Juno (2007)

I usually try to avoid declaring bland platitudes, especially in my movie blog, but something should be said about seeing a movie in the right environment. Ok, here it goes:

PLATITUDE: Seeing a movie in the right environment can really enhance an otherwise mediocre movie.

Take for example the movie Dazed and Confused. Add a few bong-rips and some stoner friends and not only do you have a great movie, you have a great afternoon. Or take Titanic and add a passionate make-out session with your date. That's a damn good date. (Tangent: I remember seeing Jackass: The Movie while in college in a theater filled to capacity with drunk college students who reacted to every stunt Steve-O and crew pulled off with shouts and howling laughter. People were throwing popcorn and running up and down the aisles. In any other movie that behavior would have been unbearable, but paired with the senseless violence on screen it remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences.)

So with that in mind, take me at my word that a theater in Union Square, surrounded by indie rock infected NYU students is the right environment to see Juno, Jason Reitman’s new flick about a mouthy teenage girl and her adventure in pregnancy. I saw multiple angular haircuts in the audience. One chick was wearing huge plastic eyeglass frames with no lenses. These are Juno’s people. They laughed at the so-square-its-hip dialogue (“Wizard”, said in place of “awesome,” was exclaimed more then once) and as soon as geek heartthrob Michael Cera appeared on the screen just about every female in the place began to giggle and sigh longingly.

And that appears to be the filmmakers intent. They want you watch, to giggle, to sigh. The movie is kinda funny at times, kinda serious at other times, but the one constant is it’s sweetness. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, our impregnated main character, is as cute as a button, prancing around her snowy town in assorted hipster regalia and at one point calling up an abortion clinic (“Hi, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion”) on a phone shaped like a hamburger.

I was a bit surprised by how toothless the script was. If you didn’t know better you could easily confuse this with a Miranda July film and even in her melancholic movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, there was that hilarious “poop sex” banter. (“Back and forth, forever” still cracks me up). I was expecting a little more edge and little less whimsy. The combination of director Jason Reitman, whose last film, Thank You For Smoking, contained one of the most gleefully amoral characters in recent memory (Aaron Eckhart as a remorseless tobacco lobbyist), and Diablo Cody, who entered the public consciousness with her book Candy Girl, an autobiography of her days as a stripper, almost seems destined to make a film drenched in sex and antiheroes. Instead we get a movie about a twee high school romance almost derailed by an unplanned pregnancy.

With all that said, I still liked it. Very much so, in fact. Once my attitude re-adjusted from black-comedy curmudgeon to romantic-comedy sap I was open to all of the movie’s charms. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, as Juno’s shocked but supportive parents, are hilarious in their roles and surprisingly avoid cliché to come off like genuine, loving parents. And Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman as the potential step-parents for Juno’s future spawn are equally enjoyable to watch as a yuppie couple coming to terms with their impending parenthood.

The mostly acoustic soundtrack (lots of Belle and Sebastian and one prominently featured Moldy Peaches song) fits the mood perfectly. Music selection is very important in these types of movies. Just ask The Shins. If it wasn’t for Garden State , their “Band That Will Change Your Life” moniker wouldn’t exist.

Of course, similarities to Knocked Up, this year’s other comedy about young people and unplanned pregnancy, no doubt have to be mentioned and I would mention them here except for, besides the main premise, the two movies aren’t at all alike. Whereas Knocked Up is about man-child Seth Rogan finally realizing he’s an immature goofball and growing up to become a dad, Juno is about a girl who thinks she knows more then the adults, gets pregnant, realizes she doesn’t know squat, and, in realizing this, comes of age, as they say. The only similarity I can see between the two is that they are both very funny.

So, yeah, returning to my earlier platitude, seeing a mediocre movie in the right environment can vastly improve that average movie. However, seeing a good movie, like Juno, in the right environment can make that movie great and that movie-going experience one to remember.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Ah, whimsy. What would life be without it? Dark, cold and cynical most likely. Even to a bitter pessimist like myself, that sounds pretty terrifying. Lars and the Real Girl, on the other hand, portrays a world that is ALL whimsy, and let me tell you, it’s a far more unrecognizable and frightening world.

In Lars' world everyone is nice and knows one another. They all go to church. They sing in the choir. It’s a place where a lonely man can pretend a life-sized sex doll is a real woman and not one person makes a mean spirited remark. As a matter of fact, the townsfolk are so unbelievably kind they too begin treating the sex doll like it’s a real person! Someone needs to make public the coordinates of this mystical village so we can firebomb it before whatever “kindness germ” they all are infected with contaminates the real world, and gross concepts like “peace” and “understanding” start to flourish.

Ahem, anyway, the story is about Lars (played with twitchy sincerity by Ryan Gosling), a introverted recluse who purchases a life-sized sex doll and pretends it’s his girlfriend. Instead of telling Lars that his paramour is, in fact, plastic and latex instead of flesh and blood, his brother and sister-in-law, on doctor’s instructions, play along and convince the entire town to play along as well. And everyone does! With little to no resistance!

And there within lies the problem. Lars and the Real Girl is so unfortunately divorced from reality that it is hard to take the drama seriously. While it contains moments of tender emotion and a few mild laughs, the movie is so bogged down by its own syrupy sweetness that it fails to leave much of an impression or even make much sense.

It’s almost inconceivable how someone like Lars, who is surrounded by loving neighbors, could possibly end up so alone he resorts to a sex doll for companionship. His sister-in-law (an adorable Emily Mortimer) and brother are constantly inviting him over for breakfast or dinner, he gets invited to parties by his co-workers and even the new girl at work inexplicably has the hots for him!

The movie is missing a much needed edge. Lars is bat-shit crazy, but the only time this is truly apparent is when he tells his doctor (Patricia Clarkson, reserved to the point of banality) that it burns when people touch him. (And even that nugget of info is quickly forgotten about.) Otherwise Lars just ambles around like a bashful, pouty Napoleon Dynamite. The movie couldn’t even let a group of hardware store employees get in a quip about the sex doll more biting then “Does she have a sister?” Har, har… har. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Lars doesn’t even try to have sex with the sex doll! It’s a SEX DOLL!!!! How neutered can this movie get!

Besides that minor improbable innocence, there is also a strange irony to the way the movie plays out that I’m not sure director Craig Gillespie (who also has Mr. Woodcock on his short resume) or screenwriter Nancy Oliver (who penned a handful of Six Feet Under episodes) intended. Throughout the movie the audience is encouraged to laugh at how ridiculous Lars looks carting around and engaging this doll as if it were real. We are being told to point and laugh at him while the characters in the movie are doing everything to try to understand and comfort him. Unfortunately for the movie, after the fourth or fifth time, the joke is no longer funny and even makes the viewer feel kind of mean spirited for laughing when everyone else is compassionate.

You might think I’m being too hard on this trifle of a movie but I’m not sympathetic. Lars and Real Girl is a blatant attempt to mine the “cutsie indie flick” hysteria of late spurred on by the success of superior movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, where those movies retained some sort of basis in reality, Lars and the Real Girl is about as believable as a pair of fake breasts on a plastic sex doll.

DVD Reviews: American Hardcore (2006) and Half Nelson (2006)

American Hardcore (2006)

Watching American Hardcore, a documentary directed by Paul Rachman about the underground American punk scene from 1981-1986, is like being bludgeoned over the head with a baseball bat repeatedly for an hour and a half. Like the musical scene itself, the blaring riffs and frantic concert footage assault your ears and eyes without mercy, but the point is lost amid the violence.

The documentary is successful in as many ways as it is ineffective. It tries to include every band that made a ripple in the underground punk scene in an obsessive-compulsive quest to not leave anyone out. It shows how bands in each major city in the country took what they heard coming out of Los Angeles and made it their own by tweaking a sound, adding their individual angst, and together, making up a unique grassroots musical phenomenon.

However, because of this quest to be the definitive, all-inclusive history of the scene, it gets lost amid the concert flyers, band pins and patches. After hearing numerous stories of fighting with the cops and how each band slept on countless linoleum floors like selfless Buddhist monks on a holy pilgrimage, the tales begin to lose their meaning. Why were kids doing this? What was the purpose? Why did they hate their parents, the cops and most forms of authority? Every talking head tells you these traits were indicative of the scene, but like being a victim of an assault, the fillm leaves you curious why it ever happened in the first place.

Half Nelson (2006)

Ryan Gosling’s performance in Half Nelson as Dan Dunne, a Brooklyn school teacher stuck in the strangle hold of addiction, is one of the most powerful performances of the year.

After he is discovered smoking crack in the girl’s locker room by his student, Drey, Dan fights to keep the two sides of his life from interfering with one another. Drey, played by Shareeka Epps, is a lonely kid whose family life consists of a brother in prison, a long-gone father, a mother who works double-shifts, and a drug dealer "uncle". Up against considerable odds, Drey is looking for a role model and befriends her troubled teacher. Together, both Dan and Drey give one another the strength to confront their considerable troubles.

Gosling is an actor known for choosing challenging roles with conflicting sides to their personalities, and, as in his previous role in the film The Believer, about a Jewish neo-Nazi, here he finds similar success depicting a character stranded between two antagonistic forces. However, this time, Gosling gives a much more subtle performance. The anguish Dan feels by being unable to save Drey from her environment and his inability to shake his own addiction is evident not by a grandiose gnashing of teeth. Instead Dan’s face becomes slack, his limp expression masking the feud raging beneath the surface. The only portals into his emotions are his eyes, which are dark pools of longing for a better, more sober, existence. It’s these small details that make his character believable and the quiet torment roiling within that makes his portrayal heartbreaking.

Epps (who also played Drey in director Ryan Fleck’s short-film version of this story, 2004's Gowanus, Brooklyn) has a kind of presence and knowingness that far more experienced actors struggle vainly to find. However, it is Gosling’s portrayal of a teacher's mental and physical struggle that anchors the picture.

Half Nelson manages to evade the easy templates of the “Dedicated Teacher, Troubled School” genre, however, it is not perfect: a third-act scene with Dan going home to visit his mom and dad who are wine-swilling ex-hippies with long ago abandoned utopian dreams and a comfortable middleclass existence sketches his self-medicating pathology in simplistic brush strokes. And the improbable ways in which Drey’s uncle arranges for Drey to deliver drugs to Dan in some ugly motel in the outskirts of the borough stretches the films credibility.

The film also deals with larger issues then the two characters at its center. Dan’s dialectic philosophy, a concept that everything is made of opposing forces, gives the filmmakers room to discuss political topics like the prison riots at Attica or the assassination of Harvey Milk and allows Gosling’s character to contemplate if one person’s efforts can truly make a difference in other people’s lives. The philosophy is the films central concept. What’s the point of teaching, let alone existing, if one person cannot make a difference in another? And if making a difference is impossible, why not just buy drugs and check out?

Control (2007)

Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, killed himself in 1980. If you’re not a fan of Joy Division’s music this fact most likely doesn’t mean anything to you and, subsequently, the movie which tells Curtis’s story, Control, probably won’t have a lasting effect. Sure, it’s a tragic tale, and due to the fine acting of Sam Riley (as Curtis) and Samantha Morton (as his young wife, Deborah) you will walk out of the theater saddened by Curtis’ final, fatal, action. But this is a movie for fans who already know the story (and all its macabre details) and have invested countless hours listening to the band’s now-classic albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. But, if you happen to be a fan of Joy Division watching Anton Corbijn’s pitch perfect film is truly a heartbreaking experience.

Few film subjects lend themselves to being captured in moody black and white like the story of Ian Curtis. (It really is just the story of Curtis. The rest of the band members play minor roles.) The combination of the gloomy post-industrial landscape of Macclesfield, England (Curtis’ hometown), Curtis’ bouts with depression and epilepsy as well as the existentialist doom of the Joy Division sound could not be filmed any other way. To film this in color would have been insulting to Curtis’ (and the band’s) legacy. And that’s all the film is about, the legacy of Curtis and his glum band, plain and simple. All in all, the film is an elegant, melancholy monument to a delicate soul tortured by the bleakness of modern life.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

“Let me ask you something,” Javier Bardem’s character asks Woody Harrelson, who he is about to shoot with a sawed-off shotgun. “If the road you followed brought you to this, what was the point of the road?” In other words, if every choice you ever made culminated in your destruction, was every choice you ever made unnecessary? And if every choice was unnecessary, does that invalidate your reason for living? These, I believe, are some of the conundrums Joel and Ethan Coen were trying to ponder in their bleak, ultra-violent new film No Country for Old Men. If our lives are dictated by a fate we cannot control, or are too powerless to control, what’s the point? I found myself asking the same question when I left the theater. What was the point of the last two hours? What does this film have to say about fate, chance and free will?

The meat and potatoes of this film are simple on the surface. It’s 1980 and the U.S.-Mexico border is a hot spot for drug smuggling and all the bloodshed that necessitates. While out hunting antelope, Llewellyn Moss (played strong and silent by Josh Brolin), stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. The scattered dead bodies stain the desert sand blood red. Amid the carnage he discovers a suitcase containing $2 million in cash, which he promptly makes his own.

Predictably so, the rightful owner of the money dispatches merciless bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (a creepy Javier Bardem invoking a homicidal Johnny Cash with a page-boy haircut amidst an existential crisis) to track down Llewellyn and return the cash. Chigurh proceeds to slaughter his way across the state towards Llewellyn like the personification of all things unstoppably evil.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, an aging sheriff who feels the times have changed so rapidly and regrettably that the tide is irreversible. He sees the wickedness spilling across the boarder infecting all that was once innocent and realizes he is incapable of stopping it. However, in a last ditch effort to save the final shreds of his optimism, he tries to save Llewellyn before Chigurh has the chance to destroy him.

No Country for Old Men is a million miles away from the Coen brother’s movies most people are familiar with. The comedy of Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski is no where to be seen. Even Fargo seems hilarious compared to this, and Fargo was pretty damn violent. This movie is a straight philosophic drama - think of a Sam Shepard play penned by Samuel Beckett.

However, in the end, the movie feels incomplete. There are no easy answers and really no resolution. Like Ed Tom Bell realizes, you just have to fight through each day and hope that there is someone out there preparing a warm, safe place for you to sleep because there are bad men out there with existential crises on their minds and sawed-off shotguns in their hands.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)

In less capable hands, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly could be dreadful. It has sentimental tearjerker written all over it. The film is about the true-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former fashion editor of French Elle, who had a massive stroke and woke up three weeks later paralyzed from head to toe with a condition known as “Locked-In Syndrome”. His mind is completely lucid but he is unable to move a single part of his body except for his left eye. With this eye, he learns a method of blinking that allows him to spell out words so he can communicate with the outside world.

The story could easily lend itself to a director’s most maudlin weaknesses (Bauby’s unbreakable spirit, the dedication of his therapists, the undying love of Bauby’s family, etc), but director Julian Schnabel (who also directed the beautiful and affectionate films Basquiat and Before Night Falls), with the help of visionary cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, (Munich, Schindler's List) resists the feel-good clichés and piles on the memorable images of a man isolated in his own body. The shot of Mathieu Amalric (who plays Bauby) struggling frantically in a submerged diving bell which hovers hauntingly in gauzy, sea-foam green water particularly sticks with me.

Another key reason The Diving Bell and the Butterfly doesn’t sink into soapy melodrama is the strength of the performances. Amalric is selfless in his portrayal of Bauby, totally giving himself to the role, drool and stroke-induced facial distortions included. But the performance that really left me close to tears was Max von Sydow’s portrayal of Bauby’s father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. The agony von Sydow brings to the role of a father trying to communicate paternal love through two practically unbreachable illnesses is heart-wrenching to experience.

The combination of an imaginative director, a cinematographer with a gift for evocative shots and a cast (which also includes Emmanuelle Seigner and Jean-Pierre Cassel) with gobs of talent and altruistic drive create a beautiful movie that has all the emotions of a tearjerker, but with the pedigree of high art rather then the sickly-sweet aftertaste of Hollywood dreck.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003 - Japan)

Sometimes you need a palate cleanser. Mainstream American movies make too much darn sense! Logical plotting and realistic dialogue can get dull if that’s all you’re exposed to. When I’m feeling like Movieland is getting too serious I turn to Japan. Which is how I recently discovered the weirdest, most whacked out and thoroughly enjoyable movie I have seen in a long time, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is about a ditzy call girl, Sachiko (Emi Kuroda), who gets shot in the head when she interrupts a North Korean spy trying to buy a small silver canister, the size of large lipstick container, in local cafe. However, instead of dying she pops right back up and, in a dazed stupor, wanders out of the restaurant. As she is leaving the owner hands her purse to her which unbeknownst to Sachiko, contains the spy’s silver canister.

This is where shit gets weird.

When she gets home she decides to explore the hole in her head and sticks a pencil in to see how deep it goes. This pushes the bullet deeper into her brain, and with a psychedelic flourish, magically transforms her into a super genius! Suddenly she has a craving to learn all of the world’s philosophy and immediately heads to the nearest university library to start devouring books.

This is where shit gets even weirder.

Along the way, we find out that the little silver lipstick container actually holds George Bush’s cloned finger. It’s red with American flag nail polish. Sachiko also begins to hear voices, in particular George Bush’s voice, telling her that his finger is the most powerful finger in the world. It’s the finger that gets to push “The Button”. (You know, Theeeeee Button.) It also finger bangs her on the roof of an apartment building.

And here, I guess, is a good time to tell you that this is a pink movie. Pink Movies are Japanese soft-core porn flicks. The sex scenes in Sachiko Hanai, (and there are many) are more goofy then sexy, and granted, the actress playing Sachiko is attractive, but it’s not why this movie is interesting. (Really its not!)

Now bear with me. I’m not trying to rationalize the fact that I was watching soft-core porn. This movie has something to say! And even though what it says is as simple as Bush is an ignorant bully, the fact that it has a political agenda at makes it more then just a trippy skin flick. It’s now political commentary.

Clips of Bush strutting around aircraft carriers in his Texas lawman pose illustrate the director’s views about how the US (and George Bush in particular) is an arrogant threat to world peace. To make his point (and it’s not subtle), the director (Mitsuru Meike) turns the tables and takes it to the most absurd level. Now a Japanese prostitute with a fortuitous head-wound controls the fate of the world. In the director’s eyes that makes about just as much sense as someone like Bush being in control.

This flick is one trippy 90 minute spectacle of mindless sex and gonzo violence reminiscent of the grindhouse, big-boobie soft-core of Russ Meyer cult classics Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls only this time it’s sprinkled with a little political satire. Anyway, fuck it, maybe I am rationalizing. But, you know what? It’s almost Oscar season, and I’m preparing for the onslaught of sweeping historical dramas and heartfelt bio-pics to begin. It’s refreshing to have some gratuitous violence, over-the-top sexuality and outrageously campy dialogue to help wash down the super-serious dreck that will undoubtedly fill theaters in the coming months.

Ratatouille (2007)

Most people who know me are familiar with my tendency to devour movies that fit into one of three categories:

1. Foreign
2. Independent
and
3. Depressing

If you can find me a depressing, independently financed foreign film, I’m going to like it 90% of the time. Yes, it makes me sound like a snob. So, in an effort to “branch out” and get away from my “snobby” film consumption, I was grudgingly dragged to Disney/Pixar’s latest animated offering, Ratatouille.

I tried to dislike this movie with all my being.

“It’s about rats… in a restaurant! That’s disgusting!” I told myself.
“It’s about a rat… that cooks! That’s preposterous!” I reminded myself.

But try as I might, as I watched my icy snob exterior began to melt away. I was actually enjoying myself! I caught myself laughing… out loud! I was amazed at my reaction to this cartoon. So amazed, actually, that when I got home I looked up any and all information about the film that I could find in an effort to justify my liking of it.

Ratatouille was written and directed by Brad Bird, the same guy behind The Incredibles and The Iron Giant, two animated movies I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I liked. So it has that going for it. It also stars (the voice of ) Patton Oswalt, whose stand-up comedy specials I always leave on when I see them on Comedy Central. So that’s good too.

I found myself connecting to the main character in many ways. Oswalt voices Remy, the rat with a super keen sense of smell and a palate that is not satisfied scrounging for garbage and stealing discarded scraps. He wants to cook! And not just burgers and fries, oh no. Remy’s a snob! I can relate! He wants to cook haute cuisine and convince all his rodent friends that settling for scraps is not the way to go. I feel the same way about movies.

After getting separated from his family and winding up in Paris, Remy befriends lanky(and human) Linguini, a garbage boy in a three-star kitchen, who Remy can control like a marionette by yanking on his hair. Realizing that he can't cook and Remy can, and Remy realizing that rats aren’t allowed in restaurants, the two protagonists join forces and try to trick everyone in the kitchen and in the formidable culinary world, including the dour, super-serious Anton Ego, France’s most feared critic.

The animation, of course, was also fun to watch. The colors pop and the digitally rendered landscapes and backgrounds practically look real. But that really isn’t what sticks with you. Over all, what I think I liked most about the movie was its sophistication. Yes, it’s a kids movie about a rodent that cooks, but it never felt dumbed down. Remy has to decide between his family responsibilities (food safety inspector - he sniffs for rat poison) and the consequences of chasing his own dreams of cooking without thinking of the results of his decisions. Every choice has a price and we watch as Remy learns this through his journey.

Even the supporting characters are fleshed out. Camille, for example, (voiced by Janeane Garofalo) is the only woman in the kitchen and she explains the only reason she’s been successful in a male dominated industry is because she’s tough as nails. But against her better judgment, her tender and vulnerable side also gets displayed as she falls for Linguini as she teaches him the ins and outs of professional cooking. These are not common topics for kiddie movies.

Furthermore, Ratatouille avoided the all-to-common practice of animated movies (the Shrek movies in particular) pandering to adults with double entendres while lobotomizing the kids with goofy songs and oversimplified moral platitudes. Come to think of it, the theater was full of twenty-somethings. I only remember seeing one kid in the audience. That should tell you something about the level at which this movie operates. It’s not just a kids movie (though have no doubt, it is a movie suitable for children). It challenges the notion of what kid’s movies are and what they could be.

That’s why when the movie ended I was convinced I needed to add another category to my list of genres I enjoy: “Sophisticated Animation”. Or does that make me sound even more snobbish?

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006)

I went into the screening for I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK expecting (and hoping for) the worst. First off, the film was introduced by the MC (it was part of the New York Asian Film Festival) as a love story featuring killing sprees, an attempted suicide and the almost-detonation of a nuclear bomb. Secondly, the film was directed by Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director behind the pitch-black gore-fest Oldboy and the Shakespearianly bleak tragedy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. (In Oldboy, a guy cuts his own fucking tongue out, and in Sympathy everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, dies. Oh and he also directed Sympathy for Mrs. Vengeance to end is revenge trilogy, where a pedophile captured and hacked to death by the parents of his victims.) So, needless to say, I was psyched to see some stylishly directed gore for once and not some torture-porn bullshit like Hostel: Part Two.

Surprisingly though, what actually appeared on screen was slightly different from what was advertised. Yes, the film did include a robotic woman hunting down psych-ward doctors with her machine gun finger tips, and yes, the protagonists try to nuke their mental hospital, but the rest of the movie was actually (gasp!) kinda cute. And even more shockingly, I kinda liked it.

It all begins with the suicide attempt of Cha Young-goon, played by the so-adorable-ya-wanna-squeeze-her, Su-jeong Lim. Young-goon’s mother ships her off to a psychiatric hospital where she meets a wide array of mentally disturbed inmates. But don’t worry, they’re only disturbed in comically endearing ways. One guy only walks backwards and thinks everything is his fault. Another invents a way to fly by lying face-down on her bed and rubbing her feet together. Another dresses like the Swiss Miss girl and yodels.

However, one inmate, the rabbit-masked kleptomaniac Park Il-sun (played by South Korean pop-singer and heart-throb, Rain), gets the attention of Young-goon by stealing her Thursday (see the movie and you’ll understand) while she is having a conversation with the coffee machine. Park Il-sun helps Young-goon on her way to recovery, like convincing her that she cannot subsist only by licking 9-volt batteries (trying in vain to recharge her core battery) and helping her get over the traumatic experience of witnessing her schizophrenic grandmother get sent away to the sanitarium. Soon the two of them are inseparable and they begin to plot Young-goon’s revenge on the doctors that sent her poor granny away.

Overall, this film suffers from the same syndrome that Chan-wook’s earlier films did. They are chock full of style, but lacking in actual substance. I’m a Cyborg... was fun as hell to watch, very funny and touching at times and there was enough gore to keep my bloodlust satisfied. But besides the sweet love story at the center of this sticky-bun of a movie, there wasn’t much to really sink your teeth into. However, I’ll happily admit, it is probably the best Cyborg-meets-kleptomaniac romantic comedy I have ever seen.

Vacancy (2007)

I generally don’t like horror movies. I generally don’t like movies that star Luke Wilson. So why in the world would I waste my time and go see Vacancy, a horror movie starring Luke Wilson? Because I had some hope for it. It was directed by Nimród Antal, the man responsible for 2003’s deliciously bizarre Hungarian sci-fi import Kontroll; about a subway ticket collector who solves a series of grizzly murders. But, unfortunately, I was let down. And I’m mad about it. So like a slasher hell-bent on bloodletting, let me take my gory revenge on the film that sucked 80 minutes worth of life-force from my soul.

Vacancy is a moronic bore of a horror movie. It is as if everyone involved in the film made a conscious effort to make the most derivative, mindless stew of horror movie clichés to ever be captured on celluloid. (For my own entertainment I am going to bold all the horror movie clichés as I recap the premise to this movie.)

Vacancy stars Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as bickering yuppie couple Amy and David Fox, who get stranded on a back-road after their pricey BMW breaks down. We quickly find out post-traumatic stress caused by the death of their young son a few years previous is causing the former love-birds to divorce. This is their last trip together.

The Foxes wind up at a creepy motel named the Pinewood, which is run by some hillbilly locals. Of course, the hillbilly locals turn out to be sadistic madmen who trap the unsuspecting travelers in the honeymoon suite with plans to torture and kill them with freakishly long knives, while wearing scary masks and videotaping the mayhem. The Foxes must escape back to civilization before they become the stars of the next Pinewood produced snuff film.

While watching the movie, I began pondering “Is this supposed to be like Scream? Am I supposed to be laughing at how preposterous it all is, and value this director’s post-modern appreciation for a genre that he loves? I mean, how many clichés do you have to put into a movie before it becomes satire? If there was an inkling that the director and the cast were in on the joke Vacancy would be an exciting movie. Instead, the most exciting part of this putrid cinematic experience was when I got up to go to the restroom and almost tripped down the stairs.

Antal manages to suck the tension out of every potentially scary circumstance and besides some cheap shock techniques which have become the crutch of weak horror movies of late (i.e.: quiet… quiet… quiet… LOUD!!), there is not one point in the movie that make your hands sweat.
And let’s talk for a moment about casting, or more accurately, miscasting. First off, Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale wrongly portray their characters as snobby urbanite pricks rendering them completely unsympathetic. In fact, they were so convincing at looking down their noses at their rural pursuers, one would have to imagine they aren’t really acting, just playing loosely fictionalized versions of themselves. Watching these insufferable yuppies expire in creatively painful ways would have been much more entertaining.

And it should be a rule (if it wasn’t already) that Ethan Embry is not allowed to play a murderer. He was Rusty in National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation for fuck sake! He was Mark, the dorky record store clerk in Empire Records! He’s not intimidating.

Also, I feel bad for poor Frank Whaley. The guy has been in every indie film under the sun and he’s still only really recognizable as the dude Sam Jackson shoots at the beginning of Pulp Fiction. I hope he didn’t think this was going to be his big chance at Hollywood stardom. Because if he went into this movie with as much optimism as I did, I’m sure carving up a few yuppie movie producers is looking mighty tempting at the moment.

And I say go for it, man. Let it out. It feels good.

Glue (2006)

The teenage years may be a self-conscious, insecure phase, but Glue, the debut feature film by Alexis Dos Santos, is a confident little film and a poised first feature from a young director.

The film follows two sixteen-year-old boys, Lucas and Nacho, as they wander around their desolate hometown in the Patagonian region of Argentina. It’s summertime and the boys have nothing to do besides ride bikes, write songs for their band and fantasize about getting laid. They meet Andrea, a girl their age, and together they explore their blossoming sexuality. The three young actors (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Nahuel Viale and Inés Efron) all contribute courageous performances as we spy on them at their most vulnerable and intimate. The characters are displayed as unsentimentally as possible like when Nacho tries vainly to relieve his frustration by masturbating and Andrea aching for a boy to French kiss has to instead settle for her glass shower door.

At times rowdily chasing after the protagonists, Dos Santos’ handheld digital camera occasionally manages to settle down long enough to capture some beautiful images. The digital film soaks up the sun drenched colors of the scorching afternoons as well as the cool blue light as Lucas’ family struggles to set up a tent on a camping trip before night falls.

The improvised script gets a little awkward by the end, but let’s face it, teenagers are awkward creatures. They want to be adults, have responsibility, and most of all, sex, but are unsure how to achieve those goals. Glue, portrays this uncomfortable, angst-ridden age so palpably you can practically smell the sweaty hormones waft from the screen.

The Illusionist (2006)

Magic shows and movies have a lot in common. Both require the audience to suspend their disbelief and become deeply involved in the production. Both require the actors to construct the scene convincingly and consistently. However, as in Neil Burger’s The Illusionist, if one aspect of the spectacle is lacking, the entire creation crumbles.

The film centers on a magician, Eisenheim (Edward Norton) who falls for an aristocrat, Sophie (Jessica Biel) in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Sophie is betrothed to Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), who, like all crown princes it seems, is a jealous sadistic prick prone to chewing scenery. With the help of his magical illusions, Norton uses his cunning (and one dinger of a twist ending) to win the woman he loves.

Known for really sinking his teeth into past roles in Primal Fear, American History X and, more recently, Down in the Valley, here, Edward Norton seems to let his goatee do most of the acting for him. That, along with a handful of intense stares and moody brow arches adds up to one disappointing cardboard performance.

Despite the sluggish pace, the wooden performances and a few misjudged, laughable accents, Paul Giamatti’s especially, the film is a pleasure to look at. The costumes, art direction and cinematography are beautiful. Filming the characters amid the glorious Austrian countryside and the cobblestone Viennese streets, the cinematography tries desperately to make up for the passion so desperately lacking in the plot, dialogue and main characters.

The Motel (2005)

Every town has one. The sleazy, pay-by-the-hour motel frequented by tricks and johns, businessmen on weekend benders and families stranded on skid-row. In Michael Kang’s touching film The Motel, a thirteen year old Chinese-American boy, Ernest (newcomer Jeffrey Chyau), navigates the tumultuous rapids of pubescence while helping his single-parent family with the day to day operations of their dingy motel.

Being a self-conscious, hormonal teenager is not an envious situation to be in and Kang refuses to sentimentalize Ernest’s coming of age. Changing stained sheets and flushing spent condoms are part of Ernest’s daily routine. Ernest, who is being raised by his task-master mother, finds a father figure in Sam, a self-destructive guest of the motel. In between draining bottles of Johnny Walker and bedding as many prostitutes as his wallet will allow, Sam bonds with Ernest over late-night fried chicken binges. Sam, in an effort to redeem himself, decides to help the young boy become a man. However, not all goes according to plan.

Kang does seem to take pleasure in humiliating his characters slightly and no lessons are learned easily. One scene has Ernest and Sam pulling over on a desolate road and manically shouting “I want to be happy now!” into the night sky. However, Kang does allow some sunlight to peer into the abysmal motel. At the movie’s core is a loving immigrant family struggling to survive the tug of war of growing up in an environment that leaves little to the curious boy’s imagination.