Not as freaky as its reputation makes it out to be . . . in fact, if you leave out the kooky Christian ranting of Woodward (and the final sacrifice freakout), the whole second half is a pretty neat primer on Pagan/agrarian English ritual. A little bit breast-laden, but then that's probably pretty accurate.

Christopher Lee is awesome, particularly his hair during the last act, blowing everywhere. The cinematography is workmanlike, but the scenery is really nice.

And all the bits with the animal masks & etc & etc are just freaky enough -- in a matter-of-fact way -- to be really effective. I quite enjoyed it.

We rented this because we were so impressed by Michael Sheen in The Damned United. He's good here as well, but not nearly as good as he was in TDU. And nowhere near as good as Frank Langella as Richard Nixon.

This despite the fact that if you go back and watch the actual Frost/Nixon interview footage helpfully supplied on the disc, Langella is overacting like crazy compared to Nixon. Langella's voice booms; Nixon's was actually much more normal-guy sounding. Langella gets quite agitated & his face contorts; Nixon maintained a much calmer composure right up til the moment when he started talking about letting down the American People.

Anyway, it's a gripping movie, which is a little surprising given that it's the story of the lead-up to a TV interview in which two white guys sat around talking, mostly quite civilly up til the very last moment.

What's most remarkable about this movie -- apart from Michael Sheen's tour-de-force performance as Brian Clough -- is that so many people came together to make such a well-shot, well-acted movie about one man's inability to coach a soccer team for 6 weeks in 1974.

Obviously there's a lot more to it than that -- in one sense Clough's failed attempt at managing Leeds United is really just a framing device to explore his history, his ambition, and his relationship to his assistant Peter Taylor. But would any of those even be important or significant if he hadn't talked so much trash and then flamed out so remarkably?

Either way, regardless of how you feel about the topic at hand, the movie is riveting, as is Sheen. Definitely an Oscar-worthy performance.

Good lord, what a long movie. They cut out the intermission, which meant I had to leave in the middle to pee, but that saved us a good 5-10 minutes so I suppose it was worth it.

Of many amazing performances, particularly those of Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Laurence Olivier, I wouldn't necessarily count Kirk Douglas's as one of them. He's OK. He does some acting, and some standing around looking handsome, and generally doesn't make a fool of himself. But I'm not sure that's the same as giving an amazing performance. Laughton is phenomenal.

Rather than repeating all the fascinating trivia I just read, here's a link to imdb: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/trivia

I'd never seen this before; it's interesting to watch it in comparison with all the X-Files we've been watching lately. It's a somewhat different vision of the FBI, at least graphically -- there's a shot where Petersen & Farina are sitting around in an office with huge high ceilings & floor-to-ceiling file drawers, nearly everything in the shot is pristine white, especially the wall of drawers. Crazy stuff.

It hadn't registered that the lead actor was William Petersen, aka Grissom on CSI, until about 10 minutes into the movie. It kind of threw me, as did his kind of weird wardrobe (well, it was the 80s, and it was Michael Mann).

Mann had a very distinctive style at the time -- it's easy to see the direct connection between this & Miami Vice. In some ways it plays like an extended episode. Miami Vice ran from '84 - '90 and Manhunter ('86) was the only theatrical movie he directed during that time.

But so there's a lot happening with colored light, and it has moody interludes. The most remarkable part is the climactic gun battle where they very artificially jump-cut between cameras running at different speeds, and actually cut back-and-forth in time a little bit in so doing. It's really distinctive.

This is the movie that made Tom Noonan's rep as the consummate creepazoid, and he deserves it. I don't know what, if anything, it did for Joan Allen's career (it didn't seem to really take off until later) but she's remarkable in it.

Remarkably consistent 70s/80s retro horror. The first hour or so of slow-building suspense is awesome, both in terms of style/design & also in terms of pacing. The last 20 minutes of cornball Satanic ritual stuff is mostly silly, but is also very true to the milieu. Black robes, blood, candles, pentagrams, funny camera angles, some shaky POV shots, some strobe-type effects, etc.

Walking home we were talking about horror & its relation to the times, and thus whether 70s/80s retro horror can/should even exist. Remakes are one thing, if they update in some way to reflect modern concerns. But this is a whole other thing.

I haven't seen any of the recent spate of remakes. I wonder if they do update, and if so what has changed. I'm not sure that I'm willing to sit through them to find out.

I love seeing Tom Noonan in just about anything, although to be honest I like him better as a sympathetic character.

I kind of feel like this is the summation of everything Wes has been working towards throughout his career, plus with animated foxes.

Actually, upon further reflection, that's not the case. I tend to forget about the best parts of Rushmore, namely those parts where Max & Margaret are flying kites in the Astrodome parking lot. Or whatever that whole section is about. There's an air of melancholy suffusing that section that feels much truer than most of the more-mannered/ironic stuff that came after. (it's there in Bottle Rocket as well, and honestly, I attribute it as much to Owen Wilson as to Wes -- I should re-watch Royal Tenenbaums, as that's the last script the two co-wrote)

And FMF, by its very nature, can't really attain that either. But it's beautiful to look at, and it's very laid-back and mellow and genuinely funny and touching. It's a work of art that's clearly the product of a relatively small group of people working together, although all the coverage surrounding Wes's remote-directing would suggest that that, too, is a fiction.

So: probably my favorite WA movie since Rushmore, and it pushes gently in new directions (it's by no means a kids movie, but there's a playfulness that he accesses via the animation that works well).

Dune! It seems obvious in retrospect but I wasn't really thinking "greatest Steampunk movie of all time" before I went into the theater. Hadn't seen it since I saw it in the theater when it came out in December '84.

The plot actually wasn't that hard to follow at all, compared to some of the convoluted overplotted disasters I've seen lately. It's still a disaster from an editing & character-development standpoint. It's just cut-cut-cut & Lynch made this crazy decision to have nearly everyone doing voice-over of their thoughts nearly all the time, which I suppose is better than nothing character-development-wise but I would've preferred actual, you know, acting.

But the sets & costumes are fantastic, and some of the scenes (primarily those involving the crazy pustulous Baron Harkonnen) are utterly unforgettable. Big thumbs up from me. Unfortunately it sounded like most folks around us were enjoying it as Le Bad Cinema rather than as a tour-de-force of Lynchian nuttiness. Fair enough, I guess, but I feel like I enjoyed it genuinely from a visual perspective.

I did find it particularly amusing that he was forced, in the final third of it, to basically compress time to the point that we couldn't even begin to care what was happening -- the classic "a year passed and their love grew" type thing -- and yet throughout the movie Lynch managed to make time for endless montages of water, moon, etc, and Kyle intoning "Arrakis . . . Dune . . . Desert Planet" over & over again. Which is also a really Lynchian thing to do.

Huge thumbs up for the eyebrows on Brad Dourif as well. All the supporting characters are pretty great (except Sting, of course). Kinda cool to see so many Twin Peaks folks onscreen, including Pete as one of Harkonnen's goons, and Big Ed as the leader of the Fremen. Plus Max Von Sydow! And Linda Hunt! It's a grab-bag of awesomeness!

So I'm actually fairly serious in giving it an 8.

Sort of like if Old Joy were funnier & much more fraught with pseudo-enlightened dude homophobia masquerading as open-mindedness. While I was watching it I sort of went back and forth on the premise (old college friends, one settled (married, job, house), one still bohemian, reunite, get baked/drunk, and swear to make a "two straight guys fucking" gay porn movie the following Sunday), but as with so much Mumblecore, it's not the plot itself but the discussions & moments that surround it. And here the cast really clicks, particularly Alycia Delmore as the wife of the "settled" half of the pair of friends.Ultimately, the movie succeeds because it actually takes its goofy premise to its logical conclusion, and beyond.

NOT Miike's best work. Not even his second-best work. Sure, I can appreciate the Kurosawa homage, and sure, there are some entertaining set-pieces (as well as some awesome costume design). But all-in-all, having his Japanese actors speak almost entirely in broken English, and having so comparatively few freaky scenes, gore, psychedelic interludes, or anything else of Miike-style interest, all translated into kind of a mellow snooze-fest.Which still meant it was entertaining enough, but it was not even in the same universe as Audition, Gozu, or The Happiness of the Katakuris. (Then again, it was probably yards better than some of the dozens of straight-to-video Miike movies that we never even get to see here in the USA)

Sure, the plot is entirely predictable. It has to be, it's a coming-of-age story set in a small town, in which a misfit girl has to learn the strength to follow her own path, instead of what her mother or her peers want for her. Yadda yadda yadda.The difference is that it's a ROLLER DERBY movie. Young Bliss (Ellen Page) stumbles across Roller Derby during a shopping trip to Austin with her mother, and everything unfolds predictably (but perfectly so) from there.The best parts, naturally, are the roller-derby action sequences, of which there are a ton. They're remarkably realistic . . . I've never been to roller derby in Austin, but I've seen it here often enough. The only major quibbles I have are that the violence seems much more extravagant than it does in Raleigh (but hey, maybe that's an Austin thing) and that they seem to play fast-and-loose with the scoring, with jammers occasionally scoring way more points per jam than seems logical.But the costumes, the audiences, the energy-level, and the overall milieu seem dead on.There are some other sequences that really work, too, most notably a love scene shot entirely underwater in an indoor swimming pool. All in all, considering we're talking about Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, a damn fine showing.

Wait, is this one of the big major-studio movies that Soderbergh makes in order to have the money/clout to make smaller, more idiosyncratic movies? Or is this one of those smaller, more idiosyncratic movies?On the one hand, it's a movie-ization of a best-selling book about an actual weird-true-crime event, and it stars Matt Damon. On the other hand, it's so alarmingly stylized that it's kind of hard to imagine any studio willingly releasing it with the expectation that it'll make a ton of box-office bank.Then again, according to imdb, it raked in $10.5 million its opening weekend, and after six weeks it has made $32 million, or roughly the break-even point for its $21 million budget. Which isn't a ton of box-office bank, by any stretch, but it does suggest that occasionally Soderbergh makes a third kind of movie, the sort of niche movie that he started his career with.So how is it? Damon is brilliant, as is Scott Bakula as an FBI agent with a weird hairstyle and an air of perennial disappointment that occasionally explodes into exasperation.Yes, it's a "serious" plot that's played for comedy, which probably was the correct response to a pretty absurd situation. But as I tweeted shortly after seeing it: Fun, although I think I need to see more pre-postmodern movies that are just movies, rather than "movies."

Good lord. What an astonishing movie. Just the casting & art direction alone are utterly mindblowing -- where did they find all these dumpy-looking people, and how, on their presumably modest budget, did they manage to so totally fucking DESTROY the future in such an amazingly coherent way?

Are there problems? Probably . . . beginning with the fact that while the premise is amazing (500 years of devolution reducing the citizenry to a rabble of base morons), and the adherence to it is remarkable, actually having to endure 90 minutes of idiot babble could prove trying for some people. It didn't bother me (much), but I'm not everyone.

Maya Rudolph is mostly wasted, as usual (I was pretty irritated with Away We Go, but at least it gave Maya something meaty to do). Luke Wilson is affable & up for just about anything, as usual.

I'd already been a DJ for 4-5 years when this movie came out, so I can't credit it with introducing me to radio. And I'd been a Pixies fan for a couple of years as well, so the awesome "UK Surf" version of "Wave of Mutilation" (really just a slowed/stripped-down not-really-rock version) was just a pleasant surprise from a band I already loved.

I don't recall whether I'd been introduced to Leonard Cohen . . . certainly "Everybody Knows" was something of a revelation. Two big middle fingers to MCA for failing to get any Leonard Cohen onto the soundtrack album (was it because they couldn't get the rights? Or, heaven forbid, did some mid-level soundtrack producer type decide that he was too "old" or unhip for the target demographic?).

But I digress. My friend Chuck pointed out that it's essentially an "Over The Edge" for the late 80s/early 90s, and he's exactly right . . . same semi-desert exurban setting, same half-finished houses (though they're really only glimpsed briefly here), same utter lack of anything for the kids to do. Except, of course, for pirate radio. Or parking on the lawn together to listen to pirate radio.

The fascinating difference, to me, is that in Pump Up the Volume, the cause celebre for Christian Slater's "Happy Harry Hardon" becomes exposing the unlawful expulsion of students from his high school . . . in essence, in the second half of the movie, the fundamental right being fought for is the right to a public education. Whereas "Over the Edge" is a bit more nihilistic (i.e. the only thing the kids do, school-wise, is barricade their parents inside and set it on fire).

The movie aged much better than Heathers did, in part due to a better script, and in part because Slater actually has the opportunity to do some acting, rather than just his Nicholson impression. Some of the moments of teen angst still really ring true, in a way that even John Hughes rarely matched.

Both Slater & costar Samantha Mathis are within a year of my age, so (even though they were playing characters 3-4 years younger) I can't help but feel some sort of connection to them & to the movie because of that as well. Plus their shirtless circling first-kiss scene in the yard behind his house is actually pretty remarkable.

Equally remarkable, for different reasons: the clothes, the hair, etc. 1990 was a strange time in American youth culture, no doubt.

John Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween (& immediately prior to Escape from New York) is less iconic than either of those two. I won't make any outlandish claims for its rediscovery, but I did enjoy it quite a bit, albeit primarily because it was shot, beautifully, in and around Point Reyes National Seashore, which is quite simply one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

It's also notable for being one of the few movies where Jamie Lee Curtis appears alongside her mother, Janet Leigh (though they don't play mother & daughter in the film, and in fact get very little screen-time together, restricted almost entirely to the climactic undead-leprous-mariner attack sequence).

Add in a taking-this-fairly-seriously turn by Hal Holbrook as the priest who discover's the town's deep dark secret (and a similarly intense performance by Adrienne Barbeau, who runs the town's 6pm-midnight-only radio station), and John Houseman hamming it up as an ancient mariner telling ghost-stories before the opening credits, and you get a perfectly diverting 90 minutes of fairly non-gory suspense.

For a movie made in 1978 (itself a remake of a 1956 movie), this feels remarkably fresh & undated. I guess paranoia springs eternal.

Donald Sutherland is awesome -- I say this as a fan, yes, but there's an intensity & a reluctance to ham it up that's not always present in his work, and which works perfectly here.

Sutherland aside, the real stars are Michael Chapman's cinematography & Denny Zeitlin's creepy, synth-heavy score. In the first half of the film especially, when the protagonists are sure something's happening but they aren't sure what it is, Chapman, Zeitlin & director Philip Kaufman generate a remarkable sensation of unease with a series of fairly static shots of city streets, seemingly random people, or just plants and buildings.

The pacing is tight, the supporting cast is amazing (Brooke Adams! Jeff Goldblum! Leonard Nimoy! Veronica Cartwright!) and Kaufman squeezes in cameos by both star (Kevin McCarthy) and director (Don Siegel) of the '56 version of the movie.Kaufman went on to make quite a remarkable series of movies in the 80s: The Right Stuff (1983), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), and Henry & June (1990).

I haven't seen most of the Iraq-war-based movies that have come out over the past half-decade. Not sure if there's a particular reason -- bad (or at least mixed) reviews? Lack of interest in seeing one more post-Platoon war movie? I actually wanted to see Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, but perhaps I needed to wait until Bush was out of office . . .Anyway. In its episodic structure, and its "series of absurd/fucked-up situations" theme, The Hurt Locker is similar to the HBO miniseries "Generation Kill", which I did see, and loved. I liked The Hurt Locker a good bit as well, though at a certain point it crossed over into melodrama . . . and that plus its 2:10 runtime wore me out a bit.

Though certainly an epic in its own right, River Kwai can't really be considered in the same league as Lean's masterpiece, "Lawrence of Arabia," and though I'm sure there are any number of reasons, foremost for me is William Holden, who appears to have been given a different script and a completely different set of directions from all the other actors. He's essentially playing the Tony Curtis role from "Operation Petticoat."But Alec Guinness (or, rather, Alec Guinness's character) is awesome in his complexity, his simultaneous humanity and complete lack thereof. The scene where he stalks the aisle of the hospital tent looking for "volunteers," and then marches his ragtag band of cripples out through the graveyard to work, is amazing, as is his "dinner" with the camp commander. Well worth seeing for all of those (and for the long commando trek through the jungle, especially the gunfight at the swimming hole with the 1000s of flying foxes wheeling overhead).

Dear Michael Mann:I am very sorry I blew off your Miami Vice movie-ization. Now that I have sat through your tedious "all the boring parts of gangster movies, plus a lot of incoherent night-time gunfights, plus pretty old cars" movie, can we call it even, and will you please make another movie as good as "Collateral"?Your pal, Ross

Absolutely perfect. Spike Lee's finest film, and one of my favorite films of all time. Yes, it's a little stagey (by design, I think). But oh, the colors! Oh, the soundtrack, the crisscrossing & overlapping between "Fight the Power" (Public Enemy's finest moment), the platters spun by Mister Señor Love Daddy, and Bill Lee's orchestral score. Ernest Dickerson's amazing, fluid cinematography. The nearly physical sensation of heat emanating from the screen. The accretion of little slights, insults & frictions that result in the climactic explosion of violence.It's a movie about families, both biological and social, and about the limits of family ties. It's also (hard to believe now) the screen debut of Rosie Perez, who makes said debut via a full 5 minutes of solo dancing over the opening credits, as "Fight the Power" plays in its entirety.See this movie. Rent it now. Come over & watch it on Blu-Ray at my house. Just see it.