The Film Junkie

One of the most tense film watching experiences I have ever had was during this Harold Lloyd comedy about a small town boy who goes to the big city to make money so that he can marry his sweetheart (Mildred Davis).

The film starts out simple enough, a few nice gags with Harold and his friend (Bill Strother) hiding from the landlady in their coats on the hangers and Harold posing as a mannacin. 

Then comes his big idea to make a lot of money from his boss: he will have Bill climb a 12 story building and entertain the masses, only Bill gets sidetracked with a cop and Harold must climb the building himself!

What a fantastic feat!  He clearly has no wires or help of any kind, no safety and this is not against a filmed backdrop, you can see the people walking below.  Lloyd actually climbed the building with his own free hands.  The gags while climbing include a clock almost breaking, a rope around the ankle and a mouse climbing up his pant-leg and they are all heart-stopping.

The film may not be much to begin with, but my god!  That climb is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen on film.

Grade: A-

The kind of movie that just seems to hate everybody.  It is the story of a popular teenage girl, Kimberly (Evan Rachel Wood) who accuses a teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual abuse along with two of her friends.

The film hates teenage girls, it tells us that they are nasty, over-sexualized pieces of work that are always looking for a way to manipulate everything in their path, or that they are virginal and innocent and would never do anything wrong if they were not coerced into it.  It re-states the Madonna and the whore, but in highschool terms.  There is no grey area here.

The film hates adults.  All parents are fucked up and selfish (James Woods is fantastic as Kimberly’s masturbating, drunk dad) with trophy wives (Jamie King), or strange sexual perversions.  The teacher accused of the abuse is seen fetishizing his students by making his wife dress and act as one of them, as though to questions whether he is innocent whether or not he did anything, but it really just makes you feel bad without anyone to direct your sympathy towards.  A local TV reporter (Jane Krakowski) uses her sex to get her everywhere, as though women will always use sex to their benefit.

This film hates people and so why should we like it back?  It does not challange social convention in any sort of cunning or smart way, just in a hateful and empty way that leaves us with nothing.

Wood gives a great performance and is the one highlight in this annoying film.  The potential she showed in ‘Thirteen’ (2003) is proven to be no fluke with her tragic and compelling work here.  Too bad the film doesn’t live up to her work.

Grade: C+

For years my grandfather has been telling me to see this movie.  It is his favorite and he promised that I would love it as well…unfortunately this was not the case.

It is the story of British officers in India who are taken captive by an evil Indian dictator, who looks an awful lot like Gandhi, and the pet-like Indian man who follows them around and ultimately saves them.  The puppy-like man is Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe in really really bad make-up), a wide-eyed worshipper of everything British who befriends Cary Grant’s officer and learns how to be a soldier.

This film is racist on an epic scale.  Indian people are seen as savage and brutal, while the British colonizers are proper and righteous.  It is sexist in that there is one woman in the entire film and she is holding back one of the officers from reaching his true potential. 

Not only that but it has a nonsensical plot that meanders and bores, the effects are bad even for 1939, and the editing is terrible.  Action scenes are sped up on film to make them seem more violent and real, but it only works to make it seem like a weird mime show. 

The pacing is slow and the acting is terrible.  Grant skates in and out of a cocknie accent for the entire film making you want to tear your own ears off.  The make-up turning white men into Indian men is about as offensive as it comes, right up there with ‘Birth of a Nation’ (1915).

Oh and the score, one of the worst Hollywood scores I have ever heard.  The orchestrations make it seem like a sweet little Disney movie while the soldiers are bombing and killing the Indian people.  It is a really weird combination that makes me feel kind of queasy, like the life of an Indian man is equal to that of a cartoon duck.

Rudyard Kipling would, hopefully, be ashamed his poem was used for such a horrible and offensive flick.

A lot of really great films came out in 1939, ‘Gone With The Wind’, ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ among them, this is most certainly not one of them.  Skip it.

Grade: D

This remake of the 1976 original starring Walter Matthau doesn’t work quite as well in a modern setting, but still gets a few laughs off.  Billy Bob Thornton is perfectly cast the pathetic exterminator with a drinking problem who played for 3/4 of an inning in the Major Leagues and is now being paid to coach a local baseball team.  Thornton is just as unpleasant as he can be and that is what is so appealing about him.  You understand why the kids would listen to him, because there is something insanely attractive about Thornton…I totally get where Angelina Jolie was coming from.

The kids are great, but nowhere near the awesomeness of the original cast.  Marcia Gay Harden is slumming it as an over-achieving mom and Greg Kinnear is playing the same character he played in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (2006), but without lessons learned and all that.

The best thing about the film is that it was directed by Richard Linklater, who is starting a dual-platformed career now as kiddie-movie great (2003’s ‘The School of Rock’) as well as indie conversation movie legend (the ‘Before Sunrise/Sunset’ movies, 1993’s ‘Dazed and Confused’).  He has a way with child actors, making them seem more adult than most kids are allowed to be in modern film.  He remembers that kids are more like ‘The Goonies’ than ‘Charlotte’s Web’, that they are wayyy more ‘South Park’ than ‘Dora The Explorer’ in reality and he uses that to make actual characters out of them, instead of over-moralizing.  This is not ‘School of Rock’, but it ain’t bad either.

Grade: B

From the actual creators (not just the producers, ahem yes I am looking at you ‘28 Weeks Later’) of the great comedy ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (2004) comes this comedy that spoofs big budget American buddy cop movies.  Simon Pegg (’Mission: Impossible III’) once again co-writes and stars in this film as he did with ‘Dead’.  Here he plays top London cop Nicholas Angel who is promoted and then re-assigned to the small town of Sandford because his arrest rate is 400% higher than any other in London.  His superiors are played majestically by ‘The Office’s Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan (TV’s Alan Partridge and the star of the great film ‘Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story’ (2005)) and the brilliant Bill Nighy (Davy Jones in 2006’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest).  Great little cameos by three of the best British comedians working today.

Angel tries hard to find the bad in Sandford but all he seems to find over and over again is simple good folk living in the ‘Village of the Year’.  He makes a few needless arrests and starts to see a dark side to the happy village…or is he just going batty?

The town consists of a jovial police chief (Jim Broadbent), a wickedly devious supermarket owner (I was later informed that this was former Bond Timothy Dalton, adding a whole level to the casting that went way over my head as I am pretty anti-Bond) and a dopey sidekick (Nick Frost, another alum from ‘Shaun of the Dead’). 

There are a lot of really good bits and great epic ending that pays serious homage to the complete works of Michael Bay. 

A funny satire with heart…and an awful lot of homosocial bonding.

Grade: B+

My favorite show really finds her feet in the second season.

We start out with Xander (Nicholas Brendon) falling in love with the ‘Inca Mummy Girl’, a kind of lame premise that is much like the one-off season one episodes.  But after the introduction of Spike (James Marsters) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) in ‘School Hard’, we get into the swing of things.

This is the season where love blossoms between Willow (the great Alyson Hannigan) and Oz (Seth Green), as well as the improbable but awesome romance between enemies Xander and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter, the bitchy-fantastic soul of the series).  Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) finally gets some action, gyspy or not, and he becomes far more human as we learn about his younger years.

The best part of season two is the introduction of Angelus (David Boreanaz, clearly relishing the change), the soul-less version of Angel.  Angelus’ romantic and sickening evil games are a great addition and force Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar, as good with the one-liners as she is with the love-sick drama) to grow up in an instant.

The great ‘Halloween’ episode is a highlight of the season, as each member of the cast becomes their costume, and John Ritter is terrifying as ‘Ted’. My favorite of the season has to be ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, where people are forced to re-enact a tragic love story over and over until it inhabits Buffy and Angel.  Plus, it has ‘Popular’s Christopher Gorham.

A really good season where Buffy gets truly addictive.

Grade: A-

This brilliant romantic comedy tells the story of Allan (Woody Allen), a movie geek and film review writer, who is left by his wife and forced to re-enter the world of dating.  However Allan has a terribly skewed perception of what love should be due to his obsession with old movies.  He is counseled by Humphrey Bogart who follows him around and tells him just what to say.

Allen and Diane Keaton, as his best friend’s wife, are a great team once again.  They instinctively understand one another and play off each other perfectly.

The references are completely fitting and for some reason I totally identify with this man for whom cinema is the only reality…don’t know why…

This movie is funny, sweet, romantic, harsh and really well made.  See it.

Grade: A

The first season introduces our main characters, our setting and the general idea behind the show.  However these 12 episodes are the weakest of the entire series.  It is a double-edged sword, these episodes are needed to set us up for the rest of the show, but to introduce new viewers to the series through this season is a disappointment and may discourage them from wanting more of the Buffyverse.

They are not all bad.  Xander as a hyena in ‘The Pack’ is good fun, and Amy The Witch will be a long-running character.  The weakest and most annoying of all the episodes is ‘I Robot, You Jane’, the Willow-meets-a-demon-on-the-net episode is cheesy and no fun.

All in all this season is still better than a lot of TV out there, but it is only the beginning.

Grade: B

A kooky little romp of a movie about a rich spoiled jerk, Lawrence (Tom Hanks), who, due to some insane circumstances, ends up working for the Peace Corps in Thailand.  There he meets Tom Tuttle from Tacoma (John Candy), an over-energetic America-rah-rah type and Beth (Rita Wilson) a smart good Jewish gal.

The film is set in 1962 so as to use communism vs. capitalism as its great evils.  The Peace Corps people encounter all kinds of crazy types from a chick with deathly fingernails to a righteous dude who speaks rockin’ English (Gedde Watanabe, very good at playing “that Asian dude” in almost every 80’s comedy).

The best part of this movie is that no one really learns anything.  Lawrence does things his way and is rewarded, he learns how to deal with women a little better, but overall he walks away with few life lessons, which is pretty refreshing.

The movie references everything from the ‘Indiana Jones’ films to ‘The Bridge Over The River Kwai’ to ‘The Wizard of Oz’, keeping it funny throughout.

The worst thing about the movie is Hanks’ horrible Connecticut upper crust accent, it drove me crazy, which I suppose is the point.

A pretty racist and sexist comedy that assumes innocence as it is set in the 60’s, but it is pretty funny.  I love seeing Candy and Hanks together.  Plus, this is the film during which Hanks and Wilson fell in love!

Grade: B+

Probably one of the least funny Marx Brothers film is this tale of a horse doctor trying to woo a rich lady in a sanitarium while also helping the owner’s boyfriend keep his horse so that it can race…yeah…that’s the plot.

The plot if full of holes and funny bits between Chico and Groucho are nowhere near as funny as other sparrings in other films.  Instead they are slow and oddly plain.

Alas I simply do not see the connection between African-Americans singing about having soul and horse racing.

There is a really funny bit with all three Bros in the operating room when they keep sanitizing over and over again and the actual horse-race is a great moment in Harpo history (no matter how much he steals from Buster Keaton).  The supporting characters are as bland as usual and the musical number is nowhere near the caliber of ‘Duck Soup’.

Skip this one and go check out ‘Duck Soup’ or ‘A Night at the Opera’.

Grade: B-