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Walk Hard
2007
I have already reviewed
this one. The unrated DVD version runs 120 minutes, as opposed to
96 minutes for the theatrical cut. The extra 24 minutes consists of
(1) even more and longer musical numbers, including many from that
corny TV show (2) additional celebrity cameos (3) nudity!
In Bruge
2008
There's absolutely no nudity in In Bruge,
but I thought it was a terrific little film, a film good enough to get
some Oscar nominations, especially best original screenplay.
Here are my thoughts.
Numb
2008
As I was preparing to pop this DVD in, I was doing my usual
preparation, familiarizing myself with the filmmaking team. I noticed
that Numb was written and directed by Harris Goldberg.
The name meant nothing to me, so I looked up his page at IMDb and got
depressed.
The earliest known examples of human writing date back to
about 3000 or 3500 BC, when three written languages seem to have
suddenly emerged almost simultaneously in Sumeria, Egypt and the Indus
Valley. In all that time, an immeasurable number of words and symbols
have been created from the pens and chisels of humans across the
globe, yet it could reasonably be argued from Goldberg's IMDb page
that he is the worst writer in the entire scope of human history,
possibly excepting a couple of anonymous Hittites who collaborated on
the first primitive script about a renegade Hittite cop who plays by
his own rules.
The Hittites were big law and order guys.
Goldberg wrote The Master of Disguise, an ill-fated Dana Carvey
vehicle about a man named Pistachio who can do a lot of voices and
impressions, many very similar to the ones normally done by Dana
Carvey, but also others seemingly inspired by studying Salvador Dali
paintings while on LSD. The film pulled off the rare
feat of unanimous negative reviews from the top critics, per Rotten Tomatoes.
To be honest, it was overrated at 0%, but our primitive human mathematics
can't find a way to describe a percentage less than zero. Let's just
say it was a very low zero, sort of like the showbiz equivalent of
absolute zero. The 25 major critics who panned it didn't just
withhold recommendations with some ambivalence. They crushed it. Ebert
awarded a single star. The BBC described a screening without a single
laugh. The Hollywood Reporter said, "About
as unfunny as unfunny gets. Even its fart jokes are below the industry
standard." The New York Daily News said, "The
film contains no good jokes, no good scenes."
You can imagine the level of enthusiasm
I had for the latest effort from the same writer.
It turns out that I was very, very
wrong. Goldberg is actually a good writer, and it's an excellent script:
quite funny, but also straight from the
heart.
Here's the story.
Goldberg was a child prodigy, entertainment style. He lied about
his age in order to become a stand-up comedian at age 14, and he sold
his first
Hollywood-style script when he was only 21. Over the ensuing years
(he's only 35 now), he was rewarded so handsomely for writing
artificial high-concept crap that he just kept churning it out,
pocketing the checks and (presumably) ignoring the reviews. Inside
of his head, however, he was nurturing a real story worth telling. His
own. He suffered from a type of mental disorder called
depersonalization, in which his life didn't seem real to him, as if he
were watching himself on TV all the time. He went through several
shrinks. Some of them prescribed various pharmacological therapies,
often in direct contradiction to what others had recommended earlier.
One female shrink fell in love with him. Meanwhile, he loved and lost
his soul-mate for a variety of reasons centering
around his own lack of self-esteem. Somewhere along the road, Goldberg
realized that his own existence was filled with the very kind of
comedy he should be writing, the kind that derives its humor from real
life. He wrote Numb, a thinly-disguised autobiography, in which he
changed very little in moving the story from his life to the page,
other than the names of the characters. He told the truth, even when
it portrayed him as a fool.
The suits were sufficiently impressed
to buy the script and to let Goldberg direct it himself.
TV superstar Matthew Perry got his
hands on the script and aggressively pursued the lead. Goldberg wasn't
sure Perry was the right guy to be his on-screen alter ego, but he came to
trust Perry's talent and his desire to deliver the role without
falling back on Chandler Bing. Goldberg was right about that, as he
was right about the merit of his script. Perry worked hard to tone
down his own personality, to study the character, and to listen to the
writer/director. He delivered an effective and affective performance
in a difficult role as a peculiar, distant, but not unlikable man.
There is some sad news within the
success story. When Goldberg was writing crap, he was making a lot of
money for himself and his studios. Even the ignominious Master of
Disguise grossed $40m. Now that he has created something worthwhile,
he can't find a commercial niche. Numb made the rounds of many film festivals,
including Cannes, and it drew some very enthusiastic plaudits from
IMDb commenters, for its honest and accurate portrayal of
depersonalization disorder, for its ability to touch people
personally, and for its entertainment value. But no
distributors were willing to gamble on a theatrical run. Too personal.
Too small. So Numb will be a straight-to-DVD film, to be released in
May of 2008, more than a year after it premiered at Tribeca.
It deserves better, but that's our world. People are saving their
hard-earned dollars for Master of Disguise 2: the Wrath of Pistachio.
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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The Wife in Apartment C
(2002)
The Wife in Apartment C is a soft core sex film, no plot division.
A sports photographer gets in the way of a fullback plunging into the end
zone, and ends up with his leg in a cast. Don't feel too bad for him, because
he can watch and photograph the "Wife in Apartment C" in the building across
the street. He notices her having sex, then his girlfriend shows up and he has
sex. Then he sees the wife leave for the night, and then her husband has sex
with another woman. Next, he sees her return, and she is not upset that her
husband screwed the other woman. When the other woman leaves, she gets into a
fight. Later, he notices that there are actually two men, obviously twins.
Then the wife knocks on his own door and screws him.
She warns him that she also has photos of him, and explains that one of the
twins supports her, has lots of money, and has a girlfriend. His married twin
brother loves her, and provides sex. He seemed glad for the explanation, but I
didn't care even a little bit. What I saw was two different couples screwing.
You may be wondering, "What alerted her that he was watching?" Well, it
could have been the assistant director waving the script in frame:
But the movie seems to think she and her lover heard his aluminum crutches
fall through a closed window, across a busy boulevard, and through another
closed window.
Bad movie. The sex is boring, the photography is bad, the plot is pitiful,
and the music is an assault on the brain and ears.
Elita Sanders
Mara Kelle
Meridith Blake
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Rowing With the Wind
1987
Happy Easter To All !
But we got confused and thought it was Halloween and we did Halloween
Night.
Nothing like a teen horror movie for Easter.
Alicia Klein shows breasts in the tub before she gets her throat slit. Caps
and a clip.
 
Erica Roby shows her boobs. Warning the last one is bloody.
  
Amanda Ward more tits.
 
Erica & Amanda have a little lesbo before all hell broke loose. Caps and
three clips.
 
Stephanie Christine Medina with her boobs bouncing all around in the sack
before she meets her maker. Caps and a clip.
Rebekah Kochan kept her clothes on but did become a "Babe in Bondage".
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Love in the Time of Cholera
(2007)
If you are a big fan of the Gabriel García Márquez novel that this 2007
romantic drama is taken from, you may enjoy the movie. I personally found
it boring, the leading man ridiculous, his many conquests of young women
even into very old age unlikely, and at the end, I was left with the
feeling I'd rather have wasted the 2 hours and eighteen minutes on a good
slasher flick. The nudity was nice, but not enough for me to recommend
this chick-flick epic gone bad. Hack off 60 minutes but keep all the
nudity, and it might be worthwhile.
Spanning a fifty-year period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Fiorentino falls madly in love with Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as a
teen. At first she professes love for him also, but eventually marries a
wealthy doctor.
Fiorentino's love for Fermina never falters, but he makes it up to
himself by laying everything in site over the next fifty years. When
Fermina's husband finally kicks, out of a combination of old age and
stupidity, he decides to take another shot.
Nothing saved this one for me, but in all fairness, it isn't the type
of movie I usually like anyway, so if you're bored to the point of tearing
wings off of flies, you might want to consider it.
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