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This was one seriously intense little film. A political activist is
working to set into motion a virus that will disrupt major financial
networks in the effort to stop the WLS (World Leader Summit) but on the
eve of this event he is in a car accident and has forgotten that last,
and most important, day with no idea of whether or not he managed to
carry out his part of the sabotage. His doctor at the hospital offers
him to be a test subject in the third set of trials of a therapy that is
specifically designed to help people recover lost memories. He agrees
and suddenly finds that he isn't sure any longer what is real or isn't,
who he can trust or not. People, places, and things begin to emerge and
repeat in distrubing patterns of similarity though not perfect
reflection.
It's a quiet and yet gripping movie that blends reality,
memory, and dreams, making both the lead character and the viewers
wonder if they really have any idea what the heck is going on or what
really happened. I've seen this sort of device used before in TV
(episodes of Farscape and The Dead Zone come to mind right
away) but
this uses it the best, and to the best advantage. The ending was also
interesting and surprising, catching me off guard after I thought the
ending had happened and was waiting for the credits to start rolling.
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This decidedly gay film is WAY over the top, very silly, very kitchy,
very corny and very
cheesy. For me that actually detracts. I had fun, but I didn't really
care for either of the lead characters because they were too cartoonish
and over-acted most of the time. Much to my amusement, entertainment
veterans Chris Katan and Parker Posey, who are the side kicks of the
respective lovers, totally steal the movie. They're just better
actors.
Don't get me wrong, I laughed. Some of it is
totally hilarious. Some of it is kinda gross. A lot of it is way too
broad and not funny. The director made a
point which I thought was interesting. He said that he used humor to
entice more straight men into feeling comfortable and enjoying his
movie. The humor, which is at times rather slapstick and broad seems to
appeal to straight men, in his opinion or research, which allows them to
care more about the characters and not get so squeamish or squirmy when
the romantic scenes happen. You'll have to judge that for yourself. I
personally found the whole romance=bottle (you'll understand if you see
it - don't want to make any spoilers) to be hilarious and yeah, it's
kinda straight boy funny. But I can't honestly say that I would
recommend this film very highly. If you like gay humor that is very over
the top, or you're a big Parker Posey or Chris Katan fan, then look for
a nice cheap matinee and expect to waste two hours and a lot of brain
cells.
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This was a really quirky, charming little film about a janitor who
watches over Italy's National Museum of Cinema. He is strange and quiet,
obsessed with old films and making his own simple movies. One night he
comes to the aid of a beautiful fast-food waitress who is on the run
from the police for pouring hot oil on her employer. She's in love with
a car thief, but as she hides out with this cinephile, she finds herself
entranced with the strange world he has crafted about himself, and the
man himself. And likewise it seems that he hasn't been coming to the
fast food restaurant all this time just because he likes the Double Fry
meals. But she is still in love with her thieving boyfriend ... so what
will she do? It was in many ways not at all what I expected it would be
and in other ways exactly what I expected. Again, not a brilliant film,
but sweet and funny and definitely very charming. There were a lot of
things that I thought were going to happen and I was suprised and
pleased when they did not in fact happen. Cute. Definitely cute. And
that museum? That looks like one of the coolest museums ever! I gotta
check it out!
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I have a problem with certain kinds of humor. I generally call them
"embarassment humor" and/or "stupidity humor". I don't like movies where
things are supposed to be funny because someone is doing really
embarassing things, or when things endlessly go wrong for them, or other
people put them in awkward and embarassing situations. And likewise I
don't like humor when someone is so dumb, or ineffectual, or incapable
of doing things that everything just gets messed up and complicated
and
screwy. This is, for the most part, just not funny to me. This movie has
a lot of this humor in it as Daniel Auteil rescues a man from committing
suicide and then becomes pretty much his den mother; housing him,
encouraging him, and trying to get him back together with the love of
his life who left him. As my friend Jessica said so aptly, much of the
humor isn't really funny, it just makes you squirm with discomfort.
What saves
the film for me is that there are other forms of funny in it as well,
and they shift back and forth between them. So for as many scenes where
I wanted to kill the suicidal guy for being such a jerk/wimp/pathetic
loser and making life hell for Daniel, there were just as many funny
moments that were, well, genuinely funny with no squirm factor
whatsoever. There are also some fun and unexpected twists in the plot
that I thoroughly enjoyed. The beginning was rather torturous, but by
the end I was happy with it.
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This is a surprising little documentary about one thing and one thing
only - the dirtiest, nastiest, ugliest little joke ever told between
comedians. It is rarely performed to the public but has been in the
comedian community for generations. I'll warn you now, this is by turns
incredibly disgusting and gross and definitely crude. The worst version
told, the only version actually that really grossed me out, was thanks
to George Carlin. Came in right at the beginning and had me worried for
a
bit that I really wasn't going to be able to deal with the rest. But
fortunately he was the exception, not the rule. It's kind of amazing to
me that a film about so small and, lets face it, stupid a topic, could
be as long and as enjoyable as this was.
Mostly what it involves is
clips of interviews with comedians stitched together, talking about the
joke and telling it. It's one of those jokes where the punchline is
pretty much always the same and the set up is the same, but everything
that happens in the middle is up to the performer. And as such some of
the tellings were utter flops that you just sorta sat through with a
grimace and others had you howling in the aisles. It's fascinating
because you can either tell this joke, or you can't. There is no
halfways about it. My hats off to whoever edited all this together,
because a lot of the quick shifts from commentary to commentary really
made the film, giving it a pace and humor that was, during those
moments, relentlessly enjoyable.
The best version of the joke, hands down, was the South Park version. I
was dyin! And it was a clip made special for the documentary, so I don't
think it's gonna turn up on an episode ... but you never know. Other
really good versions were performed by Billy the Mime (so sick and
wrong!), Carrie Fisher, Whoopi Goldberg (who was the most original and
actually funny I thought), Gilbert Gottfreid (who does it with such
style!), Martin Mull, Bob Saget (which shocked the heck out of me - not
such a wholesome guy!), and Penn & Teller (brilliant). Kevin Pollack did
a version of it as Christopher Walken that was AMAZING. He said he heard
Walken do it and was only repeating it, but he might have been
bullshitting. It was a brilliant impersonation though and Walken's
delivery is PERFECT for the kind of joke that it is. Eddie Izzard
utterly failed to do it at all right, and in fact he couldn't even do
it. Totally not his kind of humor. There was also a guy who told the
joke (Eric Med?) who did card tricks as well during it that really gave
it some wonderful flair and character. It's the kind of film that is
a strange mix of awful and gross and terribly terribly funny.
But I swear, Cartman telling the joke to Stan, Kyle, and Kenny had me
dyin!
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At first I really couldn't get into this film - for a movie that was
supposed to be sweet and charming it had an awful lot of unexpected
violence and unpleasantness. For a long while I couldn't quite
understand why everyone who had seen this film thought it was so great.
But then it gets to its feet and does indeed become a really good movie.
The story is of a
musician/composer/conductor who works so hard he drives himself into
exhaustion and seriously endangers his health. So he returns to his
childhood home out in the middle of nowhere to recuperate and just live
for awhile. He seems to have abandoned all interest in music, till he
finds out that the church choir needs a director. It's one of those
movies where lives are transformed, lies are exposed, truths are
revealed, souls are searched, and courage and beauty are nutured and
blossom.
The only real issue I had with the movie is the ending, which I
saw coming from a mile away and which was a lot more disturbing and
unpleasant than I wanted it to be and than it needed to be. This is
definitely one of those movies that would have done better with a less
defined ending, one that leaves it up to the viewer as to whether it is
a happy ending or a sad one. It would have been frightfully easy to do,
more pleasing, and just as effective IMHO. The ending really annoyed me,
but I still consider it to overall be an excellent movie.
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