The Omen
J.G. and I went to see this on opening night with all the other obnoxious kids that thought it would be cool to see it on 6/6/06. In fact, that seems to be the only day people saw it, considering it the broke box office record for a Tuesday opening but came in 4th for the following weekend. There were these teenagers in the row in front of us that were so freaked out by the movie, the whole time I kept whispering to J.G. that I wanted to sneak up behind them, lean over them and yell BOO, I swear if I did they would've run right out of the theater. The movie itself was alright, pretty good actually. I'd never seen the original, but J.G. had and said it was pretty faithful, and to me it even retained the vibe of 70's horror movies like The Shining and The Exorcist, which I love, all those long quiet scenes full of suspense. The spooky vibe was helped by all the creepy-looking old people they cast, too. Especially Mia Farrow. Kobayashi was awesome too. When he was trying to tell the main character that his son was Satan, I kept waiting for him to say Damien was really Keyser Soze. I don't know if Damien was cast well, though, there are a lot of little children that can look both convincingly innocent while also sometimes otherworldly and evil, but he wasn't one of them. Most of the time when he was onscreen, the audience was kind of laughing at him. Julia Stiles didn't annoy me as much as she usually does, but I'd never seen Liev Schreiber in anything before, and for the whole first half of the movie I couldn't stop staring at his weirdly shaped nose.

Labels: Movie Diary

1. X-Men: The Last Stand
I thought X2 was better than the first one, and I always kinda figured, out of all the superhero franchises, X-Men was the one that had so many characters and potential storylines that I'd actually want to see sequel after sequel, so it was kind of dismaying to hear early reports over the past year about this one killing off several characters and seeming to wrap up the end of the trilogy. I managed to stay away from full-on spoilers enough that I was genuinely shocked by one particular death, and not in a good way. In fact, I was kinda pissed.

The movie itself was alright, less bland than the first one, but kind of punishingly dark and violent at points like War Of The Worlds was, where at some point you kind of feel beaten down by all the noise and explosions and emotionally wrenching plot twists. It also felt kinda disjointed sometimes, especially with Ben Foster's Angel character, who was hyped up as the big new character in this movie, but ended up having only a handful of scenes that were mostly backstory adding up to not much in the end. And a lot of characters having limited screen time to make room for boring ass Storm was a lame trade-off. I cracked up every time Kelsey Grammer was onscreen as Beast, though. That shit was inspired. I was kind of surprised by the Juggernaut quoting a web meme, Snakes On A Plane-style, although it wasn't that funny.

2. The Girl in the Café
Pretty good HBO original movie that I caught on TV recently. A lot of the basics of the plot screamed Lost In Translation knockoff (older man and younger woman who barely know each other have weird semi-romantic relationship over the course of a few days in a hotel in a foreign land), but it had a little more going on with the political subtext of taking place during the G8 conference. Still, it felt a little thin and contrived, and got by mostly on the talent of the two leads. Bill Nighy is great, although I don't know if I can watch him oversell a meek character without being reminded of his perfect turn as Slartibartfast. Kelly Macdonald's accent is just adorable, too.

3. Mad City
I thought I had seen or at least seen trailers for every mid-late 90's Travolta flick from the post-Pulp Fiction avalanche, but somehow I don't remember even hearing of this one at all before catching it on TV recently. It was a little overwrought in making its points about media manipulation, but it was still pretty good, particularly for Dustin Hoffman's character. I think the weirdest thing that I remember about it, though, is that John Landis had a small role for no apparent reason, and had no other involvement in the film.

Labels: Movie Diary, movies

1. Ice Age: The Meltdown
Last week I tried to go to an advance screening for some movie called Hoot for the City Paper, but it was so advanced that the theater didn't have a reel of it and were presenting it via sattelite, and had a bunch of technical problems. They started the movie 45 minutes late and even then said you might not be able to see the ending, so I said screw it and decided to catch a later screening. But the theater felt bad and was throwing free tickets at people to make them feel better. So the next night, I was able to take J.G. to this for free, so it wasn't a total waste. The first Ice Age is easily my favorite non-Pixar digitally animated feature, so I was kinda looking forward to this. The Wile E. Coyote-style extreme slapstick of the scenes with Scrat are still by far the funniest parts, and sometimes the actual plot with the main characters dragged a little, but it was still almost as good as the original. I wouldn't mind seeing more sequels.

2. The Gong Show Movie
I was somewhat shocked to learn that a full 22 years before Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, there was already a movie about Chuck Barris that blurred the line between fact and fiction. In fact this might be the most bizarre idea for a movie adapted from a TV show ever, with Barris basically directing himself playing himself as the put-upon host who has to deal with people with crazy talents coming up to him all the time on the street trying to get on the Gong Show, with a lot of odd dramatic interludes although basically no plot. And a young Taylor Negron in a small, uncredited role. If nothing else, watching this movie affirmed for me that comparisons of the American Idol auditions to the Gong Show are perfectly apt.

3. Dig!
Man, this was hard to watch, partly because I identify with the inevitable failure of shitty rock bands far too much. Plus I don't like the music by either of the subjects of the movie, save for maybe the Veronica Mars theme song. It really is a pretty amazing document, though, simply because, in most rockumentaries and Behind The Music type things, there's not much actual footage of the wildest stories, but for these bands, there seemed to be a camera around for everything crazy that ever happened to them. This guy may have replaced Bam Margera as the single most annoying despicable person I've ever seen, the same kind of infuriating inability to take anything seriously and questionable facial hair, along with being one of those guys who's in a band but only ever plays tambourines and maracas and shit like that. Just watching that guy for a couple hours was exasperating, I can't imagine travelling across the country in a van with him.

4. Neighbors
Neighbors has the distinction of being the last, and perhaps least seen film in John Belushi's short career. It's also one of those movies where the 2 lead actors, Belush and Dan Aykroyd, seem to be in roles that could have just as easily been reversed, and according to the IMDb page, they actually were originally set to play the opposite roles, but then switched at the last minute. Aykroyd plays the kind of wild, unpredictable character that Belushi was best known for, and Belushi plays a straight man not unlike the ones played by Aykroyd in later films like the Great Outdoors. But Aykroyd also often did wacky, so his role isn't much of a stretch. But it is kind of odd to see Belushi as a mild-mannered suburbanite with graying temples, playing an age that, at 32, he wouldn't live to experience. He does let loose a little toward the end of the movie, though. It's one of those farcical comedies where certain characters don't seem to operate by any logic at all, to the point that by the end, even the straight man seems to be operating by no rationality, and at that point, you don't care about the plot at all. Which might be excusable were it funnier.

5. The Family Stone
I took my lady to see this and then we went to Red Lobster, a while back, while this was still in theaters but had already been out for a while. It was a little better than I expected, made good use of a big ensemble. Speaking of reversed comedic roles, Luke Wilson is good at being the straight man, but it was refreshing to see him actually be the funny guy for once, and he's good at that too. At some points the tone of the comedy became kind of cruel and shrill, with characters behaving unbelievably and the story coming to a predictable and unlikely resolution, but still, not bad. I'll probably watch it again in a year or two when it's on cable.

6. White Noise
Man, what the fuck happened to Michael Keaton? There are so many "gracefully aging" actors of his generation that still headline a new movie every couple months that I'd gladly trade in for Keaton to have a decent career. This movie probably could've done better with a good trailer, I remember it giving me no motivation to want to see the movie, but having watched it on cable, they totally could've cut together a spooky and intriguing trailer that would've made people want to see it as much as The Ring. It wasn't very good, but I did get good and creeped out watching it, partly because it's about the dead speaking through electrical signals, and my cable was acting up and making all sorts of glitches and jumps on the screen that enhanced the creepiness of it.

7. Cellular
Another one I found myself on the couch wasting an afternoon on, but it definitely surpassed my humble expectations, which were that the movie had nothing to offer beyond the premise established by the trailer. It was pretty fun, though, good plot twists and more cell-related humor than one could ask for.

8. The Apartment
A black-and-white classic that won a ton of Oscars after it was released in 1960, I'd heard good things about this for a long time and finally caught it on TV. Movies this good always make me yearn for a time from before I was born. It's a comedy, but one that plays out very carefully, revealing plot twists so subtly you never see them coming. It's weird to watch something from so long ago that Shirley Maclaine is actually kind of hot, though.

Labels: comedy, Movie Diary, movies

1. Tristan & Isolde
J.G. and I saw this the other night because it's one of her favorite stories/myths and she was curious to see how a film adaptation would come out, although she found the "the original Romeo & Juliet" tagline pretty distasteful. Although there are few things I'm more wary of than the post-Gladiator new school of historical costume epics, I found it relatively painless, although not great. Apparently they changed a fair amount of the specifics of the original story and removed a lot of magic and mysticism from it. James Franco is still on the 8-year streak of rebellious brooding that began with Freaks & Geeks, although his performance was actually pretty strong, and the rest of the cast was decent, Rufus Sewell being a standout.

2. I Heart Huckabees
Maybe it was because I watched this really late at night while grappling with insomnia, but this was kind of a listless, unpleasant viewing experience. It definitely seemed like he was going for something kind of unique and with more depth than the average 'quirky' 00's comedy, but the fact that almost everything about it, from Jason Schwartzman down to the Jon Brion score, carried the stench of that trend made it hard to seperate from all the other movies of the past few years that it harbors obvious comparisons to. Plus, almost everyone in the cast aside from Wahlberg was tremendously annoying. I might give it another chance sometime, but I don't know if mileage will vary.

3. Jersey Girl
Saw this on cable recently, and I have to say, despite the Bennifer and poor box office and negative reviews and being disowned by even View Askew nerds, it was actually alright! If Kevin Smith's goal was to make something as un-Kevin Smith-y as possible, he did a pretty decent job, even if occasional reminders kept popping up, like the bartender from Dogma making a joke about crotch rot. Even George Carlin had a role that required him to do something other than mug and raise his eyebrows, which was a little refreshing. And there were some parts that were genuinely funny and surprising, like the Will Smith cameo, which was kind of subversive and clever in a way that Huckabees only wishes the Shania Twain bit was.

Labels: comedy, Movie Diary, movies

1. King Kong
I never had much interest in the King Kong story, but considering how well Peter Jackson executed the Lord Of The Rings movies, I was looking forward to seeing what he did with this. The end result was overwhelming but not entirely in a good way. I liked the long first half of character development, and the cast, especially Jack Black, definitely rose to the occasion, but once the action got going, I wasn't entirely on board. There were definitely some amazing sequences, but some of the scenes with the dinosaurs and giant insects were just too long and eventually became overkill (something that always bothered me: if there's an island full of dinosaurs and all kinds of giant creatures, why would the movie be ostensibly just about the giant ape?). For a while the movie became kind of a house of horrors that was both impressive and a little greuling to watch in the same way that War Of The Worlds was.

Also, Peter Jackson has a couple habits that seem to be holdovers from his low budget gore movie days that keep plaguing this and LOTR, specifically the way he switches to a lower rate of frames per second so things move kind of slow and choppy every time there's some dramatic or pivotal scene. I swear he does it 20 times in the first half of King Kong and it gets so annoying. That said, there are some pretty spectacular sequences. And I have to give J.G. credit for noting the little in-joke reference to Dead-Alive (a crate in the boat labelled "Sumatran Rat Monkey").

2. The Producers
Covered on Powet Movies.

3. The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
We were taken to a dreamworld of magic. Never read the books but enjoyed this, particularly for Tilda Swinton, who's really good at playing the same kind of evil/ethereal being as she did in the underrated Constantine.

4. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
We saw this in the theater when it first came out a couple months ago but I don't think I ever wrote about it. I was always a fan of the earlier shorts, though, and they did a good job of expanding out into a longer and more complex storyline and making use of a bigger budget. My favorite might remain The Wrong Trousers, but they made the jump to theatrical features really well.

Labels: comedy, links, Movie Diary, movies

1. Sign O' The Times
Considering that this is a concert film version of one of Prince's best and most canonized albums, it's surprising how little I've ever heard about it, even in Matos's SOTT book it gets just a passing mention. And I mean, it's not bad, if you can handle the hilariously pretentious dramatic vignettes that occasionally pop up between songs, although all in all it does kind of take away from the odd magic of the album itself. There are a few songs that the live renditions drop the ball on (the title track comes to mind), but there's also an amazing "If I Was Your Girlfriend", and performances that made me like songs I always kind of disliked or ignored like "Forever In My Life" and "Play In The Sunshine". And the sheer variety of different treatments of the songs highlights what I love about Sign O' The Times to begin with: the multitudes it contains.

2. Walk The Line
Covered on Powet Movies.

3. Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story
Holding the dubious distinction of being one of the most memorable ripped-from-the-headlines made-for-TV movies of all time, when this came on the Encore channel, I just had to watch it. And it was definitely worth it, from the laughably sympathetic rendering of Joey Buttafuoco, to Alyssa Milano's insane sweatpants cameltoe, to the surprisingly grisly depiction of Mary Jo's bloody head soaking the hospital bed pillow.

Labels: Movie Diary, movies, Prince

1. Finder's Fee
At first I clicked over to this when it came on TV because it's written and directed by Survivor/Rock & Roll Jeopardy host Jeff motherfucking Probst, and was kind of expecting it to be terrible, and visually it was pretty lousy, looked like a Lifetime movie or something. But it actually turned out to be pretty good. Kinda reminded me of Suicide Kings in some spots (buncha young guys trying to corner and get something out of old guy, twists ensue), but sharper dialogue and a little more character development. Includes Matthew Lillard being annoying, James Earl Jones being stoic, Robert Forster being grizzled and Ryan Reynolds not being Van Wilder.

2. Batman Begins
Saw this when we went to Delaware to visit my mom, for $2.50 a pop at the 2nd run theatre that used to be the first run theatre back when I lived there. Heard good things but was still kinda surprised at how good it was. I'm a fan of the 90's animated series and the Burton/Keaton flicks, and this was pretty consistent with the dark tone of those while still packing some new tricks. Christian Bale won me over despite initial skepticism, Michael Caine was good, Katie Cruise's character was surprisingly more than just an empty romantic foil, even if she wasn't up to playing it to its full potential.

Labels: Movie Diary, movies

The Island
This was J.G.'s choice, and when the credits rolled, she turned to me and apologized. I didn't think it was that bad, though! I didn't go in expecting much but they got a lot of mileage out of a not great premise. A lot of bad, unintentionally funny dialogue, but also some genuinely funny moments, like when they learned how to say "dude". It kinda reminded me a lot of old school dystopian sci fi flicks like Soylent Green more than anything recent. And it was clever how they managed to work Scarlett Johansson's real life Calvin Klein ad into the movie.

Labels: Movie Diary, movies

1) War Of The Worlds
Really this was just worst case scenario porn, wasn't it? The kind of thing that I'd be bored by if I waited to see it on DVD, but in the theater with the big sound system and everything the really cool scary scenes actually make my jaw drop. Still kind of unsatisfactory, though, just because it didn't feel like there was any connection between the 28 different ways the aliens would kill people other than that they all looked weird and scary, and their downfall, which of course was part of the original H.G. Wells story, but still felt rushed and unsatisfactory.

2) Sabretooth
J.G. likes to watch these terrible low budget made for TV flicks on the Sci Fi Channel, and I have to say, this one was pretty entertaining. The computer animated sabretooth tigers would've been kind of impressive in a video game but in any kind of live action movie it just looks fake as hell. And it decapitates a bunch of people and there's a lot of needlessly complicated plot lines and character interactions, and Gimli from LOTR/Professor Maximilian Arturo from Sliders was there too! The plot about reanimating an extinct species that kills a bunch of people was ripped off pretty hardcore from Jurassic Park, but not nearly as much as the movie that came on after it, Raptor Island, which we didn't stay up to watch all of because it was getting late. But Lorenzo Lamas was in that one! And Raptor Island 2: Raptor Planet is coming soon!

Labels: Movie Diary, movies

1) Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
My brother already saw a midnight screening on Wednesday before flying out this weekend, but he's the kind of geek who's gonna see it multiple times, so I went with him for his 2nd and my first viewing last night. I'm not a huge SW fan but I figure if I'm gonna see it eventually I should see it in a theater. Of course, we got there during trailers and had to sit in the 2nd row staring straight up at the screen right in front of our faces, but it was still cool. I was satisfied with all the light saber battles and General Grevious was pretty cool and McGregor definitely stepped his game up and became a focal point. It occurred to me that SW/Lucas has a weird fixation with severed limbs, especially hands. And even with the PG-13 rating there was still a strange lack of blood spurting. Go fig. The best part of my long, boring graduation ceremony was that at the very end as everyone filed out, the orchestra started playing the Darth Vader theme music, which was pretty cool to hear while I was walking around dressed in a long black robe.

2) End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
On Friday I was about to go to bed and was channel flipping between Conan and some other stuff and was pleasantly surprised to come across this playing on PBS, of all places, and stayed up to watch the whole thing. It's fascinating but also kind of depressing to hear their story told from such an insider perspective, so different to what I'm used to hearing or reading about them. Less mythologization about how they invented punk and so on (although there's plenty of that too) and more of the actual band members' perspective. The depressing part was finding out how much they fought and stole each other's girlfriends and hated each other, which kind of shatters the illusion of them as a unified front, this gang of guys who dress alike and go by the same last name and stayed together for years and years and years, which was always a big part of their appeal. But it makes for a great story, and it was told pretty well.

Labels: Movie Diary, movies

1) We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
Last night I drove down to D.C. as soon as I could leave school and met up with my friend Mike, and then walked down to the Black Cat from his house. We were a few minutes late, and the movie had already started and the little downstairs bar where they were screening it was packed. It was kind of crappy conditions, we had to cram ourselves in the back, and there's a big column in the middle of the room, right in our line of vision, so most of the time I could only see about 1/3rd of the screen. I'm still glad I went, though, and I look forward to seeing it again under more ideal conditions. There are many bands I love more than the Minutemen but maybe none that inspire me more and make me more excited about the act of making music. The live footage was amazing, and since the individual songs are so short, they could be incorporated into the movie without threatening to interrupt the narrative. Lots of good interview moments, too, although I sometimes felt like I was waiting through the hyperbolic praise just to get to the personal anecdotes and really interesting stuff. At the end of the screening, a guy, I believe one of the filmmakers, said he want a picture of everyone at the screening to send to Watt, which we all smiled and waved for.

2) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
I have to admit I was kinda geeked out about seeing this. Growing up I had access to my father's huge personal library of sci-fi books, but of course, the satire stuck with me more than most of the real stuff. I mean, it's probably been at least 10 years since I read any of those books, but the prospect of a movie being made of it and being done well was still pretty exciting to me. J.G.'s also a fan of the books and wants to see it, but it'll be a couple weeks until she graduates and comes home from school for good. So I'll probably see it again with her, but I was impatient and had to see it opening weekend. And it was good. I'd read the name of the director a few times in articles but it wasn't til the opening credits rolled that I realized that it was the same guy who did all those music videos as Hammer & Tongs. I was skeptical of Mos Def's casting from the beginning, mostly because I think he's pretty overrated as a rapper and haven't seen any real evidence of his acting talent either, but ultimately I was rooting for him to be good in it. He was really the weak link of the cast, though, had tons of funny/memorable lines from the book to work with and didn't manage to make the most of any of them. Everyone else was solid, though. Sam Rockwell was good, although I was kind of put off by the fact that he kept doing a slight G. W. Bush impression (because his character is an idiot who became president, GET IT? wink wink). Just kind of a cheap joke, if you ask me. Lots of other things I could say, but mostly I was satisfied as a semi-fanboy and it even did pretty well at the box office, which is nice.

3) Sin City
I heard plenty about how good and cool-looking this was, but not nearly enough about how funny it was. For the first hour or so, I wasn't sure if I was laughing at it or with it, but by about an hour in, it was pretty obviously the latter. Like, the reaction of that guy with the swastika on his forehead to getting impaled? Hilarious. Supposedly that winking comedic element isn't in the comics (excuse me, graphic novels) at all, which is interesting considering the creator was so involved in the movie he got a co-director credit. Did he set out for the adaptation to poke fun at the source material, or did Rodriguez talk him into it, is what I'm wondering, I guess.

4) Dreamcatcher
Saw this on HBO a while back while dogsitting at my dad's house watching sattelite TV all day. I can't remember the last time so little about a movie was given away by the trailers. So much so that it feels like saying really anything about it is a spoiler. But I will say that it was completely ridiculous and shockingly bad. After a certain point, you don't care at all what happens but you just have to keep watching to see what else they have the balls to throw in there. OK, i'll tell you this much: there's an alien that nests inside of people and makes them fart until it escapes out of their butts. And the alien, whose name is Mr. Gray, is repeatedly addressed by a mentally retarded character (played by DONNY WAHLBERG) as "Mr. Gay". I swear I'm not making any of this up.

Labels: comedy, Mike Watt, Movie Diary, movies, The Minutemen

(And yes I am totally stealing the idea/format from Hillary)

1) Ladder 49: The trailer made it look alright, at least in the way that a sap like me can appreciate. But they really didn't hit the mark at all, it just kind of keeps going and trying to make you feel something or give a damn and I really couldn't. And usually I like Joaquin. And the fact that it was filmed on location in Baltimore is only utilized sparingly, actually mentioning the name of the city maybe twice in the whole movie and namechecking fictitious crabhouses. I wouldn't be surprised if they picked the location based on the fact that Baltimore has so many buildings that they could cheaply burn down for the movie. Mayor O'Malley has a little cameo in there, too. Is Baltimore really as Catholic as the movie depicts it? My dad says it was when he was growing up but I never really got that impression, and the movie makes it look like Boston-level Catholic.

2) After Sunset: Short of actual nudity, this movie is enormously generous to the demographic I will refer to here as "people who have a boner for Salma Hayek". Like, way beyond just the usual obligatory PG-13 cleavage shots. I really think they could've increased their box office take significantly if they had cut the trailer to reflect this. Go figure. Otherwise, it moved along at a good pace, decent little heist movie with a few implausible twists and contrivances. Am I crazy for kinda wishing Woody Harrelson was in more movies these days?

3) Flight of the Phoenix: I watched this with my mom and step-dad, who are fans of the original with Jimmy Stewart, and they said it was a good remake, although I think I'd like the original better. There's something about that kind of movie about earnest people in a desperate situation that I think worked a lot better 40 years ago when it wasn't a rule in Hollywood for every character to have an endless supply of snarky put-downs for each other. Also, it's one of those movies where the music supervisor seems to be going for the most inoffensively generic acceptable-for-all-audiences music for every scene. I think in the first 10 minutes they went through both Johnny Cash and James Brown (although it's kind of funny that I only recognized "Nighttrain" because of the Baltimore club mix). And don't even get me started on the part where suddenly it's revealed that the big manly men stuck out in the middle of the desert have a CD player, and put on "Hey Ya" and start dancing like Carlton from "The Fresh Prince". Seriously, WTF.

4) Gangs of New York: I worked at a post office the summer before this came out, and working in those places you end up reading a lot of magazines, and I read a few articles about all the trouble that plagued the filming of this and was pretty interested in seeing it but never got around to it when it was first out. But a couple weeks ago hanging out with J.G. at school we saw it at a party. It's weird to think that this is the kind of movie that gets watched at parties at an all-girls school, but evidently it is. I like the fact that even though it's largely fact-based and historical, it all feels so surreal and unlikely, especially the clothes. I mean, it might be really accurate and true to life, but it just looks so over the top and ridiculous, in a good way.

5) Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle: Actually only saw about the first half of this, which happens a lot because there's a Playstation/DVD player in my office and the guys I work with rent stuff a lot when there's nothing to do, and I'll end up seeing half of a movie if they're watching it at the beginning or end of my shift or it gets interrupted by the need to do actual work. What I saw was good though, better than I expected. All the stuff I read about it made it sound like it was basically the same as any stoner buddy flick with the exception of the buddies being Asian, but the race of the leads was referred to quite a lot in what I saw, and that usually accounted for the sharpest jokes.

6) Down Periscope: Another one seen at the office. For some reason I think someone here actually owns a copy. I mean, low brow 90's comedy, ok, sure, but this? I think I forgot it existed after opening weekend, and figured so did everyone else. The cast is a veritable who's who of 2nd and 3rd bananas (well, maybe not so much "who's who" as "who's that?"), the highlight being Toby Huss, who I regard warmly for his role in "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" and the bizarre MTV spots he did in the early 90's ("mornin', Roy...top of the mornin' to ya").

Labels: Movie Diary, movies