Self Absorption at Discount Prices.

23rd January 2012

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This movie is GREAT, and it’s on Netflix. Go watch it right now. Or another time. 

Tagged: Movies!

30th October 2011

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This might just be the hangover talking, but Stardust Memories is great. It is wildly self indulgent and all over the place, but holy fucking shit is it jam-packed with interesting ideas and beautiful frames. Woody Allen is Woody Allen-ing out pretty hard, and he’s playing himself so obviously that he barely even tries to make his character any different from him. Even more than usual. He could have been called Goody Fallen, but that would have probably been viewed as a fuck-you to the audience. It is on Netflix and you can watch it right now and it’s not perfect, but it’s fun and weird and there’s a ton of beautiful 1980 women and hideous (but interesting looking) 1980 men to look at.

Also there’s a shot where you can see that Woody’s got a gross, dirty ear. I love that little troll-man. He’s a smartypants pervert jewy neurotic with a heart of greasy gold.   

Tagged: Movies!

6th June 2011

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I walked into Submarine cautiously optimistic, because it’s Richard Ayoade’s debut film, and I’m a huge fan of his from Darkplace and The IT Crowd. It far exceeded all of my expectations. It’s pretty much wonderful all the way around. Great writing, great directing, and every performance is terrific. Just when you think it might veer off into too-cute territory, it reigns itself in and then tugs at your heartstrings a little and then makes you laugh and so on and so forth. It was a joy to watch, which is not something I say/think about movies very often. Also, the soundtrack is by Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, and even though I don’t really care for that band all that much, all the music was great. So many thumbs and stars for this one, really.

Tagged: Movies!SubmarineRichard Ayoade

1st June 2011

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A Deeply Nerdy Love Letter To Wet Hot American Summer

In late 2001, I was a college freshman, and Wet Hot American Summer was released in select cities. It was not playing anywhere close to my school, which was in Hartford, CT. I knew that I had to see it as soon as humanly possible, because of my long obsession with The State, the sketch comedy group that spawned most of the cast members and crew. I didn’t know anything about it beyond that it was a send up of 80s summer camp movies. It sounded great, but that’s all I had to go on, because apparently 10 years ago was the stone age. I actually had to read a review in Entertainment Weekly to find out about it (note: they gave it an A).

I waited for it to finish it’s run, and I waited even longer for it to come out on DVD. The Tuesday it was released, I made my friend drive me to the nearest Best Buy, and I bought it sight unseen. As I sat down for my first viewing, I found that it struck a bizarre but amazing tone: it started out almost sweet, like it was paying reverence to the films it was parodying, and by the end it had  mutated into one of the most surreal, non-sequitor driven, absurdist comedies I’d ever seen. No other comedy has “gone for it” quite like this, or at least this successfully. It was quite literally hilarious. If you’ve ever sat around with your hilarious friends, going off on all night tangents and laughing til you cry, thinking “we should make a thing, we’re funny,” that’s what this movie is. Except you and your friends are not a legendary 90s sketch troupe. I knew that I instantly loved it, and I wasted no time making that known to anyone who would listen.

All of my friends were curious as to what it was that I was geeking out so hard over, and why I was demanding precious common room TV space for it. A group of us, including my roommate, sat down to watch it, and within minutes we were all collectively laughing harder than I’ve laughed during any movie. This continued for several nights, as word would spread about “the crazy weird funny movie that Dave bought.” I felt like I was carrying a rare nerd virus, and they were all exposed. I must have screened that movie in the common room of our suite 8 times in 2 weeks, to groups of about 10 people each.

After my year in Hartford, I transferred to Emerson, where I learned quickly that my love for this movie was not entirely unique. The nerds who flocked to see Wet Hot were hiding at this small liberal arts college in Boston, and there were tons of them. I still remember seeing a guy in the halls dressed up like Michael Showalter’s character “Coop” on Halloween, and then going to a party that night and seeing a different guy wearing the exact same costume. I remember visiting a friend at NYU and going to a huge sold out screening of the film in Manhattan. I remember meeting David Wain on the escalator and freaking out considerably (we found a common ground in having the same first name, which I’m SURE was as memorable for him as it was for me). I absolutely wore out the DVD I bought over the years, and the steady viewings started to erode my ability to laugh at it. Anticipating every joke was not helping my enjoyment of it. So, like Andy’s old friends from Toy Story 3 (just tossing that in there for bored people who can’t relate to this), I put the DVD on the shelf and took a 3 year break.

And then Netflix Instant decided to add it to their library, and I saw it recommended for me. Immediately I decided that it was time, and myself and three friends got together and watched it a few nights ago. It was as if no time had passed since the day I first saw it. It is, quite possibly, the funniest movie I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think you need to be a comedy nerd to agree (although it definitely helps). The cast is amazing and the writing and performances blow any current comedy out of the water. The fact that it still hasn’t made it’s total budget back yet is baffling and sad to me, but I’m glad to know it’s there for us to watch, whenever we want to get weird for 90 minutes. I’d like to say that it was an inspiration, or an indicator of things to come in my life or career, but I think it’s merely a movie that I instantly knew I loved, and that’s all I need. I’m extremely thankful that it exists, if only because it’s so utterly satisfying to like something so wholeheartedly. Also, there’s a talking can of mixed vegetables who can suck his own dick, so, you know, that’s good too.

Tagged: Movies!

28th May 2011

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Giant Robots & The End Of The World

Hugh Jackman and Rock-em Sock-em robots. This is how the world will end. Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer for Real Steel, the new movie from Night At The Museum director Shawn Levy. The description reads, “A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near-future where the sport of boxing has gone high-tech,” but I interpreted it as “a movie comprised of market research and the fever dreams of an intern forced to watch every major studio movie from the past four years in a single sitting.” The premise is simple(?): Hugh Jackman, a former boxing champ, has to retire when the sport changes from man vs. man to giant robot vs. giant robot. He then, buoyed by a precocious preteen (check!), digs up an old training robot and teaches it to fight other robots for money.

Having read that, are you excited? Are you ready for Real Steel? Can you handle the excitement of a movie that looks like Transformers but has the heart of an underdog sports movie like Rocky or Rudy (or Radio. R-names!)? Also, if that’s not how they pitched this movie, they’re fucking idiots. I, for one, am not only not excited, but I feel strangely insulted. I’m not a fucking yokel. And neither are you. You are smart. You read. Maybe not books, but blogs, and maybe not newspapers, but news sites. And you don’t need to be placated to by the Hollywood studio system. And yet that’s what happens now.

This is how movies get made. Even if you liked the Hangover (and I can assure you I didn’t), you probably weren’t dying for a sequel. But you paid to see the first, so you get a second helping. Did you see Transformers out of curiosity? Well, so did everyone. Why? Because robots. Here’s 3 more! Did you go see a Kevin James movie because you saw a poster from 1000 feet away and mistook him for Chris Farley or a similarly more talented overweight comedian? Well, too bad, you are part of a trend, and now you get to see The Zookeeper, The Mall Cop, The Beekeeper, The Meter Maid, The Grocery Clerk, and of course, The Animal Husbandry Technician (He masturbates animals so you don’t have to!).

Back to the fighting robots. What did we do to inherit this? What happened? Remember when, um… wait were movies ever good? What is going on? Has it always been like this? So crass and blatant and full of product placement, piled high in the background of shots like so many of Jeremy Piven’s hair plugs? Am I just a grandpa? Are rock-em sock-em robots cool? Is Kevin James hilarious? Is Ken Jeong the future of stereotype-based hilarity? Is this where I admit that I’ve never seen The Godfather, Jaws, Rain Man, Top Gun, Raging Bull, and none of the Lord Of The Rings movies? Aw, fuck it, I gotta run. I’m late to the 2pm screening of Pirates 4.

Tagged: Movies!