Author: Greg DeLiso

‘Wanna Hang Out?’, or, Airheads is Better Than Dog Day Afternoon

airheads2


There’s an odd video on YouTube where Quentin Tarantino lists his 20 favorite movies that have come out since he became a director in 1992.  The video was made in 2009—making it a 17th year anniversary celebration of him being a director.  The arbitrariness of this echoes The Simpsons’ 138th episode spectacular (although that was a joke).

His list is surprising—in good ways and bad.  I love that he lists The Matrix and also makes a point to disregard the sequels “that serve only to tarnish the mythology of a badass movie”.  And with Jan de Bont’s Speed, he adds a clever caveat that we “forget everything that happens after the bus stops.”  But then, for some reason, he names Woody Allen’s Anything Else—one of his least significant movies.  (It’s also kind of a bummer since Allen’s best movie, Deconstructing Harry, came out in ’97—well within Tarantino’s arbitrary 17-year timespan.)
Continue reading ‘Wanna Hang Out?’, or, Airheads is Better Than Dog Day Afternoon

A Delicious Batman Smoothie

batmanforever


I have never read a comic book in my life.  To the many of you who are now automatically writing off my opinions on the Batman movies, let me please remind you that I’m writing about movies.  I respect comics as an art form, and they have been fodder for some great movies (namely Superman, the Spider-Man trilogy, Ghost World, and that’s literally it) but the truth is, I don’t really know a thing about comics.  I do love the idea of them, though.  What’s not to love?  I like heroes and villains and crazy costumes.

When I was a little kid I loved Batman.  I got into the campy Batman TV show when I was about four and started collecting Batman action figures.  I remember when the cartoon came out, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.  At the time, I was too young to see Tim Burton’s Batmans.  They came out when I was three and five, respectively.  And by the time they were age-appropriate for me, I had already moved on to dinosaurs and Spielberg.

Like everybody though, I have seen all of the Batman movies.  Unlike everybody, I know that the only one that is good is Batman Forever.  I’ll explain, but first, I have a lot to say about the other Batman movies, and I’d rather just say all them all here in one long, meandering essay than have to write separate ones.
Continue reading A Delicious Batman Smoothie

A Rebuttal to ‘The Empress, Quite Literally, Has No Clothes’

lenagreg


Let me just start by saying that I agree with everything Cody says about Lena Dunham.  But only because it’s true.  Except mostly it isn’t.  What I mean is, it’s true of everything of that ilk.  The ‘ilk’ I’m referring to is any hip ‘indie’ thing made after 1995.  Clerks is the only good movie like this and I suspect it’s because it was made by a fat white nerd with a chip on his shoulder at a time before that was a cool thing to be.  Kevin Smith made it cool, so of course everything after it sucks.  And if it weren’t for the ‘big word’ chapter cards interspersed throughout it (included just to appeal to the bohemian, intellectual, college crowds) it’d probably be a perfect movie.
Continue reading A Rebuttal to ‘The Empress, Quite Literally, Has No Clothes’

The Blair Witch Project: Stop Not Liking It

blairwitch


The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Written and Directed by Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez
81 min.

Warning: This review contains spoilers.  Please have seen this movie before reading.

The Blair Witch Project may be the most effective movie ever made.  It’s certainly one of the best.  I say ‘effective’ because its goal—to scare the shit out of you—is so cleverly achieved that it boggles the mind.

This movie is effective for the same reason any movie is effective: it’s a clear, soundly constructed story, told creatively by way of great performances, well-crafted shots, and brilliant exposition.  Exposition in particular is such a difficult thing, and is so often mishandled, generally leading to the complete and utter unwinding of a movie.
Continue reading The Blair Witch Project: Stop Not Liking It

The Master: P.T. Anderson’s Bunch of Footage That Got Released Somehow

master


The Master (2012)
Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
144 min.

Warning: this review contains spoilers I guess.  Nothing happens in this movie though, so you can’t really be ‘spoiled’.

The Master isn’t a movie.  It’s a bunch of footage.  I’ll get to that, but first I need to walk you through how I feel about P.T. Anderson’s filmography. Excluding Hard Eight.  Let’s just pretend Hard Eight doesn’t exist.  That’s not difficult, since nobody has seen it or even heard of it.  So, starting with Boogie Nights:

Boogie Nights is about a guy, Dirk Diggler, that part is clear, but then, for no reason, there’s a bunch of footage of other guys—ancillary ones.  This is because P.T. Anderson wanted to make a three-hour movie.  Which is insulting.  It’s insulting because rather than try to make a good movie that people will like, he simply wanted to make a three-hour movie.  And the way he attempted to do this (I say ‘attempted’ because the finished version is 155 minutes) was through loading it with superfluous side characters whose arcs don’t matter.  They matter so little that their conclusions are either mind-blowingly lazy (the shot of Rollergirl sitting in a high school classroom shoved into a montage at the end) or completely nonexistent (we must visit the deleted scenes on the DVD to see what happens to the black porn actress.  Apparently the guy she married beats her for some reason.)
Continue reading The Master: P.T. Anderson’s Bunch of Footage That Got Released Somehow