Films Actually <<2009-05-05 / 5:22 p.m.>>
Films that I love but will never admit openly (or maybe I will and I'm just exaggerating in order to make a point):
Love Actually
I will never fess-up and admit that I like romance movies, because romance is lame and it takes attention away from explosions and certain death (and explosions and certain death are already pretty sexual to begin with... so, who needs love to mess that up?)
Well, apparently everyone in Love Actually. They're all looking for love, finding it, not finding it, etc... Bill Nighy is undeniably my favorite character of the bunch: he finds non-sexual love with his best friend and manager on Christmas. That is super sweet. Heck, even if the filmmakers had made his character homosexual to market the film as more offbeat, he would still have been a cool ass son of a bitch.
My Sister Eileen (1955 version)
I don't think Greenwich Village ever looked so... white. I also don't believe people spontaneously break into song. So we can agree that this is indeed a Hollywood musical from the mid 20th century. Moreover, only in a musical would the charge of 'inciting a riot' include running a conga line with the entire Brazilian Navy through a derelict basement apartment. Why, oh, why do I love the musical madness of the 50's? What can I say - I'm a sucker for the triple threat performers of the day!
Question: is the Brazilian Navy really that white? I recall a Brazilian man I once dated and he was exceptionally dark. I'm just wondering if those men ever get any sun when they're out at sea.
To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar
I'm going to reveal a not-so-secret secret to you: I've always fancied men in drag. From the time I was a pre-teen watching David Bowie prance around in tights and lip-gloss as Jareth the Goblin King, to Marilyn Manson's statuesque fa�ade - wearing a red sequence jumpsuit in the Dope Show video. I'm just screwed in and up that way. It's God's fault.
Patrick Swayze... Gosh, now I�m depressed. You and I alike only watch 'The Beast' because it's the slowest snuff film in the history of snuff. The man is going out and going out running. Brave man.
Looking back on his filmography, he hasn't really done a whole lot. A film here and there... And of course the one where he and Wesley Snipes are dolled up like two of the ugliest members of the gentler sex (John Leguizamo is 'Crying Game' beautiful though, n'est-ce pas?) In spite of his looks, Swayze was quite spectacular in his performance. Sure, I don't believe that a real queen would bail on a fight with John law, but this is schmaltzy, feel-good fiction at its best. And he brings it. In my heart, Swayze will be one smooth motherfucker 'till the end, dress and all.
Hot Shots! Part Deux
The film claims that the main hero shoots more people in one scene than all other action movie before it do in their entirety. He's buff, has a bitchin' Swiss army knife and is out for Saddam Hussein's blood, or something like that. He's Topper Harley... but you didn't need the reminder, right?
In this film, he's done with frying steak and eggs on his girlfriend stomach; now he's a monastery handyman / Muay Thai boxer (and no, I had to look that detail up.) Hilarious upon hilariousness reveals a mission to rescue a recue party, a lightsaber fight between the Iraqi and American presidents, and a half-naked Valeria Golino. Yes, clearly spoof perfection.
The Three Stooges Meet Hercules
I am not embarrassed about my love of Stooges. Sort of. Let's say I'm more embarrassed about the fact that I've spent over $300 dollars on Batman comics in the past 2 months, including shipping and handling to South Korea.
So, yes, the boys are getting old by this time (Curly-Joe DeRita substituting for Curly-Joe Howard and Shemp Howard following their deaths) and the boys are not afraid to show it: gone are the skirt-chasing oddballs of the 1930's; these days, they're all talk... and a lot of heart. They spend the entire movie helping a young man get his dream girl while fighting a Cyclopes, an evil emperor and the great Hercules.
Damn... I'm still bummed about Patrick Swayze. The Stooges' deaths make me even more so. This is just not my day.
Body of Evidence
Madonna, Madonna, Madonna , Madonna... Madonna. This is a horrible film. After viewing this movie (almost 6 year ago), I still can't picture William Defoe as Jesus without also picturing him fucking on the hood of a car strewed with broken light bulbs. The historical inaccuracies of my sexual daydreams are sickening!
If you've watched it (and God knows you have, but won't admit it), you know that the sex and the drama are preposterous: she burns his dick (?) with hot wax! Who does that?! Madonna does that! And they made a film with Madonna as a psychosexual fiend who gets her kicks having rough sex with rich old men. Somewhere, somehow that seemed like a good idea down in marketing.
All of a sudden I'm thinking about Bob Crane. The circumstances surrounding his death is one of the few genuinely vague references that I already knew about before Seth McFarlane ever raised it in 'Family Guy.' Recall Stewie's one-liner: "Oatmeal? Spittle? Semen? This must be where Wilford Brimley was strangled by Bob Crane" (Wilford Brimley did some Quaker Oats commercials a while back, but I still think of him as the old guy from 'Cocoon'). From then on, I always assumed that Bob Crane was in to sadistic sex with old men. Was he? Then he's kind of like Madonna in this movie, only his acting career isn't an out-and-out joke.
Did I mention that I like this film?
And now for something completely different...
How DOES one suck a fuck?
Donnie Darko... The name invokes images of 1980's nostalgia, screwy tangent universe principles and the monotonal musings of the world's creepiest 9 foot rabbit. Oh, and a very young Seth Rogen as a slack-jawed school bully (look it up, it's him!)
Jump seven years into the future and you have S. Darko, a sequel. I think. The 'S' stands for Samantha. Samantha Darko, 'memba her? She was the ten year old jail-bait 'n Star Search hopeful sister of Donnie.
The opening titles play with an orchestral version of 'The Killing Moon' (and if it's not, it's something awfully close). Cheesy. The cinematography is eerily similar as well (did somebody say house party with twisting upside-down camera angles, coupled with time-lapsed/slow-mo speed tracking shots to dreamy new wave music?)
The original writer/director Richard Kelly made an explicit statement saying that he had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the movie, for the record. Yeah, I'd disown this sequel too if my name was connected to it through the superior original film.
(Oops, did I just get ahead of myself there?)
This movie blows, and it's not just the cringe-worthy chit-chat ("What do you think God's farts taste like?"); it's the perpetual plucking of inane fragments from its predecessor. Scratch that. I get a sick taste in my mouth calling this film a 'Donnie Darko' successor. It has none of the substance found in the previously aforesaid film. It's a bastard child claiming royalty and land from the King.
First, 'S. Darko' is imitative somewhat like a brain-damaged chimp: from the red sports car killing a girl, to the man named Frank, to the dude in the demonic bunny mask (yes, they ripped that off too). A jumble of disjointed allusions to a former film, a sequel does not make.
Second point, the acting and lack thereof.
Third, the morsels taken from 'Donnie Darko' are used so insignificantly, it's almost embarrassing that they're even present in this movie: you mean Roberta Sparrow had a Gulf War vet grandson who just happened to be in the same nowhere town as Samantha on the eve of the forming of another tangent Universe that threatens humanity? Does it even matter that he's related to the author of The Philosophy of Time Travel? You already know the answer; I began this section with that very point.
I want to string up the people who wrote this insulting tripe, who received money to knock together this nonsense and waste my time. If I wasn�t still sore about Patrick Swayze's eminent death, I'd probably be full of the Brooklyn variety of rage...
Or just the regular kind.
~ Love,
Frenzy