Danged busy this week. Danged busy. I hardly had any time at home. Sunday morning was spent trying to wake up after the insanity of ShatAttack VI. Got home and I was less than with it.
Sullivan’s Travels: To say the least, this is a zany comedy. A wealthy Hollywood writer decides he needs some authenticity for his film about the common man, so he has to go live among them. Cue total madness. As Sullivan goes through a series of strange adventures, he begins to see the world in a new way. And when things get really, really bad, he comes to see a truth he’d never have imagined. Veronica Lake is charmingly sweet as the failed actress turned vagabond companion.
Kick-Ass 2: I don’t even know where to begin. I enjoyed the heck out of Kick-Ass, but this film fails in nearly every way you can think of. The script is laughably bad. The delivery of the lines almost uniformly terrible. The score and soundtrack are excruciating. And the cinematography and special effects are bargain-basement. Every bit of charm and fun the first film had is nowhere to be seen in this train wreck. Every ounce of emotion is false in the extreme, with every dramatic moment hitting without any of the needed build-up. The movie reflects well on everyone who had nothing to do with it. My hat’s off to them. To every last person who didn’t work on this movie.
Bullet to the Head: Walter Hill strikes back. He’s old and he’s lost much of his magic. There’s nothing especially wrong with the film, I guess. It’s just not very interesting. Just kind of blah.
On Thursday night, friend Paul and I headed out to the Alamo Drafthouse to watch the ‘Cornetto Trilogy.’ Had a ton of fun. Soooooo much popcorn. Brad, Lisa, and graphic novel club member Lindsey were also there, and Brad managed to win a signed poster for Shaun of the Dead, which was pretty badass.
Shaun of the Dead: This movie is so much fun. And I love that while it manages to be very funny, it’s also a pretty good zombie (enough with the “z” word!) movie. The cast is excellent, the script tight, and the jokes fast and furious. There’s some good stuff about love, friendship, family, and growing up.
Hot Fuzz: The Shaun of the Dead folks returned with this ode to 70s cops & cults movies. Many of the same cast members return with some new additions to shake things up. Awesome older actors get some meaty supporting work, too. It’s funny, violent, and filled with goofed up action.
The World’s End: The third film in the ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ this film reunites many of the same cast and crew in another weird and funny adventure. In trying to recapture a moment from their youth, a band of friends confront past mistakes while things in their home town go tits-up. It’s probably the weakest of the three, but it’s still quite good.
Friday night was our next meeting of the graphic novel club, where we discussed Fatale. It was not universally liked, but dang I enjoyed it. Taps into all my favorite Noir and Lovecraft loves. Sadly, I had to kind of rush through the three volumes, as I didn’t get them until fairly late, and man, I’ve been a busy bee lately.
The Love Merchant: Some truly epic bad acting accompanies this not especially interesting sexploitation film from the 60s. Lots of mod folk dance around and read dialog off cards. It’s basically Indecent Proposal in black & white. Probably fun for a group watch, but nothing to seek out. Oddly little nudity for this sort of film. But great awful 60s club dancing (the girls are like Peanuts characters).
The Layout: A dissatisfied young woman is looking for love, but not getting quite what she wants in this Joe Sarno trip. That’s the start. From there, a bunch of girls start exploring various forms of sexuality. There’s a lot of nudity and some kink that is mostly just cute and awkward by today’s standards. There seem to be a bunch of shots of people looking at the camera, making me think it was a lot of one-take and done shooting. Lots and lots and lots of fairly normal looking women taking their clothes off. In the end, it seems that the path toward happiness for all these women is lesbian sex and battery operated massagers. Probably a third of this film’s runtime was non-graphic masturbation scenes. That does seem a touch excessive.
I started watching the show Orphan Black…which hasn’t impressed me at all. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep going with it. So far, it just seems like another knock-off of Dark Angel/Alias/Dollhouse. And it hasn’t got anything to make it stand out. Plus, it has the sassy gay friend, a character archetype that seems to have replaced the sassy black friend, which had replaced the sassy fat friend, which had replaced the sassy dark haired friend. The sassy friend is a terrible archetype.
That’s about it. I got a bit of time to relax and finally sleep on Saturday. But it looks like the next several weeks are going to be super busy again. What’s up with that?
-Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment