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 #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 #179 Review: There Will Be Blood (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a charismatic misanthrope transforms a sleepy western hamlet into an oil-drenched boomtown, through the power of personality and sociopathy.

First lesson: early fossil fuel extraction was grueling, messy, and crazy hazardous. Second: don't piss off the soft-spoken fire-and-brimstone young preacher. Though his family used to own the oil land, he still owns the souls of the religious community.

As the egocentric oil baron, Daniel Day-Lewis steals the show along with everything else, again thanks to insane method acting. His bristly mustache, clipped speech, raspy voice, and barely restrained intensity dominate the screen, and every inch of property his boots tread on. When provoked, his ire surges to the surface like an oil gusher.

His young son, his protege, suffers the brunt of his father's antisocial inclinations. When a mining accident strikes, as they do, the kid becomes broken goods. Between his successor's fading out and a half-brother appearing, the father takes steps to underscore his asshattery.

(About the soundtrack. Just as you seem to like unsympathetic protagonists, hope you like strings. Droning strings, thrumming strings, shrieking strings, singing strings. Expect lots.)

So this confirmed douchebag becomes filthy rich by slurping up the blood, sweat, and tears of the little people like a delicious milkshake. He builds a mansion with a marble-floored foyer and a bowling alley.

The title fulfills its promise; there actually is blood, eventually. This is hardly a gore-soaked spaghetti western, but more a simmering pressure cooker that emits intermittent bursts before it explodes. But the final shouting match, in the acoustically sublime bowling alley, cements the new standard for slow-burn masterpieces and unintentionally hilarious overacting.

IMDb #190 Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Source: Wikipedia

A destitute farming family moves to keep from starving and getting pushed around by rich jerks in Dust Bowl Oklahoma--so they can starve and get pushed around around by rich jerks in California.

They travel Route 66 in their crappy truck packed with everything they own. The grandparents drop off. With grim determination and rustic wisdom, the family chases vague promises of shitty jobs. (Spoiler: the jobs are even shittier than advertised. The living conditions are worse. And it only gets shittier from there.)

Along the road, store proprietors take pity on the weary rustics and their hungry children, who resemble grubby refugees from a Dickens novel. The small business owners dispense underpriced candy and brusque charity.

The truck gurgles and lurches into California, the promised land of milk and honey. But the honey's thin soup and the milk is filthy water, and the only promise left unbroken is the ever-deflating wages for picking fruit. Okie transient camps pop up, terrorized by overzealous militia police on the corporate payroll. But the little people stick together.

A grim pallor of "God is dead" hangs over the whole shebang, not just because a major character is a lapsed preacher. Like the dust choking the crops, tangible desperation strangles any hope of lasting happiness or relief from suffering. But the people soldier on--because they must.

As a lucky sap who never read the book in high school, I liked the adaptation. John Ford's black-and-white contributes to mood, aided by subtly ingenious lighting. The titular trampled grapes ferment into a  fine wine of bittersweet existentialism. Which means it tastes awful but sits nicely and aids bowel movements.

129 minutes.

IMDb #230 Review: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Source: Wikipedia

When the opening credits play George Frederick Handel’s Sarabande in D minor and display “Part I: By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style And Title Of Barry Lyndon” in big loopy letters, you know you’re in for a fun ride.

Fate kicks around a wee Irish sprat. Decades whiz by, kids grow up into new actors, while the star stays the same. Friends appear and disappear, money pours in and evaporates. In short, we see the random events that direct one kid’s bizarre life bouncing through Europe.

Sadly, hardship transmutes this naif into a knave.

How much do you enjoy anti-heroes? Because I spent half the runtime cursing the frigging idiot, the rest wondering why we’re supposed to pull for this dick-basket.

Fortunately, it’s a period piece. You know what that means. Costumes! Wigs! Sets! Historically accurate props! Accents! (I wasn’t alive then, but it sure looks convincing enough.)

Also, people back then seemed much cooler…about dying horribly. Duels at ten paces — not even turning around, just taking turns, standing there and waiting to get plugged. And battle tactics — marching in straight lines, firing right at the big fat targets. Not to mention lead-based face powder, which the movie doesn’t address, but features prominently.

And characters act surprised when major players snuff it.

I can see why critics complain Kubrick is cold. Barry Lyndon is an ice bath: upsetting, then refreshing, but it feels the best when you stop and towel off.

Recommended for readers nostalgic for eighteenth-century novels (in which case, GET OFF MY INTERNET), classical music snobs, and voluntary human targets.

182 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 #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.