Monday, June 23, 2008

Southland Tales

I knew from the first time I saw the trailer to this film, a long time ago on a rental DVD far away, that this would be a film that I would enjoy a lot but that wouldn't reach any sort of popular status among the naive and thought-limited public. By "thought-limited" I mean "No-one likes The Rock now that he's plain ol' Dwayne Johnson".

Can you smell what Dwayne Johnson is cooking?

Yes... it's supper for his family. And I believe he's boiling a kettle for tea. How quaint!

Anyway, point is I was correct, I loved this film but I feel that no-one else on the planet does... am I right or is that just the feeling this film evokes in everyone? Does everyone think they're the only ones who like this film? Am I a unique snowflake?
Let's not tread down the Fight Club route because it has nothing to do with this film.

After I had basically IMDBed the shit out of this whole film (That's right! I used IMDB as a verb. I used an internet term as a verb that isn't affiliated with google (yet), how d'ya like them apples!?), because there was a lot to check on, I came to a concise understanding of the lessons learned in this film. They are as follows: (I love lists, don't you?)
  • You can never have too much Jesus symbolism
  • According to Richard Kelly (Director of this and Donnie Darko), Time Travel and the end of the world have something to do with each other, but he'll be damned if he'll just come out and say it. Instead, let's watch a couple of hours of him almost telling us...
  • As I have always suspected and hoped, Buffy The Vampire Slayer does not do anal.
  • Before casting this film, a lot of films from the 80's were watched.
  • The Rock is a pimp, and pimp's don't commit suicide.
  • Justin Timberlake is not a pimp, and perhaps he should have committed suicide.
  • Arty Movie With A Social Point To Make + Pixies Song = Awesome. (This formula will never fail)
  • Moby is a dick.
  • Donnie Darko was successful.
And that concludes this "review".
High Five!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Frontiere(s)

I may have gotten the title to this film wrong, it may be Frontier, The Frontier, The Frontiers, Frontiers, Frontier(s) or The Frontier(s), or it may be all of those combined, I really have no idea.

Anyhow, in (this film) a bunch of rebel crazy anarchist French teenagers go on the run from the Paris police in a recently-turned-crazy-right-wing France only to find themselves right in the middle of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre nowhere surrounded by Neo Nazis, who in actual fact aren't very "Neo" given that the father of the inbred crazies seems to have been around since the first Reich.

As is inevitable in these situations the teenagers try and fight their way out but are shockingly slaughtered, hung upside down and gutted one by one because (duh!) they're a bunch of teenagers and they're trying to take on fully trained inbred super-race type Neo Nazi crazy motherfuckers.

That is until, our leading lady gets a nice short haircut which, of course, turns any self respecting lady into a bad-ass Nazi killing machine! Suddenly the bullets fly, the (non-Aryan) blood flies and it's as if Rambo just showed up to take care of business...

Then she does a jittery "I'm a crazy person" walk right at the end and you suddenly realize the whole film was really a comedy and you just didn't get it.

For serious, watch it yourself to find out!

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Diary Of The Dead

That's weird, I thought I already reviewed this film when I watched it but I guess not... Unfortunately it means that in my head I've already expelled all the information I have on the matter and I really don't feel like repeating myself. I shall, however summarize my favorite things about the film
  • The line near the beginning about how the undead cannot run because they'd snap their ankles, which I took to be a fairly obvious stab at a few modern (and a few older) Zombie flicks on Mr. Romero's part.
  • The line near the end about waiting in the panic room "for all this to blow over", which I do believe must have made Simon Pegg shit his pants, for George A. Romero to actually reference his zombie film. Possibly more than he shit his pants when he was asked to be in George A. Romero's zombie film. Possible more than he shit his pants when he was asked to be in both of George A. Romero's newest zombie films. Simon Pegg probably just shits his pants every day out of sheer excitement for his life.
  • The fact that George A. Romero's political themes and sub-themes aren't in any way trying to masquerade themselves behind the film like some film-makers would do, but instead are completely blatant and transparent. I always feel that if you have a political message (or any kind of message for that matter) to make with your art, there's no point in pussy footing about trying to show your distaste for the Bush administration by painting a dying Sunflower... subtly is for giant fuck-tards and David Lynch. Oh wait David Lynch is...
Moving on... this film was by no means perfect. It definitely had it's moments of tedium. The main flaw was in it's "realism", in a sense, because everyone kept going on about how annoying it was that some idiot was filming everything that was going on. This was, I felt, terribly realistic, as this probably would be people's reaction, but didn't make for a good film. Unlike Cloverfield which wasn't realistic because I think they only told him once to "turn the fucking camera off", far less often than they would in reality, but it made for a less tedious film because of it... That was really my only major gripe with the film, and since the film was trying to be as realistic as possible I should just pretty much shut my cake-hole

Sunday, June 1, 2008