What is the last movie you saw? and rate it.

[DanielBenoit]

I have to watch all the new rentals that come out because of my job. Here's what I had this week:

Omg serious?!?!? YOU have the GREATEST job in the world.

[Satan]

^Seconded. I'm jealous.

[JuniperWoolf]

Including the ones that go in the vault??

Haha, no but my manager does because he has to make sure that there's nothing illegal on them (he's found quite a bit of bestiality, actually).

And yeah, my job is sweet.

[OrphanPip]

Haha, no but my manager does because he has to make sure that there's nothing illegal on them (he's found quite a bit of bestiality, actually).

And yeah, my job is sweet.

All porn in Canada is supposed to have that little sticker that says it's been approved by the censors. Because Canadian law forbids bestiality, pedophilia, simulated rape, and violence in porn.

My brother used to work for a distributor here in Montreal and it was a big hassle for all the porn produced in the US to be approved for sale in Canada.

[DanielBenoit]

Haha, no but my manager does because he has to make sure that there's nothing illegal on them (he's found quite a bit of bestiality, actually).

And yeah, my job is sweet.

Omg I seriously thought that you had said "he's quite fond of bestiality" so I was like WTF?!

[DanielBenoit]

I'm trying to discipline myself by keeping my reivews brief. Here it goes:

World's Greatest Dad - My sister was watching this, I saw Robin Williams in it and despite the fact that I am a great fan of his stand-up comedic work, one out of every five films he's done I've disliked (yes Mrs.Doubtfire is totally one of them). That said, he has a magnificent edge for dark comedies and this film is perfect for him, as he has proven himself on those uncommon but special occasions to be just as good a comedic actor as a dramatic one.

Despite the misleading and unlikable title, this mercilessly dark satire about a divorced father who lives with his distinctively child-from-hell teenager son who is (even for a fifteen year old) grossly obsessed with sex and is a compulsive erotic asphyxiate.

I must first give a great bravo to Daryl Sabara who plays the piece of **** son with an intensity and disturbingness rarely seen in mainstream films. This kid clearly has major problems, as evidenced by his semi-sociopathy, his utter misogyny among many things.

But everything changes when the father finds his son dead as a result of accidental suffocation while masturbating, the father out of shame of people knowing the perversity of his son, discards of all of the evidence to make it look like a suicide and from then on literatley re-creates the memory of his son into a lonley, confused and yet greatly intelligent young man.

From this point on the film goes into a dark satire on not only our obsessions with the memories of the deceased, but also our willingness to project the ideal unto reality.

The film has the potential for a truly great film but meanders here and there, making unnecessary moments to the point that by the end of the film everything seems too lopsided. Indeed it has moments of a true gem, but the disturbing realism of the first half is contrasted too heavily with the satire of the second and comes out uneven.

Both ways this is a fine film, deserving to be seen merely for the first act. 7/10


Barry Lyndon - The best three hours you can spend at the movies. A great and unique film by Stanley Kubrick which is as eloquently satirical as it is sad and sublime. A poetic masterpiece that flows like music and the picturesque images presented in just about every shot. 10/10

[OrphanPip]

I just got home from watching a Canadian independent film about LARPing called Wild Hunt. It was a pretty decent movie, an interesting premise and I enjoyed it. The movie will probably be seen by only a handful of people though lol.

[DanielBenoit]

Damnation - This is as terrifying and dark a film about modern industrial life as ever I did see. Its merciless and grotesque landscape replicates nothing less than a Dantesque Hell. Dreary and desolate the landscape it. Almost every shot of this film is filled with an atmosphere of the hopelessness. And yet there live people under this fog and music too. It is all the more terrifying. There is a certain scene in this film in which two of its main chatacters are making love to the background of the noise of industry, and it is as grotesque and mechanical a sex scene as ever I have seen.

Tarr's camera slowly pans the texture of this hell. All seem to be stuck there, as if in an endless time continuum. Dogs wander the streets, scavengers for scraps of food. But worse, men sit and discover how empty the time is.

Under this physical landscape is something much worse and more nihilistic. It's main character Karrer, obsessed with memories of his past lover, gradually comes to the realization of how empty his life and everything around him is.

There is a certain scene here in which a man tap dances in a puddle of water. This isn't joy, it is as terrifying a mechanicality as the factory machines. 9/10


Now on a lighter note I am going to examine two recent mainstream comedies and examine why one works and one doesn't.

Pinnapple Express - Okay this film has every reason not to work. It's immature, has a lot of action scenes, is ridiculously absurd and is pretty much all about two stoners freaking out as they run away from a bunch of drug lords. Not only that but it is also one of the funniest comedies I've seen for a long time. James Franco's performance is pitch perfect as the one of the stoners (who's also a pot dealer) and the script which indulges in Beckettian digression constantly, makes use of the most immature, absurd and obscene situations and makes them totally ****ing hilarious. 8.5/10


Step Brothers - I'm willing to submit and say that Pineapple Express most likely has just as much violence and obscene language (though definitley not drug content, that's for sure lol) as Step Brothers, and yet one of them is deemed to be a classic while another is somewhere next to an utterly depressing experience.

So what is it that makes Step Brothers different from the brilliance of Pineapple Express? Well it's not that the word "****" is said hundreds of times in both movies, but because one of them was approached and done in a well thought-out and funny way. The script of Step Brothers pretty much just sounds like a bunch of wildly immature men got together and wrote down as many obscenities as they could and put them into violent situations.

It's hard to explain without having seen the movies side by side but because of the context and situation that memorable phrases from Pineapple Express like "it smells like God's vagina" or "you're as high as a ****ing kite" which make them so funny. Step Brothers just throws pointless and unfunny stuff at you that may be amusing to a twelve year old and that's about it. That said Step Brothers does have its laugh out loud moments (the scene when they make a bunk-bed) but other than that it is nothing more than a cruel and mean-spirited comedy. 3/10


Being John Malkovitch - My God, Charlie Kauffman I think has very well proven himself to be the first writer auteur we've had in a long time. Never before have so many films have so consistently had so much in common even if they were directed by different people, because in reality all of these great films are Kauffman films.

Being John Malkovitch is Kauffman's first success and is a moving, absurd, funny, sad, weird and beautiful film about three lonely souls whose lives are changed once they find a portal into the head of John Malkovitch in a filing room where they work on the 7 1/2 floor. Soon enough they start a business selling 15 minutes into Malkovitch's brain for $200.

This movie has so many brilliant ideas which come in layer after layer, though despite that, it is never overwhelming.

What this film is about is our sense of a longing for completeness, for otherness, for love and for eternity. What many of the characters do in this film are terribly wrong, but in some very absurd way in this alternate universe we can understand their human needs. There is a great performance in here by Cameron Diaz (with an exceptionally modest physical appearence) who discovers that she wants to be a transexual after discovering what it is like to have sex with a woman whilst inside Malkovitch's head. The scene of this realization (filmed almost entirely through the POV of Malkovitch/Diaz) is frankly the most beautiful, weird and moving of the whole film.

Then there's Malkovitch himself who took considerable guts to star in the film, with even more guts by Kauffman to write a script about people traveling inside a renouned actor's head.

Kauffman is truly the wonder-boy of today's cinema. His films are beyond description. They can be deleriously funny and sad in the very same moments, fantastical and yet truthful, satirical and yet moving. And more than anything, Kauffman is a philosopher of the human spirit. 9.5/10

[qimissung]

For some reason I haven't seen Being John Malkovitch although I used to love him back in the day when he made movies fairly frequently and he was so-o-o-o good at being the bad guy.

Crazy Heart 9/10 This movie doesn't really cover any new ground, but then as they say, there is only one story.

And this one is magnificent. Jeff Bridges earned his Oscar with every creaky joint and shot. He says he's 57, moves like he's 67. But when he gets onstage and holds his guitar you can hear every long night on the road, every bad decision, every phone call that isn't answered, every bottle that he's drunk in his voice.

Somehow, as greasy and unwashed and bleary as he is, women still want him. It was surprisingly believable when he lay back on the bed with Maggie Gyllenhal in his arms and he cupped her breast in his hand.

It was just as believable when he sat before her weeks later, his eyes little slits, looking small, deflated, cowed by life and a mother's fury.

If you are looking for a movie with an actual story to tell, one with sound and fury and even love, this is it. And it comes with songs that flow like the dark river. Here is one used in the movie, sung by the original rake-hell and wanderer, Townes Van Zandt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl41lqUFKS4

[Shalot]

Reality Bites - eh 4/10

Before I even get started on this movie, I want to know what it is about Winona Ryder that makes her so unlikeable sometimes? She has been in several movies that I liked, but something about Winona Ryder has always been off to me. I've tried to like her - she's pretty enough, she's not a horrible actress and she always seemed to get good roles up until this movie, I think...so what is it about her? It must be the way she talks. I have never liked the sound of her voice.And, if someone other than Winona Ryder had played the lead in this movie, I still wouldn't have liked it I don't think.

Reality Bites is an old movie - it's from 1994 and I would have been a junior in high school at that time and I couldn't sit through this movie back then, even though I suspect that I might have been the target audience. So, why after all these years did I watch this film? Well, it was on cable and I was too exhausted to do anything but watch crappy TV apparently.

The story is about some young people living their post-college lives in the 1990's. Winona Ryder's character was the valedictorian of her graduating class and she has a bad haircut, wears schleppy dresses, smokes a lot of cigarettes and doesn't find her dream job. She has this executive type, quasi-boyfriend played by Ben Stiller and a friendship that begs to be more with the sterotypical 90's grunge band member played by Ethen Hawke who lives in and out of her apartment that she shares with two other roomates (I'll get to those characters in a minute). The grungy band character is too intellectual to hold a job and he slips his dirty laundry in with theirs in between band rehearsals . Her other roommates consist of a gay blonde male in gold- rimmed glasses played by Steve Zahn I think (Strange Wilderness was a much better movie than this) and an unhappy chain-smoking 90's female with pale skin, black hair and hideously short, unattractive bangs who works at the Gap and also wears ugly, schleppy dresses.

Now, I am sure there is more going on in this film then what these characters are wearing. I think this film attempts to make a statement about that generation, Generation X I think it was...but all I saw were ugly clothes and bad haircuts. I think maybe the filmmakers could have done away with the plot and the dialogue all together. They could just condense this film into a series of still shots of these characters wearing those clothes in that apartment and they would have communicated the same idea in a shorter amount of time. If anyone wants to know about the 90's all they have to do is look at the clothes. And best of all, no one would have had to hear Winona Ryder's strange little voice.

[qimissung]

Precious 9/10 Precious is the story of a girl who is physically and sexually abused. When the movie opens she has been called into the office at her school where the principal confronts her. Is she pregnant? Is she pregnant for the second time?

As the story progresses I think the most amazing thing was that there was anything left of Precious to save. She is sent to a new school where the power of education and a teacher who convinces her that she really cares are the saving of her.

I've seen a number of movies about teachers who turn students around. They are, for the most part good movies. And I admit I'm a sucker for the underdog. I liked this one because it tells the story from the students' viewpoint. For most of the movie Precious had precious little reason to wake up and be glad she was alive. Lee Daniels directs with a kind, sure hand. He shows the ugly stuff, but he never strips his main character of dignity or hope.

[DanielBenoit]

The Passion of Joan of Arc - Again, this is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. Renée Jeanne Falconetti's performance is unquestionably the greatest in all of cinema. It doesn't matter if you are a person of faith or not, this is a film of impeccable quality. I hardly ever cry at films, and this film made me weep. Never will there be a moment ever again in cinema as when Joan remembers who taught her the Lord's prayer. 10/10

[DanielBenoit]

Tokyo Story - Ozu's films must always be watched twice. His films are so masterfully understated and subtle that a second viewing surely blows off the surface of contained emotions. Ozu is a master not only of composition but of storytelling. His films are like beautiful hakius, with a quiet lingering beauty. This film is as near-perfect as movies get. 10/10

[DanielBenoit]

Andrei Rublev - Very few films have ever stood amongst the epic heights of Tarkovsky's masterpiece. This film is in every respect a great film. No this is not a film of epic proportions, don't let the scope and length fool you. This is a film about moments, long and short, of the human experience. I couldn't agree with Bergman more when he said this after seeing this film, "Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." 10/10

[The Comedian]

Avatar -- Wow, was that movie slow, cheesy, and dumb. The dialogue must have been written by a 13 year old who once saw Dancing with Wolves only he was too stoned to really recall it, but, hey what if Indians were blue? And remember that one part in LOTR with those walkin' trees what were all magical and crap? Dude!

Seriously, how could this possibly have been nominated for an Oscar?

Why is it every time I watch a movie, I feel my time could have been better spent sitting on the potty and reading a magazine?

2/10