dancer in the dark

Dancer in the dark:

While I liked the story, and while I didn't find the acting terrible,
I did find the directing/editing awful! Did anyone else notice this?
I thought it really hurt the movie in a bad, bad way. What I mean, in
case you didn't notice it, is the many many times in the movie where the
editing would switch very noticeably while on one person. Like bjork would
be talking with her head facing left, then without switching the point of view
or who or what the focus was on, she would magically shapeshift
to facing forward with a different expression on her face mid-sentence and all, and
with a different inflection and tone of voice.
Otherwise, I liked it. Very sad film with a decent story.

I think the choreographed musical parts set themselves
away from the reality parts on their own just by being what they are.
The way they introduced those parts are what kept me watching.
The editing thing seemed more unintentional to me. It was probably
that they had several takes, and combined the good parts, but without
forethought that they might not be as consistent as they needed.
But by the time they edit it, it's too late, or they have to re-shoot.
I could be wrong, but that's what I thought every time I noticed it,
which was a lot.

Bjork's a bjerk for making me teary-eyed though.

After some discussion of this movie in a thread I started on a forum, I
encountered some people who liked this 'style' of directing. I was not aware
that it was a style until this, so I will continue with this in mind.
There are two fellas who direct and use this similar style as a rule. One is Jean-Luc Godard("breathless").
The other is our 'Dancer in the dark' director, Lars Von Trier, who admittedly uses
this "technique" of Godard's. I personally don't see it as a technique so much
as an oversight, or just lack of caring, just to finish up as fast as possible
to save time and money and hope it all syncs up OK in post (or editing, if you prefer).

And yes, I did bother to do some research for this one. Not much, but enough to
support my views.


I do not know who Godard is, and am not familiar with "breathless" or his patent style
of "jump-cutting". I was, however, feeling expeditious, so in an attempt at insight, I
looked him up. The following quotes may seem long, but some is very relevant to my plight.
I left the rest so as not to leave things out of context. What I found was this:

"...'À bout de souffle began in this way. I had written the first scene (Jean Seberg on the Champs Elysees) and for the rest I had a pile of notes for each scene. I said to myself, this is terrible, I stopped everything. Then I thought: in a single day... one should be able to complete about a dozen takes. Only instead of planning ahead I shall invent at the last minute!' (Godard in Milne, 172-3)

Breathless was instantly hailed as a truly revolutionary movie and the logical outcome of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) rejection of what they called 'Le Cinema de Papa' (Dad's Cinema). The most patently radical Godardian style was the incessant use of the jump cut, a sudden temporal ellipsis even in the middle of a dialogue take. That's standard practice now but at the time it broke every dictate of the conventional filmmaking manual. In fact this technique was a little more accidental than political. The film, loosely (with a minimal and constantly changing shooting script) based on a 'crim on the run' storyline by François Truffaut, ended up as a rough cut of around two hours long – more the length of the despised blockbusters then and now. To be considered a commercial product the movie needed to lose about 30 minutes, so rather than cut out whole scenes or sequences, Godard elected to trim within the scene, creating the jagged cutting style still so beloved of action filmmakers."

So it seems I was also correct, but just don't like that style.
Kind of a 'git' er done and who cares if it looks choppy' frame o'
mind. That's fine, but don't call it a style. Still, thankfully, the writing, acting,
and the intriguing way they made a musical out of it kept me
watching, and I'd still watch it again.

Godard basically said "this sucks. i can do this faster and get more scenes
done in shorter time if i ignore my notes and chop it up later."

In that aspect, it is intentional on his part, but doesn't make me
wrong, or even very critical, assuming that Lars was in a similar mindset,
as it would seem.

I liked most of the style of the film. This editing thing I mentioned
was often, but not constant. Every scene didn't have it. It just looked
like dialogue was cut out sometimes from maybe a longer sequence
or several takes didn't sync up as well as maybe intended.
As for it being definitely on purpose, I don't know that for sure.

As for the Godard vs. Lars thing:
I was just using the Godard quote to say that his technique
is the result of pretty much what I said originally. He obviously
liked it if he would continue to do things that way, thus making it
his technique for the way he likes to do his films.
Back to Lars:
What I said later with regards to Godard and Lars was with the mindset of 'if Lars was intentionally
using Godard's style.' I don't know this because I don't know this
director, but he is mentioned and attributed for doing so.

I didn't think the songs themselves were all that great, but I loved
the way each of them was introduced with the sounds of machines,
and whatnot forming the music. I sometimes sing along to the washing
machine.

Sorry for prattling on and for any overstating. It is not intentional.
This review was edited from a longer set of several takes on a forum that
I took several parts out that I thought were less relevant or too long.

;)

-Sleeve-

the skeleton key

OH MY EFFING FUCK! THE EFFING SKELETON KEY!
HOLY SHITTING FUCK!....

Sorry. I'll begin:

Fucking shit, this movie is terrible! Okay, so, good god it's awful!
I'm trying, I'm sorry....

So, the film is about this chick who moves to this new town for
no apparent reason and moves in with a woman to help take care
of her invalid husband, even though the wife does not work and stays
home full time and has been doing this on her own for years as she states
in the movie and is still completely capable of doing it on her own! Jesus!
this film is vomit!

The woman is given a skeleton key which "unlocks every door in the house"...
Yeah, that's what they were ALWAYS FOR!!! FUCK! Sorry. So, of course, there
is one room that it will NOT open, the attic, and when asked about the room it
is just said that they "don't go in there..... We never go in there..." So, our hero
wanders around in the dark, FOR THE WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE! THEY
DON'T HAVE LIGHTS ANYWHERE IN THIS FILM! THE GAS STATION HAS
NO LIGHTS ON! THE HOUSE DOESN'T HAVE ELECTRICITY OR SOMETHING,
AND SHIT! I'm renaming this movie!

Here's my review for "The so fucking dark that you strain your eyes too much to notice how awful the plot is":

So, our hero heads, in the dark, to the room again, only the room is unlocked. Yes, that's right! She doesn't even use the skeleton key.
In fact, it's unlocked for the rest of the movie and the skeleton key is NEVER NEEDED FOR ANYTHING! I want to shoot myself in the dick!... Wait. That won't fix this movie.
So, skeleton key out of the way for the rest of the film. It's not used at all. Ever!

So, she learns a dark secret about the town and the condition of her non speaking invalid
that she's pointlessly taking care of: The mirrors of the house are haunted by BLACK PEOPLE!
Oh, my god! what?!? .... WHAT?!? So, the wife of the invalid goes on about how black slaves
took the children and taught them voodoo, and now they haunt the mirrors... sweet mother of fuck! So, once you get past how much sense that doesn't make, they do make a point of
using the mirrors as a plot device... ONCE! YEAH, ONLY ONCE, AND THEY DON'T SHOW
IT! SO, THEY SHOW US NOTHING! goddammit... Anywho, they are done with mirrors as
well, so we're back to just being in the dark. Quite literally. The whole film is in the dark.
Not CSI-we-work-with-the-lights-off-blue-hue-but-you-can-still-see dark, but actual dark.
Shit, you can see the movie without renting it by just turning your lights off at night, and
trying to navigate around your place. Pretend you have a plot, and there you go. The fucking Skeleton Key!

So, the movie goes nowhere until you realize it makes even less sense by our invalid turning out to be that way because of HIS WIFE using VOODOO on HIM that is suppose to add HIS remaining years to HER life so SHE can live longer, but just gives him the appearance of having had a stroke.
Now the woman takes care of him instead of killing him, thus PROLONGING HER OWN PLAN of adding years to her life, by using those years to take care of a strokey invalid!!! WTF?!?

I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it is equally dark (not creepy, just that you can't see shit)and stupid.

Fuck! And there is no happy ending for me I'm afraid. I've seen "The Skeleton Key"
which is never used in this film...

-Sleeve-

jesus christ, vampire hunter!

Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter!

With a title that, you can't go wrong... If you're me. I absolutely loved this
film! Some will likely not, as it is cheesy, cheeky, hokey, stupid, and blasphemous.
everything is OK.
From the makers of "Harry Knuckles", comes an action movie for all who
can handle ridiculousness. Jesus in modern day, in sneakers, clean shaven,
is a martial arts guy who fights street gangs run by vampires, hangs with
lesbians.
Thank you for suggesting this one to me. I don't even know where to go
with this. It's so dumb, that I couldn't stop laughing through most of it.
Definitely a movie for those of you who watch shitty movies with a couple
friends and rip it apart, ad-lib, and whatnot. Except this movie is intentionally
the way it is, so you don't need to. Just enjoy.
It never really explains itself, but Jesus and vampires are arch enemies?
Almost everyone that dies in this movie is an extra in a few other scenes,
sometimes the same scene. Some die several times in one scene.
They have a Mexican wrestler, who is pals with Jesus.
Sexual tension between Jesus and a lesbian?
All vampires are lesbians?... Well, I guess that makes sense...?
Pointless sneaking!!!! (my favorite part)
Clever disguises.
Stakes through the heart. (these scenes really do make the whole movie)
And somehow, it looks like it was made in 1992, but is, in fact,
from 2001.
I LOVED IT!
The best way to describe this would be that conversation we've all
had with some friend that went something like this:
"If i was making a movie, I'd have a full body puppet ride a motorcycle into a hotel lobby and demand to be manager,
then he'd have to fight all the porters, cuz they're ninjas!"
"Yeah, that'd be great! And Satan would be the bellhop, and
he'd have to judge to see who wins, and if the puppet wins,
Satan pimps his ride!..."

-Sleeve-

the simpsons movie (2007)/futurama: bender's big score (2007)

OK! Here's a two-fer:

The Simpsons Movie:
This movie is exactly what I was hoping it
would be. As my friend illajikal puts it, "It's a really long episode of the show..."
This is good. I only had a few hopes for this movie.

1. Be funny.

2. Don't be completely centered on Homer hurting himself... But let it happen a bit.

3. Don't re-use old jokes from the show. If this movie has Lenny(who I love)
saying "AAah! My eye! I'm not suppose to get (anything) in it!..."
I'm going to plotz! (not good. Lenny's eye joke has already expired)

They have made me happy. They did not reuse old jokes, Homer's pain
is a at a decent level, and it is funny.
Great work, fellas! One critique: There is a scene where an angry mob
breaks into the Simpsons' house and knock the door down. They come
in thirsty for blood and are held at bay by Maggie, but in the next shot,
the door is attached again, and the mob is outside and homer is
boarding up the door.
This is my only complaint about this one. Otherwise, it had what
the Simpsons' usually has, plus beefed up in artwork and animation
for the movie as well as the irony and irreverence we fans have come to
love.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score:
This one gets a similar rating except that I laughed a pant-load more
for this one!
Hilarious! And they have a really clever way of tying in the entire
series together
and make sense, and fun, of not making sense. And it all comes
together in the smartest, most ridiculous ways. I found one or two
things predictable, but that didn't hurt it for me.

But this is me here, so you know I spotted a mistake:
There is a part of the movie where Lela's pet, Nibbler, tries to intervene by
calling the rest of his species in to help by yelling "NIBBLONIANS! ATTACK!"
The problem is (nerd alert!)that the planet Nibbler was collected from was called Vergon 6.
Nibbler was rescued from there before it kerploded. He should be the only one of
his species left, unless there are others of his kind on other planets, which I will accept. However, HIS NAME is Nibbler. Not his species! He was named Nibbler by Lela when she witnessed him
eating other species on Vergon 6 just after she discovered the little guy. If his entire species
and planet were nibblonia, even though she found him on Vergon 6, that would just
be the weirdest coincidence. This is the only flaw that i have noticed. It's a big one, but as luck would have it, it happens in the future! So, it's completely preventable!

Either way, I laughed a lot! And I'm sure I will when i watch it again. Which I will.
If you were a fan of the show and were sorry to hear it was cancelled,
Just grab this movie! It picks up nicely.
Plus, it's from the future!


-Sleeve-


P.S. The show has been picked up again after 4 full length films and will be airing new episodes soon. :)

irreversible (2002)

Irreversible:

This one was tough at first. It starts with a constantly moving camera,
even when the characters remain still, which makes you wonder if it's just
for the sake of being different, but then lends itself to aide in the
illusion of the continuous shot that the director seemed to be going for, though
it is annoying at all times. The worst part of the camera trick for me
(when i wanted to stop watching due to nausea and irritation)was a very
long "continuous shot" in a bar where the main character is looking for
someone, and we follow him through the entire place with an awful siren-like
noise going constant with techno very faint in the background, while the
camera spins the whole time. Picture someone practicing with a bow-staff, and you have the view of the bow-staff. On the character-up at the ceiling-on someone else
-up at the ceiling-to a wall-to the floor-to the dark-to the ceiling-to
our character... This goes on waaaaaaaaaaay too long. This would have been fine
if it were just a continuous shot following him, but between the siren and
the spinning, I wanted to turn it off for fear that the whole movie would
be like this, and that i'd go mad with vomiting.
Thankfully, it isn't. What came next was disturbing in a far different way.
The following scene makes you wish the continuous shot was a little less
convincing, as the spinning stops and you watch a very brutal and too realistic
scene of two guys fighting.
This film is not for... most people. I don't want to give away the whole scene, but I will
not be complaining about not seeing the violence in this one.
I myself got through this scene and stopped the movie to cringe and wince for
a bit.
Did you ever see something in a film that looked so real that you wondered if
they really did that to someone, and everyone was in on it?... Kinda makes you
feel like that.
This makes number one of my top three most brutal and hard to watch scenes I've
witnessed in a movie.

#3 is the curbsmile in American History X. Thank god for cut-aways so they
can put the dummy in.

#2 would be the face smashy part with the butt of the gun in Pan's Labrynth.

This scene hits #1. The only one where I've stopped a movie for a bit.
I still feel a little uneasy, but it was on with the rest of the film...
Whether to come to grips with that scene or not, the rest of the movie
is a lot more tame with the exception of a rape scene that leaves an
awful discomfort in your soul as well. You feel dirty and gross watching
those scenes anyway, but this one is especially long which makes it worse.
Reverse chronological order makes the movie progressively tamer and happier
from this point on. For realism, this movie does it for me, because most of the cast
are idiots with nothing to say attempting to say things. Just like real people.
My biggest problem with this film is that the writer/director decided to throw in irony at the end, or foreshadowing but it's all backward so that doesn't work, by having one of characters mention a dream about the place where something
happens to them. This was not needed as we already saw the scene if we are at this point. This film was powerful enough to keep you engaged without that, thinking something more was going to happen, but it doesn't. Don't get your hopes up.

Well. That was long. Sorry.

-Sleeve-

august underground (2001)

August Underground:

This film is suppose to be set up to look like a snuff film, where a few
morbid pals are filming the abuse and killing of kidnapped townsfolk.

This one was very tame for me. The idea of what you see is disturbing,
but watching it isn't. Any scene with any sort of blood already has the
blood on it from start to finish. Nothing happens in this film. It's made
to look like a home video of a few sadistic pals who kidnap, torture and
mutilate people. But don't worry, faint of heart, you won't see any
of this.
It is all implied. (fuck. I just went through this with the hostels...)
All deaths are already, severed limbs are already just sitting
there, and there is our main girl tied up in a chair who you witness
nothing happening to.
She is missing a nipple, but you don't see it get cut off, and you can
kinda see it grow back later, so she'll prolly pull through.
What really ruined the realism for me with this one is that these pals
go about like pub crawl jocks and are quite proud of what they do,
except that every time something may happen, the pal with the camera
either puts it down, points it away, or leaves the room.
Seems odd if they're all about documenting what they're doing.
Anywho, the idea of being kidnapped and tortured is there, but
the act is not.

Sorry august underground. Sorry I saw you.
Love,

-Sleeve-

hostel 2 (2007) with dishonorable mention to hostel (2005)

...And then it was sequel time! I had no real belief that this one would
be good anyway, so no disappointment.
Hostel 2(electric boogaloo): First off, I did not really like the first one, so I really had no right to watch or review the second. But I digress. Let's visit the reason for this sequel: (money)

Hostel 1: I thought the premise was interesting and creepy, but the acting, dialogue and plot convenience stuff left the movie lacking for me.
A lot of people told me it was really gory, and I wish they hadn't because
that was one of the selling points, and I didn't find it to be gory at all.
implied gore can still be creepy, but it isn't gore. Remember when
they cut the cop's ear off in reservoir dogs? No. You don't. Remember they implied it though? They hold the blade up,
the dude gets in the way of the shot, and the camera moves away
and when we come back, his ear spot is bloodied.
Sorta like that. You don't see it happen!
It wasn't that it was not creepy, but I mean the amount of gore
that they actually show happening. I am a lover of gore in films, and
I've seen a lot of movies where you see everything that happens
while it's happening, not just the after math.

For those who tried to defend the film with specific gore parts to prove me wrong:

Achilles tendons: The scene doesn't show them being cut. You see dudes face when
the other dude heads toward the floor, and hear a noise and a scream. then when they show his ankles, they're already cut. You don't see it happen. Please watch Pet Semetary.

Fingers: Ok. This one you do see. And it's cool.

Torch: Nope. You don't see any of this happening. Dude is standing in the way
of this shot until he stops using the torch. then, he moves and you see a mess.

I'll give you creepy, but I didn't find much gore happened at all. Just aftermath. I hope that
helps to illustrate my gripe.

Back to Hostel 2: (frigs)Mostly the same, but with a female lead
and a loser plot, and waaaaaaaaaay more predictable. Shame, but
true.

Also, I have a question for anyone who managed to make it through this film:
What was with that deal that she tries to make with the dood near the end?
Does he strike you as a person who would (a) give a shit about his client's member?
(b) make a deal to save her life? Why would he care about sparing her life? Or his client?!
what?!?

And there were a few other things, but I don't want to rant too much.
This one left me going "Are you fucking kidding me?... And I said it a lot!

-Sleeve-

superbad (2007)

Superbad:
Not super bad, but not super funny either. It had it's moments, and
I did chuckle a bit here and there, but I kinda expected more from this
one.
It just seemed slow paced for lines and whatnot.
Like when you see a junior high school play, and everyone
knows their lines, but they have to think for a minute if
it's their cue, and "what was that line again?... Oh yeah."
Then you get the line, somewhat forced, and somewhat obvious
most of the time, but it was there.
Most of what was funny in this film were the roles of the two police officers.
Otherwise, I didn't laugh much at all.

So, there you have it. Sorry it's such a short review, but, due
to the content, there wasn't much to review on this one.

-Sleeve-