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.