Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

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Canada legalized weed last month so I bet Netflix has noted a marked increase in the streaming of dumb comedies like this one.

Dumb doesn’t begin to cover it though. Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle came out in 2004. Its sequel came out 4 years later but only about 5 minutes later in movie time. Harold and Kumar have just had the craziest, drug-fueled adventure of their lives, followed by the greasy binging of dozens of weird little burgers that apparently exist in real life. Then Harold triumphantly kisses the girl next door and the sequel finds him MV5BMjE2MzU4NzM4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzQ1NDk2MQ@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1453,1000_AL_ gloating over his moment of elevator glory when Kumar reminds him that in the previous movie, they’d booked plane tickets to Amsterdam so they could creepily follow the girl next door overseas for some intercontinental stalking.

It’s on this plane ride where things go awry. Incorrigible stoners, one of them can’t help but smoke up in the bathroom, which leads to a kerfuffle with the air marshals, which results in our illustrious heroes getting summarily locked up in Guantanamo, subject to a whole buffet of cockmeat sandwiches. The title sort of gives away the fact that they escape, only so they can get into yet more shenanigans.

If there was anything funny about the first movie, and I find myself doubting it now, there is nothing redeeming about the second. If only the jokes were just juvenile, but these babies teeter and flail way over the edge of downright racist. I’m exhausted by unfunniness. It’s very draining to watch a comedy and not laugh once. Like, you just strain so hard, trying to do your part, hold up your end of the joke equation, ready to laugh at the merest flicker, merest hint that something funny this way comes. I think my blood pressure got dangerously low there for a while. But don’t worry, I’ve recovered, and I put Harold and Kumar back on the dusty Netflix shelf. I hid it behind Shakespeare In Love, so I’m pretty sure no one’s going to find it for a long, long time.

All Hallow’s Eve

Chloe

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Catherine is a gynecologist, successful and assured. Her home is beautiful, her teenage son accomplished, and her husband, David, a respected professor. But there’s a crack in all this perfection, one that gets exposed when David (Liam Neeson) misses his flight home, and thus, the perfectly executed surprise party thrown by his wife (Julianne Moore). Catherine quickly suspects there’s more at fault than just bad timing – can her husband, an incorrigible flirt, be having an affair?

Paranoid, Catherine hires Chloe, an escort, to get to the truth. She asks Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to approach her husband and see what happens. Already we’re all groaning. Such a bad idea, a terrifically bad idea. The minute you start deriving tests of loyalty or MV5BYmFhZGQ2ODYtNTg0NC00NzQwLWE0MjYtMTY1OThlZWMwNThlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDY2NzgwOTE@._V1_ faithfulness for your loved one, you have a problem, and – spoiler alert! – it’s you. Although, guess what? The minute you start hiring prostitutes, you have a problem. Now Julianne Moore has two problems, and they’re multiplying like rabbits at a problem convention.

Atom Egoyan made Chloe in 2009: it was a good year to be Amanda Seyfriend, a bad year to be Liam Neeson (his real-life wife died during while this was being filmed – he took 2 days off), and a confusing time to be Julianne Moore, a woman at the top of her game, apparently reduced to making Fatal Attraction knock-offs. Chloe is supposed to be a psycho-sexual thriller, but there are at least 2 problems with that. One: it ain’t sexy. I mean, Moore’s character tries her very best to convince you that it is. She has Chloe describe her encounters in every lascivious detail, then rushes home, nipples taut, to masturbate in the shower. But the chemistry, which must have dripped off the page for these actors to consider it, is not evident on screen. Two: neither are the thrills. We see Egoyan’s twists from a mile away, because they’ve had their blinker on the whole time. Not only do I know where we’re going, I know exactly how we’ll get there. So yeah, both the sexual and the thriller in the psycho-sexual thriller are lacking. But at least there’s the psycho! Oh man, the manipulation is firing on all cylinders. It’s so forthright you might not even find it believable, or remotely plausible. I’m so glad that a movie veering off into left field doesn’t spoil its watchability for me AT ALL.

Moore and Neeson are very good actors, and they’re very good in this. Sometimes you even forget you’re watching a piece of shit. But not for long!

Lost In Translation

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Two Americans in Tokyo. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is there for work – her husband’s work. Neglected, she spends er time gazing down upon the city from the cloisters of her hotel room. Elsewhere in said hotel, Bob (Bill Murray) is suffering the indignity of doing foreign commercials ow that his movie work has dried up. It’s a nice pay day but a blow to his ego. His wife nags him long-distance, via middle of the night faxes.

When Charlotte and Bob meet, they are immediate kindred spirits. Lonely and American, they form a bond that mimics intimacy. In their glowy little bubble, they experience the quirks and sights of Japan; its foreign-ness feels less daunting and more adventurous when they’re together. When they’re apart, it emphasizes their aloneness. But they always revert to the comfort and familiarity of their luxurious but non-descript hotel. In he hotel, they could be anywhere. They develop such a strong sense of we vs. them that even other Americans seem wrong to them, are laughable. Of course, their friendship is a little dangerous: it won’t be good for either of their marriages.

Bill Murray is good – Oscar-nominated good. His improvisations are so good you can literally see extras cracking up in some scenes. Scarlett Johansson was only 17 when this was filmed, so she’s more of a blank slate, having not yet picked up a lot of the acting crutches and mannerisms upon which she’s come to rely. Actually, in 2018, Lost in Translation is 15 years old, which is almost as old as she was when she made it. That’s something to think about, isn’t it?

Writer-director Sofia Coppola probably made her biggest splash with this film. It pulses with life because she threw so much of herself, her own insecurities and worries, into it. Both of these characters travel to an alien land to truly realize how isolated they’ve become. They are disconnected from their spouses, and communication back home is sporadic and brief. There’s a longing for connection that’s an evident, live thread woven into the tapestry of this film. So many small details add up as proof of their passionate friendship, which is far more effective in this context than a sexual relationship would have been.

The film’s sparsity of dialogue speaks volumes to language not being the greatest barrier between people. Communication happens on all levels, and Coppola signals this in her final scene, with that elusive yet beautiful ending in which Murray whispers something unintelligible to Johansson, and they share a tender kiss. What did he say to her? We may never know the words, but ew unddertand the meaning.

The Social Network

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Mark Zuckerberg is a big, fat, shit-eating dick and Jesse Eisenberg is the man who was born to play him (if only he had retired right afterward – he is seriously the most one-note motherfucker in Hollywood today).

Once upon a time, a pretty girl (Rooney Mara) broke a nerd’s heart. Mark (Eisenberg) is an asshole and deserves it, but he’s also a pretentious prick at Harvard so in his privileged, entitled little head, he thinks this gives him the right to declare war on women everywhere. He has an all-night coding sessions with his buddies (has anyone EVER written on a window with marker in real life, I wonder?) and by the next morning MV5BMjI2NzQ4MDMyM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDA1NTUxNA@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,642,1000_AL_ he’s got the most misogynistic piece of programming he can muster, and he shares it like wildfire. It attracts the attention of a couple of conceited, ambitious BMOCs – The Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer), who have an idea of their own for an exclusive social network.

Famously, Mark Zuckerberg accepted the job offer but then strung them along, stealing the idea for himself. He talked his friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) into bankrolling their fledgling company but then pushed him out just as Facebook hit the big time, in favour of the snake Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). And he didn’t just push him out, he FUCKED HIM OVER. Royally. Shares that were nearly invaluable the day before were rendered almost worthless overnight. And Eduardo was his friend! His only friend, really. This movie is about the ensuing lawsuits but mostly it’s about a young guy with a brilliant mind and a cold heart who pursued his dream single-mindedly until he was a billionaire with no friends.

Mark Zuckerberg, as he is portrayed in the film, seems to be a young man on the verge of becoming on of those woman-hating incels before he finds salvation in programming and intellectual property theft. In real life, he may not be quite so villainous, but the truth would have made a far more boring movie, and with David Fincher in the director’s seat and Aaron Sorkin writing furiously, The Social Network was never going to be hindered by the truth.

Ms. Matched

4 Replies

The opening credits weren’t quite finished but I already felt offended and degraded as a woman. Is that a record?

Netflix has bought all these (I’m assuming) made-for-TV monstrosities and I keep wondering who the hell they’re meant for, but now I know. Epiphany! The women who watch Hallmark movies are the same women who vote for Trump. In fact, Hallmark may even be complicit in brainwashing these women into buying into the patriarchy, and by extension Trump, even though it goes against their own interests!

Hallmark teaches us that a woman’s greatest achievement is landing (and keeping!) a husband, even if he’s a workaholic and a bully. It doesn’t matter as long as he can support a family; a woman’s second greatest achievement is pushing lookalikes out her vagina and immediately indoctrinating them in her ignorant, meatloaf-eating ways. Hallmark essentials: a courtship that looks a lot like hateship, because the couple is incompatible; a baking montage (a woman’s place is in the kitchen, flour on nose not optional!); a stark-white cast at all times. And if you end on the big, floofy wedding, there’s no responsibility to show the inevitable divorce in roughly 7 months time.

In this particular movie, and yes, it’s hard to tell them apart: Libby is a wedding planner hoping (urgently needing) to drum up business at a bridal convention. Ben is a financial planner and author; he’s just written a book encouraging affianced couples to dump the big event and think small. This is very bad for business – Libby’s included, but Ben makes enemies out of all the vendors at the wedding event.

Anyway, Ben is so gorgeous (this is Libby’s assessment, not mine) that she keeps pushing down those pesky feelings about being undermined and disrespected in order to be swept off her feet by the sheer romance of…hot dogs? But then she’s continuously brought back to Earth with reminders of things like bills, eviction, and penury. Will these two crazy kids ever compromise?

Nope! But they get married anyway. On a boat. The end.

What Dreams May Come

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What a fucking movie, eh?

Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) dies in a car accident and wakes up in an afterlife of his own making. The world he constructs is based on his wife Annie’s painting; everything is made of gobs of paint that squish beneath his feet as he walks and explode with colour when he grabs them. An old friend, Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.), appears as his spirit guide, though he looks much younger than Chris remembers. It takes a little getting used to, but it starts to feel like home, especially when he reconnects with his children, who died years previously. The only thing missing is his precious Annie, but Chris finds out that the two will never be reunited. Annie committed suicide – she’s in hell, and there’s no coming back from hell. But Chris tries anyway, because heaven isn’t heaven without her.

What Dreams May Come is preachy even if you believe in this stuff, and if you don’t, well, it’s a hard message to swallow. We never get a glimpse of God yet we’re left wondering what kind of deity would kill all of Annie’s loved ones – her husband and both her children, in two separate accidents – and then judge her when the pain is just too much. It seems monstrous and unfair and is even harder to watch in light of Robin Williams’ own suicide.

PIX-1-WhatDreamsMayCome_1 But visually – well, even now, 20 years on, it’s unlike anything you’ve seen. While the heaven-scapes are vivid and sometimes downright magical, it may be the visions of hell that haunt you. Robin Williams tiptoes through a carpet of faces – anguished people buried up to their necks, barely more than the holes necessary for breathing left exposed. The faces are pale and full of yearning. It’s awful – and it’s really awful when there’s nowhere for him to walk but over them.

Colours can be quite dominant – a blue tree a sad link to Chris’s past, the bright yellow of an eternal sunset, the red flames of hell. What Dreams May Come was one of only a few films shot on Fuji Velvia (RVM) film stock. Velvia is a type of film used most frequently for still photography of landscapes and other subjects because of its very high color saturation. It is only rarely employed for cinematography, usually when special effects are required – and boy were they! But these shocks of colour always mean something, whether in the afterlife, of simply through a flashback.

The “painted world” sequence is glorious. By building upon computer software developed by technical advisor Pierre Jasmin, a team devised a method of applying paint strokes to moving images captured on film so portions of the movie look like a three-dimensional moving painting. There are brush strokes that looks like you could reach out and touch them – and your hands would come away wet if you did. Live-action scenes were turned into living paintings with the optical flow technique, by which you track every single pixel in a moving image – in the end, it amounts to a layering of perhaps 10 different depths onto one image. See below for a comparison, before and after the effect is added to a scene:

This film was both breath-taking and ground-breaking; many of the programs used had to be written specifically for the film. One of the most moving images is of a particular tree that almost serves as a connection between the soul mates, though one is living and the other dead.

Rendered using L-System software, a program for defining the algorithmic development of plants and branching structures, the tree was designed with thousands of branches and 500,000 leaves, all of which are blown off and scattered in the wind. It is spectacular and heart breaking to see.

What Dreams May Come won the 1999 Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

The Kids Are All Right

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First of all, of course the kids are fine. Kids are resilient, not that having two loving parents has ever been a problem in the history of the world.

But it’s the parents we should be keeping our eyes on. Nic and Jules have been together a long, long time – since Nic (Annette Bening) treated Jules (Julianne Moore) in the ER for a sex injury. And that’s how their coupling goes: Nic is the serious, perhaps even controlling one, while Jules is free-spirited. In their years together, each has given birth using the same unknown sperm donor. Nic gave birth to Joni (Mia Wasikowska), who really takes after her (biological) mother, while Jules gave birth to Laser (Josh Hutcherson), who mostly takes after his. With Joni about to depart for college, Laser talks her in to searching for their biological father, the sperm donor. Enter Paul (Mark Ruffalo).

Now, Nic’s and Jules’ relationship has been stale for a while. Jules is in the middle of MV5BMTY2MDU4Mzg3N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjQyNDk1Mw@@._V1_SX1759_CR0,0,1759,999_AL_ starting up yet another business (landscape design) and Nic is barely tolerating the effort. But Paul’s arrival is completely destabilizing. Not only is their daughter moving away, they also feel like they’re losing their kids to a new, cool parent who has never had to discipline them or hurt their feelings. When Jules goes to work for Paul, it’s kind of the last straw. No wait: when Jules sleeps with Paul, that’s the very last straw.

Like any marriage,theirs has highs and lows. There are no histrionics; Nic is too staid, too reserved, too in control of her own emotions. Everyone is very, very sorry. So this is not about the drama, this is about who they are now, as people, as a couple. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are such excellent actors that they can convey a 20 year marriage with an ease between the two of them that feels real and also effortless. Bening gets to show real range here, though her character plays things a little close to the chest. Moore is luminous as Jules and seems to really enjoy the freedom of playing someone so open and available.

Director Lisa Cholodenko is excellent at showing you a slice of life and making you feel like you’ve had the whole cake. An exceptional ensemble comes together to give this film emotional resonance. The couple is going through their own unique problems but their struggles of love, commitment, friendship, and family – those are universal. And in The Kids Are All Right, they’re memorably, endearingly executed.

A Witches’ Ball

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Little Beatrix, age 12, goes to witching school. It’s like whatever the Harry Potter school is called, only without proper special effects, so the magic is mostly just stuff they can get away with rolling backward. It would be embarrassing if anyone in the film had a sense of shame.

Beatrix is in fact about to “become full witch” which does not involve a witch period as I first suspected. It means she passed her final exam (she made a dead rose come back to life) and will join her fellow new witches at a graduation ceremony just for MV5BZWI0OTczMTItNzFlNy00MjIwLThjYzMtNTIxODQ2ZDQ0N2Q3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjI4Mzg5OTg@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1497,1000_AL_ them – the 642nd annual Witches’ Ball, on Halloween night. She’ll graduate alongside her mother, who, being a non-witch, has just converted, and the bitchy witch who’s been bullying her at school for not being “pure blooded” enough or some such bullshit. Anyway, as class valedictorian, Beatrix receives her crystal ball ahead of the ceremony, for inspiration. And she immediately breaks it. Well, bitchy, witchy Jasmine does, but it amounts to Beatrix being in big trouble – possibly barred from witchery forever. So she enlists the help of a talking pumpkin (voiced by Weird Al) and her enchanted pet rat (voiced by NSYNC’s Joey Fatone) to solve an excessively lame set of riddles that will somehow mend her broken ball.

Even for a knock-off, made for TV (I’m assuming) kids’ witch movie, A Witches’ Ball is excessively mediocre. There are no production values to speak of, so instead I’ll just list some incontrovertible facts. The quest feels like an episode of Dora The Explorer. There’s a talent show whose sole existence is to provide an excuse for a wand-themed rap. The magic comes and goes at someone else’s convenience (definitely not mine). There’s a pop song that sounds dangerously like copyright infringement (Girls Just Wanna Rip Off Other Girls?). There’s an inexplicable adult-wide blind-spot where no grownup can identify bullying when it happens right in front of them. And perhaps most egregiously, there’s a lisp. I don’t know when we decided as a culture that no cute kid was complete without an inability to pronounce the letter R. I find it particularly offensive when a kid is forced to pretend to have a lisp. This kid is 12 years old – that’s not a cute lisp, that’s a speech impediment. Fake lisps are unforgivable.

Anyway, I frankly cannot fathom how you’re managing to celebrate Halloween without this movie in your life. Obviously.

Bend It Like Beckham

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Jesminder, aka Jess, a good Indian-English girl and Sikh, defies her traditional parents and secretly joins a girls’ football team. There she meets her new BFF Jules and together they chase their common dream of moving to America to lay professional soccer.

Jules’ (Keira Knightley) mother is not too pleased to have a tomboy for a daughter, and she’s horrified to think Jules may be one of those lesbians (“All I’m saying is, there’s a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one without a fella!”) but it’s Jess who suffers the most from her parents’ expectations. She gets cultural, religious, and filial guilt and shame heaped upon her – her soccer skills even threaten her sister’s marriage, somehow.

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In 2002, this was a fun movie about female friendship and gender stereotypes. ‘A 2018 re-watch is not particularly kind to it. It feels dated. Very dated. Which is great, obviously. Even as we burn in our collective dumpster fire, at least we can look back to the cultural touchstone that is Bend It Like Beckham with just a touch of smugness that we no longer say things like “Mother, just because I wear trakkies and play sport does not make me a lesbian!” and (white man to Indian woman who was just called a Paki) “Jess, I’m Irish. Of course I understand what that feels like.” If you wondered what those sounds were the other night, that was me, winning the world cup in groaning.

I still don’t know what it means to “bend it” like Beckham but I’ve been imagining that he has a crooked penis. This was the movie that introduced American audiences to Keira Knightley, and I didn’t find her completely awful yet. Parminda Nagra was the real stand-out, as was the man who played her father, Anupam Kher, an illustrious and dashing Indian film star. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is even creepier than I remembered. Like, unmanageably, unforgivably, career-killingly (you’d think) creepy. I don’t want him in the same movie as anyone’s juicy, juicy mangoes. He’s nearly as terrible as the 00’s club wear these ladies are sporting. It’s like a fashion show of my biggest regrets.

Laters!