Category Archives: Jay

Night At The Museum: Something About A Tomb

Wow did this suck balls. Like, no redeeming factors to report at all. The effects are brazenly shoddy. Embarrassing. Was this movie shot entirely in front of a green screen? Is there even a museum in New York?

My problem is, I don’t like Ben Stiller. My other problem is, Ben Stiller likes Ben Stiller. So much so that he conferred upon himself another character, just so he can have the pleasure of interacting with himself, green screen on green screen on green screen. Is nothing sacred?

I love Rebel Wilson but she’s falling into the Melissa McCarthy trap here – genuinely funny women that are reduced to one-note obnoxious roles that wear thin quickly. Not quite as thin as Ben Stiller as a caveman (haven’t we seen that before?), but still. She was wasted. But this movie wasted actors like it was going out of style (and if this is indeed the third and final chapter, then I guess it is) – Ben Kingsley! Hugh Jackman! Ricky Gervais! And y’all know that I love Steve Coogan but for the love of monkeys, throw the man a bone. He and Owen Wilson and floundering with oodles of screen time but nary a point. I felt bad for them.

There was a single workable joke in the whole entire thing:

Ben Kingsley (as an Egyptian pharaoh) to Ben Stiller, half-Jewish: “I love Jews! We owned 40 000 of them. They were very happy. Always singing with the candles.”

Ben Stiller: “Yeah, they really weren’t happy. They left. Spent 40 years in the desert trying to escape. We have dinner once a year to talk about it.”

So now that I’ve ruined the one funny bit for you, you don’t have to watch it.

You’re welcome!

The Needle Drop

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I’m a complete and total sucker when life pairs two of my favourite things – movies and music – in an ungodly goodly way. I love being moved by a score, I love a soundtrack I can relate to, but nothing arrests me like the perfect pairing of a movie scene and a pop song.

You Make My Dreams, Hall & Oates from 500 Days of Summer

This? This is genius. Have you seen this movie? SEE THIS MOVIE! It’s about this guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who falls for a fanciful, quirky woman, and for a time at least, it’s totally magical and transformative and the best thing about it? She lets him have sex with her! This scene is the morning after – the world is just different. In fact, it’s 10% better. Or 50% better! He literally wakes up with a song in his heart and a bounce in his step. The world is smiling back at him! His own reflection is proud. It’s crazy but it’s relatable. I feel like this too often probably, but if a good song comes on my MP3 (and a good song is always coming on!) and the sun is shining and life is good, then yeah, I’m the girl shaking my bootie down the street. Rarely do other people join in, let alone the bird from Cinderella, but I think it’s only a matter of time. My life is 10% better just knowing this exists in the world.

Stuck in The Middle With You, Stealers Wheel from Reservoir Dogs

This one has possibly made life just a little bit worse. In fact, I have not, since watching this, been able to hear this song and not feel a slight stinging in my ear. But I loved it. Quentin Tarantino is kind of a superstar when it comes to his ingenious pairing of image and sound. Here, Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde boogies down to his favourite oldies radio station while severely torturing a cop. The image is graphic and horrible but the song is light and catchy. Your eyes and your ears are experiencing two different realities, which makes your belly do a queasy thing and it’s fucking brilliant, man. I mean, I hate it, but I love it. And Mr. Blonde? He just loves it. He’s having a party. Gives you a lot of insight into just what kind of guy we’re dealing with. Watch at your own risk.

Where Is My Mind, Pixies from Fight Club

The perfect song for the perfect scene – the music is haunting and kind of apocalyptic, the lyrics vague and dream-like. The song is asking Where Is My Mind? when it’s entirely possible that Edward Norton’s protagonist is only just finding it for the first time in the whole movie. The ending is meant to be ambiguous but David Fincher leaves us with a beautiful moment, giving us time to digest the blows we’ve just been dealt.

Wise Up, Aimee Mann from Magnolia

If you’ve seen this movie, and you totally should, you can’t ever forget it. It rains frogs, goddammit. It’s way too complex to explain the various interconnecting characters and stories, but it’s a whole group of people who are in bad situations – the movie tackles regret, loneliness, family violence and exploitation. In the middle of a whole heck of a lot of hard times, every major character takes a turn singing Aimee Mann’s beautiful but unforgiving song, Wise Up.

You’re sure there’s a cure
And you have finally found it
You think one drink
Will shrink you till you’re underground
And living down
But it’s not going to stop
Till you wise up

No it’s not going to stop
Till you wise up
No, it’s not going to stop
So just give up

These lyrics prepare us for the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t giving out absolution. Mistakes can’t always be erased. There are limits to forgiveness. If you’re looking for a happy ending, look elsewhere. Hard truths, softened by an ethereal melody.

The Blower’s Daughter, Damien Rice from Closer

This movie just kills me and this end shot with the song layered over top really hammers home the wrist-slitting qualities of heart break and loss. Like, if you weren’t quite depressed enough, Mike Nichols finishes you off with this song just so you can be sure that there’s no happiness to be had here, only pain and confusion. Ouch.

Then He kissed Me, The Crystals from GoodFellas

Martin Scorsese might be the king of pop songs and movies so it’s hard to pick just one – hell, it’s hard to pick just one from GoodFellas. But I’m going with this one because it’s a classic Marty shot, a famous minutes-long steadi-cam single take that follows Henry as he leads Karen into the bowels of the Copacabana, passing out twenties like nobody’s business and basically impressing the panties off her. The song mimics this with its carefree feeling and sweep-her-off-her-feet lyrics. You feel and see and hear things from her perspective; it’s a whirlwindy pop song power trip that shows how much privilege he has while also reminding us that he came in the back door. One of my favourite three minutes of film ever.

Tiny Dancer, Elton John from Almost Famous

Who but Elton John could unite a bus full of cranky, burnt out super-egos? In a movie chock-full of songs, this one is particularly well chosen, but we wouldn’t expect any less from Cameron Crowe, would we?

Old Time Rock N Roll, Bob Seger from Risky Business

I resisted including this one for as long as I could, but rarely does a scene rival this one in our collective audience consciousness. It has transcended the movie and belongs now to pop culture’s hereafter. I have never dated a man who hasn’t at least partially recreated this scene for me unbidden and I have never seen this song fail to pack a dance floor. Tom Cruise dances around in his underpants (apparently unchoreographed) and a star is born.

I’m Kissing you, Des’Ree from Romeo + Juliet

Now to cleanse your palette and possibly enrage you, I present to you for your consideration: Baz Luhrmann. It’s nearly criminal to leave him off a list like this, but people have mixed feelings about anachronistic music in period films. This movie was released the exact year I was reading Romeo + Juliet in high school and our English class boarded a bus and drove an hour and a half so the girls could all sob as we watched the movie in a dark, dark theatre. Oh, Leo! Remember when you were briefly a teen heartthrob? Baz Luhrmann does, and this movie serves as a shrine to that era. But it’s also William Shakespeare doing a teen drama, and this song reminds us that in this moment, forget the flowery language and the hundreds of years of veneration – this is about adolescent love at first sight. Meanwhile, Baz Luhrmann is famous for inserting crazy music where you wouldn’t think it belongs – Prince into Shakespeare, Nirvana into the can-can, and Jay-Z into The Great Gatsby. Does Baz Luhrmann get a pass for being inventive or is it just as jarring as when somebody thought to use Queen’s We Will Rock You in A Knight’s Tale or David Bowie in Inglorious Basterds?

It turns out that I could geek out for hours on this subject, so I’ll cut myself off here – for now. Meanwhile, please tell me YOUR favourite musical moment in a movie! Matt, I know you just wrote about Somewhere Over the Rainbow in Face\Off last week, and Sean, I’m guessing yours is probably from Top Gun. 🙂

Faults \ Suicide Kings

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Last night we watched an unintentional doubled feature we would come to dub “Stupid Criminals” – but that doesn’t quite do it justice.

Suicide Kings is a movie you’ve almost certainly skipped over for a couple of decades now. It was released in 1997 and was so bad that Christopher Walken would have to resort to music videos to revive his career. He plays a former(ish) mob boss who gets kidnapped by a bumbling quartet of friends because he’ll have the money and the connections to help find a (girl)friend of theirs who also happens to have been kidnapped. The boys (including Jeremy Sisto, Jay Mohr, Johnny Galecki, and the kid from E.T.) are a mixture of over and under prepared – they bring a bone saw and an IV full of pain killers to better saw off appendages, but haven’t quite sorted out whose beeper the kidnappers will use for ransom arrangements. Thank Christ for Denis Leary, the competent gun for hire who will surely track down Walken and bring this movie to an end. He’s the only one who makes this whole thing bearable, and he actually improvised his whole part, which is no doubt why it stinks a whole lot less than the rest. Although, come to think of it, Walken’s shoe-polish-black hair is quite arresting. But the young criminals are quite brainless, although not quite as brainless as the actual criminals (Brad Garrett!), and the plan was absurd even if it had gone right, which of course it didn’t.

Faults you may be more familiar with – it’s a little film that gained a certain amount of traction because it’s an interesting directorial debut (Riley Stearns) with a concept that seemed ripe for mining. Ansel (Leland Orser) is about as sad-sack as they come. A “foremost” expert on cults, his expertise is so 2008 and he’s barely scraping by giving sparsely-attended talks to reluctant hotel guests and hawking a book nobody wants to read and that he’s gone into debt to his manager in order to self-publish. Orser does a great job with this, and the first 20 minutes during which his character is established are the best. You may want to stop watching here.

If you continue, you’ll find that a couple of desperate parents hire Orser in order to kidnap and deprogram their daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from a mysterious cult called Faults. This goes about as well as you’d expect with creepy-possibly-molesty dad butting in with crop tops and short shorts, and the manager’s goons breathing down Ansel’s neck with threats aplenty, and Ansel basically being bought for the rice of a hot breakfast. The whole affair is less dramatic and more sad than you might imagine, with a few moments or real dark comedic gems that are unfortunately too few to make the enterprise worthwhile. You can almost taste the ambition of this movie. It wants to serve you this brilliant treatise on mind control but doesn’t quite know how to do it. So it’s a worthy first effort but not quite satisfying in a meaningful way.

3 Idiots

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I’ve seen quite a few Indian movies over the years and I always struggle with them. I want to like them, I want to embrace the spirit, and I certainly love the brightly coloured saris and the beautiful dance. But. There’s just something about them that rubs me the wrong way.

Cinema Axis recently inspired me to give it another go, having recommended 3 idiots in quite glowing terms. If you’re looking for a straight up review of the movie, please read his. He’s able to be fair and he judges from a more knowledgeable and even-handed place.

Me, I’m still confused. I’m confused as to whether I feel condescension toward the movie, or if it’s condescending to me. The silliness of Bollywood just grates on me. Even when the story is dead-serious, like soap opera serious, there’s always a comedic character bumbling around, literally doing prat-falls and practically honking horns. Even in this movie, there was that slide-whistle sound alerting us to a good joke – a joke that wasn’t good enough to be served up without some sort of signal, but a joke nonetheless. The actors will be smouldering away, negotiating yet another impossible love scenario when someone cracks large – and then puts his hand over his lips like a little Hello Kitty fan on a Japanese game show. While they are quite capable of moving, stirring acting, they often eschew it in favour of the kind subscribed to by the hosts of children’s morning TV.

This movie is called 3 Idiots, and is about a class of engineers trying to make it through an esteemed trade school to make their parents proud. There are teen-comedy-like antics, but there are also suicides left and right due to the enormous pressure. It seems to be trying to say something very serious about the education system in India, and about the importance of following your own dreams and passions versus those of your parents, but every time they get too close to having a serious moment, they break out into an absurd song and dance that dissolves anything they might have earned before it.

I’m trying extra hard to be generous here. I want to respect their culture and their ways of story-telling, but it all just feels very juvenile to me. Perhaps it’s a case of wanting to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but it just feels like an extremely extended episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, particularly with nonsensical lyrics like “zoobi doobi” which went on for far too long. Granted, this from a website that just reviewed a movie where a car flies from one building to another not once, but twice, pretty favourably. Bollywood movies clearly exist to make money, not art, but that’s true of every studio over here as well, and the net result isn’t a product that assumes the complete idiocy, incomprehension and nonexistent attention span of its entire audience.

I kind of wanted to like this one, particularly near the end, but the slapstick got in the way – not to mention the abhorrent sound effects, the fart gags, and the about-face plot changes. Is this is a screwball romance? College hijinks movie? Social commentary? Buddy roadtrip movie? If Three Idiots doesn’t know the answer in 2 hours and 44 minutes, how should we?

So, looks like I still have a problem with Bollywood, and I’m not the only one. The Indian film industry is the second largest in the world, producing over 300 films every year, but they’ve only garnered 3 Oscar nominations for best foreign film since 1956. Canada, by comparison, which has only a skeleton movie production, and has only been submitting since 1971, has still managed 7 nominations and 1 win. Domestically, Bollywood films do incredibly well. There’s a huge audience looking for some escapism, and the movie industry keeps churning them out. But those movies have no traction with box office overseas. Maybe with time, Indian audiences will come to demand more from their film industry, but until then, I’ll be a very reluctant audience member.

Does Bollywood appeal at all to you? What’s your favourite Indian film?

Ode to John Cusack

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It’s impossible not to encounter an AWFUL lot of John Cusack when you’re perusing teen comedies. He practically had right of first refusal back in the 80s.

Say Anything

This one seems to lose a lot of sparkle the more I see it, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s not aging well, or I’m not. Either way, the things that used to get me – the Peter Gabriel on the boom box, the post-virginity snail mail, it all starts to feel like not quite enough. Like, is this really the gold standard? I’m not sure if it used to impress me, but nowadays I just can’t shake the feeling that Lloyd Dobler is a loser. “Noble underachiever” is a phrase that can only be used by someone with the word teen at the end of their age. Unemployed, unambitious lazybones is more like it. Does that make me sound like my mother? Sure he’s sweet, but I like my sweet with a steady paycheque and some hobbies that go beyond stalking.

Better Off Dead

This movie is so bad I can’t even. Hadn’t seen this before, and should have kept it that way. The effects are terrible, although not quite as terrible as the wigs on the stunt doubles, but nothing holds a candle to the terribleness of the sentient hamburger animation. I can’t believe this didn’t derail Cusack’s career then and there. This comedy, which deals repeatedly with Lane (Cusack) wanting (and attempting) to kill himself because his girlfriend dumped him, should be much too dark for a burger playing an Eddie Van Halen song. And yet!

Turns out, no one hates this movie more than John Cusack. He walked out of the movie after 20 minutes of the screening and accused writer-director Savage Steve Holland of tricking him. “Better Off Dead was the worst thing I have ever seen. I will never trust you as a director ever again, so don’t speak to me.” He felt used and foolish and finished working with Holland only out of contractual obligation. Too bad they don’t mention any of this on the back of the DVD.

Sixteen Candles

Poor Molly Ringwald. She’s trying to turn 16 and it’s all going horribly wrong. John Cusack is only in this peripherally, as a skinny little nerd, but even he’s not enough to keep the nostalgic glow alive. Matt recently re-watched this and couldn’t get over the overt racism – a gong literally sounds every time not-at-all-racistly-named Long Duk Dong comes on-screen. For me, it was the rape that was unbearable. There’s sexism throughout the movie, of course, but rape is rape. This isn’t creepy or questionable. It’s legally, certifiably, conviction-worthy rape, but the movie plays it like it’s just par for the course. John Hughes died in 2009, recently enough that a look back should have been painful, but we’ll never know what he thought because he all but retired from the spotlight in 1991 after John Candy died suddenly of a heart attack. He wrote a few terrible scripts – Maid In Manhattan, Drillbit Taylor – under a pseudonym but kept his privacy well-guarded. He was nevertheless a genius of his generation and I wish we could have heard him say he knew now that it was wrong. Because this movie does get it very, very wrong.

Twofer: Get Hard & Furious 7

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What can these two movies possibly have in common, other than me miraculously sitting through both?

Matt wrote all you need to know about the new Will Ferrell\Kevin Hart movie Get Hard. If you’re wondering if you should see it, talk to Matt. If you did see it and you’re wondering what the hell, read on: (spoilers ahead!)

Get Hard has all the nuts and bolts of a smart social farce but never really puts it together. The first 15 minutes have a lot of potential in their view of the haves vs the have nots, but the movie devolves into all of the racial stereotypes it’s supposed to be making fun of. I thought it was super damaging and sad that they made the Kevin Hart character so uneducated. Will Ferrell is the dumb one, the one who got framed and never noticed, who is terrified of black people but isn’t afraid to offend them by misappropriating their culture, who treats any person of colour so indifferently he subjects them unthinkingly to his nudity because they might as well be just another fixture in his palatial home. And yet the script goes out of its way (3 times that I noticed) to have Will Ferrell make a literary reference that Kevin Hart just doesn’t get.

The whole premise of the movie relies on Will Ferrell’s (incorrect) assumption that like most black men, Kevin Hart is an ex-convict. Actually, he’s spotless…although it turns out that he does have a cousin who’s a gang banger. So there’s that. You know, because even the non-criminal black men roll with thugs. Is that the worst of it? Hardly? One scene that goes on way too long has Kevin Hart pretending to be prison characters – a scary black dude, and an angry Hispanic one. He throws out every stereotype he knows but we never once talk about why prisoners are overwhelmingly one minority or another when we have verifiable proof of white guilt right in front of us. I came out of this movie thinking a lot about what it failed to do or say. It had every opportunity to talk about race, and about economic disparity, and white privilege, but it didn’t. Instead it was a tired, two-hour long repetitive rape joke, and what does that say about our culture that we feel better laughing about rape than we do about confronting racial bias? Yeah, I know this was a comedy that exists to make us laugh, not to be a teachable moment. But Trading Places managed to be both. There’s a lot of great satire out there, funny as heck, and while this one has the veneer of social commentary, underneath it’s just cheap particle board.

Furious 7 manages to tell us more about race without even trying. It’s hard to believe we’re seven movies into this franchise – you may think that’s seven too many, or you may already be eagerly awaiting number eight. But have you ever noticed how ethnically diverse the cast is, and has been since day one?

It feels a little tacky for me to sit here and list all the non-white people, but there are lots, and not just side kicks and bit parts – real marquee characters with back stories and dimensions, and they’re not necessarily the first to get killed off! The series has also visited a lot of non-English speaking countries along the way – trips to Brazil, Japan, and Mexico have only expanded the diversity of the cast, proving it doesn’t matter what colour you are so long as you’re buff and can drive a stick.

And that’s a great thing, actually. 54% of North American movie goers are white, but the actual population is actually a little over 60%, which means minorities, and Hispanics in particular, are the fastest-growing ticket buyers. If audiences are multi-cultural, so should be the movies they watch. And whatever else The Fast and Furious franchise has been, it has consistently delivered a varied group of people capable of interracial relationships. And this inclusive trend exists behind the camera as well. The second one was directed by black filmmaker John Singleton, movies 3 through 6 were done by Justin Lin, and the most recent two were directed by Malaysian-born James Wan.

But the most impressive part (aside from y ability to start so many sentences with the word But) is that race is just a fact of li fe in these movies. It just is. Your boss might be Asian, your girlfriend could be Iranian, your best friend could be The Rock, your own step-kid could be Hispanic, but nobody need mention any of it, let alone pat themselves on the back for it. Generally, when Hollywood makes a movie starring a white guy and a black guy, the movie is about a white guy and a black guy: the culture clash! the misunderstandings! they’re so different but maybe also kinda the same! It can never just be a guy and his friend, who happens to be black. Get Hard is dripping with exactly this kind of guilt, which is sad because Ferrell and Hart are both funny guys and (I’m guessing that) in real life, Ferrell doesn’t talk down to Hart, isn’t afraid he’ll steal his car, and has maybe even shared a bowl of popcorn with him while watching Boyz N The Hood (directed by John Singleton, by the way! — coincidence? Yeah, probably).

Movies are the one place in America where segregation is still allowed to exist. There are tiny pockets of all-black Tyler Perry movies to counter the enormity of Hollywood’s white washing, but that misses the point. We don’t need more segregation, we need integration. And I’m not talking about movies “about race”, I’m talking about movies that have people in them, stupidly beautiful versions of people from all backgrounds standing around in tight tank tops talking about what really matters to America: fast cars and freedom.

It’s Only Creepy if You Do the Math

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Somewhere along the way I accidentally fell in love with Miles Teller. Is that creepy? Yeah, it’s creepy.

Wait. Just checked IMDB and in fact, it’s not illegal! He’s not a high school student, he just plays one on TV. So it’s totally okay that I want to club him over the head, drag him back to my apartment and put my scarred body directly on top of his scarred body and make scarred little babies until he sprains his penis or I get thirsty, whichever comes first.

I just watched Two Night Stand, a not very good movie made so much better by Teller’s great on-screen presence. Actually, the first part of that sentence probably sells it short because in fact I didn’t dislike it. It’s not ground breaking material, it’s a pretty predictable plot, but it’s got charm. A guy and a girl hook up, supposedly for a one night stand, but stupid mother nature has other plans and snows them in, forcing them into a slightly awkward and prolonged encounter. Not the worst thing I’ve watched this week, not even the worst Miles Teller film, in fact

Because I also caught 21 & Over, the poor man’s version of The Hangover. Three best friends from high school reunite in their senior year of college to celebrate the last of them turning 21. Though he has an important med school interview the next morning, he’s dragged out to a bar, and then another and another until all 3 are in such terrible shape that none can remember where the birthday boy lives. Adventure and panic ensue. Teller and Skylar Astin have a lot of charming chemistry, but that only gets them so far. Actually, I just looked it up and it turns out this one was written and directed by the guys who brought us The Hangover, so that explains a lot. Unfortunately, it feels like they prioritized cashing in over story, or good sense. Not that I blame them. I like money too, and I’m super glad I didn’t waste mine seeing this movie in theatres.

At any rate, even in a bad movie, Miles Teller shows us he’s got range. He can do anything. He can be a lovesick puppy or a functional adolescent alcoholic. I enjoy watching him, and I have a feeling, after great performances in The Spectacular Now and Whiplash, that I won’t have to wait too long before turning my gaze upon him once more.

Danny Collins

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Danny Collins (Al Pacino) is a tired and aged pop singer, still swiveling his arthritic hips in the direction of the slutty octogenarians in the front row of his sold-out concerts. But in the quiet moments backstage it’s just him and his girdle, and it’s taking more and more coke to get him to sing the saccharine lyrics of his greatest hits.

His best friend and manager (Christopher Plummer) is delighted to present him with a birthday gift – a letter to him from John Lennon that went undelivered for 40 years. The letter’s a great find but ultimately it makes Danny feel like shit. He knows he’s sold out. Now he also feels like he’s wasted his life, and his talent. So like any elderly rock star having a lightbulb moment, the takes off to New Jersey, where the grown son he never met lives (Bobby Canavale) and the hotel managers are oh-so-fine (Annette Bening).

The first trailer I saw for this movie made me want to give it a miss, but a second look caught my attention. The quips sounded smart. They had good patter. Turns out, it’s written and directed by Dan Fogelman, who wrote Crazy, Stupid Love, which wasn’t half bad. And neither is this.

The problem is, you know what’s going to happen. You know exactly what’s going to happen. You know not only the outcome, but the probable trajectory. But thanks to a surprisingly stirring performance by Al Pacino, who’s backed up by a really solid supporting cast. This movie just worked for me. Al Pacino was ON. For years now he’s thrived on doing a bad SNL-type impersonation of himself, and it turned me off, and away. But he IS Danny Collins. This movie isn’t as good as The Wrestler, or Birdman, but the casting reminded me of those movies, hooking up the perfect actor for a role that feels tailor-made for them. It was fun to watch him embrace the dirty old man. He lays it on thick and Annette Bening keeps scraping it off and flinging it back at him. But it’s earnest. It’s fun. Pacino and Bening charm each other, and us in the process. They are relaxed and easy. And so is the movie. It’s not fluff, exactly, but nor does it have the gravitas of The Wrestler. It’s just a really likeable film, and i think it may have just made Al Pacino a movie star again.

Ten Perfect Cinematic Moments

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Fisti has put forth this brilliant challenge of telling what, for us, are our absolute favourite moments in film. Matt has already risen to the challenge and wrote beautifully and vividly about his own favourites, and if you’d like to read others’, then do check out the blogathon at A Fistful of Films. If you’re sticking around to read mine, please be warned that these inevitably include spoilers.

I wanted to pick that scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon, having previously asked a dude if he liked apples, pounds on the window, presses the phone number against it, and asks “How do you like them apples?” because that’s a great scene. Great movie moment. But there’s another nugget in this movie that overshadows it, for me. It’s at the end, when Ben Affleck pulls up to Matt’s house, knocks on the door, and no one answers. We already know that Ben has always secretly hoped for this very thing: that one day his brilliant friend will disappear from his desultory life and chase the stars. So we know that Ben is happy, but we also know that he will inevitably also be sad, having just lost his best friend, and having no such escape route himself. It’s a very bittersweet moment where not a single word is spoken, but so much is said. All of this is communicated with just a slight grin, but the script and the director have set this moment up so perfectly that it plays on the audience’s emotions for all it’s worth. Love it.

As a little girl, I was fascinated by this movie I kept hearing about, E.T. I got the movie (VHS, baby!) one year for Christmas, probably a few years after its initial release, when it was age-appropriate. Almost the entire movie holds magic for me. This was the first movie that I remember wanting to watch and rewatch, and wanting to own so I could do just that. How do I pick just one moment? The Reese’s pieces, the glowing finger, “I’ll be right here”…and yet, for me, it was the moment Elliot’s bike first detaches from Earth. I can still almost feel the gulp in the pit of my stomach. One minute they’re riding along, just like I did around my own neighbourhood, both wheels kissing the ground, but then the next they’re gently pulling away, with wonder in their eyes, and in mine. That was the moment I realized that movies could tell stories. Made up, magical stories – that there was an infinite sea of possibility out there, not just in my own imagination, but in others’ as well (no, the alien hadn’t tipped me off, it was definitely the flying bikes).

There are a thousand movie lines that have become classic quotes and catch phrases, but I don’t think any have affected me quite as much as “Fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy night!” This is of course uttered by Queen Davis and it wouldn’t have spit forth from any one else’s lips nearly so well. Bette Davis’s Margo in All About Eve was probably her crowning role, one she was born to play. It was released in 1950 so I missed seeing it in theatres. That famous line was part of our cultural lexicon by the time I was born. There was a time when I hadn’t yet seen All About Eve, but there was never a moment in my lifetime when that line didn’t mean something. Though I’ve seen the movie several times by now, no viewing will ever compare to the first time I heard that line out of Bette’s lips. The timing is perfect, the delivery classic. It darn near knocked my socks off.

I’m not sure if there’s one moment in Up that I can point to, rather it’s a point in myself, that moment when I’m sobbing uncontrollably, reaching for my 3rd or 4th tissue, and we’re not even 5 minutes in. Very quickly into the film, there’s a fantastic montage that basically outlines a couple’s life together. Carl and Ellie meet as kids and have a life full of adventure, but also heartbreak. I love the scene of their wedding, where her side is cheering raucously, and his is sedate (remind you of anyone, Sean?). I love the painted hand prints on the mailbox. And I am totally in awe of what must be the first miscarriage hinted at in a Disney movie. It’s done with such tenderness and sensitivity that I always end up bawling. This montage is only a few minutes long but gives you such a sense of who they were (even though they’re fictional cartoons!) that you can’t help but be touched. This movie obviously found its way into my heart, and at a time when I found myself falling in love, so I guess it’s no surprise that there’s an adventure book in my own home, and a soda bottle cap pin on my lapel, and a drawing of little Carl and Ellie on our wall, and that same drawing tattooed on my back. No matter how many times I watch this movie, I am always bowled over by the sweetness that goes along with the hilarious saltiness. I just love knowing that this is possible, that you can tell a story so purely that makes so many feel all the feelings.

I’m starting to feel like there’s a certain theme to my favourites here. Christopher Guest is one of my favourite directors, I love everything he’s ever done and I’m angry at him for not doing more. I might not be able to pick a favourite among his movies, but I can talk about this one scene from A Mighty Wind. Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, two Guest regulars, are playing a folk duo who had a relationship and a successful career but watched both implode. Many years later, there’s still a lot of pain there, but they agree to perform together at a special show as the guests of honour. During their greatest hit, once a testament to their love, they pause to give each other a kiss, just like old times. Again, I have to say that this moment works so well because the director has paid his dues. The whole movie points to this very moment. I hate movies that grab cheaply for tears and admire those that earn them. This moment is played quietly but the emotional payoff is epic.

Wes Anderson is another favourite director of mine. I get absolutely giddy when I watch his creations. My favourite, and I do have one – it’s that good – is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Its ending is maybe Anderson’s finest work- the scene when the whole damn cast is crammed into a tiny submarine, and they finally, finally find the elusive jaguar shark. It’s great, no STUPENDOUS, because 1. Bill Murray cries 2. for a movie called The Life Aquatic, this is pretty much the only aquatic life we see c) Sigur Rós’ song “Starálfur” plays, and its beauty and melancholy are just perfection 4. the shark is a metaphor, but for what? In the end, Steve doesn’t kill the shark, because it’s too beautiful, and also for lack of dynamite. It could be no other way, but only the mind of Wes Anderson would know this. Gets me every time.

I think a few of our fellow bloggers already have Inception on their lists, rightfully I think, for the hallway scene. It’s pretty crazy. But I’m thinking more of the last shot of the movie- the fucking top. Do you remember watching that on the big screen for the first time? How it spun and spun, but will it fall? We have already been told what it means: as long as it continues to spin, he is dreaming. If it eventually topples over, he’s awake. In that famous last scene, we hope he’s awake, and yet the stupid think won’t fall. It keeps going, but – oh, is it about to fall? No. But surely it must be close. Isn’t it faltering? Not quite. But it’s slowing down, right? It’s a simple top, but it manages to create a thick, greasy layer of tension is a theatre that’s already exhausted. And then, brilliantly, director Christopher Nolan cuts to black, so we are left to wonder, or perhaps to make our own judgement call, given the other facts of the movie. Is he or isn’t he? It was a perfect way to end the movie, and it was THE water-cooler topic for weeks. It made us question the nature of reality, and whether ‘reality’ was really the important thing anyway – maybe happiness and emotional connection are reality enough. Christ. I’m twitterpated all over again just writing about it!

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a film out of Belgium that shows the growth of a relationship between two bluegrass singers. The film goes back and forth, with sporadic scenes of courtship, love, marriage, babies, and breakdown. We know that their beloved daughter falls ill (cancer) and we know that the couple ends up in a very dark place, but glimpses of the kid are elusive. It feels like a real game of cat and mouse, trying to piece together what has happened to this family, but you’ve come to love them and you root for them like mad, so the scene where we finally know for sure that the kid is dead JUST FUCKING SLAYS ME.

Almost the whole of Big Fish could make this list, but I’m going to focus on the part where Billy Crudup is carrying his dying father in his arms down tho the water, and I’m going to try (and fail) to write this without tears. His whole life, his father has told him tall tales, which has bred distance and resentment between father and son. Only as his father lies dying does he come to understand that these stories are a legacy, a version of immortality, never so important as when death is knocking on one’s door. When father is incapacitated, son tells the final story: how he brings him down to the river to be bid adieu by all the fantastic characters that he’s known along the way, to finally pass into the arms of his beloved wife, and to finally become what he always was – a very big fish. I find it very moving and inspiring. Isn’t this what death should look like? Fuck heaven. Tim Burton knows how to do death right.

I read the book, pilfered from my grandfather’s collection, when I was far too young, but The Godfather is so goddamned good that it impressed me even then. The movies offer a whole plethora of perfect moments, but I’m taking mine from the second one, where Al Pacino delivers the kiss of death. As Michael leans in to kiss his brother Fredo’s cheek, he whispers “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!” Fredo doesn’t die in that scene, but we all know he’s as good as – he’s marked. He’s always been the Corleone family’s weakest link, but now we know for sure that Michael is the strongest. There’s something a little Judas-y about being betrayed by a kiss, something halfway between forgiveness and vengeance that really paints Michael as a complex man and leader. This kiss gives me chills.

Watching Movies Like A Boss

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This weekend saw the grand opening of a new theatre in Ottawa: a VIP Cineplex at Lansdowne. As Matt reminded me, the city was pretty thirsty for a downtown movie theatre, two having closed pretty recently, and the only one remaining, the estimable Bytowne Cinema, is more art-house, prone to running foreign films, and while we absolutely love it (and are card-carrying members), it leaves you shit out of luck if you’re hoping to catch the new Will Ferrell comedy. 20150328_190537

This new theatre isn’t just any theatre. It’s a VIP theatre, which means for the privilege of double the price of admission, you can also buy beer for twice the normal price. Ostensibly we made our pilgrimage for the sake of reviewing the place but honestly, just between you and me, we were all pretty psyched about the alcohol option.

We reserved our seats the day before and had no problem doing so, even on a busy opening weekend. We wanted to exercise the menu option, and the website warned us that waiters only take orders until the previews start, so we weren’t sure how early to arrive. I also wasn’t sure how I would manage to eat food on a tray table smaller than those on an airplane, and in the dark, and while wearing a white blazer, but what the hell. Live it up!

So we went about an hour early to tour the new facilities. We parked in the underground parking, which can be validated by the theatre for up to 3 hours (it was $1.50 for an additional half hour) by the kid ripping tickets as you head in. The first floor has a frozen yogurt place that’s pretty impressive – serve yourself, with a huge buffet of topping options. There’s also a sizable arcade (that was reasonably busy) and a prize booth, and some single-stall washrooms that were still neat. One escalator ride up brings you to the “regular” theatres, where you can sit and watch a movie the way you always have, with a coke the size of your head, and an even bigger popcorn. Another elevator ride up, however, takes you to the luxurious second floor, where they have the VIP theatres (must be legal drinking age, 19+), as well as Ultra AVX theatres (immersive audio-visual experience with Dolby Atmos and massive screens) and D-Box theatres (seats that move and rumble with the sound and images of the movie – not recommended for the pregnant or elderly).

There’s a slick lounge on the second floor, with beers on tap, a wine list, and some decent cocktails. Matt recommends the rusty nail; I enjoyed the whiskey punch. There’s a pub-style menu as well, with selections including burgers, wraps, salads, and lots of finger foods. We tried a sampler platter – boneless wings, mac and cheese bites, deep-fried pickles, and tortilla chips. It wasn’t exactly generous for the $15 price tag, but all items were tasty, and I especially enjoyed the pickles.

Inside the theatre, an usher brings you to the seats you’ve reserved. Every seat is a comfortable recliner. Arm rests with movable tray tables divide you from strangers, but each couple of seats can be made more cozy by lifting up the arm rest between them. Menus are at every station, pretty much behind your head. They call the menus in here “specialty” which means not quite as many options as in the lounge, but yes, you can still order popcorn or candy in addition to the california burger that I enjoyed, and the jalapeno one that Sean gulped down (Matt found his shrimp cocktail to be good, but insubstantial). Shortly a waiter will be by to take your order, and will continue to circulate until the previews start to run (they ran them with the lights still up, so you can inspect your food upon arrival – I appreciated this). By the time the movie begins, you’re munching away, and I have to say, it wasn’t any noisier than any other theatre. The food is delivered in little cardboard baskets but the alcoholic beverages are in real glasses, garnished and everything! The waiters all have portable debit machines so you can pay in your seat (and tip – a new experience for theatre goers).

The rows are spaced quite generously apart, with oodles of leg room even for Sean, who is 6’6 and used to much more cramped quarters. The waiters slide easily down the aisles with food, but once the movie’s on, they retreat, which is good because you don’t want a lot of distraction, but bad because I could have used 2-3 more drinks. Lesson learned: order a couple up front, enough to last you the film. But do remember that bladders are quite vulnerable to beer!

The chairs are the comfiest you’ll find in a movie theatre, and you’ll want to play with the button while the light’s still on, because these chairs recline. In fact, if you sit in the first row, you have premium foot rests and you can go all the way back – a trade-off, I suppose, because sitting that close to the screen, you’d pretty much need to.

My one criticism was that for a truly VIP experience, I would have appreciated a coat rack of some sort. Don’t put saucy wings on your menu and expect that to go well (they do, I noticed, provide wet naps with every order). So Matt helpfully pointed out that in fact they’re missing TWO things: the coat rack, and a suggestion box.

All in all, we agreed that we’d had a great experience and that for us, it was worth the double ticket price. There was tonnes of staff around (keeping in mind it was opening weekend, so likely to be overstaffed). We didn’t wait long for anything, and Matt commented that he’d hardly been so satisfied with service. I liked having better options for snacking, and I’ve never been so comfortable. Sean loved the leg room. The personal space is also a bonus. We’d all willingly pay for it again, and agree that this will change the way we watch movies. But with the high ticket prices, it won’t be for everyone. And if you don’t have my back problems, you might not be as tempted by the recliners, and if you’re a traditional popcorn kind of guy, then the calamari may not appeal. And that’s okay, because you can still enjoy a movie at this theatre either way.