American Hustle (2013)

Directed by: David O. Russell
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence

American Hustle is a talkie about some small-time grifters getting swindled into becoming stool pigeons for a hotshot copper.  This copper wants to shylock some bastard politicals into accepting bribes that will land him a promotion and maybe even a boat.  This john is ballsy enough to try and slip some of the D to the leading dame played by American Treasure Amy Adams, who is no dumb dora.

Terrible 20s slang aside, what I remember most about this excellent, excellent picture is a Daily Show interview that Amy Adams had where she and Jon Stewart talked about how talented Jennifer Lawrence is during the whole thing.  Having seen this interview, and having then watched this movie several months later, and having realized how excellent of a film it is indeed, I now understand what they were talking about and have no choice but to agree.  Jennifer Lawrence steals the fucking show and, in a film packing some serious heat already, that is really saying something.  The other performances are good too–Christian Bale is going full on method again–but there is something seriously amazing about what she does with her role as a trashy and manipulative trophy wife.  It must be seen to be believed, especially when she and Amy share screentime together.  These two should do another movie together, and soon.

David O. Russell packs a lot of energy into a runtime of two hours, the kind of energy that demands your attention at all times with its high strung ambition.  As a film about con-artists, a few twists, double crosses, and swerves are to be expected; so if you blink, you are probably going to miss something.  But this isn’t a bad thing; you’ll just have to go back in time and relive some incredible performances over and over again until you get it right. 

A

 

Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012)

Katy Perry: A Part of Me is a documentary/biography/musicvideo about an uptown girl living in a whitebread world. The film follows the sultry pop-star as she embarks on a year-long world tour in 2011; it features testimonials from friends and family about how hard she works in addition to a brief synopsis of her career (which includes the requisite transformation from wholesome Christian to naughty nurse) and how long it took to be noticed by anyone important. It’s as superficial and self-serving as one might expect from a movie like this but I wouldn’t call it unpleasant. Actually, it’s nothing less than adequate.

C+

Caligula (1979)

Let me start this review by saying something rather poignant about the process of film making: making film is incredibly expensive. Even the incredibly small timers could be expected to put up at least $10,000 to cover things like actor fees, catering, editing, camera rentals, grips, and so on. For example, Man Bites Dog is considered to be a micro-budget film, and its cost was roughly $11,000. I’m sure The Bunny Game strove to be even more cost-efficient. So say you want to make a film, not just any film, but a FUCKING EPIC film of EPIC PROPORTIONS. The first thing you gotta do is shop around for an investor. Unless you’re the Hiltons with a shit-ton of disposable income, you likely don’t have the cash to bring in A-list actors and a state-of-the-art crew.

This was Caligula’s biggest folly. The story goes that a dude wanted to make a movie about one of Ancient Rome’s most eccentric (read: crazy) emperors. No one wanted to take the risk on his script, but his persistence finally paid off when he met with the guy that created Penthouse magazine. They struck a deal where the movie would be made that would tell Caligula’s story while at the same time promoting the porno mag by implementing scenes of incredibly graphic sex, even if it didn’t serve the film. Somehow, Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell agreed to do the project in spite of these controversial decisions, and the end result turned into a huge mess that no one really wanted to be associated with for a long, long time.

Caligula is a historical erotic sex movie about a guy in Ancient Rome who bangs his sister regularly. He is summoned to the emperor’s court as a rite of succession and he becomes overwhelmed with delusions of grandeur, thinking himself a God in the vein of Julius and Augustus Caesar. He wastes no time in violently deposing his perceived opposition while throwing elaborate orgies and humiliating the senatorial class. He also mocks the traditional foundations of Rome by throwing mock trials of otherwise innocent people, torturing and executing them in horrible fashions. His descent into madness culminates in forcing the Senator’s wives to become prostitutes to help pay Rome’s debt after the death of his sister; at this point, he has fully asserted his Godhood and regards the Senate with utter loathsomeness and contempt. It doesn’t end well for him.

People say that this movie is incredibly controversial and I have to agree. It is riddled with incredibly violent and graphic scenes of castration, decapitation, rape, real sex, and torture. It is interesting to note that there are several scenes that are in direct service to the Penthouse contract–two girls going at it for no real reason as well as the infamously protracted orgy sequence involving the Senators’ wives being two of many examples. I kind of wonder how the movie would have turned out if these obligations didn’t need to be fulfilled and the filmmakers could have just focused on making a historical drama about one of Rome’s most eccentric leaders. There are certainly hints of this in the overall story arc; they really make an effort to keep things serious. Pornographic elements aside, this to me isn’t the most terrible story ever told and is actually constructed fairly well given its tumultuous circumstances. It won’t stand the test of time as a serious piece of art unfortunately, but it is still remarkable in its stunning brutality and moral ineptitude. Watching this film will probably make you cringe, at best, but writing it off completely seems kind of unfair.

C

The Bunny Game (2010)

The Bunny Game is a horror film made in 2010 by about 15 people over 14 days and, to its credit, that kind of turnaround is impressive. It tells a story about a prostitute who might be retarded.

I’ll try and explain.

So Bunny is an overworked and apparently homeless hooker who appears to hate her lifestyle. The first 20 minutes is spent pounding this premise home; we see here snorting coke, peeing in a parking lot, and getting raped constantly. By the way, this movie is incredibly not safe for work if you haven’t guessed that by now.

Okay, so, because she is an idiot and doesn’t know any better, she does endures this horrible living situation day in and day out. In fact the very first scene is her giving head to some guy for like 2-3 minutes while crying. That scene by itself sets the tone for a long and brutal 90 minutes where eventually Bunny meets a creepy trucker that knocks her out and proceeds to torture her physically, emotionally, psychologically, and fetishistically until she becomes a gibbering idiot.

Usually brutal is an appropriately good word for a horror movie when describing violence and discomfort. This movie turns the discomfort part up to 11 by placing the audience in the middle of what appears to be a snuff film. The pacing and the editing is designed to keep us disoriented, and given the obvious shoe-string budget, I would like to tip my hat to the producers for nailing the tone. What hurts this movie a lot, though, is that Bunny is a completely irredeemable character who has no plan, is a permanently tortured soul, and is neither intelligent nor capable enough to get out of a desperate and alarming situation. Usually, horror movies follow this trope that says the protagonist at least attempts to fight back, and we as an audience respond with feelings of desperate and visceral hope. We want the hero to succeed and can be considerably moved if they fail.

In this regard, The Bunny Game is a broken movie. We literally just see a bunch of things happen, and maybe say to ourselves “Jesus, that guy is sick.” But there’s no emotional connection. There’s no motivation. There’s no resonance. There’s no success, no failure. Things happen, and that’s it. Maybe that was the point the director and writer were trying to make: that there’s this inexplicable darkness that encroaches on everything and everyone that strikes as fast as it disperses. I get that there are people who haven’t seen horror movies of this subgenre before, but it’s a novelty that wears off fast. The ultimate reality is that there’s not enough meat here for a feature-length motion picture, and that’s especially evident in the way this film is edited. Why doesn’t this film have a plot???

D

Twins of Evil (1971)

Twins of Evil is a horror movie about two identical pairs of lovely boobs who move into some backwater Puritan town that has nothing better to do than to burn its hot peasant girls at the stake for their busty, heathen witchery.

…

Yeah, I got nothin’.  This movie is forgettable. I liked the boobs, though.  They were nice.

D+

Barely Legal (2011)

Barely Legal is a sex comedy about three 17 year-old girls, all born on the same day, who don’t have parents, and live in California. Every year on their collective birthday, they get together and do something new and exciting to celebrate. This year, they’ve decided that losing their virginity during a huge house party for everyone in the neighborhood is clearly the best option.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that’s so forgettable and useless, a bottle episode of The Real World extended to feature length proportions. It’s basically just a bunch of beautiful California people throwing an orgy in someone’s mansion. Each character is a shallow archetype that has a personality like a punchcard. There are a few clever jokes that save the film from purgatory, though; and they make me think the screenwriter is incredibly talented yet just phoning it in. The actresses are also really hot, as I’m sure most rich California people are. But yeah, it’s mostly forgettable.

C-

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell is a highly influential and critically acclaimed anime film that was released in 1995. And I didn’t like it all that much.

It’s a film set in the possibly-not-too-distant future where cybernetics and The ‘Net have become commonplace up to the point where brainhacking is a real and persistent threat–a thing where some asshole can hack into your brain and erase your memories and your personality, then make you do things under newly assumed motivations. Just such a thing happens right as the film starts when an incredibly powerful entity known only as “The Puppetmaster” manifests in a nameless metropolis with the implied threat that his mere existence could wreak havoc on international relations. A really hot cyberchick is dispatched to investigate and cull this threat and she discovers some things about life, the universe, and everything along the way.

So, before I “dive in” and discuss the things I didn’t like about the film I would first like to say that I’m pretty sure I made a mistake in watching the English-dubbed version of this film. The voice acting is by and large completely fucking terrible. I suppose if enough people look at the grade and say ‘WTF dude this is the best movie EVAR’ I might give it another go using the Japanese dub instead. However, I was able to get used to it; this allowed me to concentrate on what was happening much better.

In spite of the amazing visuals and setting, I had enormous difficulty with Ghost in the Shell’s story. I just could not find my feelings for any of these characters whatsoever. Perhaps this was the point since everyone is a robot. The cold and logical tone actually made Blade Runner pop up in my mind more often than not: something I’m vaguely aware could have been done on purpose. While I liked the film’s thesis regarding life, spirit, consciousness, and what it means to truly exist, I wasn’t able to appreciate it principally because the plot was so profound and distant to me that I was unable to connect with it. What were the stakes in the Puppetmaster’s little gambit, anyway? What was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs actually working on? What’s humanity’s ultimate position in the midst of all this?  I still don’t know.  Or care.

I understand that we are gravitating towards a world where Ghost in the Shell presents an unnerving possible reality. However, instead of really focusing on just what it means to hack into a person’s brain and live out a dual life or perform some action for some nefarious purpose, I’m treated instead to international robot politics and crude existential philosophy. I want to know how dangerous and unethical it is having such power. I want to see the guy pulling the strings and I want to see how he could be defeated. Most importantly, I want to see how the future of humanity hangs in the balance. I just feel if I tried to fill in the gaps myself, I’d just get it wrong.  And get called an idiot for trying.

C+