Journal of sielwolf (246764)

All the acting is on fire in this movie. The movie plays balls out. No Pants.

This is the sort of movie that is infinitely rewatchable, infinitely quotable and will age with every passing year. It'll be up there with the other cult/cable TV rerun staples of Scarface and Shawshank. Yeah, "I'm the guy who does his job.

"

I don't care if he's the unsung first of the 90's indie filmmakers. He is just an unending avalanche of bullshit sliding into your face that the filministas think you should welcome with an open mouth. They don't care he has no directoral flair, his concepts are overripe crap that would get a resounding 'D- Get Over Yourself' in any Freshman level creative writing course, that he can produce almost nothing with good actors and that he craps out three movies a year.

But he's also a big PKD fan and by staying canonical to the source he's created a fantastic film about paranoia and notion of self...

wait, let's just say that PKD created it and Linklater put it into action (like the apes in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: "DO!") The only issue is having Keanu Reeves as the lead and surrounding him with Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson acting their skins off. Luckily he spends half the time in his camo suit and someone else is doing his voice and we don't have to look at his dead eyes.

That just lets us look at Winona a little more (still a superfox. It's a generational thing but it's absolutely true. She's our Brigette Bardot).

Along with the just shown (genius) Season Four of The Wire, this movie is one of the most piercing looks into public primary education. And don't let the groan-inducing concept of "White crack-smoking teacher tries to reach his students" make you get visions of Dangerous Minds. There is no Coolio in sight.

And credit for that goes to the leads of Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie and Shareeka Epps who create characters of pathos while letting them fill them out with the all too human traits of stupidity, farce, and adolescent want. There are no moral heights in this movie. Everyone is allowed to be judged on their own choices.

And the central question of who and what we let educate our lives runs through it all.

This was the first fictional skater movie that was good. This was the first fictional movie about punk rockers that was good. Anyone who knows even the littlist about LA Hardcore knows how LA held it down and how the Latino youth there where a part of that.

The genius of this movie is casting the authentic article and letting them skate and jam in the crazy fucked up world that is LA. If Hollywood did this movie it would be Heath Ledger playing Salvador Fernando or something and you would only see Latino faces and White faces. Wassup Rockers has the whole city rubbing shoulders with each other: Beverly Hills, the police, the squadrons of other neighborhood youth battling on little more than ethnic identity.

Wassup Rockers is The Warriors of the skaters. The boys odyssey is a litmus test of the state of the American Western city and all the worlds that compose it.

Covering the Miami Cocaine era of the late 70's and early 80's, this movie brings to light a fascinating and powerful narrative of American culture and one that is often untold. What do most people think of when they think Miami and drugs? Scarface and Miami Vice.

But what about the real world? If you asked someone to tell you who Mo Green in The Godfather was modelled after, they could tell you (Tony Soprano, right?) But the history of America's cocaine wars walks in the shadows mostly because it is composed of Latin and Carribean stories that the mainstream media has never beenable to see as anything other than ethnic "color".

This documentary opens this world up to you: how they did it, how it rose and fell, the people involved. You'll go into hysterics, you'll be shot down by tragedy, you'll think. Like the best documentaries you'll be inserted into events that no screenwriter could conceive.

Murderous hits, gutting guys with bayonents, bodies in boxes, coke dropped from airplanes into the sea in waterproof containers. I actually think the marketing campaign hurt this one: ads done up like Grand Theft Auto and music by Jan Hammer? All unnecessary for this riveting story.

? The first 5 minutes of this movie are a laugh riot: a young Jack Black stand-in (creepily good) sings the most outrageous song while Meatloaf (as Jack's father) and Ronny James Dio (from a bedroom poster) join in Andrew Llyod Webber style. It only gets better.

Ben Stiller and Tim Robbins in great cameos, the Breaking In song, rocking out Beethoven on the beach and the "Little Devil in All of Us" speech at the end. Completely hilarious. But this movie dying a painful box office death just reaffirms my lack of faith in humanity.

Too often RomComs are about quirks instead of character, about dumb sub-Sex in the City gags than actual comedy. This movie isn't really about bellylaughs but has a lot of strong performances and sympathetic characters. It has some great sequences and a real heart.

Most of all it doesn't play you for a fool and that's a rare commodity.

Craig as Bond feels fresh. I could have gone without the "So how did he get his car" bit and I thought the first Bond Girl was disposed of a bit too quickly. It all feels like a rush trying to get everything in (esp Felix Leiter.

How many lines did Jeffrey Wright have? Three? And he got fifth billing?

I expect there to be a lot of metaarc then...

which is good). Like a good Bond it attacks the screen. I'm perfectly fine with a redux or the whole canon.

The more good movies in the world, the better.

Sure, it was kind of long and it felt cheap bringing back every major character from the first...

but this movie was fun and clever. The action was top notch and everyone seems to be having a good time (call it the Oceans 12 Effect). Cute babes popping out of corsets.

Always a good time.

A little robotic but still a good time. Some great lines and sequences. What theater didn't go wild when Ricky Bobby stuck the scalpel into his leg?

Enjoyable but it's no Ether either. Maybe in this year lacking any explosive female roles it stands out but folks won't remember this movie in five years.

SST belongs in the conversation with Motown and Atlantic. Yes, it's that important. Basically if you listen to music with guitars now you need to doff your cap to the bands in this movie.

.. too bad this film doesn't give you any of the greater narrative of Hardcore's place in music.

This film starts and stops. You don't even get told what these talking heads went on to do after 85? A neophyte might look at the bald heads of Moby and Ian MacKaye and not realize that one went on to whore out every song on his crossover album for commercial use while the other is out still killing crowds, resisting commercial pressures, issuing discs for 10 bucks and keeping alive the burning flame of independent spirit.

What we really wanted here was Our Band Could Be Your Life. But that would be a twelve part series..

. and probably would need to be expanded. That's the problem: the dirth of quality music artifacts makes even something passibly good feel deeply inadequate.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is the same. Did you ever wonder how a movie gets rated differently than another? It happens at least once a year: "How is that PG-13?

" Did you know Red Dawn was the first PG-13 movie? How many 'shits' are allowed in a PG film? And all of the implications this has: how NC-17 rated movies can't be advertised on television and won't be stocked at Blockbuster and Wal-Mart (although in this Netflix/streaming age that's becoming less of a barrier).

This movie explores the MPAA's self-regulation and how in fact it is negligent, hypocritical and biased. How we so easily accept ignorance as strength.

Everything you fear about the North Koreans turns out to be true. The genius is keeping the North Koreans out of the picture. You get the sense they are everywhere, in everything.

As the story unfolds the conspiracy deepens: a 13 year old girl disappears in the late 70's and then a decade later it is revealed she was kidnapped by the North Koreans to train their special force operatives. Then it turns out at least dozens and maybe hundreds of Japanese where kidnapped. Her parents seek at all costs to find out what happened to her.

Oh and it's a documentary (in case you thought otherwise). Enough humor to keep you from wanting to kill yourself.

I hope this burnt Matt Dillon's undeserved credit for Crash. Sadly it probably won't and we'll have to live with more poor attempts. I really wonder what people see in Bukowski's work if this is the sort of product they turn out.

They never appear to grasp the smile of the desperate beaten.

. oh, but some of the characters are gay. SHOCKER.

Gay is now just one of the quirks crap writers give to characters in absence of actual writing. You can easily tell if this is the case by switching the genders of one of the characters. If this now heterosexual story is absolutely cliche then you have a worthless movie.

It used to be switching the male/female roles from dominant/submissive was the risque thing. Then making the ages extreme was en vogue. Now its 'gay'.

How 'zzzzzz'. What's next? "Oh upside-down chair leg!

How I BURN for you! But- it's forbidden!!

No- no!!!

I can't give into temptation! You- bastard! [pause] Ravish me!

[jumps assfirst at chair leg]" Without that this film would fall into that Motley Group of Counterculture Characters Form a Functioning Family Unit while Indie Music Plays I described above. But even those movies don't stoop to the hilariously stupid oncoming headlights/squealing tires/funeral ending. LAME!

J-Horror, and Chan-wook Park. DID YOU KNOW THAT CHAN-WOOK PARK IS HARRY KNOWLEZ FAVOREIT DIRENATOR EVAR!!

!??

? People who will buy that Oldboy tinbox are idiots. Confusing well made films with vision that have dumb dialogue and lazy plotting with actual good movies is the path to getting clowned mercilessly.

It also keeps directors from growing and actually becoming something to really get excited about.

An 19 year old would have written this. And it didn't even register a blip on the consciousness. GET OFF THE STAGE!

People don't do it to shock themselves. It's visual alcohol; they do it to feel numb. All the dread of the 21st century and they think this will cure them or make them any less afraid.

A thousand little deaths of who cares.

IT'S THE CINEMA EQUIVALENT OF A HOWIE MANDEL STANDUP! If Gondry got Bjork to squawk for 90 minutes of the visuals this would have been better. This isn't anything more than a video installation.

Don't pretend this is a movie. Just because you can eat it doesn't make the turd cooking in my bowels a meal.

"Finally, a stage magician movie for My Generation!"

Dumb dumb dumb. Oh, and ask mekkab: the drink named after her is as crappy as it sounds. Someone get this girl an album made after '95.

This should be up on Encore On Demand.

.. starting here seemed like a bad choice.

bland premise that kept me from going to the theater. It sounds like hard realist fiction. And I hate hard realist fiction.

But I was never really in a comedy watching mood this Fall. I'll probably see it on TV and die laughing. It's one of those odd things of loving something but not becoming obsessive.

but Eastwood is WAAAYYY overrated as a director. Million Dollar Baby was trite self-righteous crap. A part of me thinks that there was probably no need to fictionalize this and a documentary would be far more powerful.

I'll wait to watch it on HBO and will be glad to be proven wrong.

Joe P back in movies for the first time in eight years. I have a mancrush on Team America Voice MATT DAMON /Team America Voice This could be really good.

But it was out for a total of two weeks here. It's coming out again..

. when I'm back in Ohio for the holidays. Shitty fucking luck.

At least see its finer points.

I dig Clive Owen. Creepy Post-apocalyptic movies rock.

I'm afraid I'll probably miss it like Jackass 2. Again maybe low expectations will save it for me.

Cults fascinate me. The psychology and sociology and spirit of the times. There is something great and dreadful walking over the earth.

Too bad it didn't come out here.

Average man gets unfrozen in the future and finds out he's the smartest guy in the world. What sounds better?

I dunno about this. So often an homage often means "boring and forgettable". Still, it's Soderbergh.

He's in good with me. Plus it has Toby McGuire playing an asshole.

Add onto it most people saying it had three funny scenes. I think South Park might be ruining me. My expectations for comedy are so high.

I want layers and layers of satire and parody. It's hard to live up to.

It's a topic that is both fascinating and repellant to all people. I doubt there will ever be a showing of it though. So now I play Wait For the DVD.

It reminds me of J.M. Coetzee (Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians).

It's a Western but intangled with the racial and historical politics that make Australia what it is. It's about the compromise on ones soul when you ask to have civilization. At what costs?

WTF? This looks awesome BTW.