Tag Archives: drama

#275- No Country for Old Men

Quick recap: Llewelyn Moss is caught in a deadly cat and mouse game when he stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong.

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But, like, more violent

Fun (?) fact:  While filming in Marfa, Texas, shooting was halted for the day when a cloud of dark smoke came into view. It turned out to be a pyrotechnics testing for the movie There Will be Blood, which was filming nearby.

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Only the Coen brothers could find the most perfect haircut for a maniac

My thoughts: It’s no secret that I love the Coen brothers. Or maybe some people don’t know,but that would be a totally lame secret to have in the first place,tbh. Anyway, I love them and they can do no wrong, not even with Burn After Reading, which I think is underrated. No Country for Old Men is a different monster, though. Many of the same trademarks are there, but this film just feels different. It’s darker, more violent and less funny than their previous projects. And it is perfect.

I don’t use the word ‘perfect’ lightly, except for all those times I’ve used the word ‘perfect’ lightly. But that’s just what this film is. I can’t find fault in it, not that I’ve tried all that hard. Take the music, for example. There is none. At all. And with most other movies, this would bother me. Not this movie, though. No music really heightened the feeling of dread I got anytime Anton Chigurh was onscreen, and it felt as though he could be outside hunting me too. The scenery is another home run for me, not just because it’s in Texas, but it’s the most gorgeous part of Texas. I’ve been talking about a road trip to Marfa for years now and maybe subconsciously I’ve been thinking about this movie and that’s why I haven’t gone. It’s so desolate out there and perfect for just the sort of thing that played out onscreen.

But really, just like any good Coen brothers film, I’m in it for the characters. There isn’t a lot of dialogue, but there doesn’t need to be. I still don’t really understand the ending but I also kind of like that. It is what it is and it always will be that way. That’s good enough for me.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: the Sins of Lola Martès

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#272- Happiness

Quick recap: Netflix says this is a movie about a dysfunctional family but I beg to differ. . These people are the most awful and miserable I have encountered in this list and that’s saying something, considering I have watched Downfall.

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Kind of odd, but I used to have a thing for Philip Seymour Hoffman. Glad that’s been cured!

Fun (?) fact: Many well known actors refused to play the part of Bill, who is a pedophile. It didn’t bother Dylan Baker, however, who claims his career never suffered and he moved on easily from the role. Who is that, you might ask? Exactly.

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How about a lovely scene with Jon Lovitz, who is apparently posing on the same couch my mom had for over 30 years.

My thoughts: When a movie goes with something as bold a title as Happiness, I knew it would be anything but. And considering how rough the last few weeks have been, I wanted to wait until I was in a better state of mind before watching something so mind numbingly awful. I’ve seen some bad stuff on here, mind you (El Topo, Murmur of the Heart, The Tin Drum), but Happiness is on a whole other level of messed up.

One weird game I like to play when watching movies I’ve never heard of before is to think about what kind of person would list this film as one of their favorites. Because you know that somewhere, someone LOVES the hell out of Happiness and can probably quote it word for word. That concerns me, naturally, but I guess I can see the possibility in the kind of person who loves black comedies. And buddy, this is the blackest comedy there is. Unlike American Beauty where I could never figure out what the ultimate message was, this one was simple: The suburbs suck and the nuclear family is a myth. Heartwarming, no? Maybe not, but it makes the film much more tolerable to think of it as a farce, rather than a legitimate story.

So, what exactly is so bad about Happiness? I’m not really going to go into detail about it because I don’t want this blog to turn into ‘for mature audiences only’, but here’s a quick rundown on a few characters:

Allen- a sad sack of a man who has a crush on his next door neighbor but who also gets off calling random girls and saying super inappropriate things to them

Kristina- has a crush on Allen and when they finally go out (a rare moment of happiness for me because I felt sorry for her) reveals that she killed the doorman who raped her and cut his body into little pieces.

Helen- whom Allen has a crush on. She wrote a book about being raped as a child but that never happened and now she wants nothing more than for that to happen.

and finally Bill- a therapist who is a pedophile. He enjoys drugging his young son’s friends and raping them.

And to top it off, none of these people ever really learn a lesson, except maybe Kristina who was arrested. The movie ends with the family sitting around the dinner table and continuing their misery exactly as before. The only thing that surprised me as the credits rolled was how the movie didn’t just end with everyone killing themselves.

Final review: 2/5

Up next: Vinyl

 

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#267- Shock Corridor

Quick recap: A journalist pretends to be insane so that he can solve the murder of a patient in a psychiatric ward.

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You mean there really is a Bart? Good Lord!!

 

Fun (?) fact: Because he had a small budget, director Samuel Fuller hired little people to hang out in the background of the hall to produce a greater sense of depth for the audience.

My thoughts: Before Shock Corridor, someone could’ve presented me with a movie about being in a mental institution and I would be all over it. So many directions to go! So many points to make! So many complex yet endearing characters! But now I know better, thanks to this movie. See, this is why we can’t have nice things.

The film starts with Johnny Barrett rehearsing his story to a psychiatrist to ensure that the police take him seriously and lock him up in this place. Before I go any further, I want you to imagine what story you would come up with in that situation, knowing that you would be subjected to any kind of technique to cure you and this would most likely stay on your criminal record. What did Barrett and his boss come up with? Incest, of course! And not just incest, because apparently that isn’t crazy enough. Let’s add in a hair fetish! It’s one thing to want to go full into the role and all, but that’s taking it a little too far, I think. Oh, and to make it extra creepy, they added in Barrett’s girlfriend to play the sister. I’ll let you in on how that turned out later on. Hint: not well.

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But, you might be saying, Barrett was trying to solve a murder! He had to concoct a crazy story to make sure he got in and stayed in. I suppose that’s true, although we as the audience never meet who was murdered or see the murderer or get any hint that there is still a threat. Granted, the mental institution does some crazy stuff, but wasn’t that par for the course in the 50s and 60s? By the time the murderer is revealed, I realized that I had never been invested to being with.

So, what to take from this movie? Is it that the insane deserve a voice and a sympathetic ear? No, because the characters themselves are about as stereotypically insane as you can get: A man who sings opera in the middle of the night, a guy who things he is a general in the Civil War and my personal favorite, the black guy whose racist against black guys. Each person shows flashes of sanity at some point, but then retreat back into their world and are of little help in solving the murder. And what does Barrett gain from all of this? He goes insane, too! Turns out, it might not have been the best idea to turn your girlfriend into your sister, buddy. After getting electroshock therapy and intensive counseling sessions to cure him of wanting to molest his sister, Barrett wants nothing to do with his girlfriend.

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There’s a nympho ward!

Final review: 2/5

Up next: The 39 Steps

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#266- Full Metal Jacket

Quick recap: A young Marine survives boot camp and gets sent to Vietnam where he can truly understand the phrase, ‘war is hell, man.’

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Here’s your friendly reminder of how amazing the Simpsons used to be.

Fun (?) fact: Private Joker’s real name in the film is J.T. Davis, a real soldier who is considered to be the first American casualty of the war.

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My thoughts: The Vietnam War alone is about as hellish as anyone would expect it to be. But just in case we Americans didn’t really ‘get it’ the first time around, a slew of war movies came out to make sure we remembered just how bad that war was: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter and so on. All the while Stanley Kubrick was watching us, unimpressed with our claims of horror and empty promises of not letting that happen again. And thus, Full Metal Jacket was born.

Full Metal Jacket is horrifying, but not in the ways I expected. I knew there would be blood and guts because this is war, duh, and I was even prepared to see innocent civilians murdered. But the scenes that stuck with me the most were the conversations the men had about the war. As evidenced by the boot camp sequence, the US wanted killing machines and that’s what they got. It’s much easier to give a man a gun and teach him to shoot than to sit him down and explain why he’s going to war. And this tactic works well, for the most part, until a group is separated from their leader and their leader is murdered and then they have to think for themselves. The juxtaposition of the young sniper dying while the soldiers tried to decide what to do with her followed by the men singing the Mickey Mouse theme song is chilling and affected me more than I expected it to.

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Besides horrific scenes, this movie also had some really funny parts. The opening scene of Sgt. Hartman yelling at his new recruits might be one of my favorite scenes on this list, although it’s also really horrible to watch and I felt bad about laughing. Full Metal Jacket is the kind of movie where, when you laugh, the next thing you say is, ‘oh my god, I can’t believe I laughed at that’.The soundtrack is also great and surprised me that it was used for comedic effect as well. It’s a Kubrick film, after all, so I expect nothing less.

Final review: 5/5 but I don’t know if I could sit through it again.

Up next: Shock Corridor

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