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acerbica
Reviews
Their Own Desire (1929)
culture study, not cinematic art
I rate this movie highly not because it's all that great but because it's a fascinating piece of movie history. There are no seamless edits - the end of one take often doesn't match up with the beginning of the next. Scriptwise, more is implied than said. In one conversation, Norma Shearer is clearly about to say the word "mistress", but bites her lip and spits out the name of her father's paramour instead. Yet fifteen minutes later she's standing in a slip while brushing her hair, and her nipples are clearly outlined through the fabric. Shocking, I tell you! My favorite scene was the dance sequence, which features a wonderful, haunting piece of music called "Blue Is The Night" by Fred Fisher.
Overall this movie was interesting as an exercise in contrast and comparison with modern films. There are better films from that era - there were probably better films made that week - but I didn't mind spending 65 minutes with these people. I was duly entertained.
Garage Days (2002)
The soundtrack is pretty good!
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie sucks on ice.
The "characters" are either overblown clichés (death-obsessed goth girl? Check. Drugged-out drummer with mod haircut? Check check. Ubiquitous use of eyeliner? Check check check!) or ridiculously annoying people who you'd never spend six seconds with in real life.
Script-wise, this is a soggy mess. There are three people credited with the story, which makes sense as there are at least three movies stitched together. My guess is that Dave Warner wrote a comedy, Alex Proyas penned a tragedy, and Michael Udesky scribbled in a notebook while tripping on liquid acid. Then each of them tore out every fourth page of his script, threw the remaining pages up in the air, and stapled the resulting mess together.
The, um, cinematography is aggravating. Tarantino is not hip, MTV is not edgy and that disjointed text-on-screen technique went out of vogue around the 1890's. As for the trip/rave/ingestion scenes, they're as effective as PSAs: Don't do drugs! Why? They're boring as all get-out.
Overall this is a sickeningly inauthentic movie. The acting is laughable, the comedy is unfunny, the pathos makes you hate these people even more than you previously did. All the tattoos look like they were drawn on with Magic Marker. And the band's total playing time is less than two minutes. 90 seconds of that is a fantasy scene.
The ONLY reason to acknowledge the existence of this celluloid horror is its soundtrack. Featuring the Jam, the Femmes, the Cure, Roxy Music and Tom Jones - that's entertainment. Just buy the record and skip this movie entirely.
Spanking the Monkey (1994)
flawed third act but still a keeper
THIS COMMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS, GIVEAWAYS AND REVELATIONS. Or something.
Okay, to my mind what holds this movie together is the chemistry between Susan (Alberta Watson) and Ray (Jeremy Davies). Almost everything else is superfluous and a great deal of the last half hour could have wound up on the cutting-room floor.
Tom, the controlling, philandering dad, could have been fleshed out more. As it is, we see a driven, conniving, dishonest man - with no idea of what made him that way, or why Susan stayed with him. There is a scene rather late in the film where he opens up, but it's wedged between about six other speed-the-plot scenes, and loses almost all its meaning. His character works best not as a real person, but as another one of the many pressures that act against Ray all summer long. You can see Ray's fear, resentment and anger build through the entire film. Jeremy Davies' performance is agile and moving.
I did not need even one appearance of Ray's stoner friends; they don't advance the plot or even give any comic relief. We're supposed to understand that Ray is only there because he's friends with Nicky (played by guitarist Matthew Puckett), but the other three jokers take up so much cinematic room that there's no way to tell what Nicky and Ray meant to each other.
Likewise, when Ray jumps off the cliff, we're supposed to understand that he's making a desperate bid for freedom, and that his old life is over (rebirth / baptism / etc). But not half an hour ago he was trying to kill his mother. Too much information.
Toni Peck is the little girl from down the lane who's had a crush on Ray without ever meeting him. She is a precocious thing who has read more about life than she's actually experienced. The early scenes with her and Ray could have had more bite - what he says to her in the pagoda is not really enough for her to go home in a snit. And if she can't take that kind of verbal treatment, how in the world does she manage to stand up to Hurricane Susan later on? I don't feel that Toni's character was really thought through (and her father should have been excised from the movie). She was not really a person, but a study in contrast. Ray is awkward, graceless and fumbling when he's with Toni, but with Susan he's the consummate lover - relaxed, confident, passionate, healing.
Jeremy Davies does not quite pull off every trick in Ray's book. Too often he is a limp dishrag - not at all vibrant or interested in interacting with the world. Makes sense for his character but is very boring to watch. He is at his best when he's with Susan - there are long loving closeups of his face as he massages his mother's feet, calves, thighs... those are some of the few times in the entire film Ray looks really involved. The phrase "smoldering lust" comes to mind.
Alberta Watson was phenomenal. Her character is the only one who really does anything. She behaves inappropriately with her son and suffers the consequences. Tom is a cipher, and Ray's biggest problem is that he is acted upon. Everything he does is a reaction. Even the climactic leap at the end.
Morphine's score is sardonic, rueful and knowing - very well suited to this movie. And the cinematography isn't stunning by any means, but the camera is so voyeuristic when Ray and Susan are in the bedroom - those extreme closeups, coupled with panning shots that don't cut away even when you're flinching and squirming and wanting to leave the room. Those are the scenes I go back to - they are erotic, but for all the wrong reasons. Even as you're drawn in, you really wish you could look away.
Kick a few plot twists (will Ray won't Ray ever get to Washington?) and extra characters (Aunt Helen) to the curb, and this movie would have been tight as a snare drum, extremely compelling cinema. As it stands, it's a darkly flawed diamond. 6.5/10.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Five things about this movie.
1. My friends recommended it wholeheartedly. Either they hate me, or they're none of them all that bright - I'm not sure.
2. I've hated Jim Carrey for years, but - "It's so good!" my friends squealed. "It makes you forget you're watching a Jim Carrey movie!" See point number one.
3. "Adaptation" was wretched and "Malkovich" was only tolerable because of John Cusack - so as soon as I saw the name Charlie Kaufman, I should have hit "eject".
4. Kate Winslet's character was a walking horror. I've known a lot of people like her and sadly, not enough of them are dead.
5. No one else in this movie did one thing that made the slightest bit of sense. They're not characters, they're plot contrivances. Lone exception: the wife of the man who ran the clinic. The scene where she confronted her husband was the only honest moment in this film.
5.5. Okay, the lighting was gorgeous, and the special effects were pretty good. But if the lighting is the best thing in your movie, then your movie really sucks.
Final analysis: I still hate Jim Carrey. I now loathe Charlie Kaufman. My friends are idiots who couldn't be trusted with a block of cheese.
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
The goggles, they do nothing
I took two kids (nine and four) to see this movie. I knew it wouldn't be good, because the first one wasn't, and this one is a sequel starring Scott Baio. Now I volunteer to watch bad movies, and I'm easily amused, but I had no idea it would be like this. Never have I wanted so badly to dig my eyes out with a spoon. Everyone in the cast could benefit from a lobotomy. I don't count the actual babies because I'm not convinced they were real. The teen romance is on par with the touching love story in "Young Lust in the Leper Colony". And there was... a moral? Somewhere? Yeah, the moral is children are idiots, parents are suckers, and you'll watch our brain-damaging movies and like them. This movie makes me nostalgic for "Glitter", "From Justin To Kelly" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate". And I would rather be nailed to a chair and forced to watch those three films back to back for a week, than sit through this piece of s**t movie, ever again.
For the record, I had a blinding headache after the first 20 minutes, the four year old threw up, and the nine year old fell asleep. So nobody wins.
Desperate Housewives (2004)
They said it was the best new show on network television
...and they were right. However. Considering how horrible network television is, that's not really an accolade.
I was so happy to see Felicity Huffman in a regular series; I've missed her so much since "Sports Night" was cancelled. And she makes the most of a thankless role here - her character, Lynette, who gives up her beloved career to be a stay-at-home mother, and is (who'da thunk it?) totally unfulfilled. There was promise in Lynette in the first two episodes - the scenes of her trying (and failing) to subdue her demon-spawn children were hysterical. I'm sure every parent can relate to being just that close to the edge. But as the series progresses, Lynette is no longer humorous, she's just out of control. She can't discipline her boys, so she bribes and manipulates them instead.
And that sums up the problem with a lot of this show - these women can't get what they want. In a couple cases, they can't even articulate what they want. The rest of the main characters are Gabrielle (the Latina adulteress whose husband is a capitalist prig), Bree (a woman whose OCD is alienating her children and ruining her marriage), and Susan (a gangly, awkward she-child whose preteen daughter is light years wiser than she will ever be). Please notice all the main characters are female - men are second, third, and fourth-stringers on this show.
Gabrielle wants to be loved. She married Carlos for his money, and (surprisingly) he treats her like a thing that he owns, and this makes her unhappy. Does she say anything? No. She pouts, throws tantrums, and starts sleeping with the gardener. Deception: 1, Honesty: 0.
Bree wants to be perfect. Her control-freak ways have driven her husband Max to the end of his rope, and they wind up in marriage counseling as a last ditch effort to salvage their relationship. Max (who, by the way, is one of the best things about this show) is upfront about why he wants to leave, and the counselor invites Bree to respond. She comments on the flower arrangement on his desk. Brittle facade: 1, Honesty: 0.
Susan... gawd, the less said about this woman, the better. In a nutshell, she wants to be in a relationship. She gets this huge adolescent crush on the (one) hot bachelor in the neighborhood - and instead of just asking him out, she whines to her daughter about how cute he is, and how tongue tied she gets around him. I think the writer wants us to find Susan endearingly goofy, but she's just annoying. She's a grown woman who needs romantic advice from a 12-year-old. Childishness: 1, Honesty: 0.
There are cultural issues - why are the lead characters so painfully non-ethnic? Why is the maid Asian and the hooker Black? Why are the men so bumblingly incompetent? - but this is network television, so I can't expect much on any of these fronts. My real problem is that all these women lie, cheat and steal to get what they want, instead of just opening their mouths and asking for it like normal people.
Case in point: the episode where Lynette's husband (who's such a non-entity, I can't even remember his name) has to stay home with the boys while she goes out. Since he's a man, and taking care of kids is woman's work, he clearly can't get anything right, and has to call her in a panic wondering how to work the microwave or something like that. But the true nastiness is this: Dad might have been able to deal with the kids perfectly well that night... if Lynette hadn't jacked them up on sugar before leaving the house. When she returns, he calls her on it and they have an aw-shucks moment and he laughs it off. I would have left the house for a week.
Some reviewers dislike this show saying it's anti-feminist because all the women are ridiculously dependent on the men in their lives (husbands, absent father figures, rowdy sons). Other reviewers claim the show is too feminist because the men in the show are unidimensional, unsympathetic, and kinda stupid. I've seen critiques that say it's just plain immoral, what with a married lady sleeping with a teenager and the whole murder mystery plot (which is, frankly, way too boring to get into). But my main problem with this show is that not one of these women has a freaking clue how to get what she wants, and they act like horrid, spoiled little children because of it. I'm sorry, Felicity. Better luck next show.