Some Other Movies From 2009 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2009 entry. 

The following things happened in 2009:

• Bitcoin went online.
• Barack Obama became President of the United States.
• The Sri Lankan Civil War ended.
• An outbreak of H1N1 triggered a global pandemic.
• Michael Jackson died.
• David Carradine, Patrick Swayze and Brittany Murphy passed away

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

One of the More Interesting Things I've Seen Lately

1. Max and Mary

Two lonely people, one in Australia and the other in New York, form a long distance relationship that endures of decades.  This animated film definitely isn't for kids, but those with a taste for the eccentric will find its sense of humor endearing, and the story it tells unique.  Toni Collette voices Mary, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Max.  The writer and director of this movie, Adam Elliot, has won many awards for his work.

Some Good Ones

1. Law Abiding Citizen

Director F. Gary Gray was diving deep for this one.  I'm guessing a lot of people missed it at the time, but this movie makes some compelling arguments against the criminal justice system.

And for what it's worth Gerard Butler does a good Punisher.  Jamie Foxx is equally compelling as the lawyer trying to stop him.  Will it remind you of Se7en?  Oh yeah.  But is it as good?  Definitely not, but it stands on its own legs and I respect that.

Fun Fact: That slammin' song at the end is Grand Funk Railroad.

2. Bride Wars

Completely forgettable, but not bad.  The adorable Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway star as two BFFs who (gasp) find that their weddings have been scheduled for the same day.  It's NOT hilarious but, again, it's not bad.  Hey, check out Chris Pratt!  Starlord and Catwoman in the same movie!

It's the cinematic equivalent of a hot pocket.  If you were really hungry you'd eat one, if you weren't, you wouldn't.

3. Notorious

The life and times of Biggie Smalls.  At the time I was way more into Tupac, and The Notorious B.I.G.'s popularity was something of a mystery to me.  Even so this movie is pretty good, and director George Tillman Jr. does a good job of telling Biggie's story.

4. Star Trek

Figured I'd go back and re-watch it.  It holds up well, although the constant panning and lens flares do get a bit annoying.  J.J. Abrams did a lot more for the Star Trek universe than he did for the Star Wars universe, though I get why he eventually jumped ship for that more famous and financially lucrative property.

I didn't like Into Darkness, but the third film, Star Trek Beyond was good.

And by the way, where are they now?: Well, of the original cast, Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Bones) and James Doohan (Scotty) are no longer with us.  In 2017 William Shatner (Kirk) voiced a character on - I kid you not - the My Little Pony TV series, and identified himself as a "brony."  He's also doing country music, and appeared on the Grand 'Ol Opry last year.  Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) was on TV's The Young and the Restless for a while, worked with NASA, and retired in 2018 after she was diagnosed with dementia.  Walter Koenig (Chekov) has appeared in various low budget science fiction movies.  George Takei (Sulu), probably the most vocal of the original cast members, is a champion of LGBT rights and was a staunch critic of the Trump administration's immigration policies.

And let's not forget Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov in 2009's Star Trek.  He was great in Green Room, a movie that also featured Patrick Stewart, who everybody knows from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Not as interesting as Max and Mary above, but this animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's book will leave you feeling happy.  It's a Wes Anderson movie, and although his signature style is evident he doesn't step too much on the original story.

6. The Princess and the Frog

I liked the music.  The rest was Disney princesses and New Orleans voodoo.  I was only halfway paying attention, but yeah, I liked the music.

Fun Fact: Terrence Howard voices the heroine's dad.  I suppose he did this instead of Iron Man 2, which he would have been filming at the time.

7. 500 Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in this movie about love found and love lost.  It threatens to wear out its welcome toward the end, but it's a film full of interesting touches.

Fun Fact: Director Marc Webb would go on to direct The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2.

8. Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

It's surprisingly not bad.  Completely predictable, yes, but not bad as these things go.  The guy trapped in barbed wire and dragged behind the truck was a nice touch.  The plot?  I don't remember.  Anyone familiar with this series knows that the second one was the best one, so I wasn't going in with the highest expectations.

Fun Fact: This movie was shot in Bulgaria.

9. Exam

Reminded me a lot of Cube, but this one's set in a single room, and the story's easier to digest.  I guessed the ending early on - I wasn't sure, but I guessed - but this didn't diminish my enjoyment of it.  I'm just wondering, what if someone answered The Question at the beginning of the test?  Or more than one person?  Would that person automatically pass?  Would everybody pass?

A Cause for Sadness: Actress Gemma Chan is so beautiful.  I wish she'd been in more of this movie.  And no, I'm not giving anything away by saying so.

10. Jennifer's Body

I would watch the hell out of a sequel to this movie IF it was written by the same person.  Amanda Seyfried's character is interesting, Megan Fox was well used, and some of the lines are extremely quotable.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if this movie enjoyed a cult following.

Fun Fact: Amy Sedaris, who plays Seyfried's mom, is the younger sister of writer David Sedaris.

"Borderline / Seems like I'm going to lose my mind / You just keep on pushing my love / Over the borderline..."

1. Orphan

The reveal at the end almost makes this movie worth it, but Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are such shitty parents that I started rooting for the adopted kid halfway through.

Some Bad Ones

1. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Instead of Ebenezer Scrooge (or Bill Murray), we have Matthew McConaughey, and instead of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future we have three ex-girlfriends, ready to show Matthew McConaughey how to form lasting, committed relationships in which both parties are respected.  Feeling nauseous yet?  To make things worse, they really take McConaughey's character too far in the other direction, to the the point where you wonder how anyone in this movie can tolerate his pathological behavior.  The bit with Michael Douglas is funny, but that's about it.

2. State of Play

Great cast but it's very boring.  Russell Crowe plays a reporter investigating a murder, with Ben Affleck as a congressman at the center of his investigation.  It's way too similar to other, better movies about government corruption and corporate conspiracies, some of which Crowe and Affleck have also appeared in.  All the President's Men?  The Parallax View?  The Insider?  All much better films.

Fun Fact: Brad Pitt was originally set to play the reporter, with Ed Norton as the congressman.

Unsurprisingly Terrible

1. American Pie Presents: The Book of Love

Three high school guys attempt to get laid.  And then - spoiler alert - they get laid.  But the getting laid part happens just before the credits, so don't get your hopes up early.  Aside from this, breast implants and lame sexual innuendo abound.  Oh, and Stifler's... whatever he is... gets raped by a moose.  Yeah, that really happened.  Prioritize your life accordingly.

Fun Fact 1: There are 9 movies in this series.  This is one of the five spinoff films.

Fun Fact 2: Poison's Bret Michael's is in this briefly.

Fun Fact 3: Check out star Bug Hall's Wikipedia entry.  It's quite the rollercoaster ride.

Sad Fact: Saved by the Bell's Dustin Diamond also appears in this movie.  He died this year of lung cancer.  His life post-Saved by the Bell was... pretty weird.

Nope.

1. The Ugly Truth

Katherine Heigl stars as a vocationally successful if romantically unsuccessful woman, with Gerard Butler as a cartoonishly misogynistic man.  I got about 15 minutes in and had to stop.  It was that stupid.

Bad Bordering on Offensive

1. The Fourth Kind

Paranormal activity in Nome, Alaska.  This movie, like Notorious above, mixes dramatic recreations with actual footage, but in this case the inclusion of an actual murder pissed me off.  It just wasn't good enough to take that kind of step, and the footage makes it feel like the worst kind of exploitation.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 2008 (2)

Some Other Movies From 2007 (2)

The Movies of Sylvester Stallone

Some Other Movies From 2006 (2)

"The Silent Patient" by Alex Michaelides (2019)

"I had been seeing Ruth for a long time before I met Kathy, and I continued therapy for the first three years of our relationship.  I remember the advice Ruth gave me when Kathy and I first got together.: 'Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist.  We need to ask ourselves is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?'"

Alex Michaelides is a British author.  The Silent Patient was his first book, and his second book, The Maidens, was published this year.  He's also written screenplays for Hollywood movies.

In The Silent Patient a psychotherapist treats a woman convicted of murdering her husband.  As he does so his personal life begins to unravel (or does it?), and many of his colleagues begin to question his methods.  The goal of his treatment is facilitating the breaking of his patient's years' long silence.

The first half of this book is solid, even if the protagonist is hard to understand or sympathize with at times.  The novel deteriorates in the second half, with his personal struggles forming a perplexing counterpoint to what's happening to him at work.  The plot twist at the end of the book comes out of nowhere, and the patient's motives for doing what she does are never satisfactorily explained.

The author has complained that his screenplays were "mangled" in other people's hands.  While this may be the case, I can't help but think that his screenplays were suffering from the same kind of causal issues as this book, and that the characters he was writing into his scripts were as inscrutable as the characters in this novel.  The Silent Patient isn't terrible, but towards the end the characters in it act in an increasingly arbitrary fashion, as if the author had an ending in mind but didn't quite know how to get there.

Related Entries:

"The Candle in the Wind" by T.H. White (1958)

"The Ill-Made Knight" by T.H. White (1940)

"The Queen of Air and Darkness" by T.H. White (1939)

"The Sword in the Stone" by T.H. White (1938)

"Nomadland" by Jessica Bruder (2017)

"For purposes of stealth - to avoid getting harassed by passerby or, worse, rousted and maybe ticketed by police - readers were advised to hide their solar panels between the bars of a luggage carrier or ladder rack."

Jessica Bruder is a journalist who writes about (American) subcultures.  She also teaches narrative writing at Columbia University.  She started out reporting for The New York Times, and her only other book is Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man.

Nomadland was a smashing success for the author, and inspired an Academy Award-winning movie starring Frances McDormand.  I haven't seen the movie yet, though my wife tells me it's great.  If you've been following the movie entries in this blog, you'll know that I'm presently watching films from 2009, so it's going to take me a while to work my way up to Nomandland, which was released in 2020.

It may surprise some people to know that Nomadland (the book) is a work of non-fiction.  In it the author follows several "nomads" around the United States, detailing the various ways in which they make their vehicles livable, how they make money, and where they gather in the winter months.  The city of Quartzsite Arizona looms large within the book, as does Amazon, the company which hires many of these nomads during the Christmas season.  

In terms of people, Linda May's story is at the center of the narrative, with fellow nomads "Swankie Wheels" and Bob Wells organizing various nomadic communities from behind the scenes.  It's worth noting that all three of these people also appear in the film.  

Is the book worth reading?  I'd say yes, but I think the author was a bit too close to her subjects.  She often seems to be handling these people with kid gloves, and never really delves into their personal struggles on any meaningful level.  There's also the question of the larger economic context behind their lifestyle, which could have been explored in more depth.  As it is Nomadland is definitely light reading, and after finishing it I felt a bit disappointed.  I wanted to see the darker side of this lifestyle, and I wanted to know how some of the nomads dealt with troubles beyond the economy.

But yeah, it's good.  I have the feeling that reading it will also enhance your appreciation of the movie.  I can't see myself living in an RV anytime soon, but I respect the people in this book for their choices.  Between the online economy, the decline of unions, lack of governmental oversight and the export of manufacturing industries to China it's not an easy time to make a living.

Related Entries:

"The Chinese in America" by Iris Chang (2003)

"The History of the Jews" by Paul Johnson (1987)

"Wild" by Cheryl Strayed (2012)

"Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life" by William Finnegan (2015)

Some Other Movies From 2008 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2008 entry.

The following things happened in 2008:

• The Great Recession began.  For details I refer you to The Big Short.
• Iran launched a rocket into space.
• Demonstrations by Tibetans led to unrest in China.
• 138,000 people died after a cyclone passed through Myanmar.
• The Canadian Prime Minister formally apologized to First Nations people for the Canadian Indian residential school system.
• The Summer Olympics took place in Beijing.
• The Android operating system was released.
• Satoshi Nakamoto published "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."
• Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider and Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

Underlined titles were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Jojo Rabbit?  I think The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas tells a similar story much better.  This, and that ending will Fuck.  You.  Up.  Jesus, I really didn't think it would go that way.  I'm not buying the part where he digs under the fence, but yeah, that ending...

You Make the Call: Many critics dismissed this movie as being derivative, but in my opinion the ending is worth it.  Many other critics complain of "false equivalencies" between the suffering of a single German family and Jews persecuted during the Holocaust. 

2. The Wrestler

One of my all-time favorite movies, my favorite Mickey Rourke movie, and my favorite of Darren Aronofsky's films.  If you haven't see it you should, and if you've already seen it you should go see it again.  This movie walks a fine line between Rocky and The Last Temptation of Christ, and it does so with an assurance that very, very few movies possess.  Out of Aronofsky's films I'd pick Black Swan or Requiem for a Dream for second place, but both are still far removed from The Wrestler, which remains a masterful film.

Fun Fact: Nicolas Cage almost starred in this movie.  That would have been interesting!

Find a Quiet Room Without Distractions

1. Synecdoche, New York

Uh... what's it about?  Well, Charlie Kaufman's fingerprints are all over it, so if you like "meta" this film doesn't disappoint.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is also great in the lead, playing - as you might expect - a stand-in for the writer and director of this movie.  Many critics called it pretentious, others called it the greatest movie of all time, and others probably scratched their heads, wondering what they'd just seen.

 

Some Good Ones

1. Definitely, Maybe

Ryan Reynolds stars as a man recounting tales of relationships gone bad.  Aside from the framing device, which seems very forced and artificial, it tells a good story of love lost and love found again.  Reynolds appeared in Smokin' Aces two years before, and he'd appear in X-Men Origins: Wolverine the following year.

2. Transporter 3

Jason Statham rescues a hot Russian girl from a kidnapper.  I liked 2 a lot more, but this one's OK.  Luc Besson wrote the script, and had a lot of say over the production.

Fun Fact: Natalya Rudakova, who plays the hot Russian girl, was a complete unknown before filming started.  Luc Besson spotted her on the street in New York, paid for her acting lessons, and flew her to Paris for the movie.  Critics at the time weren't loving her performance, and she hasn't been in a major movie since.

3. Speed Racer

"More like non-jas...."

I don't care what anybody says, I've loved this movie since it first came out and I still have to re watch it on occasion.  Sure, WAY too much backstory for its own good, but it looks amazing and parts of it are very funny.  Anyone who can say some of the cornier lines in this movie with a straight face deserves an Oscar, and John Goodman says more than his fair share.

This movie was a financial disappointment, and failed to impress critics at the time.  Just the same I highly recommend it.

4. Max Payne

Look, it's Beau Bridges!  And Chris O'Donnell!  What are those guys up to now?  I have no idea.

I'm not sure if it's more apt to describe this movie as Sin City Lite or Constantine Lite.  Whichever it is, it's weird to see Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis together in this movie.  I kept thinking of Ted, and how much more engaging they were in that film.  Not that this movie's bad, mind you - the scenes near the end are actually quite cool - but yeah, it's not as good as Ted.  Or Constantine.  Or Sin City.

Olga Kurylenko is, by the way, incredibly sexy in this movie.  She played the same role in 2007's Hitman, but she's even hotter in this movie.

5. Death Race

Better than Transporter 3, another Jason Statham vehicle (ha ha) from the same year, but still not that great.  As B movies go this one's a solid B.  It takes itself a bit too seriously, lacks the cheesy charm of the original, and violence + EXTREME LOUDNESS don't quite compensate for a film that could have been 30 minutes shorter.

Fun Fact: David Carradine, who starred in the original Death Race 2000, voices "Frankenstein" in the beginning of the movie.

6. City of Ember

Two young adults discover that there's a world beyond their underground city.  Reminded me a lot of Hugh Howey's Silo series, though City of Ember - at least in its film incarnation - is a lot better thought out.  It bombed at the box office, but the critics weren't especially harsh on it.

7. 27 Dresses

Say what you like about Katherine Heigl, she could carry a movie.  And say what you like about James Marsden, he could also carry a movie.  Sure it's a rom-com, sure it's contrived, but it somehow works, damn it.  They MAKE it work.

8. Bronson

Tom Hardy stars as "the most violent inmate in the history of the British prison system."  Hardy is great in the role, but what keeps me from putting this movie in the "Excellent" category is that it's pointlessly violent.  I love some of director Nicolas Winding Refn's other movies, but this effort seems more muddled than others.  I'm just not sure what this movie was trying to say.

9. Never Back Down

It's nice when Djimon Hounsou has a role he can do something with.  He's a good actor.

The rest of this movie?  Basically nu metal + teenage angst + mixed martial arts.  The star looks a lot like Tom Cruise.  After Never Back Down he'd go on to star in The King of the Fighters and other movies you probably didn't know existed.

Fun Fact: Check out Evan Peters in this movie.  He was quite husky back in the day!

Some Bad Ones

1. Step Up 2: The Streets

Whereas in Save the Last Dance Julia Stiles plays a white girl schooled in ballet who learns how to both dance and fall in love in the darker side of town, in Step Up 2 a while girl, schooled on the streets, learns how to dance ballet and fall in love in the lighter side of town.  WHOA.  I know, right?  But turnabout is fair play, is it not?  Overall it's pretty bad.  Channing Tatum briefly reprises his role from the first movie, but aside from him I couldn't recognize anyone in the film.

2. Wild Child

A spoiled rich girl from southern California makes new frenemies in a British preparatory school.  I'm of course NOT the intended audience for this one, but I still feel pretty confident in calling it terrible.

3. RocknRolla

Guy Ritchie directed this boring movie about British and Russian gangsters.  There's a lot of famous people in it - most of them speaking in their natural accents - but plotwise it's all over the place.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 2007 (2)

The Movies of Sylvester Stallone

Some Other Movies From 2006 (2)

Some Other Movies From 2005 (2)

"The Chinese in America" by Iris Chang (2003)

"The anti-Chinese backlash engendered much soul -searching and debate within the Chinese American community.  The late 1990s and early 2000s saw endless, frantic discussions on how to prove one's loyalty to the United States, or whether to confront these attitudes with organized protests.  Some immigrants began to blame themselves for being too complacent - for immersing themselves in their careers and families, and not braving the risks of participation in affairs of the larger world.  On Internet chat groups and in public forums, they openly questioned whether they had been giving the right message to the next generation.  Was it, perhaps, short-sighted to discourage their children from careers in the media and the arts, careers that could influence public perception of Chinese Americans, in favor of the more anonymous fields of science and technology?  Could the putative security offered by such fields have been nothing more than an illusion?  Were they wrong to warn their children to avoid politics?  Could their own memories of repressive regimes in Asia have nudged them toward a safe haven of political apathy in the United States?"

Iris Chang is a Chinese-American author.  She began her career as a reporter, and later switched to the writing of history.  She has won numerous awards, and her most famous book is probably The Rape of Nanking, which I read some time ago.

The Chinese in America starts where you'd expect it to start: in America in the 1800s.  It then moves to a snapshot of Ching Dynasty-era China at the same time.  From that point on it advances through the history of Chinese Americans decade by decade, stopping to examine The Chinese Exclusion Act, racism against Asian Americans during World War II and more recent, racially motivated acts against Chinese Americans.

The author writes well, and with a fluid command of her subject that precious few historians possess.  Some of the typos I encountered near the beginning of this book were slightly embarrassing, but that's not something I can hold against the author.  Her arguments are always predicated on both facts and the ideals upon which the United States is, or at least pretends to be, built.

I can't say this book was consistently fascinating, but overall it's very good.  The most interesting thing about it is the interactions between American and Chinese governments.  In The Chinese in America one sees that these two countries have developed in tandem, and the modern history of China is in many ways also the modern history of America.  The labor shortages, economic upheavals and political changes in one nation were constantly effecting the other, and a kind of feedback loop developed over time.  

It's in some ways easy to see the Chinese immigrants building the Trans-Pacific Railroad as cut off from their country, but the reality was something more complex, more subtle.  I think The Chinese in America does a good job of illustrating this human relationship between the two countries, even if this relationship isn't always at the forefront of the discussion.

Compared to The Rape of Nanking, a book that's bound to provoke more extreme reactions among readers, The Chinese in America is, I think, much better.  In this book the author shows that she can write history in the absence of racially-charged atrocities, and that her understanding of the subject exceeds what's usually supplied by propaganda.

Related Entries:

"The Candle in the Wind" by T.H. White (1958)

"The Ill-Made Knight" by T.H. White (1940)

"The Queen of Air and Darkness" by T.H. White (1939)

"The Sword in the Stone" by T.H. White (1938)

Some Other Movies From 2007 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2007 entry.

The following things happened in 2007:

• Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.
• Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU.
• A total lunar eclipse occurred.
• Greensburg, Kansas was devastated by a tornado.
• A series of Live Earth concerts were held around the globe to raise environmental awareness.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. The Kingdom

OK, ignore the prelude, which basically writes a historical check it can't cash.

After that, what you're left with is a tightly plotted action movie that doesn't feel the need to lecture on the subject of U.S.-Saudi Arabian relations.  Instead of explaining it demonstrates, and that makes all the difference.  

In The Kingdom Jamie Foxx leads a team of FBI agents into Saudi Arabia after a terrorist attack.  Director Peter Berg had a good run of movies up to and including this one.  After The Kingdom?  I'm sorry to say that he's responsible for Hancock, which is a movie best avoided.

2. The Number 23

They overdid the special effects, but this might be my favorite of Jim Carrey's movies.  In The Number 23 he stars as a man fixated on a number, and this intricately plotted film will have you guessing this way and that all the way through.  Virginia Madsen is also good as his loving if slightly confused wife.

I've also  had a couple friends who've gone down similar rabbit holes.  Those of us inclined to empiricism will know difference between correlation and causation, but take just about any lonely person, sit them in front of YouTube long enough, and they'll be coming up with their own conspiracies.  In this era of fake news and the consolidation of media outlets it's something to be aware of.  It's not likely that "they" are out to get you, but a few disconnected facts presented to an unbalanced mind can lead to a lot of confusion.

Surprising Fact: Joel Schumacher directed this.  I think between his direction and Carrey's performance they knocked it out of the park.  Prior to The Number 23, the two worked together on Batman Forever.

Don't Take My Word for It: Critics hated this movie.  Honestly, I don't think they gave it a chance to begin with.

Some Good Ones

1. Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Eh, it's OK.  Not nearly as good as the first one.  But then again the first one had Vincent Cassell, so there's that to consider.  I have to admit I lost interest in this movie halfway through, but Cate Blanchett's performance remains the cornerstone upon which this would-be movie franchise was built.  The idea of putting the queen of England at the center of an action movie is so out of left field that I have to admire those involved for their audacity.  Critics at the time hated it, but then again critics at the time loved Paranormal Activity.

2. Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

"Almost heaven / West Virginia..."

Reality show contestants vs. cannibalistic hillbillies.  It's a movie that knows exactly what it is and what it's trying to do.  I watched the unrated version, which is undoubtedly better than the theatrical cut.  This sequel easily surpasses the original, which was just another Texas Chainsaw Massacre / Hills Have Eyes retread anyway.

Henry Rollins must have had a blast during filming.  Not only does he get to play Rambo, but he gets all the best lines.

3. The Great Debaters

Denzel Washington is a good director.  I think this movie takes a slight misstep in linking Washington's character too closely with the Depression-era labor movement, but there are great scenes in this movie and the conclusion is very satisfying.

Fun Fact: Denzel Washington plays the debate team's mentor in this movie.  Forest Whitaker plays his colleague.  The young actor playing Forest Whitaker's son is Denzel Whitaker, who was named after Denzel Washington.

4. Lars and the Real Girl

Ryan Gosling stars as a man who falls in love with a sex doll.  It starts out good but strains its own credibility.  That ambulance ride?  The "hospitalization?"  The funeral?  The burial?  None of those things would be cheap.

5. Waste is Food

Thought-provoking documentary on biodegradable materials, and "cradle to cradle" production.  Parts of this documentary will make you think "Yeah, but what about...?", and it certainly could have gone into more depth, but it's worth watching regardless.

Not So Much Bad as Perplexing

1. Hitman

John Wick before the fact?  Kinda.  I admire what director Xavier  Gens was trying to do, it's just too bad the studio got squeamish and edited the life out of this thing.  At times it feels French, at times it feels American, and between the two styles of film-making this film never finds a place to rest.  Some interesting scenes for sure, but as an action movie it fails.

This said, if you ever want to see the value of a good actor check out Timothy Olyphant in this movie.  He does this half-crazy thing with his eyes, and it almost carries the entire film.  Ditto for Olga Kurylenko, who'd go on to do Quantum of Solace the following year.

Fun Fact: Vin Diesel was originally cast as the lead.

Not My Thing

1. The Beatbox Choir

Why am I not surprised that Bjork shows up in the beginning of this documentary?  It's exactly her kind of thing.  Beatbox ambassador Schlomo assembles a choir (choral ensemble?) for a unique concert.  Would I buy the album if there was one?  Naw.

Some Bad Ones

1. Paranormal Activity

Remember when every other horror movie was a found footage movie?  Paranormal Activity is very much in keeping with that Blair Witch-derived aesthetic.  It was cheaply made, neither of the actors were ever famous, and the special effects are decidedly un-special.  It would've been a much better movie if they'd just edited a half hour out of it, but then it would have been an hour long, and thus too short for theatrical release.

But hey, IT'S THE MOST PROFITABLE FILM EVER MADE.  Really.  They filmed it for peanuts and it made millions.  They've also made seven of them, with the seventh due sometime soon.

Fun Fact: The principle actors in this movie go by their own names, and most of the dialogue was improvised.  They were paid $500 for their work, and filming took place over 7 days.

Cause for Argument: Some people LOVE this movie, and it has done well with critics.  In my opinion it's completely derivative, especially given The Blair Witch Project that came before it.  Apparently it scared some audience members so badly that they walked out of the theater.

2. The Mist

It starts of well, but the cgi tentacles ruin it.  Then the characters that haven't been "tentacled" engage in the most pointless arguments while evading monsters that are somehow powerless against plate glass.  It feels like a 70s disaster film, but it's not cheesy enough to be entertaining.

Cause for Argument #2: Again, critics liked this movie, though Roger Ebert agreed with me.  I didn't find it particularly "deep" or "politically incisive," but that's what some critics said at the time.  The director, Frank Darabont, is an Academy Award nominee several times over, and his previous films included The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

3. War

Vengeful cop Jason Statham squares off against ruthless hitman Jet Li.  This movie could've used a lot less drama and a lot more action.  I got about halfway through and had to tap out.  Statham and Li were great together in Unleashed, but that movie is the polar opposite of this one.

4. Dead Silence

More spooky dolls (or in this case ventriloquist dummies) from James Wan.  He directed this after Saw III, and comparisons between the dummies/dolls in this movie and Jigsaw's likeness were unavoidable.  This film just doesn't have enough of a premise to sustain itself, and making it into a short would have worked much better.  As it is it DRAGS, and by the time the town's dark secret is revealed it's hard to care one way or the other.

Fun Fact: Aquaman 2 should start filming this month.

5. Next

Parts of this movie make no sense, the dialogue is awful, and Jessica Biel is a terrible actress.

BUT the premise is fun to think about.  If Nicolas Cage can see two minutes into the future, can he see two minutes into EVERY possible future?  How would his mind process all of those possible futures?  Would he be like a walking quantum computer, using every version of his own mind in a different reality at the same time?  Would he be able to process these possibilities, in parallel, to the point where he achieved a godlike intelligence?

And is his foresight something he can switch on and off?  Or is it on all the time, dooming him to live in a series of futures he cannot escape?  Would he be in effect paralyzed by the consequences of his own and every other person's actions?  Would he suffer, knowing the negative consequences that every single one of his decisions inflicts on someone else?  Would he cease being human if he was unable to live in the present?

I'm sure that Philip K. Dick, who wrote the story this movie is based on, had a fun time contemplating such matters.  It's just too bad that the movie never bothers to do so.

Fun Fact: PKD's original story more closely resembled Theodore Sturgeon's groundbreaking novel More Than Human.  "Cris Johnson" as presented in that novel was a much more misanthropic character, driven to the periphery of human society by both his "gift" and his inability to procreate with normal people.  The original draft of the script was also very anti-authoritarian, but this aspect of the story was later toned down.

Nope.

1. P.S I Love You

No idea.  I got about five minutes in.  Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler were having a marital spat.  Seemed too much like a play.

2. The Man From Earth

Even more like a play.  The guy from Candyman is in it.  Didn't recognize anyone else.

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Albums That Changed My Life 10: Everything Else

In the last Albums That Changed My Life entry I discussed the "Alternative" or Grunge bands which I listened to through high school.  After that point - a period in which I listened to Grunge and Thrash music to the exclusion of almost everything else - my taste in music grew a lot more diverse.  Part of the reason for this was college.  I was meeting a lot of new people who listened to many different kinds of music.  Another part of the reason was the purchase of a turntable, which allowed me to discover a lot of the late 60s and early 70s music I'd missed earlier on.  Looking back at that time from 2021, I can see my ears really opening up for the first time.  No longer obsessed with what was "cool" or "new," I was really hearing the music I was exposed to, and judging a lot of music on its own merits.

What follows is a list of bands I've listened to since college.  Maybe you like some of this stuff too.

1. Reggae

I listened to Buju Banton's Til Shiloh a lot in college.  Alpha Blondy and Steel Pulse were also in heavy rotation on my car stereo.  I've never been a huge Bob Marley fan, but I've owned several of his albums.  African Herbsman is probably my favorite.

2. Late 60s Rock

I've gone back and forth through this genre so many times.  The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all that came after.  One of my favorite 60s bands is Arthur Lee's Love, but there are countless other great bands from that era.

3. Glam Rock

This is a huge one for me.  Sometime in college I bought Ziggy Stardust, and from that moment on I was hooked.  Bowie's albums were strangely difficult to find at the time, but after tracking down everything from his first album to his early 80s stuff I moved on to T-Rex and Roxy Music.  I still listen to some of those albums - especially Lou Reed's Transformer and Mick Ronson's Slaughter on 10th Avenue - quite a lot.

4. Progressive Rock

Another huge one for me, and in many ways the polar opposite of Glam Rock.  ELP's Tarkus album is still my favorite, but I've loved Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Procul Harum and all those bands at one time or another.  Later albums by many of these bands SUCK, but when they were great they were truly great.

5. Metal

I'm not even sure where to start with Metal.  I've moved back and forth between genres and regions over the years, going from the NWOBHM bands to Thrash, and from there to bands as diverse as Mastodon, Bathory, Opeth, Animals as Leaders, Meshuggah and some of the more fringe "Metal" like the stuff Alex Skolnick was doing with Michael Manring.  When Metal is good I love it more than anything else.

6. Classical

I started off with the Baroque composers: Bach (most of all), Vivaldi and Albinoni.  From there I moved on to the likes of Beethoven, Brahms and other composers of that era.  My favorite era for Classical music is probably the early 1900s, when Russian composers such as Rachmaninov and Prokofiev were doing really exciting things.  I like Philip Glass and some of the other Minimalist composers too.

I've never liked Wagner, Mozart or Tchaikovsky though.  I can't fully explain why.

7. Jazz

One of the first LPs I ever bought was Bitch's Brew.  That album blew me away.  It sounded nightmarish and beautiful at the same time.  I've since moved on to Miles Davis' other albums, and I'd have to say that Miles in the Sky has become my favorite of his albums.

After Miles, Keith Jarrett is probably my second favorite.  His The Survivor's Suiteblew me away as well.  That chord progression that just builds and builds.  It's amazing.

My favorite Jazz Fusion album is definitely Billy Cobham's Spectrum.  I liked The Mahvishnu Orchestra, but never as much as other Fusion bands from the same period.

Ornette Coleman's Skies of America was another big one for me.  I love that album.

8. Mandarin and Taiwanese Music

I've lived in Taiwan since 1999, and although the amount of Mandarin or Taiwanese music I listen to is very small, I do still enjoy it sometimes.  Wu Bai was one of the first local musicians I liked, but I've never been a huge fan.  I've owned CDs by Wang Fei and Teresa Teng, and I thought that Jay Chou's most popular album (the one they play on the radio endlessly) had some great songs on it.

9. Later Alternative Bands

Anyone else remember Shudder to Think?  Frank Black's solo stuff?  Rage Against the Machine?  311?  Ozomatli?  I still listen to that stuff occasionally.  It brings back a lot of memories.

7. World Music

I once owned an album by the name of Afro Rock that I listened to incessantly.  It was like James Brown went to Africa and personally told every awesome band there to record a song.

Of course when I say "World Music" I mean everything outside North America and the UK.  With respect to that definition I've enjoyed Chinese Classical, Bollywood soundtrack, Indian Classical, music from several South American countries, Mariachi, Tango, Bluegrass, Thai Pop, Gamelan and Buddhist chanting.  As far as this almost endless category goes, I listen to more music from Africa than anything else, with Bollywood being a close second.

8. Rap

Like a lot of guys my age I know the lyrics to several Public Enemy, LL Cool J and Doctor Dre songs.  Am I a huge rap fan?  No, not by a long shot, but there were periods of my life when certain albums captivated me.  Busta Rhymes' Extinction Level Event, for example, or that album by Hieroglyphics, 3rd Eye Vision.

"Life is a blast when you know what you're doing / Best to know what you're doing / 'Fore your life get ruined / Life is a thrill when your skill is developed / If you ain't got a skill or trade then shut the hell up!"

9. R & B / Funk / Disco

Motown.  Yeah.  I've spent years in Motown.  James Jamerson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson Five, Diana Ross.  There's some excellent music there, some top-notch songwriting - even if people conveniently forget all the songs that WEREN'T hits.  For me the biggest of all is Stevie Wonder, whose early 70s output was fantastic.

Then of course, as the 70s wore on the Motown stuff morphed into Funk and Disco.  I have obsessed over several of Parliament/Funkadelic's early albums, even if their later stuff was lost on me.  Disco?  I think some of the later, non-American interpretations of that genre are more interesting, especially what showed up in soundtracks during the later 70s and early 80s.

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See "Albums That Changed My Life 1-9 in the sidebar.