Current music: Kanye West "School Spirit"
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Last night, I found out that my friend Graham's been working on 'The Swan.' Words, for once, fail me.
A little catching up here. I'd forgotten two movies I saw over the weekend, and I watched 'Spun' last night...
KILLER'S KISS (1955) - d. Stanley Kubrick
Um, I was really expecting to fall in love with this movie. The era suggested that this was going to be Kubrick really telling an old-school noir story. Instead, it's a bit more of an exercise in noir style, as Kubrick was only getting his feet wet (this is his first narrative feature). The best thing about the film is its 67 minute running time, but, to be honest, it still feels long.
Here's a quote from the man himself - "While 'Fear and Desire' had been a serious effort, ineptly done, 'Killer's Kiss'... proved, I think, to be a frivolous effort done with conceivably more expertise though still down in the student level of filmmaking."
There's some strong visuals and cutting, a wild (though not exciting) final sequence, and anyone who tells you that they can tell that all the dialogue was recorded in post is a flat-out liar.
Anyone who defends it as Stanley's first masterpiece is also a flat-out liar. Worth watching, just don't have your expectations too high. Oh, it's about a boxer who falls in love with a mob moll. Then they face the mob. The end.
You gotta get to 'The Killing' to see Stanley do it right.
SPUN (2002) - d. Jonas Åkerlund
Ugh. Crap. Shit.
'Meth-heads in SoCal' should be a good movie. It isn't. A lot of people compared it to 'Requiem For A Dream,' a movie I don't think is nearly as good as everyone else seems to. I also don't think they're that similar, other than the fact that drugs play heavily in both. Instead, 'Spun' is more like a poor imitation of second and third-generation Tarantino motifs. If someone's entire cinema experience was 'Kalifornia,' 'Love and a .45,' and 'Two Days In The Valley,' it would explain this movie. As it stands, it's too crap to bother explaining. Mickey Rourke is good. Eric Roberts is passable.
HIGHWAY (2002) - d. James Cox
I kind of hate James Cox. If you were at NYU in the just-post 'Atomic Tabasco' days, you'd understand why. There were two camps at school, the 'Five Feet High and Rising' camp and the 'Atomic Tabasco' camp. Atomic Tabasco kids should've just gone to USC and put us all out of our misery. This isn't just an 'I hate him because he's old as fuck' thing.
The guy who wrote 'Highway' also wrote 'Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,' 'Kangaroo Jack,' and 'High Fidelity'. I don't get the 'High Fidelity' association watching this charmer, but I do get the other two.
Tarded. This is Jared Leto after he'd semi-legitimized himself with that p.o.s. Aronofsky movie, but he's out of his depth as a leading man here. The costume design stands out as particularly bad, and Jared's outfit's probably the dumbest. This is also an early Jake Gyllenhaal role, and he didn't know what he was doing in front of the camera yet. The 'plot' involves stolen-ish money, a guy who looks like an alligator and a pilgrimage to Seattle because Kurt Cobain's just shot himself. The less said, the better. Even John C. McGinley sucks in it.
This dude, also James Cox, had two surgeries for testicular cancer, was turned on to medical marijuana because where his balls used to be hurt so much (and the disease was eating his stomach), was busted by cops investigating a break-in at his house, and got hooked up with a fifteen year prison sentence. After five years in prison at age 50, an attempted suicide, and two stomach surgeries, he's out, but his parole requires twice-weekly piss testing. Doctors started giving him morphine for his tummy aches, and now the feds are thinking of sending him back to jail because he tested positive for opiates. Can I get some love for mandatory minimums?
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