and somehow the bar gets nicer and nicer. But there is a bad man who owns the town, and he's a dick, and he sort of looks like a cut-rate mixture of Jonathan Pryce and Sam Neill. Patrick Swayze is also a Buddhist, according to the DVD box copy and nothing else, and he shows this by doing tai chi in a field while an old farmer with a beard blushingly wipes sweat off his head. And blah, blah blah.
It's all pretty awful, but if you have the right group of people, it can be respectably hilarious.

Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), Robert Butler. June 6, 8pm. View count: One.

So supposedly this is the sequel to "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes," which I've never seen, possibly because no one disliked me enough as a child to subject me to it. This one's bad enough, although pretty hilarious for several reasons: 1. Cesar Romero; 2. Kurt Russell as an alpha teenager; 3. Lots of terrible live-action Disney "invisibility!" effects.

There is, however, a high percentage of golf in this, and some terrible, pointless car chases.

Arguably the best thing about this movie is the guy who played the hapless redheaded sidekick went on to write the episode of DS9 in this exchange occurs.

The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), Otto Preminger. Apr 28, 2pm. View count: One.
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), Otto Preminger. May 1, 3pm. View count: One.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Otto Preminger. May 1, 8pm. View count: One.

The Man With the Golden Arm is an entertainingly abstracted movie, which seems like an interesting direction to go in given that the book it's adapted from is said to be rather complex and dense. I think it suits the subject matter rather well; the four or five sets, each seemingly visible from all the others, bolster the boxed-in atmosphere. Sinatra does pretty well as a dude from circumstances who is rather excited to have in mind a thing he wants to do for a living, only to have everyone around him practically shove heroin needles at him. (Note: everyone calls him 'Dealer' not because he deals drugs (he would then be called a 'peddler'), but because he deals cards in illegal poker games. It took me a while to figure that one out.) All the rest of the cast does decently as well; I particularly enjoyed the sidekick, who is apparently played by a comedian of the time; he's a guy who's ignored and pushed around by most, and that enables him to mouth off to a small but measurable extent, to keep a small but measurable amount of dignity. Kim Novak is described by someone on IMDB as "plant-like", which I now have to agree with. She's that Ideally Supportive Woman that is often to be found in movies, which makes her fairly dull.
The wrap-up at the end I found something of a cop-out; I've seen earlier movies that managed to lay a pall of pessimism or precariousness over a relatively up ending, but this one did not do this. It was just a happy, convenient ending. Preminger seems to do this a lot. Oh, and finally, there is a smooth-coated terrier of some kind which drinks beer out of an ashtray to please a woman. This will be revisited later.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is about a violent detective who just can't stop beating up bad guys. Occasionally he beats up non-bad guys as well. He also has a highly supportive lady that he likes, although that lady does not have a beer-drinking small dog. A lot of the movie is spent on detectives figuring things out, and trying to find one another in various bars and houses. The ending here is almost entirely a happy cop-out as well; I was rooting for something much more along the lines of "and he took the secret to the grave," but you know me and secrets and graves.

Anatomy of a Murder is apparently an adaptation of a True Story, which was accordingly Ripped From Today's Headlines (where "today" is defined as "sometime in the fifties"). It's in large part a courtroom drama, which is mostly entertaining enough. The real kicker, however, is the sheer number of times that Jimmy Stewart says "panties." It's punishment, but it's the kind of punishment that makes one still kind of want a little mp3 of each instance. I mean, what if I needed it?
Apparently the discussion(s) of rape that happens in the movie was fairly off-putting to at least some people, including Jimmy Stewart's father, who reportedly "was so offended by the film, which he deemed 'a dirty picture,' that he took out an ad in his local newspaper telling people not to see it." It does all seem fairly inappropriate for the fifties, albeit the late fifties, and, as I say, probably Jimmy Stewart's father was just reacting to the horror one cannot escape when Jimmy Stewart says "panties."
The rape victim is the one with the terrier that drinks beer from an ashtray (she, like the woman in Man With the Golden Arm, is utterly charmed by this for some reason), and the dog is even used to point out a stuffy man who does not like dogs. Oh ho ho, only bad men do not like dogs!
I would not exactly recommend this one; it has sort of a sunny tone which does not much befit the subject matter. However, the courtroom scenes are well-handled and don't drag, and you could do worse if you're looking for a movie with law in it for some reason. And Jimmy Stewart saying "panties."