Exorcise the overblown, cartoonish depictions of the religious side-characters and you’d have a funny, sometimes touching portrait of two miss matched characters discovering each other and themselves. It’s nothing new in the world of indie comedies, but it is well told, minus a few wrong turns. Still, Harris and O’Leary with their one-on-one comedic scenes make up for any minor quibbles I had with the film.

Spoilers after the image.

A Descendent of Raising Arizona?

Spoilers, perhaps?:

Sometimes a quirky comedy can be too well written, like when all the quirks neatly connect. The real oddity of our world lies in the fact that we can’t figure out how all the dots connect. So, when a woman who can’t get pregnant hooks up with a guy who warns us that he’s all too fertile, the twist at the ending should come as no surprise.

One more note: all films after The 400 Blows should avoid having characters escaping to large bodies of water.

This glass is definitely all empty.

No amount of beautiful imagery or poetic editing can make up for the fact that We Need to Talk About Kevin is a boneheaded, manipulative, hateful film frighteningly detached from reality. Try as I might to understand this film as either horror or black comedy, no genre or spin can excuse the shallow shock value of this picture. Director Lynne Ramasy creates a film hellbent on making you squirm, but it’s a cheap effect nearly synonymous with a favorite quote of mine from George Lucas – “If you want me to make you feel something, that’s not hard. I’ll choke a kitten in front of you, and you’ll feel something.”

What we are meant to feel in We Need to Talk About Kevin is Tilda Swinton’s grief and confusion. The film peels back layers of fragmented events as both Swinton and the audience try to figure out what caused her son to grow into a homicidal maniac. These questions of what drives a child to kill, what role do the parents play in such a tragedy, and how can a parent carry on or move on after such a tragedy are extremely interesting questions, but Ramasy shows little concern in addressing them. What she is going for is spine-tingling, edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting, with an art-house gloss. It’s the same old popcorn with a different spice.

Kevin is shown as a product of passion that leads to misery. His arrival brings about depression. He forces Swinton from her beloved New York apartment. He dampers her globe-trotting lifestyle. He cramps her career. He ultimately ruins everything. He destroys happiness. I find it confusing that a female character should be punished for having a career or enjoying sex. This seems far more like Lars von Trier territory. Then again, if you are going for shock and awe I suppose von Trier is the bar you need to measure yourself against.

Overall, I simply do not understand the behaviors or actions of the characters in this film. I ask, “How do they carry on?” Ramasy asks, “How much can I torture you?” She deploys characters and scenes like pawns just waiting to be capture or crushed. At the center of the game she is playing is Tilda Swinton a mother tormented and frightened by her son. Cinema has had other mothers scared by their offspring. Just look to The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Bad Seed, even It’s Alive. The difference here is that Kevin is not supernatural. He is meant to be all too real. The typical child destined to shoot up his school. So, if Kevin is meant as normal, not supernatural, why is his parent’s actions and reactions do inhuman? They never react. They never get upset. They never push back in a way that makes any sense. They act like no one I know.  They give me no reason to feel for them other then on the most basic level. They act like movie characters manipulated to spark a reaction in the audience. They are like Lucas’ cat.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is a mildly compelling noir about a loose cannon cop (Dana Andrews) with a violent streak that gets the best of him. After beating a suspect to death, in the hopes of securing a confession, Andrews works hard to cover his tracks and bring down a criminal kingpin at the same time. Matters only get worse when a dame enters the picture.

As much as I love noir films it often feels as if a large number of them center around our hero getting caught up in a web of troubles and then spending the entire picture trying to untangle their lives. Where the Sidewalk Ends follows this same model with only the slightest added flair.

Otto Preminger is no slouch as a director. Of his works, the ones that I’ve seen, Where the Sidewalk Ends rises high, ranking up there with Bunny Lake Is Missing, Anatomy of a Murder, The Man with the Golden Arm Laura. Crime or the criminal element is Preminger’s strong suit. Still his work has never impressed me as a master director. His films entertain me, but do little to inspire me with either their direction or their imagery. However, there is one shot three-fourths of the way into Where the Sidewalk Ends A car pulls into a parking garage, with the camera mounted inside the car’s back-seat, its gaze looking past the passengers in the front seat and out through the wind-shield. The car then pulls into a claustrophobic elevator and is lifted to a new floor. The shot continues and when the doors open. Suddenly, we are privy to an expansive space. This lengthy take with its shifting scale in space and depth is unlike anything we’ve seen to this point in the film and it will not be matched later in the film. It’s a beautiful anomaly.

Elizabeth Taylor is trying to get herself murdered. She begs a man to take her life. He’s just interested in having an orgasm once a day. He says it is part of his macrobiotic diet. Andy Warhol pops up as nobility. For 105 minutes The Driver’s Seat delivers madness and non-stop histrionics. Recommended only if you have a dying need to hear Taylor screaming about orgasms and death.

What I do know both of these movies make me feel down-right sad for the women in each film. In How to Beat the High Co$t of Living Susan Saint James,  Jane Curtin and Jessica Lange must resort to stealing prize money from a shopping center raffle if they hope to, you guessed it, beat the high cost of living.

Each of their financial woes is the direct result of the men in their life. Susan Saint James is a divorced mom who needs money to not only raise her kids, but more importantly to buy herself some time away from them so she can shag he new beau, Fred Willard. Jane Curtain needs money because her husband just left her and took all their assets with him. Jessical Lange has a man in her life. He’s a successful veterinarian, but he’s just cut off the funds to the unprofitable antique shop she runs. With all this trouble the only logical thing to do is tunnel under the mall and siphon thousands of dollars out of a huge glass orb filled with cash.

I don’t have any trouble with the fact that in both How to Beat the High Co$t of Living and Nine to Five the women resort to illegal measures to solve their problems. These sort of foolish solutions are nothing new to cinema and something we haven’t seen men in numerous movies. It’s just that in How to Beat the High Co$t of Living the women’s motives are less about gaining financial independence and more about co-dependence. The goal of the heist is not just to gain get the money, but to use that money to afford the greatest prize – a man. It’s not the money that completes them it is the man.

The women in How to Beat the High Co$t of Living are all beautiful and full moxie, but they are also sheltered, naive, and just plain lucky. It’s hard for me to tell if these characteristics are simply part of the comedy or a larger view of women. I would not expect that in a comedy of any sort that the heist would go off with out a hitch, but I also found it completely out of character for Jane Curtain’s character to perform an impromptu strip-tease (Curtain uses a body double) to distract the patrons of the mall.

There is ultimately something fun and laughable about this comedy, but its also something personally irksome. Perhaps if I knew that females were creating these projects I’d feel less awkward, but too often I think male creators are projecting an image of women as cute, clumsy, and charmed.

On a totally separate note, I loved the scenes inside the old mall. I once wrote about Scanners and its dark, 70′s era mall scenes. In that write up I said comedies were somewhat exempt from the dark mall look, but How to Beat the High Co$t of Living has those dark mall corridors of my youth. How foreign they must look to today’s youth raised amongst brightly lit malls or open air town centers with their high recognizable franchised establishments.

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I love this preposterous film and I don’t feel a lick of guilt. Larry Cohen can take outlandish plots and a shoestring budgets and crank out engaging and entertaining cinema. He routinely mixes genres often combining the supernatural with gritty realistic human stories, but his emphasis is always on the humans. Here a cop drama, mixes with a botched heist film, and a giant monster movie. Like most giant monster movies the finale involves a epic confrontation between man and monster.

We’ve seen this skyscraper battle before in King Kong, but in Q the battlefield is reversed. This time the monster is in the air and the humans are a top of the Chrysler building firing at the beast. As many times as I’ve seen this movie and various King Kong films, I’ve never once questioned what happens to all those bullets that did not make contact with their target? A volley of bullets is being fired into the sky and only a few make contact. Bullets have to land somewhere. They don’t just continue upward and onward into space. Look out NYC, a bullet rain’s a comin’.

Those trying to re-boot old franchises pay attention.

Winnie the Pooh feels fresh because it maintains the tone of earlier theatrical Pooh movies. There is no pandering to the worst modern trends in kids film. You will not find sass, pop-culture references (share for a few low-key ones) or most-of-all a stupid need to make things flashy, fast paced, and attention demanding. These new adventures of Christopher Robin and friends completely ignore generations of media that caters to ADHD attention spans.

While the film expands upon the writings of A.A. Milne it never loses regard for the fact that Pooh’s adventures were always born of text. The written word actually plays a key role throughout the film, both as a graphical element and as clever deus ex machina. I so greatly enjoyed the films playful use of typography that I almost preferred the portions of the film in which text appears on the screen to anything else in the film.

I am never one for musical numbers. The one’s in Winnie the Pooh are so well done that I didn’t mind if indie-darling Zooey Deschanel was singing some of the songs. The music numbers also give the animators time to flaunt a few different styles of hand-drawn animation with a penchant towards the surreal. I was more than once reminded of Dumbo‘s “Pink Elepants” or scenes from the first Fantasia.

Most of all, the film succeeds on its writing. While the stories are nothing new for Pooh, and thankfully they are nothing like that godawful Pooh television show that tried to introduce a girl in the place of Christopher Robin and made all the characters Super Sleuths – ack, the dedication in this movie to both word play between characters and visual gags help enliven time worn tales. In a word this new Winnie the Pooh is classic, but it bring new stories I have yet to see on the big screen. So, in this sense it is new. I guess that makes it a new classic and not simply a cheap attempt to market to a new generation by speaking in a language that some business strategist thinks speaks best to a target demographic.

Whereas Cars 2 apologizes for the bombastic, fool-hardy, but supposedly genuine faults of American rednecks, the moral behind Winnie the Pooh is that sometimes you should put the needs of others before your own desires. For 90% of the film Pooh is simply on a quest to feed his rumbling bell some honey. His search for food quietly propels the who gang of animals through a serious of adventures and calamities. Frankly, Pooh is a bit of a self-serving prick. Until the end, when he finally finds honey, but puts off over-indulging himself, so that he might help a friend. It’s a simply lesson. However, this is simple film designed to speak to a young audience needing to learn those first lessons in life.

Far too often I think we have let the tail wag the dog and we have found businessmen (you can call the artists if you like, but I won’t) making films hoping to capture the attention (and dollars) of an audience they think they understand. Usually, they are successful, at least at collecting the money of the masses, but rarely do they seem to capture the attention or imagination of their audience. If anything they just leave the audience semi-satisfied, but wondering what’s next. Rather than making something more than an instant cash grab they should try making something that will not diminish in interest or value once the hype or curiosity dies down. I know this must sound crazy to those running the game, and I’m sure Cars 2 will rake in far more money than Winnie-the-Pooh will bring in at the box office. Still, shouldn’t we make work that reflects what we want our audience to be instead of base impulses?

I know, stupid question. It’s just a movie, right? Stupid me thinking it isn’t all about $.

On another note The Ballad of Nessie, the short that played before it about how (the Loch Ness Monster learned it was okay and even healthy to sometimes cry, was quite brilliant. Certainly nothing ground breaking in technique or aesthetic, the films feels fresh simply because we Disney Animation does not do too-many pre-feature shorts. They leave that to Pixar. However, where as Pixar seems bent on breaking new ground Disney Animation goes for nostalgia, which might just be their best bet. For what is Disney if not a nostalgia factory. Yes, it is a fabricated nostalgia for a time that never was, but it is what they have always done best.

I feel I should at some point be condemning these two Disney films simply because they are Disney films. It’s not as if Disney is a brand free from problems. Disney as a company and as a voice for a particular world view has its ethics issues. Still, Winnie-the-Pooh and The Ballad of Nessie with their unselfish and touching morals are so strikingly different from what I am used to seeing in modern kid’s programming that it’s worth defending these films against my own complaints about Disney,  especially its Princesses franchise. In fact, the message of these films is so different from the loud, clamorous, Ayn Rand, Objectivist, Tea-bag rhetoric running through America that maybe these films should come with a warning. I’d hate to think that some right-winger would have to call Disney UnAmerican because a film didn’t kill off a parent in the first ten minutes or some other lesson that teaches its main character to pull themselves up by their boot-straps. I’d hate to think those poor souls might have their kids learn something about being anything more than a selfish consumer.

This was really just supposed to me quickly saying how surprised I was that I liked the film. Oh, bother.

But just who the hell is this loveable inebriated coot? The credits list Clarke Gordon as the narrator, but during the film someone calls our tour guide “Fred”. I must admit I had to look up just who Clarke Gordon was and what connections he has to racing. It turns out he’s an actor with a long record of westerns to his name. Here, he plays a roving narrator, traveling across North America introducing the audience to a variety of different motor-sports. When he’s not filling us in on the details of each race he’s cracking a cold beer and ogling girls.

The film serves as little more than an extended montage of action photography soaked in a heavy 70′s aesthetic. Think lots and lots of lens flares!

70's Flare

I have to chuckle at how easy these 70′s sports documentaries must have been too produce. Only about 10% of the film (or less) has diagetic sound. The narration provides the minimal amount of information needed. There’s little to no story. Wall-to-wall music pushed the film forward.

Songs like “Swamp-buggy boogie” provide a chuckle, but by the hour mark the hokey music and the replaceable shot after shot of racing motor-vehicles is enough to turn off all but the most hardcore gear-heads. In short, the whole picture feels like the Wide World of Backwood Sports. Perhaps, if Clarke Gordon (or who ever the hell he is) were more prevolent throughout the picture Dirt could have held my attention. His horny roving eyes and colorful commentary compare with classic WGN broadcasts of Cubs games, where every commercial break was preceded by shots of bikini-clad bleacher bums.

If the narrator and our tour guide on screen is Clarke Gordon its quite humorous to find that he would later play a character simply known as The Drunk in the Chuck Norris action flick The Octagon , which just happened to be directed by Eric Karson, who also directed Dirt.

If you don’t believe me that this guy is perfect in the role of a lecherous drunk, watch these scenes from Dirt.

This clumsy mash-up of an Ernest movie with a James Bond film was not at all what I was expecting from Pixar. From its overly violent, not to mention physics defying, action sequence opening to its rube humor and its aw-shucks sentiment this travesty disappointed me at every turn. Oscillating between bombastic and borderline incoherent races with little emotional charge to car-fu fight sequences the film only takes breaks from the action to give center stage to Mater, the franchise’s red-neck, lug-nut tow-truck voiced by America’s current king of trailer park humor – Larry the Cable guy.

Set lose up on the world, Mater is the ugliest of Americans. Dumb, obnoxious, and unwilling to control himself, Mater gets by on down-to-earth charm and lots of luck. His mixture of idiocy and earnestness appeals to jingoistic, flag-waving Americans that believe the world must both lower themselves to America’s intellect and raise itself to their perceived notion of greatness. For me, it was simply too much to ensure and when Mater’s best friend encourages Mater to just be himself (i.e. an unapologetic clodhopper) and that the rest of the world will just have to accept Mater for who he is, I wanted to puke on my shoes.

Is this the message Pixar, Disney, Hollywood, and America have for the world? Americans like being moronic jerks with supposedly good intentions, deal with it!

America Carsonified

Admittedly, I did not see the first Cars film. Perhaps, had I seen the first film I would have been better prepared for the shock I encountered. I used to think Pixar has some of the best mainstream screen-play writers and gag-men in Hollywood. Then again I haven’t seen the last 3 or 4 Pixar films. Perhaps they have all been going down hill. Cars 2 certainly doesn’t give me reason to go back and watch the films I missed. Instead I need to list 5 random things:

1) Cars sell: They sell far better than E.T. looking robots. However, this whole movie seems designed to not only push merchandise, but to apologize for the commentary on humans found in Wall-E. It’s designed to sell Americans on their identity and to feel good about their faults. Where as Wall-E painted a grim portrait of humans as self-destructive sloths, Cars fills the screen with anthropomorphic surrogates all too genuine, well-natured, and good-hearted. It serves to remind viewers that golly-gee we might have our problems but deep down we are pretty f’n great…oh, and we look sweet too. No need to improve who we are or how we handle ourselves. Just keep truckin’.

2) Without stereotypes films would have nothing to say about other cultures: Mexicans love low-riders. Japan has weird toilets. Italian moms solve everything through big meals. The French are snooty and to not be trusted. British pub patrons are rowdy. Almost always there is a humor behind each stereotype. Yes, this short-hand reduction of culture for the sake of simple joke is nothing new, but for kids this is often their first introduction to other cultures. This is the EPCOTing of the world. Experience the globe in your own backyard.

3) Pixar is not waving the green flag: Underneath all the action and the dumb jokes Cars 2 has a convoluted story about alternative fuels and a group of oil investors looking to besmirch non-petroleum based fuel. The plot and motives do not make a lick of sense. By the time the true villain is revealed and his motives are explain, in a manner equivalent to a ho-hum episode of Scooby-Doo I was utterly confused. Some how Pixar managed to make a film that both argues for alternative fuels and re-affirms the necessity of fossil fuels. At least that is what I think happened. This whole debate of fossil vs. bio fuel gets a few seconds of screen-time and there is no real debate. It would truly be remarkable if one of the cars in this film had a moment of existential crisis, questioning just what purpose it serves to drive in circles, burning resources, and polluting the environment. I know that is a lot to ask of a kid’s movie and even more to ask of the NASCAR fans this film seems to target.

4) Owen Wilson isn’t a bad actor:  He’s not an actor at all. He’s Owen Wilson and no matter what role he is in he is awful. Even as a CGI car I just want to cram my fingers in my ears until I feel grey matter and completely block out his voice.

5) What if Jerry Lewis had directed this film: What if he, as his Kid persona had played the part of Mater instead of Larry the Cable Guy? I might have liked this film. I might have loved it, because I am sure Jerry Lewis could have figured out how to pull of the naivete of Mater with a lot more pathos. Sadly, what we get instead is a love letter to the American lowest-common denominator.

Marjoe expresses the pain of watching this film

Mausoleum is the type of bad movie that makes you lose friends. Seriously, who needs to see a horror film with a 5 minute gardening sequence! Forget that this film had Marjoe Gortner in it. Forget that he dies a spectacular death. Forget that it has LaWanda Page of Sanford & Son and Laff Records fame. Forget that she’s playing a wildly racist stereotype. Forget that Playboy Bunny Bobbie Bresee bears her upper assets. Forget that she’s a bat-shit crazy house-wife possessed by an ancient demon that forces her to seduce men only to kill them after she gets upset by their advances. Forget that this film even has demonic boobies. Yes, demonic boobies!

You can try to forget all these wild aspects of this rather slap-dash, gutter-quality movie. What you will not be able to forget is that the film takes a break from building suspense to provide the audience with a clunky montage of landscaping and gardening. Why?

Big thanks to my longtime friend Don of Schlockmania. I’ll forever question your personal recommendations.