Ballet sucks.  The end.

Neill Blomkamp, USA, 2009, 112 min.

District 9 was the tits!  It was absolutely awesome.   What’s this? A summer flick that has not only some sweet battle scenes, but also a plot  (what the?) and a theme(gasp!)?!?!  Don’t Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp realize that  it’s just a movie and as long as a bunch of shit blows up, the viewer won’t care if the actual plot of the movie is otherwise a festering pile of shit riddled with holes? The part of me that has been dying inside every summer with the proliferation of  stupid, unintelligible Michael Bay-ish summer shitfests (I’m looking at you, Transformers and G.I. Joe) rejoiced and was given hope that perhaps, somewhere around the corner, the summer blockbuster will return to its roots of awesomeness instead of continuing the ugly trend of films whose plot  exists solely to enable directors and demolitions experts to satiate their pornographic need for explosions.

The plot is relatively simple.  Thirty years ago approximately 1 million aliens became stranded on Earth in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.  Unable to cope with vast cultural differences, the aliens were eventually relegated to their own separate slums just outside the city.  Presently there are closer to 1.8 million of the aliens, who are now called Prawn because of their relative resemblance to the sea creature.  Humans have yet to be able to find a happy balance with the creatures and, due in large part to public outcry, the prawn are to be evicted from their homes and moved to a new “settlement” 200km away from the city.

The movie begins the day before the prawn are scheduled to be evicted as Wikus Van Der Merwe leads a team in charge of serving the prawn their eviction notices.  During the process he is exposed to a substance that alters his genetic structure, making him the most sought after and valuable object in Johannesburg and forcing him to choose between fulfilling his own selfish human desires or helping the prawn.

Like I said, this movie is awesome.  The first half to three quarters of the movie is shot in a style very reminiscent of Cloverfield, only without the motion sickness inducing shakey-cam.  It’s an interesting way to tell the story and lends itself to a peculiar sense of intimacy with the characters.  Believe me, if even an emotionless shell like me feels connected with the characters on screen, the technique is doing it’s job. 

District 9 also does a great job of relaying its theme.  It certainly paints the human race in darker tones than most other films I can think of.  I was worried about the possibility of a heavy handed handling of message of the film due to it being set in South Africa and having obvious parallels to apartheid, but those fears proved to be unfounded.  While at certain points in the film there is literally not one likeable human character, I can’t say that any of the treatment the prawns received was historically inconsistent with the treatment experienced to this day by different minority groups around the globe.  Neill Blomkamp does an excellent job of creating sympathy for this race of seemingly unlikable aliens without stretching the boundaries of reality (well, you know, aside from having them here in the first place). 

District 9 rocks out with it’s immeasurably long cock out.  It is everything a summer action movie should be (even though it only cost $30 million to make).  The writing was tight, the characters were complex and the whole thing just flowed.  Nothing felt forced at all.  There was an actual causal relationship between the action sequences and other events in the film, it wasn’t just a bunch of “well, I’ve got a couple mill left in the budget, let’s blow some shit up!”. 

I really don’t think that’s too much to ask of a summer flick, do you?

Wachowski Brothers, USA, 2008, 135 min.

CinemaSodomy is our recurring feature where we force each other to watch films that we never would have otherwise.

This film has to be seen to be believed. It’s pure cinematic spectacle with a big heart. Too long and complicated for kids, and too colorful and fast for adults, this film got a bad rap. But look past the reviews and you’ll find a treasure trove of sights and sounds.

The Wachowski’s really outdid themselves. They created a film packed to the brim with detail. This is no slap-dash piece. You can really feel the care and attention put into every frame. The effects weave with the colorful story and characters to create a unique world. A world where the incredible images seen on the screen are entirely plausible. A world where heroes can come from humble beginnings to save the day. A world where the magic of cinema is fully realized like never before. I can confidently say that Speed Racer is the Wachowsky Brother’s best film to date.

-TC

TC had been raving about Speed Racer since the first time he saw it.  He kept telling me how awesome it was and how much he thought I would love it.  I had actually wanted to see it based on the Wachowski brothers’ work on The Matrix series, so I gleefully accepted it as my CinemaSodomy before he could think of some other subtitled piece of shit movie to torture me with. (Side note: I’m pretty sure TC doesn’t understand the underlying principles behind our CinemaSodomy feature.  It’s ok, we all know he’s a little slow).

After watching Speed Racer, one thing is certain: TC was terribly, terribly wrong on all counts.  Speed Racer is the story of a mildly retarded, yet oddly determined boy and his triumph over corporate megapowers through the sport of autoracing.  This movie was a carnival ride of suck.  Watching Speed Racer feels like accidentally taking psychedelics right before going into the circus.  It begins as a fun family outing.  It’s colorful, there’s some nifty music, a few hot chicks and some clowns!  Then somewhere in the middle of the show, you go into sensory overload.  The colors are too bright.  There’s a little too much motion and things stop making sense.  You’re completely discombobulated, unsure of where you are and just generally confused.  And, wait, why the hell are those bastard clowns trying to figure out how many of them can fit inside of YOU?

Yeah, that’s right.  The clowns are the Wachowski brothers and they’re blasting you in the butt without even asking permission.  Once you get past how cool all of the Mario Kart on crack cinematography looks, there really isn’t anything to this movie.  The talent is underutilized (seriously,you don’t make a movie with Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon and give them a combined screentime of approximately 0:37 all-the-while dressing them in clothes that fail to accentuate their lady bits) and the story is downright laughable (the stock market is controlled by autoracing? really?).

Speed Racer looks pretty and that’s about it. It’s like that stunning girl you see at a party who, when you finally get up the nerve to go and talk to her, has the voice of Fran Drescher and all the social graces of a heavily medicated Anna Nicole Smith.  All looks and no substance.  I can only hope that next time TC picks something with subtitles so that when I inevitably find myself wishing for death, I can just drift off into fantasyland instead of watching a movie I can comprehend.

Jody Hill, USA, 2009, 86 minutes

Following in the footsteps of Kevin James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop (and what a mighty fierce piece of shit that looked like), Observe and Report features Seth Rogen as Ronnie Barnhardt, a slightly mentally handicapped mall cop with delusions of grandeur in this comedy/drama/underdog story/ummmmm…..

Ok, seriously, I have no idea what the hell this movie was.  Watching Observe and Report was like watching a woman go through menopause.  There were more hot flashes and mood swings than I could possibly count.  It starts out as a comedy (I guess), became a man-against-the-world film, switched over to a drug movie and then ended on a triumphant man-against-the-world note.  It seemed like no one knew where they wanted the movie to go at all.

I have to wonder if the making of Paul Blart didn’t have some effect on the style and direction of Observe and Report.  Although I never saw Paul Blart (and good luck getting me to go to it.  The trailer was a failure of epic proportions, conjuring images of stupid humor only seen once before in the Love Guru trailer), it shares striking similarities with Observe and Report.  I mean, it’s not every day that a movie is released championing the protectors of retail consumers rights and both films were shot at about the same time (Paul Blart in March 2008 with Observe and Report following in April and May of 2008).  It’s probably just coincidental and wishful thinking on my part (I’m a huge fan of the previous Seth Rogen efforts), but I have to wonder if there wasn’t some worry of producing too similar a movie that lead to some last second script/story changes to Observe and Report in an effort to make a less similar film, at least stylistically.  I find it highly unlikely that the producing team could have been unaware of Paul Blart beforehand or would even be the least bit intimidated by a Kevin James effort, but it’s certainly a possible explanation for why the film was such a rudderless ship.

Although the movie suffers from multiple personality disorder debilitating enough to make Sybil jealous, I don’t think it was horrible.  I have a gut feeling I would like it much more after a second viewing, although I’m relatively sure it will never be anything spectacular.  It’s hard to give an opinion of a film when the advertising is so misleading.  This was like going to see Halloween and expecting to see a feel-good children’s movie.  I’m getting pretty tired of being manipulated so effectively by movie trailers.  This is the second time in a row I’ve gone to a movie expecting it to be one thing and having it be another.  Adventureland was a sweet surprise, Observe and Report was mystifying.  When I rule the world, the people responsible for creating misleading movie trailers will rue the day they produced these atrocities.

Burr Steers, USA, 2009, 102 min

17 Again is the story of Mike O’Donnell, a one-time high school basketball superstar who finds himself with two kids he barely knows and on the brink of divorce with his high school sweetheart.  He longs to relive his golden days and in supremely predictable cinematic fashion has his wish granted.  The rejuvinated and newly 17 again Mike O’Donnell makes the most of this second chance by enrolling in his children’s high school, where he gets to know his children, falls back in love with his wife, realizes how great his life was before and blah blah blah crap crap crap.

Listen, you’ve already seen this movie about a thousand times.  Sure, maybe Mr. Destiny didn’t have a very awkward incestuous love triangle.  Maybe  the girls in it weren’t as hot as the women in The Family Man.  Ultimately, however, it was the same movie.  It was fun in parts, but pointless and uninspired when you get right down to it.  There really isn’t much to say about it.  If you’ve seen the movies mentioned above or any of the countless other movies with a similar theme, you’ve seen this movie too.

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One last note: if you’re thinking of making a film, don’t have Lisa Beach and Sarah Katzman take care of the casting for you.  Seriously, could they have come up with a less likely pairing than Zac Efron and Matthew Perry for a youth-to-adult progression?  I mean, I’m sure Zac Efron is about to be the newest big star or something and Matthew Perry was, well, he was probably just sitting on his couch in his underwear at the time, but the look absolutely NOTHING like each other.  What’s the common thread, brown hair?  If I looked like Zac Efron as a teen and ended up looking like Matthew Perry, I’d be pretty pissed about how my life turned out too.  Thank God I’m much prettier than either of them and will be able to play both versions of myself when my biopic is finally unleashed upon the world.

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