Claire's blog

VIDEO: MOVIE: REVIEW: Dark Horse (2011)

Claire: 3.6/5 stars, 7.8/10.
Carolyn: 3.6/5 stars, 7/10.
Native ratings: 2.8/5 stars Netflix, 5.9/10 IMDB.

Todd Solondz! One of my 15 favorite directors!

He doesn’t really make movies in genres that I like; he makes movies in genres I don’t like and manages to make them very interesting to me.

His movies are the ultimate in depressing awkwardness, with occasional black comedic effect.  And this movie lived up to that reputation.

Ultimately we have a movie about a main characther who is such a loser that everyone around him would be better off if he was dead. We end up with a very lonely movie.  It kind of makes us think about how detached, lonely, and desperate people really are (it’s more than most people think). We’re all just floating through life, scared, having no idea what we’re doing — and yet, grabbing on to the first person willing to grab back doesn’t magically solve these problems. I’ve learned it all too well myself, and this movie demonstrates it just again. The cold hard existental truth about the meaningless of human contact.

Interesting IMDB trivia: “Estelle Harris, Jason Alexander and Jerry Stiller were hired to do voice overs for the scenes where Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken sit stone-faced watching an unseen TV sitcom. Todd Solondz felt the Costanzas on the TV series Seinfeld were a sitcom version of the family he was depicting, but he couldn’t afford to use audio clips from Seinfeld.”

Written & directed by Todd Solondz (Palidromes; Happiness; Welcome To The Dollhouse; Fear, Anxiety & Depression [my favorite]).

Starring:
Jordan Gelber as Abe.
Selma Blair (Storytelling, Hellboy movies, A Dirty Shame, Cruel Intentions, Can’t Hardly Wait, Legally Blonde, Destiny in 2 eps of Out There, 1 ep of Portlandia) as Miranda.
Mia Farrow as Phyllis.
Christopher Walken as Jackie.
Justin Bartha (Doug in The Hangover movies, National Treasure movies, uncredited in 54) as Richard, the brother.
Aasif Mandvi (The Internship, Movie 43, The Dictator, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, The Last Airbender, Spider-Man 2, 1 ep of King Of The Hill, 1 ep of Curb Your Enthusiasm) as Mahmoud.
Zachary Booth (Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist) as Justin.
Donna Murphy (The Bourne Legacy, The Fountain, Spider-Man 2) as Marie.
Tyler Maynard (there’s also a character called Jiminy in Palindromes) as Jiminy.

LINK URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1690455/combined

VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIOEW: The Purge 1 (2013)

Claire: 4.4/5 stars, 8.4/10.
Carolyn: 4.4/5 stars, 8.4/10.
Native ratings: 3.1/5 stars Netflix, 5.5/10 IMDB (seems low, but IMDB is usually low).

What a premise: The government allows all crime to be legal for a period of 12 hours every year.

Carolyn thought it was an interesting commentary on human behavior and preventing crime, but then I had to interject that it was not a commentary on that at all. It was a commentary on using crime prevention as an excuse for class warfare: A phenomenon that is very real and happens in the real world today.  Very often — in the real world — the vaunted public interest of stopping crime or making people safe is used as an excuse to reduce personal liberty. And this is the ultimate example of that.

In that sense, this is a political commentary along the same lines as The Hunger Games, but in a more decentralized, less post-apocalyptic, less futuristic way. The society seems to be a present-day society, whereas Hunger Games seems to be 50-100 years in the future. But the message is the same: Class warfare is entertaining for the upper class, hell for the lower class, and is designed to destroy everyone but the rich.

So the movie had political ramifications for me, regardless of how good it was otherwise. And I liked that.

But I felt it was good, otherwise, as well. There were at least 5 different factions of people — not even counting the conflicting motives of the family. These factions all had their own agendas, and the viewer didn’t always know what they were. This allowed for a lot of small twists and surprises that helped betray one’s expectations and make the movie more interesting and less guessable.

Some people are mad at this movie because not everyone acted rationally. They seem to forget that a movie where everyone acted rationally would generally not be interesting. You need some people to do some stupid things to get everyone into a predicament, so that you can be entertained by the prospect of getting OUT of said predicament. Do I really have to explain this? A horror movie where everyone acted rational would mean, in this case, a movie where everyone locks up their house and nobody goes outside during The Purge. That. Would. Be. Boring. I’m sure there are plenty of horror movies where nobody does anything stupid. It wouldn’t work in this case. So I don’t view that as a valid complaint.

Written & directed by James DeMonaco.

Ethan Hawke (Gattaca, Daybreakers, Reality Bites, Mystery Date, Explorers, 1 ep of Robot Chicken) as James Sandin, the dad.
Lena Headey (Dredd, Sarah Conner in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, St. Trinian’s (2007), 300, The Broken, The Brothers Grimm) as Mary Sandin, the wife.
Max Burkholder (Astro Boy, 17 eps of Family Guy, 2 eps of The Cleveland Show, 2 eps of American Dad, 1 ep of The Spectacular Spider-Man) as Charlie Sandin, the son.
Adelaide Kane (she’s in some new Teen Wolf show) as Zoey Sandin, the daughter.
Edwin Hodge (Dorm Daze 1, Take Me Home Tonight, 1 ep of Heroes) as Bloody Stranger.
Rhys Wakefield (+1) as Polite Leader. Claire recognized him instantly a few days later when we watched +1.

LINK URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2184339/combined

VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: Violet & Daisy (2011)

Claire: 3.6/5 stars, 7.4/10.
Carolyn: 3.6/5 stars, 7.4/10.
Native ratings: 6.2/10 IMDB. Doesn’t seem to be on Netflix.

This was interesting and somewhat quirky black comedy about a pair of female underage BFF assassins. However, one is very alpha, while the other (Saoirse Ronan) sort of follows along. There are interesting dynamics between them, and things only get more interesting when they are awarded what turns out to be the most challenging hit of their careers. And not at all for the reasons you would think. Not at all.

It wasn’t that action-packed, but then again, it wasn’t an action movie. It kind of meandered a bit with the cryptic dream sequences, but for once, such an endeavor did not detract from the story. They were short, they were over, and they could be ignored if you chose to.

Watch this for one of James Gandolfini’s last performances before his death. He’s quite a different character from Tony Soprano here.  But also watch this if you are a Saoirse (“Seer-sha”) Ronan fan. That girl keeps growing on us. She’s only 19-20 and we’ve already seen 5 of her movies now.

This has a sort of indie feel to it, in that the plot isn’t as realistic, and the ending/meaning is slightly pretentious. I’m okay with that. We were entertained, and it was interesting, as well as having a lot of laughs. It earns the “comedy” in “action-comedy-crime-drama-thriller”, and comedy deserves to be the 2nd genre mentioned there. Though the comedy does thin out a bit near the end.

Written & directed by Geoffrey Fletcher.

Saoirse Ronan (The Host, Hanna, Byzantium, the voice of Arriety in The Secret World of Arrietty) as Daisy.
Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls) as Violet.
Danny Trejo (Breaking Bad, Predators, Harold & Kumar 3, The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto, Eyeborgs, Fanboys, Smiley Face, The Devil’s Rejects, Anchorman,Trojan War, Enrique on King Of The Hill, Machete in Spy Kids 1-3) as Russ. He gets around!
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (The Cell) as Iris.
James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, Where The Wild Things Are, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Get Shorty) as Michael.
John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco in The Sopranos) as Man #1. Claire recognized him immediately from Sopranos.

LINK URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1634136/combined