Koen Mortier, Belgium, 2007, 101 min.

Normally I don’t mind dark, disturbing, dirty films. I’m a fan of anything that can subvert the normal expectations of cinema. This time, it doesn’t work. The films concerns a group of handicapped musicians who set out to win a music competition. For their drummer they decide to recruit a famous author who decides to join the band for his own strange reasons.

The drummer lives in a penthouse apartment, in clean luxury. The rest of the band lives in the seedy underbelly of the city and its outskirts. They are poor, uneducated, filthy, and just generally horrible human beings. The contrast between the two lifestyles is evident, but the motivations of the title-character are murky at best.

That was my issue with the film. It has some style, especially the opening, but the aesthetic of the film is just so ugly. And worse, the characters are so unlikeable that it is too hard to understand why anyone would want anything to do with them.

This films wins the award “Most Apt Nickname” for “Big Dick”, the rival musician who enjoys whipping it out for pleasure, for art, for combat, and anything else he feels like.

Christopher Nolan, USA, 2010, 148 min.

This film is a spectacle. Momentous in its visuals, intriguing in its structure, surprisingly poignant in its characters. Its a big-budget film, slick solid and well-paced with a great original screenplay and high-caliber acting.

After flirting with greatness in his Batman films, Nolan has finally done it. He has made a Great film. I am not a Nolan-fanboy, blindly obsessed with anything he makes, but for 2 1/2 hours I knew what it was like to be one.

This film wins the award “Best Fight Scene” for Joseph Gordon-Levitt flying around a hotel in twisting aerial combat.

James Mangold, USA, 2010, 110 min.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have inventive banter, run around, get chased, and dodge bullets in the suprisingly fun first hour.

After that, the script turns to serious, fills up with cliche’s and CGI, and ends with a whimper that the first half of the film did not deserve. The whole thing smacks of studio intervention. I would love to read the first draft.

This film wins the award “Coolest Safe-house” for Tom Cruise’s private island paradise.

Peter & Bobby Farrelly, USA, 1994, 107 min.

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

If films were measured by a Wheel of Intelligence, Dumb and Dumber is so stupid it would fly straight past Idiotland (ruled by the narrowminded Dictatorial Tyrant TC) and straight into Geniusville  (population: LCD).  Trust me, that’s a good thing.  I think everyone has at one time met someone so inept that they’re not quite sure how the other has managed to survive (coughcoughTCcough).  This is a film about two such beings, call them soulmates if you will, who have managed to find each other and eek out an existence together, however pathetic it may be.  This film is their story.

Listen, the first thing you need to know is that this is a Farrelly Brothers movie.  The directing, camera work, special effects, etc etc etc aren’t going to catch your attention.  This isn’t one of those sissy foreign language films TC loves so much.  The thing that will catch your eye is the vulgarity and the humor of the film.  Quite simply, this is a big, blundering oaf of a comedy.  It’s not witty.  There is nothing subtle about it.  What it is in actuality  is laugh out loud awesomeness.  I even caught TC chortling a few times before he remembered he’s supposed to hate this bourgeouis crap.        – LCD

The history of film is rife with dynamic duos. Groucho and Harpo, Riggs and Murtaugh, Jay and Silent Bob, and now… Lloyd and Harry of Dumb & Dumber. These titular mongoloids undertake a cross-country journey to Aspen where Lloyd (Jim Carrey) will meet up with the woman he loves (Lauren Holly) and attempt to settle down and live the rest of their lives in happiness. Harry (Jeff Daniels) comes along for the ride because each is so inept that they couldn’t possibly survive on their own.

Like Odysseus before them, they encounter assorted roadblocks on their way and slowly but surely approach their goal. But the draw of the film is not in the story. In fact, the story is thrown in as an afterthought. It feels like the filmmakers thought of these characters, made a list of scenerios to put them in, and then figured out the story later as a way to connect them together. The main characters, and their eccentricities, are the driving force in the film.

It’s a gag film, and the gags are dumb and fast. For a while it works. The performances of our abnormal heroes are unique and sort-of charming. The style is clean and colorful. For the first reel, I was becoming pleasantly surprised. Had LCD forced me to watch a film that I would actually like?

No, of course not. After thirty minutes the charm of the film wears off and I was left watching stupid people do stupid things for another hour. What I liked about it at the beginning was not enough to extend it into a feature. The charm of the characters, the speed of the jokes, the solid production values were nice, but without a story, rounded characters, or insight, the film goes nowhere fast.

The first part is dumb but fun, but I should have taken the title to heart. What starts off dumb, just gets dumber. By the time the midway point rolled around I was done with the characters and didn’t care about the story. The film turns into an ugly mess. If I had to rewrite it, I would have Lloyd and Harry drive their shaggy dog truck over a cliff about twenty minutes in. Now that would have been a good film.

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.