Magic Mike XXL

(You don’t have to watch this video, you should just hit play and let this be the soundtrack for the post)

I saw the first Magic Mike accidentally-on purpose and barely lived to tell the tale. I’d never meant to see the movie. Not my thing, and aside from a mild curiosity about Mr. McConaughey’s involvement, I could have lived a happy life never having seen it. But then one (Canadian) Thanksgiving we were drivi first ng home from Boston having just watched the Patriots slaughter the Broncos and stayed the night in a hotel (motel? Holiday Inn?) with very limited options. We ordered a not very good pizza and settled in to watch a not very good movie.

I’m just not titillated by male strippers. I’m not often titillated by the male body, period. I enjoy my husband’s body a great deal and could drink him in all day long, but that’s different. It’s not fetishistic. I have never seen a man who looks good in a thong. Never. And last night in Magic Mike XXL I saw at least a dozen buff men dancing around in them, and nothing. Well, not true. Nothing would be an upgrade. I was turned off. It’s a turn-off. And when the thing that’s meant to be sexy ends up soliciting a laugh instead, you’ve pretty much killed the moment.

And there was A LOT of moment-killing in this movie. Because the truth is, I’m not really excited by male dancers either. I mean, I’m pretty sure that 98% of male dancers are gay, and about 99.9% of male strippers are gay, and somehow this movie assembles America’s only hetero male entertainers into one beefy troupe, sharing chest-waxingly, body oilingly super straight good times. Me? I prefer a man who can’t dance. Can’t, but will. A man who can dance will always arouse my suspicions.

And while we’re at it, I’m not really into the whole hard body phenomenon either. I get that I’m supposed to find it attractive, but I just don’t. That body makes me think this guy is going to take me to dinner, order a salad with dressing on the side, and then pick at it while he sniffs at my bleeding steak. And that he’ll spend three hours a day at the gym, leaving me to watch The Mindy Project alone. And that his eyes will seek out his own reflection instead of mine. And what use is a man who isn’t checking me out?

So yeah, Magic Mike isn’t exactly aimed at people like me. I think it’s marketed to housewives but appreciated by a certain 10% of men who shall remain nameless. But they’re definitely doing their best to draw a female audience; certainly the female fans in the movie are more robust than ever, covering a multitude of body shapes and colours and ages (and a sinfully wonderful though underused Andie McDowell), speaking directly to the audience it hopes to tap. And this sequel is a little les magicgif s self-conscious than the first. It doesn’t get in on the joke exactly, but it takes itself a little less seriously, or at least that’s how I’ve interpreted the lack of script or plot.

Sorry Channing Tatum and company (the boys who didn’t have speaking parts in the first film but who must step up to fill the holes left by Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer in the second), but you aren’t exactly known for your improv prowess. But we all know the scenes between dance numbers are just filler, and this isn’t really even trying to be a movie so much as a soft-core musical montage. But every time the music started up, I blushed and averted my eyes. Oh lord, I’d think, again? Yes, again. And again. And again. There’s more self-fondling, shirt-ripping, edible props, self-tanner, and earnest eyebrow plucking than you can shake a stick at. Tatum’s convinced that you think he’s handsome in his backwards cap, and it becomes ubiquitous. There are so many gyrations with penis stand-ins that I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone for hours after leaving the theatre. I’m not a prude, I just have a low tolerance for people embarrassing themselves. I’m not sure if I’ve just seen the gayest straight movie or the straightest gay one, and it doesn’t really matter. This is just not a sausage party I care to be invited to.

Movies Based on Classic Literature (No Poems, No Plays)

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Thursday Movie Picks seemed tough this week at first. How many adaptations of really great books come close to doing their source material justice? I’m just proud of myself that I was able to come up with 3 without any Jane Austen.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)– Probably my all-time favourite adaptation of a novel, director John Ford is just the right amount of faithful to Steinbeck’s classic. Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson was smart enough to know when best to let scenes play out nearly word for word as it did in the novel just as well as he knew when to let the movie when changes were needed. In 10 Movie Moments That Took My Breath Away, I listed Ma Joad’s burning of the old family photos as one of my all-time favourite scenes but now wish I had used the penny candy scene. There are so many perfect scenes in one of my favourite movies based on one of my favourite books.

Apocalypse Now (1979)– Francis Ford Coppola put his career and sanity on the linein his re-imagining of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness set during the Vietnam War. With all the script and cast changes that plagued the production, it’s a Hollywood miracle that Apocalypse Now is even watchable, let alone an American classic. Even the Marlon Brando part works for me.

Clueless (1995)– It’s easy to forget that Clueless is a modern adaptation of… damn. Okay, I guess I couldn’t completely escape Jane Austen. It’s supposed to be an adaptation of Emma, the only book of my three picks that I have not read, so I’m not sure how faithful it is. I’m guessing not very. But it is hilarious, quotable, and one of the few teen comedies I can think of that encourages us to learn a new word every day. It also features a young Paul Rudd (who has barely changed), an adorable Brittany Murphy, and a scene-stealing performance by Dan Hedaya.

I Missed Him Again?!?!: Annie Hall and Why Jeff Goldblum is my Polkaroo

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According to IMDB and the closing credits of Annie Hall, Jeff Goldblum appears in the film’s LA party scene and I always forget to watch out for him. Watching the credits about twenty minutes later, I always throw up my hands in frustration thinking “I missed him again?!?!”

Annie Hall has a lot of moments like that. It’s another movie that I make a point of revisiting about once a year and, unlike Citizen Kane, I rarely look forward to it. I seem to keep remembering Woody Allen’s examination of a relationship that’s run its course as more depressing than it actually is. I remember Alvy’s anxieties, Annie’s depression, and how sad it is to watch these two inevitably grow apart. Sure, this is 1977 Woody Allen (long before his movies started becoming no fun at all) so there are lots of laughs throughout to make it all go down easier but surely I must see all those coming by now.

What I keep forgetting, besides that I’m supposed to be on Goldblum watch, is how many funny moments Allen works in. Some are funny because they’re true, others because they’re outrageous, but nearly every scene hsa something to laugh about. So many of them still catch me off guard after all these years. This time it was “You’re what my Grammy would call a real Jew” that really got me. I even somehow forgot all about Christopher Walken’s scene. There really are a lot of gifts for the audience in this movie and, watching it today, I realize what a positive note it ends on. I’m already looking forward to next year.

You won’t get away from me next time, Jeff Goldblum!

Happy Canada Day!

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It’s rainy and gray in the Nation’s Capital (a perfect movie day, some might say – Magic Mike, anyone?) and what better way to celebrate our fine country’s 148th year than with a great source of national pride – Blame Canada, as it appeared in the glorious 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

This song was actually nominated for an Oscar that year, controversial because how on earth would they perform let alone televise a song that contained the gleeful use of the word FUCK? So they called in Mr. Squeaky Clean himself, Robin Williams, who turned his back to the audience at the crucial moment and allowed a backing chorus to gasp in its place. They left in all the best insults against former first lady Margaret Trudeau, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, and of course that bitch Anne Murray too (who went on record as officially “not offended”).

Happy Canada Day, loves – may your barbecues and fireworks be unsoggy.

Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned

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I have a little ritual. Once a week, movie in, manicure kit out. Last week I wore 4-alarm blaze, this week I’m changing it up for Bahama Mama. It’s nice to know that in the crayon off-season, colour namers still have somewhere to go. A movie is a perfect length of time to do your nails, and wet nails are the perfect way to stop yourself from eating a whole bag of chips while watching the movie: win-win!

And truth be told, some movies require a modicum of distraction. I mean, this movie in particular is a little intense, and it’s nice to have somewhere else to focus when your senses start overloading. But for me, being a little deficient in attention, I tend to actually focus better if I’m doing 2 or 3 other things in addition to the movie watching, which is why I’m writing to you, while watching a movie, while painting my nails. At work.

I’m watching Calvary, which is a brilliant character study of a priest going through a rough patch. Father James (Brendan Gleeson, wonderfully) sits in confession one Sunday and a parishioner confesses that he was molested as a child, by a priest. His abuser is long dead; instead, he plans on making a good priest pay. That good priest, it would seem, is to be Father James. The date is set for a week hence – Father James will die for the sins of the church.

Father James goes about helping the people of his parish – a butcher (Chris O’Dowd) being cuckholded, his own daughter fresh from a suicide attempt, a cynical and atheistic doctor, and a young man in prison for killing and eating beautiful women, this last played by Gleeson’s son Domhnall (of Ex Machina, you may remember). Their scene together is pretty disturbing, and pretty great. Actually, the whole thing’s pretty great.

All the while, we’re wondering if it’s one of these parishioners (we’re introduced to a nice, round, biblical 12) who has threatened his life, so the interactions are tainted with underlying hostility and suspicion. We may not yet know who the would-be killer is, but Father James knows him. He knows his fate but keeps walking toward it. The movie’s cleverly put together, with plenty of hints in retrospect, sometimes uneven in tone as the humour and the violence circle around each other. The film deals with a difficult subject – sexual abuse in the church – in a circumspect manner; not so much head-on as from a spiritual angle looking into the black hole left by years of abuse and maybe worse still, its cover up.

I always like Gleeson but he’s top-notch in this. His weathered face fills the frame with truth and regret. Forgiveness, redemption, compassion, sacrifice: by the time you’ve done your penance, your nails will be dry and you’ll be free to sin again.

Movie Masturbation Scenes to Get You Going Every Time

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The truth is, most masturbation in movies isn’t sexy at all. Awkward for sure. Embarrassing at times. Shameful. Painful. Or just downright scary. And that’s why I’ve decided to celebrate them with this post!

The Squid and The Whale – Owen Kline plays the younger of two kids belonging to Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, who go through a rather stuffy and bitter divorce. Owen finds lots of ways to cope, but none creepier than when squid he uses a crinkled piece of porn to rub himself off against a book case in his school library, defiling some nearby books with his teenaged cum. You can’t help but see the symbolism as his parents are both bookish (a professor and a writer), a rejection of them and an assertion of himself. Oh Noah Baumach, there are some things we just can’t unsee you know.

American Beauty – There are many great components to this movie, and we’ve talked many of them to death, but I think that until now we’ve avoided the most telling and depressing scene of the movie. Our introduction to Kevin Spacey is when he’s alone in the shower, jerking himself off rather sadly and routinely, though describing these few moments as “the high point” of his day. Later we catch him masturbating yet again, fantasizing about his daughter’s teenage girlfriend, and unashamedly waking his wife in the process. They fight, of course, and the act feels really hostile, contemptuous of her, but at least he’s not hiding in the shower anymore. Spacey says “It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself.”

Bad Lieutenant – There are many reasons why I’ll never really recover from watching this movie, but Harvey Keitel’s masturbation scene is still ranked really high on that list. A corrupt cop pulls over two teenage girls who are using their father’s car without his permission. Keitel forces one of the girls to strip while the other must simulate fellation while he masturbates. There is nothing arousing or hot about this scene. He’s not getting off on the girls, he’s getting off on his power. It’s repulsive, and on some level, even he knows it.

Little Children – In a nice side story to the prominent Kate Winslet one, a pedophile’s just been released from prison and his mama thinks he can turn his life around if only he could just meet the right woman. Cue the blind date, which seems to be going surprisingly well until he wordlessly pulls the car over at the end of the night, and starts masturbating while she’s trapped in the front seat with him…and they just happen to be parked right outside a playground. No word yet on date number two.

So what’s your favourite movie masturbation?

Odds & Ends – Netflix Edition

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The Longest Week – Jason Bateman plays a dependently wealthy man-child chronically working on (or at least thinking about) the great American novel until one day his parents cut him off, he gets evicted, and he shows up on his best friend’s (Billy Crudup) doorstep, begging for a place to stay. And this might have gone well if he didn’t immediately start crushing on and sleeping with his best friend’s girl (Olivia Wilde). Likeable leads. Aiming for quirky but falls into been there, done that.

Touchy Feely – Rosemarie DeWitt plays a massage therapist suddenly stricken with a complete aversion to touch. She can’t do her job anymore but that’s the least of it: all of her personal relationships start to suffer too. Luckily her brother the dentist starts to do really well healing his patients thanks to his daughter (Ellen Page) breeching protocol. The uptight family does some X and wander around and just like this movie, they never really go anywhere.

Life of Crime – Tim Robbins is a rich old white guy with a young, hot wife (Jennifer Aniston) but leaves his wife for a younger, hott life-of-crime er mistress (Isla Fisher). Too bad some dumb criminals pick this exact moment to kidnap the wife and demand a hefty ransom. Sure he has the money, but now that he thinks about, he wouldn’t mind if his wife just disappeared – in fact, it would save him on alimony. Not the best Elmore Leonard adaptation but solid, and sometimes charming.

The Giant Mechanical Man – Jenna Fischer plays a woman who’s a little too old to still not know what she wants to be when she grows up. Temping isn’t paying what it used to and she has to move in with her uppity little sister. She feels comforted by the giant mechanical man (Chris Messina) when she spots him around the city – one of those street performers who dress up like a metal statue and never move. Turns out the mechanical man is going through a transition period himself. His girlfriend’s left him because he spends his day wearing silver paint rather than being gainfully employed. The two finally meet when they both take jobs far below their stations, and bond over their common loserdom. It’s quietly sweet, but it’s hard not to think that Pam belongs with Jim, and Danny with Mindy. Call me crazy.

Citizen Kane: The Citizen Kane of American Cinema?

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First of all, I like Citizen Kane. It is on my short list of movies that I try to make a point of checking in with at least once a year. “Keeping your film nerd cred up to date,” my friend called it yesterday. Because nothing keeps you current like rewatching a 1941 movie.

Of course, I’m not the only one who watches it regularly. Nearly 75 years later, it is still typically referred to as the prototypical example of a great movie. For example, if you wanted to recommend the latest Oscar bait with qualifications, you might say “It’s not Citizen Kane but I liked it”. I do it too. Back in April, I referred to The Dark Knight as the Citizen Kane of superhero movies. In May, I quoted Entertainment Weekly in calling The Room “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”. But is Citizen Kane really the Citizen Kane of American movies?

It’s not my favourite movie. How can it be? My own grandfather was just a kid when it was originally released. By the time I finally watched Citizen Kane for the first time when I was maybe 17, its visual style and narrative structure had been inspiring writers and directors for nearly 60 years, making it easy to take so much of what made the film unique in 1941 for granted. As a 21st century viewer, I’m far more likely to marvel at the style of, say, American Beauty even though that film would not have been possible without Citizen Kane.

So why do I find my annual visits with this movie so essential to my film nerd cred? First of all, I admire the non-linear structure. Even today, where movies like Pulp Fiction and Memento have taken this idea even further, Citizen Kane is still impressive. It remains one of my favourite character studies of a ruthless protagonist. And Rosebud! How often do we sit through an entire movie waiting for an answer that actually satisfies and feels right?

I can’t pretend to feel that Citizen Kane is necessarily the greatest movie ever made but it has a lot to offer even to modern film nerds. It rewards multiple viewings and I’m always looking forward to my next one.

The Drop

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‘Cousin Marv’s’ is a Brooklyn bar run and formerly owned by Marv (James Gandolfini) and his cousin Bob (Tom Hardy). The Chechen mob has taken it over for their own devices, often using it as a drop – the designated spot where the city’s dirty money will be stored over the course of an evening.

One night the bar is robbed, and now we’re in trouble. Well, they’re in trouble and we’re vicariously in trouble. In a way, this is just another mob movie. Not nice people doing not nice things to other not so nice people. No heroes, no sympathy. But this one kind of rose above for me because Gandolfini and Hardy are both so damned good in it. It’s slow, moody, dark. And to be honest, they probably had me at ‘Tom Hardy with a puppy.”

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

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Apparently I’m a bit of a masochist this week – after watching a bunch of foreign movies, I’m watching a few more, including the last Oscar-nominated animated movie on my list, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, because why watch any old cartoon when you can watch one that’ll make you work hard reading subtitles?

And if you’re thinking that a subtitled cartoon doesn’t sound like much fun, then let tell you about the animation, which is very minimalistic and quite drab, and the story, which is goddamned depressing.

Okay, the truth is, it is quite beautiful. Yes, the lines are simple, hand-drawn, but it is quite lovely. And the colours might more optimistic be described as soft, like water colours. It certainly makes for a stark contrast from the Pixar fare we’re more accustomed to, which doesn’t make it bad, just different – and for me, less engrossing.

The tale is this: an old man, a bamboo cutter, finds a tiny person in a bamboo shoot. He brings her home and when he and his wife decide to raise her, she changes into a baby, but one who grows rapidly. The old man is convinced she is a beautiful princess, so when he finds gold in the bamboo patch, he moves his family into the city and buys her a title, along with everything else that money can buy. The princess is unhappy. She preferred her simple life back home. She’s saddled with a tutor who teaches strict lessons in civility and the etiquette of nobility, while the princess just wants to laugh and play.

The most interesting scene for me was when the princess decides to run away from a fancy party where she’s meeting suitors – the animation goes to black and white, with a shot of red that really speaks to her fleeing. It was so much stronger a visual than anything that had come before it that it was arresting, and kind of woke me up out of the stupor that I’d been in.

I was watching, as I said, the original Japanese version, with English subtitles, but there does exist a dubbed version James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lucy Liu and Darren Criss provide the voice work, and I wondered if maybe that would make it more approachable and help me to get lost in the story. I normally find dubbing to be unforgivably distracting but about half way through the movie I switched over and, well, yeah – lots of white voices behind traditional Japanese characters? Not working. Either way, it felt very abrupt and cold. And if there were times I felt I was picking up on some social satire despite the fact that this is a retelling of a Japanese piece of folklore many centuries old, I still failed to connect with a message in any meaningful way. The translation is so stiff and awkward it earned chuckles from me it never asked for.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are some FRESH tomatoes, but me? I thought it was ketchup. Generic ketchup. Sundried, generic ketchup. I promised myself on a previous review not to feel guilty anymore when I disagree with the critics’ consensus. Where others saw beauty, I felt mostly boredom. And with the exception of a beautiful scene under cherry blossoms, I never felt done right by this movie.