Rampage: The Movie

I just got through this thing and I'm reeling like a roller coaster ride just blasted my skin off over the course of an hour. It's fitting because this ain't really a movie, it really is more like a glorified Star Tours (just like Lost?). No real beginning, no end, just steep terrifying drops. The way he pulls a story line that's relatively tradish in monster flicks is suprising, intelligent, and suprisingly intelligent.

They go to great lengths to match The Blair Witch Project's docu-realism, and though we've all had enough of it this decade, I can still be down. But while I can get over the fact that there's a monster tearing apart New York, it's really all the little unrealistic things that bug me. The running for hours in high heels the quick recoveries from injury and mourning, the convenient "plot" moves. But I'm all like "fine" because I can't wait for them to never stop tearing down the biggest sandcastle in the country just like I saw on TV in 2001. Should we feel a little violated that JJ Abrams squeezes lemon juice on our American scab for no good reason? Maybe so, but I can't help feeling like Cloverfield is still a thriller like they used ta make 'em.

Oh and if you're gonna see it, see it in a movie theater.

The Ten (Divided by The Two)

So 2007 has come and gone and nothing has floored me. I have a few left to catch, and maybe I truly just don't make the effort to find the many brilliant underdistributed foreign films that are always the unsung heroes. But I saw a lot of movies this year, and I only have one 5 star movie to show for it: David Wain's The Ten. Most people haven't heard of it.

I haven't seen anything ultra-pertinent since There Will be Bloodsport, but Netflix has just released The Ten through their Watch Instantly feature, and since it was a predictable bomb in the theater, I figured I'd commemorate the occasion with a nod.

It's Paul Rudd hosting 10 skits by my generation's comedic geniuses who refuse to let the Kentucky Fried Movie audience down. Are there hits and misses here? Yes, but the hits are some serious hits. It takes a special someone to like this movie. Did you like Wet Hot American Summer? Did you watch MTV's The State? Did you like Mr. Show? Did you like Stella? Do you like palpability of discomfort in the theater or your living room (vis. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Freaks and Geeks, BBC's The Office)? If the majority of your answers were yes, catch The Ten while you're waiting for the promised The State DVD collection.

Daniel Day-Lewis does Mr. Smith

Robert has said that my commentaries have been too one-sided. My defense was that I try to limit what I write to only what might be original thoughts. I'm not a reviewer. But I'll start by saying that Daniel Day is definitely fantastic. He's the slickest chameleon out there - I've always said so, incidentally. Paul Dano sucked, but let's keep this positive. The production work is roundly great, and as a work, it's more than well-realized. But one thing is for sure: Upton Sinclair would have hated this.

That's not necessarily the film's sentencing since, after all, PTA has said that it's not an adaptation. Then again, the fact that narrative has strayed so far from works like those of Mr. Sinclair might give us pause. Leaving out the studios for a moment, why does a screenwriter and director make a movie like this, and why do we as an audience enjoy it? Like The Aviator, There Will Be Blood is about a tough-as-nails robber-baron who stops at nothing to demolish his enemies and achieve success of American mythic proportions. But respected filmmakers can't get away with transparent bourgeois propaganda, not that I think they would ever consciously intend to. So we get the inevitable moral ambiguities and ultimately even condemnation of the central character - by the end of the film, we hate Plainview for his cruelty. In other words, we're not permitted to identify.

But here's the thing. Despite all that, can't we still see a kind of reverence for Plainview, for Howard Hughes, for William Randolph Hearst? A sense that now there's a real man! That's the part of these movies that makes me a little ill: the capitalist master as anti-hero. In the case of both The Aviator and this movie, the introspective is at the expense of even the briefest glimpse of class struggle. So despite the films internal strengths, for which there are many, for me it fails the test of greatness for everything it chooses not to see.