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May was our month to take time to recover from the quantities of stress we had to deal with in April. Lots of quiet time together at home with frequent breaks for hugs and 'i love you's. Lots of relaxing, taking stock and regrouping. All of this means lots of movies. We watched a bunch of Netflix as per usual, but I also went on rampant Vulcan Video binges 3 consecutive Saturdays in May which means that I watched a total of 27 and 1/2 movies in one month.
I can't expect that anyone will stick around to read all this if go into avid detail about all 27 and 1/2 of them here, so I've decided to simply write my overall impression of each film in a sentence or two. What stood out the most if you will. No in-depth analysis here. Just the big pieces and overall feeling I walked away with for each one.
Is the water warm enough?
Shall we begin?
Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny: It frustrates me that so many insanely talented people can converge together on a creative project and come up with such a mediocre end result. This movie should have been made 5 years ago. I also kind of felt like those of us who already know all about The D weren't given anything new to sink our teeth into. Oh well. I still love you Liam Lynch, Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Jason Reed, Paul F. Thompkins, Dave Grohl and Jay Johnston. Hopefully you'll all figure out ways to find projects worthy of your ample talent.
The Clash: Westway to the World: One of the best bands ever. It was interesting to see them as young kids and to hear them all talk about how it all happened. Kind of amazing how it all seemed so haphazard but they ended up changing music forever.
American Hardcore: Was like eating delicious cake with my eyes. So much fun to hunker down and take in a history lesson on something I'm deeply in love with from the actual people who actually did it. It was a great double feature with The Clash and made me feel full of energy for about 2 days after I watched it. So pure. So inspirational. So much nostalgia. I got choked up.
A Bullet in the Head: An early John Woo movie that I'm hoping just lost a lot in translation somehow. It's either that or it was just really bad.
F*ck: I watched a shit ton of documentaries this month. I'm just now realizing it. This was of interest to me because of my long standing interest in censorship and language and the power it has. Fuck is a really amazing word if you look at it culturally. The movie was pretty tongue in cheek but fascinating.
The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog: It felt like getting into a time machine and traveling back only a couple of years. That Bon Jovi shit is still hilarious. And the Star Wars interviews kill me.
Mitch Hedberg: Strategic Grill Locations: I can't get started about Mitch Hedberg or we'll be here all day. I preferred the uncut version of this Comedy Central Presents showcase because besides being insanely funny and clever, one of my favorite things about him was that watching him struggle through losing and winning back the audience and all the mental notes about what plays and what bombs is all talked about out loud as it's happening. He was never on stage alone up there. He always brought everybody in the room up there with him to work out where to go with it next. Plus, he actually tells real live jokes. He doesn't tell stories or anecdotes or recall events. He has simple, clean jokes that are boiled down to their core. No need for funny faces or voices or gesticulations. The material and the delivery sell the whole thing. He was one of a kind. "If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit."
Social Distortion: Live in Orange County: I like seeing Mike Ness off stage because it's such a total dichotomy. He's so quiet and nebbish and sweet. Plus I could just sit and stare at him all fricking day and never get tired of it. There's an extra on the DVD where they play acoustic in a bathroom and it's really beautiful.
The Prestige: I'm going to be really, really happy the day Christian Bale finally wins that Oscar he's been deserving for most of his entire career. God damn it I love him. This movie was better than I thought it'd be and I really was pleased with the way it ended.
Jet Li's Fearless: Not my favorite. I've always really WANTED to love Jet Li and I'm coming to realize that I really don't. I have a lot of respect for him. But I'm not really blown away by anything I've ever seen him in.
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I went on a total crazy girl movie binge one Saturday and rented a bunch of shit I would never inflict on anyone else so I could sit in my giant Lazy Boy in my underwear all day and be awash in romantic comedies.
Employee of the Month: This is me officially de-boarding "The Dane Train".
Catch and Release: I don't even remember what this movie was about really. All I know is that I've been working ever since then to erase all memory of Juliette Lewis molesting Kevin Smith from my mind. I actually screamed out loud and covered my eyes. Not romantic. Nor funny. I don't want to watch my parents fucking and I don't want to watch The Other Sister trying to give Lunchbox a hand job. I hold these truths to be self-evident.
Sleeping Dogs Lie: I heart Bob Goldthwait. I have since I bought Meat Bob when I was 12. He wrote and directed this movie that was surprisingly good, memorable and well done. Of these 3 "romantic comedys", it was the only one that was actually romantic and funny. Plus there were a couple of moments of acting that I really loved. I recommend it. Although it is a movie about a chick who blows a dog, so I'm guessing it's not really for everyone. I personally thought it was a really nicely made allegory about the lies we tell to the people we love not to protect them, but to protect ourselves. Good work Bobcat. I knew you had it in ya.
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Children of Men: Really amazingly well shot. Wow. The camera work was technically brilliant but always designed specifically to serve the story and I thought it was astonishing. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was definitely well worth the effort to see. A great film.
Cirque du Soleil: Corteo: The thing I love about Cirque du Soleil is that no matter what, I always find myself in this really amazing place where I'm just stunned. It's inspiring to see that elite athletes with generations of training and tradition behind them who could quite literally do ANYTHING they wanted with themselves decide to throw together something that's awe inspiring, creative and that fills people with a true, childlike sense of complete wonder. There's a trampoline act in the beginning of this that's staged to look like a giant pillow fight on two huge beds that I thought was completely awesome.
Casino Royale: The only Bond movie I've ever actively enjoyed. Daniel Craig - Blond-haired, blue-eyed chiseled hard bodies aren't usually my cup of tea but shit, there's an exception to every rule. I think it's his eyes really. There's a lot going on in there. Plus his body is basically just insane. Lip smacking good.
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Trip #2 to Vulcan found me bringing home all sorts of emotionally complicated dramas of varying sorts for some reason -
Harsh Times: This is the first 1/4 of the 1/2 a movie I watched. I got about 20 minutes in and just had to turn it off. Christian Bale can convince me of a lot of things, but convincing me that he's a white/chicano from East LA who is just back from fighting in Iraq and is full of misguided rage isn't one of them. It was painful. Just brutal. I'll commend him for giving something this far away from anything else he's ever done an honest shot. But shit if it didn't totally fail.
Brick: The writing here is what sells this one. It's really great old-school, film noir, gumshoe stuff set in high school. I really loved it. Joseph Gordon Levitt has always impressed me even when he was on that dumb sitcom when he was a kid. He's really great in this. And this just in: Lucas Haas is perhaps the most genuinely weird looking person who's not actually deformed that I've ever seen.
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: Got nominated for a bunch of acting awards at the Indie Spirits this year so I thought I'd check it out. It didn't bounce for me. However, I thought Shia LaBeouf and Robert Downey Jr. were outstanding in it.
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Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance: The first part of the Chan Wook-Park revenge trilogy. I got it because I love Oldboy (the 2nd part) so fricking much. This had some well made scenes in it, but as a movie, overall, I didn't dig it that much.
HOWEVER
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: The final installment of the trilogy was really excellent. There were certain portions of it that I thought were extraneous, but once it gets rolling, it's really subversively well crafted. The whole idea of it (I don't want to give away what "it" is) really intrigued me and how it all played out was pretty crazy to watch. Oldboy's still my favorite just because it has so many elements in it that I thought were so well put together, but this is definitely and for sure worth a look. Good stuff.
Pan's Labyrinth: Edward hadn't seen it and I really thought he'd latch on and love it. Turns out he only kind of liked it. It made me wince in the middle and cry at the end just like the first time I watched it so it certainly held up. Mostly I'm just struck by how much Guillermo del Toro clearly loves to tell stories. I want to listen to the director's commentary all the way through some time. I love the way he talks about movies. I can relate.
Manic: Having been impressed with Joseph Gordon Levitt in Brick and refusing to rent Mysterious Skin because I'll never give Gregg Araki another chance after The Doom Generation, I rented this. It was decent but not great. Lots of good acting. Not a whole lot of much else.
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I went to Vulcan and on my way from the bathroom to the front of the store I got caught in the documentaries section. I ended up bringing home 7 of them that all looked riveting.
Jupiter's Wife: About a homeless woman living in Central Park whose rambling and seemingly incoherent descriptions of what seem like hallucinations turn out to be a very detailed and carefully constructed alternate reality that is very much tied to her very real past. Super interesting. Not super well made, but super interesting.
Twist of Faith: I'd been wanting to see this for a while and wanted to wait until I'd have proper time to digest it. It's about a firefighter in Toledo who goes public with his suit against the Catholic Church he grew up in that fostered and allowed a priest to molest him and several other boys throughout their childhoods. He had originally filed suit as one of five John Doe's but after realizing that part of the way these things are perpetuated is by forcing silence and buying compliance, he decided he had to say out loud what happened to him. A truly heroic act. The movie's about how that decision impacted everything else in his life, most excruciatingly, his anguish over his daughter's first communion. It's harrowing subject matter that doesn't have a righteous Hollywood ending and that will make anyone doubt all sorts of things. In addition to being really powerful for me it also touched on all sorts of personal issues related to my decision to be open about talking about my sexual assault. Hard to watch. But worth it for sure.
American Mullet: This is the second 1/4 of the 1/2 a movie. I'd actually already seen it and the disc was all gunked up, so we ended up turning it off about 1/2 an hour in.
When Stand Ups Stood Out: I'm always fascinated by stand up comedians talking about stand up comedy. This is about the scene in Boston in the late 70's and early 80's. I don't know how interesting this would be to someone who doesn't really have any ties to or interest in stand up as an art form (you heard me. i said art form.) but I thought it was really, really interesting. Especially given that there was so much footage from these old gigs and the people in them were all still alive to talk in detail about what it was like before things blew up and Steven Wright made it on to The Tonight Show. It was a nice way also for me to be reminded, in one of the extras, that there was, at one time, a good reason I loved Dane Cook. Before he turned into a giant wind bag of guileless self-promotion, he was a kid in Boston who worked his ass off to be a great stand up comedian. I wish somebody would sit him down and tell him. In any case, for someone who's spent a lot of time learning about and genuinely admiring stand up comedy, this was definitely great.
Beer: The Movie: I like beer. I like movies. I didn't like Beer: The Movie. I thought it would be kind of like Jackass or CKY. We only watched about 3 minutes of it because it turned out to be a cut rate version of the already cut rate parts of CKY that I can't stand. Mustard Man isn't funny to me. And neither was any of this horseshit.
Unknown White Male: Has stuck with me for a while after I watched it. It's about this guy who comes to one day on a NYC subway with absolutely no memory of who the fuck he is. It raised a lot of questions for me about how we form our own identities and how dangerous it might be to let other people help you decide who you really are. I'm still mulling parts of this movie over regularly and just found the whole thing really thought-provoking. How do we know who we are if we don't have any anchor to anything in our past? And what are friendships really made of if not an accumulation of shared experiences? Highly recommended.
The Education of Shelby Knox: About a teenager in Lubbock who spends her years in high school trying to get her school board to approve comprehensive sex education in the curriculum after learning that the strict religious, conservative, abstinence only culture of her community has bread the highest teen pregnancy and teen STD rates in the nation. I'm not even going to lie. I have mad crazy respect for this girl. I got done watching this and found her on the internet to tell her how proud I am of her. She's a student at UT now here in Austin and if I ever run into her I'm giving her a big hug for being such a total badass. It takes huge giant balls to go up against what she was up against at that age and she handled herself with so much poise and emotional acumen. I'm inspired by her. A truly amazing coming of age story. You gotta check it out.
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So yeah, that was May. We just started off June by going to see Knocked Up on opening night. More on that in early July... But for the sake of spreading the news, it's fricking hilarious and while not totally cohesive overall as a movie, has some seriously hilarious performances by basically everyone in it all the way through. Definitely recommended.