The first scene has the two leads talking about being lesbians, their crushes, and how they are ugly. The dialog is tight and fresh with a naturalistic improv feel, but the characters are given little to do but care about their crushes. Basically, the first scene is a lie because the movie goes off the rails pretty quick after that. These two Hollywood ugly (come on, they are beautiful) women start a fight club to secure intimate exposure to the cheerleaders of their dreams while nothing remotely natural or normal happens around them.
Maybe it's because I grew up with them, but I love extreme satirical psycho movies. Especially with teens. Something about the illusion of innocence added with a lack of shame causes wonderful moments of bombastic strawmen to die with gruesome intent. The only thing that could make Heathers better is if Paul Verhoeven had directed it.
Our story is about Veronica, a kind if checked out girl making her way through high school along with her friends, the Heathers, popular girls who throw their privilege around. Enter JD, a malcontent willing to do whatever he finds entertaining who wins Veronica's affection and repect. Several murders and suicide attempts later, maybe this couple are not long.
I love this movie. It's a fascinating mix of tropes to create satire. The language and visuals are heightened to a Twin Peaks level of awareness without winking too much at the camera. The characters' dress have become archetypes (black coat for psychos) or are just odd (Ryder journals with a monocle more than once). Mean Girls wants to have the teeth this story does, facing topics like suicide and homosexuality ("I love my dead gay son!") with a dark glee. Just because the kids are young does not mean they are precious.
My notes are all quotes, it's that much fun.
The cast equally entertains. Sure, Christian Slater is doing his best Jack Nicholson if ole Jack had stepped out of the Shining hotel with the drink in his hand. It melds well with the sardonic turn Ryder is giving against the banal evil of the Heathers. The order of Heathers ruling the school descends into a chaotic mix by the end when a smoking Ryder rips the bow from Heather and walks away. Was anything solved? Nope.
If your diet is mostly post-2000 teenagers in film, this will be a shock. These kids fuck and kill and curse, and if that's what you like watch this film.
The circulation desk had not seen a patron for over an hour. Circulation decided to use the time to check in the book drop, asking Childrens to keep an eye out. When Circ got back, Childrens was folding little paper animals.
"Did you see the new Super Mario Movie?" Circulation asked.
Childrens held up a paper turtle, saying, "No. I can't."
"We had fun with it. It's silly and has a lot of references to the games. I guess it would have to though. What do you mean you can't?"
"I do not believe in abusing mushrooms," Childrens said.
"Oh, well, I guess I get that. Like psychedelics?"
"No, no, no. Noooo. I'm on those right now." Childrens waved a paper squid in the air.
"So, physically?" The book dorp was forgotten.
Childrens ate the paper squid, slowly chewing it to a wet pulp. "Do not hurt the fungus for the Forest Queen lives among us."
"How about you fold those in the back? Or go home?"
Childrens held up a paper dragon. "How about that?" The dragon fell to the carpet. Childrens cried "Wah-hoo" and jumped up and down on the origami before running through the staff door.
Along with Seth Rogan and a lot of other people in my generation, I realized movies could be bad by watching the 1993 Super Mario Brothers: The Movie. Twenty years later I sat in a theater and watched the movie I wanted back then. The new Super Mario Bros Movie is the best thing we could have hoped for: competent.
Mario and Luigi live in cartoon Brooklyn, New York starting up a plumbing business. That is quickly swept aside when they find themselves in an oddly spacious sewer and sucked down a pipe. Mario goes to the Mushroom Kingdom where he learns a dragon man named Bowser is attacking everything while Luigi gets put in a cage. Mario vows to help Princess Peach defeat Bowser and save his brother. All that happens.
Saying a movie is competent these days is quite the praise. So much intellectual property has been wasted in the last decade *cough DC cough Star Wars cough* that having a breezy 90 minute movie that is entertaining and well made feels delightful. If we cannot get original stories any more, at least we can get entertaining films like Air (more later) or Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves (maybe later).
Sure, all these movies are made to sell products or make us believe that the heroes are the million dollar companies that want us to buy more products, but last night when Luigi got his shit together and helped out his brother, one little girl shouted "Luigi" in pure childlike fandom. That's something I have not heard in a while. A kid, not a grown adult, cried out in joy for her favorite character. It made me smile.
The animation is beautiful, and the cast did a damn good job. Every frame is filled with easter eggs to Nintendo and Mario's history while not one time did I think of the person behind the animation. So much is packed in visually (with a beautiful score by Brian Tyler) and the voices matching the animation that we did not get another jukebox musical animation dump but an actual movie.
To round out, I'm gonna give a big virtual high-five to whoever came up with the nihilistic Lumalee. There is dark, then there is getting the director's daughter to say lines like "more meat for the grinder" dark that brought back a little weirdness to kids movies that I love.
If you have kids or access to recreational drugs, check out Super Mario Bros Movie.
copyright image MGM
Rocky's protégé is giving a chance to an old friend who might not have the best intentions while beating people to a pulp for entertainment.
Here's a numbered list of things you might not like in Scream 6.
© madheidi.com / Artwork by Matt Ryan Tobin (worksofmattryan.com)
When the love of Heidi's life is executed in bloody fashion, Heidi is captured and taken to prison where she will be programmed to be the cheese dictator's servant. Except fuck all that.
If you see one movie with a cat wearing human clothes, check out this thing my cousin did with his ginger baby Flopsy with a little fedora saying "m'eow."
When high school English teachers tell you to read Wuthering Heights, they talk about romance and gothic and love and leave out the horror that love can bring.
Decades from now, space children will go to their space parents and ask what would happen if a giant furry murder machine was given stimulating substances. If there is any justice in the world, a DVD will still exist and those children will watch Cocaine Bear until the laser burns a groove in the disc.
Everything here is from February 14th to the 22nd-ish. Hopefully these won't be this long in the future.
Every so often I give myself a movie binge challenge. Watch all the movies of Steven Spielberg or watch a lot of movies about killer tomatoes. This year in December, I decided to do holiday movies. I'm not done yet, but here's what I've seen so far.
It was hot in Seattle. Damn hot for a city that throughout history has not needed air conditioning. What we needed was a long movie for comfort. What we got was assaulted.
This musical assault of a movie was happening in the Dolby theater of the local AMC. Big sound and reclining chairs. I could live there if they would only install a kitchenette.
We sat down for Baz Luhrman's Elvis. My history with the director is pretty good. Romeo + Juliet was my high school crush, Moulin Rouge was a college fling, and Great Gatsby was the pretentious one that made me realize what I really wanted. I do not need all the flash and glamor, but it is fun to get a little crazy.
After the first ten minutes, I leaned over to my friend and, talking to myself as well, asked if she was okay. She did not know. We had both been assaulted with a barrage of light and sound so potent and overwhelming I found my brain had skipped a beat or two. I could not tell you what happened. Only that it hurt. Not in an aggressive punk rock way, but in the way a family member yelling that all the good cereal was gone. Solid trauma.
The film flows with vibrant and jarring sights and sounds for most of the run time. When the musical performances hit, they act like well done MTV at the height: visual representations of songs that illustrate moments in Elvis's life from church services to iconic spasm filled stage ballads. But the music does not stop. Rather than being punctuation, the music is the whole sentence. The relentless dumping of information through song drains all narrative flow. Yet the recreation and the emotions of iconic moments like the first pink suited wiggle and black leather clad special return to form are amazing. Too bad there's few moments to breathe.
What does get a moment to breathe are the actors. Actors Austin and Hanks center the story and both are giving it their all. In recreating Elvis, we see hope and conflict as Elvis's mental and emotional capacities decline with Austin's subtle and solid performance. Yet Hanks steals the show in one of the more off putting performances of his career. Like a devil of folklore, Hanks's Parker is a weird, conniving, broken creature sent to suck the fight from Elvis by giving him everything he wants. Had the performance been more subtle it may have worked, but Hanks repulses more than invites. There is no redemption for this villain. No excuse why Elvs would be tempted by the man. Elvis is not a hero; he is the carnival sideshow Parker leeches for all he is worth.
Elvis in the end is the carnival attraction it told us it was. Bright and bombastic yet led by a life sucking swindler forming a grotesque affair more akin to Nightmare Alley than A Star is Born. The tragedy here is in the execution.
Another Marvel, another day. In this episode of a thirty-year-old dude's version of grandma's stories, a wizard has to protect a girl from an evil witch.
Professional sex havers get hacked apart in the woods and explore what desire and freedom can do when taken from you.
Who's got three thumbs and likes to beat criminals senseless? What has three city officials killed, a mobster put to his crimes, and a masked maniac who loves another masked maniac? If you said Batman to either of those, then you saw Matt Reeves's The Batman and also The Dark Knight.
Studio 666, the new horror film starring the Foo Fighters is a little creepy, kinda funny, and full of "Who let these maniacs into the theater?"
Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage and some other people, is a musical, something I do not think the advertising liked to talk about to the point where some guy in the back row said, "The fuck" when the singing started.
If you see one movie about the moon trying to kill everyone on Earth, then maybe try out Moonfall, Roland Emerich's latest beefy fuck you to all science and human emotion everywhere.
The second episode of this Captain America spin-off gives us everything we wanted. More information on everyone including the new Captain, the Flag Smashers, old super soldiers, and Bucky and Sam's relationship. What we didn't know, but hoped, we might get is some serious social commentary. While soft with the commentary, the episode still brought up some serious race relations as they relate to America's historical experimentation on black people and policing. The witty banter and action scenes are a great spoonful of sugar that allows the Disney overlords to not question the medicine this show is capable of making the audience swallow. It's not the Watchman show, but it does have its heart in the right place.
Here are my notes, beware spoilers
Old High School
Interesting open with our new Captain John Walker back at his old high school. We get who I can only assume is his wife (or a dear old friend) giving him a pep talk. Then we get his partner, Hoskins, who I will not call Battlestar. To be honest, I really liked seeing the doubt in Walker as well as surrounding him with people of color. We see that he's a competent soldier who people like thrown into the propaganda machine like Steve Rogers was, but there's still that line Hoskins says that makes me wonder. "You can't punch your way out of this one." Seems Walker goes to violence as a solution rather than a last resort, although Rogers tried to fight a guy for talking in a movie BEFORE he became a super soldier, so whatever.
Good Morning, America
The propaganda theme is literally played as Walker walks out (congrats to that jazzy drumline marching band, that was great). What gives me pause is the "no superpowers" line. Come the fuck on. Even a perfect specimen could not throw that shield and catch it. I cannot believe otherwise.
Bucky meets Falcon
Sam's got issues with all the "new Captain" posters, and I don't blame him. Then Bucky comes in bitching about giving away the shield. Behind all the "Big 3" and other funny quips, I just loved these two playing off each other. Then there's the jump out of the plane and Sam's teasing. Omg it's the best.
Road Chase
After locating the Flag Smashers and sniping at each other some more, Sam and Bucky get to fight on top of some semi-trucks. The new "bad" super soldiers kick their ass while hauling vaccines. Bucky apparently is not strong enough to pull himself up half the time, while Walker comes in with Hoskins to shoot at least one bad guy and again, no regular guy can do what he does with a shield. There's no other backup (another country maybe, but still weird. Even Cap had back up with SHIELD). Sam gets some awesome use of his wings, but our heroes fail.
Ride with a Captain
Man, Walker talks too much and says very little. Still, that little is the wrong thing. He wants to succeed in his mission, not replacing Steve, but tries to bring on Bucky and Sam by playing up the image of Sam. And that's all this is, him giving into the propaganda machine in a time when that's not enough. Sam's comment on the last line hits it right on the money.
Flag Smasher Refugees
I'll cover all their appearances here. It's obvious this ragtag, global group of revolutionaries with an awesome slogan are trying to do good. All heroes and villains think they are doing the right thing, so we have to have some sympathy for these people who are trying their best. It's a turning point. Are they really the bad guys as they seem to be hunted by even worse guys? Also, Marvel nerd squee on the deep cut "Power Broker" being after them. I will admit I only knew the name and had to look it up, but after I did… big smile.
Baltimore
Bucky decides Sam needs to know some secrets after fighting more super soldiers. Man, this is where this show decided to go for a run. We meet Isaiah, a supersoldier experimented on for decades, the first black super soldier. He's pissed because of the government and Hydra's treatment of him. Also, fun possibility of his grandson being Patriot and leading the Young Avengers. Then we get a standoff with the police being a dick to Sam until they recognize him. All these moments were something I honestly did not expect. Not perfect, but just raising these questions in a Disney Marvel show is kinda amazing.
Therapy for Two
Bucky gets arrested for skipping his therapy session (dissolving the police scene), and we get a tense but hilarious buddy cop scene. The two of them stare each other down under the watch of Bucky's therapist. Then Bucky lets out a good measure of his character, believing that Sam giving away the shield Steve gave him means that Steve might be wrong about Sam which means Steve might be wrong about Bucky, too. Sam's reaction is understated and perfect, asking if Bucky believes Sam believes Sam did the right thing. It's not Sam's reluctance to take up the mantle, but America's reluctance to see a black Captain America.
We get more of Walker's arrogance here as well, getting Bucky out of jail and off parole. Then he tells them to work with him or "stay out of his way." What happens when our heroes cannot do that.
Go See Zemo
The ending tease of Zemo drips with menace. But uh, why is he the only one that knows Hydra's secrets? Widow put all of Hydra's files out on the web during the Winter Soldier movie, and Zemo said in Civil War that's how he found out. A little bit of google translate and CTRL+F should help people find whatever they want in those files.