Eventually, This Will Be a Review of the Movie ‘Husbands’ by John Cassavetes

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Rob Fortucci, one of my best friends, commissioned this review.  I met him in tenth grade—in film class, no less.  First hour at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School, in affluent/middle class Shelby Township, Michigan.

By the time we met we had each already cultivated our respective cinephile statuses.  Mine was completely traditional—my parents and grandparents are movie buffs and introduced me to all the kid-friendly classics, everything from Spielberg to Chaplin.  At around 12, I started venturing out on my own into more ‘subversive’ territory, as one does.  By the time I met Rob at 14, I was already a Kubrick, Scorsese, and Allen fanatic, and a true student of the 70’s and ‘golden age cinema’.
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Argo: I Barely Watched It (So You Don’t Have To)

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Yes, this is really from the god damn movie.

Argo
Directed by Ben Affleck
Screenplay by Chris Terrio
121 min.

I tapped out after about 15 minutes on this one, and normally, I’d just not review the thing on here, and tweet “argo sucks ass” and call it a day, but I gotta talk about this fucking thing. Because I look at a movie like this and I can’t understand the world I live in. This movie is so the antithesis of everything I value as far as movies are concerned (and what you, ideally, should value too) and it’s times like these I feel like the great Roddy Piper in They Live, staring at the plain-to-see ugliness in front of me, and I just wanna force glasses onto everyone around me with my words. So here goes.
Continue reading Argo: I Barely Watched It (So You Don’t Have To)

I Do Declare ‘Compliance’ To Be The Worst Movie of 2012

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Compliance (2012)
Written and Directed by Craig Zobel
90 min.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I know, but when I see a title like Compliance, a red flag goes up in my head. It’s one thing to make a title short (Jaws is brilliant) but it’s another to give away the entire movie’s theme right off the bat. (Gee, I wonder what Shame is about. Perhaps it’s about doubt? No, that’s probably Doubt. What do you think the characters achieve in the movie Atonement? And so on.) When a writer/director/producer/studio chooses a title like Compliance, they’re announcing to the world that their movie is About Something That Should Be Taken Seriously, unlike those plebeian popcorn flicks with actually-great titles such as Drag Me To Hell or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. As a result, I tend to avoid such seemingly one-note movies. But, I am also ever critical of my arbitrary biases, so I recently decided to test my hypothesis by Netflix-ing this one.
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Django Unchained: Tarantino’s Worst Since Pulp Fiction

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Django Unchained (2012)
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
165 min.

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

Look, I’m not saying that Django Unchained is a bad movie. Or that Pulp Fiction is either. They’re both good movies. Tarantino has never made a bad movie. The good parts of any one of his films always seem to outweigh the bad—the two with the strongest good-to-bad-part ratios being Inglourious Basterds and Jackie Brown. Those two are damn near perfect. All the others are either ‘very good’ (Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, From Dusk Till Dawn, True Romance) or just ‘good’ (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Death Proof, Django Unchained). And Death Proof is a bit more solid than Django in my opinion, therefore, Django is his worst since Pulp Fiction. (By the way, I should point out that yes, I’m fully aware that Tarantino wrote, but did not direct, From Dusk Till Dawn and True Romance. If I don’t mention that, some fanboy will point it out in the comments like he knows something I don’t or whatever. Well guess what, hypothetical fanboy? You know nothing I don’t. So you can take that hypothetical fact and shove it. Although, and I don’t wanna get off on a tangent here, but isn’t it weird how often people fall for that ‘Quentin Tarantino Presents’ thing? There are people in this world that legit think Tarantino was involved in the writing or directing or whatever of The Protector, Hostel, and others. Swear to god. I worked a video store, dude. I know things. And that’s honestly the tip of the iceberg as far as ‘weird things customers think’ goes. I’ll have to do an entry or entries about my video store days one of these days…)
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Netflix Quickies #1 (Sleepwalk With Me, Red Hook Summer, Cavegirl, Zeta One, Good Deeds)

Alright so whenever I go on Netflix Instant I just sorta pick random movies from my queue, try them for a few minutes, and then if I’m not feeling them moving on to another until I finally find one I don’t hate, and then I watch that one. This ‘Netflix Quickies’ thing is basically gonna be a series where I just talk about movies I decided not to watch after the first couple minutes and explain exactly what turned me off about them. Here goes:

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Sleepwalk With Me (2012)
Directed by Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish
Written by Mike Birbiglia, Joe Birbiglia, Ira Glass, and Seth Barrish
90 min. (gave up after 2 min.)
Continue reading Netflix Quickies #1 (Sleepwalk With Me, Red Hook Summer, Cavegirl, Zeta One, Good Deeds)