badgerblog - many movies: Pieces, The Limits of Control, Zombieland, Law Abiding Citizen

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October 25th, 2009

10:09 am

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many movies: Pieces, The Limits of Control, Zombieland, Law Abiding Citizen
Italian 70s slashers, arid arthouse, a very funny movie about zombies, and a revenge action drama. With upcoming film trailer commentaries and a special "rudest movie patron of the month" report.

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Pieces
_Pieces_, Colony Theatre, part of the Cinema Overdrive grindhouse-like series. 1970s Italian slasher flick. 1970s America in a time capsule filtered through an Italian lens, hyperstylized. Every movie convention is plugged in, including a WTF kung fu moment. Music by CAM. Very Goblin-like.

Trailers chosen suited to the tone and time period of the movie
* Hatchet For the Honeymoon - Mario Bava director.
* 7 Doors of Death
* Phenomena - Dario Argento, Jennifer Connelly, Goblin progrock soundtrack, and a lot of bugs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomena_%28film%29
* Andy Warhol's Frankenstein in 3D
* Suspiria
* Cannibal Holocaust
(No, I have NOT seen all of these. [Most, yes.])

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Escapism
Spent the following Friday and Saturday in Durham at the Carolina Theatre for the Escapism Film Festival with

maegwynn seeing five more movies: Doctor Strangelove, The Last Unicorn,
Battlestar Galactica (me) / Escape to Witch Mountain (her), Return To Oz, and It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.
http://badger.livejournal.com/1584392.html

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The Limits of Control
Sunday night I went back to the Colony for Jim Jarmusch's new film _The Limits of Control_.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control
Minimalist and sparse, dreamlike and barren, like a Dashiell Hammett noir novel adapted and filmed by David Lynch. Philip Marlowe in the Inland Empire. An emotionally chilly movies that makes _Ghost Dog_ seem up close and personal. Good cameo scenes with Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, and Bill Murray. The lead actor playing the main character, Isaach De Bankolé, is great. Soundtrack, very sparse, by Boris of metal and SunnO))) collaboration fame. I'm glad the Colony fought to get a print of this limited-release arthouse film, even if for only a week.
*puts DVD on preorder*

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Special Self-Centered Jerk Report
Oh, and NO LOVE WHATSOEVER for the self-centered and impossibly rude woman who came in with a friend to _The Limits of Control_, sat center front in the fourth row, in the direct line of sight of everyone else attending the film, and took OVER TWENTY PHONECAM PICTURES during the film. Raising her phone to above her head height, her phone screen glaring as an intermittent moving bright light below the edge of the movie. No consideration or respect for anyone else in the theatre. Remember I said the film is sparse, arid, and minimal? That includes much of the soundtrack: every one of this inconsiderate person's snapshots, I could hear the sound effect of her cameraphone "shutter" every time, from six rows back.

trailer:
* A Serious Man - the next Coen Brothers film.
Advance review article:
http://movie-critics.ew.com/2009/09/13/a-serious-man/

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ZOMBIELAND!
_Zombieland_ at Mission Valley with

andyhat because it was ending Thursday (Mission Valley is bringing it back on 30 October for at least a one-week run), and season pass meant free, and

maegwynn hadn't wanted to see it, and everyone I know who saw it loved it. Yes, the first several minutes are pretty gory by most peoples' standards. Manages to riff on every major zombie movie I can think of, as well as other films (I noticed at least one nod to the Terminator, but the Romeros, the _28 $timeperiod Later_ sequence, and a deftly-added allusion to _Shaun of the Dead_ shows the filmmakers know their predecessors, love them, respect them, and are fine admitting that.)

Very very funny. Also, a date movie. Don't look at me like that, I mean it - much of the film focuses on the people and not the formerly living. Also, a surprise and note-perfect celebrity actor appearance. GO see it, but if you don't, come over as soon as the DVD is released.

trailers:
* New Moon - The second of the Twilight film franchise. VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE, DAMNIT.
* Saw VI - Speaking of franchises...
* Legion - The Prophecy (the angels horror film trilogy, not to be confused with _Prophecy_, the "thalidomide-deformed mutant bear chasing campers through the woods and eating them" 70s horror film…why are you looking at me like that?) meets Terminator. Postponed to January 22.
* 2012 - November 13. I get a disaster movie for my birthday. How sweet.

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Zombieland at Mission Valley again, with

maegwynn who had thought she wouldn't like the movie, and was happy to find that she loved the movie. She laughed a lot. Will happyily see this film again, in case I wasn't the last person in the movie's target audience to see it.

Same movie, same trailers, but one anecdote from this screening worth sharing - a group of undergraduate students sat directly behind us and one of them complained

"I don't know why, in the olden days, people didn't think of putting cupholders in theatre seats."

Olden days. Sigh.

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Law Abiding Citizen
The reviews are generally horrid and I at least partly disagree with them - it's not brilliant, and the acting isn't Oscar-worthy, but it's not remotely as bad for me as the reviews make it out to be. Short summary: family guy loses family to bad people, spends the rest of the film revenging on the bad people and the legal system that didn't meet his expectations. Some visible parallels to the SAW horror film franchise, and a probably unintentional parallel to Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, the closest-matching antecedent I can recall offhand is Rex Miller's [1] horror novel _Frenzy_. Within film and with slightly different dynamics (revenge instead of rescue), _Law Abiding Citizen_ resembles last year's _Taken_. Gerard Butler is good at playing "I know more than you do" characters: smug and supremely self-confident. Written by Kurt Wimmer, who wrote and directed _Equilibrium_, one of my favorite dystopian SF action films (if you don't remember Equilibrium, think Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World, all mixed together with The Matrix.) I could sit through this again when the season pass activates for it, but if I don't I won't cry.

Trailers:
* The Men Who Stare At Goats - Adapted from Jon Ronson's allegedly nonfiction book about the US Special Forces "psychic warriors" program, this film is, well, a farce. Looks very funny. George Clooney, Ewan Macgregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges.
http://www.jonronson.com/goats_04.html
* Brothers - Toby Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular characters. Toby goes to Iraq, and dies. Jake falls in love with Toby's widow. Toby wakes up from the coma he was in when he was lost missing in action and comes back. Everyone goes spare.
* The Crazies - Timothy Olyphant as a sheriff of a small town (yes, he was the sheriff in Deadwood) when the inhabitants all suffer a break with reality: catatonic, bicycling down main street in nightgowns, talking to imaginary people…then violent and killing. Government moves in to contain the situation. Based on the trailer it looks like _Outbreak_ crossed with _28 Days Later_. Trailer soundtrack used the version of "Mad World" from Donnie Darko, which was the first of two times this day I was to hear that song in new media. Umm, it was great in Donnie Darko, and then the brilliant Gears of War commercial, so can we have a moratorium on this song's use for about five years or so?

[1] Hadn't been paying attention, just looked up Miller to see what he's been doing and discovered he died in 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Miller

Tags: carolina theatre, colony, durham, escapism, festival, film, film09, ihsp, ihsp2009, raleigh, retrofantasma