Billy Loves Petey

2004-06-28 - 18:23:00
Current music: The Books - "Tokyo"

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A friend of mine watched 'Thief' after reading my write-up and felt utterly let down by it. This provides me with the perfect opportunity to point out that I have horrible taste in films. Just look at the movies I've watched since I started keeping this journal. With that said, I don't think my write-up on 'Thief' was misleading. If you've seen 'Heat' (which I don't really like), you'll know that Mann hates going from A to B in the shortest number of steps. But I should've mentioned that just because it's called 'Thief' doesn't mean it's really a heist film. Said friend is totally right to dislike the movie and feel betrayed. I will always let you down.

I love Mike Judge. Here's this week's Onion A/V Club interview with him - I Like Mike


FAHRENHEIT 9-11 (2004) - d. Michael Moore
I don't really like writing about movies that every single person and their mom are talking about. It was good, it got me riled, I liked it, it wasn't nearly as shrill as I was expecting. There's a small part of me which still wishes it was a socialist recruitment video, but that wouldn't have been the right approach, and Moore, for once, understands that now is the time to play the relatively straight man. All in all, a very cogent argument, and a film that I think is going to sway more people than pundits want to believe. It could stand to lose ten to fifteen minutes from the end, though.

I know they only had a couple of weeks from the time they purchased it to the this past week's release, but Lion's Gate dropped the ball bigtime. Sure, it's the #1 movie in America, broke all kinds of records for a documentary, blah blah blah blah, but they didn't have nearly enough prints out to theaters. Seeing how every local screening was sold-out in the Triangle area (keep in mind that this is the South), you have to think they could've easily broken the $30 million mark.


LOST IN LA MANCHA (2002) - d. Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe
I forgot that I'd watched this about three weeks ago. I'd heard that it was a pretty sloppy effort, and it was, but it's better than what I'd prepared myself for. The big surprise was that Terry Gilliam didn't come off like an idiot who lost control of his production. The biggest mistake he seemed made was to surround himself with producers sans clue as to what it would take to get that big a movie done. It's a pretty clear-eyed look at how films go south. I want to see Gilliam get the movie made; it looks like there were some great ideas on hand.


TRICKS OF THE TRADE: MAKING 'MATCHSTICK MEN' (2004) - d. Charles de Lauzirika
It was probably some rag like Entertainment Weekly or Premier where I read that the documentary in the 'Matchstick Men' DVD package was a must-see, and now I know better. The film, at 70 min., is actually a pretty decent overview of the filmmaking process, prep-to-post, but it's no major revelation. I'll give it credit for not being 100% rah-rah, but the warts-and-all approach smacks of a calculation, and there's gotta be much juicier stuff which didn't make the final cut. 'Hearts of Darkness' and the 'making of' which accompanies 'Three Kings' are much better bets.


VISITOR Q (2001) - d. Takashi Miike
Confession time. I got sent a fucked up copy of the disc, so I only got to watch the first hour of the film (the runtime is 85 min) and things got mangled just as it was getting to the I-can-take-no-more-point.

Oh, Miike, you so crazy. Anyhow, this is like all of his favorite themes, and the film includes paying your daughter for sex, a kid beating the living shit out of his heroin addict mother, rectal exams with microphones, and excessive lactation. Shot on video, and no worse for it, of his films that I've seen, it's the one which most explicitly examines the seamy side of mainstream Japanese culture. Icky as hell, and sometimes too offensive for words, but mostly oh so fun. And, yeah, sure, the second Netflix gets a new copy (good luck), I'll re-watch it and come to a different conclusion.

Here's a couple of Miike interviews - ranked in order of personal preference - to tide you over:
 Miike in The Guardian
 Miike in Film Threat
 Miike in Midnight Eye


THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) - d. Wes Craven
If I was a true horror fan/sadist, I'd like Wes Craven's earlier movies a lot better than I do. While 'Last House on the Left' is effective in its brutality, it's also completely WRONG, and I fucking hate it. 'Deadly Blessing' and 'Stranger in our House' are also suck. Actually, they're both so bad, I'm sorry I even need to mention them.

I've stayed away from 'Hills Have Eyes' because I was expecting more of the same.

It is more of the same.

Talk about movies with a lame setup. I'm not really sure why this is a cult-classic and one of the more important horror films of the 70s. I mean, it's better than the rest of his early stuff, but it's mostly just dumb and crappy. A warmed-over 'Texas Chainsaw' with bad performances, good locations, silly silly costumes and Craven's trademark ultra-aggressive direction.