“What are you looking at? Wipe that face off your head, bitch!”

I haven’t been in school for 6 years but still, every year around this time I get the “school’s out for summer” feeling. Dazed and Confused is the best movie for this time of year and it’s is the best movie of its kind.

This movie is chockfull of great quotes, but Parker Posey has the best one.

Does anyone else get this feeling this time of year? Are there any other movies anyone watches this time of year? I also enjoy American Graffiti, Superbad and Super 8.

Now first, let me give you a quick plot synopsis: a group of doctors and scientists are taken to a small New Mexico town where all of the inhabitants died instantly after a satellite carrying a virus from another galaxy infects them. While there, the scientists investigate the dead people (some of whom are having their eyes eaten by birds) and discover that the corpses have dried blood that pours out like sand. So sets forth a scientific investigation into what the alien virus is and how it kills so fast… all while the president is threatening to nuke all of New Mexico to stop the spread of the virus. If that’s not the plot of a G-Rated film then I don’t know what is! Why would a kid want Rapunzel or Winnie the Pooh when they can have corpse eye-munching birds and sand blood pouring from a slit wrist?!?

Damn your eyes… Too late!

In the film there is not one but THREE scenes of nudity (one is particularly shocking in that it is a dead, topless hippy woman). Also, there are many, many scenes of violence and general mayhem. Not that any of them are any more violent or shocking than the newest C.S.I. episode, but this film was actually marketed to families and children.

This made me think about other 70’s films that had scenes that would never even be in a PG-13 movie today. The 1976 film, Logan’s Run, has several scenes with a fully nude Jenny Agutter (known mostly for her role in An American Werewolf in London) that would guarantee it an R Rating today but it was PG. Philip Kaufman’s brilliant sequel/remake Invasion of the Body Snatcher has extremely horrific scenes of alien clones growing and then having their heads graphically bashed in (not to mention a topless chase scene at the end) and that one was PG too. Then there is the original Planet of the Apes with several scenes of a nude Charlton Heston (and two other beefcake astronauts) and apes torturing humans that was rated G. These films also deal with situations and themes that are definitely not for kids and not just because they are too adult, but also because kids would never understand them!

This is just one of the disturbing scenes in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It gave Dusty nightmares too!

I understand that the ratings system was still a fairly new thing (first going in effect in 1967) and there were only four ratings: G (general audiences), PG (parental guidance), R (restricted) and X (explicit), but the fact that these films were marketed toward children is simply insane. Now, I’m not a conservative creep saying kids can’t handle these things, but it’s just so strange when comparing it to the present day. The ratings are so strict that no movie can use “fuck” more than twice without gaining an R rating ( and both uses must be non-sexual) and VERY few films have nudity without being rated R (I know everyone is thinking ” but wait, wait pal, what about Titanic?”). When it comes to violence, if blood is shown, it usually gains an R. For example, The Dark Knight Rises was able to have as many people as they wanted getting shot, as long as no blood was shown.

I don’t really know what to think about this, it was just something strange I was thinking about while watching Andromeda Strain. What do you guys think? Can you think of other G or PG rated flicks that contained nudity, extreme violence or obscene language?

Now first off, I must begin by saying that I love the new Marvel films that began with Iron Man. I was so happy that Marvel finally figured out how to incorporate their mythology into a series of films that were at once standalone comic book pictures but also part of a larger storyline. With each new Marvel film, I was so excited to see Captain America’s shield showing up on Tony Stark’s work counter or talk of the Super Soldier Serum in Incredible Hulk because I knew The Avengers was coming. And when it did, it was FANTASTIC!

Iron Man 3 is in a tough spot already since it’s the first standalone Marvel film after The Avengers. The fact that they chose Iron Man (obviously the most popular and liked Avenger) is smart but still makes one yearn for Avengers 2. The entire film I kept hoping Thor or the Hulk would jump in and help out Tony Stark when he is fighting hordes of villains, but sadly, *SPOILER ALERT* they never do.

When I heard Shane Black would be writing and directing the new Iron Man I was ecstatic! I absolutely love Lethal Weapon, Monster Squad, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and thought he would be bring an amazing new voice to the superhero film. After seeing the movie, you can definitely tell Black was involved (whether it is Stark’s narration where he messes up and begins again ala Kiss Kiss or the film noir and buddy film tropes all of his films possess or it’s Christmas setting), in the end it just feels like another overblown superhero movie.

I can enjoy an overblown superhero movie any day of the week (I LOVE The Incredible Hulk) but Iron Man 3 has a mid-movie plot twist that absolutely ruined the entire film for me. Now the twist is very clever and definitely unexpected (don’t worry I won’t ruin it) but it made me feel the exact same way I did when I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. For those who haven’t seen The Village, stop now and continue to the next paragraph. Ok, those who are still here, WHY THE HELL DID HE MAKE THE MONSTERS FAKE?!?!? Everyone always mentions the so-called “BIG” twist that the village is actually in the modern-day and not the 1600’s as you believe, but that one doesn’t really ruin it for me. The fact that he made the monsters a made-up parlor trick to scare the villagers into submission is simply idiotic. How can you be scared again? Why even watch it again when you know those horrific beasts are actually assholes in homemade suits? This is how I felt in Iron Man 3. I literally almost walked out when the twist happened. It ruined the mythology the films had created and made the entire movie a joke.

Now, not everything is bad. Ben Kingsley makes a FANTASTIC villain out of the Mandarin. He is a character cloaked in mystery and feels completely dangerous. The way he talks is simply creepy and awesome and a much better villain for Tony Stark to fight than a bald Dude or a Russian Mickey Roarke. The film noir and mystery aspect of the film is great. Most of the movie, Stark acts as a detective (much like Bruce Wayne) attempting to solve and avenge his friend’s recent attack and injury. It’s a very cool addition to the series and gives the film a new style to play with. The film also does a good job treating the events that happened in The Avengers as a trigger for Stark’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tony Stake has always been the most “human” Avenger and the fact that he has panic attacks after going through the wormhole in Avengers makes him even more relatable.

Overall, I give it a 14/17 on the Sitz-o-Matic scale. It is the first big disappointment of the year and quite possibly the worst of the new Marvel films. Please see it and tell me what you think! I have a feeling that my reaction to the film might be completely different than everyone else.

Top 5 “Phase 1″ Marvel Films:
1. The Avengers
2. Iron Man
3. Thor
4. Captain America: The First Avenger
5. The Incredible Hulk

I love that the blurb for this poster comes from Sex Gore Mutants. Brilliant!

The film was actually pretty awesome. The “infected people” basically look like bad make-up Lepers (Dustin described them as looking like the Toxic Avenger) and they constantly attack and bite people’s necks and drink their blood like they are vampires. If I didn’t know better, I would think that Danny Boyle and Alex Garfield saw this film before making 28 Days Later but since Boyle is so adamant that his film is NOT a horror film and doesn’t share anything with the horror genre, I would suspect this wasn’t the case. But the monsters in this film do share many characteristics with those infected with the RAGE virus: they’re fast, they’re angry, and they’re super violent for no explicable reason.

Like many Italian zombie flicks of the era, this one is filled with gratuitous gore and nudity (and a wonderful disco dance scene added in case we get bored). Sometimes the two meet as when one unlucky dancer (in the aforementioned disco dance show) gets her breast cut off and eaten. The dubbing is fairly bad and sometimes the dialogue literally made no sense at all. You won’t find any award-winning acting either, but Stiglitz DOES do all of his stunts and wields a gun and hatchet fairly well.

Aside from an ending that makes no sense at all (and nearly ruins the rest of the film), Nightmare City is a fun, gory film for fans of Lucio Fulci (Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead), Romero and other Italio-zombie films. I give it a 14 out of 17 on the Sitz-O-Matic Scale.

As an added bonus, Quentin Tarantino has a funny story about a time when Eli Roth met Lenzi and told him Tarantino was a big fan of his “zombie” film, Nightmare City, and Lenzi began yelling (in a strong Italian accent) “they are not zombies, they are INFECTED PEOPLE!”

This week, I watched the “shockumentary” Goodbye Uncle Tom by the Italian documentarians Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Here is a quick film history lesson, friends! Jacopetti and Prosperi invented the shockumentary with Mondo Cane (1962) which was basically a showcase of the most absurd, shocking events they could find around the world. While these films began as real documentaries, most of them started incorporating fake reenactments and gore effects until they became pure exploitation. They continued into the 1980’s with the popular Faces of Death series (which I refuse to watch) and fake snuff films and eventually died out with the invent of the Internet.

Goodbye Uncle Tom begins with Jacopetti and Prosperi somehow traveling back in time to the per-Civil War American south to make a documentary on slavery. The strangest thing about this is that the film never makes it seem absurd or strange in the slightest. They just wanted to make a doc on slavery so they jumped in their helicopter, gunned it to 88 MPH and automatically ended up back in time. When they arrive, all the slaves and slave owners simply wave at the helicopter as it blows about their bushels of cotton. Inexplicably they don’t find it weird that a flying machine with giant blades appeared out of nowhere. The filmmakers begin to interview people around the south but never mention the fact that they’re carrying cameras which would obviously seem strange to these people. Famous “celebrities” like Harriot Beecher Stowe show up randomly to give insight on slavery. Very strange. It actually confused the hell out of me that a movie like this can get made and no one at any point ever mentioned how weird the time travel aspect is.

When it comes to their depiction of slavery, they hold nothing back. A title card at the beginning reads “THIS FILM IS COMPLETELY TRUE. NOTHING WAS FABRICATED FOR ENTERTAINMENT” At one point a slave ship is shown with literally hundreds of naked men chained together in tiny bunk beds as they are urinating and diarrhea’ing all over each other. The men are fed pig fat, cornmeal and grain. One slave refuses to eat so they jam a large chisel in his mouth, break his teeth with a hammer and force feed him the “food”. The entire film is filled with these scenes of extreme depravity and gruesomeness. I read an interview with the filmmakers where they claim to have made the film in response to being called racist following their earlier Mondo shockumentaries. While i applaud their decision to graphically show American slavery in excruciating detail, the way they do it is just wrong on so many levels. Many of the scenes show gratuitous amounts of female and male nudity not for “historical accuracy” but titillation. The fact that they are exploiting such a disgusting part of American history makes them seem even more irresponsible, if not racist.

I don’t think I can recommend this movie to anyone unless they are in the mood for something horribly offensive, depressing and gross. It ranks alongside Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, Cannibal Holocaust and Men Behind the Sun (about the Japanese experimenting on the Chinese during WWII) as one of the most disturbing, shocking films I’ve ever seen. I give it a 10/17 only because I can’t stop thinking about it.

Eli Roth does a fantastic commentary of the trailer over at the great website Trailers From Hell. Check it out!

This poster TOTALLY rips off Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

See, same poster!

After reading the short synopsis of the Norwegian film Headhunters, I figured it was gonna be a thriller in the vein of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and as the poster eloquently reminded me, the films share a producer). What I wasn’t expecting was a brilliant dark comedy mixed with extreme violence and gore.

Roger Brown (a VERY strange name for a Norwegian) is a recruiter (or “headhunter”) for major corporations with a beautiful wife and a beautiful home that looks like a showroom at Ikea. To pay for his extravagant lifestyle, Brown steals works of art from the rich men he recruits with the aid of Ove Kjikerud (now THAT’S a Norwegian name), a gun loving security guard. Everything is going great until he meets Clas Greve (played by Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, looking like a real-life Prince Charming from Shrek). Soon, his head is being hunted (get it, the title works both ways… those clever Norsemen) and he doesn’t know who is after him, or why they are trying so hard to kill him. Do they know he is a thief? Does this mysterious hunk Clas want his beautiful wife?

The film reminded me several times of the Coen Brothers. The tone is most like that of No Country For Old Men with people getting double crossed at every turn. There are also scenes of sudden, extreme violence that sometimes literally made me cringe. As many know, I’ve seen some truly messed up movies in my day, so if a movie can make ME cringe, it MUST be good! I give it a 14/17.

I love Mondo posters. They’re the best!

Next up is another film that surprised me: Seven Psychopaths. I had wanted to see this movie mainly because the director, Martin McDonagh made the vastly underrated In Bruges. I loved that film but after first seeing the trailer to Psychopaths, I lost most of my excitement (oddly enough, the trailer for In Bruges was also off putting and lame, this guy needs a new trailer editor). When it came out on DVD, I figured I would give it a chance and it was fantastic!

The film tells of a guy, Colin Farrell, writing a screenplay about 7 psychopaths. His best friend, played by the always brilliant Sam Rockwell, steals dogs with Christopher Walken and collects the rewards. They steal a local mafioso’s shih tzu and all hell breaks loose.

That’s right boys and girls! Tom Waits is in this and he is crazy as always.

The best way to describe this film would be Adaptation directed by Guy Ritchie. As the film progresses, the script Farrell is writing begins to become the film we are watching. It all becomes meta and self-referential, which sounds pretentious, but the film handles it in a very laid-back fashion without pounding the audience over the head with its cleverness. As with Headhunters, Seven Psychopaths was far more violent than I expected. Some of it I was actually surprised got past those wonderful censors at the MPAA. But the film also has moments of extreme sadness and beauty. When people die in the movie, it isn’t used for laughs as in other dark comedies. Instead, McDonagh understands the seriousness of death and isn’t so low as to use it as a gag. I give this one a 16/17. Check it out!!!

LCD Soundsystem played their final show to a sold-out audience at Madison Square Garden on April 2nd, 2011. The decision to end the band was made by LCD frontman James Murphy. He explained that he wanted time to live his life rather than spend his days touring on the road. LCD Soundsystem were always an interesting “band” because they began as a solo project for Murphy (who was best known as a DJ in New York who had a very eclectic record collection). Their first big “hit” was “Losing My Edge” which was basically an airing of grievances for an aging hipster upset that the younger kids claimed they knew more obscure bands than Murphy did. Next came the brilliant “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” about a house party in which those lovable Gallic robots show up to jam. It’s wasn’t until later that Murphy was forced to hire musicians to learn and play his album live. So basically, everyone knew LCD Soundsystem had a short lifespan. After the release of This Is Happening (their third and final album) the band decided to call it quits and stop before they became enemies or burnt out, as most bands end up becoming. The document of their final show is the brilliant documentary, Shut Up and Play the Hits.

The documentary is receiving many comparisons to The Band’s Last Waltz and for very good reason. LCD’s final show is littered with DFA Records regulars (the New York label Murphy started with Tim Goldsworthy), Arcade Fire singing back-up and a who’s-who of Brooklynites jamming onstage with the band. The entire show feels more like a giant party rather than a concert.

While I will admit that I’m a bit biased when it comes to reviewing this doc since LCD Soundsystem are one of my favorite bands, I found it very bittersweet and exciting. The concert footage is interspersed with the morning after the final gig and the week prior. Scenes of Murphy taking his dog for a walk around Williamsburg (aka The Hipster Capital of the World) juxtapose the excitement and anticipation of the band’s final show. Chuck Klosterman (the brilliant essayist and music critic) interviewed Murphy about his final performance and the conversation between the two provides a welcome break from concert footage.

A few days after their final show, the crew packed up all the equipment and left it in a large warehouse before it’s auctioned off. When Murphy visits the equipment, he breaks down and sobs. I couldn’t help but be bummed too since I will never be able to see LCD Soundsystem play live. But watching this documentary is the next best thing. I rate it a 15/17.

Just for fun, here is my Top 5 LCD Soundsystem Songs:
1. Someone Great
2. Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
3. Tribulations
4. Dance Yrself Clean
5. Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up

“Kathryn Bigelow is a female director who makes “male” movies. Just look at Point Break or The Hurt Locker”. Nearly every review I’ve ever read about Ms. Bigelow either starts like this or mentions it at some point. This is very confusing to me. There are literally hundreds of male directors who make “female” movies every week, but no one ever feels the need to mention the gender of the director in a short review. Garry Marshall has made a career out of so-called “chick flicks” (ie Princess Diaries, Beaches, those shitty holiday movies with literally ALL of Hollywood staring in them) but no one ever asks, “how can a male director can make female-centric movies?” With each new movie Bigelow makes, the fact that she is female is ALWAYS addressed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Filmmaking is (and always has been) a male-dominated art form so its great and noteworthy when a talented female director comes along. But what makes Bigelow such an interesting filmmaker is the fact that the movies she makes never cater to the fact that she is female. Unlike Penny Marshall or Nora Ephron, Bigelow’s films deal with very traditionally “manly” topics: bank-robbing, nuclear submarines, bomb dismantling in Iraq. I think she said it best, “It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible. It is.” Personally, I would love to see more women making movies and I hope directors such as Bigelow, Mary Lambert, Jane Campion, Mary Harron and Lena Dunham pave the way to a future where one doesn’t have to start a review of a fantastic film like Zero Dark Thirty talking about the importance of female directors.

Now to the movie. Zero Dark Thirty is a brilliant piece of filmmaking. When I watch movies like this one, I’m in awe of how the writer and director are able to jam so much information into a cohesive film. This is Bigelow’s Zodiac or JFK. Like those films, Zero Dark Thirty deals with an obsessed individual trying to solve a mystery while displaying extreme amounts of research and theories. Zero tells the story of Maya (Jessica Chastain giving her best performance since Tree of Life) thrown into a world of torture and espionage, tasked with finding the elusive Osama bin Laden. Like Silence of the Lambs’ Clarice Starling, Maya is a woman in a man’s world (and one could argue Bigelow is as well, but that’s a little obvious). In Lambs, director Jonathan Demme constantly framed the petite Jodie Foster standing next to large, muscular men. In Zero, Bigelow has characters refer to Maya as “the girl” or have them ignore her entirely. It’s obvious that Maya is the smartest, strongest character in the movie, but she must work for the others to understand this. At one point during a political meeting, Maya interrupts the men to explain what they are missing and the men look shocked. One man asks, “and who are you, dear” and she responds “I’m the mother fucker who found his place, sir.”

Everyone knows how the film ends. *SPOILER ALERT* Osama bin Laden is killed. But the leading up to his death is one of the most suspenseful scenes I’ve seen in a very long while. The Navy Seals hired with infiltrating bin Laden’s fortress are extreme professionals. When he is finally killed, it is not done in “showy” or cinematic fashion. Instead, he is shot… quickly and almost boringly. The Seal who kills him doesn’t even realize what he did. I found the direction in this scene fantastic. In lesser (or more, lets say, cinematic) hands, his death would be shown in slow motion to extend the action and emotion of the scene. But this is not that kind of film. This is not 300 or Kill Bill. It is extremely realistic, much like a documentary.

I’m quite surprised that Kathryn Bigelow didn’t get a Best Director nomination in the Academy Awards. It seems they pick the lesser of all the best directors in any given year and nominate them. I mean come on, Behn Zeitlin or Michael Haneke are NOT better directors than Bigelow, Tarantino or even Ben Affleck, but I digress. The direction was the most interesting aspect of Zero Dark Thirty. I can’t wait to see it again to catch more information (some of the Palestian names get confusing, especially when many people have 5 different aliases). I rate it 17/17 on the Sitzmatic scale (or a 10/10 on the Deuce Scale).

Has anyone else seen this? Did you like it? I’m interested because I know it’s gotten a lot of controversy from both political sides.

I also need to mention that I was disappointed after seeing it. It’s hard to put my finger on what bothered me about it, but I think the major difference between this and Lord of the Rings is the fact that not as much is at stake and the movie felt much more “light” than the other holy trilogy. Now I know the book is much more kid-oriented and playful and that definitely comes through in the film. The entire film seems much more goofy and comical. Peter Jackson tries to make the movie feel important and give the sense of dread and foreboding, but the stakes are not simply as high as having the whole world end and becoming a slave to Sauron. Parts of the film actually reminded me more of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves than any of the Rings films.

One thing I noticed throughout the entire film that bothered me to no end was Jackson’s over reliance on CGI characters and sets. What made Lord of the Rings feel so real and amazing was partly due to the wonderful sets, makeup and special effects used to make every scene believably. There are parts in the Hobbit where it was obviously filmed in front of a blue screen and gave the entire film a fake look. Sometimes it looked like a filmed play if that makes any sense. The thing that bothered me the most was that Jackson animates things that do not need to be computer generated. Trees and bushes are animated for no reason at all. Almost all of the orcs and goblins are now CGI even though it was proven that men in makeup looks perfectly fine and awesome. I can’t see it being cheaper making so many things animated so it kind of confuses me as to why they would do this. I’m sure it has something’s do with the 3D and 48 fps but it just felt lazy to me.

Now that I’ve gotten everything out that I didn’t Iike, now I can mention the things I did love which was basically everything else. When Hobbiton first makes its appearance, I instantly got goosebumps. Howard Shore brings back the Hobbit theme and it feels like we are seeing (and hearing) old friends again. Martin Freeman is FANTASTIC as Bilbo Baggins. He is simply the perfect Hobbit and probably the best casting next to Ian McKellen as Gandolf. There are some fantastic set pieces and some cool character designs that make one remember when Guillermo del Toro was attached (he still received a co-writer credit). I still wonder what a del Toro Hobbit would be or look like.

Overall, I enjoyed the Hobbit very much and can’t wait to see the next two, but there are things holding it back from being a classic that simply make me sad and disappointed. I still give it a 10/10 but just barely.

First of all, the movie is boring. I think this might be the first time I’ve been bored during a Spielberg movie since Amistad (the movie that Lincoln most reminds me of). It’s not that the story’s necessarily boring, it’s the fact that Spielberg is so keen on making every detail and fact correct that he forgets he’s telling a story. The film is bogged down with loads of political speak like “we need a 2/3rds majority” and “a concurrent resolution of amendment” and “where does poop drop”. Most of the film is spent with politicians being told how to vote or arguing why they vote. And other times “lobbyists” I guess they are called, run amok getting shot at by “renegade Democrats” and argue amongst themselves who they will turn. I may be in the minority, but most of the time I had no idea why any of this was happening. It made me feel like a moron.

Every character talks in speeches. It made me wonder if Lincoln ever had a normal conversation with someone without resorting to a story ending in a lesson or moral. Every piece of dialogue in the film feels like it was worked over to sound as important and flowery as possible. I recently watched Schindler’s List again and noticed that Spielberg spends more time than needed mentioning EVERY name on the list. Any time someone reads the list, they say 30 names before it cuts. I know he is trying to pay respect to those who actually lived during the Holocaust, but the IDEA could have been understood with only a few names read. The same thing happens in Lincoln when the vote finally occurs, every House member’s name is read along with their vote. It became monotonous.

Not everything is bad. Day-Lewis gives another amazing performance, one that is more subtle than his last few roles. Sally Field is fantastic and feels like the only “real” character in the whole movie. She stole every scene she was in, which is hard working with classic scene-chewers like Tommy Lee Jones or Day-Lewis. The cinematography was also very beautiful, but that again is expected coming from Janusz Kaminski (aka one of 3 greatest living cinematographers).

I don’t really know what I was expecting from this film. Maybe more heart? Spielberg haters always claim his films have TOO much heart and emotion. Maybe he was trying to go against what people expected of him. I’m not sure.