IMDb #235 Review: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Source: Wikipedia

A miserably married couple invites two young newlyweds into their home. The situation accelerates downhill faster than the laws of gravitation should allow.

It’s after midnight, the older couple drink profusely despite being sozzled from a previous party, and the hosts despise each other and their guests. When somebody brings up the older couple’s son, it spirals into madness.

The title hinges on a bad pun, the first of many of brutally unfunny jokes. Despite the backdrop of a prestigious university, the characters behave like social cripples. The older couple drags the youngsters into their marital spats and faculty politics and semantic squabbles.

Speaking of language, the dialogue is shockingly obscene for the 1960’s. As in, it explicitly references to certain body parts and functions. Fortunately, the younger man is a biologist (no, he's not from the Maths department, nor is he the History department). And he's certainly equipped to explore the biology of the older professor’s wife.

The result is nastier and even less fulfilling than The Graduate.

It’s incredible how much of the IMDb Top 250 consists of uncomfortable dinner parties. Hell, I could manage that. Just invite all my readers/spammers in for a Friday night bender and leave a camcorder running. I’ll collect my Oscars in the morning, thank you.

Recommended for happy couples, genial hosts, and the nonreligious, as an instruction manual how NOT to do it.

132 excruciating minutes.

IMDb #236 Review: Castle in the Sky (1986)

Source: Wikipedia

Strap on your steampunk goggles for the ultimate rollicking yarn from Studio Ghibli, an adventure about a pigtailed princess and her magic rock and the enormous tree they send soaring into the mesosphere.

But seriously? It’s gold. Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese Disney, strikes again.

A girl drops into a mining-town monkey-boy’s life–shenanigans commence. Pirates pop up, a posse of ponces headed by a motherly shrew chasing after the ingenue’s sparkly plot token. Then the military rolls in with their anachronistic arsenal. The countryside explodes into mayhem and sweet, sweet prepubescent romance.

Expect the Miyazaki hallmarks. Flight sequences (more than usual), evil government, gray morality, funny background events, blatant environmentalist messages. Also, some of the finest hand-drawn animation in the business. Glass, water, clouds, and DESTRUCTION have seldom looked so good.

Even better, the Disney dub adds flavor to a quiet film. Bonus orchestral music by Joe Hisaishi. Funny throwaway lines. And a cavalcade of big-name voices.

To wit: Mark Hamill cavorts as the exposition-happy villain. Cloris Leachman squawks as a feisty old buccaneer lady. Anna Paquin, as the heroine, occasionally slips into her adorable native New Zealand accent. As far as dubs go, not bad.

Space left over? Story time. Miyazaki named the floating continent Laputa after a location in Gulliver’s Travels. Strangely, the great director neglected to recall that Jonathan Swift was a satirist–in Spanish, “la puta” translates neatly to “the whore.” The film might’ve proven difficult to market in Spanish-speaking countries.

Recommended for adventurous adolescents, picky snobby discerning otaku, and recovering acrophobes.

126 minutes.

IMDb #237 Review: Jurassic Park (1993)

Source: Wikipedia

In the far-flung future of 1993, where DNA decay doesn’t exist and computers age worse than B-list child actors, one man has a vision.

• First, resemble a creepy, pudgy, possibly insane Steven Spielberg. Check.
• Next, clone dinosaurs using blood from mosquitoes fossilized in amber, also frog DNA for unexplained reasons. Somehow, check.
• Finally, invite the public to an island theme park swarming with huge, murderous, science-spawned monstrosities.
• Mission accomplished.

But wait, intermediate step. Bring in paleontologists, a lawyer, and a world-famous mathematician (those exist?) to inspect the site and deem it a terrible idea. Frigging awesome, but still terrible.

Anticipate painfully lame educational tours, obnoxious children, and irritating quirks from the “rock star” chaos theorist. Then things get really bad.

The disgruntled IT guy screws over everyone. Not just his cheap-ass boss–everyone. For the crimes of demanding a decent paycheck and being a fat, traitorous, legally blind slob, he meets an embarrassing demise. So do some other people.

Suspense happens as the less unsympathetic humans scramble for shelter.

But we know who the real stars are. They’re apparently warmblooded, deficient in the feathers department, and exemplary of the finest special effects the early nineties could afford. No joke here: it’s the dinosaurs. These beautiful bastards roar, chase, bite, and brutally dismember just as well today. (Note for posterity: dino action starts around the one-hour mark. Skip the human palaver, bring on the bloodshed.)

Best (?) of all, certain kitschy touches–juvenile gags, cheesy lines, and silly sound effects–reach out to a broader audience, so kids can enjoy the primal carnage too.

127 minutes.

IMDb #238 Review: La Strada (1954)

Source: Wikipedia

For nearly two hours (months, in-story), a weird girl follows a beefy alcoholic grouch until tragedy strikes like a brick to the teeth. It’s black and white and Italian, so it’s art.

Yes, there’s more to it. Aforementioned grouch is Zampanò, a “traveling artist” so poor he lives in his motorcycle trailer. He’s a strongman. Meaning, whenever he musters enough bravado to draw a crowd, he follows a routine:

1. Remove shirt. (Very important.)
2. Flex.
3. Attach chain with quarter-inch links around chest.
4. Flex so as to break chain.
5. Collect booze money in hat.

He buys a girl from her mother (just go with it) to wear mime makeup, beat a drum, and pass the cash-collecting hat. First she’s unhappy, then slightly less unhappy, then…well…look, you’ve seen movies before, ain’t ya?

Problem is, Z-man isn’t exactly a diamond in the rough. More like a lump of coal. He sure acts dumb as one. He starts drunken brawls, stomps around, and looks funny in a pinstripe suit. As for the girl he bought? Early in their relationship, he whips her with a switch till she learns to play the trumpet. Their relationship hardly improves.

He’s a grump, a drunk, a womanizer. She wobbles between smiling sadly and mewling like a mopey puppy.

However, they meet a circus troupe, and a charismatic tightrope walker who insists everything has a purpose.

Is this a comedy? A romance? It skeeves me out.

A tragedy? It’s like watching the first act of Beauty and the Beast in super-slow motion.

Fortunately, it’s art.

104 minutes.

IMDb #239 Review: The Help (2011)

Source: Wikipedia

This movie came from a novel, which can mean any of many terrible things.

Most writers write what they know–who they are, what they do, where they live. In this case, it's a young woman writing in Jacksonville, Mississippi. Atoning for the sin of small imagination is difficult but not impossible: tell a stupendous story. Which, fortunately, she does.

Instead of hustling pool or falling victim to sultry housewives, our heroine sticks up for black maids in the horribly racist Deep South. Progress is slow, hard, painful. But, as with many protagonists in historical fiction, we root for her because she thinks the way we do today.

First she solicits a maid’s advice for a cleaning column in the local newspaper. Strangely, treating people like people tends to make them like you. Life stories trickle in, then pour in, from one, two, a dozen maids with horror stories about modern day slavery. A book deal is born.

Our authoress and her co-conspirators work in secret. Their project is not only illegal, it is social suicide. The consequences? Unjust arrest. Blacklisting. The tinkly tittering of tarnished southern belles who’ll tear your heart out with a condescending smile.

In a matter of minutes, I swung from rage at injustice, to maniacal laughter at justice served, back to rage, and finally to grudging acceptance.

It’s a brilliant chick flick that hits all the buttons. Predominantly female cast, feel-good story (which takes breaks for bitter realism), pointless romance…and, rarest of all, genuine heart.

Recommended for unthanked housekeepers, mothers (redundant?), blacks and whites and everything in between.

146 minutes.

IMDb #240 Review: Roman Holiday (1953)

Source: Wikipedia

We plop back into mid-twentieth century Rome, when the people were inherently classier and the world appeared more black-and-white.

Bored with the demands of royalty, Princess Diana v.1 abandons her luxury accommodations to experience normal city life–the opposite fantasy of most girls her age. Instead, she collapses in the streets from exhaustion.

Fortunately, there’s an average Joe named–well, Joe–who takes her in, because he happens to be a respectable human being. Unfortunately, he's also an American, a journalist who recognizes the princess and an opportunity for the biggest story of his career. Which he doesn't tell her.

Hijinks ensue.

They frolic in the city, her for the fun and him for the scoop, at least at first. Then their relationship, rooted in the fertile dung of lies, blossoms into something…more.

It’s a busy day. As “Anya Smith,” the princess adopts Audrey Hepburn's iconic pixie cut, samples gelato, hijacks a moped, crashes a moped, falls into forbidden love. Average Joe strings her along, calls up his photographer buddy to sneak sweet pics, goes with “Anya” to a dance on a boat, starts a brawl at a dance on a boat, and faces a moral dilemma. Meanwhile, the royal entourage panics.

This movie oozes charm. It exemplifies a classic fish-out-of-water yarn with some very lovely fish.

But amid the hilarity lurks the nagging notion that it can’t last. She has royal responsibilities, he has a job. The holiday has to end.

Reality ensues.

The last scene contains the loudest silence, the most meaningful eye contact, that I’ve ever seen in any movie.

Recommended for cheapskate tourists, neglectful journalists, and secretly romantic cynics.

118 minutes.

IMDb #241 Review: The Big Sleep (1946)

Source: Wikipedia

There seem to be three distinct detective personalities. The Holmes knockoff, an eccentric bastard who works independently, usually in contempt of authorities but eventually earning their grudging respect (e.g., Auguste Dupin, Hercule Poirot, Gregory House).

There's also The innocuous snoop, usually a kid or a kindly old lady, who attracts trouble by being nice and nosy (e.g., Miss Marple, Father Brown, Nancy Drew).

Then there’s this guy. The hard-boiled detective. The tough loner, tragic lover, nihilistic wisecracker, he haunts the crime-ridden urban sprawl with a solemn sense of duty (e.g., Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Batman). No fun at parties, but objectively cooler, by virtue of being so relentlessly depressing.

Humphrey Bogart lends his sad face and nasal drawl to a private dick (or “shamus,” he calls himself) poking his nose into a blackmail case. Driven by curiosity, dumb luck, and a 1938 Plymouth DeLuxe, he gets back more trouble than is worth $25 a day plus expenses.

Here we have a noir film with all the trappings. Trench coats, fedoras, booze, cigarettes. Chilly, witty banter. Not just one, but two femme fatales, a rich old cripple’s pair of shady-ass daughters. A shamelessly melodramatic orchestral soundtrack. Dames screaming, guys dropping from one slug on the mug.

No discernible message, no social commentary, just pure plot. And what a plot. Lies, corpses, sketchy characters, and gambits pile up, then collapse in an avalanche of befuddling yet profoundly entertaining mess.

I recommend it for daytime sleepers, nostalgic old people (fine, Grandpa, I confess: folks were classier back in the day), and amateur sleuths seeking badass lessons.

114 minutes.

IMDb #242 Review: The Graduate (1967)

Source: Wikipedia

Apparently, once a college overachiever gets slapped with a diploma, he dissolves into a tepid milksop inexplicably attractive to the opposite sex.

Apparently, adults are self-absorbed, socially myopic, manipulative bastards. Moreover, they spew unsolicited advice at slightest provocation (e.g., breathing), enforce tyrannical control of their grown children, and make sexual advances on said children despite being middle-aged and married.

Apparently.

Being somewhat sensible, the title character (very young Dustin Hoffman) worries about his future. Not that he’s inclined to do much except brood. Then the icy-hot temptress Mrs. Robinson slinks into his life, just like the enormous spider crawling down the back of your neck right now.

Mrs. Robinson’s motives are murkier than your spider’s, who at least has a warm place to snuggle into before an immanent squashing. The white wannabe-widow’s methods are far more deplorable. She tests, teases, tantalizes her way into the protagonist’s pants, to less than surprising results. Our hero exhibits the moral fortitude and emotional range of a moist wank-rag.

To complicate things, the hot mom’s hotter daughter drops in from Berkeley. Things happen. (Apparently, confidence is a sexually transmitted disease.)

Just because I cringed every scene doesn’t make the movie bad. The dialogue’s realistic, the situations believable, the tan lines staggering.

And the music. Simon and Garfunkel nail the soundtrack–to the wall, by the ears. Their tingly harmonies enrich montages of boring airports, lonesome moping, and speeding in the red hot rod/portable Freudian metaphor.

Recommended for the happily married, the unhappily matriculated, and shotgun wedding planners.

105 minutes.

IMDb #243 Review: Prisoners (2013)

Source: Wikipedia

How far would you go to save the ones you love?

Too far.

In modern America, an idyllic Thanksgiving dinner party shatters when two young daughters go missing. Then it becomes Taken with kindergartners. If Liam Neeson were a blue-collar dude from suburban Pennsylvania with no special training, no killing experience, and no qualms.

An unrecognizable Hugh Jackman stars as the mad dad. Not-Wolverine goes far to rescue the girls, from combing the woods, to talking to police, to abducting and torturing his prime suspect.

Yes, torture. Beating, scalding, isolation, sensory deprivation, presumably starvation. Even when evidence veers other directions, mad bad dad keeps at it.

The real hero? Detective Loki, whose badass name punctures the brutal realism. His is a textbook case of how police work sucks. Along with hard hours, fruitless searching, no leads, false leads, constricting protocol, and ungrateful victims, there’s the threat of getting shot in the face. And an asshole boss who looks like Alfred Hitchcock and spouts shit like, “We can’t always save the day. We’re just cops. Janitors.”

I wouldn’t classify Prisoners as entertainment. Art, sure. Endurance test, definitely. A slow burn, like the underground coal fires in Centralia. When the ground falls through, you're burning too.

Who are the prisoners? The kids, the kidnappers, the cops, the dads? The viewers?

Sorry for the lack of lightheartedness. This film saps joy, like Wal-Mart missing person posters dating back to the 80s.

Recommended for wannabe detectives, doomsday preppers, and NOT for overprotective parents of young children.

153 minutes.

IMDb #244 Review: Papillon (1973)

Source: Wikipedia

This film chronicles the bromance between a scrawny Frenchman in coke-bottle glasses and a stubbly bag of testosterone named Steve McQueen, I mean Papillon. Our beefcake gets his ridiculous moniker from a butterfly tattoo on his rugged sternum, also on account of being French. Sorry, Steve-O, biggest movie star of the seventies you may be, but you is as French as a Belgian waffle.

The intro plops our heroes into yet another “inescapable” prison camp. As usual, most cons plot escape from the first step off the boat, with varying degrees of success–failure or death.

However, this penal colony resides like MRSA in French Guiana, the armpit of South America. And the pit stains are spectacular. The damp shirts, rotten teeth, muddy swamps, and exotic pests, all send a strong sense of the region. Namely, GOOD GOD, IT STINKS. Which mirrors my impression of the movie.

Masterpiece or whatever, it bored me. Some films are entertainment, some art…here, things just happen. Usually bad things, which then get worse. With no apparent message, unless you mean, “Rock-headed persistence might pay off, maybe, eventually, oh shit never mind.”

The third act drags like a keelhauling. Worse, it repeatedly indulges in Deus Ex Who-The-Hell-Are-You-People.

In one excruciating sequence, the titular meathead languishes in solitary confinement, lamenting his wasted life. Watching it, I could relate.

Frankly, I’d rather watch tranquilized film historians slobber through a doctoral dissertation on the symbolic significance of coconuts.

Recommended for incarcerated insomniacs, the Devil’s Island tourist department, and female inmates.

150 minutes.

IMDb ??? Review: Underground (1995)

Source: Wikipedia

What. The. Hell. Was. That.

In this Serbian film (not THAT one), two exquisitely mustached sociopaths run amok in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the opening credits and over the whole three hour runtime. They save and kiss and punch each other, squabble over a woman, and spark bloody revolutions. (According to Ten Seconds of Googling, the director wanted FIVE hours.)

This manic tragicomedy spans generations, decades, wars. Or what the poor bastards who spend decades in a bomb cellar think is one war.

A.D. 1941. Some battered citizens of Belgrade retreat underground to make weapons to fight the Nazis. But the war ends. The brilliant bastard running the operation convinces his people that World War II still rages. While his comrades toil, he sells their guns and the movie rights to his exaggerated memoirs. Underground, children grow up. People marry. Then some wander outside…

It’s a strange ride. A surreal emotional carousel: constant motion, fluctuation between high drama and low comedy, and a persistent sensation of nausea. There’s slapstick, pointless death, and spontaneous brass ensembles. Pratfalls, mistaken identity, and electroshock torture. Weddings, funerals, movies, and a chimp in a tank. A grisly finale with genocide, complex politics, and unconvincing old-age makeup.

If there’s any message, it’s too obscure or too obvious for me.

Overall, it’s a bizarre, rambling parable about exploitation, enforced ignorance, and facial hair. To quote one mustached sociopath, “We’re all crazy. We just haven’t been diagnosed yet.”

Recommended for psychedelically inclined historians, mole people, and clinically depressed former Yugoslavians.

167 minutes.

IMDb ??? Review: Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1994)

Surprise, monolinguals! The title’s in French because the whole movie’s in French, the language English can thank for its longer, stuffier words. Our joie de vivre, esprit de corps, raison d’être, without which we’d succumb to ennui and l’appel du vide.

A French model rescues an injured German shepherd (dog, not sheep-herder) and returns it to the grouchy old owner. This man’s sole pleasure in retirement, apart from nursing loneliness and neglecting pets, is to snoop on saucy local phone calls via Ham radio.

Through this plot development, we discover the unlikely ties that bind strangers who live on the same street. Also, the entire population of France is a seething cauldron of hot, sweaty infidelity.

How to describe this film? The third entry in a trilogy I’ll never finish. A glacier-paced common-place drama tinged with bittersweet realism and Dickensian coincidences. A study of human relationships and distractingly ancient telephones.

Because it’s slow, serious, and represented on the IMDb Top 250, I probably missed boatloads of symbolism. It’s dark, not for objectionable content, but because in some scenes you can’t make out a blasted thing.

One thing: for a movie called Red, there’s remarkably little red. Except lipstick, a thematically significant billboard (i.e., it shows up more than once), and the profound lack of blood geysers.

On that note, the soundtrack is excellent. Instead of Akira’s 80’s-tastic sci-fi techno cheese-mania, Rouge broods to symphonic orchestra and classy classical-esque.

Recommended for dog lovers, Francophiles, and overzealous lovers/law students.

99 minutes.

IMDb ??? Review: Akira (1988)

Source: Wikipedia

Hell yes, anime.

The bottom slot changes position more than an electron running for president, but on 01-01-15, it settled on Akira.

In the late eighties, this gritty imported classic slugged Western audiences square in the gut. It blasted a Japanimation-shaped hole in the chest we’ve been struggling to plug ever since.

Fine, I confess--I’ve seen this one. The anime bug caught me young. In middle school, Naruto on Toonami snagged my feeble pubescent attention span. I hopped aboard the weeaboo wagon waving a rubber kunai and squealing, “Dattebayo!”

Let us never speak of this again.

Like many popular Asian cartoons, Naruto suffers from tedious monologues, highly stylized action sequences, and clunky dubbing. Akira, however, offers…tedious monologues, highly stylized action sequences, and clunky dubbing. (Don’t match the voices to the flapping lips; you’ll sprain your brain.)

At least the 2001 Pioneer English dub’s roster stars Johnny Yong Bosch (Vash the Stampede, Ichigo Kurosaki, Lelouch Lamperouge, everyone who's NOT Stephen Blum) and his immortal name-yelling...

"TETSUO!”

KANEDA!

“TETSUOOOOOOOOOOO!”

KANEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

“TETSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Also like Naruto, the hero and anti-hero spawn a bromance that could engulf planets.

Sound quality aside, the animation is BEAUTIFUL. Every frame of lovingly crafted ultraviolence screams genius, obsessive attention to detail, and probably agonizing wrist cramps.

Call it the rebellious step-cousin of Studio Ghibli (repeat offenders on the 250), replete with motorcycle chases, brutal violence, urban destruction, drug-induced progeria, and toon boobs. (Objectively superior? Perhaps.)

Recommended for mature audiences who can appreciate spectacular animation, blood geysers, and awesomely awful dubbing.

121 minutes.

Where's Kingsman (#245)?

Not out in theaters, not yet on DVD/BR.

So, evading a morass of morally complex acquisition methods (i.e., shitty cam-rips), I've put off viewing and reviewing "Kingsman: The Secret Service" until it's legally available to the general public.

To compensate, I'll post reviews an older, shakier rendition of this list. IMDb was different then. We all were. Four months is an eternity in Internet years.

As for sifting through the dregs of the Top 250, "eternity" is an understatement.

IMDb #246 Review: Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Source: Wikipedia

Riding a wave of Little Mermaid money, Disney dives headfirst into the “tale as old as time” about a poofy-lipped French bookworm exploring bestiality.

Wait, no, it’s about a doe-eyed waif with Asperger’s who bumbles into a creepy old castle populated by animated inanimate objects, and together they have zany adventures as she discovers the manifold joys of Stockholm syndrome.

Actually, it’s about a massive multimedia powerhouse that pumps budget, bowdlerization, and Alan Menken earworms into a Brothers Grimm folktale to create the ultimate blend of 2D animation and early 90s CGI, to sell like heroin-laced hotcakes and keep the liquid nitrogen flowing in Uncle Walt’s cryogenic preservation chamber.

Which is why you should go watch it right now, under the unfathomable circumstances you haven’t already.

I’m serious, it’s a Disney classic. Do yourself a favor and splurge on the Special Edition. It adds revamped picture quality and a deleted song-and-dance sequence that contributes approximately nothing to the plot but looks real pretty.

That’s really all there is to say on the matter.

I have HOW much space left? Oh geez.

Details I never noticed as a youngster:

• In the inciting incident recounted via stained-glass windows, the spoiled prince was eleven. The whole castle gets punished for his acting like an eleven-year-old. Also, hot enchantresses are apparently roaming rural eighteen-century France. 
• The whole story happens in, like, a week. 
• Despite the “true beauty is found within” moral, the heroine and *human!* Beast are fortunately quite attractive. 

Recommended for…

…frigging anybody.

84 minutes.

IMDb #247 Review: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (2003)

Source: Wikipedia

At an idyllic lake temple, through a gate illustrated with flexing buff dudes, there lives a kindly old Buddhist monk and his young ward. This little bald kid is the WORST STUDENT EVER.

We follow their relationship through five seasons, spanning decades. Sadness ensues.

Spring. The problems start when the bored kid tortures animals for fun. The wise old man's karmic punishments do little to disinfect a rotten heart.

Summer. Years later, Korea's dumbest mother brings her ill daughter to stay at the temple for "spiritual renewal." Her teenage daughter, with a celibate monk and an adolescent male, living in a remote area and sleeping in the same. This goes about as well as you'd expect. At least the monk remains honorable.

When the time arrives for the girl to return to the world of blue jeans and shopping malls, the boy follows the booty. To the surprise of no one, least of all his guardian.

Autumn. The prodigal finally returns--older, cockier, shittier. As a twitchy fugitive from justice, he seeks refuge, and willingly receives the monk's punishment. Then the cops show up. The monk proves a generous host, to the astonished delight of all. (Except the cat, whose tail makes a poor calligraphy brush.) Delayed but not deterred, tragedy strikes.

Winter...I can't spoil. Just know it offers a ray of hope--then snuffs it out and drowns it in ice water.

As for the next spring? I don't have the words or the heart to find them.

I don't understand Korea's vendetta against happiness. Maybe it's meant to reflect nature. The setting's staggering beauty brings out nuanced portraits of the small cast and shines a favorable light on an existence dedicated to humble piety. But, for all the simple beauty, expect a heaping helping of nature's brutal cruelty as well.

IMDb #248 Review: Solaris (1972)

Source: Wikipedia

A gloomy Russian cosmonaut investigates phenomena aboard a space station orbiting a sentient planet—eventually. This is an Andrei Tarkovsky film. I believe his name translates to “Tester of Patience” and “MOOOORE slow-panning environmental shots!”

So yes, crazy shit’s going down at an exoplanet (inexplicably named after our Sun) out in god-knows-where space. But first, let’s have a long, dispassionate conversation about it. “Tell don’t show” seems to be the rule when showing would be obscenely expensive. Also, let’s watch five solid minutes of silent driving. That’ll teach the critics.

After a hand-waved interplanetary commute, our deadpan intrepid hero ventures into the metal Frisbee, whose interior resembles an abandoned City of the Future from an old-school World's Fair.

It's also criminally understaffed. There’s a crazy guy who's locked himself in the lab; another guy who "killed himself" and left a rambling suicide video; and a paranoid doctor who's horrible at hiding secrets. (Yeah, turns out the sea's alive, so we just blasted it with X-rays. That cool?)

Then the “Visitors” arrive.

Because of *insert pseudoscience technobabble explanation*, the conscious Ocean attempts communication with the humans via human beings plucked from their memories. Our hero sees his dead wife. She starts asking existential questions. Unconventional romance ensues.

You've just read the grievously abridged version. Imagine a cosmic horror story; now replace the horror with angsty romance and trippy dream sequences.

We haven't even touched the philosophical discussions--dissertations on love, identity, reality and illusion, but mostly the human arrogance of  indiscriminately enforcing our culture on the universe.

Not exactly a popcorn flick. A more exotic dish with an odd flavor meant for savoring, not appeasing the appetite or nourishing the body.

Actually, this movie's mere existence serves demonstrates that speculative fiction was alive and well in Soviet Russia, just waaaaaay out there on some bizarre planet whizzing around a nameless star.

169 minutes.

IMDb #249 Review: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Source: Wikipedia

A sleazebag journalist schmoozes and smooches through the rich, famous, beautiful women of 1960s Rome, and I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for the bastard.

He dreams of writing literature, **high art**, but feels trapped in the gossip columns. It doesn't help that he chases every pretty tail in the immediate vicinity. His poor girlfriend—first time we see her, she's flopped out on the floor, gasping for breath, having poisoned herself. Sadly, she survives to endure this despicable prick with the rest of us.

But there’s hope. A vivacious American film star visits Rome. A giggling floozy, statuesque dumb blonde. She revitalizes his life for a while, then trickles off-screen. Or something.

This movie was difficult to follow.

Scads of colorful one-note characters flit onscreen to do their duties and subsequently skitter off. Plot points pop up, pop back down. Conversations meander, or segue into tastefully unobtrusive philandering.

And methinks Fellini loves his show-within-a-show sequences, whether nightclub, cabaret, circus, or spontaneous rock-and-roll cover by a jazz band.

Somewhere there’s a satire about celebrity worship that remains scarily relevant today. Somewhere there’s a warning against unbridled hedonism, as demonstrated by the dysfunctional upper-upper class. Somewhere, so I hear, there’s even a comedy. I had to dig for it, but only unearthed the fossilized skeleton of an enjoyable film.

Philosophical musing? Social commentary? Revolutionary artistry? Bounced off my drooping eyelids.

In the end, I identify with the journalist protagonist, trapped in the “sweet life” of watching lovely, wealthy, detestable cretins make themselves miserable in pursuit of fun.

180 minutes.

IMDb #250 Review: The Hustler (1961)

Source: Wikipedia

America, the 1960s, when men were men and women were objects. When people drank like fish and smoked like napalmed Vietnamese fishermen. When slick tricksters with ridiculous monikers like “Fast Eddy” and “Minnesota Fats” dominated the pool table and relieved morons of their money.

The game goes thus. The hustler ambles into a pool joint, all smiles and jokes and naivete. Eyeing the felt table, he invites dummies barflies to a game. The bets start small, because a dollar meant something then.

The hustler keeps losing but keeps raising the bets. The marks winners play along. Stakes dangerously high, right on cue, the hustler trounces the other players suckers. Things go well, they fork over the cash. Things go south, they break his thumbs.

Paul Newman plays a pool hustler, who goes from the top of the rat heap to the bottom to clawing his way back up. Midway through life’s journey, he falls prey to two primary predators of professional liars: better liars and big men with big fists.

On the road to recovery, he shacks up with a lovely alcoholic alias Sarah (real name: Sarah).

Sleazy, skeevy, and cynical, this one dragged. I wanted to sink the metaphorical eight-ball and get it over with. The character growth of a “born loser” should feel inspiring; this tastes bitter like spoiled whiskey. The ending sticks in your throat like you swallowed the bottle whole.

Recommended for charm school rejects, unprofessional gamblers, and nerds who can distinguish pool, billiards, and snooker.

135 minutes.

Hello, world!

Hi, Internet! Welcome to my infinitesimal slice of cyberspace.

Story time: I escaped college with a Creative Writing degree worth less than the paper it’s printed on. (Note the fancy paper, gilded lettering, and tens of thousands of dollars in direct subsidized loans.) Armed with a command of the participial phrase, I’m out to spread culture to people who, like me, read crap on the Internet instead of doing anything productive. Because contributing to society is for doctors, engineers, and municipal solid waste workers.

School taught me one thing: I don't know jack. Finally, I can learn...

• How to train for a marathon
• How to make a retro video game
• How to balance a budget
• How to watch hundreds of hours of movies and blog about it FOR FREE

There are plenty of helpful guides on the internet. None of them are me.

Here, I’ll do things I’ve never done before, fail, and maybe learn something. You get to laugh at my suffering.

First target: movies. I’ve slurped on television’s glass teat since I could blink (and nod off). Twenty two years, and I’ve barely sucked the scum off the world’s most influential creative medium. Because there are way too many “best” movie lists: the Criterion Collection, the AFI Top 100, Roger Ebert’s. One problem—they’re chosen by experts, who know too much to know anything. Instead, I chose another list. YOURS, Internet denizens. The IMDb Top 250.

Over the next year, I’ll be reviewing one film per day, counting from 250 to 1, until 2016 rolls around or my eyeballs melt. The good, the great, the weird as shit, the boring as hell, all wrapped up in one biased package.

See you in the New Year.