224 - Sinister

    A family moves into the house where most of a family was murdered, and the father investigates the crime for his true-crime novel.  Evil stuff starts to happen when he finds footage of the murders - and others.
    I showed this to Cathy, as it was one of the more interesting horror movies from the last several years.  It’s been awhile since I saw it, and this viewing did make things more interesting.
    The sound and music is really unusual.  While the found footage is playing, some very unsettling music plays.  It’s a little like a heartbeat, but less organic.  There are synth elements.  It’s strange that I didn’t remember this from the first time I watched the movie.  I kept wondering if the found footage sequences would have been more or less effective without the score.
    The story fits together better than I remembered.  There are a lot of red herrings during the first half, but I’m impressed with how deftly the script inserts the important pieces of information.
    I do have one main complaint, and it really seems like something the director would have addressed.  There are two points in the movie where they use a jump scare that involves the supernatural being’s head jumping in from the side of the frame along with a big stab on the score.  These moments are cheap, and they break the fourth wall, for some reason.  They actually hurt my respect for how well the movie is done otherwise.  It’s like some producer said “we need a big scare to go out on!  Do this!”
    Regardless, the movie was effective at scaring Cathy.

223 - Suspiria

    An American girl goes to a foreign dance academy.  People start dying, and strange stuff happens as she gradually investigates things.
    I’ve avoided a lot of the giallo movies.  I haven’t cared much for Argento in general.  Last year, I watched Tenebre, which I think I liked a little more than I expected.  I’ve also found that he directed the Masters of Horror episode Jenifer, which I liked quite a bit.
    Suspiria enjoys a very positive reputation, and a pretty influential status.  I think I can understand this sort of thing, since it does make an impression, but honestly, I find it exhausting and weak.
    The movie focuses on two specific aspects: color and sound.  The script, the acting, the effects… all of it is unremarkable.  The editing is interesting, but it’s remarkably difficult to follow.  The design of everything is tilted toward making interesting colors.  Tinted windows are exploited to throw bright colors on things.  Red is all over the place, then blue, then occasionally, a green is used.  This focus actually works against the believability of the movie.
    There’s a sequence where a girl is fleeing a killer.  She makes it through a small window, putting a room between her and her stalker.  She sees an open door on the other side of the room.  She drops down, falling onto a whole mess of barbed wire.  The room is lit well enough that the audience can see all of the wire clearly.  If we had seen from her perspective, and the wire was entirely in shadow, I could believe it.  As the scene plays out, I can’t help but wonder why she decided to jump into the wire.
    The sound is really strange.  Music appears and pounds loud - really loud - and then stops.  This happens several times.  I don’t mind the idea of this, since the music is tied to the editing, and there’s some kind of internal logic to it.  The problem is that the volume difference is so incredibly huge, it’s hard to feel anything but annoyed.
    I had heard something… when Star Wars was originally released in Italy, audiences loved Vader’s breathing.  As a result, the Italian mix pulled the breathing way up.  This is all I could think of.  These audiences would rather hear the music than the dialogue.
    The story itself is kind of minimal.  It isn’t written especially well.  There aren’t many surprises to be had.
    I don’t actually think this is a great movie.  But I do think some of the imagery and the coloring, and the framing of the shots are fairly influential.  I think I just wanted a stronger, more coherent story.

222 - Ishtar

    A pair of songwriters get a gig in Ishtar, where they get entangled in a political mess.
    Cathy got me the Blu-ray for Christmas.  We watched it together.
    After I watched this the first time, I liked it quite a bit.  The longer I thought about it, the more I liked it.  Dangerous Business has been in my head often, and I’ve been suggesting the movie to almost anyone I can.
    The second viewing was actually better than the first!  While I had really liked all of the music/songwriting sequences the first time through, I felt like the plot was almost an intrusion into that bliss.  This time through, the plot wasn’t bad at all.  It felt like there was more of a continuity from the song sequences into the plot ones, and it felt more like two people from another movie stumbling into a big-budget action movie.  The tone of the delivery and the photography changes.
    I was more aware of a variety of continuity gags.  Every time they’re on stage, they invariably kick a microphone at some point.  Dangerous Business is remixed into different instrumental versions for background music (as well as a piece of music used in the Mission: Impossible series, in a very pleasing easter egg).
    There’s one complaint that I have, and it’s hard to blame them for.  There are passages where most of the dialogue is whispered.  I wish the mixing were better for those scenes.  I think those play better in theaters though.

221 - Charade

    A woman is widowed.  She finds herself surrounded by con men, looking to find $250,000 that her former husband supposedly had.
    I’ve had this in my queue for a long time, since it looked vaguely Hitchcockian, and I’ve wanted to see more of Cary Grant.  I finally gave in and watched it.
    It’s okay.  I’m surprised that it has an 8 on IMDB, but it is fun, even if it’s a little weak.
    The story is mostly told from the perspective of the female lead.  We learn what she learns, and we don’t get any information that isn’t directly shared with her.  Most of the story is built on trying to reformulate the audience expectations.  First, Cary Grant is a good guy.  Then something reveals he’s a bad guy.  Then he offers an explanation, and he’s back to being a good guy.  This keeps on cycling through.  It doesn’t feel like it’s masterfully handled, but it may just be an issue of the time period.  Everything feels like it’s being spelled out too clearly to the audience.
    The biggest problem is that the story is tonally confused.  It plays out like a mystery, focusing on tension for some of the story.  Then there are these witty, flirty exchanges between the leads that play like a romantic comedy.  Things keep flopping around, and it never does either of these things especially well because of it.
    There are two main reveals near the end.  First, the location of the money.  Second, one person isn’t who they seemed.  The location of the money is something they’re all focused on, but it never seemed to be the important question.  I certainly didn’t care.  Even the female lead doesn’t seem too concerned about it.  Come to think of it, she didn’t seem too concerned about her husband’s death either.  The second reveal is something that I saw coming.  Even from the beginning, the setup seemed fishy.  It makes the female lead come across like she’s not especially bright.

    Yet, perhaps because of the strange tonal shifts, this remains more watchable than I expected.  Some familiar faces are nice to see - Matthau, Coburn, Ned Glass.  Still, could use some trimming, and possibly a bit of restructuring to make the developments happen in the right spots.

220 - We Are the Best!

    Three young girls in 1982 Sweden form a punk band.
    This had a solid five-star rating on Netflix.  I decided to overcome my lack of interest in punk music to give it a try.
    It’s good.  I feel like there are aspects of it that I don’t quite identify with, since I’ve never been to Sweden, I’m not a girl, and I’ve never identified with the punk mindset.  Outside of these issues, there’s something very charming about this.  Their band is almost incidental.  It seems to give the characters something to do, but most of the story is just the three of them having fun, arguing, and indulging in their friendship.  And that’s where the movie feels best.  The three girls have interesting relationships, they have distinct personalities, and the interplay is simultaneously unpredictable and completely normal.
    The ending comes with their first public performance, and it’s strange.  It doesn’t feel like much of an ending, but at least it seems like it solidifies the point made about their friendship.
    What I found most likable was Hedvig, who knows her instrument well, but seems to like the fun of playing punk music.  But it was her role as a mediator that I liked.  She doesn’t have as many lines, and she seems the least comfortable with stretching her boundaries to accommodate her friends, but her behavior is still something I identify with.
    Still, I don’t really understand the punk mindset.  That isn’t to say that the adults in this come across as good people, or even reasonable.  They seem shortsighted, probably about just as shortsighted as the girls do.  But it reinforces a few stereotypes I have about punk music, notably that it involves a bunch of musicians copying each other and repeating ideas without actually believing in anything in particular.

219 - The Wolf of Wall Street

    The rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a stock trader who was convicted in 2003 of securities fraud and money laundering.
    I’ve been reluctant to watch Scorsese movies for awhile now.  I liked Goodfellas during high school, but eventually I grew out of it.  I realized that I find many of his movies kind of indulgent.  I think I like my stories a little more compact, tightly wound.  (Although Cathy didn’t care for Shutter Island, I remember liking it, and I’ve intended to revisit that one soon.)
    This movie is hard to avoid comparing to Goodfellas.  It’s long, at three solid hours.  It’s a similar rise and fall structure.  It ends with the person being convicted, ratting out his accomplices, and pining for the life he once led.
    There’s one key difference.  In Goodfellas, Henry Hill’s life is in a pretty constant decline.  He peaks pretty early on, but the drugs filter into everything, he gets less likable, and more and more people have to be killed off.  It gets harder to feel like it was a life worth living.  Here… I don’t get a sense of that.  It’s a party time from the beginning until about 15 minutes from the end.  Even the sequences that should have been terribly bleak feel like they’re being played for laughs.  He insists on his yacht being driven into a storm?  The scene becomes a joke as he sends his buddy down below to get some drugs.  Even after the ship capsizes, there’s a little dance party afterward.  What’s the message?  It doesn’t really matter.  He’s got enough money that it doesn’t matter at all.
    All of the negative consequences of Belfort’s behavior are personal problems.  Divorce, jail time… everything is softened because of his wealth.
    As I watched this, I thought of all of the people from my class that went on to work in finance.  Some of them were decent people.  Some of them were the most amoral people I knew.  I can imagine this movie captivating, especially in the time leading up to high school.  Without a strong moral core, I feel like this movie is missing something important.

    I read a handful of reviews on IMDB, and it reminded me of a few things.  The movie follows the general layout of a normal story, but it’s padded out to an excess.  There are loads of scenes that don’t really advance the story, or do it in the longest way possible.  Then there are a few other sequences that gloss over substantial events.
    Even though I can’t say that this is actually a good movie, it’s an entertaining watch.  Performances are fun, direction is usually enjoyable, and the quick pacing gives it a sheen of humor.  But at the core, I can’t say that this is good.  I can’t recommend it to anyone.

218 - Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle

    Stoner buddies Harold and Kumar decide that they want to make a trek out to White Castle to get some burgers.  Their trip turns into a night of (mis)adventure.
    I saw this a long time ago, probably 2005 or so.  I remember being pleasantly surprised.  There was mention of Neil Patrick Harris yesterday, and I remembered him being a highlight of this movie, so I decided to watch it again.
    I think I like it more than I did back then.  I’m seeing the unrated version now, which just means a bit more nudity, some of which adds to the surreal qualities of the movie.  I’ll get the one scene I really don’t care for, and that’s the toilet scene.  It’s not terrible, and it might play better for some age groups, but it seems out of place at that point in the story.
    The things that I like are much more unusual things.  Playing with the audience perception of racial stereotypes.  Putting an Asian guy as a romantic lead.  Even the appearances of some of the guest stars are about subverting the audience expectations of them.  Neil Patrick Harris is a strange, messed up, horny guy.  Christopher Meloni is cast wearing a bunch of weird deformities on his head.
    None of the white male characters are positive or honorable.  This doesn’t bug me.  It’s actually pretty refreshing.
    It’s also remarkable how the movie takes a premise that revolves so centrally around White Castle, and manages to prevent the movie from feeling like an ad for the chain.  It never says anything bad about their food, and the good material is glowing.  But it feels completely real.  These cravings happen.  I remember one day in college where a bunch of us started thinking about how great it would be to get Subway.
    I also like how well the movie ramps up the craziness.  It reaches a peak a little early, but it seemed like it didn’t make logistical sense to arrange it any different way.