// Category Archive for: Movies

The Cabin In The Woods (spoiler free!)

By Lisa Anderson

Do you love the horror genre, but feel like it’s in a rut? Do you like rooting for main characters in a terrifying situation, but find that in recent movies, they’re often one-dimensional or unlikable? Do you enjoy the exquisite treat of being confronted with a Big Bad that’s been built up for over an hour . . . but wish that could happen without a lot of sexism or torture porn?

If, so, fortunately, Joss Whedon agrees with you.
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Battle Royale: The Complete Collection

By Less Lee Moore

For those (like me) who have not yet been seduced by the legendary Japanese film Battle Royale, this new Anchor Bay collection—featuring the theatrical cut, the 2001 special edition, Battle Royale: Requiem, plus a disc of featurettes and extras—is nothing short of jaw-dropping. The four-disc set comes in a beautifully packaged booklet and is available in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats.

Battle Royale was originally released in 2000, and was adapted from Koushun Takami’s controversial 1999 novel of the same name. The film exploded into the new millennium, riveting audiences, breaking box office records, outraging censors, and transfixing a generation of film nerds like Quentin Tarantino. Its synopsis is straightforward:

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Valerie Solanas: Who Shot Andy Warhol?

By Less Lee Moore

In June of 1968, a woman named Valerie Solanas rode the elevator up to The Factory, Andy Warhol’s loft. In the elevator with her was Andy Warhol himself. In the Factory’s office was Mario Amaya, an art editor from London; Fred Hughes, one of Warhol’s assistants; and Paul Morrissey, Warhol’s executive producer. Morrissey walked into the bathroom. Within a few minutes, Solanas pulled out a .32 caliber gun and shot Warhol three times. She then shot Amaya in the hip. Hughes begged her to stop. When she fired the gun at him, it jammed. Just then, the elevator doors opened and Hughes told her get on. So she did.

Screencap from I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996

Soon after, Valerie turned herself in to police. When questioned by the media outside of the police station, Valerie said that her reasons for shooting Warhol were “very involved. Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am.” Solanas served a three-year sentence for attempted murder and died in 1988.

Over 40 years have passed since the shooting, but people are still asking the question “Why?”

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Bonnie and Clyde: “You Made Me Somebody They’re Gonna Remember”

By Less Lee Moore

“Why? What’s you mean, ‘Why?’ Because you’re different, that’s why. You know, you’re like me. You want different things. You got somethin’ better than bein’ a waitress. You and me travelin’ together, we could cut a path clean across this state and Kansas and Missouri and Oklahoma and everybody’d know about it. You listen to me, Miss Bonnie Parker. You listen to me.”
—Bonnie and Clyde, 1967

Screencaps from The Thought Experiment

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The King and (F.B.)I: Elvis Found Alive

By Christian Lipski

Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Simi Valley. Or at least that’s the claim of Elvis Found Alive, a new faux-documentary from Highway 61 Entertainment, who brought you Paul McCartney Is Really Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison (reviewed here). This time around, they’re doing a complete 180, revealing a conspiracy to fake a death instead of a life.

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I Hate You Like Family: Sibling Rivalry In Pop Culture

By Aila Slisco

When the often-quoted W.C. Fields famously said “never work with children or animals,” he might have done well to add “or siblings.” Anyone with a sibling knows that there is an often thin line between love and hate when it comes to relations between brothers and sisters. Sibling rivalry has probably been around as long as siblings have, although it rarely reaches the Biblical proportions of Cain murdering Abel. When it happens in pop culture, even comparatively mild disagreements are amplified and the drama is put on display for all to see.
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Scandal In The 21st Century: The Different Faces Of Irene Adler

By Lisa Anderson

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It’s not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one in particular, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind . . . He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer . . . And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
—”A Scandal in Bohemia,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In recent years, two new versions of the stories of Sherlock Holmes have captivated viewing audiences. One is the film version starring Robert Downey, Jr. The other is the BBC Television version with Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead. Both versions make good use of characters that have either been portrayed very differently or not used as extensively in other incarnations of Holmes stories. For example, both Jude Law and Martin Freeman portray John Watson as a much better sidekick than did Nigel Bruce and others. Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s smarter older brother, gets screen time and importance in both the movies and the television show. However, none of Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters has seen their stock increase more in these retellings than Irene Adler. SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT!
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Catfish: Beyond Real And Beyond Fake

By Less Lee Moore

Living on the Internet means that you often have to dodge spoilers. Luckily, the Internet is also so crammed with information there are enough things with which to distract yourself.

Such was the case with Catfish, a 2010 documentary that caught my attention via its unsettling trailer, which seemed like a faux documentary horror movie along the lines of The Blair Witch Project or the Paranormal Activity series. It was clear that an appreciation of the film was a case of “less is more,” so I added it to my DVD queue and successfully avoided spoilers for almost two years.

When I finally watched Catfish earlier this week, my stomach was in knots for at least 45 minutes until the movie completely . . . I’ll stop here because if you haven’t seen Catfish, you should watch it, and you should watch it not knowing any more than I did.

Catfish is a remarkable film and one that is thrilling, upsetting, disturbing, and moving. It makes incredible use of technology in its presentation of the Internet persona through GPS, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and all the other forms of social and searchable media we use every day. Such technology is so easily accessible and so widely used that it becomes a part of our lives that we take for granted, even though we assign it so much importance. We take all the veracity it reveals to us on faith.

As far as Internet personas, it’s common knowledge that we want to show everyone the best of ourselves, even if that means we make ourselves seem better than we are. But there is always a gap between our “real” selves and our Internet selves.

The width of this gap will likely determine how you treat your Internet friends. Do you treat them the same as your “real life” friends? Better? Worse? Do you subscribe to the “It’s just the Internet” theory to make yourself feel better about what you see and read there? The width of this gap will also determine how much Internet interactions affect you when you’re not on the Internet.

These were the ideas swirling around in my head right after I watched Catfish and right before I started looking up reviews online. Then, much like the film itself, everything changed. SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT!

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Top Ten Movies To Look For In 2011: Follow Up

By Lisa Anderson

In late 2010, I made a list of the 2011 films that I was most interested in. With many year-end retrospectives going on, I thought I’d go back over the list and report on how these movies compared to my expectations.

1. Red Riding Hood

Of all the movies on my list, this one probably disappointed me the most. The story was muddled and didn’t make use of folklore and symbolism in the way it could have. The love triangle was not as interesting as it could have been, and there were disappointing performances all around from otherwise amazing people. Last but not least, the script missed the perfect opportunity to have the wolf throw back its head and howl at the moon. Red Riding Hood had its good moments and there were things I liked about it, but overall, you’re better off watching Hanna (reviewed here) for an innovative, feminist take on fairy tales.
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Best Of 2011: Less Lee Moore

As always, I wish I’d had the time and resources available to experience more, but here are some of the things that made 2011 memorable (in alphabetical order, to be fair).

À l’Intérieur (Inside) at TIFF Bell Lightbox, August 20: Though I’d already watched this film three times on DVD, I felt that I needed to see it on the big screen. I’ve probably said this a few times already, but it’s still true: it manages to completely transcend the horror genre to become a bona fide work of cinematic art. It is indescribable and powerful and if you haven’t experienced it yet, you should.

Adam Ant: For all those folks who thought he was a crazy, bloated has-been, recent live performance clips on YouTube will more than prove those half-baked theories wrong. He’s so much more than the guy who did “Goody Two Shoes” and any and all adulation for him is well deserved. His descent into madness, fall from grace, and subsequent return to form (used in the truest, most non-cliched sense ever) are remarkable achievements. He remains, after thirty years, a huge inspiration to me. (more…)