IMDb #146 Review: Gone Girl (2014)

Source: Wikipedia

The runaway bestselling e-book gets the Hollywood treatment, and miraculously ticks off everything I hate about mysteries.

Not that it makes the ride any less enjoyable.

A seemingly ordinary middle-class guy -- the modern reader's self-insert "failed writer working dull normal job" -- returns home to find his seemingly perfect wife vanished. Almost immediately, the delicate situation spirals into fractal overcomplexity. A half-baked secret diary. A shed of unwanted Internet loot. A creepy yet wealthy ex-boyfriend played by Neil Patrick Harris. Murder, staged murder, concealed murder. And a tangled mess of manipulation and pretending and domestic abuse and, how'd you guess, infidelity.

Because of the twenty-first century, the media picks up the story. It goes viral. Explodes into a publicity marathon of Hunger Games-style celebrity image management.

Finally we find out where she is, and what happened, then what really happened, and then...

Holy shitballs, this is complicated. Um. Backtrack.

It starts with a fairytale romance, between an aspiring novelist and a brilliant beautiful blonde bombshell. Whose pushy parents obtained their ludicrous wealth by publishing children's book about the idealized image of their daughter. No pressure, honey.

But apparently romance runs on money, because once the recession hits, the genre switches. Out go the kinky sex games, here comes the nagging, the provoking, the public facade.

Back to the start of this sick scavenger hunt.

All the fuss about the fickleness of public sympathy has weight, because the character sympathy swings back and forth like a drunk yo-yo. It took me too long to realize: nothing's real, nobody's sympathetic, and everything is terrible. That realization makes the experience loads better, and I could almost enjoy the terrible things happening to these awful people in their toxic relationships.

For all the nods to classic mysteries, it's just not my cup of poisoned tea. I'd forgive the absurd contrivances if they labored toward a satisfactory conclusion. But no. BUT NO.

Smash-cut to the end credits, you wait the real ending, in vain. I wanted to reach behind the screen where all these lovely idiots live and bash in their brains with the bulkiest e-reader available to the general public.

149 minutes.

IMDb #147: Rebecca (1940)

Source: Wikipedia

The classic mystery novel gets the Hitchcock treatment, and miraculously avoids ticking off everything I despise about mysteries.

Not that it makes the heroine any more tolerable.

A typical boring self-insert female protagonist, she unwittingly snares the attention and affection of a handsome, brooding widower on a cliffside contemplating suicide. Thus she transitions from "professional companion" (of a chatty old hag) to a professional spouse (of George Fortiscue Maximilian de Winter, brusque and imperious iceberg whose hidden depths sink relationships and kill people).

The whirlwind romance deposits the boring girl in Oz. Only it's called Manderly, the Munchkins are the dour serving staff, the unhelpful Wizard is her temperamental husband. Also, the Wicked Witch is the deceased previous wife, whose bitter legacy permeates the house and its inhabitants and even the movie title. This Dorothy has no friends. But there is a fluffy little dog, who drags her to a lakeside cottage containing a crazy old lady and rooms full of secrets.

As the boring girl strives for unattainable standards of beauty and sophistication, she hones her remarkable talent for pissing off her husband. Not that it takes much effort. She's awkward, deferential, and he's temperamental, demeaning. REBECCA stands between them, preventing intimacy as effectively as a full-body condom.

So when the authorities find Rebecca's body, and the hole-riddled boat it sank in, thus begin the token mystery shenanigans. Overnight, the situation waxes toward ridiculousness. Was it suicide? Accident? Murder?

The case re-opens in court. The soap opera begins, reducing the boring heroine to blessed irrelevancy with more complex games afoot. Mind games! Pregnancy! Cancer! The plot threads twist until they fray and unravel. The douchebag car-salesman cousin tries to ruin everything with damning evidence. The reticent landlady discovers her inner pyromaniac.

It's a lovely package. Well-paced, well-delivered, well-unwrapped.

The loose plot threads, just enough string to hang yourself, tie up in to a neat knot. And the shaky marriage between abrasive Lawrence Olivier and his girl-of-the-week achieves questionable vindication.

130 minutes.

IMDb #148: The Deer Hunter (1978)

Source: Wikipedia

Vietnam sucked.

Just in case you needed a reminder.

In case you need another, watch these moderately likeable schmucks from a quiet Pennsylvania steel town go about their lives, then go into the service and ruin those lives on the other side of the world.

At the outset, grubby foundry workers wash up, dress up for a buddy's extravagant Russian Orthodox wedding. They drink, dance, hit on bridesmaids, hit their wives. The buddies resolve to venture forth on one last deer hunting expedition before ... well, before Nam. (A Green Beret, drinking alone, eloquently summarizes his war experience: "Fuck it.") They do so, and soon wish they'd planned the excursion better. Just like President Johnson's war policy.

So, Nam. Midway through, a completely different movie starts. Right away, they're prisoners of war. Playing Russian roulette to amuse their captors. (Note for posterity: generally unwise to hand the captured enemy a loaded gun.) Brutality ensues.

The band of buddies splinters. To the Army hospital, to the Saigon slums, even back to Pennsylvania minus two legs and joy of life. There's difficulty reconnecting with painfully awkward civilian friends, because they've become different people. The boys can't go deer hunting again, like old times. Can't hardly construct a simple sentence once PTSD acts up. Can't find peace except with a bullet in the noggin. Can't even accept amorous advances from an absent friend's lonely wife. (At first. Infidelity finds a way.)

One of the boys, missing in action, stays in Saigon, playing Russian roulette for the big bucks. Time transforms him into a mute death-seeker. Not that it stops our grim battered hero from going back in there to save him.

And in case no other single element was subtle enough, behold. An anemic rendition of "God Bless America," sung over a gloomy military funeral dinner.

We get it, guys. Vietnam sucked.

183 minutes.

IMDb #149: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Source: Wikipedia

A village of Scottish-accented Vikings kills dragons, until deciding not to.

There are several things wrong with this picture.

First, the sarcastic voiceover helpfully jokes that the weather is cruel and brutal. We see sunshine, not a single snowflake. The Vikings also fail to be cruel and brutal. Instead of raping and pillaging, they tend crops and raise sheep -- which makes them viable targets for raping and pillaging. Did I mention the adults have Scottish accent, whereas the kids sound mysteriously Canadian.

Once again, Dreamworks tries to be Pixar. Following the standard formula.

A bigheaded wuss decides that "X" will solve all his problems (become a prince, nab a girlfriend, or in this case, slay a dragon). So he does. Or tries. Once he breaks away from appeasing his unpleasable father figure, he instead establishes a symbiotic relationship with a puny crippled hell-beast. (The lesson: to crush your enemies, establish a codependent relationship so they can't cope without you.) As usual, the marketable doglike lizard cozies up to him, even arbitrarily understands human speech when it's funny or plot-relevant.

Meanwhile, the teen protagonist undergoes Spartan training to defeat the physics-defying lizards. The Understandably, the peer caricatures instantly dislike the hero. Because he's a bleeding coward, he compensates for lack of physical prowess with suspiciously precognizant mechanical inventions.

Enough about the hero. A word about the heroine. The typical "tough gal," the hardness quickly liquefies and she drops any individual goals once the bully squad suddenly understands the misunderstood hero.

Furthermore, the alleged Vikings put aside three centuries of bloodshed to unite against a freakishly convenient common enemy.

Yes, I personally despise this franchise. How'd you guess. But I can't fault everybody involved on the project. The animation's gorgeous. The soundtrack noticeably strives for critical mass of "suitably epic." The dragon designs are consistently clever (continuing even through the credits sequence). Blessedly, the hero isn't quite invincible. But virtually everything about the story irked me.

How do you train a dragon? Simple. Once the main guy's done it, anybody can do it in a snap. Because apparently dragon training is a frigging breeze.

98 minutes.

Retrospect: IMDb #200 - 150

Here we are again. Another fifty movies, another torrent of uninformed opinion. Which puts me among the vast majority of moviegoers who've never taken a film class in their lives. It's all hooey anyway. What what you like, maybe try new things to see if you like 'em.

I'm here to help.

Once again, the best and the worst, based on purely objective subjectivity.


THE CREAM

Amores Perros
Two years of Spanish classes, and I couldn't hope to remember the name Alejandro González Iñárritu. Now it's branded into my brain. Because this movie jolted me out of a stupor.

Back when I considered abandoning this project (not for the first time), this movie slugged me in the jaw. Its manic pace, shocking violence, deep-cutting drama, and overlapping non-linear stories, showed me what movies could be, and should be. Hence, I'm still watching, and you're still reading.


Fargo
Joel and Ethan Coen. There's another pair of names that pops up a lot. For good reason. Their patented mixture of quirky humor, brutal violence, and genuine humanity in dark worlds somehow amazes me every time they pull it off. Once I get past the bizarre personal touches. Like the weird meandering conversations in regional dialogue, every verbal tic and obscenity and filler word carefully calculated for maximum effect.


Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Speaking of weird meandering conversations: Quentin Tarantino. Maybe you've heard of the guy. Kind of a big deal in film circles, apparently. How would I know. Something about the way he makes movies that reference other movies, and his own work, and entirety of popular culture. But I submit that he is not an auteur, for three reasons which I just made up.

* They're absurd, they're convoluted, but his movies make sense.
* There's no deep meaning behind the stylish violence, far as I can tell.
* This one's just fun to watch and watch again.


Life of Brian
Fun to watch and watch again? Did somebody say Monty Python? I did.

This tragically overlooked spoof (in America) depicts human absurdity better than anything else they've ever done. Like discovering razors in your toffee, there's a sharp message amid the silliness: you're going to die, so might as well enjoy your life. Even you accidentally become the epicenter of a fanatical religious cult. Cheerio, we're British.


Mary and Max
I defer to the reigning champion of black comedy. This peculiar claymation contains more harsh life lessons per minute (learned the hard way), more tragicomedy, more sympathetic portrayals of human weakness, more gross-out moments, than my entire elementary school career. (You should've been there.) If I could recommend one movie out of one hundred, this is it.


THE DREGS

Annie Hall
I want to like Woody Allen. He's intelligent, innovative, sincere about his insecurities, and ferociously eloquent. But why does it have to be Freudian musings on the sex lives of nebbish Jewish comedians. While I admit sympathy for this doomed fictional romance, I also file a fictional restraining order, to prevent them from ever engaging my idle imagination (in public) ever again.


Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
A classic turn-of-the-twentieth-century Western? Sure, if you're a sucker for lovely scenery. As a story, I found it dull and bloated, though intermittently amusing. Like an overweight redneck-in-denial who prattles endlessly about lofty vehicle overhauls he'll never follow through with. By the time our titular heroic outlaws get around to shooting and getting shot at, it's too late. Like the Old West, my attention has moved on.


Cool Hand Luke
Imagine the tough, taciturn, individualistic hero of a Western, only plopped into a twentieth-century chain gang. Now imagine the trouble he'd instigate when he runs out of fucks to give. That's this guy. Some folks might enjoy his petty hijinks; I wasn't feeling it. It hurt to watch the guy beat his head against the system, then get beat down for it. Over, over, and over.

If you're looking for a positive opinion or a meaningful interpretation or a hackneyed Christ figure parallel, look elsewhere. Maybe a marginally qualified reviewer. There's hundreds. Search engine's just a click away. Browse, until you find someone who agrees with you.


Persona
We meet again, Ingmar Bergman.

This glacier-paced surrealist piece delves into the psyches and psychoses of two irrevocably flawed someone. They talk. And it was an agonizing experience I am not keen to repeat. For the curious: you have been warned. For the furious: you're allowed to like it and not be threatened by my dissenting opinion.


The 400 Blows
Swedish, Italian, Yugoslavian, French? Maybe I do harbor a subconscious vendetta against Europe. But you've heard my objections to this one in other contexts. The characters are indiscriminately despicable. The plot progresses at the speed of I don't give a fuck. And the seemingly triumphant resolution left me befuddled.

What moral is the director attempting to subversively communicate? If you're smart, you can be a brat and get away with it? Don't do all these cool things I did as a kid? Questions pile up like a dung heap in a Parisian alley. And I'm none too keen to reach in and feel around for answers.

Retrospect: IMDb #250 - 200

What a long, strange trip it's been.

When I figured I'd watch a metric shitload of movies and upload my uninformed opinions to the Internet, I didn't know what I was getting into. Just that it would take a lot of time, and certain parts might be less enjoyable than others. I was right. I'm not used to being right this much. All of that happened, and more.

Fifty movies later, I've scraped the team off the top, and the weird scum off the bottom, for your convenient ocular ingestion. You're welcome.


THE CREAM

Before Sunrise
Love at first sight. Does it actually happen? Who knows. But it'd have to start with a conversation. Here's the most organic, naturally quick-developing romance I've ever seen. Well, watched on a screen. And the sequels are just as good. For me, this was love at first sight.


Castle in the Sky
The quintessential fantastical adventure comes courtesy of Studio Ghibli. It features puppy love and luxuriously animated destruction. I submit to you, the finest of early Miyazaki.


Donnie Darko

No, I don't completely understand it. But where's the fun in that. The weirdness, offbeat humor, honest relationships, and sincere existential questions still resonate. Not to mention there's a freaky guy in a bunny suit.


Ip Man
Want a genuine Hong Kong kung-fu movie? Here's your kung-fu movie. Mix together: fantastic fight sequences, desperate circumstances, and dubious historical accuracy. Stir it up, bake on HIGH for 108 minutes, and serve one (1) masterpiece.


Prisoners
Intense. Just...intense. A father going too far to save his little girl, knowing he's going too far. But what else can he do. Just watch. Once per millennium is enough.



THE DREGS

8 1/2
I don't get the hype. Am I dumb? Or just honest? I can figure out some of what Fellini is shooting for, but I end up more repelled than impressed. Sure, it's probably ingenious, but I'm not at the point to appreciate it yet. I leave it for the elderly sophisticates whose dopamine receptors quit functioning decades ago.


Fanny and Alexander
Long, oblique, and relentlessly depressing. I swear don't have a vendetta against European auteurs. They're brilliant, in their own way, I'm sure. But my mushy mind can't wrap around why anyone would willingly sit through this picture. Masochism, or boredom snowbound in a Swedish blizzard with nothing better to do than play this cinematic soporific on loop.

La Dolce Vita
More Fellini. Feign surprise, everyone. I resubmit the same tired complaints: difficult to follow, overflowing with frankly despicable characters, and punishingly long. If this is "the sweet life," I'm going vegan.


The Graduate
Inter-generational American adultery? It might even be interesting, if the adulterers in question even remotely cared about each other. Instead their relationship collapses into a black hole of mindless unfulfilled hedonism, from which not one molecule of joy or love can escape. At least the guy learned what he's going to do with his life: perpetuate that black hole on girls his own age.


Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Painfully dysfunctional relationships. I'm detecting a pattern.

What set new standards for Hollywood swearing also blazed new trails in how much I can despise every minute of a movie. I'm not afraid of Virginia Woolf -- nice lady, a tad strange, but has some interesting things to say -- but I'm afraid if I have to suffer through this film again, I'm marching off into a lake with rocks in my pockets.

IMDb #150 Review: Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Source: Wikipedia

A heroic troublemaker-without-a-cause saws the heads off parking meters, then goes to jail for it. Where he continues to make trouble without a cause.

Naturally, his cavalier attitude rankles the bosses.

He plays the part of the quiet, mysteries newbie on the chain gang. As an itinerant worker, the men dig ditches, tar roads, chop roadside weeds, and box barefisted on Saturdays. But our hero Luke makes it his side job to start shit.

He takes a beating in the ring, eats fifty eggs in an hour (and makes a killing off the betting pool), shouts out in a thunderstorm at a God he doesn't believe in, works crazy hard to finish tarring a road ahead of schedule, plans crazy escapes and actually goes through with it. Why? For the hell of it.

Sure, Luke's got a cool head, a belly swollen with guts, but he's got nothing in the world to fight for. Depressing, really, to watch all that potential squandered on petty mischief.

He's not totally alone. Luke's dear mama visits once -- ONCE -- then leaves and dies offscreen of disappointment. (Uh, spoiler, I guess. Did you care?)

In the event he finally escapes, Luke's charm and cunning and enormous reality-warping balls just deposit him back in the box. Out there he's got no money, no car, no house, no friends. Back he goes into solitary confinement, his life sentence and the sentence to summarize his life.

Why make such a concentrated effort to piss off the world? "Something to do," he says with a shrug. Stalling for time. Which the whole movie feels like. Sure, our boy Luke sticks it to the man. But what's that worth? One life time and phony religious conversion later, it's not worth a damn, just a smattering of tears and possibly a bullet right through his shit-eating grin.

126 minutes.

IMDb #151 Review: Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Source: Wikipedia

The U.S. of A commissions a wise old judge from Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, Maine, to relocate to Germany for the incredibly difficult task of legally determining whether the Nazis were bad people.

Not as simple as it sounds.

The defendants -- judges, now undergoing judgment -- were just doing their jobs when Hitler decided to run things. Can these men be blamed for obeying the (flagrantly racist) laws of the land? The prosecution thinks so. Then again, the rabid nationalistic American officers had the delightful pleasure of liberating Dachau. Slight prejudice there.

However, the judges have a kickass defense lawyer. His passion sizzles for justice, loopholes, and moral ambiguity.

These three hours are the slowest burn I've ever seen passed off as a movie. Serious men talk in a room, and occasionally shout. The camera circles speakers like a hungry vulture. Various witnesses occupy the stands: a skittish lady with a sordid romantic history, a chemically castrated old man, and (in spirit) over six million dead Jews.

The lawyers delve into the racist ruling of a past case, harping on minutiae. Until the Americans bring out legitimate Holocaust footage. (In a Bad Things To Do contest, tough to beat genocide.) Somehow, the sad old white guys find the guts to repeat, "Not guilty, not guilty."

As the case wears on, the increasingly weary judge acclimates to postwar Germany. Amid the bombed-out shell of a city, he lives in a mansion, and somehow meets and dines with the widow who used to live there. He also finds it to be in poor taste to ask the serving staff about the concentration camps.

Did the German people know the extent of Hitler's atrocities? Good question. The kickass defense lawyer indicts the whole world, who knew of the Nazi party's intentions years in advance, yet did nothing. And the Americans, who nuked Japan. He demands to leave a shred of dignity, of autonomy, for the German people. As if that's an easy thing.

But the old backwoods judge feels he must vote his conscience. Especially if the decision is unpopular.

All in all: gray, gray, gray. Not just because the movie's in black and white. Not because it's white guys in dark suits sitting in a room. But because the morality is so obscure, the presentation so dry, and the outcome so bleak.

So this (fictionalized) judge votes his conscience for these (fictionalized) war criminals. In one major sense the film parallels reality: by the time this movie was made, the (real) decision didn't matter anymore anyway.

179 minutes.

IMDb #152 Review: It Happened One Night (1934)

Source: Wikipedia

Yet another spoiled heiress flees from yet another wedding. Yet another Joe Schmoe reporter unknowingly cozies up to her and wheedles his way into getting the biggest scoop of his hack career.

If it sounds cliche, it's because this exquisitely preserved cinematic mummy established the cliches.

Some parts are different. The girl jumps off her dad's Navy boat and swims to shore, so she's kind of a badass. She meets her smartly-dressed smartass by falling asleep on his shoulder on the overnight bus, so she's kind of clueless.

The guy, however. He skips an hour of pointless misunderstandings and tells her outright: he's a journalist, he knows who she is, and he's here to help her out. Which frees up more time for G-rated sexual tension when they have to share a room (rope + blanket = Wall of Jericho, apparently). Fortunately, they're frighteningly natural at marriage roleplay -- they have the bickering down pat.

While the unhappy couple crosses the Eastern Seaboard on $4, the rich father sics detectives on her. And gets the newspapers involved.

This girl's abrupt disappearance makes front-page news. Never mind the Depression, or rampant unemployment, or Chancellor Hitler's rise to power -- the general public is more interested in the boringly plush lives of the rich and famous. (Who can blame them.)

The guy teaches the girl the joys of ordinary life. Budgeting, waiting in lines, not missing buses, telling off creepers, and being told no. Meanwhile, she teaches him patience and complex journalistic ethics and effective hitchhiking technique (hike up the skirt -- the limb is mightier than the thumb, indeed).

Since this groundbreaking talkie practically rooted itself in the cement foundation of romantic comedy, you can probably guess how it ends. Innocuously. When the odd couple reunites with her father and the groom-to-be, and they have to part at last, and then--

A car chase. You got me, movie.

The title still makes no sense. What happened? And they were gone more than one day, so which night? Unless they refer to sexytimes. (This was pre-Hays code.) Which only makes things more complicated, because how are we supposed to know what night things happened or didn't. Thanks for taxing our brains with a romantic comedy, Frank Capra.

105 minutes.

IMDb #153 Review: Fargo (1996)

Source: Wikipedia

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a wife must be in want of a needlessly complex scheme to dispose of her which inevitably goes horribly wrong in the most entertaining of fashions.

The same principle applies in the snowbound Midwest in the late eighties. Far enough north that people care about hockey.

A shady car salesman hires two even shadier characters to kidnap his wife so he can pump his rich father-in-law for ransom money. But the old fart's wallet is tighter than his anal sphincter. And just like real life, everything goes to shit because of one traffic cop doing his job. For the last time.

Things spiral out of control. Negotiations break down like a leg in a wood chipper.

It's a strange, sordid, locally flavored tale. A world where the most unquestionably evil characters, the silent psychopath and the angry foul-mouthed chatterbox, can be the funniest. Where cars break down and televisions don't work, no matter how hard you smack 'em. Where greed and tempers and itchy trigger fingers cause a rash of easily avoidable deaths. Where singsong regional accepts slip into daily speech like musical word parasites.

On that note, the seven-months-pregnant lady cop is just the best person ever. She supports her husband's stamp-painting dream; takes time out of her case to visit a lonely-and-awkward-as-hell Asian guy from her past; and she braves the cold and snow to figure out what the deuce happened out on the open road. Moreover, it takes a miracle to catch up with the darkly hilarious killers, when the only lead is two mosquito-brained barfly sluts.

But the best character is the world, an absorbingly demented slice of reality. Nothing goes as planned, which feels painfully real. The dialogue sparkles, as if the directors constructed every idle word to not sound constructed. The story's so convincing, I believed it was actually on a true story. (It wasn't. Despite the title card insisting it was. Part of the world, I guess. Just roll with it, drink in the madness.)

IMDb #154 Review: A Beautiful Mind (2004)

Source: Wikipedia

An asocial mathematician finds love and meaningful work at Princeton -- then nearly loses it all to people and things that exist inside his brain. Schizophrenia's a bitch. And it's worse when you don't even know you've got it.

So the math dweeb starts out in college. He doesn't like people; they reciprocate the sentiment. Eccentric, unfocused, yet inexplicably arrogant, he chalks equations on windows, drinks with the boys, and fails to seduce women by plainly stating his intentions. He has zero accomplishments to his name, until he craps out a simple formula to overturn Adam Smith's capitalism, a paper whose influence doesn't become apparent until he's a wrinkly old guy.

He grows up to suck at teaching, and attending his to his wife's needs, and living in reality.

Seeing things from his perspective, the audience doesn't know what's really real (or not) until he does. It's disorienting. Unsettling. Sobering to think: What would convince you that certain facts you know just...aren't?

Well, the genius has to swallow his supermassive ego and strive for the consensus reality. Because the imaginary can't coexist with the real. And certain medication can't coexist with his higher cognitive functions. After a lifetime among sweet lies, he makes his choice.

This just-about-true story displays how love, made of chemicals in the brain, can triumph over paranoia, other chemicals in the brain. How love, which our hero compares to the infinite of the universe, can conquer the demons of mental illness. How one can only find logic in love, the most blissful state of illogic.

(And then the real John Nash goes and dies in a taxi cab crash in March 2015, because the universe is just awful like that.)

135 minutes.

IMDb #155 Review: Trainspotting (1996)

Source: Wikipedia

What scads of cringe-worthy anti-drug PSAs can't drill into impressionable young minds, one movie can.

What's that, kiddos? You don't want a boring life with the typical boring choices? Then hop aboard the heroin train, where there's friends and shenanigans and the highest dopamine rush money can buy. The price of admission: every fucking other thing you ever wanted to do with your life. And it'll probably take your life too.

Just kidding. Don't mind the title, the movie's barely got anything to do with trains. Heroin ruining lives? Hell to the yes. In harsh Edinborough brogue, no less.

Four Scottish punks pump themselves with the happiness needle and accomplish little else. Until our hero Renton, not for the first time, decides to get off the stuff. His life goes to shit -- literally, since his journey begins shoulder-deep in "the worst toilet in Scotland." Then come the disturbing hallucinations. Withdrawal. Constipation. Women whose sex education revolves around Cosmo advice columns.

Soon it's back to the slag, and eloquently discussing James Bond flicks, and stealing a laundry list of other drugs to afford more heroin. Rehab. Jail. Emergency room visits. Disappointed families. And the constant risk of gruesome death.

So when the main guy finally decides to clean up his act -- move to London, bullshit into a soul-numbing job in real estate, keep his nose and arm clean -- his old life follows him. The guys drag him back in. And their habits, not limited to drugs, threaten to spoil his shot at a better life.

It's a fast, gross, darkly comic peek into a hopeless yet virtually omnipresent lifestyle. Which, thanks to this thing, I never want anything to do with. Not that it took much convincing.

93 minutes.

IMDb #156 Review: Gone with the Wind (1939)

Source: Wikipedia

Amidst the spectacular disintegration of the Old South, feminazi icon Scarlett O'Hara blusters through trials and triumphs before, after, and during the most decidedly un-Civil War.

Also, men.

Scarlett chases a perpetually unavailable fellow called Ashley, weds a conga line of boring blokes she doesn't care for, and shunts the inexplicably devoted rogue Rhett Butler -- until it's too late and everything's gone to pot. (Why this dashing not-much-of-a-gentleman worships this weepy, needy, greedy bitch befuddles me.)

The American Civil War blasts the Old South into rubble. A whole generation of men dies offscreen. And as the Antebellum era sashays onto the scene, Scarlett -- hard-drinking, hard-driving, all-business lady -- decides to do whatever it takes to survive. In relative luxury, preferably. She'll marry some dull old coot with big bucks, take over his lumber empire when he keels over, screw over impoverished employees, the works.

But suppose, somehow, miraculously, the perfect (?) man netted the perfect (?!) woman. The entire universe warps into unnatural shapes and non-Euclidean geometries to unite the star-crossed lovers, Rhett and Scarlet.

Of course it goes terribly wrong. Alcoholism, motherly neglect clashes with fatherly dotage, and years of baggage (delivered first-class), put noticeable makeup lines on their faces.

So when the timeless last line smacks the audience in the face, it carries the burden of decades of failed romantic advances. And casts it down.

What to make of this roiling soup of murky morals, exploded hopes, and unrequited love?

Classic, obviously. With an orchestra this maudlin, Technicolor twilit silhouettes this prevalent, a story this sprawling, and a heroine this thick-headed and unlikable, it's inevitable. In the thirties? They must have sold off the family homestead and the rest of the whole bloody state to finance it.

Though why this film pines for the frankly awful time period also befuddles me. Oh, this civilization is lost forever, gone with the wind? No more poofy-dressed floozies nattering about their brainless quixotic beaus while the household slaves invisibly toil until their weary bodies plop into shallow unmarked graves? GOOD FRIGGING RIDDANCE.

221 minutes.

IMDb #157 Review: Rang de Basanti (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

A posse of hard-partying Indian college students concede to play their historical counterparts in a documentary about Indian freedom fighters. The experience transforms their aimless lives into recreating the past. Not by being like Gandhi, who is safe and respected; but morally ambiguous young people with more passion than self-preservation.

A British lady travels to India to shoot a documentary, despite having no funding, no knowledge of the culture, and no cast or crew. By movie serendipity and a sequence of shitty auditions, she stumbles into the ideal candidates. Singing, rapping, muscle-flaunting college students, who've effectively adopted the cynical hedonism of western culture.

Probably her biggest obstacle is the negativity instilled in India's youth. This country sucks, the government is corrupt, it's never going to get better, there's nothing we can do, we have to worry about our futures, I just want to stay in college forever and drink and screw and party all night.

Only natural that the older generations grouse that young people are useless. Generally, they are quite useless; not that the old farts are doing much more.

With this mindset, the big kids have a hard time donning period costumes (and mustaches) and regurgitating cheesy patriotic dialogue -- without cracking up.

Fed up with their waffling, Brit lady says, Fuck it, I'm out.

But a sense of purpose brings her back. Guilt brings them back. Guilt, and sudden unexpected tragedy.

Bollywood did it again. They got me. After a couple hours of dicking around, I was ready ready to write this one off as a waste of space. Then SNAP. Right outta nowhere, everything becomes FRIGGING AMAZING. The characters rocket into maturity at blistering speed; the music swells from obnoxious to overwhelmingly amazing; the tone jolts into deadly seriousness; and all the events from the dicking-around phase accumulate sobering significance.

These overgrown kids confront corruption head-on, and discover how complicated it can become to convince India to fix their crappy planes.

While I can't in good conscience condone the events of the climax, I confess it felt legitimately inspiring. (This must be how entry-level jihadists break in.)

157 minutes.

IMDb #158 Review: Into the Wild (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

A college student graduates with all the education, friends, money, and potential he could ever want. Problem  -- he doesn't want it. So he ditches his troubled family, burns his savings, abandons his car, and bums around America for a while. The ultimate goal: Alaska.

This earnest young man seeks REALITY and TRUTH. He conveniently ignores the REALITY that his sudden disappearance plunged his (flawed) family into unspeakable pain and the TRUTH that he regularly flouts the law and gambles with his life and can't trust luck to protect him forever.

It's still inspiring, and all that crap. In the tender years of early manhood, this guy goes out and does crazy things. While I write about movies and you read about it.

Tired of things, he works on a farm in South Dakota. Under the name Alexander Supertramp, he hops on a hippie wagon by the California shore and rekindles a starchild romance. He paddles down a river, lacking a license or any relevant experience, and dodges the river patrol in time to run into Danish tourists with lax standards of public nudity. He sneaks in and out of Mexico just to prove he can. Short on cash, he works fast food, with no identification or permanent place of residence. He sprouts a magnificent hobo beard.

And finally -- chronologically interspersed with these other adventures -- he hitchhikes, then hikes, to Alaska. To live off the land and read and sleep in a convenient abandoned bus.

"If you want something in life," he preaches, "reach out and grab it." Unfortunately, LIFE is a petulant bitch who resents unsolicited groping. She gladly recompenses amorous advances with a slap in the face and a knee in the crotch. As he learns, in his attempts to subdue the Alaskan wilderness with aught but his wits and naivete.

(Starving is a shitty hobby. But so's wasting ammo because you never learned to shoot, and raising an impromptu maggot farm on meat you never learned to preserve.)

This remarkable epic is based on a true story, admittedly with some fictional elements (a nudist colony with attractive people in it? Impossible). But the lesson remains just as true. After all the books, experiences, reflections in solitude, what does he learn, thanks to the famous wise hobo Tolstoy? HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.

(Agreed. Because as much fun as it is churning out jokes for the Internet, it's even better knowing someone read it and had fun. Maybe even emitted a pitiful snicker.)

148 minutes.

IMDb #159 Review: Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003)

Source: Wikipedia

A big-city Mumbai gang boss struggles to convince his parents that he's a successful doctor, an upstanding member of the community. Even if he has to blackmail and kidnap and flagrantly lie to do it. When the farce inevitably falls through, he goes for the next best thing: become a real doctor. By blackmail and kidnapping and etc, etc, etc.

It's made plane from the slapstick-packed intro chase that none of this is to be taken seriously.

Our hero Munna might do bad things, but he's not a bad guy. He dotes on his doting parents; inspires fierce loyalty in his men, who'll break laws for his convenience before he even asks; and he harbors a charming vacuum where most people store their social awareness. Case in point: dropped out of high school, but decides to become a doctor, while drunk.

More heart than brains, he barges into med school the new-fashioned way: force a genius to do all the work.

But his old life follows him. He wriggles out of an arranged marriage by exposing himself as a delinquent. But, by virtue of indiscriminate friendliness, he meets and falls for the same girl (who he still hasn't met) who happens to be a nurse. Even though her father's the dean, who loathes him, who KNOWS what he is. It's that kind of movie.

Anyway, our hero's rough-edged cheerfulness sparks an underground success. He greets the veteran janitor by name and thanks him for thirty years of grumbling service with one of his mom's famous Magic Hugs. He plays carom and drinks OJ with a cool old guy. He sits up with a vegetable, gives the handsome lad a makeover, and wheels him around outdoors, jabbering about nothing and everything. He starts a spontaneous song-and-dance sequence to explain love to a suicidal patient. He cheers up a young guy dying of stomach cancer by bringing a stripper to the hospice ward.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished. But when the plot structure demands things turn for the worse -- resulting in some surprisingly emotional moments for an absurd musical comedy -- legions of loyalists flock to his aid.

I've said too much already. Yes, it's probably the funniest thing I've seen in years.

Realistic? No frigging way. But hella fun.

156 minutes.

IMDb #160 Review: Rush (2013)

Source: Wikipedia

Formula 1 -- NASCAR for sophisticates, for enlightened connoisseurs of expensive cars driving in circles really fast and exploding.

Apparently this is serious business. Especially for two diametrically opposed superstars. Scrawny Austrian car nerd Nikki Lauda gives up a successful future in finance to drive in circles really fast. Beefy beach-blonde British playboy James Hunt presumably considers cars a negligible distraction from women and booze.

But as our chiseled long-haired demigod says, the racing is incidental. It's the personalities, the competition, the brain-boggling piles of cash sunk into these races. And the closeness to death makes them so attractive to women. At least for him (heads up: plenty of luscious lady-flesh) -- so long as he's winning.

These guys have one thing in common: they alienate their families, ditch potentially stable careers, to taunt death driving "bombs on wheels."

Our joint heroes meet in the minor leagues, where it's hate at first sight. The rivalry spans years. One wins, the other wins, and sometimes some irrelevant dude wins. James Hunt goes through women like toilet paper; the abrasive Austrian plops into a lovely love life which, if it weren't based on fact, I'd condemn as improbable fiction.

The cinematography makes the movie. It's quick, tense, up-close-and-personal. Expect POV wheel shots and close-ups of eyes and axles. The races travel to exotic locations around the world -- from Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Monaco, Germany -- different title cards for slick asphalt tracks.

But priorities change. The promise of glory, the fear of horrible flaming death, grows complex when both guys have spouses to support. So as they yo-yo in and out of slumps, and when the wheeled bombs blow up in their faces, they might finally learn to respect each other. Even if they can't like each other, they can become like each other. Let respect and envy drive them both to greatness.

If that's how you wanna look at it, at the finish line, everybody wins.

122 minutes.

IMDb #161 Review: A Wednesday (2008)

Source: Wikipedia

A Mumbai police commissioner, fat and balding and about to retire, reminisces about his "most challenging case." The case isn't recorded in any file, only his mind, possibly out of embarrassment to the department.

A bomb scare quietly gripped his city, when he was younger but still fat and balding. (Props to Bollywood for not casting male swimwear models for every starring role.)

Back in the day -- a Wednesday, surprise -- an old guy sets up an ingenious tech station on the roof of an unfinished building, in broad daylight.  He telephones the commissioner about the bomb scare; he says to release four Pakistani terrorists or else kaboom. (Despite all his skills and guts, he calls himself a "stupid common man.")

Being uncommonly shrewd, he also informs a news anchor lady, on a painfully slow news day. Her job is to hound the police, get in their way, and (indirectly) keep him updated on how they're doing.

Meanwhile, the hero stews in the Mumbai police department's kickass War Room. (Doesn't your local precinct have one?) Here's where the action happens. The boss fields calls from the terrifyingly sane bomber, techies attempt to pinpoint his location, and important officials look official and important. (Heads up: you'll get sick of the Nokia Tune.)

To fight back, the cops loose the bomb-sniffing dogs, and the loose-cannon rogue cop hits the streets and smacks around scumbags and gets results.

Time passes. When authorities release the imprisoned terrorists, the inevitable HOLY CRAP twist hits like a bolt from the blue, only slightly diminished by staggeringly shitty CGI.

While we're harping on technicalities, a word about the cinematography -- frenetic. IT. CAN'T. STAY. STILL. From the rapid-fire city shots of the opening montage, to the cops marching dramatically down the street, to the mastermind sitting on a roof sipping coffee. The field of view whirls, zooms, pans, and shifts to slow-mo for reasons beyond mortal ken.

Just as the police commissioner grows to respect the would-be bomber for his true motives, I grew to respect the guy for an amazingly nuanced performance (especially the motive rant). To show that terrorism isn't just a problem in America. That everybody suffers, regardless of race or age or creed. That great films don't need enormous budgets, and talented actors need not be strikingly beautiful.

But you'd think somebody would have to fill out paperwork somewhere.

103 minutes.

IMDb #162 Review: Dial M for Murder (1954)

The Alfred Hitchcock suspense formula vacations in London, where it turns out people are still bastards and just as fond of needlessly complicated murder schemes.

This story follows the traditional speech structure -- say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you just said. Or, in Hitchcock terms: have a long dry chat about the crime you're going to commit, flub it irreparably, then spout a series of escalating lies before the coppers figure out what the hell happened.

So a guy wants to murder his cheating wife. Almost understandable. He plays professional tennis, so he's obviously insane. He conscripts another guy to kill her, in this case an old college buddy. He concocts an absurdly convoluted plan that gives them both alibis. (Wait, this is Strangers on a Train, transplanted to London for no reason!)

What could go wrong? The answer is -- I can't say, it's too stupid.

Fine. You made me do it.

She kills the killer in self-defense. With a pair of scissors. Completely by accident, it looked like.

When the dogged detective hunts down the baffling set of clues, he miraculously deduces that there was an accomplice. As the husband frantically conceals incriminating evidence, he only makes things worse for himself. What could be a fantastic black comedy is instead played quite seriously. Kudos to the cast for keeping straight faces.

Boil away the mystery claptrap and what have you got? Three long conversations in the same room, with about ten minutes of things going on. Is it interesting? Sure, if you're into that kind of thing. Hitchcock thrillers, while thoughtfully constructed, don't feel too mentally or emotionally taxing to begin with; once again, cardboard cutouts overreact to patently unfeasible scenarios. You can smell the grease sizzling in the director's brain-gears.

So if you enjoy stuffy Brits playing absurdly complex mind games to achieve contrived conclusions from hypothetical scenarios -- congratulations, both of you!

Whoever you are, stay the hell away from my house.

105 minutes.

IMDb #163 Review: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Source: Wikipedia

Back in the golden slate-gray age of film noir, a hard-boiled detective could hunt for a plot device just by engaging shady characters in lengthy expositional dialogues.

The stuff gleaned from that conversation is then invalidated by the next conversation, not to mention garbled by Humphrey Bogart's signature drawl. Awfully often, we hear one side of a phone conversation and have the pleasure of extrapolating the other half. And then, from this succession of half-conversations, we somehow extrapolate a classic movie.

Sam Spade is a private dick "too slick for [his] own good." (Finding unintentionally hilarious innuendo makes old movies so much more fun to watch. Other gems: "You're a good man, sister," and "I've taken all the riding from you I'm gonna take." Collect them all!)

When SS's unlikable partner loses an argument with a bullet, and so does the dude his partner was tailing. Now that it's gotten semi-personal, our alliterative detective takes up the case.

How does he do it? Well, he mumbles a lot, and mumbles fast. He only smiles ironically, and the rest of the time he emotes about as much as a stroke victim encased in concrete. With these intimidation tactics, he casually drops vaguely worded intel. The nervous nellies fill in the rest. To get the truth, Bogie slaps it out of men, obliges womanly wiles, and follows up every lead on the missing Maltese "dingus" (as he calls it -- what'd I tell you about innuendo).

The spiffy gents in fancy suits wade him into a swamp of murky morality. As an archetypical detective, he's more interested in getting paid than bringing criminals to justice (or so he claims).

As for the titular plot device? The introductory text scroll sells a hackneyed backstory about the Crusades and a gift to Charles V of Spain that fell afoul of pirates, or some such drivel. Some dame asks Bogie what it's made of, and he replies, "The stuff dreams are made of." Intangible ideals, self-deception, and 8 mm film. But things people will cheat and kill and shell out the big bucks for.

And occasionally jabber about little to nothing for 100 minutes out of 101.

101 minutes.

IMDb #164 Review: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Source: Wikipedia

Back when Bruce Willis had hair and M. Night Shyamalan had a bright future, there was a "thriller" (which wasn't that scary) about a depressed child psychologist and and a mopey latchkey kid who inexplicably "sees dead people."

The dead can't see each other, but considering how many people have died in Philadelphia history (a fuckton), the earthly afterlife must be pretty damn crowded. Which explains the rest of the film.

Supernatural suspense! Single mama drama! Every shitty elementary school experience rolled into one cliched package! Theater drama! Oblique Catholic symbolism! And suddenly, a micro-episode of PREPUBESCENT GHOST DETECTIVE, in which a squeaky-voiced squirt and an old due crash a wake and solve a girl's murder via VHS tapes of puppets shows.

It juggles all these elements like jugs of nitroglycerin -- captivating, but exhausting to watch. Finally, for its last trick, the juggler strikes a match and explodes into flesh-confetti. You clap along nervously. Sure, it was a neat show of skill, but...why?

This kid, who could revolutionize scientific and religious understanding of mortality, opts to solve local problems one at a time, as inefficiently as humanly possible. Granted, science would probably slap him with a schizophrenia label, pump him full of drugs, and lock him up. So maybe the kid's smarter than he seems.

Most of the run-time consists of the hyper-stressed mama trying to dig into her freaky little boy's head, whereas the stalker child psychologist succeeds through calm persistence.

These mind games make a pleasant distraction from the premise and overall plot. But then the famous twist hits, and the first five minutes of the movie finally make sense. M. Night gleefully points out every obscure shred of foreshadowing, to save you the trouble of ever watching his movie again.

But even in his biggest success, the big M foreshadows his present slump. Ambitious (read: bloated) plot construction, pathetic humor, unnecessary cheesiness, clunky dialogue, and of course the tweeest. Hindsight sours the taste of success.

And one more thing, a critical research failure. WE HAVE MORE THAN FIVE SENSES, GENIUS. WAY, WAY MORE.

107 minutes

IMDb #165 Review: Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Source: Wikipedia

When the tiny Central Africa nation erupts in a genocidal bloodbath, the manager of a ritzy hotel hits limit on neutrality and relying on the moral qualms of rich white people.

Stay out of trouble, he says, and protect your family, because family matters most. Then trouble actually comes. Tough to stay calm when you're knee-deep in corpses.

Hold on, back up. It's urbanized Africa, mid-nineties. People seem to seize any excuse to feel better than other people, so racism is embedded in human nature, and skin color makes for a very visible excuse. In this case, Hutus and Tutsis were arbitrary distinctions set up by the occupying Belgians. Decades later, pissed-off Hutus want revenge for Tutsi injustices toward their parents and grandparents. A caustic radio program spurs the hateful Hutus to machete-swinging massacre.

This puts our protagonist in a predicament. He's Hutu, married to a Tutsi, with no strong feelings either way. Effectively westernized, he runs a posh joint for visiting dignitaries. All his problems he smothers with style -- poise, class, elegant lies. But smiles and bribes can't block bullets.

When destitute refugees flock to him, bloodthirsty mobs in pursuit, he appeals to UN Peacekeepers (200 assigned for the whole country, and they can't fire a shot) and the guilt of Western powers (who don't want to get involved, just like the hero himself before the problem plopped on his doorstep).

Essentially, reality hacks a civilized man's ideals to pieces, which bleed out face-down in the dirt. He grows increasingly haggard as the body count racks up and even more angry dudes with guns yell in his face.

At last, in a borderline parody of "white people to the rescue," a team of volunteers extracts the refugees piecemeal from the hotel's ruins. Not that it's easy, or a bloodless transition. But thanks to them and people like them, there's this story to tell.

A story which I've hardly heard till now. Because, over one million bodies later, it seems nobody's learned a thing.

121 minutes.

IMDb #166 Review: The Thing (1982)

Source: Wikipedia

An alien parasite systematically kills the brilliant idiots stranded in an Antarctic base. What'st here to say? Roll credits. Directed by John Carpenter, music by Ennio "I Did More Than Westerns, You Know" Morricone, starring Kurt Russel's beard and some other guys.

What's a gore-fest doing on the IMDb Top 250 alongside glacier-paced navel-gazing black-and-white European experimental film d'art and every half-decent war movie ever made?

Because the oppressive atmosphere, dazzlingly elaborate puppetry, decent stop-motion, and subversive undercurrent of antisocial paranoia -- these elevate the glorious blood-and-guts to the brink of ART.

The cold open plops us in at at the American science base. Population: boredom, and zero women, not a coincidence. When not overworking, the guys indulge in ping pong and booze and old-school chess simulators and more booze.

Then comes the Norwegian helicopter, sniping at a lone dog fleeing across the tundra. The pilot runs at the Americans, waving his rifle, babbling spoilers in his native tongue. The monolinguals gun him down. The dog becomes their buddy, no questions asked.

Sure, they find some weird shit at the Norwegian camp, but they shrug it off. Just another charred monster corpse to autopsy. The geniuses don't notice anything amiss with their canine companion until -- SWEET MUTANT BABY JESUS -- it sprouts tentacles and starts consuming the other dogs in the kennel.

Sorry, nightmare fetishists, but the practical effects have gotten campy with time. Horror movie featherweights, rest easy. For all the hype, I expected worse. But the real horror takes place in the scientists' heads. They're sleep deprived, scared out of their minds, and now they have guns and grenades and flamethrowers at the ready. Any one of them could be infected and not know it until his chest bursts open.

The slaughter continues unabated, up till The-End-Meaningful-Question-Mark and the unfulfilled promise of future installments.

But the deft pace is as forgivable as the small cast and shaky-cam. Antarctica is frigging cold.

109 minutes.

IMDb #167 Review: The Wages of Fear (1954)

Source: Wikipedia

In the event you find yourself dangling over the pen of a zillion flesh-eating hamsters, your response is threefold. First, you panic. Understandably. As you adjust to your situation, you grow calm, maybe even bored. Amid the doldrums of the second stage, you slip into the third. A surge of elation from impending rescue. Or, more likely, things turn to shit, and you tumble to a slow nibbling death from a zillion tiny incisors.

There was a movie to talk about, wasn't there.

Right. Four poor white guys in South America need cash fast, so they take a job nobody else wants. They drive nitroglycerin trucks across the jungle. On a deadline. With zero safety equipment. And, in one case, without driving experience.

It's tough, grueling, manly work. Which means sweat-soaked tank tops plastered to chiseled torsos. (Difficult to see, because this movie looks like it was recorded through the translucent bottom of a grease-smeared milk carton.)

What's most amazing is how, once the trucks take off, the suspense stretches out for the last two-thirds of the movie. How do they do it? Characters.

There's the requisite handsome hero; his portly mustachioed roommate named Luigi (before Atari, before Pong, but not before the invention of retrospective irony); a pretty boy who survived the Nazi camps; and Mr. Jo, an aging rogue who clings to his tenuous existence via shameless cowardice.

Any significant women? Well, one, back in the village of poverty and giant spiders and copious wipe transitions. She's a coy, fey woman-child who exists to be unimportant and endure horrible treatment from the handsome hero and adore him anyway. (Pretty disgusting by today's standards.)

Anyway, these MANLY MEN rumble over bumpy stretches of unpaved road, slog through mud, and teeter over the brink of cliffs. The two truck drivers ascribe to opposite philosophies. "Danger? Slow down!" -- "Danger? Floor it!" Guess who drives in front.

Expect gratuitous close-ups of speedometers, gearshifts, tires ... and subtitles. The dialogue wanders among half-a-dozen languages, so hope you like subtitles.

What will these brave idiots sacrifice for two thousand dollars? Life? Limb? Yes, preferably other people's lives and limbs.

After all that buildup to the inevitable cathartic explosion, can be pretty draining. It almost renders the final delivery unsatisfying. But once I got past the anticlimax, the real ending clobbered me. When the end card popped up, I felt so cheated I just about exploded.

131 minutes.

IMDb #168 Review: Finding Nemo (2003)

Source: Wikipedia

A maniac kills and eats a man's wife and all his children, save one. Year later, the father and a mentally retarded woman go on a dangerous journey to rescue his physically disabled son. Also, they're fish, and this movie's for kids.

Nemo, the titular localized disaster zone, gets scooped up by divers and plopped in a quack dentist's aquarium. His embarrassingly overprotective dad charges headlong into danger to save his boy from getting a scratch. In fact, the incredible journey goes viral, rippling through the ocean faster than the East Australian Current.

The rules of this universe are baffling but consistent. Fish have expressive eyebrows. Their offspring go to school with musically pedantic manta rays. Aquarium dwellers befriend pelicans and perform tribal initiation rituals. Colorful denizens of the Great Barrier Reef can apparently survive in any environment. These include Sydney's polluted bay, the deep-down Abyssal Zone, and the Jonah zone. All aquatic species (except weird ones like jellyfish and anglerfish) can inexplicably communicate, as well as understand human speech. One, in particular, can read English.

I nitpick because I can only nitpick -- this movie's scarily close to perfection. The animation's brilliant as ever. The storytelling takes the shotgun approach to the broad family audience, and blows the competition out of the water. Pixar writes children (of all species) remarkably well, most likely by consulting actual children. 

Somehow, the work remains grounded. Over-caution becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: it results in rebellion, which results in abduction by aliens. The message boils down to all things in moderation and trust each other. Simmer at 350 for fifteen minutes, add a dash of Cajun spice, and dig into a healthy helping of chillax, yo with your fellow blazed-out surfer turtles.

IMDb #169 Review: Mary and Max (2009)

Source: Wikipedia

"Mary Dinkle's eyes were the color of muddy puddles. Her birthmark, the color of poo."

Unpack these opening lines, and you find a microcosm of the strangest, crudest, most unabashedly peculiar thing I've watched in eons.

First, Mary. She's a quirky but plain-looking little girl from the Australian suburbs. Her family is horrible. Lonely and whimsical, she writes a letter to a random stranger in New York City, to ask where babies come from.

Thus she enters correspondence with Max, a morbidly obese, mentally troubled, middle-aged Jew. He and she happen to be fans of the same kid's cartoon about suspiciously phallic Smurf rip-offs. As she grows up, they keep in contact. With each other's guidance, they both mature in the oddest ways.

Now, "muddy puddles." Deranged poetry permeates the work; every weird metaphor sounds lovely in the narrator's silky-smooth, matter-of-fact baritone. This tasteful narrative distance contributes to the mood of a fractured fairy tale for modern times.

However, note "birthmark" and "poo." The most pungent aspect, underneath the linguistic gymnastics, is that this world is ugly. Characters are cruel, selfish, irreparably flawed, and physically hideous to boot.

Did I mention this movie's made with CLAYMATION? You know, the repulsive red-headed bastard child of the animation family? Because clay captures the ugliness. Hardly a frame goes by without referencing burps, farts, warts, wrinkles, feces, pert old-man nipples, toenail clippings, injustice, alcoholism, social anxiety, and shattered idealism. This ain't Wallace and Gromit, people.

But the flippant crudity deserves kudos for frankness. There needs to be a name for this kind of humor. Brown comedy?

On that note, "color." Australia is painted in brownish hues, New York in gray. But when Mary mails a souvenir from her exotic Southern Hemisphere lifestyle, or characters experience epiphanies (complete with literal light bulbs), color washes into the drab and turns it wonderful -- briefly.

Color fades. All the beauty in the world can't erase its faults. On this base, the goal becomes accepting, even embracing imperfection -- accepting yourself.

And when the pen pals finally meet, after years of heartache, under the most unthinkably ugly circumstances, it is a scene of agonizing beauty.

90 minutes.

IMDb #170 Review: Incendies (2010)

Source: Wikipedia

A twin brother and sister leave Quebec for their mother's nondescript Arab homeland, because her will stipulates they scour the war-torn desert for their half-brother and father.

Brutal realism ensues.

Following in their mother's footsteps, the daughter (and, eventually, the son) traces a meandering trail of influence across the tactfully unnamed nation, heretofore referred to as Nondescript.

In Nondescript, right-wing Arab Christian terrorists wreak havoc. They hold up, shoot up, and occasionally blow up buses.

In Nondescript, harsh old people cling to the harsh old laws. Illegitimate children are shipped off to orphanages, which revolutionaries pillage and loot for orphans to train as militia snipers.

In Nondescript, illegitimate mothers might have it the hardest. Villages shun them. Crones shrill at them for sullying the family name. The university kicks them out, shattering a successful career path, for completely unrelated circumstances. And, surprisingly, the corrupt regime tosses people into hellish prisons, even for assassinating just one Nationalist leader.

The storyline bounces between past mother and future children like narrative volleyball. Fat red sans-serif letters announce where we are at as chapters begin, not that knowing the location is as helpful as knowing who the hell are these people again. Watch anyway. The atmosphere of religious tradition, seething hatred, and pressurized violence feel painfully authentic.

But. (It's a BIG but.) The pressurized atmosphere explodes when the timelines converge. Because the SENSELESSLY TRAGIC CONCLUSION hinges on NOT ONE, but TWO UNFORGIVABLY CONTRIVED COINCIDENCES.

One happens in Nondescript, the other in Canada, years apart. ONE is forgivable; TWO is inexcusable. The shock, or perhaps sheer unfathomable stupidity, of this revelation literally kills the amazing lady whose last will and testament kicks off Plot B.

Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens, inveterate masters of passably deployed coincidence, are simultaneously beating their heads against the pearly gates, shrieking invectives against the village idiot of cheapjack copouts. "It was so good -- SO GOOD -- until THAT THING happened!" they'd rail, if they weren't so dead.

130 minutes.

IMDb #171 Review: No Country for Old Men (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

A sad old sheriff chases a strong young psychopath who chases a befuddled middle-aged white guy fleeing to Mexico with a briefcase full of drug money. This could easily veer into slapstick territory; it doesn't. Instead, it opts for breathtaking vistas of the Tex-Mex borderlands, not to mention breathtaking brutal murder.

(Thanks, Cormac McCarthy. And congratulations on the Nobel Prize for that book about the slow agonizing demise of post-apocalyptic civilization.)

So there's this game hunter, out by his lonesome in the Texas wilderness. He finds a bunch of shot-up pickup trucks and bloated corpses. A drug deal gone wrong, he supposes. He finds money. At the worst possible imaginable time of night, he takes the money. He evades murderous drug dealers and his wife's passive-aggressive barbs.

Who could have figured on a brilliant blank-eyed psychopath with a killer oxygen tank.

A moment to explain. The shaggy-haired villain uses what Wikipedia calls a captive bolt pistol. It pushes a bolt down a shaft through a tank of compressed air. Usually used to brain cattle, this guy uses it on humans and stubborn doorknob cylinders. (There's a metaphor in there somewhere. People are cattle? Save beef, eat doorknobs?)

A battle of blue-collar ingenuity ensues. A war ignobly fought in motel showers and roadside gas stations. The killer is so detestable for his propensity to casually murder strangers, the heroes so helpless to protect themselves and their loved ones, the law enforcement so befuddled by it all, that can result in suspense. It would be sensational, if it weren't so mercilessly depressing.

Harrowing escapism melts into a lukewarm puddle of harsh reality. Where good guys die horribly, bad guys get away, and old people retire to wallow in failure, survivor's guilt, and hard-earned PTSD. FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY.

122 minutes.

IMDb #172 Review: Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

Source: Wikipedia

Schlock auteur Quentin Tarantino stitches together a Franken-movie from the severed appendages of an indiscriminate hodgepodge of world cinema. Then he shocks the monstrosity to live with an ample dose of ole QT's patented formula: pop culture references, rambling conversations, nonlinear storytelling, at least one trunk shot, and a little of the old ultraviolence.

The aggressive unrealism might jolt unsuspecting viewers from their verisimilitude-induced stupor. Have no fear. Once you realize it's just a film that knows it's a film, you can relax and drink in the spectacle. Which tastes remarkably like blood. So. Much. Blood.

The story is bonkers. A lady assassin wakes up from a coma to hunt other assassins that screwed her over big time. The revenge plot and list of colorful baddies to waste, might feel familiar. But the pace blazes along so fast you can hardly keep up with the cliche barrage.

Just let it wash over you: Rouse the old master swordsmith out of retirement! Lone warrior versus faceless army! Not one, not two, but three requisite girl fights!

(Admittedly, our anonymous protagonist exhibits the personality depth of a quietly hostile salad fork. But salad forks can prove useful for scooping out eyeballs and occasionally cleaning toenails, although they cannot explain QT's obsession with Uma Thurman's crooked, gangly, hideous feet.)

Er, right, the movie.

The delivery method of stylized insanity wanders all over the cinematic landscape. It cuts from color to black-and-white to dalliances in silhouettes, from live action-cartoon to literal Japanese cartoon, and ultimately to literal Japan. That's where the real magic happens.

(Opinion time. The second installment fared worse, not because it was slower and longer, but because it lacked the majesty that is the Crazy 88, and Gogo the delightfully psychotic schoolgirl bodyguard, and O'Ren the incredibly unlikely female Chinese-American yakuza boss. Tough to top.)

It's cheese, but strong and delicious cheese. Not to everyone's taste, but appropriate in measured doses with proper company and adequate ventilation.

111 minutes.

IMDB #173 Review: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Source: Wikipedia

As the Old West declines in mysticism, the two titular gentleman-outlaws bugger off to South America. They find it's everything and nothing like what they expected. Despite the rampant poverty, there are banks everywhere, practically begging for robbery. But, just like America, the local government deploys punitive countermeasures, which occasionally includes guns.

Wait -- backtrack. Butch Cassidy is the happy-go-lucky rogue who (arguably) leads the Hole in the Wall Gang. Remarkably less childlike is the grim Sundance Kid, his crack shot sidekick and faithful mustache-wearer. These best buds hold up trains, blow up safes, and squabble amiably over the same pretty lady. (Cue romantic bicycle ride.) Then their outlaw lifestyle catches up with them, just like the ace lawmen doggedly chasing them all over the great American wastelands.

Thus, at the peak of their careers, these guys decide to retire. Maybe become heroes, "go fight in the Spanish in The War." Instead they hit up New York City, as seen in their sepia-toned vacation slideshow. Fed up with the Big Apple, they book it to dirty impoverished Bolivia, without a peso in their pockets or the slightest grasp of the language. Fortunately, pistol-in-your-face translates neatly.

As usual, the bad (good?) guys are terrible shots. Problems arise when enough bad-shot bad guys congregate in the same area; statistically, they have to hit something. Good thing our good guys don't take themselves too seriously, even though their wacky escapades leave invisible strangers in financial ruin.

The pacing flags in places, but the snappy banter between the diametrically opposed protagonists pins the story together. Their bandito antics seldom seldom cease to entertain, and even better are their crises of conscience. Butch gallivants like a harebrained Don Quixote, the Kid trundles as his weary accommodating Sancho Panza, although unlike Miguel Cervantes they'd probably flunk first-year Spanish.

110 minutes.

IMDb #174 Review: Platoon (1986)

Source: Wikipedia

A promising young fellow drops out of college to volunteer for infantry service in the Vietnam War. His excuse: so he can "learn something." He quickly learns this was a godawful idea.

He learns how fun it is to slog through mud. While feeding the jungle bug population with his blood and sweat. And functioning on two hours of sleep nightly. And keeping a lookout for leaf-hatted Vietcong lurking in the trees.

This ain't your usual guts-and-glory war epic. Solidarity? These dudes can't even spell it. The whole crew hates the new guy, hates the officers, and hate each other most of all. Someone screws up, people die, they pin it on the new guy.

Heat cooks the life out of fresh meat. No exception for our hero.

He finds comfort in two things. Letters to Grandma provide voiceover narration and a stock symbol of the American life he casually discarded. As for the other, what can be more American than recreational drug use.

Serious trouble starts when the titular platoon encounters a village. Do these peasants support the enemy, or don't they? Doesn't matter. The Americans head-butt the language barrier till the collective migraine spurs terrible snap decisions. Torch the place. Letting the inhabitants live is a courtesy, one they are happy to rescind upon the slightest resistance.

To allay the realism and keep things artsy, two officers embody a painfully blatant dark/light metaphor. The brutal scar-faced Barnes wants to kill all the yellow bastards, while moderately handsome Elias tends to give a damn about human life. Given the tone of Vietnam, you can guess how this ends. (Poorly.)

Because, contrary to the aphorism, foxholes are atheist factories.

120 minutes.

IMDb #175 Review: Life of Brian (1979)

Source: Wikipedia

In the early first century, a random schmuck named Brian gets mistaken for the Messiah. The resulting shenanigans are "so funny it was banned in Norway!" Monty Python didn't invent that tagline -- Norway actually did it.

Before any of the Messiah misadventures spontaneously generate, Brian is a regular dude, a perpetually powerless comedic straight man. He lives with his (squawky-voiced man) mother. He hawks animal byproduct snacks at Jerusalem's shitty knockoff coliseum. He somehow stumbles into the mush-brained factious politics of delusional revolutionaries. 

Now the fun begins. Bring on the campy Romans and haggling merchants and chase sequences and a jarring instance of equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity (in a PG movie?!).

But let it be noted. This is not sacrilegious. Not blasphemous. Yes, there's a nativity parody (once again featuring shepherds and wise men erroneously commingling). Yes, there's a Sermon on the Mount sketch (featuring the hecklers in the back who can't hear a bloody thing). Yes, there's a crucifixion scene (featuring no gore and instead substituting the most British funeral song ever written).

May it be written a hundred times on a stone wall in big letters: this film does not mock faith. Actually, the Pythons depict Jesus briefly and tastefully. Instead, they focus on the most universal source of comedy, human foibles. Hypocrisy, dogmatism, legalism, jingoism, and stark idiocy. Also gender confusion: men pretending to be women, men wanting to be women, or men pretending to be women pretending to be men. It's like one long Flying Circus sketch, more cohesive than the other famous Python movie, but still with wonderfully irrelevant surrealism from Terry Gilliam's deranged animations.

By missing the point and assuming whatever message they wanted to hear, Norway committed the same sin as the Messiah-manufacturing mob. Though as far as I know, nobody was mistakenly crucified.

93 minutes.