★★—The Bride? More like The Ex. Am-I-right? I sort of liked this, at first. It seems that it is universally hated, but I thought it was sweet, though incredibly unfocused. I think it would be more accurate to say I wanted to like it… But the more I think about it, the worse I feel about it.
Recent Oscar winner Jessie Buckley is Jean Harlow is Marla Singer… with some shit on her face. She’s also inexplicably possessed by Mary Shelley some of the time. Quotes Melville a lot, ye olde “I prefer not to.”
Some Gyllenhaal-on-Gyllenhaal action. Maggie directs what I assume will be her last film for a while. Jake plays a Fred Astaire type that Frankenstein is really into. Speaking of weird siblings, this super niche Swedish electronica band, the Knife, showed up playing not period music. The band is made up of Karin and Olof Dreijer. You can’t miss them. Karin looked more like a zombie than Frankenstein.
Like Christian Bale in everything. This was no different, though it was no Big Short. People are constantly trying to fuck with him. Kids, if you are listening, picking a fight with a large man that looks like that is ill-advised. Then again, he passes as a waiter at one point. Am I sure I liked this movie?
Takes place in the mid-1930s, roughly around the time Bride of Frankenstein came out. Love a period piece, usually. Way more dancing than I was expecting. Lot of film references. Ones I recognized, in addition to Bride of Frankenstein, include Bonnie and Clyde, Natural Born Killers, Moulin Rouge, Poor Things, Young Frankenstein.
Overall. Too long. Too referential. Too little substance. Plot is insane, but not in a good way. Everything with Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz was unnecessary.
★★★★★--Movie about looking back after a lifetime of success and realizing you fucked up. Watched this the day before my sister’s wedding. A wedding I was officiating. Seemed like the best movie possible going into the occasion.
George Clooney plays title character Jay Kelly, who is a famous actor much like George Clooney who also starred in all the same roles the real George Clooney starred in. Things get pretty meta. He is always wonderful, this maybe especially so. Noah Baumbach directs. Wrote it with Emily Mortimer who plays Jay Kelly’s hairstylist.
Rest of the cast is star-studded. Adam Sandler knocks it out of the park as Jay’s manager Ron. He has a wife back home, played by director Greta Gerwig (who is Baumbach’s real life wife), but he also has unresolved history with Jay's publicist Liz, played by the ageless Laura Dern. Billy Crudup is an actor/former friend of Jay’s that he screwed over to get his big break. Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough is Jessica Kelly, Jay's elder daughter, while Grace Edwards is Daisy Kelly, Jay's younger daughter who he did a little bit better of a job raising. Stacy Keach plays Jay’s dad. And Patrick Wilson plays actor Ben Alcock who is also an A-lister managed by Ron but is not quite on Jay’s level of stardom.
While I loved it, it kind of lost me in the last 30 minutes before correcting course to stick the landing. This wonderful meditation on aging, legacy, power, perception, family, stardom, celebrity, celebrity worship, friendship, brotherhood, betrayal, and guilt. Yeah, it’s pretty great.
★★★★★-Since The Royal Tenenbaums, I've been all in on Wes Anderson, seeing every film opening weekend. He is one of maybe 10 directors who I'm going to make a spectacle of when they have a movie come out. Have I had a great seeing all of them? Fuck yeah, I have. Asteroid City is no exception, though I am not sure if I really understand it.
The film is pretty complex in the way that The French Dispatch is complex. Where we get the story of a publication in The French Dispatch while we are also given some of the best stories to come out of that journalism, in this movie we are told about the production of a play, showing that play, and weaving other stories within them.
This is what you call a metatextual approach, yeah, I went to grad school. First the movie gives us a broadcast of the story behind the play which segues into the first act which follows people as they arrive at a Junior Stargazer convention. Between acts, we are then given behind-the-scenes moments with the actors, director, writer, broadcaster, so forth, who are giving this production a life of its own while offering the audience (real [us viewing the movie] and imagined [the 1955 television viewer]) a glimpse into the creative process. Beyond this, not to give too much away, the film is really, deep down, a lighthearted search for meaning, complete with nuclear testing, alien encounters, and ray guns. And that is just within the play.
Cast includes most of his usuals and some newcomers to his universe. They include: Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell (loved him in this, by the by), Hong Chau (she the front of house manager in The Menu), Margot Robbie, Matt Dillon, Hope Davis ( The Daytrippers, American Splendor), Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Rupert Friend (he's one of the stars of the show Homeland), Maya Hawke (nepo baby child of Ethan Hawke and Uma, she was in such flicks as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Fear Street Part One: 1994, Do Revenge, she also played the part of Robin Buckley in Stranger Things), Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Liev Schreiber, Fisher Stevens (he's the white guy playing the Indian guy in Short Circuit, he's also in Succession), Tilda Swinton, Tony Revolori (he was the bellboy, the lead, in The Grand Budapest Hotel), Edward Norton (who looks pretty exactly like William Faulkner in this), Steve Park (he is probably most remembered for being the Asian guy on In Living Color, he was also in Do the Right Thing, Falling Down, Fargo, and The French Dispatch among other things. I suspect this might be a breakout role), and Jeffrey Wright. Also, a bunch of children, Anderson loves him some witty wiz kids. Among them, the main one, this kid Jake Ryan, is the most notable and is probably destined to be in all kinds of Wes Anderson future projects. Also, Sophia Lillis from It, and this Grace Edwards girl who plays ScarJo's daughter.
I love a meta movie, and I love some Wes Anderson. This one is full of his signatures and feels like the culmination of his work. Not sure if I'll like it more or less with more viewings, but more viewings are definitely required. Didn't crack my top three Anderson movies, (The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums) but right now I'd put it at about four. We'll see if I feel better about it down the road.
★-Not good. In fact, very bad. It's there with Pootie Tang on the bell-curve of cinema. At least movies like that and Freddy Got Fingered have cult value. “Sepatow!”
Seems like it's supposed to be an ode to silent film actors as well as a Hollywood satire, but it really doesn't work. The gist is a mute mental patient played by Charlie Day happens to look like this pain in the ass star and gets thrown into stardom after the other guy dies while autoerotic asphyxiating himself. We then follow this still silent, non-actor guy's rise to fame and fortune.
Movie sort of relies on cameos to provide humor. It feels like one of those, dude calls in every big name he knows, and they come out and phone in a day of shooting. People you'll see in this flick: Jason Bateman, Kate Beckinsale, Adrien Brody, Common, Edie Falco, Glenn Howerton, Ken Jeong, Ray Liotta in his last role, John Malkovich, and Jason Sudeikis, among others. Something like Santa's Slay, for example, which also has cult appeal.
More than anything, it was an unfunny satire about the type of douche bags that we hear about in these Hollywood inside baseball movies that become hot every few years. These have been coming out forever. Examples off the top of my head: The Player, Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Hail Caesar!, Barton Fink, The Aviator, Bowfinger, Ed Wood, the Eddie Murphy Dolemite movie, The Artist, The Disaster Artist, Movie 43, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (a must-see), Get Shorty, Sullivan's Travels, The Bad and the Beautiful, Singin' in the Rain, Babylon (which I thought was underrated)... All of those movies are infinitely better than Fool's Paradise, which bummed me out.
So, yeah, unfortunately a shockingly bad movie, Fool's Paradise was pretty much unwatchable. Dull-witted, unfunny, aimless. Avoid.
The Player. "Do places like this really exist?" "Only in the movies." Directed in Robert Altman and released in 1992. Stars Tim Robbins in an incredible role/performance.
Gist of the movie is a Hollywood studio executive sort of spirals after he starts getting death threats from a writer whos script he rejected, which he takes much pride in and does many times a day. He thinks he's figured it out and ends up killing the guy and getting with his girlfriend. Ultimately, however, there is a "happy ending" for the executive, which is great for him, that prick.
As you might have guessed, this is a very dark, black comedy/satire. It stars Italian film star Greta Scacchi as the love interest, Fred Ward from Tremors and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Whoopi Goldberg, Vincent D'Onofrio, "that guy" Peter Gallagher, Brion James from Blade Runner and 48 Hrs., and Cynthia Stevenson from Happiness (which I do not recommend), Dean Stockwell from Blue Velvet and Paris, Texas, and Richard E. Grant who was nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (he is great in this movie), among many others. It makes many film and meta references, and has 65 celebrities making cameo appearances.
Sum up with: Extremely dark. Super meta. Occasionally funny. Has a very messed up sex scene where a guy tells a gal he’s doing it with that he killed her ex to make it hotter. Oof. Best use of saying the name of the movie within the movie of all time though.
Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood. Oh my fucking gawd ya'll. Two lines from the movie sum up my reactions to the movie, "That was the best acting I've ever seen in my whole life" and "You're real, right?" Or something like that. Sort of Tarantino's way of telling you what he thinks about the film. Like when Aldo at the end of Inglourious Bastards says, "I think this just might be my masterpiece." At least the first one, any way. Lot of chicken mole, amigos. Rotten Tomato score is 85% Fresh. This is a travesty. In no frame of mind to definitively say this, but after one viewing, it is my favorite Taratino movie. At least on this night.
Gist of the movie is that a "has been" actor (who lives next door to Sharon Tate), one Rick Dalton played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stunt double, Cliff Booth played by Brad Pitt, who is more than a brother and not quite a wife go about and hang around, doing their things in L.A. in 1969, building up to the violence that you know is coming at the hands of the Manson Family. The trailer makes it look like a Manson flick mostly dealing with the murder of Sharon Tate, played wonderfully by Margot Robbie, but it is really a buddy hangout movie. Great one at that. Minimal violence for a Tarantino movie and then we get what we were waiting for.
The Tate family, notably sister Debra, was originally pissed that Tarantino and company were making this movie that they planned on being released on the 50th anniversary of Sharon and company's murder. Then the director met with her and she gave the film her blessing. Now she come down firmly in Tarantino's defense, saying that the movie made her cry and how touched she was by Robbie's performance. She has even gone as far to say that she wished he would make a movie completely dedicated to her and what not. So really came around on that one. After seeing, you can totally see why.
Some of the bullet points. Leo and Pitt. These two together are the perfect duo and their performances are amazing. They should both be nominated for Best Actor.
First, Pitt. Cliff is one of the great Tarantino characters. Little bit of Aldo in him from GB. Also some shades of Rusty Ryan and Tyler Durden. He and Tarantino both independently saw the character as a Billy Jack type which he totes is. If you haven't seen that, it is basically about an extremely masculine but cool dude who can kick some fucking ass. We find out maybe halfway through the movie that he has done some shit that makes him a bastard. But he is such a great dude otherwise and is so fucking cool, you don't care. A personal fave scene with him is the one where he ends up at the Spahn Ranch, taking one Pussycat back to her people. It is tense as fuck as Manson Family members come out of the woodwork and ominously stare him down. You feel that he is in real danger and there are red flags popping up everywhere but he is a coffin nail, this guy. When he kicks the shit out of Steve "Clem" Grogan for slashing his tire, this is the guy who in real life was recommended to die after the Manson Family trial but then sentenced to life (he would get out on parole in 1985, incredibly) because as Judge James Kolts said during the sentencing, "Grogan was too stupid and too hopped on drugs to decide anything on his own," for slashing his tires when one of the hippy chicks runs off to get Tex Watson (the kid that plays Tex is one Austin Butler who was also in The Dead Don't Die whom I had never seen before a month ago and is now everywhere) who hauls ass back to the scene. The way he moves and the crazed look he has about him, you know shit was really about to go down. Plus, all this echos what happened to the real life stuntman Donald Shea at the hands of the MF. Shea was checking on George Spahn just as Cliff does in the film and calls the police on them. After the cops raided the ranch, Manson and company murdered the guy, burying his body near the property. Anyway, yeah, if you know about this shit it is even more ominous and you are even more freaked out. Also, him being a guy who never was in shit sort of follows an alternative path for the actor. Like if he was just a guy who played little roles like the one he had in True Romance.
Now Leo. Dude wins the film. Pitt was fucking sick. It is almost unbelievable, these two together, acting the shit out of this movie. A cool ass actor doing good ass work. That's Leo and his character, Rick fucking Dalton, in the film. Best when is sort of losing his shit. His is career is basically over with the arrival of New Hollywood (also called the "American New Wave") ushered in in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde. No more Rick Dalton as a leading man, he is now relegated to television, playing a big that gets his ass kicked by the next big thing that comes along. The show that his character is acting in with the movie, Lancer, was a real show that ran from 1968-70. In the movie Lancer looks amazing. I tried to watch an episode, "Blue Skies for Willie Sharpe," and it was fucking terrible. Production wise it was like watching someones home movie or something. I was expecting Howard Hawks. I think it was Tarantino joke. Having Dalton telling himself in the mirror that if he doesn't get his lines right, he was going to go home and blow his brains out, taking this shit so goddamned seriously for a show that was meh. That's his best scene in the movie. Might be saying it is a job and this guy fucking takes it seriously. In any case, love all the acting stuff with character. This is where he really shines, Leo that is. So many layers there. Pretending to be a good actor doing a shitty job and then freaking out. Then acting as this guy acting and fucking killing it. It was mind blowing how good that stuff was. So much so that they address it in the film.
Finally, there is Robbie as Tate. Her portrayal is so bubbly and likable, you feel protective of her. She is almost larger than life at first. Hanging out with Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips at the Playboy Mansion. Driving around LA with Roman Polanski. She is New Hollywood and very cool. But then were see her out and about. Stopping at a theater to watch a movie that she is in. No one knows her. It is sort of humbling but she is just excited to be there and hear people's reactions to her work. She isn't famous at this point, but this isn't something she seems to really care about. More just happy to be a part of it. She doesn't say a lot but she does such a good job and it is all done so delicately, you really get a sense of who she is and what she was like. You want her to live and you think of what she could have become. It feels like this is a woman picked for stardom for a new era, she just hasn't gotten there yet. Plus, Robbie is so pretty and that 1969 look is good for her. I don't mean to objectify her because she is so talented. But she is like painfully beautiful in this movie. Some critics have made a big deal of her character's lack of lines and shit. This is bullshit and sort of demeans her performance. She doesn't need to say a lot to knock it out of the park, which she does.
Some other things that really stand out include the cool as shit 1960s world that Tarantino builds, (getting into spoilerish territory here) the crazy ass ending, and the fucking insane cast. Not sure there has ever been a cast like this. There are three above. Fucking sick, right? Then there are the other people that kill in the couple of minutes where they are on screen. Folks that play historical figures like Bruce Dern as George Spahn, Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, and Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen. Random industry people some of which are real and others not like Zoë Bell and Kurt Russell play a stunt coordinating couple, Nicholas Hammond as Sam Wanamaker, Timothy Olyphant of the TV western Lancer James Stacy, and Al Pacino as a film producer. Various recognizable faces in the Manson clan, like Butler as Tex, Lena Dunham, Dakota Fanning as the notorious Squeaky Fromme, Danielle Harris from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myersand Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Margaret Qualley was sort of the biggest standout from the Family as Pussycat. A few kids of famous people like Kevin Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith (still sour on him after he was an asshole at a comedy club appearance in town) who was a random Manson Girl--whom I found out is a vegan, so totally in my cool book--and Rumer Willis, the spawn of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, who played Joanna Pettet. A couple of 1990s people that were tapped for stardom that never came, in this camp were Rebecca Gayheart (Urban Legends star/Noxzema Girl from the 1990s) as the wife Cliff kills and Luke Perry as Wayne Maunder who shows up as an actor on Lancer. Then there are a lot of people that would maybe get second billing in a lesser movie, guys like Clifton Collins Jr. and Michael Madsen and James Remar, for example, that are basically just extras in this flick. Hell, even Clu Gulager makes a cameo as the bookstore owner.
Also, Tarantino doesn't seem to like Bruce Lee (portrayed in the film by one Mike Moh). The character is sort of a prick and overall looks ridiculous. Plus, Pitt's character makes him look like a loudmouth who can't really even fight. That is a fantastic scene by the way. Everyone in the theater I watched it with was losing their minds when Lee challenges Cliff to a fight and has a random guy hold his jacket and the guy tells him that Cliff has a rep for being crazy. "What did he do?" "Killed his wife and got away with it." Lee looks at him like WTF. Fucking great. Apparently, Lee's surviving family is pissed.
A personal aside I think is relevant on how good I felt the movie was. So I am definitively an ex smoker. However, I allow myself one a year which I've not partaken in for some time. So, yeah, great Tarantino movie, second to last, supposedly. So I had my first cigarette since 2013 to commemorate it. I smoked about half of it and tried to really enjoy it which I sort of did. Could go for one of those acid dipped ones though. That I'll tell you.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Insanity. Pair of crazy old biddies, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, who play sisters, going at each other. In the film and in real life. So much unhinged from Baby Jane and Mommy Dearest. Davis, as Baby Jane, is fucking terrifying and completely unhinged.
Gist of the movie is a pair of sisters, Blanche and Jane Hudson, go back and forth relying on and resenting each other. At first Jane is a child star Vaudeville performer and treats Blanche like shit. Later, after film has caught on, Blanche is the star and Jane is the forgotten one. It was then that Blanche ended up paralyzed under mysterious circumstances with Jane in a drunken haze, unable to remember anything. Everyone assumes Jane ran her over with her car but Blanche eventual admits that she tried to run Jane over but instead wrecked her car and paralyzed herself in the process.
Jane's treatment of Blanche progresses from bird killing and cooking to starving/dehydrating and straight up murder. So basically from fucked to completely deranged. Directed by one Robert Aldrich who did Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte which was originally going to put Crawford and Davis back together but they couldn't be in the same room (more on that later), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and The Longest Yard (1974).
The film feels, in some ways, like the Samuel Beckett play Endgame where the crippled character Hamm asks his servant Clov why he doesn't leave for more or less the entire thing with interludes of trashcan parents popping up and dying, ending with Clov trying to leave but standing in the doorway, unable. Minus the absurdism, both these works of art feature characters that rely on a resentful servant in a home they are all more or less trapped in. At the end of WEHTBJ? we see Jane finally leave the home for good but she still, after everything, feels that she has to take Blanche with her.
Not the look of someone you want to fuck with...
Unless you are Joan Crawford
Davis definitely wins the movie but Crawford does a hell of a job as well. By most accounts, Davis was slightly less of bitch than Crawford in real life but both had their moments and daughters that wrote extremely fucked up tell-alls about their famous moms (Davis's is actually in the movie, she's the teenage girl that lives next door). However, both were pretty progressive for their day as life-long California democrats and have a sort of a status of gay icons. Crawford was especially surprisingly cool and had a very close bond with her silent film co-star from the 1920s, William Haines, whom the studio tried to romantically link her with to keep his sexual preference out of the spotlight. When that didn't work, Haines left acting and became an outrageously successful interior designer and antique dealer with life partner Jimmie Shields. When Haines died in 1973, Crawford unsuccessfully tried to keep Shields out of the throws of deep depression which led to his suicide. Afterward, of Haines, Crawford said, "He had never kept it a secret that he was homosexual. It was never anything that mattered to me, but most people in Hollywood didn’t like it. I can’t imagine why they thought it was any of their business. What mattered to me was that for a long time, he was my best friend." So, yeah, pretty cool there. You can read more about it at much ado about cinema in this excellent article.
One last thing, what wasn't cool though was how Crawford sabotaged Davis's chances at winning an Academy Award for the role of Jane. Not only did she call Oscar voters to talk shit, Crawford reached out to all the Best Actress nominees to see which among them would be unable to attend the ceremony, offering to accept the award on their behalves. Eventual winner, Anne Bancroft for her part in The Miracle Worker, agreed and on the night of the show, Crawford gleefully accepted. Davis's reaction was indignant astonishment. Books have been about this shit.
Sunset Boulevard. Loved it when I first saw it. Soured on it in college. Back to loving it. As has been established, I love self-referential cinema. Back to thinking that this is one of the best. I mean, not quite Singing' in the Rain, but it is unfair to compare it to that wonderful, upbeat film. It also predates that flick by a couple of years making it the first, that I could see, movie that looks back at the old silent era. Old Hollywood looking at an older Hollywood. Not the first meta Hollywood flick, Sherlock, Jr. staring Buster Keaton who makes a cameo in this movie was made in 1924 and 1941's Sullivan's Travels which starred Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake are both movies about the film industry, this is the first of a subgenre that depicts has-beens that time forgot.
About a down-on-his-luck (and dumb as fuck) screenwriter played by William Holden who gets romantically involved with a forgotten starlet, Norma Desmond played by the silent film star Gloria Swanson, in her 50s who believes she is on the verge of a comeback due to a script that she threw together and dude is molding into something coherent. In the first scene we see the screenwriter, our protagonist, floating facedown in the bloody swimming pool. This is, indeed, a fucked up and dark movie.
Still makes the film look like a hilarious comedy, which it is
Probably a somewhat unpopular opinion here. I fucking hate the main character, Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, and sort of think he had bad shit coming to him karmically. Maybe not murder, but bad shit. He thinks he is playing Norma, ha, but is playing fucking checkers. Thinks he is stringing her along as a meal ticket of sorts. She buys him shit but doesn't pay him and won't let him leave. Yeah, really getting one over on her. So his motivations are fucked, obviously, and he is in a prison of his own making that is so fucking obvious but he barely sees it or doesn't care until the end, when he suddenly does. His leaving prompts Norma to pull out her gun and start waving it around, threatening to shoot herself. He is like, don't care. Obviously should have as we see in the first scene that he is dead from getting shot. Like someone who isn't a fucking idiot, he should have got the fuck out of there when she broke out the gun, instead he is like, "na, I'mma push her over the edge," which he does by talking shit and calling her crazy and what not. Making a bitch shoot him.
Get some solid cameos with director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper both playing themselves, said to be somewhat recognizable by Gillis and presumably playing themselves, Buster Keaton (the one who says "pass", Buster was a silent film star who was supposedly famously not allowed to open his mouth in a talkie where everyone else sang, heard this on a podcast but can't remember the film), Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner are all seen in the "living waxworks" scene playing bridge with Norma, and Erich von Stroheim, a "groundbreaking" silent era director, who is fucking great, seems to sort of play a version of himself as a forgot, avant garde director who now works as Norma's butler after the two divorced.
Hebba hebba
Gloria Swanson totally wins the movie. First, don't buy the myth that this is in any way autobiographical for her. While she wasn't the star she was during the silent era, Swanson's transition to sound was fine(ish), continuing to get work and even getting nominated for a Oscar for The Trespasser in 1929, though there were a handful of flops in there. When her career began slowing down in the late 1930s, she started a patent company in New York that was she created to help get Jewish inventors out of Nazi occupied Europe. This kept her busy through the war years. Then in 1948 she began hosting one of the first live television programs, The Gloria Swanson Hour. So yeah, she was doing alright when this part came along though she wasn't exactly the first choice. Director Billy Wilder offered the role to silent stars Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, and Mary Pickford (who was one of the inspirations for the composite character). Also Mae West was Wilder's original choice but was never asked to star in the film. Rumor has it that she was all, "of course a younger man would want to date me! I wouldn't be believable!" which is something I imagine all of these ladies saying and it being pretty true. Swanson, for her part, looks great for 50, though the craziness is pretty off-putting. Also, as a young woman, hubba hubba. And she is still, I think, more attractive in this film than the younger chick that William Holden as Joe Gillis wants to shtoop, Betty Schaefer played Nancy Olson who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and is still alive, that's engaged to his buddy. SB marked her first film in a nine period after Father Takes a Wife, she was that wife, bombed. For the role, Swanson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, her third nomination.
Didn't remember how funny she is, Swanson. Like the way intensely stares at him as he reads her script which he hates. When he goes through the motions like he is really trying to make her script better, taking stuff out and what not, she is like, "why did you take that out?" He says something like, "you can't be in every scene." She leers at him and barks, "put it back," in a way that is like "of course I'll be in every scene." Some more humor comes when the two walk through the giant, creepy-ass house and we hear a sinister music playing in the background. Norma then says "yeah, wind gets in the organ pipe, happens all the time." Love that shit. Also, she is so physical and deliberate with all her movements, sometimes to great comedic effect. Those silent film skills. Really like her. But she is fucking insane. Guys, if a woman has all of your things removed from your apartment, is keeping you from leaving, and claims to be your employer but doesn't pay you, don't fuck her.
Singin' in the Rain. "I'm laughin' at clouds, so dark up above, the sun's in my heart, and I'm ready for love." Holy shit, this movie. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Arthur Freed takes all of the best show tunes he wrote with Nacio Herb Brown from MGM best musicals and builds a plot around them. Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds choreograph and sing the shit out of them. MGM, the studio, then scales them to infinity. It's genius. If you don't fucking love the shit out of this movie, there is something really wrong with you. If I'm having a shitty time, this is the movie I put on to break me out of it. "I'm happy again!" This film is light, vividly colorful, a feast in every way a film can be. It is perfect. I will fight anyone who says otherwise. I really believe, like for real real, maybe, I don't know, that this is the best film ever made.
Love a self-referential flick, as has long been established. I've been especially into these older Hollywood movies that focus on an even older Hollywood. This flick, Sunset Boulevard, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, so forth. In this one we get a 1950s history of the transition from silent pictures to sound. We even see how it was done in those early days, which is cool. Here we have an actress, Lina Lamont, played by Jean Hagen who is best remembered for her role in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, who was a star in the silents but sounds like shit and has to have her voice dubbed. Megastar and Lamont's fake, studio boyfriend, Don Lockwood, played by the Gene Kelly who wins the movie, falls in love with the girl dubbing her lines and providing her singing voice, Kathy Selden played by the lovely Debbie Reynolds. The only real conflict in the movie is that Lamont is a bitch who steals all the credit away from Selden which keeps her from becoming a star. But that shit doesn't work out because this is lighthearted picture.
But here's some weird and interesting shit, Hagen, the actress playing Lamont, when she has her voice budded in the acting parts, Reynolds does sing, of course, is actually using her own voice. So she is using her own voice, but we are lead to believe that the voice we hear is Selden's. Definitely a mind fuck.
So much iconic shit in this movie. First, there is Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain". OMG. Then there is the "Moses Supposes" scene, one of two original songs in the film, where Donald O'Connor as Cosmo Brown, Lockwood's vaudeville partner and sort of his boss as the head of Monumental Pictures' music department, work with a speech coach in preparation for the transition to sound when they just ham it the fuck up and sing and dance all over the goddamned place while this coach guy stands there like an idiot. Love it. The three of them, Kelly, O'Connor, and Reynolds, in character, of course, performing the shit out of "Good Morning," one of my faves from the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie Babes In Arms, worth a watch as well.
But the best has to be O'Connor doing the original, though very similar to Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" from another MGM flick, song "Make 'Em Laugh." The song is awesome and O'Connor's dancing is incredible. His athleticism is amazing. He dances up walls, running up them and flipping back to the ground, and does impressive physical comedy with a mannequin. These are all long shots. No cuts. We see all the moves and the actors have to be spent after their number. This one ends with O'Connor throwing himself through a wall after what can only be truly maximum effort. This movie and this number are the shit.
Pros: Lots of kills (but none of them are really very good). Some pretty ladies. The ending isn't too bad. A few decent moments of dark comedy.
Cons: Makes no sense. Has a bunch of characters that are completely out of place. Everyone is insanely stupid. Hot chick drops an N-bomb for no reason.
Here's the gist. Angela, played by Pamela Springsteen, goes back to the camp where she killed people the year before (might be the camp from the first Sleepaway Campthough), now called Camp New Horizons under new ownership after having killed everyone the previous summer, where she immediately starts killing off other counselors. Same shit, different assumed identity. In this one she mows down this chick Maria (who has the hilarious tattoo "Milk Shake" on her tits) with a dump truck and then steals her name, clothes, and job as a counselor. She even has the same hair as this Maria chick which is unnecessary since no one has ever seen anyone before and no one knows what Angela looks like as she killed everyone in the previous movie. Doesn't get the tattoo though, thank fuck. The film also stars Haynes Brooke as the idiot rapey one, Tracy Griffith as the pelo rojo survivor girl, Mark Oliver as beefcake Tony, and Michael J. Pollard whom I distinctly remember as one of the homeless guys in Scrooged (the one that freezes to death in the sewer [if you remember that]), are all in... irrelevant.
These three...
Black guy being angry. Did I mention the movie's racist?
Favorite scene is indeed the most absurd. This comes early in the movie when a newscaster shows up to the camp and interviews all the new counselors, just saying their names and where they are from and what archetype they are and so forth. Well, the newscaster, having just met Angela but being able to tell she knows how to party, I guess, asks her if she can get her coke. She is going back to the city or whatever but needs coke now, apparently. She obviously has a huge problem. Angela ends up selling her Comet which kills her. Having had shit up my nose that shouldn't have been, there is no way that she doesn't get extreme pain in her nostril the second that shit goes up her nose. But this chick keeps doing it and she dead.
A lot of nonsense in this flick. A memorably absurd scene comes in the middle of the flick when it suddenly gets all meta. Here Angela finds a hockey mask in the woods like Jason wears. She then asks what day it is and someone says it's "Saturday the 14th." Wacka wacka. Probably the most unbelievable shit in the movie is that the male owner, played by Pollard, who is a gross old man married to this gross old lady ends up doing a very attractive counselor with fake breasts even though he is like a 1/10. This gets them both killed, by the by. The wife, meanwhile, gets buried up to her neck in trash and then Angela mows over her head with a lawnmower. More insanity is this black gang member guy that "works" as a counselor at the camp. This guy is crazy aggressive and refuses to do shit. The owner of the camp asks him to do shit and he is all like, "fuck you, bitch, suck my dick." Not really the way you keep a job. Plus that shit is racist as fuck.
Skipping IV! Yay!
Speaking of racism and attractive females, this one chick out of nowhere drops the N-word in reference to that aggressive prick. For this Angela strings the girl up on the flagpole during the trust walk and drops her on her head from the top, killing her. It's pretty lame. Despite this, the racist chick, played by one Kim Wall, is indeed a pretty lady. As is Jill Terashita, the Asian one, whom you may remember as the attractive Asian chick in Night of the Demons. She dies, too.
MVP for this one is more or less no one because everyone phoned it in. I guess maybe the aggressive black guy or the red head survivor girl who seemingly kills Angela. She beats down Angela like a wild woman and ends up stabbing her in self-defense. When it is going down you think this is it for Angela, sort of, but you are wrong as we see in the last scene that she is in an ambulance coming t, killing the EMT and making her escape.
And that is Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, a real piece of work. So, uh, you know. Don't cry. Don't raise your eye. Only one more of these movie left to go as I can't find Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor anywhere. This seems just as well since it was released in 2012 after mostly being shot in 1992 as test footage with spliced archival footage from films I-III. Not going to count this garbage, whatever it is, as a real movie. Am looking forward to Return to Sleepaway Camp which ret-cons the other sequels. It is also the only one with involvement from original director Robert Hiltzik. So, yeah, should be fun(ish).
Scream 2. The crazy-things-are-happening-to-Sid-at-college movie. This was the first movie I can remember where I was gleaning leaked info from the internet. A movie within the movie that was based on the events from the first movie. Hearing about this, though nothing new, really, did blow my little freshman mind with anticipation. Was incredibly stoked when it finally came out and I thought was a worthy followup to the most groundbreaking horror movie released in my lifetime (though Get Out might have surpassed the original Screamon that front). In some ways I liked it better than the first film, although it is really tough to beat. Like the way Sid is a damaged character, the way Randy explains the rules for sequels, the way it is established that "brothers don't last long" in horror movies, and so forth. For these reasons I'm gonna call it... Greatest movie of all time.
Pros: Seems cliche now but it did for horror sequels what the original did for horror flicks. Mixes humor and murder pretty deftly. Decent amount of wit. The movie within the movie is great shit. Pretty ladies. Cox never looks better than she does in this movie. Just about as rewatchable as the first one. Great couple of kills (especially the cops).
Cons: More or less just more of the same (not that I consider this a bad thing). A little too cheesy, maybe.
Gist is a couple years following Sid getting attacked by her boyfriend and his partner-in-crime after they killed a half dozen or so people at her high school while dressed in the now famous Ghostface mask, a copycat killer now takes up murdering people at her college. Like the original, we get all the meta genre stuff, wit, and satire as we see how the whodunit unfolds. Also directed by Wes Craven, the movie stars all the survivors Scream in David Arquette as Dewey who is just as brain damaged in this one (see the scene when he almost gets killed at the end [his downfall is stepping in pizza that is on the floor, which is just completely insane]), Neve Campbell as Sidney, Courteney Cox (who looks great in this one) as Gale Weathers, Jamie Kennedy as movie geek Randy, and Liev Schreiber as wrongly accused Cotton Weary. Short-lived newcomers to the franchise include a murderers row of '90s college aged talent in Omar Epps, Rebecca Gayheart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Portia de Rossi (Lindsey from Arrested Development) who shows up out of nowhere to show us what a Blueth was like in college, and Jada Pinkett Smith. We also get some Laurie Metcalf (who plays Jackie in Roseanne) action as, spoiler, a news report who ends up being the mother of Billy Loomis, the murderer from the first one, who teams up with Olyphant for some sweet revenge.
The mean girls all stars
First people of color in the franchise. Last less than a scene
Most memorable scenes from the flick include the opening, the Randy talking about movie scenes, and the dress rehearsal of the Greek tragedy "Agamemnon". The first is sort of the amuse bouche for the flick. After having no diversity in the original, here we get Epps and Jada at the "Stab" premiere which is the movie within the movie that details the events from the first flick. So right away we know that that is a thing and that people are into the story in that universe like audiences were into Scream at that same time. Which is all a little confusing. Plays within plays or movies or whatever have been around since the Renaissance dating back to before Shakespeare (although he more or less popularized it) and weren't even new to TV and movies like with "Itchy and Scratchy" in The Simpson, of course, but this movie within the movie about the first movie was pretty fucking nuts. Here we get Epps sticking his head up to a bathroom stall at the premier of "Stab" to listen to two people have sex when the killer sticks a knife through the stall door and into his head. Scary Movie sort of ruins this when they completely copy this scene with one of the Wayons bros getting a dildo to the brain instead of a knife. Jada, for her part, gets murdered in the theater with people cheering, thinking it was a part of the show or something. It is brutal. Being surrounded by all those people and no one taking your screams seriously.
As for the scene where Randy talks shit about them living in a sequel or whatever, keep in mind that while the thing that Scream does where everyone in every horror movie knows they are in a horror movie has been played to death, back in 1998 it was still new and hadn't really been done before the one came out in 1996. So, yeah, this was still defining the tropes and telling us what was to be expected in the age of self aware horror in regard to sequels. Like we saw in the previous film, Randy does this pretty much directly in two scenes. The first one he is in film theory class or something and him and Olyphant and Joshua Jackson are discussing the apparent lameness of most sequels. Randy holds the position that no sequel has ever outdone the original. People name various examples, none of which I give a shit about, where this was not the case. This is an ingenious little scene here and forces audience participation. Every time I see this movie, probably around four times at this point, I think of new examples that have popped up since my last viewing (this time Thor: Ragnarok came to mind, another previous one I thought of in the horror genre is Evil Dead II which I have to get around to soon). And we also get one of the killers talking movies, showing his hand a little bit. The second Randy-talks-movies scene is when him and Dewey are at a diner after the killings start up again. Here we get "the rules" which basically come down to more people will die in more gruesome ways. They all can't be winners, I guess. An honorable mention sort of related to horror movie rules would be when Gale's black camera man states that brothers don't live very long in horror flicks. A bit of situational irony there as he is saying this whilst bouncing out of town and thus ensuring his survival.
The last really memorable, and probably best, scene in the movie is the one where Sid is playing the role of Cassandra in the Aeschylus tragedy "Agamemnon" which is part of The Oresteia which is a trio of plays based around the Cassandra character at dress rehearsals. Early, Sid talks about how she wants to go on with the show despite all these murders. During the rehearsal, the chorus chases her about with fake daggers wearing cloaks and masks. Here we see Ghostface among the chorus, which may or may not have been real, slashing at her and weaving in and out with the other actors. It is all chaos and Sid freaks out. I like to think this wasn't Mickey, who was nearby and is later revealed as one of the killers, the experience is just too much.
But none of those were the truly best scene in the movie. That is hands down when Jerry O'Connel's character sings "I Think I Love You" by The Partridge Family at the top of his lungs to Sid in the school cafeteria. It was super sweet and totally impressive. Apparently the role was between O'Connell and some other guy and O'Connell nailing this scene is what got him the part. If he would have survived, he almost certainly would have won the movie. Check it out...
Best kill of the movie was the cop on the hood of the car. Here, Sid and her soon to be dead friend Hallie get picked up by the cops on Sid's protection detail. While they are stopped at a light, Hallie, who is pretty terrible, is like "uh, where we going?" The cops just say a bunch of stupid shit like "if we tell ya, we'd have to kill ya," and "don't ask; don't tell" which, you know, maybe pay attention instead of making the worst dad jokes of all time and shit. Of course Ghostface pops up here and stabs the driver in the throat. The other gets out, gets kicked in the face, and ends up on the hood with Ghostface driving like a wild man. He eventually rams it into a construction zone, plowing into a dumpster full of metal pipes. One of these ends up through the guys head in super gnarly death. The girls then have to climb over Ghostface, who is passed out from the wreck, to get out of the car. It's a pretty shit situation to be in.
It is tough to say who won this one but in the end I'm going with Gale. No longer hated, her and Sid end as sort of friends. She gets the scoop, kind of falls in love (again), survives getting shot, and kills a rival that isn't even on her level. Plus she is looking fierce in this installment. In 3 she has this weird bang thing going on that I'm not crazy about but here she is perfect looking. And is just totally a badass. Winner. This chick.
So that was Scream 2. I sort of like this watching and writing about an entire franchise and am probably going to do that with all the big ones. So, yeah, look forward to seeing some shit on 3 and 4 here before too long. Also some shit on Sleepaway Camp and Texas Chainsaw as well, assuming I get them done before the fall. Then I'll be doing the rest of the Halloween franchise.
Scream. Total game changing horror movie. When this came out I lost my mind. I was in eighth grade and I remember everyone sort of placing themselves in the various roles and where they fit in and stuff. I was an obvious Matthew Lillard although I have probably grown into more of a Randy. So yeah, not only did it start a horror renaissance but every high school movie ever rode it's coattails and was made from 1996-2001. Catapulted Courtney Cox into super stardom for a little bit. Established Wes Craven as a genius and gave us two of my favorite scenes of all time. Greatest movie of all time.
Pros: The opening is one of the greats of all time. Ditto on the rules scene. One of the greatest meta films ever which really popularized the literary device in cinema (especially with horror). Matthew Lillard (Stuart) really goes for it. Most of the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the film awesome instead of annoying. Lots of pretty ladies. Rose McGowan has never been cuter, a very cute girl, than at that moment.
Cons: Some of the plot is a little ludicrous. Like, I don't think the whole Billy Loomis/Stuart game plan at the end to get away with murder, spoiler, is going to hold up once the crime lab shows up and sees they are covered in corn syrup. I'm pretty sure Dewey is making fun of people with brain damage.
Gist of the movie: A masked killer, Ghostface, terrorizes the town of Woodsboro, California, with a serious of pretty fucking heinous murders that reference horror films. High school senior Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, and her friends become the focus of the killer(s)'s "game". Directed by Wes Craven, the film stars David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, Cox, McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich who was briefly the next Johnny Depp. Linda Blair (from The Exorcist), Liev Schreiber, and Henry Winkler are also sort of in the movie in mostly cameos. Can't stress how groundbreaking this felt at the time. A darkly comedic satire of shitty horror tropes that had dominated the genre for half a dozen years prior. It was the only horror film that was aware of other horror films. It was fresh AF and I fucking lost my shit over it.
Shit that sticks out... Gotta start with that opening scene. So much to love here. First, Drew Barrymore, probably the biggest star in the movie at the time, gets offed in a super violent and grotesque way. Psycho did this before when they killed off Janet Leigh but there weren't a lot of other people in that film. When you buy your ticket for this, you know you have this ensemble cast so the message is that anyone can die in this flick. And it's a super long and brutal scene. The killer toys with her and the audience, calling and asking her questions about horror films that her life depends on. Like the whole who was the killer in Friday the 13thquestion. Barrymore screams "Jason" which is incorrect. It was his mother that did the killing in the first one. I feel that most people, unless they were obsessives like Randy, Stuart (Lillard), or Billy, would probably get that wrong. Then, once she is finally done for and her parents get home, her mom picks up the phone to call the police and they can hear their daughter's gurgling sounds and kindly says something like "sweetie, baby?" The way I interpret this is that she knows her daughter is not long for the world and she just wanted to provide her with some kindness in her last moments. Fucked. But then the husband sends the wife off to the neighbors to call the police and there is their girl, hanging from a tree. This was thankfully not as brutal as it was supposed to be. Barrymore originally was gutted and her entrails were all spilling out and stuff but it earned the movie an NC-17 from the ratings board and they took it out.
Brutal
One nitpicky thing, the computer/technology stuff does not hold up so well. Computers, according to movies in 1996, were magic. Like how Sid calls 9-1-1 via text (this after she rips dumb horror chicks for running up the stairs instead of out the front door and then does just that) which maybe you could do but who would. Also when Dewey, the least likely person ever in the history of film to be remotely computer literate, sees that Sid's dad never registered at the hotel he was supposed to stay at with a quick Google search.
Another nitpick, no way in hell Billy/Stuart could have possibly thought they were getting away with this. They are blaming Sid's dad--why the hell is he doing this?--who they have bound in Stuart's basement for multiple days. Ligature marks, anyone? Plus they are covered in physical evidence and one of them has fake blood all over himself. But sure, you'll get away with it. Not like you weren't already shady as shit and on the cops' radar since the first murder.
"It was du-umb"
Something of note is what a surprisingly sensitive lover Skeet is despite his hatred of Sid because of her mother cheating with his dad (talk about misplaced anger) and being a vicious murderer and all. This is quite the long con. Also, their motives are suspect as hell. Just throwing that out there. Anyway, this, I feel, is why Sid didn't really ask too many questions the Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy run up on her saying that the other one is the killer. She locks them out, must have been a pretty awkward conversation for those two, and Billy shows up after seemingly just being killed. Covered in corn syrup, Sid gives him the gun even though he was obviously the killer. Well, they had just gone to bone town and Billy was like shockingly sweet. He would try to kill her in like less than an hour but not before sharing an extremely tender moment.
The breakout star of this film, the guy who won the movie basically, something I'm awarding to movies from here on out, was Randy. Three of the best scenes in the movie were the result of this dude. The one that is most amaze balls is the one where Jamie Kennedy goes over the rules for surviving a horror. Namely don't drink or do drugs, don't have sex, and don't say you'll "be right back. Just another great meta moment which popularized horror movies being aware of other horror movies (though Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Waxworks, and several other movies did it before). The scene in the video store where Randy screams "everyone is a suspect!" is up there as well for all of the same reasons. It is basically the same scene in a different location. One of my favorite scenes this time around featuring this dude that I never really gave much time before was when Courtney Cox attacks him with her giant 1980s cell phone. This is just after she finds blood everywhere in her van and is super on edge when Randy just wanders up and is like, "hey, Gale, where is" and smack. She then takes off in the van when her dead camera guy falls off the top. Sid tries to stop her and it just freaks her out more and she veers off the road and crashes into a tree. Meanwhile Randy, who doesn't know anything is going on still, has just been attacked by a news celebrity for what seems like no reason. This would be like Nancy Grace beating with a Blackberry or something.
Randy's wet dream
So, yeah, greatest movie of all time. Having finally worked my way through all the Friday the 13thand Nightmare on Elm Street movies (though I'm still working on my piece for Freddy vs. Jason) I am probably going to revisit all the Scream flicks which I was obsessed with as an early internet user. I remember getting online via dialup and reading about leaked info for the sequel which is basically wacky stuff happening Sid at the sorority movie. So look forward to that.
I looooooved this fucking movie. Totally one of those kitchen sink type movies, there is a lot going on. The film has lots of meta, self-referential humor, features a slasher based on a Saw esque movie within the movie called Cinderhella, time travel, prom, Freaky Friday body swapping that makes the old noodle hurt to think about, a vegan protagonist, a guy with fly DNA, Canadians, and even aliens. It is fucking awesome.
The basic gist of the movie is a killer obsessed with the fictitious horror franchise Cinderhella dons the costume and kills a bunch of Grizzly Lake High School students. The group of suspects/potential victims include protagonist Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell, a pretty young lady who was in The Conjuring but not much else I've seen) who is sort of a suicidal outcast with a broken leg, her love interest/buddy from childhood Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson who was Peeta in the Hunger Games), his love interest and her one-time homey (whose mother has inhabited her body, sending her mind back to 1991--it's best not to think to hard about this) the cheerleader Ione, the "nerd" that's obsessed with Riley, Sander Sanderson (A.D. Johnson), and the jock with fly DNA that is obsessed with Ione, Billy Nolan (Parker Bagley), and numerous others including a Canadian. The principal, Dane Cook, gives all the usuals all-day detention in an effort to keep Cinderhella from murdering anyone at prom.
Pros: Pacing. Pretty ladies. Meta as fuck. The survivor girl is a vegetarian. Casting. Soundtrack. This movie rocked.
Cons: Sometimes it is tell what the hell is happening. There may be too much going on here (at times).
The pacing of this movie is fucking insane. It's a movie for people with no attention span and it really jumps all over the place. It's like being on Adderall. We start out with a killing, segue to Mean Girls, get some more killing, suddenly get a dude with fly DNA, more killing, get the ludicrous solution to the killings (put them all in detention) when they start watching the Cinderhella movie where they see the movie is about a bunch of kids in detention are watching a lower budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a very low budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a possible porn movie of about a bunch of kids in detention.
It is here when we get my favorite line in the movie which sort of requires a bit of backstory. For a long time my female companion and I would seek out ridiculous Canadian horror. It is a sub-genre I encourage everyone to explore. Some of these movies are genuinely good movies with lower costs to make like Ginger Snaps, Ponypool, Trick 'r Treat, or The Witch (2015). Others decide to mix in elements of comedy, these being along the likes of Horns, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, and Wolfcop. And then there are the ones that are just a train wreck that ends up sort of working, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare both come to mind here. Zombie Nightmare even had a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode devoted to it where they address this sub-genre at one point saying that the movie had "Canada's stink all over it," which is something we often say and both said while watching this movie. So it really tickled us when one of the kids in detention, watching one of these low budget slasher flicks inside of flasher flick, and so on, asks, "what is this, Canadian?" It was the first time we had ever heard this addressed and could not stop laughing.
Another hilarious moment and reference to Canada comes near the beginning of the movie from Gord,
the Canadian, is easily my favorite character (but they are all pretty
amazing). He is facing off again the main girl in debate class on vegetarianism. This fucking rant he goes on is fucking golden
and complete nonsense and it comes at you in that style of debate where
information is just thrown at you at insane, breakneck speed with
"facts" that have no basis in reality. I don't usually include fucking
dialogue (or monologue or whatever) in these things but this is fucking
out there. It goes thus: "Yes, I'd like to start off by saying that this
girl's argument is ridiculous! Vegetarians who eat fish are hypocrites!
She thinks because fish may feel no pain they don't value their lives.
Absurd! And notice how she expresses almost no sympathy for chickens.
That's because Americans hate chickens. For example, KFC serves popcorn
chicken to assure the customers that the chicken was blown to bits, yet
the meatball sub at Subway isn't called 'popcorn cow.' Americans want
chickens to die! Lame! Personally, I do feel sympathy for animals, which
is why I choose to only eat baby animals. They have not lived as long,
and they are not leaving as much behind. Baby clams, chicken wings, baby
seals - no... big... loss! If we don't eat meat, we lose out place in
the food chain. Eating animals gives us confidence as humans.
Vegetarians like this girl, who is only wearing one shoe, have less
confidence than everybody else."
More comedy than horror, we are treated to a mullet beats ponytail battle where two dudes fight in the style of Swayze and Seagal, time traveling and freaky Fridaying (for no reason), a dude with fly DNA (again, for no reason other than referencing another horror movie), the best possible answer to "do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?" ("the easy way"), and an out there ending involving aliens and Canadians. We get lots of meta-references like talking about how the murders at the beginning are like Scream, a cop says the goings on in the school really "nuked the fridge," and so forth. And when the vegetarian decides to eat meat again we get a dude that comes down in pieces on the grill, making the burger falls out of her mouth in disgust (noice). Movie is sweet and definitely worth your time.
