My Favo(u)rite Flavo(u)r Of Cornetto

"We're going to see this through to the bitter end. Or lager end."

There are a select few movies I consider my all-time favorites. The top spot tends to rotate, but there are a handful of movies that are in constant rotation for that top spot. Superman. The Fly (Cronenberg's version). Do The Right Thing. Psycho. The Fisher King. Movies that, for me, are perfect or near-perfect. This is the first time in my life I've found myself adding a movie to that list after living with it for less than a month. That movie has not only shot directly to my all-time favorites list, but may have already become my favorite movie full-stop. That movie is Edgar Wright's masterpiece, The World's End.

As much as I loved the movie, and in particular Simon Pegg's performance in the lead, Pegg's character Gary King scares me a bit. To explain why, a brief autobiographical intrusion: toward the end of my senior year of high school in Baldwin, NY (a town in which I had lived my entire life) my father got a job offer in Florida. My folks put the house on the market, figuring it wouldn't sell until at least summer and then we'd head down to FL. It sold almost immediately, so in March of 1994, with three months to go in my senior year, we moved to another state. After that, I spent a whole lot of time angry (because it's all about me, you understand) and miserable. For the next few years, I was pretty much a Gary King in training. I couldn't let go, I was fairly impossible to be around, and I was thoroughly full of myself. I could so easily have ended up just like Gary that it's a bit terrifying. I almost hate how much I identify with him, but that also helps me to find him endlessly compelling.

I've loved all of Edgar Wright's movies so far, but while I tried to keep my expectations in check for this one it still surprised me just how much I loved it right out of the gate. I've seen the other two "Cornetto" movies several times each, and I'm proud to say I saw Scott Pilgrim 4 times during its theatrical run, a feat for me only equalled by my 4 theatrical screenings of Pulp Fiction. His movies are all so densely layered that I find new things no matter how many times I see them, and though I've only seen The World's End twice now it affected me more profoundly than any movie I can recall. I can't wait to see it again, to dig deeper into it and to poke around the corners. I love so much of what it has to say about nostalgia, about "Starbucking", about putting up fronts, about the things that separate who we are from how we see ourselves.

The great Heath Holland wrote a piece recently on the equally great F This Movie! (fthismovie.net) about a trip he took with his family across Route 66, and so much of what he had to say about "Starbucking" was echoing through my thoughts as I watched The World's End, particularly during my second viewing. All Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers style movies cover the subject to some degree, but it hit me much harder this time, even while working as a very funny aspect of the movie (I've actually taken to thinking of any one of my 30 zillion local Starbucks as "The Old Familiar").

In short (too late, the cast of Clue says in my head), The World's End is that most elusive of creatures, a movie that works as a comedy, as a genre piece, and as a character study that truly has things to say. I don't know that I've ever fallen quite this hard for a movie all at once, and perhaps future viewings may temper that a bit, but right now I'm high on a movie that touched me, and that's my favorite feeling in the world. Thank you, Edgar, and thank you, The Five Musketeers.

Holding It Between My Knees

You know how when people talk about Psycho, all they ever seem to focus on or even remember is the shower scene? Nothing against that scene, it's still undeniably amazing, but the movie has so much more to offer than just a single memorable set piece.

That being said, I'm totally guilty of the same thing regarding Five Easy Pieces. I've seen it a few times before but all that really stuck with me were the infamous diner scene ("I want you to hold it between your knees") and Nicholson playing the piano on the back of the truck. Watching it again last night, it was suddenly a whole new movie. Maybe it's just because I'm older and see an unnerving similarity between the way Nicholson's character behaves to the way I've behaved at certain points in my life. I'm significantly less than proud of that, but it's true, and the movie hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It made me sad, but it also made me feel less alone. It was made five years before I was born but still spoke to me as if it was made expressly for me, and any movie that can affect me so powerfully stuns me and lingers in my mind for days afterward.

The other day on Twitter, a guy I follow named Sid put out a series of tweets (since deleted, unfortunately) that talked about how social media has made him feel lonelier, it's made true social interaction more difficult, and he was having a rough moment where he was feeling alone and angry. Reading what he posted helped me feel less alone, because I was feeling very much the same way for a time. His tweets really helped me to gain perspective and feel less socially anxious, and I didn't know why at the time, but they also made me want to watch Five Easy Pieces. When we lost Karen Black yesterday, I decided to revisit Five, and Sid's tweets popped right back in my head. Obviously the movie doesn't directly address social media because it didn't exist at the time, but so much of what it has to say about the way we relate to other people fit with what Sid was talking about. In truth, I don't know if watching it made me feel better or worse, but it sure as hell made me feel and made me think and sometimes that's all we need to start healing. That's part of why I love movies to begin with, they can affect us in the most unexpected ways, and Five Easy Pieces has left me reconsidering the way I've treated certain people in my life and the way I've handled certain situations in my life, and it'll never just be "that movie with the diner scene" again.

Thanks for your help, Sid, even if you didn't know you were helping. I'll totally split the royalties from this blog post with you. What's 50% of 0?

Night Terrors

No idea where the paragraph breaks went in my last post, I swear they were there when I wrote it. In case they disappear from this one after posting, I assure you they're here as I write this one, too!

I'm writing this around 2am with most of the lights in my house on. The lights are staying on, possibly forever. I'm going to forward my electric bill to Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill, because it's their fault I'm not ready to face whatever might be waiting in the dark.

Sinister (directed by Derrickson, co-written by Derrickson & Cargill) is the story of a true-crime author who moves his family to a house with an unsavory past. It's not a haunted house movie, not exactly, nor is it a found footage movie (thank God) but it wisely balances the strongest elements of both. Sinister is the best kind of scary, it's that gets-under-your-skin kind of scary, and it never gets overly graphic or fetishistic in its depiction of violence.

I won't say too much about the plot, only that it involves the aforementioned true-crime author (Ethan Hawke) researching a grisly series of murders with a possibly supernatural bent. There are real surprises in store, and the movie is expertly paced, allowing the tension to ratchet up without sacrificing characterization to spook-house jump-scares. There are several solid jump-scares, but the movie is more interested in doling out the kind of fear that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

Sinister is one of the strongest horror movies of the past few years. Smart and scary are too often seen as mutually exclusive, it's great to see a movie that is both of those things. It's well worth seeking out...just make sure you can afford having to keep all your lights on for quite some time.

Spike, Spelunkers and Serpentine

I have, in the past, been a decent human being. I have tried not to be a charlatan, a scalawag, or an outright crumb-bum. That ends today, because I am about to commit an act of straight-up thievery.  Stewart Smith is the entertainment editor for a Texas paper (you can find his columns and reviews and such at www.tylerpaper.com), and recently he's begun a project that intrigues me. He's writing a very informative and entertaining blog called The Shelf (http://subspace.tumblr.com) in which he's writing about every single movie in his 500+ DVD collection, and he's doing so in alphabetical order. I don't have the patience for alphabetical order (I like the element of surprise), so while thieving his idea (told you!) I've numbered every title in my so-far 1766-movie collection, and plugged those numbers into a random number generator app on my phone. Like Stewart's "Shelf", these will be written pretty much however I feel like it. Some movies will inspire essays, others possibly only a single word. That being said, I'm a talkative fellow so let's get started! Over the past week I've watched the first three movies that came up. They were:  #7. 25th Hour Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing is one of my all-time favorite movies, a blistering portrait of New York that in over 25 years hasn't lost any of its power. It's a true masterpiece, and for quite some time, it also felt like a promise left unfulfilled. I like Spike Lee a great deal, and I've seen everything he's done. While there's much that's good and even great in his filmography, there was nothing as bold, original, and purely effective as Do The Right Thing. After missteps like Girl 6 and She Hate Me, I was afraid that maybe his heart just wasn't in it anymore. I needn't have worried, because 25th Hour finds a masterful filmmaker back at the top of his game.  The movie, released in 2002, is haunted by the specter of 9/11. It opens on footage of Ground Zero, accompanied by Terence Blanchard's mournful score. While the film isn't about 9/11 directly, it doesn't shy away from showing NYC as it was in the aftermath, nor does it shy away from the fear and rage that many New Yorkers were feeling at the time. Edward Norton is Monty Brogan, a low-level drug dealer who is one day away from beginning a seven-year prison sentence. He spends his final night of freedom with his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), his friends (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) and his father (Brian Cox). Every performance is outstanding, and Norton is unforgettable in the lead. The movie is melancholy through and through, but it never feels oppressive. The most famous scene (and rightly so) features Norton ranting into a bathroom mirror, his profane tirade leaving no ethnic stone unturned. It's reminiscent of a similar scene in Do The Right Thing, but it is entirely its own thing and works beautifully on several levels.  #396. The Descent Part 2 I hadn't seen this one before, and was pleasantly surprised. At first I was torn. One of the greatest strengths of the first movie was its all-female cast, and this movie doesn't have that. In exchange, it does offer Gavan O'Herlihy, a favorite character actor of mine since his days as a threequel superstar (he was the reverse-mohawked gang leader in Death Wish 3 and a drunken bully in Superman III...he's also the son of Dan O'Herlihy, the man who gave us Halloween III's Conal Cochran, proving superior threequelicity is in the genes).  The Descent was a smart, scary monster mash and while the sequel takes a bit of time to get going, once it does it proves itself a worthy follow up. Again, there are caves, there are creatures, and there's a borderline cartoonish amount of gore, but there are also solid scares and some real tension. There are moments that feel like a retread of the first, but not as many as you'd expect in a direct-to-video sequel (though there's an annoyingly cash-grabby setup for a third movie that leaves a bit of a bad taste after an otherwise decent flick). All things considered, it's a surprisingly fresh & scary creature feature. #754. The In-Laws I love this movie. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin play off of each other effortlessly, and no matter how many times I see it, it's always laugh-out-loud funny.  If you've seen the ill-advised, painfully unfunny remake with Michael Douglas & Albert Brooks (seriously, what the hell drew Brooks to such a boring and bland movie?) please don't let it dissuade you from giving the original a try. It's manic without being unbearable, and unabashedly, gleefully silly. It's also exactly what I needed after the downbeat double-bill that preceded it. I'm looking forward to whatever this movie roulette system brings next...only 1763 to go!

Ch-ch-ch-changes and Nightmares

So I've decided to do things a little differently. Rather than keep with formal reviews, I'm gonna try to make things a little chattier around here, though the focus is still completely on movies. 

I've found that I've watched a whole lotta movies lately that I just didn't have a tremendous amount to say about. I mean, why put more work into a review of Hellraiser: Revalations than anybody put into the execrable script? That being said, I'm still watching plenty of movies, and I'd like this to be a place to talk about them. 

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street another go. I saw it theatrically at the midnight show the night before it opened, and again on bluray at a Halloween party later that year. This time I watched it with "Maniacal Movie Mode" engaged, a bluray feature that allows access to deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind the scenes footage while you watch the movie.

Didn't help.

Full disclosure, I think Wes Craven's original A Nightmare On Elm Street is fantastic. It's a terrifying concept (your dreams can, and probably will, kill you...don't fall asleep!) and while the movie is not without its flaws, it's a scary, smart, engaging story.

The remake, on the other hand (claw?), is a boring, ugly, lifeless exercise in loud jump-scares that create neither fear nor interest. Jackie Earle Haley is serviceable as crispy-skinned murder enthusiast Freddy Krueger, but he brings very little of the playful deviltry that Robert Englund originally brought to the role. I'm certainly not against the recasting of Freddy (Englund himself has gone on record several times saying that he's been Freddy long enough), but Haley is given virtually no character to play. It also doesn't help that the CGI-assisted make-up makes him look like nothing so much as a microwaved hamster in a hat.

There is one genuinely chilling moment in which Freddy is cackling over a victim and informing him that it takes the brain a few minutes to die after the body does, so "we got six more minutes to play". It's a great bit, but unfortunately it's surrounded by the rest of this godawful misfire.

They cover the beats of the original film, but they do so without anything organic to the story driving those beats. It's a remake that knows the words but not the music (and frankly it's somewhat fuzzy on the words).

Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara is bland, forgettable, and blandly forgettable as Nancy, a character who shares a first name and absolutely nothing else with the feisty heroine of the original film. Here, Nancy is our protagonist because....uh...well, we need a Nancy I guess. So here's a Nancy. 

The other characters, such as they are, are a band of interchangeable mopey kids who may or may not have a connection to a deceased creepy dude who graduated first in his class in dream-murdering. It's very briefly introduced that the kids may have caused all this with a big fat lie, but what might have at least been an interesting wrinkle is dropped as fast as this movie will drop out of your memory banks.

One last thing...where the fuck are all the parents? There are a few great character actors completely wasted in thankless authority figure roles (Clancy Brown & Connie Britton most egregiously), but there isn't a single character in this movie with more than one parent at most. Is this a comment on the prevalence of single parent households in modern suburbia, or is it a lazy script that decided characters only need to exist to spout expository dialog and nothing else? The answer is simple: I don't care because this movie is the WORST.

"I know the law. The law doesn't know the streets."

Prince Of The City (1981)
****
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Lindsay Crouse, James Tolkan
MPAA: R

Sidney Lumet has made some of my all-time favorite movies (12 Angry Men and Deathtrap being particular standouts), and I was still stunned by how gripping and powerful this sprawling tale of police corruption was.

Treat Williams is Danny Ciello, a cop who, despite not being entirely on the side of the angels himself, is lured into a sting operation to curtail police corruption. He's in virtually every scene of a 167-minute movie featuring over 125 speaking roles, and he OWNS it. From his brash cockiness as the story unfolds to his rage and disillusionment as the operation drags on, he is mesmerizing, aided by a who's-who of versatile New York character actors. 

This is a procedural in the truest sense. There aren't any shootouts or explosions, no over-the-top movie moments that remind you that oh yeah, you're watching a movie. Despite all the recognizable faces in the cast (mostly unknowns at the time, including Williams) the movie feels real, like if you touched the screen your hand would come back covered in authentic NYC grime.

Speaking of NYC, Lumet and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (which I just spelled from memory, go me!) create a world that feels lived-in and foreboding, while also managing some truly beautiful shots of the city and its surrounding boroughs. The movie is hardly a travelogue, but it presents a New York now lost to gentrification, a place that is at times dangerous, alluring, and not just a little bit seedy. 

If you haven't seen it, I couldn't give you a higher recommendation. It's a frank, sometimes brutal meditation on the nature of honesty that is thoroughly engaging all the way through to the bitter final line. It's also a master class in wringing tension out of scenes that show nothing but people talking. Don't be daunted by the epic length...epics don't get more intimate than this.

"The house always wins."

Hostel: Part III (2011)
**1/2
Dir: Scott Spiegel
Starring: Kip Pardue, Brian Hallisay, John Hensley
MPAA: Unrated

Great opening scene. I don't want to spoil anything, but the beginning of this latest chapter in the gruesome horror series does a pretty fantastic job of subverting your expectations while still staying true to the other movies. The whole movie actually has a few tricks up its sleeve that ultimately make it more satisfying than part 2, but it's still not a particularly great movie.

The action has moved from the Eastern Bloc to American soil, specifically Las Vegas, as a group of somewhat douchey young men get together for a bachelor party and run into the Elite Hunting Club, now using their Vegas environs to place bets on the victims (what they may say to beg for their lives, how long they may survive, etc.). It's novel, but by bringing the movie to the US it loses the "stranger in a strange land" sense of alienation that drove the other two movies.

Also, being the first in the series to go direct to DVD, the flick looks cheap. Of course that's to be expected, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a pilot for Hostel: The Series, which, for the record, is a show I would watch the ever lovin' shit out of. 

This is Spiegel's second movie as director, and his first in over 10 years. The other was From Dusk Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, another above-average DTV sequel. He still has a habit of employing distractingly showy POV shots, but he's much less reliant on them than he was in Dusk.

Budget limitations and odd directorial choices aside, this is a solid little movie. It's much tamer than the other two despite the meaningless "unrated" tag (since it was never theatrically released there was never a rated cut) but the kills are varied enough that it doesn't feel like a retread of things we've seen before. There are some truly clever twists that also keep things fresh, and all things considered it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you liked the others in the series.