A Haunted House (2013)

My wife brought this home last night, so I watched it with her. I've never been a fan of the "Scary Movie" series, so I wasn't expecting to like this at all. I ended up laughing heartily throughout.

This is a spoof of those "Paranormal Activity" movies, so the plot lines are similar. If you've seen those movies, you know what's happening in this one. Marlon Wayans isn't one of my favorite actors, to say the least. I've really only seen him in "Requiem for a Dream" (which he was decent in) and these Wayans Brothers comedies. He's always playing "the stoner", but outside of Cheech & Chong, drug "comedies" don't work for me. I don't smoke pot, so I can't relate to the humor, but if real life "stoners" are even half as stupid as they're portrayed in movies, I've done well avoiding their company throughout my life. There was one such scene in this movie and it did sort of kill things for me, like they had to insert it "just because", but I laughed often before then and occasionally after. Even Cedric "The Entertainer" managed to get a couple of laughs out of me, and I don't think that's ever happened before. Some of the side players were funnier than the lead roles, but the casting was nice overall. Pacing was nice, too.

Yes, this was stupid, but it made me laugh, so it succeeds as a comedy. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but other than a few of eye-roll inducing scenes, I enjoyed this. I have no problem giving this my recommendation if you're looking for a fun way to kill 90 minutes. This wasn't "good", but it was funny. Much funnier than the trailer shows. If you're easily offended by racist comments, black and gay stereotypes, this one isn't for you.

3/5

Slade in Flame (1975)

"It's a rock 'n' roll thing. You wouldn't understand it."

In the 80s, my oldest brother won a copy of "Rouge's Gallery" from the local radio station in a call-in contest, but I had forgotten all about them. I couldn't even remember what they sounded like, really. A couple of years ago while in Arkansas visiting my grandmother I bought an AC/DC biography and in it they they listed Slade as one of their biggest influences. In fact, the absence of bands like Slade was the inspiration to form AC/DC. If you've seen the clip of "Can I Sit Next to You" with Dave Evans on vocals, the glam rock influence is strong. 


 
So I read this thinking "that can't be the same Slade, can it?". I downloaded their "Slayed?" album, loved it and eventually picked up a few of their CDs as they were recently reissued.

In an interview that accompanies this DVD, singer Noddy Holder claims their manager followed The Beatles very closely and tried to use their history as a blueprint for Slade's success. After a string of hit songs and best selling albums, it was time for them to make a movie, but the band didn't want to make a slapstick comedy. They knew that's what people were expecting from them, so instead they made a gritty film about the cut-throat music industry and the rise and fall of a band.

The good: I don't remember where I got this notion (probably from my friend, Scab), but I heard somewhere that this movie was terrible. Because of this, I assumed the music Slade provided for the soundtrack was terrible, too. Slade's songs on here are pretty good and there are a few "performances" (all lip-synched, of course) that were pretty enjoyable. Early on in the movie Noddy is performing in a band called The Undertakers singing from a coffin. He was supposed to pop out mid-song to dramatic effect, but a member in a rival band locked him in preventing this from happening. No doubt, this was inspiration for the pod scene on "This is Spinal Tap". Instead of roadies with hammers, The Undertakers' drummer frees him with a fireman's axe. That's where the similarities with Spinal Tap end, though. The rest of this, I assume, is supposed to be taken seriously.

The bad: Where in the fuck are the subtitles? The poor audio track paired with British accents and lack of subtitles made for a horrible viewing experience. Literally, I watched the entire movie figuring out what was going on by context. At least half of the audio was indistinguishable to my ears and it killed the experience for me. More than once I wanted to give up on it, but I stuck it out to the end so that I could write about it. Even without being able to make out most of the dialogue I could tell that as far as "gritty tales" go, this was pretty tame.

2/5

Up! (1976)

Raven De La Croix out on her morning jog.

Made towards the end of his career, "Up!" is the most over to top of the few Russ Meyer movies I've seen. It's also one of three movies co-written by film critic Roger Ebert. It's beautifully shot with lots of great scenery and mountains of exposed flesh.

I started writing a plot summary, but decided it was pointless. Look it up online if you want to, but I'm not wasting my time typing it all out. Plot isn't going to be a deciding factor in watching this. People don't watch Russ Meyer movies for their subtlety and unless you're a 13 year old boy, I can't imagine you're watching them for their masturbatory potential. It's too bad the adult film industry made his kind of films obsolete and eventually forced him out of the game. Meyer himself said he was repulsed by pornography and thought it was too "clinical". Instead, his films glorified the female body and pointed out just how ridiculous sexual acts are. Every single sex act in this film is exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Russ Meyer made fun, sexy films filled with gratuitous nudity, violence and improbable situations. Often the plot didn't make sense, but it didn't matter. Meyer is brilliant with his editing, and the juxtaposition of some of these scenes really works well for comedic value. The violence, too, is piled on in cartoonish levels driving home just how ridiculous this is. People with axes buried in their backs simply yank them out and keep going. It doesn't have to be realistic, this is escapism. I watched this with my wife and she lost interest just after the opening credits. If she wasn't already familiar with my tastes in film, I might have been embarrassed by subjecting her to this, but she just rolled her eyes and went back to her book. She isn't part of his target audience. These are movies for men - beer drinking movies. I like his stuff better when it's a little less absurd, but this was good fun. I'll spare my wife the experience in the future, though.

3/5 

(Normally I'd put a link to the trailer or a scene in this space, but there isn't anything I can link that wouldn't require some sort of content warning on the blog. Sorry, folks. If you search YouTube, you can find the entire film with Spanish language. Chances are you wont be able to follow the plot or figure out what's being said, but there's plenty of skin to see.)

Wanderlust (2012)

My wife is a Jennifer Aniston fan, I guess. We seem to always go to the theaters to see her movies when they're released and they're usually pretty good. I wouldn't consider myself to be a fan of Paul Rudd, exactly, but I've seen him in enough Apatow comedies to watch a movie based on his inclusion. After watching "In the Bedroom", we were in the mood for something lighter and chose this.

George and Linda are a young couple in New York who are in  over their heads. Barely able to make ends meet, they decide to buy a studio apartment. George loses his job the very next day and they sell it at a loss. New York defeated them, so they drive to Atlanta to live with his obnoxious, shithead brother, Rick. Exhausted from the drive, they stop at a bed and breakfast located on a hippie commune, the Elysium, and after a night of partying with the nut-jobs who live there, they continue on the road to his brother's house. Quickly, they find him to be an insufferable prick, so at George's suggestion, the two of them ditch their modern lifestyle and head back to the commune to live there full time. Linda is reluctant at first, but is sucked into the lifestyle and feels at home even after George has had enough and wants to leave.

As a teenager in the 90s there were a shockingly large group of my classmates who smoked dope, wore tie-dye, listened to the Dead and played hackey sac in the parking lot before and after school. The pot smoking I could understand, but neo-hippie culture still confuses the fuck out of me. I got to know these people because I played in a band and they routinely came to our shows. Some I still consider to be friends of mine. I'm well versed in the lifestyle this movie pokes fun at and, trust me, there's plenty to ridicule. This movie was mostly stupid, but there were several genuinely funny moments throughout. More often, though, the scenes either weren't funny at all or dragged on for way too long. Let's face it - Aniston is slumming it in this movie, but did a decent job with what she had to work with and Rudd does a fairly good job as the straight man to the insanity that surrounds him (and there's plenty of it). There was a nice cameo by one of my favorite actors, too.

It certainly wasn't terrible or a complete waste of time, but calling this "good" would be stretching it. If you think Adam Sandler's movies are a laugh riot, this would be up your alley as it's similarly crude. I prefer my comedies to be a little less dumb, though.

Right in the middle, 3/5. 

In the Bedroom (2001)

Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) is a college student involved in a summer fling with Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei), an older woman who's separated from her husband, but not divorced. Her abusive husband, Richard, wants back in Natalie's life and isn't happy with Frank's presence, so he takes matters in his own hands and removes Frank as an obstacle. Something terrible happens and what follows is devastatingly brutal 90 minutes of Frank's parents dealing with it.

There really isn't much plot to speak of in this film, which is fine because they made up for it in character development. Where most movies are about what happens in what order, this one is about how people deal with what is thrown at them. Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson's flawless performances as an older couple dealing with grief and their resulting mental deterioration more than makes up for any lack of action. Matt Fowler, once a jovial man with a private medical practice who everyone knew and liked, rapidly shrinks into himself. People now approach him with pity, eager to help, and he resents them for it. Ruth, who has always been cold, grows even more cold and angry. While Matt is wrought with sadness, Ruth is filled with hatred and blame. The two of them barely speak to each other and the tension weighs heavily throughout.

Todd Field's directorial debut succeeds on all levels. It's well acted, perfectly paced, never predictable and gripping until the very end. There isn't a scene wasted in it's 138 minute running time. I enjoyed his second film (Little Children) a little more, but find no reason to give this less than a perfect rating. Already I want to watch it again.

5/5

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008)

Roman Polanski on his way to court.

This better than average documentary comes from HBO. Years ago I watched one of those "E! True Hollywood Stories" about the Roman Polanski rape case, so a lot of this was familiar territory for me, but this film focuses less on the incident itself and more on the details of his trial and how it was mishandled. Boy, was it ever mishandled...

Again, I don't like to go into too much detail when writing about documentaries. Movies exist for entertainment and it's acceptable to reveal a certain number of plot elements to pique peoples' interest. Documentaries exist both to entertain and to inform, and giving away too many details can cause people to lose interest in seeing it, I think. I'll try to practice moderation and leave plenty of meat on the bone for those that decide to watch this.

Roman had a rough childhood. His mother was gassed by the Nazis and his father was thrown into a concentration camp while he was still very young. Somehow he overcame this, followed his dream and became a success making movies. After proving himself in his native Poland, he moved to London and became a staple of the nightlife. Charismatic and likable despite his short stature and strange looks, Roman did alright for himself with the ladies. After meeting Sharon Tate on the set of one of his films, they fell in love, married and moved to Hollywood because that's where the money was. Soon after, Sharon was brutally murdered at the hands of the Manson family. Polanski fell into a depression and unapologetically dealt with it by plowing through scores of young women. For him, chasing jailbait was a better option than drowning his sorrows in booze. On a photo shoot for Vogue, Polanski drugged and photographed a topless 13 year old girl in a hot tub at Jack Nicholson's house, then had what he considered to be consensual sex with her. She called it "rape", and Roman went to jail.

The bulk of this documentary deals with the trial and how badly it was handled by the judge, Polanski's growing hatred of the media (starting with his wife's murder) and his fleeing the country to make a new life in France. These are the details that made this an interesting film. There were long, in depth interviews from both the prosecution and defense attorneys, both corroborating each other's stories concerning the details of the trial and of Judge Rittenband's inappropriate conduct throughout. Lots of other people weighed in on the subject, too, none boring or making me question their presence in the film (see: Jack Black in any music documentary ever), and there was plenty of archival news footage and interviews that held all of this together nicely.

Overall, this was very well made, informative and entertaining. I only wish I didn't already know so much about this case going into it. Had I known nothing in advance, this would have been even better. I found this DVD at Big Lots for $1.88 and there was a huge pile of them. I figured it would be lousy because of that, but it far surpassed my expectations.

4/5

Searching For Sugar Man (2012)

Sixto Rodriguez: America's Cast Away

Sony's documentaries are usually pretty great. I picked this up hoping it would be another "Devil in Daniel Johnston" (one of my favorite music documentaries ever), but it wasn't nearly as good. I still enjoyed it, though. 
 
It's difficult to write about this film without revealing too much about it, so this will be a short synopsis. The mononymous "Rodriguez" was a mystical folk singer who recorded two albums for the Sussex label in the early 1970s. Both albums tanked here in the states and he disappeared into obscurity. Somehow, a copy of his first album, "Cold Fact", made it's way to South Africa and it spread like wildfire becoming a huge sensation there on par with The Beatles and "bigger than Elvis". This background information is given in the opening lines of this documentary, followed by a matter-of-fact account of Rodriguez dousing himself in lighter fluid,setting himself ablaze and killing himself during a poorly received concert.

One day, while visiting with one of his American friends, Cape Town native Stephen Segerman was shocked to learn that nobody in America had even heard of Rodriguez. He assumed that because he was so popular in South Africa, he must have been hugely popular in his own country, but that just wasn't the case. When Rodriguez's second album, "Coming From Reality", was finally issued on CD in South Africa in 1996, Segerman was invited to contribute to the liner notes. Within those notes he solicited further biographical information, should any exist. It was a long shot and  an open-ended request, but music journalist Craig Bartholomew Strydom was already wondering about the circumstances surrounding Rodriguez's death and got in touch offering his help. People loved Rodriguez's music, but nobody knew anything about him. The cryptic album art and lack of liner notes left only his lyrics as clues. What follows is the search for "Sugar Man".

There wasn't much to work with in making this documentary, I assume. The interviews with the players in Rodriguez's career were interesting, but there weren't very many of them to speak of. The big reveal is given away early on in the film and was predictable from the very beginning. The problem is that it didn't leave much to fill the rest of the running time. This documentary succeeded in introducing me to his music, though, which is terrific. It's my understanding that with the exception of this film's soundtrack, his music has been out of print here in America since 1971. If a CD containing both of his albums in their entirety existed, I'd happily purchase a copy today.

This was entertaining enough, but I wouldn't have bought it if I had watched it first. My wife paid for it and gave it to me for my birthday, so that works for me. If you have the chance, see it, but don't go out of your way to do so.

3.5/5

 (Watch the trailer at your own risk as it gives away more about the film than I have above.)