Assassination of a High School President

Wow, a completely overlooked and enjoyable adaptation of "Chinatown"-as-high school noir. It shares a lot in common with "Brick," but the formal touch is lighter, so you won't be left talking like James Cagney for the next couple of days, "yeah see!" Which is actually pretty fun, now that I think about it. But the soundtrack's better, so I suppose you'll win either way.

The casting from beginning to end is just right, Reece Thompson of "Rocket Science," Mischa Barton, Bruce Willis and on down the line. Every one. And the script is tight and funny and resolves with a guffaw of recognition. Good stuff.

"Forget it Funke, it's high school."

(Apologies for the layoff this week, but I'm afraid I had to heed the Call of Duty. Also I discovered PlayOn software for the XBox. This app is amazing. Pipe web content like Hulu and YouTube, or your own video files all of which you've grown accustomed to hunching in front of the laptop screen to watch to the big boy tv through the magic of the Microsoft box. Free two week trial, install is 100% idiot-proof. Like it, and you will, and it's yours for $40 or so.)

Paranormal Activity

This first one is a softball. If you like-a the scary movies, you're going to want to see Paranormal Activity, in a theatre, with other people. And, if possible, you're going to want to have someone to go home with, although it won't matter. It can still get you if it wants.

I happened to see PA while on a trip with friends. We shared an adjoining suite and stayed up a-waaay past our bedtimes, so there wasn't much time between head hitting pillow and falling asleep. But my dreams were troubled. And when, like all good things do, the trip concluded and I returned to my apartment alone there was a reckoning. But, like the Blair Witch Project, the torment eventually subsided. And luckily I don't a) have hollow, thunky wooden floors, b) live in a two-story home, or c) have a long hallway leading to the closet with the crawlspace hatch. Shiver.

Sleep tight.

90 Movies in 90 Days, Beginning Monday, November 16th

To quote the funniest, well really one of only two funny things Rob Schnieder's ever said: "You can do it!" (In this case "you" is me. I hope that's clear.)

Bonus points if you can tell me the other funny thing. Go!

Eight Days A Week. Well, Six, But Still.

It appears that Netflix, in the Phoenix metro area at least, is now receiving and shipping on Saturday too. This is a game-changer for me. I'd gotten in the habit of holding a movie over until Monday, rather than pushing to finish it Friday, figuring the weekend was a wash. But now, it's go time.

Traitor

Remote-piloting my MQ-1 Predator attack drone over my queue the last couple months I’ve had this nagging feeling that I was missing something. Some enemy, both foreign and domestic, hiding in plain sight, taunting me. Then walking the aisles of the BX, my wrist sore from hours of joysticking…, I passed the DVD racks, apparently stocked not just by the blind, but their actual backpack-wearing dogs, and there he was, Don Cheadle staring back at me. “Oh yeah, Traitor.” Gotcha!

It was a little-advertised, little-seen and, it turns out, only mildly well-reviewed picture. Well, the poster kindly offers that “the truth is complicated.” But the truth is really very simple, 41% of those critics are stupid moron crapheads: this movie rocks. It’s so nice I watched it twice. Because, you know, it’s complicated.

I don’t want to give away too much, but Don Cheadle is selling Semtex and detonators to Arab operators (okay, don't worry, not really Don Cheadle, you know what I meant), and may or may not be a deep-cover CIA agent, or an Al Qaeda-esque double-mole. Think Syriana with a half dozen fewer movies stuffed inside, Three Kings without the jokes (or a preposterous Nerf football bomb), but all the double-triple head faking, the legitimate and discomfiting questioning of American Middle East policy, and a lot of the excellent Arab character actors you've seen kicking around in this genre. (Okay so I wrote “Arab,” and thought “hrm.” Turns out the first five billed “Arabs” are French, Asian, English, Asian and French. Ha! Discomfiting, indeed.)

Other good stuff you get. Shot on actual factual locations in Morocco, etc., this thing looks great. Steve Martin, yes that Steve Martin, wrote the story and produced. And the final twist-o-rama, the “how are they gonna solve this problem?” that undoes so many cool movies in the final minutes is a new one and you might just jump up and say “Gotcha!” Not that I did that. I would never do something so childish. Only a stupid moron craphead acts like that. Not me. Nope.

And finally, Guy Pearce appears to be making movies again. Well, what am I trying to say? Cool movies? Movies you want to see? This is great news. Remember L.A. Confidential, or the first, uh, three times, complicated, you saw Memento? Check out The Proposition, an ugly little Australian western. Also based on nothing more than clicking through his imdb.page, I’m now looking forward (whoops! backward) to seeing The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (director K-19: The Widowmaker, and what! writer Near Dark) and written by Mark Boal (writer In The Valley of Elah).

(Quick. Three more pretty cool movies set in “The War on Terror” you may have missed: The Kingdom, Body of Lies and The English Patient.)

Gotcha!

I’ve Loved You So Long & The Duchess

I’ve Loved You So Long is set in modern day France and follows the reentry into everyday life of Juliette Fontaine after serving 15 years for murder. The Duchess is set in late-1700s England and follows the entry into high society of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, after her mother oversees a match with the Duke. The settings and circumstances couldn’t be more different, but both movies are essentially about the same thing: the lengths to which a mother will go to care for her children.

Things you should know:
Both movies are excellent.
Each features a starring lead from The English Patient.
I loved The English Patient.
Keira Knightley is more talented when she’s wearing a bustle.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I’ll still love The English Patient.
Ralph Fiennes adds another well and true bastard to his resume.
Do you really think your snickering is going to make me cave after all these years? The English Patient was great. Back off with your newfound backlash courage.
ILYSL is in French w/ English subtitles, “look at the big brain on Kristin, acting in a second language!”
The English Patient.

Elegy

Love, mortality, selfishness, cynicism, the gilded prison of marriage. What themes of my middle-life aren’t rummaged through here? I can remember reading Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King in high school and thinking these old man anxieties seem a hundred years away. Turns out twenty was enough to get me there.

Ben Kingsley plays a scared man of sixty-something, facing the grave, his back on his life, trying to fuck his fears away. As usual the women, including the young, naïve ones, are more intelligent and realistic about what’s gone before and what’s possible from now on. When will I learn?

Choke

Sam Rockwell? Chuck Palahniuk? Sign me up. Open humanism disguised as cynical misanthropy? Sheep, get out of those wolfskins.

"You're my best friend in the whole world. But this girl, she's like the only nice thing that's ever happened to me. So do you think you could resist the impulse to piss all over it, just this once?" For you Dignan? Yeah.

Milk

Wow. The best news is Gus Van Sant might be back from experimental film school. I’d read something similar after he made the little-seen Paranoid Park, but I guess I was still numb from the shell shocked loneliness of Gerry and, to a lesser degree, the softcore slaughter porn of Elephant, which actually kind of hooked me in the same way it’s hard to turn away from roadside car crash aftermath, and finally that Kurt Cobain meditation, Last Days, by which time I’d thrown up my hands.

But those films made it easier to forget Van Sant was the same career-making fever dreamer who blew it up with Drugstore Cowboy, which might be the underappreciated James Legros’ (best) biggest picture (try out Living in Oblivion if you’re interested), which begat My Own Private Idaho and featured the still interesting pre-Speed Keanu Reeves (come on: River’s Edge, Parenthood, I Love You to Death), which begat To Die For and made Nicole Kidman, which begat Good Will Hunting and made a couple of B-listers you probably wouldn’t recognize, and which, coupled with Finding Forrester, might have been the mainstream material that sent our boy into the wild. I could go on, but time’s up.

Though I’ll say this, Sean Penn won this year’s game of pretend for a reason.

The Other Boleyn Girl

Strikes me as Cliff’s notes on Henry VIII vs. The Boleyn Family: an emotionless by-the-numbers survey of Anne’s rise and fall, the dissolution of Henry and subsequently England’s ties to Rome, and the ruination of the Boleyn family, check, check, check and check. And the usual tease-all, show-nothing, bee stung, deer in the headlights character work of Scarlett Johansson; see also Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, He’s Just Not That Into You, etc. Empty but strangely satisfying, like a Twinkie.

50 Words or More

In an effort to resurrect this thing, I'm making a New March's resolution to write at least 50 words or more about each movie I see. So pieces are going to be (even) less finished and more like notes from a ratty spiral bound.