John Tucker Must Die (2006)

Directed by: Betty Thomas
Starring: Brittany Snow, Jesse Metcalfe

Yep. It’s a teen movie. A bunch of beautiful teens slink around a beautiful high school trying to get laid while ostensibly discovering their true feelings, identities, and/or sexual preferences. Chances are high that this beautiful high school is somewhere in beautiful California. Probably L.A. People’s beautiful high school reputations are at beautiful stake as they plot and scheme to fuck each other or fuck each other over on their collective quest to become a beautiful legend or something among a beautiful crowd of peers notorious for not remembering or caring about any of that beautiful fucking crap.

I’m trying very hard not to sound jaded here; I don’t have the enthusiasm. John Tucker Must Die (JTMD if you’re sassy) simply doesn’t achieve anything new. The movie is about an invisible beautiful girl who moves from town to town. She and Jenny McCarthy have settled in some upscale hamlet in beautiful California, where she finds herself struggling to fit in. Meanwhile, the most popular kid in school is reveling in his ability to play the field and date several beautiful girls at once. Our invisible beautiful heroine is not part of this fun. When it’s revealed that he ain’t nuthin’ but a beautiful playa, the estranged ex-girlfriends involve our heroine in a plot to destroy his beautiful reputation because they are shallow and also incapable of getting over him. Everything culminates not in a school dance but with a party that looks like a school dance. This shows us that yes, this teen movie is different than the rest of them and is complicated and has a lot of depth to it. For starters, did you know they all drink alcohol?

While the overall plot has nothing going for it really, I will say one thing about this film that I found to be really good. JTMD is totally an actor’s movie. And JTMD’s cast had a lot of fun making this movie. This is most obvious in a frenetic scene where it is revealed that main character Kate (Brittany Snow) hasn’t really kissed anyone before, at least not well. She and Beth (Sophia Bush) are in John Tucker’s Jeep discussing how to deal with this sudden change in the plan to ruin him because he’s going to drive Kate home and likely give her a good night kiss which will, like, most definitely ruin the whole thing. Beth is the loose one of the group and she lays on a seduction so convincing to Kate that as she and John are driving home later you can see it in her face: she is clearly turned on. The best part is that John has no idea and starts talking to her about music and stuff. It’s a wonderful little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that I wish appeared more in an otherwise bland teen movie.

C+

St. Charles at Dusk (2011)

Written by: Sarah M. Cradit
Published by: Createspace

St. Charles at Dusk is a romance mystery novel that revolves around a spineless clueless playboy millionaire and the absolutely perfect author avatar billionaire heiress that he just can’t stop thinking about.  It is a romance in that it tells the story of these two star-crossed lovers and the inconveniences that come between them; it is a mystery in that the inconveniences that come between them involve amnesia and a presumably jealous rival’s insistence that their time together before ‘the accident’ that created their predicament is either inaccurately remembered or never existed at all.

The theme of this novel is one of memories and of lost time, the bulk of which is explored via a series of flashback sequences within flashback sequences within a larger flashback sequence when these two characters reunite after a longish furlough at the top of the book.  While they are presumably staring coldly at each other in a dimly lit room in a New Orleans mansion–something that rich people do I think–Oz the narrator brings the audience up to speed on what has happened with their on again, off again relationship over the previous 10ish years in 300 pages or less, ostensibly conveying just why this relationship happens to be special and why these two long lost lovers are not, in fact, enormous flakes.  The challenge for the audience, aside from putting this relatively simple mystery together, comes in when it has to decide whether or not two enormously wealthy people with their heads lodged so firmly up their asses and who have nothing but time on their hands to contemplate the meaning of will-they-or-won’t-they are worth the effort.

Personally, I don’t find rich people to be all that interesting.  There is a certain National Enquirer intrigue that comes with peeking into the top and seeing how the other half lives; but, in a love story especially, the wealth becomes a serious obstacle in giving a crap about people who are used to their frilly maids, their 200-room manors overlooking the plebian provinces, and the consummate navel-gazing wankery that goes with the lamentations of having a perfect (if not a tad sheltered) lifestyle.  One where character development consists of ravenous consumption of the high arts and sciences, one where any chance or risk that is taken comes with a not-so-dangerous pratfall that is lined with a million and one feathered pillows, one where every action has a meaningless consequence but must be discussed anyway because goddammit the whole bloodline might be but probably isn’t at stake.

You could say that I might be jealous of the excess and comfort and recklessness that is afforded to someone who has nothing to lose and is practically perfect already, and who wouldn’t be?  When blessed with every ample opportunity to be happy with what I have been given and what I already have, I’d probably fuck it up, too.  And that’s why I can relate somehow to the dashing millionaire playboy Oz’s dilemma of having prize after prize thrown brazenly at his feet, only to be spellbound by the obsessively beautiful and intellectually flawless Adrienne who manipulates and dominates every waking second of his life, who colors his history in such a way that to be without her he is very much a basket case.  What I can’t relate to, and probably never will, is the overblown serendipity that underlines Oz’s every action and the diminishing returns of failure after failure as he dismisses just how lucky a person he is to have everything in the world a person could possibly want but to squander every ample opportunity to better his situation because some arbitrary sense of bumbling pride.  He doesn’t suffer at the hands of his mistakes much, if at all.

Every romance novel [that I can think of off the top of my head] has some kind of obstacle that opposes the joining of two lovers in holy matrimony, and St. Charles at Dusk is no exception and even boldly offers more than one.  First, the nature of Oz and Adrienne’s relationship is contentious in that Oz comes from a family of wealthy lawyers and Adrienne comes from a family of Oz’s family’s clients, who are also good friends.  It is revealed that the client is zillionaire Charles Deschanel, and that Adrienne is one of four illegitimate heirs to the family legacy, conceived with a maid or something because he got bored with his wife.  Second, Oz and Adrienne grew up together and are separated in age by 5 years; only she is underage when their romance begins for the first time, which spells trouble for a dynasty already riddled with scandal.  Naturally, the father does not approve of the affair, even though Oz is probably the best person for her.  Third, Adrienne disappears out of the blue one day which abruptly brings the relationship to a halt.  The plot revolves around her return two or three years later, stricken with amnesia, and her quest to find herself after living in the care of some plebs, not knowing that she is the sole living heiress to a family fortune, and selfishly demolishing the emotions of every person she comes in contact with.

It is within this turmoil that the novel gains its traction.  Where did she go?  What did she do?  And why is she now deciding to find out the truth about the sixteen years of her past that have been lost to her mind at the time of her disappearance?  Unfortunately, the mystery is meandering and needlessly complicated, driven by a narrative that bounces from his point of view to hers across a spectrum of years that dissipate any tensions it aims to build with a voice that is at times brooding, at times mechanical, and at times apathetic.  This is exacerbated by the decision to fill in the blanks of Oz’s first person narrative with patches of Adrienne’s third person narrative to better supplement his story.  If this move was meant to throw the audience off the scent, it certainly isn’t obvious in retrospect. Further gumming up the works are the descriptions of the various provinces and set pieces around New Orleans that are detailed but feel abstract or obligatory.  A limited cast of auxiliary characters is introduced throughout and they are interesting in their own right, but are also not used to their fullest potential and kind of just discarded nonchalantly when they are no longer a need or a threat.

So is a man and a woman coming together who have everything in the world and nothing but time, convenience, and opportunity, something to get really intrigued by?  I guess it’s a matter of perspective.  Some people completely dig the fantasy of romance and true love and ultimate happiness, that two characters that were imagined for each other can overcome tumultuous odds stacked heavily against their favor, regardless of whether or not these characters could ever be considered ‘real.’  St. Charles at Dusk is a story about love–at the very least there is love in it–but there is something lacking here, some real tragedy, some real grit, that holds back its ambition.  I could not say that it swayed me to behold love and all that that entails in a certain way, but I could say that it has left me disappointed in myself for not having been born into a life of uninhibited perfection.

C+

P.S. I’d like to thank a redditor for the term ‘navel-gazing wankery.’ I’m trying to find your comment sir and credit you properly, but I can’t find it and I’m sorry. 😦

Choice Passages

“She pulled off the cloak and carelessly tossed it across the back of my leather sofa in the sitting room. Neurotically, I was one step behind her, wiping the raindrops off of the couch and hanging her cover on the oak coat rack, where it belonged.”

“The more time I spent dating, the less time I gave my personal studies. The behavior that had once defined me slowly became less a part of me until there was no room left for it all.”

“She was absolutely, without a doubt, the smartest human being I had ever known … She had also studied ancient history in her father’s expansive library at Ophélie, and like me, had longed to find someone who found it worthwhile … It was painful for Adrienne to be forced to remain in this world of children when mentally she had already checked out of it.”

“‘Why apologize for what I am?’ she told me later when I asked her why she was often not more delicate with those she loved, more sensitive to the insecurities of others. I apologized for things I was responsible for as well as the things I wasn’t. I was stuck in a perpetual pattern of second-guessing everything I ever did, saying sorry for things that weren’t really my fault.” (Note: Adrienne is 11 and not very adorable in this sequence.)

“‘But,’ I continued, ‘Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something else out there that I would have been better at. Perhaps even something that would make me happier than this. Yet, if I did that, if I went out and searched for whatever that was, what would my father think? He’s always given me everything I could ever need or ask for and never asked anything in return.”

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+

Red Lights (2012)

Red Lights is a thriller about a pair of paranormal investigators, professors at a prestigious university apparently, who specialize in defrauding practitioners of paranormal activity. When a famous blind psychic emerges from a 30-year stint in obscurity showing all the major signs that supernatural phenomena is a real thing, they become consumed in uncovering the truth about the origins of his power. Strange things happen to the investigators as they attempt to uncover the blind man’s secrets: birds smash into windows, electronic equipment spontaneously explodes, and perfectly innocent spoons get bent while they sit idly in half-filled coffee cups. They must ultimately examine whether E.S.P. is real as a result.

This movie is meh. The performances feel very dry, with relationships between characters changing primarily off-screen in favor of moar pseudo-sciency exposition and mystery build-up. There’s too much focus on the pseudo-science I think. Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver have very little positive chemistry during most of their time together, DeNiro is some kind of big villain without having been established as such in any meaningful way, and Cillian’s girlfriend is handled incredibly poorly–she’s, like a student in their class I guess? But then they’re sleeping together? When did that happen? Was I messing around with my phone during the obligatory ‘draw me like one of your French girls’ love scene?

Tiny details like this are passed over in favor of building up some kind of mystery about how Robert DeNiro is some kind of dangerous, magical blind dude. I suppose that we don’t need to know about how Cillian plays with others really but, if you see the movie all the way through, it suddenly becomes a little bit more important when it goes to tie things up. Speaking of DeNiro’s character, he’s supposed to be incredibly charismatic. Instead, he is some kind of weirdo with a Shakespearean complex that’s too big for his britches. I’m sure that’s what they are going for, but the way this plot and its concepts were handled was a complete flatline for me.

One last thought: do universities really have paranormal research and investigation departments that also hold classes? That. Sounds. AWESOME! How do I get in on that business?

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+

Melody Time (1948)

 

Melody Time is a collection of animated shorts set to popular music and folklore of the old days. It’s pretty much a watered down version of Fantasia, with a lot more emphasis on love and light-heartedness (much like Fun and Fancy Free before it).  Let’s do a quick rundown of the animated shorts of this feature:

• A romance piece set during the winter where a boyfriend and girlfriend go ice skating.
• A very awesome sequence of a bumblebee battling a frenzy of music, led by an awesome jazz number.
• A retelling of the Johnny Appleseed story.
• A story about Little Toot, a tiny tugboat that wants to be like his dad but can’t stay out of trouble.
• A very short but decent sequence set to a poem about Trees, the animation goes through each season.
• A sort-of reunion of The Three Caballeros in a short called Blame It On the Samba.  Donald Duck and that other green one are introduced to samba music, we are introduced to an incredibly talented organ player.
• A set piece about Pecos Bill.  I read on the Wikipedia that all the segments featuring him smoking were removed.  No mention about a quick bit where Indians were called Redskins and how the Painted Desert got its name though.  Smoking’s gross, kids, but racism still A-OK!

This movie isn’t terrible but it’s not all that thrilling, either.  It will probably put your kids to sleep.  I’m actually starting to get tired of package films by this point, myself.  I think the last 4 Disney films I’ve watched on this little journey of mine were just packaged shorts that I’m convinced were later split up and aired on the Disney Channel at 2 in the morning to not interfere with all that Kidz Bop revenue.  I want to see a fully-fledged feature, dammit! Where’s the treachery?  Where’s the evil?  Where’s the tension and suspense?  I don’t think I can take another love story or adventure without much of a conflict!  Somebody help me!!

C+

Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Fun and Fancy Free is not so much a movie as it is a sort of exhibition, the sort made by Disney’s B-Team.  It’s a feature-length cartoon divided into two distinct parts: one where a circus bear escapes captivity to pursue his roots in the natural wilderness and another where Mickey Mouse & friends go on an adventure based on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale.  There is also an intermission where the studio again tries to intersperse a live action element where the creep factor is turned up to 11.

There isn’t a whole lot of praise that can be dumped on this film.  It feels a lot more efficient than previous Disney endeavors of the time–the animation is hokey and the two stories are fairly simplistic.  I think Disney has wholeheartedly embraced the cartoons-are-for-kids motif at this point: the first teaches us how cuddly bears fall in love in addition to dealing with jealous alpha males, while the second is a David & Goliath type of story (as was Beanstalk) that shows us we can overcome just about anything larger than ourselves with wit, gumption, and bravado.

However there is a positive thing I can say about this movie: that “Disney Magic” is out in full force.  I’m talking about that angelic and whimsical chorus of ladies singing whimsically through a tin can as our heroes deal with their problems.  The whole first half is nothing but a musical in this vein and it is very pleasant.  It actually reminds me of my childhood due to having seen many of these older Disney films when I was just a little guy.  Whimsical notes are carried by whimsical visuals, and it is almost hypnotic in its execution.

I think your kids will like this movie, but in today’s world they might also get bored.  These types of cartoons just aren’t as engaging as they were in the past.  The bigger problem I see with this one is the live action segment–there’s this sequence where this guy is entertaining his daughter or something at a birthday party.  It’s just him, her, and three ventriloquist dummies that all talk out of turn.  The creep factor rises when it’s revealed that these dummies don’t require the ventriloquist to be attached in order to talk and behave.  The little girl enjoys this, but I really think that whole set is haunted.

C+

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a documentary jointly produced by The History Channel and PBS that uncovers a darker and grittier side of the Lincoln presidency. Based on material written in a recently discovered diary that belonged to Lincoln, the film painstakingly reconstructs this newfound perspective about one of the most beloved presidents in American history by showing us what being a vampire hunter was like back in prehistoric times. It also harnesses the power of modern computers to simulate how vampire combat is thought to have looked back then, particularly during the Battle at Gettysburg and one part where Lincoln totally murders a guy with his axe.

Generally, this movie is not ashamed to be exactly what you’d expect it to be: Abe Lincoln kills vampires because Abe Lincoln is a BMF.  It could be a spoof on this insistent Internet argument that Hollywood is out of ideas and will make anything that might bring in a buck, especially if it’s cheap.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that it looks like a PBS documentary with comically cheap CGI battles and conspicuously foggy sets.  Another problem is with color correction and its heavy abuse; I don’t think there is a single scene that uses a natural color and the majority of the film’s color is snuffed out via a sepia filter.  It’s supposed to evoke this feeling that we’re in Civil War days before black & white cameras I guess.

I liked Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s performance a lot. There’s a scene where Abraham confesses to Mary Todd that he is a vampire slayer and her reaction is adorable.  The vampire combat sequences were cool but relied too heavily on that 300 thing where time slows just before or after a strike connects to show off blood splatters or Abe’s manliness. The worst thing though?  The film isn’t all that interesting and kind of fumbles around until Lincoln “grows the beard.”

C+

The Girl From the Naked Eye (2012)

The Girl From the Naked Eye is a film-noir-kind-of-kung-fu movie about a guy who works for a pretty seedy outfit called The Naked Eye.  It’s a brothel or a night club or something.  I know how you all like brothels.

It kicks off with an unsolved mystery: some girl is found dead in her apartment.  The guy, an expert Tekken streetfighter and also her personal bodyguard, resolves to uncover the truth about her murder whilst using his fisticuffs to murder the shit out of most of the club’s staff until the answer is found.  I feel kind of sorry for those guys; they’re just trying to make their way in this topsy-turvy world.  Who does this asshole think he is?  Some kind of Liu Kang or something?

[This is the part where my brain tries to rationalize what I’m feeling.]

Anyways, the film is mostly forgettable and definitely feels like a baby’s first Bruce Lee movie.  The characters aren’t all that interesting and I felt a nagging disconnection from Jake’s (the lead) situation.  The fight choreography felt manufactured and boring.  Also, the actors looked like they were just practicing their roles for some other movie.  Having said that,I think it’s a decent effort for what it is that could lead to something great for these filmmakers and I really hope they succeed.  With a little more passion, I think they will.

C+

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Vampire Hunter D is a Japanimation (anime) film set in the super-distant future, where the world is or isn’t sometimes a wasteland and motion is reduced to about 10 frames per second.  In this fairly well-realized world we see vampires, werewolves, and mutants terrorize neo-Victorian villages regularly.  People who are ‘bitten’ are ostracized from society unless they join the ranks of the vampire noble elite through marriage or servitude… or both.

This is a movie about D, a half-human, half-vampire hybrid warrior with an extra face on his hand.  He is given the task of killing a super old, super powerful vampire MegaBoss for a girl in a village who was bitten recently and doesn’t want to be a totally awesome vampire noble.  A lot of the movie is spent exploring this world and describing through some pretty nice visuals how things work in this distant apocalyptic future.  I liked the Victorian aesthetic. It meshes well with this style of animation.  I’m also a fanboy of Yoshitaka Amano, the character designer for D, and have no real complaints regarding that aspect.

They try their best to make D one super badass mofo while also going to great lengths to show that he sometimes has difficulty surmounting his problems.  This film takes the lazy route concluding these scenarios by conveniently having him have some kind of flash of brilliance that relieves tension a little too quickly.  What ends up playing out is some kind of DBZ knock-off (or inspiration?) where the situation is instantaneously resolved by lobbing off a head, an arm, or any other sliceable body part. I guess what I wanted was D having to think very critically about solving his problems instead of immediately knowing the answers or just brute forcing his way through.

C+