Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Weekend movie report (speedy version)

I don't feel like writing in any depth about the movies I watched over the past few days, so here's the "quick and dirty" version, as some of my high school teachers and bosses like to say and which always gives me the creeps. First, I saw two films in the theater:
The Yes Men (Chris Smith, Sarah Price, Dan Ollman) This is a documentary from the same people who made "American Job," "American Movie," and "Home Movie," about a group of activist/pranksters with a fake WTO website. The website looks identical to the WTO's real website, except for the text, so they get a lot of invitations to speak at conferences on behalf of the WTO, which they gladly accept, even conning CNBC at one point. What's amazing about this film is the lack of reaction they get for their outrageous speeches from the rest of the conference attendees, even when those speeches include a tear-away suit revealing a gold jumpsuit with an extended inflatable phallus with a television screen on the tip so a boss can observe his workers when he's on vacation or at the gym and a plan to reconstitute McDonald's hamburgers from human waste and sell them to Third World countries. The documentary is slight (no background is given on the WTO and little is revealed about the Yes Men), but it's well worth seeing for the footage of the pranks.
I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell) This movie is full of good ideas. It's also a total mess. It plays like a rough draft, with eight main characters and almost as many story lines fighting for air in a movie that is less than two hours, and sometimes the script feels too much like a Charlie Kaufman wannabe. Mark Wahlberg, weirdly enough, is the only actor who really gets it. He plays his very funny character completely straight, in the process acting circles around Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Jason Schwartzman, Naomi Watts, and Jude Law, all of them trying to act as quirky as the script. He's the main reason to see it.
Here's what I watch on video:
The Thing (John Carpenter) I remember really liking this as a teenager. After seeing it again, I have to say I was disappointed with the script and its complete lack of characterization. But I loved the special effects, the atmosphere, and the scary scenes, and these things go a long way in a horror movie. In addition, fuck CGI. Modern special effects are so unbelievably crappy. The best looking effects were in horror movies in the seventies and eighties. Bring back hand-crafted effects, please. Also, Kurt Russell wears a hilarious, giant hat in a few scenes which my wife (that's so weird to say and type) and I dubbed the "Russellbrero."
Detective (Jean-Luc Godard) Light, breezy, cerebral, confusing, and funny. I liked it, but I did not love it. Sometimes Godard makes my brain hurt, sometimes he makes great movies, sometimes he's just fun. This one is fun, with a little bit of brain-hurt.
The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke) This is a great murder mystery/comedy with one of the most likable depictions of a married couple in American film. There's a great scene where the husband, William Powell, is being hugged by a woman, and his wife, Myrna Loy, walks in on them. The camera pauses on them both for several seconds, then Powell makes a funny face and Loy makes one back. No need for a big fight, an explanation, and a reconciliation. It's 1934 and the film has already deflated a generic scene we've seen too many times since.
No Telling (Larry Fessenden) What a disappointment. Fessenden makes intelligent, interesting horror films. "Habit" is one of the best vampire movies I've ever seen, and "Wendigo" is really good, too. This one, though, pretty much sucks. It's preachy, heavy-handed, and poorly acted. I'm glad I didn't see this first or I wouldn't have checked out his other movies. I can vouch for "Habit" and "Wendigo," though. Rent them. They are good.

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