Spun (2003) is a brilliantly filmed portrait of the Crystal Meth culture, including pusher, cook, and assorted speed freaks. The story takes place over the course of three days, while everyone is on a speed trip. The cast, which included Mickey Rourke and Ron Jeremy, together with the cutting and special effects, gave a compelling insight into what Crystal addiction must be like. Nothing was glamorized, not were any moral judgements presented, although it was obvious, once again, that drugs suck.

It was a somewhat easier watch than more serious films about drug abuse due to the very dark comedy, but I couldn't relate to any of the characters. While I admire the effort put into the film, and see its strong points, it was not a movie I could really enjoy, other than the full frontal nudity from Chloe Hunter through the entire film, naked and tied to a bed. IT is a very well mad efilm, but targeted to a very narrow audience. C+

Read My Lips (2001)

Original French title: Sur mes lèvres

Carla is a frumpy 30-something secretary in a construction company. Her career and private life are going nowhere. She's almost completely deaf. At work, people either ignore her or exploit her. At home, she has no love life, and her friends use her to baby-sit, or ask if they can use her apartment for wild sex while she sits quietly in a cafe until they finish. She allows herself to be exploited without more than a peep of protest.

When her boss lets her hire an assistant, she chooses a scruffy ex-con with no office skills. He is barely on society's edge. Unable to get any other job, homeless, without friends and family, and deeply in debt to baddies who don't believe prison paid his debt to them, his life is headed nowhere but down. It isn't clear why Carla would hire such a man.

But it made for a good movie.

Amazingly enough, the two losers form a symbiotic relationship that creates one highly competent individual. His tough-guy skills come in very handy for intimidating office bullies and people in the construction industry who hold up her projects waiting for kick-backs. On the other hand, her lip-reading skills are indispensable for planning criminal activities.

There are no lovable characters. Carla is truculent, pathetic, and anti-social. The con is a sleazeball. The fact that their interaction isn't predictable makes things more intriguing as they lead up to their big score, and possibly a romantic involvement as well. If it were an American movie, we would know full well that the frumpy goody-two-shoes secretary (Sandra Bullock?) would stop short of criminal mayhem, and the unkempt sleazeball (Mickey Rourke?) would eventually reform. But this is a quirky, amoral French premise, and not an American formula. It is never quite clear just how far Carla will venture toward the dark side.

It's kind of an odd movie in that the first half is kind of a comedy/drama which takes place mostly in the office, while the second half is a bloody and tense caper film. Overall, it is neither, but an interesting dual character study of the interaction between two people who make each other better.

The critics absolutely adored it. It garnered 96% good reviews, and James Berardinelli picked in in his annual Top 10.  I can see why people like it so much, but I didn't really share in the mass enthusiasm. The movie simply didn't bring me the pleasure that it brought most people, and I was mystified that the critics seem to have overlooked its flaws. It has a sub-plot with the con's parole officer, for example, which is confusing, slows the pace, and is completely supererogatory.

I think it was a good movie, but I'm at a loss to understand why it met with such universal acclaim. The 7.3 at IMDB pegs it more accurately that the 96% positive reviews. It is solid and creative, but not at the masterpiece level.

• Emmanuelle Devos (might be a double, I suppose.) (1, 2)

The nudity in this film was disappointing, but Charlie bailed us out with a comprehensive look at her career.

• Devos in "My Sex Life" (1995)
• One more of Devos in "My Sex Life"
• Devos in "Le temps perdu" (2000)
• Devos in "L'adversaire" (2002) (1, 2)
• I don't know what movie this is, but it's a film clip, and she's stark naked in the shower. Full frontal nudity.

Guilty by Association (2002)

Whoa, did I get suckered in by this one. I'm pickin' up all the worthwhile new releases at Blockbuster this week, and here's this movie sitting there with a picture of Morgan Freeman on the cover. The DVD box has been beautifully engineered to look like a clone of Along Came a Spider or Kiss the Girls, with Freeman dominating the box, staring meaningfully and compassionately off into the unknown. I should have wondered why I never heard of the movie, but what the hell, I can't keep track of every movie everywhere, so I figured it just slipped by me.

Turns out it is a confusing, no-budget black urban street drama shot on DV, indistinguishable from about a zillion similar films in the new releases section at Blockbuster (with exactly one copy of each on the shelf). Morgan's part is almost irrelevant. I guess it was a vanity project financed by the rap group Section 8 Mob. I found it difficult to understand the dialect, the editing was confusing, and one guy plays two parts, so I'm not too sure what the hell this film was about, but the plot is something like this:

Two friends work their way up from the streets to the rackets. The one guy gets a big head, starts to show off his wealth, and recklessly attracts the attention of the cops. They nab him, he rats out his friend. A gang war results in a dead little girl.

Then Morgan Freeman comes out as a police captain, and looks soulfully into the distance, and pontificates about how "evil" is bad and certainly worse than "good", because "good" behavior usually doesn't result in little kids getting gunned down while they slide in the playground, and it would be much better if we had more good and less evil. Especially for little kids.

Then Morgan thinks about the crimes in a musical montage, solves them, punches the timeclock, and collects his paycheck.  To be fair, I can't believe Morgan did this for money, because they couldn't have paid him enough to make it worth scheduling around, and he certainly couldn't have done it because he was attracted by the aesthetics of the project. So I'm guessing that he has a friend or relative involved somewhere, and he agreed to appear for a couple of minutes as a favor to someone who felt that Morgan's face on the DVD box would trick some old white farts into renting it at Blockbuster.

That may be sleazy, but it sure ain't stupid!

• Miscellaneous unknown ho's. (1, 2, 3)

UPDATES:  

• Updated volumes: Julie Smith, Amber Smith, Raelyn Saalman, Holly Sampson

OTHER CRAP:

• 13 ways to make baseball brawls more fun
• The latest from the Wicked Weasel Bikini Competition
• Radio personality Bobby Harper, whose on-air antics were the basis for WKRP's scruffy, spacey Johnny Fever, died yesterday.
• Deficit-Wracked Maryland will be closed indefinitely on August 31
• Eagle Teen Offered $12,500 For Kobe Bryant Story. The story also says "the pictures of the alleged victim circulating on the Internet are not her but a classmate with the same first name."
  
  A few thoughts on the Kobe accusations.
  
  1. I'm not saying Kobe is guilty, but I don't think the D.A. would have brought a "he said, she said" case to trial. The prosecution has the burden of proof in a trial, and a case like that would probably get dismissed early before going to a jury, thus making the D.A. look like the world's stupidest guy in front of the whole country on national television. Nobody wants that, so the guy must have some strong evidence that leads him to believe her story.
  
  2. One person says she was all jokey and bragging about the incident, while another says she was obviously traumatized and physically battered. Somebody is very full of baloney.

• Godfather of Soul James Brown has announced his separation from his third wife in an advertisement featuring a family photo with the Disney character Goofy. Disney's lawyers will be so thrilled.
• The 19-year-old woman who accused Kobe Bryant of sexually assaulting her attended a party just days before charges were filed against Bryant and appeared to be in a good mood and “bragging” about the incident, several teen-agers at the party told NBC News on Tuesday.
• the sons of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis will perform together.
• Oprah Winfrey is No. 1 on VH1's assessment of the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons.
• the ten most overrated sexy celebs. Sample comment about Julia Roberts: " ... the insane smile of hers that spreads from ear-to-friggin-ear. She's like the Joker's bubbly sister "
• Chris Penn gets into a fist fight with a midget. Chris is 5'10", weighs 200 pounds. His opponent was 3 feet 5 inches tall. As guards dragged him away, Penn reportedly roared, "Let me knock out that midget!"
• Great story - Brooklyn road signs get some attitude."Leaving Brooklyn . . . Fugheddaboudit."
• T-3 chick into voodoo, human bones, heavy drinking, heavy cussing. How did Colin Farrell miss this girl?
• Three women were being hunted by Greek police yesterday for giving men oral sex on a crowded beach. Ah, the beach. Waves lapping on the shore ... Whoa, Beavis, he said "lapping". Heh heh.
• Interesting article from TIME - Michael Elliott - Europeans Just Want to Have Fun: "Why do Europeans and Americans differ so much in their attitude toward work and leisure?"
• Manchester United starts on a U.S. tour ... met by 12 fans. Hey, there would have been 13 fans, but Ugo got sick. The funny part of the story is that the club had earlier made a decision to whisk the players secretly from the plane to the hotel, as if they were Pitt and Aniston. What planet are they living on? Those guys could walk down the main street naked, with their names and "Manchester United" painted on their arses, and nobody in the USA would bother them!
• The Dude Abides. Still takin' 'er easy for all us sinners.
• CBS premiere dates

Other crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

PIRATE COUNTDOWN:

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

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