A month or so ago I was messing around with an online “test” that determined what sort of humor you were into. It ended up categorizing me as a “Wit,” with a preference for subtle, edgy humor and shying away from spontaneous and vulgar material. My closest celebrity comparisons were Jon Stewart, Woody Allen and Ricky Gervais, which would be a fun cab ride but a pretty unappealing orgy. Giant 3-D Diagram Here.

I only bring this up because the last four movies I’ve seen are The Wedding Crashers, The Aristocrats, Dukes of Hazzard and 40 Year Old Virgin.

There goes that theory.

For the record, I’d actually recommend all of them but Dukes of Hazzard, which wouldn’t be entertaining even if I watched it on cable. The Aristocrats, a documentary about the world’s dirtiest joke, is gleefully vulgar but it has its share of cerebral moments too. It gets a little repetitive, but it’s fun to see the different nuances comedians bring to the same material. 40 Year Old Virgin is probably the most endearing over-the-top sex comedy since There’s Something About Mary, and Wedding Crashers isn’t far behind. In the end, Virgin’s better because it doesn’t crash and burn with about thirty minutes to go. Judd Apatow’s creation really is about 900x funnier than Superstud. Sorry Paul.

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I thought Land of the Dead was pretty assy, but that was until I watched Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse. They both had some redeeming aspects though. Land of the Dead has a sidestory of a proud Black zombie leading his zombie people to topple his White oppressors, and RE2 has more hot chicks and a zombie with a rocket launcher. That about sums up the general themes of the films as well.

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War of the Worlds is a really peculiar Hollywood movie. The typical layout of this movie would have Tom Cruise be the world’s greatest dock worker, and only his unique skills at uh… moving boxes could save the earth. Thankfully, that never really happens.

Cruise is actually terrible at pretty much everything except running with his mouth open. There’s some plot about him redeeming himself in the eyes of his family, but it never really connects. The movie concentrates more on aliens vaporizing people, and how humanity is completely, hopelessly fucked. It never strays from that vision, as man turns on itself in riots and the pile of bodies grow. The movie actually works perfectly as a horror movie, as it’s completely terrifiying.

The more the aliens rampage, the cooler the movie is. By the time they’re harvesting humans left and right and covering the earth in red licorice, it was wicked awesome. On our side of the ball, we run, we die. We shoot, it deflects off forcefields and yet we keep shooting. I would have pulled for the humans more, but really, we’re crap. As a result, Spielberg has made bizarro-Schindler, a genocide where we root for Nazis. It’s all strangely satisfying despite being somewhat mediocre.

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I forgot to mention that at the end of “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” there was a Q+A with Miranda July. Now, you all know how much I love(hate) Q+As.

Now, you must remember that July just made a movie after going through Sundance Labs and getting funding from Sundance grants as well as IFC funding, and got that movie into Cannes and took home several awards there, for her first feature. In other words, in a theater full of filmmaker wannabes, she just lived the dream. So of course there were dumb questions. Like her characters, Miranda July is goofy and awkward and not necessarily eloquent on-the-spot. As a result, you had uncomfortable exchanges like:

“So what was the symbolism at the end of the movie? What were you trying to say?”
“Ummmmmmmm, I don’t know how to explain that, in words. If I were better at verbalizing things like that, I wouldn’t have had to do this whole thing. You know, make the movie and all that.”

The worst thing, was when she asked for the last question some guy just started blurting out “ohh I think you really made something good here and I think you’re onto something and you’re going to be really big and successful and you did a really good job.”

HEY, what’s the first rule of Q+A? STATEMENTS ARE NOT QUESTIONS, YOU FUCKER. GRAHHHHHHHHH.

In somewhat related bits, movienet has a series of letters (well, excerpts) that July wrote to her friend Julia during the making of the film. Catch the Sleater-Kinney reference at the bottom.

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Every now and again you’ll stumble across an indie that actually feels indie, and not Hollywood-lite. Me and You and Everyone You Know is like that, a flick that comes out of the blue and speaks with a new voice. I’m not sure it’s saying all that much, but I’m happy that it’s saying it differently, if that makes any sense.

Miranda July’s acting/writing/directing debut is about a struggling video artist/eldercab driver that falls in love with a self-immolating recently divorced shoe salesman that has two kids, an older one that’s judging blowjob contests and another one that’s having scatalogical chat sessions on the internet. The latter kid? He’s seven years old. Now, I know what that sounds like. The thing is, July treats it all with a wide-eyed optimism and naivete that makes it all work. The point is that it’s not a freakshow, but good honest people that have spent so much time living within themselves that they forgot how to live with each other.

The performances are fantastic all around, starting at the top with the loopy charm of July and going all the way down to a crazy scene-stealing turn by young Brandon Ratcliff. It is one of the few kid’s roles in recent history that didn’t drive me completely nuts, and honestly the dude made me laugh harder than anyone else in the movie.

Miranda July has been logging her promotional activities over on her blog, which includes a blow-by-blow account of her winning the Camera D’Or at Cannes. It also includes random missives from young Brandon, who writes stuff like this:

Well 143. Remember that means I love you. 1 for the letter I because it only has 1 letter, 4 for love because of 4 letters of the alphabet make up that word and you know you has only 3 letters so…

143 Ms. Miranda. I learned that from Mr. Rogers but he is dead now.

Miranda July also runs Learning to Love You More, a collaborative community art project made up of random creative assigments that anyone can contribute to. These assignments range from drawing temporary tattoos to renacting movie scenes to taking pictures of your parents kissing. She also kicks around a mixtape for female video artists called Joanie 4 Jackie, where she compiles video shorts and then sends them back out to all the contributors. All the projects have that adventurous go-get-em spirit, and you start to understand where the movie came from.

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Working through my backlog of movies, I completely forgot about Cinderella Man. The problem, of course, is that the movie is completely forgettable. The true story of James Braddock, depression era boxer that makes a miraculous comeback to the top of the sport is a Seabiscuit meets Rocky fairy tale that is (theoretically) heartwarming and inspiring.

While Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti give it a good effort, Akiva Goldsman’s script and Ron Howard’s direction are completely workmanlike. All the story points are obvious, and it rarely rises above TV-Movie quality. It’s difficult to take a true story and make it seem fake, but that’s pretty much what happened here.

Oh yeah. HE WINS. SURPRISE!!!

EDIT: Title changed to FistBiscuit. Blame Fraction.

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I realized I haven’t written any movies in months, mostly because I haven’t been overwhelmed by anything. It’s been a sea of mediocrity, with only a recent little upswing. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a brave attempt at adapting that book, but hurts itself by being comedy that’s not actually funny. That kinda killed it. I’d say more but I almost fell asleep more than once.

I had no expectations for Kicking and Screaming but it cracked me up. It’s by the numbers Bad News Bears type stuff, but there are more than enough laughs. It has kids climbing out of a butcher’s truck covered in blood right before a match, for one. Only producer Judd Apatow would think this was good for kids movie. Remember, he once thought a movie about kids getting abused at fatcamp was comedy gold. There’s a midget Asian kid in the movie named Bing-Bong, and there was this creepy pair of ladies behind us that kept yelling stuff like “AWWW HE’S SO CUTE” and “OH MY GOD I WANT ONE.” That was good for some bonus laughs.

Oh look, it’s the last Star Wars. I actually liked lots of Episode III, but it seemed like every time I was really into it, Lucas would clip my legs out from under me with a poorly timed joke, a feeble romantic scene or just basic ineptitude. Pity poor Natalie Portman, who gets to do exciting stuff like sit in an apartment and look sad while outside INTERGALACTIC WAR breaks out. I still liked more than I hated, and all in all it’s probably the best of the prequels. Plus I like prettyboys getting amputated. It makes me guffaw.

On the other side of the universe, Lords of Dogtown would be a perfectly serviceable biopic, if it weren’t for the fact that Dogtown and Z-Boys covered that material so completely. Lords of Dogtown is completely superfluous as a result. There are decent scenes here and there, but it tends to jump around a lot without any real narrative. There’s nothing particularly awful here, except for maybe Emil Hirsch shaving his head and acting like a cholo.

Here comes the aforementioned upswing. Howl’s Moving Castle is Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature, and like most of his work, it features a young girl finding herself in the midst of a great conflict, usually brought upon by the encroachment of industry into nature. OK, so this one’s not exactly about that, but if you switch around some words you can make it fit. One thing I love about Miyazaki’s movies are that they are just so damn unconventional compared to the American animated features. The plots meander and flux, the designs always have that unique style, combining the adorable and the grotesque. They really do feel like the product of one vision, as opposed to a committee effort to steal kid’s disposable income. For one, the cutesy buddy character is a PILE OF SENTIENT FIRE. I wonder if any kid went home and tried to play with their gas range. It’s beautifully animated and has more than its share of jaw dropping moments.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith never seems to get going, but it’s still a fun little romp regardless. The plot is straight out of old comic book teamups, where our heroes fight each other due to a misunderstanding before realizing they have a common enemy and combining forces. It’s funny and clever but it’s not really hilarious, and the action is well done but somehow never really exciting. There is LOTS of action, but much of it is perfunctory stuff, background noise for the back and forth quips. There is one terrific car chase though, and the leads are ridiculously hot. While I didn’t love it, it killed 2 hours pretty well and I think it’s setup for some really fun sequels.

Batman Begins is actually the first Batman movie to be about Batman. Not the villains, not the car, not Robin, not some extended Batfamily, but Batman himself. Christopher Nolan commits the movie to explaining Batman’s origin, making it feel possible and real. For the first time, you really get the feeling that Batman is more than a little fucked in the head, and for the first time the costume and the car actually make sense. I liked Burton’s phantasmagorical take on it, but there’s something to be said for this lean and mean, fully functional Batman. Populating the cast with Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman,Gary Oldman and Liam Neeson gives the whole thing real gravity, which helps keep the camp down despite dispicable dialogue. I wish David Goyer could have found a thesaurus, because he uses the word FEAR about 50 or 60 times. I know it’s the main theme of the movie, but come the fuck on! Give me a little terror, dude. The only things I really hated were Katie Holmes and the last race against the clock set piece, but the rest of the movie built up enough good will that I was willing to let it slide.

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You know why Matthew McConaughey looks so smug? Because he stole my fucking $10. Sometimes you get a little too bored and you end up at shit like this, even though you should know better.

Sahara, apparently based on some franchise adventures by Clive Cussler, has got to be the single most boring action adventure I’ve ever seen. Maybe I had a little too much to drink before hand, but I was nodding off repeatedly since there’s no actual “adventure” until maybe an hour into the movie.

There’s a reasonably workable plot about treasure hunter Dirk Pitt obsessively trying to find an abandoned Civil War ironclad in the middle of Africa, transported there by some sort of biblical flood (!), but there’s no humor or fun to be had anywhere. It’s not bad enough to mock heartily like Tomb Raider, or tightly woven enough to generate any sort of rush like National Treasure. I saw that Roger Ebert gave this three stars, which has to be one of those deals where he gives two stars based on the lead actress being hot.

By the way, just to ruin the movie for everyone, they find the ironclad. It is just below the surface of a sand dune, so all they needed to find it was a really big metal detector.

EDIT TO ADD: Remarkably bad usage of music in the film. The soundtrack was straight Freedom Rock, including “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” and “We’re an American Band.” I think I heard some Marshall Tucker Band and some Canned Heat as well. The only connection I could make was that McConaughey is a Texas stoner so DIRK PITT must have been as well.

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As a fan of pro-wrestling and someone generally intrigued by its history, I was pretty disappointed with Lipstick and Dynamite, Piss and Vinegar : The First Ladies of Wrestling, Ruth Leitman’s new documentary about the old dames of the sport. The doc isn’t bad, and it’s stocked with tons of solid archive material and old ladies cussing up a storm, which is always good for a laugh. The best interviews come from Killem Gillem, the oldest living lady wrestler (82 years young!) and The Fabulous Moolah, the former world champ who is still working occassional matches with the WWE.

Unfortunately, there’s not much of a narrative to hold it together. There are four or five key interview subjects, but they only crossover in rare spots, connected mostly by the male promoters that they slept with and were beat by. The movie gets across how tough it was in this world, and how tough the ladies were, but not much else. I expected the main interviews to be buffered by some more historical experts, but that never really happened. The problem with interviewing pro-wrestlers, particularly ones that worked in the wayback, is that many of them still talk to reporters as if wrestling were not scripted. There’s only a few interviews that seem to acknowledge that. When a lot of the backstage politicking can be more interesting than the results in the squared circle, you got the feeling that you weren’t getting the whole story.

It’s a great tribute these tough broads from yesterday, but it lacks depth. The really brilliant documentaries tend to stumble onto some unexpected turn of events that they can turn the movie around, but that never really happens for Lipstick and Dynamite either.

P.S. After the screening there was actually a Q+A with the director and four of the wrestlers. The women were great (if a tad long-winded), but I have never experienced a longer string of dumb questions in my life. Questions about the stiffness of the mats and breast implants and one fan who desperately tried to get them to talk about Andre the Giant… it was excruciating!

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You know, if you’re looking for the Sin City website, you really have to be careful. If you don’t type http://www.sincitythemovie.com exactly, YOU WILL END UP BURIED IN PORN. The movie itself is pretty much as advertised. For better or worse, it is an exact replication of the books.

It’s visually stunning with its stark panels of black and white splashed with color, with computer generated backgrounds that carry the grit of reality as well as an elastic, exaggerated physicality that’s more reminiscent of Looney Tunes cartoons. The hard boiled voiceover needs to be pulled back a few notches. There’s lots of times where the voiceover is routinely describing the action on screen, which is bad in comics and awful on the big screen. The acting ranges from fantastic (Mickey Roarke) to pretty dang sucky (Michael Madsen, I look in your general direction).

Frank Miller’s Sin City books really wanted to be adult, but they’re not really mature, if you catch my drift. They’re gratuitously violent and there’s nudity everywhere, justified or no. The movie reproduces this as well, ratcheting up the violence just a touch and easing up on the nekkid. The stories never really go beyond “tough dudes have hearts of gold, protect girls that are nice, even though they work in the sex industry.” All three parts follow that template, give or take, and even by noir genre conventions that’s pushing it.

It’s pretty cool in some parts and it made me wince in others, but overall it was a decent enough way to kill an afternoon. Anyone that claims it’s the greatest movie ever made is probably a nerd, and will change their opinion when Star Wars: Episode III comes out anyway.

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