bluegreenbluegreen Reviews

American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002 Video)

noir

[8/10 · 2 December 2009]

I enjoyed this movie.

The atmospherics are good- there is a noir quality to it. That feeling of a world gone awry with an unfocused, city-wide menace always seeping in from the background.

Contemporary college campus noir- it looks wonderful, but..

All the characters accept a morally compromised world. Bad, sometimes really bad, acts are banal and ordinary.

The plot is engaging, and fast, and full. Fun, quirky characters abound. Halfway through a full story is told, but it just keeps unfolding in pleasing and surprising ways. It's really quite a good movie.

Also the acting is very good through-out. Good, full characters.

The music, a sort of self-mocking surfy/euro-loungy thing brings a smile..

And, even though the events and actions are somewhat preposterous, the story and the characterizations are psychologically true.

The protagonist is truly frightening, as is the world she comes from, but she's also kind of appealing.

I Am Legend (2007)

total crap!

[1/10 · 12 May 2008]

All I remember of The Omega Man is that first image of Heston, at least as I remember it, luxuriatingly driving a big convertible in an oddly empty cityscape. I think he's on some curving overpass as we first see him, elbow on the window sill, smiling in the sunshine.

That ironically odd image is iconic and dead-on right. There isn't even that much in this 2007 movie.

This movie is so bad... Who thinks this is a fine performance? Are they talking about the dog? Nothing that this actor did seemed remotely human or true.

It's not all his fault. The script had him saying and doing completely stupid stuff. Maybe a truly great actor could have found something recognizable in this non-human role, but I doubt it.

Why does he need mannikins to meet and talk with, but shows zero interest in real people? I'm not talking about being scared, or shy, or defensively, reflexively hostile... just not interested. The girl was just a nuisance. It made no sense.

Why did he put out a radio message and wait everyday if he were convinced there were no survivors?

How is it a guy this resourceful is such a whiny tantrum-thrower? none of this made any sense, not any of it at all. This movie sucked real hard.

And the acting was just terrible. My character needs to display emotional agony? I'll just screw-up my face and look like I stubbed my toe real bad. Maybe it's the directors fault. I don't know. But this is just... well, you know the word.

----

I'd like to assign more than one point, if only for variety- so I'm trying to think of something redeeming or respectable about this.. and.. I can't. Even his choice in pilfered (or inherited) art was unimaginative.

When they went to cgi for the villains, some-one said "physics-schmizix, I want them to move like they weigh two pounds, and collide like they are 500lbs of solid steel!" That's why the zombies weren't scary.. they moved too fast to have substance.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

what a lovely, lovely film

[10/10 · 8 May 2008]

The film is bleached to the ruddy-yellows of turmeric, the color of curry, and to the color of saffron. It gives a dreamy quality to the thing... yellow's not a pretty or a soothing color, but there is a spiritual openness, a sun-bakedness, about it here. We occasionally get to balm our eyes in deep indigo for contrast and rest.

This spirit quest is dreamlike, the men are plucked from their lives and placed on this flimsy, beautiful train, which rocks and sways as it cuts slowly across the savanna. It's a command performance called by the oldest brother who has had an epiphany, and there are some things to work out (that's about all he knows about it), and it will take all three.

The dry humor of interaction that calls back to their history as brothers- which we are wisely left to intuit and guess at ourselves- is delicious and pleasing. Just the right notes are hit here.. we understand just enough of who these men, and these boys, are.

It's a delight to watch the spirit of the quest move into and animate the brothers; to watch the playing out of old patterns, the play of old hurts and loves, the reaching back and reaching forward, the odd increase in both humility and surety that comes with spiritual growth.

The music is exactly what it should be- intelligent, sensual, dreamy.

The flat-on snapshot like compositions of the three brothers are interesting and effective.

The picture moves well, and resolves well. It is sensual and touching and funny. It is beautifully shot. The players are well suited to their roles, and play off each other very very well. The extraneous characters and scenes are not extraneous in any way, they complement and complete..

An absolute delight.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

another 10 on the crapmeter

[1/10 · 7 May 2008]

Something strange is happening in the town of Marfa. This movie is just as bad as There Will Be Blood. What is going on?

The above line has more story, more interest, more movement, than either of these two movies.

To be fair to No Country For Old Men, the ghost-like assassin character is well drawn, well clothed, and well played. This actor has a monumental face that is a delight to the camera. His voicing is dead-perfect. There are some good shots of bare, open, sun-shot highway, too, that just hit the right note. Also, 70's cars are cool.

What's wrong: Well... No story. After a nice tease of a set up. It started like a story, but nobody really did anything that made sense.

You have a man on the run; good stuff so far. He's got a girl, that's good too. You see their home, you believe his character, great. I'm on his side. Then comes a remorseless, unstoppable, killer, not of this world, who seeps over everything like a black cloud of death. Cool.

Then you realize you're following the wrong character- this movie isn't about the prey, or the predator either.. it's about the superfluous sheriff, remorselessly pursued by his own black cloud of getting too old and not giving a damn. He struggles weakly against the approaching cloud and then philosophically gives in to it.

In the mean-time we watch other people offer themselves up to the black cloud of the assassin. Eventually, at no particular point, the silent black credits slam in.

The above makes this movie sound like it might be entertaining, or at least about something. It isn't.

The sheriff has exactly one great, topical, line. While dismounting his horse at a scene of great carnage - the desolate big-time drug and money exchange gone bad - he adds a fillip to his deputy's half-successful attempt at manly-lawman-understatement of the grisly scene: In response to the deputy's comment the sheriff says "well there does appear to have been something of a glitch.." - or something like that.

It's so good, that it is almost enough to save the sheriff, but , sadly, it is not enough.

Also, while the movie looks like Texas, many of the characters seem a Texan parody of the flatest, thinest sort.

I thought the woman motel clerk was wonderful. And have no quarrel with the Scottish girl's accent or portrayal as the young texan wife. The husband played well enough, too. But for what.

This movie has a very bad spirit, and nothing to justify it. May it's own black cloud hasten to catch up to it soon.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

perfect 10 in the world of crap

[1/10 · 5 May 2008]

students of mass hysteria take note: a critical mass of positive commentary has tipped the bucket of critical opinion over into a pool of blind, fervent, admiration.

This movie is a disaster. On so many levels.

1. acting: The award winning portrayal is one note, badly played. Yul Brenner in Westworld except he's not supposed to be a robot. The voice (I didn't rcognize it for John Huston's- but it is clearly) does not fit, does not modulate, and is as substantial and iritating as a sheet of wax-paper obscuring our view of the character. Just as well, the character doesn't move.

2. staging: It doesn't look like California. Nothing like it (except for the beach at pt conception). I assumed we were in Texas until the idiot characters started dropping names like Bakersfield. When they were talking Signal Hill, early on, I wondered "Is there a Signal Hill in Texas too?" Jeeze.

3. score: artless, weird and obnoxious.

4. story: No story, really.

5. dialogue: Unreal and out of period with jarring modern references.

6. camera-work: weird, arty nonsensical flourishes. Blurry stuff in the foreground obscuring your view. Also, keeping out of the frame the thing you want to look at, etc..

The mine accidents remind me of the "mousetrap" death scenes in that movie about the people who cheat death, and then have to pay... you know, it catches up with them in improbable ways. It takes some kind of genius to make a mine accident look improbable, got to give them credit for that.

Also, I didn't know mines and miners were so colorful--- the mine scenes I've seen before at Disneyland.

One of the worst "films" I have ever sat through.

Iron Chef America: The Series (2004–2018)

I agree... it lacks the charm of the original

[17 January 2008]

It lacks the ironic humor of the original. The Japanese were having fun with the idea of cooking as competition... and playing it straight.. the result was utterly delightful. The Americans are humorlessly playing for keeps- it's pathetic. There was a subtlety and a beauty to the photography, the commentary... and yes, the English translation in accented voice was delicious, too.

Alton is, sadly, a bit much, ...

Oh, but I miss the hushed excitement of the Japanese commentators, and the shy, sensuous confessions of the female panelist- "I really liked it!" and the worldly, companionable bantering of the more substantial male panelist.. and the delicate, precise wording of the author-panelist... and the delightful mythos built around the person of the chairman and his "kitchen stadium". Also, come to think of it, the dignity they gave the challenger by presenting his myth as well.

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)

sophisticated?

[5/10 · 16 October 2007]

I watched it on tcm and enjoyed it. Minimizing Frankie and Annette is OK with me. I watched these movies as a kid, when they ran on LA TV, less than 10 years after they were made. F and A were the worst part.. I thought it was clever and about time to put frankie on a distant island.

I remembered Buster Keaton's witch doctor .. and the pretty island girl, and the torpedo juice gag.. and liked them just as well as I did back then.

I think it was a nice way to show kids a real actor, in the midst of this froth. And not in any way demeaning. A shaman, an old man with magic powers and mystery... whats wrong with that.. it's fitting. I loved the character then and now. He has his own set, his supporting players, and reccurs through-out the movie. At no point is he upstaged or interrupted by the youthful players.

But Elizabeth Montgomery's cameo was indulgent and bugged me then even as now.

Eric Van Zipper was great then, and even now a delight. One of the "mice" is a quite pretty blonde called "puss".. she's so serious- it plays well.

Some-one mentioned musical "book-numbers".. I thought that was kind of cool.. and the fun part- setting it up, moving from dialogue to song to number.. was there, while the bad part- the music itself- was mercifully truncated. It played fine by me.

Speeding up the race scenes was something borrowed from the greats of silent film... and made fun something that might have been tedious..

I'm reminded now of the courtship motorcycle ride with Annette and the male lead.. that Was tedious..

"Bonehead" is a wonderful character actor.. loved the girl sent by the witch doctor.. the clumsey gag was good..

I liked the way the race was previewed by the sabatour explaining to Van Zipper how it would go down, and then we recognize it, before it happens, and enjoy it more that way. We know there is a tiger in the pit.

By the way, no-one mentioned the gay innuendo involving the tiger. The blonde mouse says she's not OK with a woman being eaten by a tiger.. and the heavy says "well this tiger only likes to eat boys..." later, when Von Zipper is spared by the tiger, he exclaims.."I've never been so insulted..." Also, the island girl squeezes torpedo juice from a very phallic looking torpedo. The torpedo enters the screen nose first, with a shocking imagery.

What else.. Liked the suits on the beach... nice juxtaposition.. and Micky Rooney was fun, and has nothing to be ashamed of in this, either. Contrast it with his and Buddy Hacket's dreary bit in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World".

Yeah, it's sophisticated- and I liked it. I'd of rated it higher, but I didn't want to give you the wrong idea.