Wanted

I can't even begin to explain how excited I was for Wanted. I wasn't excited for Angelina Jolie's butt, (yes, it's there, in all it's glory), and I wasn't excited for James McAvoy. What I was excited about was my hope that the director, Timur Bekmambetov, would have made an awesome film for the American audience, and finally get to show a larger crowd what he's capable of. Nerdy, I know, but I am an undying fan of Bekmambetov's two Russian films, Nightwatch and Daywatch. Those movies were special effects feasts, creating amazing scenes and stories with an Eastern European craziness that I had never seen the likes of before, including even subtitles that were animated to coincide with the action on screen. When I heard that he would be directing his first American film, I was stoked, to say the least. This news came about the same time I read that one of my favorite Japanse directors, Ryuhei Kitamura, would be directing the film adaptation of Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train, and needless to say, that was a day I almost exploded with happiness. For all of Hollywood's missteps, one thing I will never get enough of is bringing foreign directors over to the U.S. and giving them a Hollywood budget.

Wanted lives up to the hype, blasting its way through so many awesome special effects sequences that my mind is still having trouble wrapping itself around what it just saw. The story is very well-written, with twists and turns and double-crosses, leaving me wanting more when the credits rolled. My only issue was with McAvoy, who was such a whiner for a lot of the film that I wanted to grab him by the head and shake him. I suppose that's just how his character was supposed to be, but still...a bit much. The biggest treat for me was definitely the appearance of Konstantin Khabensky, the lead Russian actor from Nightwatch and Daywatch. I LOVE this guy. When he came onscreen, I had to restrain myself from jumping up and clapping, as I would have definitely earned myself a one-way ticket to Nerdsville. He's a great actor, and I only hope I get to see more of him in the future...hopefully in Bekmambetov's third film in the watch series...Twilight Watch, due in 2009!


And here's the trailers for Nightwatch and Daywatch, just because I love those movies so damn much.

Diary of the Dead

I have always been a sucker for apocalyptic/dystopian future films and books. Anything concerning the end of the world or a post-apocalypse society and I am on board. Zombie movies, while usually considered to be straight-up horror, belong with a foot firmly based in the apocalypse camp. To me, there is nothing scarier than a zombie uprising, especially when it's done well. Let's face it, there are scores of abysmal zombie movies out there, and thanks to the recent upsurge of zombie popularity, (zombie t-shirts and mugs? YES PLEASE!) there has been a deluge of some of the worst zombie films ever, (Day of the Dead remake featuring Mena Suvari and zombies that crawl on the ceiling? NO PLEASE GOD NO).

Of course, George Romero, a king among men, is the father of the zombie film. But the one thing that I always loved about Romero's films was that behind the zombies is an underlying treatise on the state of the world, politics, consumerism, and humanity. All of that and braaaains. It's horror for smart folks, and that is the best type of horror. Romero's last entry to his zombie saga was Land of the Dead, his first zombie film that was given a semi-respectable Hollywood budget, but as we all know, with a Hollywood budget comes Hollywood executives who think they know better than everyone else what the audience wants. Romero himself in several articles has decried the system and the way that these executives hack and slice their way through movies to get a better rating. Naturally, Land of the Dead suffered for this, and Romero acknowledges it. He decided to make Diary of the Dead, independently, and it is his true vision, and totally kicks zombie ass!

Done in the "found footage" format that when used well, can be totally awesome, Diary of the Dead centers around a group of film students who are in the middle of filming a movie when the dead start to rise. The film then chronicles everyone's stories, their attempts to get home, survive, and battle. The gore is minimal, with a few really cool sequences, and the plot moves along at a good speed. The film also features some great characters including Samuel, the deaf Amish guy, who can wield a scythe like nobody's business, and the coolest drunk professor ever. Diary of the Dead is a great film, by a great director, and I can't wait for the next one. Here's hoping Romero lives forever.

Thursday Night Double Feature: Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs and Machine Girl

Let me just start these reviews with a disclaimer: NERDS ONLY NEED APPLY. It's Thursday night, I had a tough week of classes, and I need to cut loose. Is it time for another movie I can, in good conscience, recommend to anyone? No. Tonight is the night that nerds must reign, and therefore, I watched two movies tonight that only nerds can appreciate. Did I cave in to my baser needs as a true nerd? That would be an emphatic yes.

First on the list is the second of three Futurama films, The Beast With a Billion Backs. For all you Futurama fans out there...well...it's better than the first movie, but still not better than some of the best Futurama episodes. I am one of the rare beasts that have little love for The Simpsons, and an almost crazy love for Futurama. I guess I just love cartoons that feature robots and squid as lead characters more than anything else. I know I may get roasted alive on a spit for this, but The Simpsons is just incredibly not awesome for me. Naturally, after watching countless reruns of Futurama on Adult Swim, I was ecstatic to learn that the entire cast returned for three feature films, the first of which was Bender's Big Score, which was just so-so, and kind of a letdown. The Beast With a Billion Backs is better, but not by much. Unfortunately, these feature films seem to get really caught up in a little thing called "the plot". I get that the creators wanted to make some movies with great storylines, but most of the comedy that made Futurama great tends to get lost in the attempt to stick to an actual plot. Futurama was best when the comedy was the baseline for the plot, not the other way around. So, it was entertaining, I laughed out loud a few times, but I expected better. Here's hoping the last film, Bender's Game, really delivers.


And so, we move on to one of the craziest movies I have ever laid my nerdy eyes upon, Machine Girl. I can say with complete honesty that this is the wildest Japanese film I have ever seen. That statement shouldn't be taken lightly, as I have seen some craaaazy shit in Japanese film, including but not limited to: killer hair extensions, dancing claymation cannibals, and a male member that turns into a drill. The Japanese are CRAZY, yo. However, as bizarre as the Japanese film industry can get, one thing they do really well is the slapstick comedy. Machine girl is one of the bloodiest movies I've ever seen, but it is also one of the most hilarious. In the tradition of early Peter Jackson, director Noboru Iguchi goes so over the top with his gore that it becomes laugh-out-loud hilarious. The lead character, in her first acting role, does a great job, considering a lot of Japanese actresses show little emotion. She plays a student whose younger brother is killed by yakuza, (the Japanese equivalent of the mafia) who subsequently goes on a revenge bender, slicing and dicing everyone who gets in her way. I couldn't stop myself from rolling around on the floor, laughing hysterically, as I am treated to visions of an arm that gets tempura fried and neverending waterfalls of blood. It's crazy, it's hilarious, it's weird and wonderful, and that's the best kind of film for us gorehound nerds.

First Snow

There is nothing I hate more than a movie that lets me down. Not a movie that I expected to be good, and it ended up being bad....no, that's just like biting into an apple, and finding a worm inside. When that happens, it even has the potential to be so bad it is good, a rare but awesome occurrence, much like Haley's comet. No, the real crime is a movie that is absolutely incredible for almost the entire duration, which then destroys all the good that came before it with a utterly disappointing ending. This event is also extremely rare, but it hurts bad, like the movie sucker-punched me right in the kidneys. Such was the case with First Snow.

And I hate to say it!! Because I love Guy Pearce, and think he is criminally underused in film...I don't know why. He created a timeless classic with his performance in Memento, was my favorite character in L.A. Confidential, was raving brilliant in Ravenous, and in The Proposition, made me, a girl who has an affinity for all things Spongebob, fall hopelessly in love with the violent Western genre. In Pearce's defense, however, I can't blame him for the sucker-punch. His acting throughout First Snow is awesome, as usual.

Pearce plays a slick jerk of a salesman whose car breaks down in the middle of a ramshackle town in the desert, where he decides to bide his time by getting his fortune read by a splendidly grizzled J.K. Simmons. He's told that he's gonna have a great business proposition fall into his lap, among other small predictions that all eventually come true...and then Simmons jerks as if he's touched hot coals, and you know that can't be good. Turns out he's seen that Pearce's character is gonna die, and he's gonna kick that bucket at the first snowfall. From this point, the story turns into a slow-burn of a psychological thriller, as we see Pearce desperately trying to figure out who kills him, and how to prevent it. Pearce does a great job through and through, making the audience root for a character who is kind of an ass, but really not so bad deep down. The film raises some good questions about fate and free will, and near the end, it seems as if the film is really building up to a shocker showdown of a climax. I was waiting with bated breath...and then...NOTHING. Highlight for spoiler: So Pearce is sure that his death is going to come about by an old friend he screwed over in the past who landed in jail for it, and now is seriously pyscho...Pearce is in the car, driving to meet the guy, after an hour of buildup to this point...and then we hear him say a voiceover about the path he chose and blah blah blah, the camera goes inside the car, he has blood on his face for some reason, a bright light flashes, and we are jettisoned to the next morning, with a view of skid marks on the highway, and a voiceover of a radio report about a car accident. A CAR ACCIDENT. NINETY MINUTES OF BUILDUP FOR A CAR ACCIDENT WE DON'T EVEN SEE. And where, tell me, did the blood on Pearce's face come from? It was there before this phantom accident. Apparently there was a showdown of some sort. WHICH WE NEVER SEE.
I was stunned. I literally stared at the screen with my jaw on the floor, trying to recover hopelessly from the crap the movie just pulled on me. I don't know why this happened, maybe they ran out of money, god knows the film was low-budget...but seriously? I've seen horrible films before, and even most of them give me a solid ending of some sort. Hello sucker-punch, meet my kidneys.
I think I need to go watch Pearce eat some people in Ravenous to get over this.

Be Kind Rewind

I missed Be Kind Rewind when it was in theaters, but I wanted to see it because I love both Jack Black and Mos Def with a completely irrational love. Jack Black I've loved since early Tenacious D, and Mos Def was totally on point and hilarious as Ford Prefect in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I am less a fan of Michel Gondry. While I liked the creativity and the amazing acting of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I just felt so-so about The Science of Sleep, which got to be so whimsical it was slightly boring, and this is from the girl who has whimsical daydreams about Falcor the luck dragon from Neverending Story, and who also has a wild teenage crush on Gael Garcia Bernal.

Fortunately, I really enjoyed Be Kind Rewind. At first, I was a little confused, as it seemed as all the principal characters in the film were mentally impaired in some way. I mean that in the most serious way, at first I truly believed Mos Def and Jack Black were playing characters who were impaired. As the movie progressed, I realized that they were all just incredibly quirky, which I should have known at the outset, as I don't believe that there has ever been a character in any Michel Gondry work that wasn't quirky. Mos Def and Jack Black play a couple of guys that either frequent or work in a VHS rental store owned by Danny Glover, who takes a trip and leaves these the shop in the completely uncapable hands of Mos Def. Jack Black is awesomely hilarious as a demented buffoon who unwittingly erases every tape in the store because he somehow got "magnetized". So the dimwitted duo decide to "remake" the films, starring themselves and other colorful characters from the city. These remade films are by far the most hilarious parts of the film, leaving you always wanting more. However, it is at this point that the story starts to get a bit weak. The store is due to be demolished, the guys try to save it, there is a sappy happy ending. Pretty run of the mill stuff. There are also a few plotlines that never get fully explained or established, such as a romantic moment between Mos Def and lead chick, that happens for a moment and is never touched upon again, and the strange link between Mos Def and Danny Glover, (are they father and son? was he adopted? is he just a child that was left on Glover's doorstep?) and how Jack Black got "magnetized" in the first place.

In the end, Be Kind Rewind is a cute, whimsical film, just like Gondry's other films, and while it is his most mainstream, it suffers a bit for it's Disney-esque storyline. However, the acting of Jack Black and Mos Def is great, and I laughed out loud several times. Disappointingly, the DVD is pretty bare bones, with only a short documentary about the town the movie was filmed in, and trailers (which do not count as a special feature! Trailers should just be a given on a DVD!).

13 Tzameti

When I can't pick something to watch, I decide with my anal-retentive pharmacists' mind, to watch movies in alphabetical order. The first movie in my collection that I hadn't seen was 13 Tzameti, one I had gotten more than a year ago, and never got around to watching. Mostly because I had no idea what to expect, except that it was foreign, in black and white, and involved guns. Usually, those three things make a for-sure awesome film, but for some reason I still kept putting it off. I am kicking myself now, because it was AWESOME.

I am a noir-thriller film newbie, to say the least. I think I've seen all of four noir-ish films, and they were all Alfred Hitchcocks', and even though I enjoyed them all, I enjoyed them with the respect I reserve for film classics. That is to say, I have a soft spot for classics, but current films are my number one dames. When I viewed these older noir films, I couldn't help wishing that some director, somewhere, would make a really great noir-thriller film that would update the genre.

And so I came upon 13 Tzameti, the answer to my hopes. With my fingernails firmly embedded into the cushion of my chair, I was taken on a stark, desperate, thrill ride through the story of a handsome young man, who unknowingly makes a terrible decision, and ends up playing a modified Russian roulette in a dingy basement, forced to put his and others' lives at stake. The cinematography, in black and white, is beautiful, and I really wish more films would take advantage of the crispness that is available today for black and white films. Supposedly, The Mist was supposed to be released in black and white, and I personally think the film would have been even better if it had been.

The film starts out a little slow, but moves quickly into thriller territory, where it firmly remains for the duration. Hold on tight, this is one shocker of a film that will stay with you.

Paranoia 1.0

Paranoia 1.0 is a one of those movies I bought on a whim. Blockbuster occasionally has these 4 DVD's for $20 deals, and I am always able to find some real gems stuffed in between the billion copies of Norbit and other such DVD's whose only real use is as makeshift coasters or ninja throwing stars. If you dig long enough, you can always find some great stuff that pretty much no one else has seen, a real treat for cinephiles like me. The main reason I snatched up this one was because it stars Jeremy Sisto, one of my favorite actors, who always plays these really great insane characters. He's kinda like Christian Bale, where you never quite know if he's a good guy or if he's gonna go completely bonkers and start axing people. Little did I know that I was in store for a real treat, as the film also features my favorite creepy German guy, Udo Kier, and in a role that isn't completely wasted for once!

The story centers around Sisto's character, Simon, a computer programmer who lives in the weirdest, most run-down apartment complex on the planet. The cinematography of the film is really great, conveying the decaying environment beautifully. Right from the start, I could tell the film was going to be one of those that likes to blend and mix the rules of reality like a dessert chef. Personally, I love these types of films, the ones that make you question reality and keep your brain working on all gears for the duration of the movie. A lot of people can't stand this type of movie, and it's too bad, because they are missing out. Simon starts receiving these oddly empty packages, first just sitting outside his apartment, and then suddenly appearing inside. But are they truly empty? Things only get weirder, as Simon is confronted by his strange neighbors including a slimy porno director whose virtual reality game is more than it seems, Lance Henrikson as a cryptic handyman, and my personal favorite, Udo Kier as an eccentric scientist who is creating a creepy android head that is trying to communicate with Simon, to warn him....but of what? That's the central question of the film, why are these people here in this place, what is wrong with them, and why does Simon feel the urge to down fifty cartons of Country Fresh milk a day? The answers to those questions are sinister and bizarre, and the movie unfolds as such. The DVD extras are pretty run of the mill, with a making of featurette, and trailers. No commentary track, unfortunately, and an ungodly amount of deleted scenes which are really worth sitting through, as many of them really belong in the film. With a creepily pervasive soundtrack featuring songs by Sigur Ros, and top-notch acting from all characters, Paranoia 1.0 is a great mind-warping film for those of us who like to shake up our reality.

Ned Kelly

I rented Ned Kelly after complaining to my mother about the huge disappointment that was Naomi Watts in Funny Games, after which she suggested I rent Ned Kelly, since she loves Heath Ledger and she knew Naomi Watts was in it. So I checked out the trailer, thought it looked pretty good, and here we are.

Oddly, Naomi Watts' role in the film is almost completely unnecessary. She's alright, but really, her screen-time is all of ten minutes, and her character is never really fleshed out enough to be cared about, though her costumes were fabulous.

Of course, the real star of the film is Heath Ledger, and his performance is pretty damn good. I'm not entirely familiar with Ledger's work, though I am so excited to see him as the Joker this summer. I haven't really seen him in anything else, and seeing this film made his passing all the more sorrowful for me. His performance is really great, bringing to life a historical figure that American audiences have absolutely no familiarity with. I think that's probably why this film didn't get wide reception in the states, as I, along with most Americans, can claim I know as much about Australian history as I do about advanced astrophysics.

Ledger plays the title character, a sort of Robin Hood - Billy the Kid character in Australian history, the typical flawed but courageous individual that attempts to change the status quo of society. Unfortunately, as so many other stories of this kind, there is very rarely a happy ending for these warriors of the people. Orlando Bloom plays his right-hand man, and he does a great job as a ladies man, bringing the only bit of levity to the film.

And, ultimately, that is my only criticism. The film is a bit disconnected, the events within don't really match up to make linear sense, and the reasons for Ned Kelly's rebelling, and where he's doing it, simply are not made clear enough. It's also incredibly dark for the entire film, and I feel that the film would be much better if certain details were made clearer to the audience and if there was more of a playfulness and lightness added to the actions of Kelly and his gang. Stories of this type are made more interesting when the lead characters humiliate the oppressors over and over, and from reading the actual history of Ned Kelly, it seems that he and his gang were a lot like Billy the Kid and his gang, only with an actual political agenda and a righteousness to their actions.

The DVD's extras are pretty interesting, with a documentary about Ned Kelly, and actual photos of the real characters. Unfortunately, the documentary is doubly depressing, as it features live interviews with Heath Ledger. It is saddening that Ned Kelly was killed at the young age of 25, and even more depressing that Ledger left the world at 28, with so much promise, talent, and integrity.

The Signal

I was really looking forward to The Signal, as pretty much everything I had read about it claimed it was fantastic, but I was still wary. After all, just last week, I had watched Funny Games after reading similar glorious reviews, only to end up wasting two hours of my life on a steaming pile of dinosaur turds. So, with high hopes, I slipped The Signal on, and oh boy, it did not disappoint.

By the way, a note to any future movie directors, any movie that opens with bloody seventies-esque music, effects, and visuals, and then goes directly to a gratuitous ass scene is already number one in my book. Oh, and kudos to the guy who decided to make a "mix CD" a major prop, awww...he gave her a mix CD to show his love...so cute...who does this anymore? I will cry the day we can no longer make mixes for significant others and are doomed to only give mp3 playlists. So unromantic.

The Signal is a horror movie that is so highly creative that it was like a breath of fresh air. It's shot by three different directors, each one doing a different "transmission", which I loved! More movies should be done this way, it's like one of those great comic book series where a different artist and writer do each part. The first part is all visceral super-intense horror, with some great gore, considering the miniscule budget the film was shot on. A signal, natch, is transmitted through all the televisions in the city, causing every human to go balls out psycho and start killing each other. But don't sigh, this is NOT your typical fast zombie type film. These people are actually mentally crazy, and that's the part that's really freaky. The transistion into the second part of the film, which is all dark comedy, was a bit jarring, but I quickly found myself laughing hysterically. The third part of the film definitely slows down a little, and it gets into reality-bending territory, (Can anyone leave the city? Is any of this really happening in reality?) so the horror eases off a bit, but by this point, I was so attached to the characters that I didn't mind. I must say that for a cast of complete unknowns, I was terrifically impressed by all, especially the fantastic Clark character who had me cracking up on the floor. I totally recommend this film, and the disc was packed with great special features, including a bunch of neat mini-films and even another short film along with all the making ofs, commentary, etc. You can even choose to let the actual signal play on your TV, though I wouldn't recommend it. Definitely pick this one up if you are in need of some really creative horror.


So there we go, my first film review of the summer. I will be reviewing a movie a day until the end of August, so check back every day!!