High School

Frederick Wiseman's 1968 documentary is an interesting film for two reasons. The first is that it shows a world very similar to a universal experience, but its world is specific and mired in time and culture. The second is that it exhibits a group of people on the brink of liberation who acknowledge individualism, but deny its place in school. HIGH SCHOOL is filmed with intimacy. Wiseman practically gets right in the faces of the students and teachers, and perhaps just because of the medium of film or the camera itself, he gets a lot of candid and unattractive material out of the teachers and students. It's an interesting look at particulars, and an interesting stylistic approach to a documentary. It shows, there are no voiceovers, and there are no outside interviews. Still pretty relevant as well.
High School: ★★★1/2

Summer Hours

SUMMER HOURS is a great film: encompassing many different aspects of people and life within wonderfully directed scenes of naturalism and honesty. I've not seen a film with greater honesty about teenagers, or greater honesty about families. In SUMMER HOURS, three siblings gather around the impending death of their mother. Their father was never around, and so she is their beacon, their matriarch. The first quarter or so of the film depicts the family joking and happy around the matriarch in her home: a gorgeous, lurid house filled to the brim with un-calculatable art and culture. It's the 21st century, and the siblings move about each other in defensive mechanisms, each going to see the mother at different points and manipulating her for some sort of material item. What SUMMER HOURS gets right is this: the time that passes between seeing people when you're disconnected, the sibling battle between desires for parental attention and a common bond against those parents descent or ascent, and the teenagers obliviousness to it all expect on base levels of: dad's being a dick. As Olivier Assayas films SUMMER HOURS, as he directs his actors, the film grows to a greater level of greatness. The acting is perfect, people talk over each other, whisper, blink, like a symphony of images and reactions to each other. And then in the second half, Assayas makes SUMMER HOURS even more modern and relevant. For, Assayas is a director who concerns himself with money. Money. Money, how it works, how it's complicated, how it divides the family, how sensibilities and greater truths transcend that desire for money, and then reality crashes into them in the form of closer family. A great film.
Summer Hours: ★★★★

Encounters at the End of the World

Not without great images, some great voiceover work, ideas, and comedy, Werner Herzog's film where he travels to Antarctica is somewhat underwhelming. Beginning with an underwater shot of breathtaking quality, Herzog tells us that such images inspired him to make the film. He goes on to document the scientists who live at a compound in Antarctica. All are quirky and some are entertaining. These people seem to have made a greater effect on Herzog than most else in the film. He lingers on them for too much time, I think, and that pulls the films quality down. For, although Herzog is experiencing Antarctica first-hand, and he thus finds lesser subjects more interesting, we aren't in his position, and I wanted more of the imagery that was at the beginning of the film. It's also spaced out throughout the duration of the film, but its not enough for the promise that Herzog gives. There's some greatness here; especially concerning a suicidal penguin, and the film as a whole is worth seeing, but I feel as if on some level it's a bit of a failure. It's scope is too narrow. I admire Herzog's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS a whole lot more because it lingers on the images rather than dubiously entertaining or quirky scientists. Will I remember the scientists a month from now, and how one told a lot of funny jokes at Antarctica bars and another liked to watch sci-fi films? Or will I really remember the underwater stalagmite-esque eeriness? This is what I think Herzog neglected. Sure, people are interesting, but the film is about the End of the World (Antarctica) and also, in a way, a realization of eventual death. But you can question anyone about this anywhere and discover this simplicity. If you're going to Antarctica, you better have something real to show us.
Encounters at the End of the World: ★★1/2

M. Butterfly

M. BUTTERFLY is a sad misfire from David Cronenberg. Based off of a play, and definitely creepy, M. BUTTERFLY's creepiness actually undermines it. Rather than taking its political / social statement seriously, the story becomes mired in silliness and weirdness. The story is about an Englishman named Rene (Jeremy Irons) who lives in China working for the British embassy. He meets an opera singer who he dubs Butterfly, who teaches him about Chinese culture. One of her theories centers around the opera Madame Butterfly. She tells him that the Chinese hate the opera, because it's about an oriental woman sacrificing herself for a white man. Rene, however, becomes infatuated with Butterfly, and over the years fashion her as his own Madame Butterfly. The joke however, is on him, for, quite obviously so, Butterfly is a man, and is stealing secrets about the embassy from him. This is an interesting premise, but Cronenberg doesn't handle it well. The film is occasionally boring and disingenuous. Either Cronenberg doesn't trust that the audience knows Butterfly is a man, or he knows that we will and goes through boring reveals anyway. Basically, M. BUTTERFLY is a real disappointment and probably Cronenberg's weakest film. There's a story to tell here, but the way that Cronenberg tells it is too unattractive to be appealing or even admirable.
M. Butterfly: ★★

Graveyard of Honor

Takashi Miike's GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is unlike anything you'll ever see. I can describe two films that this GRAVEYARD resembles, and those two are in their own right controversial and shocking. Like Martin Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, GRAVEYARD shows the inner workings of the mob, and exhibits a special interest of the director in the mob. Like Scorsese, Miike is no member or even possible prospect of the mob, but he is intrigued by them. In his film though, Miike has a particular interest in the mechanisms of the mob. Certain words and terms are explained in subtitles, commerce and killings are also explained at length. The other film GRAVEYARD resembles is HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. That film is gross and raw, featuring a disgusting rapist who acts without emotion. GRAVEYARD OF HONOR's main character is similarly evil and unemotional. Entering the mob after saving the boss' life, Ishimatsu (played perfectly by Goro Kishitani) rises quickly. After a kill, or a job, or an escape, Ishimatsu rapes a random girl brutally. Filmed in handheld, Miike exemplifies Ishimatsu's crime, and later, the girl becomes his wife, continuously raped and abused. Ishimatsu goes off the rails, but he's a powerhouse, and Miike shows how an insane character like Ishimatsu in unknowingly used by different mob families. GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is one of the best films ever made about the mob. It is raw and powerful.
Graveyard of Honor: ★★★★

Family Guy (Seasons 5 & 6)

"Family Guy" is basically a bad show, over-reliant on making fun of celebrities who aren't much higher morally or in terms of talent that the creator himself, with poor writing that feels as if it were randomly selected by manatees, and an over-reliance upon parodying superior storylines and passing them off as its own to viewers who aren't as knowing of current pop-culture. The characters are uneven, and some of the events or actions that take place are borderline gross, desperate in their necessity to shock or be funny. Despite all of this, which makes "Family Guy" a technically bad show, its still pretty funny, and decent lazy television. It's not "good" in any way, but its not terrible. Indefensible in any way, but not bad for stupid entertainment.
Family Guy: ★★1/2

Vera Drake

VERA DRAKE is a strong, powerful film of naturalism by Mike Leigh. Starring Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake, Leigh creates in a wonderful meeting of talents, a natural period piece. Set in 1950, Vera is a happy older woman living with her husband and children. Her daughter is being courted by an awkward but well-meaning neighbor boy, and her entire family is shown as a generally kind and gracious one. Vera, however, harbors a secret. She is an abortionist. As provoking as this sounds though, this slow and unostentatious revelation and way of life is portrayed with such obviousness and matter of factness, and Vera is shown to be so well-meaning, that even detractors to the practice would have to make admissions here. Vera believes that she's helping these women, and in many ways, she really is. Her practice is obviously seen as sinister by the people and the times though, and in many ways VERA DRAKE is about how well-meaning people can be screwed by a system that holds power over them and even members of the system on her side. From a technical point of view, VERA DRAKE is impeccable. The production design, lighting, acting is all superb: the world that Leigh creates is believable and clean. This makes the film even more of a tragedy. Small instances and small hardships are stressed. Despite the punishment for Vera's practice being seemingly minor, in the scope of her life, it's massive. Also present here is something that exists in a rarity in contemporary cinema: burrowing into all of the unattractive aspects of a subject. For despite Vera Drake being seemingly kind, there is a sinister nature to the way her process is filmed, her detachment from her subjects, her children's hatred toward her, the questionable loyalty of the family's best friend. VERA DRAKE is a pretty great film, modern and relevant, but also filmed with talent and intelligence.
Vera Drake: ★★★★

Cigarette Burns

Despite 2011's THE WARD marking the official return to cinema of John Carpenter, CIGARETTE BURNS was a tv episode that Carpenter directed for a series called "Masters of Horror" in 2005. It serves, along with Carpenter's entire body of work, as a really entertaining film mired in the history of cinema. CIGARETTE BURNS, especially, concerns itself with this. In the film, Kirby Sweetman, the owner of a failing nostalgia-theater, takes a job from a rich oddball who lives in a creepy house on a hill. Kirby is requested to find an old, lost film called LA FIN ABSOLUE DE MONDE (THE ABSOLUTE END OF THE WORLD) that, upon its premiere, caused mass chaos and death. Kirby traverses among a host of creepy characters, including a lost-film hoarder who kills people, but as he becomes obsessed with discovering LA FIN ABSOLUE DE MONDE, he begins to see cigarette burns (the mark in films to signify that the reel has to be changed) filled with horrific images. Kirby has a damaged past though: a dead girlfriend, and she begins to effuse into his insane visions. With a combination of creepy imagery and historic film craziness, Carpenter accomplishes a story funnier and weirder than what it can accomplish. Carpenter's poor actors and poor production design are nevertheless overwhelmed by style and oddity, and CIGARETTE BURNS is ultimately a fun time.
Cigarette Burns: ★★★

Putty Hill

PUTTY HILL is a luridly shot film with a structure a lot like Richard Linklater's SLACKER or BEFORE SUNSET in its lingering upon regular townsfolk and their experiences and sensibilities. Following the death of a local, PUTTY HILL is a pretend-documentary that interviews a few people who knew the boy. What PUTTY HILL accomplishes though, by contrasting its imagery with its dull, meaningless people, is that it shows a diminishing importance of death. The complete meaninglessness of the townspeople, and their realization of their unimportance, puts a new light on the death: that it doesn't even matter if people don't matter. And thus, PUTTY HILL is a film about decline. Filmed so luridly though, it seems to suggest a preciousness of the small down, but a sad and inevitable, pervasive decline. Everyone realizes this decline, and yet there is little resistance, but a lot of 'oh wells' and small pleasures out of tragedy. In an odd and disturbing scene, the townspeople have a party in remembrance of the dead boy, but rather than walk around in black lightly eating and lightly talking, they literally party. They get drunk and dirty dance, and it becomes completely clear that this town will die slowly and painfully.
Putty Hill: ★★★

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

One of the greatest films ever made, here, George Lucas left his darling creation, STAR WARS, off to another director. With Irvin Kershner,  EMPIRE became a film that was trenchantly of the style and tradition of Lucas' original, but left a lot of the corniness of Lucas' film for all-out oddities. The worm scene, Boba Fett, carbonite, and some of the most memorable lines in cinema, all populate EMPIRE. The film is so clean in its characterizations too, that its able to take some real time and suspense. A lot more is at stake in EMPIRE, characters aren't so perfect, but are vulnerable and reliant upon each other. The galaxy, and the aliens that exist in it, are fleshed out and brought into great visual compositions. EMPIRE is an improvement on NEW HOPE, but it its also an improvement upon the mythology and even the storytelling. There's a cleaner narrative in EMPIRE, and a newly realized vastness. NEW HOPE could almost be a standalone because the Death Star is utterly destroyed, but EMPIRE suggests a much larger, pervasive evil. Great.
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back: ★★★★

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Rickety and clunky, dirty and tattered, A NEW HOPE was not the film that I expected to see when I put the VHS tape into the player. As a child, I think, A NEW HOPE was one of the first films I ever saw, or at least one of the first that I can remember seeing. Every single bit of it seemed real and extraordinary, and now, approaching my two thousandth film, cluttered with the easy technicals of AVATAR and b-movie GI-JOE, A NEW HOPE seems rickety and old. The film, with the Millennium Falcon described as a "heap of junk" even in the duration, and a lot of corny moments next to convenient jumps in time, A NEW HOPE is still one of the best looking special-effects creations ever, and still one of my favorite films of all time. A NEW HOPE behind a lot of its own notions, is a film of young vs. old, of good vs. evil on a simple and primal level. The Coen Brothers have made a career of their belief in absolute evil, and A NEW HOPE proclaims it with a winking eye, knowing where its story will eventually end, and maturing in that revolution. No bulbous, over-shiny spaceship of modern films even looks as good as the dubiously flyable Millenium Falcon, or the Star Destroyers of Darth Vader. The idea to actually create these flying creatures was a great one, for there is no question to their authenticity. The plastic models, puppet aliens, and labyrinthian fights are pure and great.
A New Hope: ★★★★

My Son My Son What Have Ye Done?

MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE? is a film of pure oddity from Werner Herzog. It could almost be seen as Herzog's reaction to "whimsy" in its overuse of completely batshit notions, animals, and characters. The film opens with a cop (Willem Dafoe) arriving at the scene of a murder. He passes by a man, Brad, (Michael Shannon) who mutters to him "razzle dazzle them, razzle dazzle them" and enters the house, seeing a woman with a sword through her. It turns out that the strange man from outside is the murderer, and that the woman inside is his mother. He lives across the street, and starts yelling that he has hostages. In a series of flashbacks, Dafoe's cop interviews the man's fiancé (Chloe Sevigny) and his theater director. After seeing his friends die in a rafting accident after having a premonition about it, the flamingo obsessed Brad returns with the type of grandeur in his motions similar to that of the man he plays in a Sophocles play. With odd detail to Dafoe's interview, which seems more out of pure interest that real, relevant worth, Herzog shows us a descent into insanity that is surrounded by insane notions and gestures. Flamingos, ostrichs, etc. all inhabit the film in the same weird way that Iguanas were intriguing to the cracked-up cop in Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT. As a serious film, or even one to stand up in Herzog's oeuvre, MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE isn't much. Its insanity, which is the compelling factor of the film, also bogs it down because explanatory sequences can be ostriches. But there's some really great pallid imagery here, which is almost a reason to see the film in itself. Ultimately, the film's pretty fun, and always entertaining.
My Son My Son What Have Ye Done?: ★★★

Road to Nowhere

Modern and confusing, creepy in its languor, ROAD TO NOWHERE is one of the strangest films you'll ever see. Directed by lionized cult director Monte Hellman, who hasn't made a film in twenty-one years, ROAD TO NOWHERE is about put-ons and how that translates in films. The film considers Mitch, the director of a film also called ROAD TO NOWHERE that only exists within Hellman's film. Mitch finds an unknown actress to play the coveted role of the lead. His adaptational film of true events is somewhat high profile, and role is especially so. Thus, when Mitch puts in an unknown (brilliantly played by Shannyn Sossamon), there's a lot for Hellman to work with in terms of identity. A lot of the time in ROAD TO NOWHERE, we're not sure which film we're actually watching, and it's never spelled out. Thus, characters like Sossamon's have a lot of liberties to act in different conflicting manners, none of which are ever very clear. But the way in which people act towards their directors (bosses) or towards other actors (while acting) or in supposedly authentic ways (in romance) is always dubious. Which one are they employing? Hellman's film is masterful. Every scene is, by itself, a perfect composition. But in the scope of the entire film with its jumps in time, dubious characters, and which film you're watching, ROAD TO NOWHERE becomes intricate and complicated. It's one of the most challenging films of 2011, but ultimately, its payoff is worthwhile.
Road to Nowhere: ★★★1/2

Bringing Out the Dead

Here is one of the most under-appreciated films Martin Scorsese has ever made. It is practically unmentioned in his legacy of films, and yet it is one of his best and most modern. Starring Nicholas Cage as an ambulance driver with insomnia, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is haunting and beautiful, every shot calculated to a pastel work of color, night lights and striking power. I love this film. Cage's Frank Pierce is the modern version of De Niro's Taxi Driver. Both characters traverse the streets of New York City, and both have a deep and intense hatred towards the people of the city. Both work at night, and both were thought up by Paul Schrader and Scorsese. Pierce sees specters of the people he failed to save on every streetcorner, there's a gross routine to his work, and a number of illuminating characters. Shot with great charisma, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD considers Pierce's failures and the role he plays with them. These ambulance drivers avoid their duties, but in telling gestures. The hatred of people is most intriguing, Pierce is disgusted with a sort of immorality within his world in the same way that the taxi driver was, but he is stagnated and unable to act. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is more frightening because it represents a constant stewing but never a boil.
Bringing Out The Dead: ★★★★

The Rum Diary

Based off of a Hunter S. Thompson novel but basically attempting to stand with FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as a "here's Johnny Depp playing Hunter S. Thompson" movie, THE RUM DIARY is so uneven a film its impossible to enjoy. Depp plays Paul Kemp, a journalist who flies into Puerto Rico to help write for a failing paper. There's a manager (Richard Jenkins) who's an idiot who thinks he's smart because he's surrounded by Puerto Ricans and drunks, there's a photographer Bob (Michael Risposi whose voice is a dead ringer for Michael Madsen's), and an extreme drunk named Moberg. Kemp begins to meander around in sexy cars, getting too drunk to make smart decisions: lighting a policeman on fire, running a car through a building, and becoming involved with a real estate scheme that doesn't really matter. He does acid in a really funny scene, is photographed beautifully in Puerto Rico, and becomes involved with Chenault (Amber Heard). The problem with THE RUM DIARY is it's so infrequently fun. Most of the time it's pretty boring, and even funny or interesting scenes don't lead up to anything, mean anything, or change anything. Simply put, the film's a bore.
The Rum Diary: ★★

Beginners

For many reasons, BEGINNERS shouldn't be as good a film as it is. It's got weird little sum-upances of the world, liberal jumps through time, and a few too many quirks. However, its still not bad, and in fact, it's pretty good. Probably due to the acting presence of Ewan McGregor, BEGINNERS' quirks come off more melancholy than they would have in the presence of any other actor. The story consider's McGregor's Oliver, a sad sack who endangers his own endeavors through fake senses of incompletion. The story jumps between his father's battle with cancer and simultaneous coming out of the closet, and Oliver's romantic pursuit of a frenchwoman named Anna (Melanie Laurent) months after his father's death. Here is the strength of the film though: everything that could have been grating is under a strong control by director Mike Mills. All of Oliver's quirks and over-explanations are sort of sad, so they aren't annoying. His father's (Christopher Plummer) exploration of his gayness isn't exploitive but also sort of depressing because he's exploring this side of himself briskly and he has little time to explore it because soon he'll die. This fleeting nature of Plummer's character strengthens the Oliver-Anna relationship because Oliver has the realization that he can't be fooling around with his desires. This simplicity is handled well. Furthermore, BEGINNERS has a wonderfully modern look about it: filled with all of the yellows and oranges and that have colorized 21st century films. If this film has a weakness, it exists within Melanie Laurent, who is underused and practically an emblem. If her character had been strengthened, and some of the quirks dialed down to the point of nonexistence, BEGINNERS would be a really great film. Instead it is flawed, but entertaining and occasionally beautiful.
Beginners: ★★★

Terri

TERRI is a largely successful film because it daringly tells a conventional story, but falls into none of the clichés or pitfalls that usually inhabit those types of films. Directed with real intelligence and honesty by Azazel Jacobs, TERRI tells of an obese fifteen year old named Terri (Jacob Wysocki) who doesn't really feel so diminutive in his secluded position, but really quite comfortable. Terri is called in by the vice principal Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly) one day for some minor offense, and Fitzgerald projects his own view of a loser-child upon Terri. The two develop a mutual understanding, but their friendship is mapped over by a few realizations of dependency. For, despite Terri's independence, he is still a little pathetic, and despite Mr. Fitzgerald's assumed solidarity, he's really just projecting a bunch of things he experienced as a child upon a group of students he's deemed as losers. Fitzgerald is compelling in this way, for he has in a way become a form of bully, especially by singling out kids he assumes to be outcasts. In this manner, Terri shows Fitzgerald his true intents. A lot of TERRI relies on the idea that people are always doing things for themselves. This also expresses itself in a complex and honest part of the story involving a hot fellow classmate of Terri's, who is fingered in science class and in danger of expulsion. Terri stands up for the girl, but she herself was implicit in the fingering, and uses Terri in subtle ways. TERRI is an honest film in its willingness to show us things that people usually shrug off about high school students. It's also a very good film.
Terri: ★★★1/2

The Joneses

Odd for a film like THE JONESES to be so transparent and simplistic in its title, which refers to the saying 'keeping up with the Joneses'. So facile a title would not reflect some of the real fun that exists within the film, but such an idiotic title is also reflective on the downfall of the film, which is that its expectations for itself were never set very high. The story, which is, of course, ludicrous, is about a company which sets up fake families of people in rich neighborhoods who are given all the new, hottest stuff to parade about and force sales up. This fake family, consisting of the nymphomaniac Amber Heard as the daughter, David Duchovny as the inexperienced "father", Demi Moore as the weathered and ambitious "mother" and Ben Hollingsworth as the closeted "son". At first, Steve (Duchovny) is doing horrifically in his sales, and for a while the film tracks his struggle and unlikely ascent. Some of the methods the Joneses go through are pretty funny, and the odd humanity the "family" finds resembles that same good, buried movie. How the film fails though, is that it becomes so simplistic as to become stupid. It has a message of how we don't need to be keeping up with the Joneses, and a neighbor even kills himself because he has bought so intensely into their ideology. Steve Jones feels terribly, as if this is his fault, but there is no fault put on the idiots who buy in, and they are here excused. This then humanizes the Joneses, who are really just idiotic hogs who bask in their new shit and whine about how their lives aren't perfect. Such half-notions about 'money doesn't make you happy' and you can't 'keep up with the Joneses' is what makes this such a simplistic drag.
The Joneses: ★1/2

The Strange Case of Angelica

I was a huge fan of last year's ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL, which is by the same director as this film. The director, Manoel de Oliveira is not to ever be taken lightly. He will be 103 years old this year, and he is the second eldest film director ever behind George Abbott, who lived to be 107. ECCENTRICITIES was an introduction to Oliveira's work for me, and I expected a lot out of THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA, which is similar to ECCENTRICITIES in many ways. For one thing, the films both have a very similar look, for Oliveira re-used the cinematographer of the previous film for this one. The look is brilliant still, there's an old-world look to his modern city. In THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA, just as languid a film as ECCENTRICITIES, a young photographer is beckoned to the estate of a rich family, whose daughter Angelica has just died. He is to photograph the corpse, and he is overwhelmed by Angelica's presence, even though she's dead. Angelica looks placid as she lies in brilliant yellow, and the photographer goes on to photograph men working across from his flat. His obsession deepens though, and he sees Angelica blinking in the photographs, and she finally separates him from his body and takes him through the sky. There is no ridiculousness here though, for Oliveira treats the tale as if it was an old folktale being retold through film. This is such a quiet and gorgeous film, and perhaps it does not deserve the 'not enough' feeling I harbor towards it considering how it came after my introduction to the director, and thus his style realized.
The Strange Case of Angelica: ★★★

Anonymous

It's too bad that Roland Emmerich made ANONYMOUS. But it's also a great joy that he made it. Emmerich, the director to schlocky, idiotic, coherent dialogue sparse films like GODZILLA, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, INDEPENDENCE DAY and 2012, would never have been expected in a million years to make a film about the Oxfordian Theory, but he did. This, I think, (his track record especially), has caused ANONYMOUS to be ridiculously and unfairly nit-picked, and even dismissed by many critics. That's a shame, for if Emmerich's name, and the allegory he places within the film that invigorates his worth were absent, ANONYMOUS would be revered across the board. Sure it's overcomplicated, and its been described even as muddled, but it adds to the fun. Emmerich crafts an extreme-version of the Elizabethan days perhaps because of the exaggerated nature of his disaster films. The film makes the case for (or entertains us with the idea that) William Shakespeare never actually wrote any of the plays attributed to him. Rather, the plays, poems, sonnets, were all the work of a nobleman named Edward de Veer. de Veer, the film exhibits, was a genius, and he is played as such in an Oscar worthy performance by Rhys Ifans. (Again, it's too bad such a performance will be overlooked because the film is made by Emmerich). Skipping around through his timeline with little to assist us but aging hair and a few different actors, Emmerich shows us a labyrinthian world. For ANONYMOUS is, in fact, so complicated and fun, ridiculous and overwrought, that it's affecting. de Veer is brilliant and captivating, and the political trials are so burdened with melodrama that it becomes fun rather than instructive or argumentative. I have one quibble though: would the works of Shakespeare really be so easily explained through the trivialities of de Veer in any grand scale? Of course not, and that's why the Oxfordian Theory is really, really stupid. But who cares, it makes for a pretty great movie: one of my favorites of the year in its unintentional pleasures, and its pure fun with words. Cronenberg once said that he didn't even see the difference between action in the form of violence and action in the form of talking. This is a film that embraces that idea.
Anonymous: ★★★1/2

Breaking Bad (S.4)

Season four of AMC's "Breaking Bad" is not only the best season of the show, but has about three episodes that deserve to be placed near the zenith of television perfection. Explored more, or perhaps just fully realized in the show's fourth season is the idea that middle class, timid white guy Walter White has the desire to be like what the low class, crude Jesse Pinkman is. "Breaking Bad" is a brilliant show, deserving of high praise and wider audiences.
Breaking Bad (S.4): ★★★★

Carrie

CARRIE is a problematic film, one that has a great beginning, great middle, and an end which is so atrocious, is repurposes the previously great segments, and ruins the film. Directed by the occasionally unwieldy, but talented Brian de Palma, CARRIE is a simple horror story, but its artful and creepy in its opening. de Palma begins with Carrie, an outcast at school and daughter to a religious nut, naked in the locker room at school. Many directors have started their films with blatant female nudity (see: PLEASE GIVE), but it acts as a pretentious precursor to a pretentious film. de Palma's decision to start the film this way is sort of brilliant though. Carrie looks like a naked animal, like a cat shaved and thrown in water. She's bony and creepy (played with real knowledge by Sissy Spacek), and while in the shower, she reaches down between her legs and her fingers come up blood tinged. Because of her idiot mother, Carrie (who is a senior in high school) doesn't even know about periods, and past the obvious creepiness of a stunted puberty, Carrie runs at her fellow seniors, bloody fingers outstretched like a mad creature. Her classmates laugh at her and humiliate her, and this sets up de Palma's world as an immoral creature itself. Even the teacher who pities Carrie is at heart just as disgusted with her, but acts towards her in kind gestures just to prove a point to herself. Then the horror bit sets in, and we discover that Carrie has the power of telekinesis. This changes her life, and she is even asked out by the only goodhearted person in the film to the prom as a pity-gesture. Despite these motives, de Palma creates a great sequence here, showing Carrie and the boy dancing round and round as his camera follows them round and round. There is a plot at work though, for the girls from earlier plan to humiliate Carrie by dousing her in pig's blood. Carrie is now beautiful at the Prom: her face is clean and scintillating, but we know that it will soon be stained by pig's blood. Then de Palma fucks up. In the last scenes of the movie, he throws all of these wonderful ideas out the window, Carrie goes batshit crazy, and we've lost any true beauty or true horror to pretentious camera tricks, confusing and unnecessary split screens, and yells. Any animalism that existed, and quasi-Cinderella horror story that de Palma set up is ruined. For me, CARRIE is one of the saddest failures I've ever seen, because it had so much potential. Turn off the film right when Carrie gets doused in blood and you've got a really fine film, but that is not the case, and as a whole, de Palma makes CARRIE not work. A real shame.
Carrie: ★★1/2