Had another bout of insomnia, figured I'd catch up on what I've been watching the last few months:
Dumb & Dumber To (Peter & Bobby Farrelly, 2014) - Was hating on this pretty hard as it start off poorly and the jokes are really thin at first but by the end I warmed up to it quite a bit. Still at least ten years too late but since its not terrible its a win overall.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2014) - Fucking. Awesome.
Four Rooms (Allison Anders, Alex Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, 1995) - This didn't hold up that well for me. Robert Rodriguez's segment is still great and Tarantino's is good, but couldn't muster the shits to give about the other two segments.
Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kumel, 1971) - Was expecting this to be some B-grade italian smut but instead of lesbian exploitation I got a rather fantastic and unique twist to the vampire genre. Its really well-directed and just an all around beautiful film, and its got this mysterious ambience to it that just enchanted the fuck outta me.
The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-Wai, 2013) - This is basically kung-fu porn. Wong Kar-Wai can stage a puddle fight like a motherfucker. Enjoyed this and yet I expected more, Wong Kar-Wai's only other film in the genre, Ashes of Time Redux, is a lot better. There's just not a lot of meat on its bones and it doesn't really tell much of a story.
Jack Reacher (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012) - Apparently I like this way more than most people. A lot of the backlash against the movie was just because midget-ass Cruise was cast as a character described in the books as a 6'6" beast, but if you're like me and don't give a fuck about the books and judge it on its merits, you'll find a very intense thriller with a lot of great/memorable action sequences.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride (Tiller Russell, 2010) - I've been morbidly curious about this one for a long time, since it has an interesting cast (Peter Dinklage, Dwight Yoakam, Jason Priestley, Kris Kristofferson and of course, my boo Lizzy Caplan in the title role). Problem is everything else about it is a mess and it looks like shit, even by low-budget standards. Lizzy's terrible western accent produced a lot of laughs though.
Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead (Tommy Wirkola, 2014) - An excellent followup to the modern Norwegian cult classic. The introduction of the Russian zombies was a nice touch and it maintains the same balance of delightful violence and dark humor. Plus any movie that closes with Total Eclipse of the Heart gets some love around these parts.
The 10th Victim (Elio Petri, 1965) - An odd yet entertaining blend of science fiction and the Most Dangerous Game scenario of people hunting people for sport. This is filled with a lot of great visuals and is notable for the introduction of boob guns, which Mike Myers notably lifted for the Austin Powers movies.
Quest for Fire (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1981) - A mostly language free tale of prehistoric cavemen on a journey to find fire. Features Ron Perlman in his debut role, one he was born to play, he's the most convincing troglodyte I've ever seen. Plus you get to see Rae Dawn Chong give the world's first blowjob AND invent the missionary position. What a woman.
Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi, 2012) - Another movie that got slammed in a lot of places that I found to be mostly enjoyable. Anthony Hopkin's Hitch is a bit too campy at times but still a lot of fun.
Flame & Citron (Ole Christian Madsen, 2008) - Excellent WWII hitman thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen, whose just as captivating here as he is in pretty much every single thing he does.
Cane Toads: The Conquest (Mark Lewis, 2010) - The sequel to maybe the greatest man versus nature doc ever made, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History. This one is similarly entertaining as these fat frog fucks slowly take over an entire continent.
Johnny Carson: King of Late Night (Peter Jones, 2012) - Waste of time. 2 hours long and you get no real insight into the real Carson at all, there are hundreds of Carson stories out there, especially regarding his drinking and womanizing, but this just glances over that stuff to give a sugarcoated overview of his life's work. You'd be better off just watching old Tonight Show clips on youtube for two hours.
Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay, 1995) - An interesting failure of a movie that has acquired somewhat of a minor cult status in some circles. It's one of the most 90's looking movies ever made and has some fun comic book art direction but it didn't do a lot for me. But worth watching just to see Ice-T as a talking mutant kangaroo.
The Raid 2 (Gareth Evans, 2014) - God status. Action movies should never be this long though, christ.
Life Itself (Steve James, 2014) - I finally got around to reading the book last year after Ebert's death, this is a great companion piece and certainly worth a watch for any of his fans.
Runaway Train (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985) - This should go on the list of ultimate Man Movies. Jon Voight at his most gulliest as an escaped convict trapped on a runaway train in the middle of a snowy wilderness. Would make an awesome double bill with Death Hunt.
All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki, 2010) - Its almost fucking impossible for me to judge this impartially having viewed The Jinx first, but this fictionalized version of the Robert Durst murders was pretty good. The Gos does fine work in here like usual.
Footprints on the Moon (Luigi Bazzoni, 1975) - Had a bro-date with drizzle to see this on the big screen in NYC and we both loved the shit out of it. Not even remotely a giallo even though it seems to always be lumped into the genre. Also not a science fiction movie either, once I got over my disappointment in realizing that fact I really started to appreciate it for what it was, a really excellent psychological mindfuck mystery.
Chariots of the Gods (Harald Reinl, 1970) - The ultimate conspiracy theory documentary about how the earth was visited by aliens in the past and built the pyramids. Extremely entertaining as long as you don't take it seriously, even when it raises some interesting questions.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney, 2015) - Above average but I was expecting more relevations about the cult. Most of everything in here is already well-known, you'd learn more from reading Paul Haggis's article in the New Yorker a few years back.
The Zero Theorem (Terry Gilliam, 2013) - Enjoyed this even though it never really gels into anything substantial. But few can build a fantasy world like Gilliam.
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (Brant Sersen, 2004) - Pretty entertaining comedy about a professional paintballer trying to make a comeback 10 years after he was exiled from his league. Has a really fantastic before-they-were-famous cast, basically a who's who of current comedy with the likes of Paul Scheer, Ed Helms, Rob Riggle, Jack McBrayer, Rob Huebel and of course Rob Corddry in the lead role, who's probably the most underrated comedy glue guy in the current comedy world.
The Purge: Anarchy (James DeMonaco, 2014) - The John Carpenter comparisons made me cave and break my rule of never watching sequel without having seen the first movie. The Carpenter vibes are legit, but really the movie that this owes its existence to the most is Walter Hill's The Warriors. A group of people, forced to traverse through a murderous city filled with colorful street gangs, having to reach home by morning to stay alive. It's pretty much the exact same premise.
Boss Nigger (Jack Arnold, 1975) - After watching this I'm convinced that Michael Jai White modeled the Black Dynamite character after Fred Williamson in this. I don't care if its true or not. Instantly one of my favorite blacksploitation movies ever, just really really funny and everyone in it seems like they are having a ball.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, 2014) - Crap.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (Tommy Wirkola, 2013) - Don't have much to say about this, it was moderately entertaining but I already forgot most of it. A decent time-waster.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (Chapman & Maclain Way, 2014) - Pretty cool documentary about Kurt Russell's dad and his independent minor league baseball team.
Showrunners (Des Doyle, 2014) - This is the downside of Netflix, sometimes you end up watching some random-ass shit that turns out to be a big waste of time. The director interviewed almost every major current tv showrunner, which sounds cool on paper but ends up just being 2 hours of 50 different people telling you their job is hard. It doesn't really give any insight into what the job entails though and a better approach would have been to stick with a much smaller group of showrunners and actually follow them in their day-to-day duties for an extended period of time.
Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett Morgen, 2015) - Amazing documentary about one of my all-time favorite artists. A very intimate portrait of a star that burnt out too quick, there's some really private/shocking stuff in here, watching Kurt nod off holding his baby while high as shit on heroin is just really really sad to see. But then he gets high and mockingly sings Soundgarden's Outshined and all is good again. Major props to Lefty for hooking me up with this before it even aired on HBO.
Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 1979) - Oddly, the Cobain doc shines an odd amount of time on this movie, playing clips of the movie in the background while playing a recording of Kurt talking on the phone with someone about how much he loved this movie. While watching that, I realized that this was a movie I bought a long time ago and never left my unwatched pile so I decided to give it a spin. Really great teenage angst/anti-authority film that succeeds because it feels remarkably authentic and is one of those rare movies with exception casting of the kids.
The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955) - This is one of the best examples of when someone has true star power. The main character played by Tom Ewell is so bad that it should have buried the movie. He fumbles pretty much every joke, and frankly is just annoying and completely unlikeable. But every time you start to sour on the film, Marilyn Monroe pops into the frame and everything turns magical. She's deservedly famous for her beauty and her ability to turn even the simplest things into the sexiest thing imaginable, but she never gets enough respect for her comedic abilities, her physicality and timing here is fucking impeccable.
God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2011) - A middle aged man and a high school teenager go on a cross country killing spree, ridding the world of assholes, one self-absorbed piece of shit at a time. Really enjoyed this.
Europa Report (Sebastian Cordero, 2013) - Above average sci fi adventure with a solid cast that rises above its modest budget.
Seventh Son (Sergey Bodrov, 2014) - This sucked. Stay to see Jon Snow die in a fire in the first 15 minutes, then turn it off and watch something else.
Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961) - This is a lesser Ford, even Ford himself wasn't proud of it and admitted he did it for the money. But its still a decent western adventure, and watching Jimmy Stewart play a drunk asshole for an hour and a half is always fun.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (Matthew Vaughn, 2014) - Sooo so great. Vaughn skillfully combines the early Bond-era spy films with action stylings of the modern era and comes up with something wholly original and endlessly entertaining. The church fight is the greatest action scene of the past year outside of Mad Max Fury Road.
Snake Eyes (Brian De Palma, 1998) - Seen it before a bunch of times, but not in the last ten years at least. Always thought this was a better than average De Palma film and I still stand by it. Cage is in peak form here and even though I know that 15-minute long take is a cheat with multiple hidden splices, its still a thing of beauty.
Super (James Gunn, 2010) - Was disappointed in this considering how much I love Gunn's other films, Slither & Guardians of the Galaxy. Problem is that everything this does, Kick-Ass did better.
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013) - This is one of those movies that I wasn't entirely thrilled about after it ended, cause it seems like it doesn't really go anywhere but then I couldn't stop thinking about it and finally pieced it all together and now I love it. At first I thought that Bob Dylan showing up at the end was a little too on-the-nose, but then I realized that's kind of the point, that sometimes really talented people just get lost in history while even more talented people take their place. I also really appreciate how the Coen's constantly subvert typical redemption tropes at every turn, from the Chicago audition, to driving right past the town of his child, or where there's a big emotional build-up while playing for his dad only to end in a pair of shitty pants. Oscar Isaac is really amazing here and looks like a real natural as a musician.
Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015) - Really wanted to love this but ultimately its just an average movie and probably the worst of Mann's career to date. I was supportive of Mann being an early adopter of digital video and was part of the group that thought Public Enemies was an overall successful experiment. But its all wrong for this film. Mann's strengths as a director have always been mood and visual aesthetic and he's starting to lose that. This film should be beautiful, it was filmed in a bunch of visually interesting places in a bunch of different countries, but then he shoots it on a handheld like some amateur found-footage horror piece of shit.
All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930) - World War 1 film worth watching due to its importance in the grand scheme of cinema but not necessarily a true classic film. The action sequences with the trench warfare are surprisingly intense and violent. Problem is sandwiched between them is a lot of hokey scenes where they try to beat a message into the movie with a blunt object. WW1 is terribly underrepresented in film, but this just hasn't aged all that well and parts of it seem incredibly silly when compared to say, Kubrick's Paths of Glory.