In case you were wondering what we have been doing all week, here is a list of the films we have watched since last time.

The Cinesthete:

1. The Room – See my review below!
   
2. High School Musical – Shut up.
3. Bullit – Standard fare except for the great car chase and the airport set-piece.
   
4. The Dirty Dozen – An awesome film with an unbelievable amount of star power. Tarantino probably stole a lot of this one for his new film.
   
5. If… – It’s slow to start but Malcolm McDowell is great and the film becomes just surreal enough. 60′s England must have had a heart attack when it saw this one.
   

The Lowest Common Denominator:

1. Bruno – Kind of gross, very awkward for the sake of being gross and awkward.  Not as funny as Borat and didn’t have nearly as much to say.  Mildly amusing at best.
   
2. Knowing – Nicholas Cage does his solve a puzzle thing again. I’m always struck by how lazy Hollywood is about research and how easily people eat it up.  Just because it’s sci-fi doesn’t mean you can make up your own rules.  And why include a documentary that refutes what happens in the movie as impossible as part of the special features on the DVD?
   
3. Napoleon Dynamite – It’s the 2000s, but everyone in Idaho still dresses like it’s 1984.  And it’s awesome.  How did Jared Hess go from making this quirky, genius of a film to the festering turd that was Nacho Libre?
   
4. The Shawshank Redemption – The Greatest Story Ever Told.  The novella by Stephen King is so good it should be part of the Bible.  The film trumps it.  Every single frame of this movie looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, if Norman Rockwell had had the balls to paint prison sex instead of baseball games and family dinners.  It’s the closest thing to perfection cinema will ever know.
   

Tommy Wiseau, USA, 2003, 99 min.

The Room is unique. On the surface its a bad film. A horrible film. Horrible direction, acting, script, etc. But its a film that intrigues, entertains and draws you in none-the-less. For those reasons, could it be considered a great film?

Written by, directed by, and starring Tommy Wiseau (a mysterious man of unknown descent), the film takes everything you know about bad films and turns it on its head. This is not bad in the traditional sense. Rise of the Scarecrows is a bad film in the traditional sense. Not this.

Wiseau seems to be on his own wavelength, and everything about the film is off. The character interaction, the dialog, the motivations, and the presentation of information are all off kilter. It’s as if an visitor to our world, who only absorbed a tentative grasp of the way humanity works, decided to make a melodrama.

The plot is unimportant for this review. It’s a simple story of a man whose fiance is cheating on him, but its complicated by random subplots and red herrings that may or may not be meaningful to everything else.  Sure, its laughable, full of horrible but quotable lines, and leaves the audience flabbergasted with its ineptitude. But it’s meaningful to Tommy Wiseau. That is what makes the film unique. This is not supposed to be bad. Its heartfelt and completely serious.

Wiseau had a vision and you can tell he acheived it. Even if he had to change his crew and his actors on several occasions. Even if people still go to midnight screenings to make fun of the film. Even if he didn’t know the difference between DV and 35mm and shot with both cameras simultaneously on the same tripod. He got what he wanted. You can feel it in The Room. It’s a work of art to Wiseau and you have to admire the film for that.

In case you were wondering what we have been doing all week, here is a list of the films we have watched since last time.

The Cinesthete:

1. The Thing – Great sci-fi horror from Carpenter. It was lovely in Bluray.
   
2. Crash – Who in their right mind would read Ballard’s Crash and think it could make a good film, and actually be right about it? Cronenberg of course.
3. Zack and Miri Make a Porno – Has some funny bits but too long and too predictable to be any good.
   
4. Comedian – I wish I could be a standup comic. It’s such a romantic job. “Romantic” in the classical way.
   
5. Batman: Gotham Knight – Another DC Universei animated film.  This time its anime Batman. These strung together shorts were sometimes great, always good, but solid all around.
   
6. Wonder Woman – An amazing DC Universe animated film telling her origin story. These people are like Pixar!
7. The Bank Job – A fast-paced British heist film with a good script and good direction.
   
8. Roxanne – Steve Martin, Cyrano de Bergerac.. what else could you want? A good film, but not Martin’s best.

The Lowest Common Denominator:

1. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – Full review coming soon.  Probably a decent movie if you haven’t read the books, but definitely fell far short of expectations.
   
2. Zack and Miri Make a Porno – Very enjoyable even if it’s a bit predictable.  Still, better than anything Kevin Smith has done lately.
   
3. Role Models – Spectacular and hilarious!  Stiffler and Rudd make a great team.
   
4. Encino Man – It’s hard to believe that 17 years after this was produced A) this movie is still awesome and B) Sean Astin went on to be in some of the best movies of all-time.
   
5. Rambo – About three minutes worth of story and 87 minutes of gore, what more would you want?  Perfect ending to the series.
   
6. He’s Just Not That Into You – The female neurosis is put on full display in this movie where every man is a prick and every woman suffers from some sort of mental retardation.  Very true to life.
   
7. Planes, Trains and Automobiles – Two unlovable schmucks turn a simple trip from Wichita, KS to Chicago, IL into an odyssey of moronic hilarity.  It’s the 80s.  It’s Steve Martin.  Of course you’ll love it, even if it’s one of his weaker films.
   
8. Twilight - one of the worst movies of all-time.  Who could like that atrocious piece of trash? Synopsis: “Well, despite the fact that everything bad that has ever happened to me is directly attributable to you and you admittedly want to drink my blood, I completely and irrevocably love you”–Kristen Stewart

In case you were wondering what we have been doing all week, here is a list of the films we have watched since last time.

The Cinesthete:

1. Three Amigos – Not my favorite Landis film, but funny and full of some really good bits.
   
2. The Program - College football told as after school specials. It was an entertaining diversion.
   
3. Superman: Doomsday – Direct to DVD DC universe animation. This was a lot of fun and made me realize why I hate the latest season of Smallville so much.
   
4. Bruno - See my review below!
   
5. Borat – Still funny, and better than Bruno.
   
6. Justice League: The New Frontier – More surprisingly great DC universe animation. This deft story of the formation of the Justice League is well-written, and action-packed.
   

The Lowest Common Denominator:

1. Balls of Fury – Amusing, but ultimately forgettable.  Ho-hum.
   
2. Three Amigos - Awesome movie from my childhood that gets better with every viewing.  How could a movie that features a singing bush and an invisible swordsman be bad? Answer: it can’t.
   
3. The Program – A college football team full of troubled players struggles to make a bowl game.  Pretty awesome and entertaining, even if it is like watching a dozen after school specials concurrently.
4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall – quite possibly the awesomest romantic comedy of all time, complete with a dracula musical featuring puppets.  Jason Segel is my hero.
   

Larry Charles, USA, 2009, 83 min.

The thing about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno and Borat is that you will never see anything like them. His films stand alone as unique projects. So when this new one came along, I just had to see it, knowing that it would be a unique experience at the worst.

I will not give away anything that happens in Bruno (I wish I didn’t read about it before I watched it!), because not knowing what is going to happen in some scenes will make them that much funnier. Suffice it so say that if you liked the first film, you will also like this film.

There are some major differences, however. Bruno does not have any scenes the caliber of the home run one-of-the-funniest-things-I’ve-ever-seen bits from Borat. It does have some that come close, and many that are more outrageous. But it is always funny.

LCD, in a rare moment of clarity, noticed the main difference between the two films after watching the trailer. Borat is an innocent likeable character, and Bruno is not.

That is true. Borat was innocent. He had feelings and the audience would feel sorry for him. He was ignorant, but not racist. And because of this he let people make fools of themselves. Bruno is in your face, annoying, and one-dimensional. He forces people to make fools of themselves because he almost attacks them. It’s like police entrapment.

But it is funny. Very funny. And although the film has no real story, it goes smoothly from one bit to the next. It’s not a great film that has something to say like Borat did, but it was entertaining, over-the-top, border-line offensive, and one of a kind.