District 9: a Review (?)

You know a movie's bad when you think it's a spoof and it's not. This movie is funny. but the satire (parable) is too heavy handed and the story line's got more holes in it than swiss omelettes.

This is a movie I should by all rights have walked out halfway through or earlier. And if my wife stayed to watch I should have hunkered down in the men's room stroking my stomach which is growing, these days, in leaps and bounds. Man, I have cravings!

But something made me kind of like it. The weak narrative? Cheesy costumes? Bad Nigerian caricatures? (my brother tells me that it's been banned in Nigeria). Bodies exploding? Weak romantic and "human" (like the ending--- only works if you're laughing!) moments? The hilarious character of Wikus van der Merwe who I was occasionally tempted to take seriously? (I never was never tempted in the same regard with respect to his alien compadre--- i mean, c'mon !!).

But, whatever. All in all this is a movie I do recommend. But save the head scratching---Just don't take it seriously!

Where the Wild Things Are - A Brief Review

"Where the Wild Things Are" suffers the fate many movies suffer. It starts off well enough. Sets up possibilities. Then kind of just fizzles out. And the ending's a cop out. A morality lesson. Yeah, Yeah: i'm all vague about town here. Well, so what. It's a decent movie all in all. But I wanted to feel as strongly as I did when I was terrified as the creatures encircled our wayward adolescent, threatening to eat him. From there o in it was all downhill, intensity-wise. And I was needing a good sound nap.

The Torn-Up Virgin Tree - A Few Movies

Three Movies We Saw This Weekend:
(skip to number 3 if you want the torn-up virgin tree)

1) "Sparrow"
A convent-cinderella story complete with evil stepmother and problem stepsisters. In Sicily: Catania and its countryside. With views of Etna. And barred convent windows. Nice scene where Maria stands up for a dog. And lemon trees. Love vs "Bride of Christ." So-So.

2) "Mona Lisa Smile"
Some great feel-good moments. If that's what you're after. And I was. Sometimes situations and characters resolve too easily. "Formulaic." And one big slip-up's when That 70's Show guy (Eric Forman) gets in Julia Robert's face on the dance floor. It completely undermines the nifty and luminescent Julia Stiles I-want-to-be-a-housewife speech that comes just a little bit later. I wrote somewhere before about how I sometimes like systems where everything clicks into place. I liked this.

3) La Dolce Vita - The Torn-up Virgin Tree

(In Italian with Spanish subtitles.) A 3-hr feast we spread over three consecutive nights. Great portrait of the bored rich. The lost. The Italian: religion, women, fashion, movie stars.

Especially wonderful scenes:

---Father parts from son. Gets in cab.

---Sex in a stranger's house. Will you invite us in for a cup of coffee?

---Helicoptered statue (en route to the vatican)

O, hell, the movie's all wonderful scenes

I keep thinking about this movie and everywhere I go, on every street corner and in every plaza, a brightly-lit La Dolce Vita



I want to howl like a dog. Walk round with a cat on my head. (a kitten, actually). And, deep in the night, walk into the Trevi Fountains with my great and magnificent hair and breasts. Because, of course, everyone wants a piece of this torn-up virgin tree.

Into the Wild or Why I'm a Jerk

I have mixed feelings about giving up on this movie half way through and going downstairs to sit with my birds.

Actually, I don't have mixed feelings.

It was driving me crazy.

Most of the blame probably lies with the sister's voice overs. O, Lord!

And maybe those voice overs are why I felt myself being pulled inevitably into the garbage you hear when a young person dies, for example, skydiving:

......."He died the way he would have wanted".....blah blah blah
......."Doing what he wanted to do"........blah blah blah

Or maybe it's more than just the voice overs.

But, anyways, I got to thinking of what my friend Nate thinks of my birds. He thinks a few days of "freedom" (and then starving to death or getting ripped to shreds by a hawk or a green heron) would be better than a long, happy lifetime of chirping and squawking and hopping around in a big ol' cage with lots of toys to play with and destroy and all sorts of foods (and water) available and other birds within just a few meters.

So, I gave up on it.

Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe the movie became complicated and interesting.

O, Who cares?

I don't, at least. When you become so alienated from something it's best to walk away. And, besides, I really enjoy sitting with my birds. They seem so damned happy.

Knowing: 3 Good Minutes (a movie review- ?)

I went into the movie "Knowing" with some expectation. Bangkok Dangerous had made such an incredible impression on me but I was doubtful that Cage's inept acting could be as "expertly" showcased here. And, unfortunately, this turned out to be true.

Cage's acting was pathetic but there weren't too many laugh-out-loud moments. Though my wife did have to nudge me a few times.

In the middle of the movie I had to go to the bathroom. But the urinals looked so far away so I pissed on the floor. This was the highlight of the movie.

"Knowing" (here in Mexico they call this movie "Presagio") contains about 3 minutes of decent footage.

A plane crashing into a field.

A train derailing.

A wave of fire (form a solar flare) sweeping through NYC destroying everything including Nick Cage and his screen family embracing.

A little boy's alien-induced vision through his bedroom porthole-window: the woods on fire and a huge moose crashing through and exploding in fire.

Otherwise this movie (the rest of its 2 hours), is pretty much worthless. And it's not one of those "it's so bad it's good" movies. This movie just pretty much plain sucks.

(note: I did not actually piss on the bathroom floor.)

Bangkok Dangerous (a review?)

My brother and I pay-per-viewed Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous because we figured it would be bad enough to be good and because it was listed as only 100 minutes long.

The movie, for the most part, kept our attention. Although we spent much of our time trying to figure out what exactly Cage looked like.

Here are some things we came up with:
"vagrant," "creepy," "retarded," "a druggie," and, probably the most accurate of the bunch, "a Frankenstein."

Cage has a knack for all sorts of subtle expression and nuance and here at his best he looked as bewildered as a caveman suspended in ice for 10,000 years and just now thawed out and squinting into the 21st century.

I absolutely cherished the bizarre and moody closeups of Cage (and I don't mean "cherish" in the way I enjoyed watching Madonna with short hair frolicking in the sea in her "Cherish" video. and, damnit, remembering that's bringing a sad damp cloth down over my little nostalgic soul right now).

Overall, Bangkok Dangerous was worth watching. Fantastically bad sometimes. Especially Cage's broody husky voice-over monologues which took me all the way back into the darkest corners of Apocalypse Now.

And whoever decided to make the local pharmacist love interest girl deaf was inspired. This stroke of genius led to one particularly surreal and ridiculous scene but overall, sadly, it was underexploited.

The movie, for all its spark, lagged in a way that, for example, "Taken" (a modern classic of this sort) did not.

So, I give it 3 1/2 stars.

Seven Pounds-- a review (?)

I think Jorie Graham described Stephen Berg's prose poems as "beautiful, beautiful poetry" or something like that.

Well, I think (I'm a sucker for a well-made tearjerker) Seven Pounds is a beautiful, beautiful movie and I'd like to buy it so I can just enjoy it rather than spend so much of the time trying to figure things out. And without some of the skepticism I am naturally inclined to and for which the seeds herein (Seven Pounds) were sown.

But I'm cool with all that for the first time round. I think I watched the movie pretty much as its makers wanted me to.

Again, it's beautifully made. Especially the last ten or so minutes when you know exactly what's going on. The music and the visuals are wonderful and manipulative, wonderfully manipulative (break out the violins, boys, break them out!) and I was fighting back, without complete success, tears.

In the car on the way home I remembered how afraid my brother was before his bone marrow transfusions (except for the first one) and that made me cry some, quietly, leaning towards the window.

And then I thought of the guy on Goodreads who asked me "why bleak? what does bleak do for you?" (or something like that) in response to a note a posted about Weldon Kees.

I think I explained about Kees. Whatever.
Fuck it. Just fuck it.

Benjamin Button: A Review (?)

More like Benjamin Boring. How many ways can you spell "Boring?" (My wife makes spaghetti many ways and it's never boring). And how many ways can I compare this to Forrest Gump? But Forrest Gump is so much more temperate than this spoon-fed summer's day. (Don't forget Titanic, Rauan. O, Rose! O, Rose!)

Okay, I saw Forrest Gump so long ago. At the Galleria in Dallas with Danny Dever. (Danny where are you now? In Phoenix still, feeding the masses?)

Okay, there are some beautiful scenes of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in their characters' primes (you could call them cheesy but I was filled with bright crayon sunset colors) but, god damnit, couldn't these have come 30 or 40 or 50 minutes earlier.

The pygmy character--- Jiminy Cricket !
Captain Mike---- Loo-tenant Dan
Daisy--- Rose. Ginny.

Hummingbird flying up out of the ocean--- ooooooooooo

And of course I didn't appreciate being brow beat by the anti-Dylan-Thomas-dying-of-the-light message.....okay, let's just sit on the dock, and watch the sun go down, and die.........yawn....

Note: while writing this I've been listening to young-lass (and young-ass too I guess) Amy MacDonald's "This is the Life." And now Cinco Minutos by Gloria Trevi. Trevi's made a comeback. She was in jail for helping whore out her dancers, or something like that. In one of her new songs (not Cinco Minutes) she dares the listener (presumably a younger man) to prove it to her. "I am the original," she scream-croons.

Gloria Trevi just oozes greasy trucker sex.

I got a bad feeling when I was in line to buy two tickets for Benjamin Button (screen 12, 8:05 PM, Cinepolis in Pitillal-- before Cinepolis and the adjoining shopping center there was a cockfighting ring here. this reminds me of the Kink's "Come Dancing.")

So, I got the bad feeling when I looked at the posters for "Bride Wars" (two cafe-knife wielding starlets) and "Marley and Me" (Jennifer Aniston hoisted up in Owen Wilson's arms. O, what chemistry !! I want to see them together on the big screen !!)

But, all in all, I am glad for the experience.