She's fierce like my miniature american eskimo was fierce

Ellen Page is quickly becoming the female Michael Cera — someone the audience can identify with no matter what’s swirling around her.  Just like Cera, she grounds every movie she stars in and gives it enough soul to be good.  We like her and care about her, and we see ourselves and our struggles inside hers.

Yeah, so it’s a good thing she’s directly in the center of Whip It, because this is some by-the-numbers Hollywood moviemaking right here in your face.  The stock characters swirl around her — domineering mother, aloof father, cute little sister, wisecrackingly smart friend, cinematically crazy roller derby girls, cute boy/rock star, etc — and it kinda works because Ellen Page is all vulnerable and stuff.

What director Drew Barrymore has done is made a movie about roller derby that is as safe as humanly possible.  There’s no real danger, no real surprises, and unless this is your first time in a cineplex, you’ll be able to pretty much figure out the ending after about a half an hour.

For example, Ms. Barrymore cast herself as Smashley Simpson, a total psychotic who gets thrown out of every roller derby match she’s in because she can’t resist the urge to beat up girls.  That character should have some edge, right?  Well, this psycho has been covered in a shellac of extreme non-threateningness that’s so pervasive, it makes her vicious attacks seem cute.  I realize the point of a movie like this is to make us like and identify with the characters, but does all the menace have to be removed and replaced with cuteness?

That’s not to say that everything besides Ellen Page was bad.  A couple of the other performances — most notably Andrew Wilson (the lost Wilson brother) as Page’s oft-ignored roller derby coach — were top-notch, and the roller derby action was pretty exciting without being unrealistic or stylistically distracting.

Also, the film did remind me of Texas, with its beauty pageants and crazy moms with misplaced priorities.  It got a lot of the details of that right.  And its message of “be yourself,” trite and safe as it may be, did come through in a positive and not totally trite way.  In a way, it reminded me of the Lyndsay part of Freaks and Geeks, where a small brunette girl discovers a new world she likes that doesn’t quite fit with the world her parents have created for her.  Don’t let anyone tell you not to play roller derby or hang out with stoners, small brunette girls.

Tomatometer rating: 84%

What it should have been:  75%

I have Mark Zuckerberg to thank for lots in this world.  He posts pictures of funny things on my wall.  He comes up with funny and/or poignant status messages that interest and entertain me.  He provides me with up-to-the-minute information and opinions on things that matter to me and my many, many acquaintances.  And he does this for me and 500 Million other people across the globe.  Because of this, and the fact that he is awesome, he has made billions of dollars and everyone cares what his opinion is on everything.

OH WAIT THAT’S RIGHT HE DID NOTHING BUT START A WEBSITE AND MANAGE TO BE SMARTER THAN MYSPACE (WHICH, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, WASN’T THAT HARD).  HE DOES NOTHING ON A DAILY BASIS EXCEPT ACT SMUG AND LIVE OFF THE STATUS UPDATES AND MEMORIES OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HE DOESN’T KNOW.   HE IS A VIRTUAL ZERO IN THIS SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD, AND IF HE DIDN’T EXIST, SOMEONE ELSE WOULD HAVE MADE A FACEBOOK AND BECOME A BILLIONAIRE INSTEAD.  HOPEFULLY SOMEONE LESS SMUG.

Forgive my all-caps newbie-style rant.  It’s just that The Social Network is about Facebook, which I think is pretty cool.  But actually, it’s about the guy who takes credit for creating Facebook, which is also a pretty cool story but kind of besides the point.  Put it this way — every time Michael Jordan won a championship, did Dr. James Naismith get credit for creating basketball?  Did the media go on and on about the greatness of Naismith and how Michael Jordan wouldn’t be possible without him?  No?  Then why, every time I post a brilliant status message, does Mark Zuckerberg feel like he deserves any credit?  He’s a billionaire — isn’t that enough for him?  What happened to the idea of the recluse?  Did Howard Hughes and Michael Jackson kill take the luster off Reclusivity forever?

But then there’s the actual movie, which is entertaining.  It tells the story of the beginnings of Facebook and the overprivileged white people who stole the idea from other overprivileged white people.  The dialogue is snazzy, the story is intriguing, and the performances are great and often really funny.  Go see it.  I’m totally not interested in talking about it.

The Zuckerberg was reportedly kinda scared of how he would be portrayed in the movie.  Should he have been?  He comes off pretty well, as a really smart and friendless psychotic who wins in the end because he’s smarter than everyone else, but is still deeply sad.

Eduardo Whats-his-face (his original partner, who ended up suing him after being tricked out of his agreed-upon money) comes off pretty well, too.  The actor who portrays Eduardo Whats-his-face channels Hayden Christiansen in Shattered Glass, and is all vulnerable and soft-spoken and skinny and high-voiced.  It works for him — he ends up being the protagonist because he seems like the person the audience least wants to punch.  So good for him.

And then there’s the Winklevoss twins, both portrayed by Armie Hammer with understated hilariousness.  I loved every scene they and their little friend were in, even if their “you stole my idea” lawsuit seems a little silly in the context of their already multi-million-dollar Olympics-filled life.

Finally, you have Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker.  Mr. Parker founded Napster, and if The Social Network is to be believed, he is responsible for two decisions that ended up contributing mightily to the ascent of Facebook over its pathetic social media rivals:  he pushed the Zuckerberg to avoid advertisements on the site; and, he offhandedly suggested they drop “the” from “thefacebook.”

I’m telling you, if Facebook had embraced ads, it would have been another Myspace, and nobody would know the Zuckerberg from the Zuckerman*.  He would have merely been another standard American internet millionaire — which, due to Bush-Obama inflation, now are worth 1 dime per dozen.

But still, Sean Parker did cocaine, and therefore ended up with only like 7% of Facebook’s billions.  There’s a lesson there for all of us.

Tomatometer Rating: 96%

What it should have been: 96%

*If you don’t know the Zuckerman, clearly you need to brush up on your 90210.  And not the newer version, either.  That thing is death.

She seems nice

Let’s go through the possible ways in which a teen movie can suck, and see if any of them apply to Easy A:

Most of the characters are even-more-exaggerated-than-usual versions of typical false Hollywood teen-movie archetypes?  Check.

Authority figures are divided neatly into “Liberal/Cool” and “Conservative/Fascist” camps?  Check.

It’s a comedy that’s not very funny?  Check.

You can see every plot twist coming an hour before they arrive, turning them from plot twists into a lock-step march into averageness?  Check.

…So we can see that Easy A has a an insurmountable set of problems that prevent it from being good.  This doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable, however, and not just in a unintentional comedic sense.  It has some charm, largely from having its insane Christian-hating heart in a pretty good place, and placing Emma Stone in virtually every scene.

Stone plays Olive, that girl in high school that nobody notices.  This all changes, however, when she decides to tell her best friend Rhi (Disney teen veteran Aly Michalka) that she had sex with a college guy, and the school’s head Christian bitch (Nickelodeon teen veteran Amanda Bynes) overhears.  Rumors of her sexual escapade quickly spread through the school, and before long she’s having fake sex with a gay kid to keep him from being bullied by evil jocks and wearing hooker clothes emblazoned with a literal scarlet letter.  After making several gift-card-for-reputed-sexual-act trades, things play out as you’d pretty much expect, if you’ve ever seen an angsty teen movie.

Some of which is by design, by the way.  Easy A tries to be a sort of combo-homage to both 19th century American Lit and 80′s John Hughes films.  What it actually is:  An attempt to copy Juno‘s formula of “compelling female lead + her one blonde outspoken friend + the one cool boy who understands her + high school sexual politics + snappy dialogue + cool parents + adults having mid-life crises = sweet and funny.”  In this it fails spectacularly, largely because nobody in the film besides Emma Stone acts anything remotely like a real-live human being.

i.e., In Juno, there’s a Christian girl carrying a protest sign who meets the title character as she’s on the way to the abortion clinic.  She tries to convince Juno not to have an abortion, and eventually succeeds by pointing out that the baby in her stomach already has fingernails.

In Easy A, there’s a group of Christians carrying protest signs who try to convince the school to expel Emma Stone for being a slut.  And oh, by-the-way, they’re all total hypocrites.  Betcha didn’t see that one comin’.  Ahh, those Christian teens.  Always so cartoonishly evil.

Or take Emma Stone’s cool parents, played by that woman from The Lonely Island’s “Motherlover” video and the increasingly not-dead Stanley Tucci.  Where Juno had parents who were relaxed and not terribly authoritative, they were at least, you know, parents.  Motherlover and Tucci, however, represent some sort of Berkeley fantasy parenting ideal where acting as chill and hip as possible at all times will create well-adjusted, whip-smart, and caring teens.  Because people are basically good, and the only thing that can screw them up is the System’s rules, man.

And I mean, you could find an antecedent in Juno for just about everything in Easy A, and the Juno version is always 10 times better.

Even with all its problems, and the fact that the movie actively hates me for believing that Jesus was who he said he was, I enjoyed Easy A. Emma Stone is believable, and kinda funny, and has the same breezy charisma that she had in Superbad and Zombieland.  She really lifts the thing from 1-star territory into a solid 2.  Also, I approve of any teen entertainment that sides with the underdogs and downtrodden, which Easy A does at every turn.

The moral of the story?  If you want to see Easy A, go see Juno again.  But that’s probably always the moral.

RottenTomato Meter: 85%

What it should be: 45%

Juno is notable for its ending, which gives vision and words to the geeky sensitive male high school fantasy better than any film before or since. It’s like the John Cusack holding a boombox over his head moment for skinny, awkward, and shy heterosexual males who ran cross country. I’m flabbergasted that a woman wrote the screenplay, actually. It’s like Diablo Cody’s in my head. It’s a weird feeling, this having a former stripper in one’s head. I don’t quite know what to make of it. Suffice to say, Juno kind of rocked my world.

Naturally, I needed to see the whole movie, because that is some crazy imaginative monkey-based animation right there.  Thankfully, the movie it came from — Sita Sings the Blues — is distributed by its creator, Nina Paley, under a creative commons license.  It’s available for free download at sitasingstheblues.com, or for streaming at countless other sites (the full movie is even on Youtube). So I clicked some stuff and within seconds was watching a movie that I just found out existed.  This is how the internet should always work, right?

Anyway, Sita Sings the Blues is an animated musical retelling (and at least partial satire) of the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic tale where an “Hindu Ideal Man” and “Avatar of Vishnu” named Rama loves a “Hindu Ideal Woman” and “Avatar of Lakshmi” named Sita, which results in all sorts of ancient drama like kidnapping, war, and tearful break-ups.  This epic tale is interspersed with Nina Paley’s own tearful break-up with some guy named Dave.  Nina’s story is told in sparse squigglevision animation, while the Ramayana parts are given life through three different styles of animation.  Since it’s free to copy, here’s a 10-minute clip with examples of all three styles. plus some Nina stuff at the beginning:

So you have the modern shadow-puppets trying to recall things about the story, the painted figures giving the characters a voice, and, most importantly, the crazy flash-animated exposition of the story where Sita sings with the words of 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw.  All of this flows together to create an irreverent but somewhat respectful version of the Ramayana, at least for the first two-thirds of the movie.  The stars of the show are clearly the otherworldly animation sequences and the voice of Hanshaw, whose constant devotion to “her man” fits Sita’s thoughts perfectly.

Things take a darker (and more controversial) turn about an hour into the film, when Dave breaks up with Nina via e-mail and the newly crowned King Rama has his brother abandon his pregnant wife Sita in the woods because his subjects can’t respect a man who takes a woman back who has lived in another man’s house, even if that woman was only there because she was kidnapped.  It’s at this point that the movie gets a little prickly and feminist, though still cartoonish and funny.  For an example, take my favorite scene, which is delicious but (as Homer Simpson would say) also a little sacrilicious.   The bouncing sing-a-long ball is a nice touch:

So clearly Sita Sings the Blues is questioning the idealness of Rama, the Hindu Ideal Man.  It’s this part that has hardcore Hindus up in arms, taking to internet comment boards to deride and threaten Paley.  It’s also the part that apparently has hardcore academic postmodernists up in arms (if they even can be said to have arms), because they think that a white woman artistically questioning a non-white culture is inherently racist neocolonialism, and should be forbidden.  Thankfully, nobody really cares what postmodernists think, and we can move on and actually explore the questions.

Are human feelings universal, and if so, in what way?  Is feminism a universal value?  Ok, then, what values are universal, if any?  When feminism and Hinduism clash, who does the Baby Jesus root for?  Is it ok for an outsider to suggest that a religion is wrong about something?  These are not easy questions, but we’re not going to stop trying to find answers just because postmodernism has.  Obviously, there are some humongous issues involved here.  Which is exactly why Sita Sings the Blues is “good” art — because it makes you consider issues like this.  Also, it’s very funny.

Bonus:  The part hardcore Hindus really hate is where Rama walks all over Sita, who makes squeaky noises.  Enjoy the sadness:

There's nothing about this photo that isn't awesome

First of all, I don’t believe this movie accurately portrays much of anything outside of Steve Wiebe’s home life, which should probably be considered a problem for a documentary.  There’s probably a lot of truth in Steve and his family’s struggle with the culture of competitive old-school gaming, though.  As a one-man character study, it provides a little insight into an interesting time in the life of the Wiebe family.  As a total documentary, it gets a little sketchy…

And that’s what makes it great.

Billy Mitchell is an amazing cinematic creation.  Whether he’s real or not doesn’t really matter — every word that comes out of his overbearded mouth sounds like it came from a Hollywood script.  He’s a classic villain, a situation made even better by the fact that he seems to think that he’s the hero.  Everything about him is manufactured to almost Lady Gaga-esque levels — the long hair, the beard, the glamorous wife, the impeccable casual clothes, the rock-star status, the army of henchmen who seem to worship him, the svengali-like hold he seems to have on gaming authorities, his successful wing sauce business — but since it’s manufactured in the world of competitive video game playing, everything is a bit off.  His look is ridiculous enough to qualify as a potential halloween costume; his wife is a trophy, but not particularly pretty; his henchmen all seem unaware of any life outside of nerdy pursuits; his main achievements, the video game records, mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside the Gaming Inner Circle; and nobody has ever heard of his apparently regionally popular wing sauce.  To put it bluntly, he’s a zilch, and this makes his willingness to spout Donald Trump-y life lessons and platitudes endlessly hilarious.   What’s more funny is that he’s somehow acquired these henchmen, who think this larger-than-life gaming persona of Billy’s is something to be admired.

But like I said, I don’t know how much of Billy Mitchell, his henchmen, the video game judges, and the situations depicted in The King of Kong are real.  If any of it outside of Steve Wiebe weren’t staged, then the filmmaker stumbled into a truly amazing true story.  Either way, Mr. Wiebe’s quest against the evil scheming monolith that is Billy Mitchell has lots of exciting twists and turns and a cast of unforgettable characters.  And that’s all you can ask for in this era of The Hills and Survivor, isn’t it?

Four out of five overpriced popcorns, because while it felt a little fake, I’ll never forget Billy Mitchell and his well-conditioned hair.

P.S. — Don’t think I didn’t notice that one of Billy’s blonde-haired henchmen was named Steve Sanders.  Man, there’s so much great stuff in this movie.  I didn’t even mention Mitchell’s old “nemesis,” a man who recorded (what seemed to be) self-help dating videos as “Mr. Awesome.”  The big dispute they had was  over Mr. Awesome’s record score on the crappy 80′s game “Missile Command,” of all things.  You can’t make this stuff up — or can you?

Edited to provide this link from the Onion’s awesome AV Club, wherein Billy Mitchell calls them to set the record straight.  Then the AV Club followed up with the filmmakers about Mitchell’s accusations.  This movie/story keeps getting more awesome.

About to be hit in the face by evil

Ok, so Sam Raimi made another horror movie — finally!  He’s the only Leprechaun out there who can turn standard horror B.S. into a magically hillarious gore-tacular.  We remember the deliciously over-the-top Evil Dead, and its evil rubber chicken of a sequel/remake, Evil Dead II.  Then there’s Army of Darkness, which streamlined the mayhem and made it larger.  So Drag Me to Hell has a heck of a lot to live up to, is what I’m saying.  Does it?  Well…yeah, I suppose, if you’re into that sort of thing.

What sort of thing is that?  Well, how about a toothless old gypsy gumming up poor Alison Lohman’s face, not once but twice?  How about multiple scenes of people being hit with unseen punches and everyday household objects?  How about people being, as the title suggests, dragged to hell?  How about evil forces screwing with people in ways that can only be described as hilarious and super-disgusting?

Why does Sam Raimi waste his time with things like directing Spider-Man or producing Xena: Warrior Princess when he has the power to do something this unique and cool whenever he wants?  Sure, Spider-Man II remains the greatest superhero movie of all time, and Xena had quite the following, but what about this scene from Evil Dead II:

And there are 20 scenes in ED II that are just as good.  Now, nothing in Drag Me to Hell is quite that inspired, but it’s still a good effort from the only man in the world capable of such lunacy.  3.5 out of 5 overpriced popcorns, but that’s only because parts of it were a little boring.  Specifically, most of the parts with the guy from the Apple ads.

"His name should be A** Kicked"

Well, that was interesting.  I’m one of the people who saw this movie on its opening weekend, which is weird because I a) never see things on their opening weekend, and b) wasn’t that excited to begin with.  But weirdness aside, the best way I can describe “Kick Buttocks” is this: It’s not a total waste of two hours.

The main problem with the movie is it can’t decide what it is.  Is it a violent satire of Spider-Man?  A violent Kung-Fu movie with teenage superheros?  A violent black comedy with an indie comic sensibility?

So we can see that whatever this movie can be said to be, we know it is violent with a capital V.

“Kick-Buttocks” suffers from what I’ll call “indie comic hyperstylization complex,” which means that while an 11-year-old girl in a mask taking out scores of drug dealers with a variety of cool weapons might look good in a comic book, it’s really disturbing when played out in a live-action movie.  I’m not saying it wasn’t really cool, mind you, but any emotional resonance the story might have had went out the window when legs started being chopped off.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Kick-Buttocks is about a normal kid who decides that he’s going to try to be a superhero even though he has no powers.  It starts out with a positive message about doing something about all the crime up in here, but turns into something different when this non-hero gets put in the hospital, comes back to “crimefighting,” names himself “Kick Buttocks,” becomes a Youtube superstar, meets a real Batman-esque vigilante (played by Nicolas Cage) and his deadly 11-year-old daughter, runs afoul of the mob, and tangles with McLovin’.  Yes, that McLovin.

Some parts of it work.  The whole Nic Cage and daughter thing is great, and every time they show up the movie gets appreciably better.  The mob scenes, when played for laughs, are pretty good.  But it all ends up being fluff, and the central message of “one normal guy can make a difference” quickly degenerates into “one normal guy in a costume can get chicks he never could have gotten otherwise.” When McLovin dons a costume he’s supposed to be funny; we know this because it’s McLovin, and he’s dressed like a gay japanese pop idol.  But he’s decidedly not funny, and he ends up being the crux of all the dark and violent places the movie eventually goes.  This may have worked in the comic book, but in a live-action movie, it’s just annoying.

The kid who plays Kick-Buttocks himself was fine, but he needed to be awesome.  He has two friends in the movie that are kinda funny, but they needed to steal scenes.  The only two characters that lived up to their roles were Big Daddy and Hit Girl.  Maybe the film should have been about them instead.

2 1/2 out of 5 overpriced popcorns, because while a little girl taking out 50 mobsters is undeniably kick-buttocks, abruptly introduced teenage sex in an alley definitely isn’t.

and WHEREAS, I have set as my goal the quite daunting 500 as the number of movies I need to watch to be a self-actualized human being;

and EVEN THOUGH that 500 number is completely arbitrary;

and WHEREAS, I don’t care;

and WHEREAS, I have a heretofore unnecessary subscription to Netflix that I barely use;

and WHEREAS, I have the skill to make a spreadsheet;

then be it RESOLVED, God willing, that I come up with a schedule of five (5) movies a week until I either: a) go crazy, b) pass away, or c) fail to watch five movies.

Wish me luck.  That is all.

WARNING:  This Netflix Diary contains spoilers that will spoil you like sour cream that’s been sitting in the sun.  Only read if you don’t care about this.

The Fall is so unique and crazy that it defies normal movie reviews.  Director Tarsem Singh has created a visual and emotional feast whose effectiveness depends entirely on one’s answer to two questions:  1) Do you like huge, spectacular natural sets and over-the-top visual artistry? and, 2) Does the relationship between the main characters — a suicidal stuntman and a 5-year-old girl — resonate with you emotionally?  In my case, the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes,” but then again, I like weird stuff.

Some people have compared The Fall to The Princess Bride, but the only thing the two movies share is a framing device.  In Bride, we don’t care about Peter Falk or that stupid kid; we just want to find out if the Dred Pirate Roberts gets the girl.  In The Fall, the story is imaginative, but clearly being made up on the spot by the stuntman and imagined onscreen by both him and the little girl.  It looks super-cool (and without it, this movie would admittedly be a depressing 45-minute dirge that would have no reason to exist), but as Homer Simpson would say, “There is no moral.  It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”  This is probably what makes The Fall so divisive.  People want the fantasy story part of it to have the amazing ending that’s promised by its epic scale, and the film turns out to be just about a suicidal guy telling a story to a girl so she’ll bring him pills.  Although it eeks out some good feelings at the very end, the vast majority of both narratives is unrelentingly bleak.  So you can see why I like it.

Another potential point of divisiveness is the performance of the little girl, a foreign non-actor who mumbles and does all sorts of other things that broadcast the fact that she’s a real girl and not really acting.  I’m going to submit that this dose of reality helps the film a ton, because it turns it from a standard manufactured Hollywood drama into something unlike any other movie before it.  She’s such a real presence that she forces all the other actors to play “real” with her.  This makes the whole thing kind of charming — but also really strange.  And when the end comes and she figures out that he wants to kill himself and that the epic tale he’s spinning from his own life is going to end in tragedy, her tears and protests are too unskilled to feel trite.  I can see how someone who’s really happy would still find the story boring and lame, but don’t listen to them.  About anything.

P.S. — The woman who looks like a Bond girl that plays the nurse/princess has a really weird voice.  I have nothing besides that to say about her.  Also, one can tell this film was made by the same guy who made The Cell.  Tarsem really likes horned helmets and giant Martian-looking outdoor locations.