This week’s movie:
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

F@#k  “Twilight“! ….and their offspring!

You know what I’m talking about.  That sappy, so-called vampire movie that all the tween and young teenage girls are going gaga over.  “Isn’t he just dreamy”, and “Isn’t it cool to be a vampire?”  “I wish I was a vampire – it’s soooooo romantic.” – piece of crap excuse to sell merchandising.

I blame “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and the whole Buffy/Angel on-again, off-again romantic subplot.  It spelled doom for the show and film makers should have taken notice.  I blame the “Underworld” series for glorifying vampires as an organized society of bad-ass erotic uber-mench – and who wouldn’t want to be part of that world, especially if Kate Beckinsale is a member.  I blame Lost Boys because, after all, wasn’t it pretty much the same plot?  I blame Interview With the Vampire and all the other Anne Rice Novels for making the vampire life look so cool (lest you think I’m wrong, Interview With the Vampire featured Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas).

Movie-wise, vampires really needed a fast kick in the fangs .  The last good creative and interesting vampire film was Francis Ford Coppola’s  Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with Gary Oldman.  It did a lot of interesting little things with subtle visual effects.  HBO’s True Blood isn’t a great vampire story, but it does pose some interesting concepts, plus it is slick and sexy and funny and what else can you ask for in a TV series?

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN may be perhaps the best vampire movie in a long long time.  Many of the RottenTomatoes film critics certainly think so, leading to a score of 98% on the tomatometer.  And they’re not the only ones.  Here are just a few samples from the many reviews:

“THIS IS A VAMPIRE MOVIE LIKE NO OTHER. MESMERIZING.” – Newsweek

“A SPECTACULARLY MOVING AND ELEGANT FILM THAT IS, AT THIS POINT, THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR.” – Washington Post

“ONE OF THE YEAR’S VERY BEST MOVIES. A FUNNY, HAUNTING DAZZLER.” – Vogue

“A SPECTRALLY BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRE FILM” – New York Times

“BEST. VAMPIRE MOVIE. EVER.” – Washington Examiner

“IT’S A WINNER! … SEE IT NOW BEFORE A HOLLYWOOD REMAKE RUINS IT.” – Rolling Stone

“…THE BEST OF THE YEAR AND ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL AND HAUNTING VAMPIRE FILMS EVER MADE.” – Gwinnett Daily Post

“QUITE EASILY THE MOST COMPELLING NEW ENTRY IN VAMPIRE MYTHOS IN AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER.” – Twitch.com

etc……  It seem to be on everybody’s “Best of …” list.  Then why is it that you’ve never heard of it???  The truth is, some of the best, most innovative, most entertaining, most intelligent movies ever made – ever will be made – you’ll never hear about.  Why?  How do you find out about movies?  You might see them advertised on TV.  You might go see a movie at the theater and see previews before the feature film.  You might even call the hot line at your local cineplex and find out what’s playing.  If this is how you do it, then you’ll never find out about the best films.  The local cineplexes are franchises that are owned by large corporations.  They select to be shown only movies that their marketing guys tell them will sell the most tickets.  They base this judgment on where the film was made (Hollywood studio vs Independent studio), big named actors, primary language (foreign language films – nobody wants to see those), and how much money has been spent on TV and magazine advertising – and has absolutely NO bearing on how good the film is.  That’s why movies like Daddy Day Camp (tomatometer score: 1% No, that’s not a typo – that’s ONE percent) made it to the theaters and this week’s film (tomatometer 98%) did not.

….and THAT’S why you need someone like ME to tell you what you’re missing!

The vampire in the film is a young girl named Eli.  She tells her friend Oskar that, like him, she is 12 years old – but unlike him, she has been 12 years old for a very long time.  Eli is probably the most enigmatic and tragic vampires in filmdom.  She is perpetually 12 years old, frozen in time, you might say, in that incredibly painful period of post-childhood, pre-adolescence.  She has been around for a long time and you might think that she would relate better to her adult caretaker, but she’s still basically a kid and so she feels more comfortable with Oskar.  She sees candy and knows she can’t eat it, but she can remember a time when she could.  She’s old but can never grow up.  As fascinating as she is, Eli is not the main character.  The story is told through the point of view of Oskar.  He is lonely.  His parents have split and he lives with his mother, who has little time for him.  His town is cold and bleak as the frozen landscape.  He is bullied by the kids at school.  He takes some of his rage out on inanimate objects and suppresses the rest – until he meets Eli.

I don’t want to give you the impression that this a revenge movie.  He doesn’t enlist his new vampire friend to get back at his tormentors, and he doesn’t sneak his father’s gun into school and start taking his rage out on animate objects.  Instead, he begins caring less about that because the focus of his life is now changed. The one good thing in his life now is his friendship with Eli (and vice versa).  The focus of the whole film, in fact, is the relationship between the two leads and less about killing and the drinking of blood.  Not that there isn’t killing and the drinking of blood – there is – it is a vampire movie, after all.  It’s just that those things are rather matter of fact.

In an ordinary vampire film, the two leads would have a steamy romance, but considering that they’re 12 years old, let’s be thankful that they don’t.  Instead, there is a tender friendship and the promise of possible romance in the years ahead (if they survive that long) – but we know  it can never be because Eli will always be 12 years old.  Besides, who has sex with a vampire?  Really!  They’re all cold and dead and stuff – eewwww!

In an ordinary vampire film, Van Helsing would corner the vampire with a crucifix and the townspeople would drive a stake through her heart, but let’s face it – if it were that easy to kill a vampire, Eli would never have survived the first hundred years or so.  In an ordinary vampire film, Eli would turn into a bat and fly off.  Now this brings up an interesting point.  If you turn ,say your typical 180 lb. vampire into say, a typical 1 lb. bat, what happens to the remaining 179 lbs of vampire that doesn’t fit into the bat?  Makes you think, don’t it?

As of this writing, there are devious plans in the making of an English language Hollywood version of this movie.  Don’t wait for it!  It’ll suck!  It always does!  See the original (It’s in Swedish with subtitles in various languages.  Additionally, there is an English language soundtrack that’s not too bad, if you don’t want to read subtitles) – this is the version that has won such critical acclaim and for good reason.  The remake will be quickly forgotten.

One thing to note.  When the DVD was first released in the US, the distribution company (Magnolia films) messed up the English subtitles (Why they didn’t just use the subtitles from the original DVD, I’ll never know).  These subtitles were “dumbed down” a great deal for American audiences.  long passages were reduced to a few words and some were left out altogether.  In the ensuing furor, Magnolia Films agreed to re-release the DVD with corrected subtitles – however, I have been unable to find any of the “good” ones.  When you go to rent, look for the words “Theatrical Version” after “English Subtitles” on the back of the box.  If not, I suggest selecting the English soundtrack.

Halloween is fast approaching, and in the tradition of the holiday, people like to watch scary movies.  So I’ve delved into my collection and came up with my own suggestions for Halloween viewing.  So put in your DVD orders, make the popcorn, put the lights down low and sit real close together because these have a high squirm factor.

1. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN – it is, after all, this week’s featured film.
2. The Changeling – This old fashioned ghost story is still one of the creepiest films ever made.
3. Paranormal Activity – As of this writing, you’ll have to go to the theater to see this one – but this movie is scaring everybody.
4. Drag Me To Hell – I resisted seeing this for a long time and wish I hadn’t.  This is a great scary/funny film from Sam Raimi.
5. Audition - On a creepy scale from 1 to 10, this movie is a 15!  A must-see for Halloween.
6. Shaun of the Dead – If you have to include a zombie movie, why not a good one (funny too).
7. Little Otik – Holy crap!  This is creepy.
8. May - A crazy girl + a creepy doll + knives = Freaky movie that you just know isn’t going to end well.
9. Army of Darkness: Ash, from the Evil Dead movies, is transported to the 1300’s to fight the army of the dead. It is perhaps the most quoted of all horror movies.
10. Three Extremes: A collection of three 40 min. stories from three different Asian horror masters. These guys know how to push the right buttons on the creepy meter.

I never understood how Halloween (all souls day) became associated with ghosts and zombies and vampires – but since it does, queue up this week’s movie LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
….and enjoy.

see the trailer.

REEL-ILLUSIONARY ZONE

They all laughed at Edison, and even at Einstein.

There is a genre of film that many of you, probably most of you, possibly all of you will never see.  “Is it the foreign language film?”, you ask.  Close! but not what I had in mind.  “Is it the Japanese Cowboy movie?”, you suggest.  Good guess, but again, not what I was thinking.  “Surely, you must mean the War Horror Musical?”, you ask.  No, I believe there’ll be War Horror Musicals in theaters by Spring.  No, no no – I’m talking about the “experimental” film.

Many of our most creative film makers have made these experimental “art house” films early in their career.  These generally don’t tell a conventional narrative in the traditional sense.  Instead, they are often a project in which a film maker is trying out some idea or technique.  For example: Suppose I just got a new fish-eye lens.  I might say to myself, “I wonder what would happen if I filmed a doorway to a building with people walking in and out.  But then, very 5 minutes or so, I rotated the lens 15 degrees, so that after half an hour, the image is on its side – and after an hour, the picture is upside down, etc.  Boy, wouldn’t that be cool!”  Now, I might show my film to the public to find out what they think, and they might say that the picture on its side or upside down looked stupid, but at about 15 to 30 degrees, it caused a sense of uneasiness and tension.  So now when I go to make my “real” movie, and I want the viewer to feel tension or uneasy, I’ll rotate my lens 15 degrees ,so that the picture is slanted.

Art House films are not only about experimenting with technique, although there is usually some of that in nearly every one, the film maker may also have an unusual idea that he wants to pursue.  Perhaps it’s an adventure story with a cast made up entirely of trees (damn!  that’s a great idea!).  Whatever the idea, whatever the reason, the film maker needs to get it out on film (or tape – or hard drive – or flash memory).  There is almost never any budget for this kind of project so these films tend to be pretty spare.  This is good, because it forces film makers to be creative.  If you ever get to see experimental films, don’t expect to see the kind of film normally shown in theaters.  They’re not like that.  One cannot use the same basis of comparison or rating that we use for traditional films.  Art House films are not “good” or “bad” in the same way that traditional films are good or bad.  I guess you could say that Art House films are the modern art paintings of the film world.  They’re not for everybody.  Plenty of people will look at a Pollack and say, “It’s just paint thrown onto a canvas.”  It’s meant to bypass all traditional points of reference and allow you to look directly into the artist’s mind.

This week’s film REEL-ILLUSIONARY ZONE, from Reel Groovy Films, written and directed by John Hartman, is such a film.  Don’t expect to see it advertised on TV.  Don’t expect to see the trailer shown before “High School Musical 9″.  Don’t expect to see it shown at your local cinema multiplex, or even at the local independent film theater (there aren’t any near me, but I’ve heard rumors of their existence).  In fact, the only way to see this film at this time, is during special showings by the film makers (click the link to see upcoming schedules)  or by ordering the dvd (check for availability) directly from Reel-Groovy Films.  I met director John Hartman and producer “Z” of Unfolding Story Pictures at a special showing of another of their collaborations, Bridge Crusader (more about this in a future posting).  I was so impressed with their obvious commitment, excitement, and dedication that I agreed to screen and review REEL-ILLUSIONARY ZONE.  Of course, having been distracted by the exotic dancers, I probably would have agreed to anything.

The movie:  As an experiment, techniques both in cinematography and in storytelling are being explored here.

The cinematography is spectacular.  Hartman uses an ancient super 8mm hand-held camera with film (yes – actual film) to produce a color palette that is deep and rich.  He uses other techniques, such as  shooting through filters and skewed viewing angles to produce, sometime bizarre effects, and give the illusion of an old silent film.  Stop-action photography give rise to special effects not possible in the silent film era.  Although there is no spoken dialog, the film is not silent, featuring sound effects and an music original soundtrack.

The story itself centers on a toy maker who toys rebel and head for the real world.  Without any prior experiences, they must somehow safely navigate this bizarre world, with funny and frightening consequences.  Simultaneously whimsical and dark, it compares favorably with the works of other experimental film makers, such as Jan Svankmajer, Maya Deren, Guy Maddin, and David Lynch.  These film makers, not only made experimental films early in their careers, but are still making  them today (except for Maya Deren who died in 1961 when her brain exploded because she couldn’t get her ideas out and onto film fast enough).

REEL-ILLUSIONARY ZONE is not an easy film to find, it’s not an easy film to watch.  It disconnects the brain from common film-viewing reference points and makes you work for it.  It assaults your sense of sight and hearing, as well as your sense of reason.   But it should be seen.  You might like it or you might not.  You might think it’s a masterpiece of film making, or you might think it’s just paint flung onto a canvas …..but you should at least see it.

I’ve been thinking lately about making my own experimental film.  In my case, they would HAVE to be experimental because I really don’t know how to make a film, but I do have some ideas that I wanted to share with you.

1. A 15 minute short in which I film the camera that I use to film the camera.  I doesn’t really ‘do’ anything, hence it’s only a short.  If the camera actually had moving parts, well …..there’d be a feature film in that.
2. FranksFilms – the Movie!
3. A film about my daily life – except that every 5 minutes, I would lean an additional 15 degrees to the left.   So that after half an hour, I would be lying on my side – and after an hour, I would be upside down.  There would be a time (at about 15 – 30 degrees) where I would feel an uneasy tension, and throw up.
4. In the spirit of going with upcoming trends, a War Horror Musical in which WWII Nazi zombies do “Grease”.
5. As an homage to David Lynch, a documentary which just replays the lesbian scene from Mulholland Drive ….over and over and over …..
6. FranksFilms – the Movie!  Really!  I mean, really.  Doesn’t that have a great ring to it???
7. A re-telling of the Joan of Arc story with a cast made up entirely of  potted plants.  Not just flowers but herbs too, and perhaps vegetables as well.  Really, it’s just a metaphor for ……… er, for ……….er, well, I’m still trying to work that one out.
8. An avant-garde film that totally bucks the Hollywood system.  It’ll be so avant-garde that it won’t hit one false note, will not succumb to commercial influence,  will be for its own sake and will not pander to any audience.  It will be so avant-garde, that it won’t even show the theaters.  It’ll be so avant-garde, that it won’t ever make it to dvd.  In fact, I won’t even film it – that’s how avant-garde it will be.
9. A time-lapse motion picture that follows a laptop computer booting up Windows 7 for the first time, until the day it crashes for the final time.  That’s a lot of crash/reboot sequences.
10. Silent films have no sound.  How about a film that has sound but no video!  Yes – I know they used to do exactly that back in the days of radio – but my “film” would play in cinemas.  The next step would be a 3D version ……….in IMAX!!!!!

REEL-ILLUSIONARY ZONE
How adventurous are you?
Enjoy

This week’s movie:
12 AND HOLDING

I used to be smart once.

I have this theory that we are all born knowing everything. All the mysteries of the universe – the sum total of human knowledge PLUS everything humans have yet to discover – is all there right in our heads from birth. But because the human brain has a limited volume, any acquired experience must ultimately push something else out. The upshot of this is that the older we get, the more we experience, the stupider we become. Ironically, babies are just not physically equipped to deal with omniscience. They might, for example, understand that quarks spontaneously decay in a degenerate spin field, but believe that this just a trivial matter that must be obvious to everybody – and instead, content themselves to totally dominating every other human surrounding them.

Humans tend to peak around 12 or 13 years old – that is, until puberty hits and our bodies betray us – when the sudden influx of new information and priorities herald the exodus of every single other bit of useful data – leaving one in hormonal dufusity, instead of philosophical brilliance. Adults don’t understand children. We adults think that we are mentally superior – but the truth is that we just can’t comprehend the utter vastness of a child’s mind that is totally unencumbered by the details of the adult world. The adult world is is designed , from very first principles, to fill the mind with insignificant trivia in an effort to keep us from figuring out too much of the world because, after all, we’re at the age where if we knew too much, we would surely hurt ourselves.

Kids know better than to try to explain themselves to us. I can remember a time, I think I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, when I told my mother I didn’t want to go to school that day. She asked, “What’s the matter? Do you feel sick?” I thought about it for a second and replied, “Yes. Yes, I do.” I just somehow knew that she wouldn’t have understood if I told her that I had this idea for time travel and I needed a little uninterrupted time to work out the details. …..and I did it too! …..I just wish I could remember how it worked……

Children instinctively know what they need to do and do it. It often doesn’t make sense to adults but then, we are not as well-informed. For instance, I have a friend whose (then) 8-year-old son, Jeffery, had cut off all his hair with the kitchen shears. He then taped it all to the living room wall. When they asked him why he had done it, he just shrugged his head and mumbled, “I don’t know.” They thought he was brain damaged, but he’s not. Children just don’t bother to explain themselves to us – we just wouldn’t understand. Maybe the slight weight of his hair was applying just enough pressure on his brain to interfere with with his meditations and needed to rid himself of it to complete his journey of enlightenment …………..or maybe he was just brain damaged.

The 12-year-olds in this week’s (month’s) movie find themselves faced with a tragedy and have to find some way of dealing with it. They each do it in their own particular way, and although the adults don’t seem to understand any of it, the kids know what they need to do. And though each is different, they all have the same sort of logic, proven by the fact that they all see a resolution of one form or another.

It’s refreshing to see a film that portrays pre-adolescent characters in a realistic way, without reverting to Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys cleverness, or Disney-style cuteness. These children are not Hollywood stereotypes, they are not precocious, they’re not super-heroes, they’re not geniuses (except as mentioned above), they are undergoing changes that they themselves don’t understand.

In a Hollywood film, these kids would have to negotiate all the normal hazards normally facing your typical movie pre-teen. For example, they would have to put up with humiliating put-downs by the “cool” popular clique at school, tyrannical school principal, clueless parents, bullies in the neighborhood, and probably a pair of inept crooks. They would end up solving their problems by: making the cool clique a little less cool; detective work to expose the principal’s plan to skim school funds; make the cheerleading team by beating the team captain in the big competition; put on a musical; get the girl; stand down the bully by not backing down; set up booby traps that torment the crooks until they turn themselves in to the police; or maybe – all of the above. This stuff doesn’t happen in this film. Instead, they ………………well, I let you find out for yourselves.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend’s son Jeffrey, who cut off all his hair. I feel that if I can understand this behavior, I can maybe reawaken the lost memories of my own youth – or maybe of yesterday at least. So here are some possible …………

…….REASONS WHY JEFFEREY CUT OFF ALL HIS HAIR

1. Needed to lose half an ounce of weight – the quick way.
2. Watched a late-night showing of the film Westworld, with Yul Brenner, on cable.
3. Wanted to convince himself that he, contrary to his parents’ accusations, was NOT the Antichrist, by checking his scalp for the tell-tale “666″. Fortunately, he found only a harmless “999″.
4. Watched a late-night showing of the film The Magnificent Seven, with Yul Brenner, on cable.
5. In order to save for a 10MeV magnetron, for his “Space Drive” experiments, he decided to cut down on extravagances, like shampoo.
6. In an effort to stave off ecological disaster by global warming, cut off his hair and polished his scalp in order to increase the albedo of the Earth and reflect more light back into space. …..and it would have worked too if not for you meddling adults!
7. Watched a late-night showing of The King and I, with Yul Brenner, on cable.
8. Employed the following train of logic: Everything costs money; money is made of paper; paper is made from trees; trees grow in the forest; forests convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to oxygen; there are rain forests in South America; The Conquistadors explored South America looking for gold; there is money to be made in gold; everything costs money; wouldn’t it be a good idea to cut off all your hair and tape it to the wall?
9. Watched a late-night showing of The Ten Commandments, with Yul Brenner, on cable.
10. Step 1 in his “fuzzy wall” project.

Parent advisory: This film is rated R by the MPAA, which means that the young 12 year old stars cant legally go to see their own movie. The film portrays young children dealing with tragedy and changes within themselves in a very realistic and no-nonsense way. This often frightens off many adults who feel that children shouldn’t see such things – that is, until they have to go through it themselves. I, personally, didn’t find anything very disturbing about it, but if you have young children, you may want to preview the movie first and then decide if you want to watch it again with them.

Cut off all your hair and watch 12 AND HOLDING

enjoy.

watch the trailer

This week’s movie:

WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY

I cried at the end of Old Yeller.

Of course I was only six, but still …… so what? I also teared up a bit for Grave of the Fireflies, and Love Story, and Ghost, and My Girl, and Bambi, and Pandora’s Box, and The Bridge to Terabithia, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. You know …….the usual tear-jerkers. The point is, I consider myself relatively normal. My black sense of humor non-withstanding, I usually react to films the same way that most people do. So – when I say that I found this week’s movie, about an afterlife populated by people who have committed suicide, rather sweet and endearing, it’s not because I have a warped sensibility (I do, but that’s not why), it’s because the movie really is sweet and endearing.

Now, before you say, “Oh God! Not another one of these oddball freaky FranksFilms-esque movies! Why can’t you review ‘normal’ films like Made of Honor or What Happens in Vegas?” The truth is, I see a lot of movies like those and some of them are pretty good – but there’s nothing new or different or unusual about them. I know exactly what to expect, and I get it – they’re predictable, they’re pure entertainment, audience satisfying, seat filling ticket selling commodities but they won’t raise any new issues or make you think uncomfortable thoughts or make you look at the usual in an unusual way. Whereas, the films that I feature here typically have an unusual hook or do something exceptionally difficult or take chances that have a great payoff. WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY does all these things.

A young man, Zia, commits suicide (guess how) when he becomes disconsolate after his girlfriend dumps him. Now you might think, there’s no excuse for that, suicide solves nothing, nobody is worth killing yourself over …..to which i say, you haven’t seen his girlfriend – she pretty hot. The irony is, his is relegated to an afterlife two or three notches more depressing than the one he left behind. He is assigned a depressing job, lives in a depressing apartment with a roommate he hates. He considers committing suicide again but, who knows, he might end up in a worse place – I mean, where do you go if you’ve committed suicide from the suicide afterlife? I mean really, it boggles the mind.

Zia does make friends. Eugene, a failed Russian rocker, killed himself on stage during a show. They pick up girls together and compare suicide stories. Eugene lives with his family. Yes, his entire family committed suicide – not all at once. They are happy (somewhat) but it’s not easy to be happy here. You can’t smile, there are no stars in the sky, the landscape is bleak, nothing works right, there are no good jobs and no good apartments – what do you want? You’re dead – make the best of it.

All this so far is just a set up for the story. From a chance meeting, Zia is given a piece of information that sets him off on a journey – a quest of sorts – almost impossible, given the circumstances – but as he tells Eugene, “Do you have anything better to do?” He needs Eugene. Eugene has a car – a depressing one – the kind each of us has had at one time or another. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker, Mikal, who is on a quest of her own. She is looking for the PIC (People In Charge) because, she claims, she is there by mistake and would they please send her someplace nicer. They meet up with, and stay for a while at a small commune led by Tom Waits, and find a camp belonging to a suicide cult who, it seems, have been transported there en masse. They’re still up to their old tricks, so maybe we will find out what happens if you kill yourself in the suicide afterlife after all.

We never really find out why all the suicides end up here. Perhaps they’re given this opportunity to work things out in a way they weren’t able to in life. Maybe they’re forced to find happiness in a placed devoid of it. Maybe, if they find it, it’ll no longer be so damn depressing. Funny things is, although the landscape is stark and the circumstances are depressing – the movie isn’t. The movie is funny, and sweet, and happy and whimsical. In a bleak existence, miracles can (and must) still happen. Performing one seems to be a rite of passage – and one can still find friendship and purpose and even love.

The clever story and dialog contain lots of satire and social commentary. In the novel, “Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, One of the characters (a demon from hell) drives an antique car and points out a fundamental, if unwritten, law of nature that – “…any cassette left in a car for more than a fortnight turns into ‘Best of Queen’” In WRISTCUTTERS: ….., Eugene’s car points out another well know rule – any object that falls under the front seat, disappears from the known universe and is never seen again.

And finally, as the title implies, this is a love story – simple true and unpretentious, without gimmick (well …….except that it takes place in the suicide afterlife) – characters find love the way real people do (well …….that is, except that it takes place in the suicide afterlife). It is a universal story (except ……well, you know…..).

I know that suicide is a serious subject and that we shouldn’t make light of it – but the film never makes light of the suicides. It just proposes the concept that your life is unfinished and maybe there are still things you need to do. Besides, war is a serious subject and we still have films like Mash and Catch-22. Also, killing is very very serious, and yet Live Free or Die Hard is still a fun time at the movies, as is The Matrix and the Indiana Jones films and the James Bond films. So I don’t want to hear another word about it.

In the film What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams kids are killed in a car accident. He and his wife are beyond grief, but at least they have each other. A short time later, he is also killed in a car accident and goes to heaven (the real heaven). The mother, on the other hand can no longer cope with the grief and being alone and so – kills herself. She doesn’t go to heaven – not even a suicide’s version of it. Instead, she is sent to hell (yes! hell). It hardly seems fair. WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY, although it has a lot of suicides, is far less depressing – it’s much fair-er.

“Oh, Frank – I don’t know. This sounds really strange and bizarre. I don’t know if I would like this.” Yes – that’s the point. Films that are different are also original – and you might like a type of movie you haven’t seen before. But you won’t know until you try it. Of course, if you don’t like to try anything new, you could watch Sleepless in Seattle over and over and over and over …..

Over the years and thousands of movies, I’ve made some observations about romantic comedies. For instance: The plot to 80% of all romantic comedies: Boy and girl meet, they like one another, they fall in love, things are going great but one of them has a dark secret that the other can never find out, the other finds out, they break up, the one with the secret tries and tries to get the other one back, they get the other one back in the end, love conquers all. The plot to nearly all of the other 20% of romantic comedies. Boy and girl meet, they hate one another, they constantly fight and argue, during one particularly harsh shouting match – one reaches out and kisses the other, they realize that they actually love each other, love conquers all. I think that this genre needs new material to revive it – so I’m proposing 10 different and unique romantic plot lines for possible future films. I’m throwing them out there – feel free to use them as you wish.

1. A single woman lives on a houseboat on Puget sound. Every time she falls asleep, she dreams of a romance with a single man from the East Coast, who dreams of her when he’s asleep. Time zones notwithstanding, they carry on a hot and heavy courtship every night. It’s called “Sleeping in Seattle”.
2. A man with multiple personalities discovers that two of his selves have fallen in love and plan to get married – but a forth personality wants to put an end to this by stealing himself away from himself.
3. A man with ten wives has an affair with a woman with ten husbands. Much of the movie involves trying to figure out exactly how many adulteries were committed.
4. Everybody loves robots, but the truth is that most robots don’t get along with other robots. Two robots buck tradition by moving in together into a small 1 bedroom above a flower shop. The flower shop lady can’t understand why suddenly she always hears clanging metal. Perhaps she needs to get those pipes fixed – yeah, the pipes, that’s it.
5. Two comatose patients suddenly become aware of each other when their telemetry monitor wires accidentally get crossed. He admires the occasional dips in her EEG’s alpha waves. She is turned on by the cute way his EKG spikes between the Q’s and the R’s every time he “sees’ her. The hospital staff get confused when her EKG suddenly develops a second fainter faster heartbeat.
6. Co-joined male Siamese twins fall helplessly in love with co-joined female Siamese twins. The courtship runs into a roadblock because they can’t seem to get any ‘alone time’. After coming up with what they consider to be the ideal solution, an 18 hour operation by a team of surgeons separates the two sets of twins – then they reattached the male/female couples together. In a surprise twist, the couples, upon waking, are aghast when they find that they have been mistakingly attached to the wrong mate.
7. A beer-guzzling hockey-loving man and an opera-going martini woman truly despise one another. Unfortunately, because they have spent most of their lives watching romantic comedies, they realized that they must eventually fall in love. In a bold move, they decide to get married to bypass the whole ‘falling in love’ progression and move straight to boredom.
8. The His and Hers towels have been getting rather ‘cozy’ lately. Hers likes His casual, somewhat disheveled unfolded look, and His likes the feel of the fabric softener Hers has been washed in. It’s hard to ignore the other since they’re always hung side by side. One day, Hers leaves for a few minutes and comes back totally drenched. His is consumed with jealousy, and would like to storm off, but is fated to always hang next to Hers. The outcome is a bit predictable, I’ll admit, but with such likable attractive characters, this is one hell of a thrill ride.
9. An anthropomorphic animated tale, the kind that Disney is so good at. Mandy’s biological clock is ticking. She’s a praying mantis who is down on love, but throughout the story, her heart softens a bit by the advances of Jerry, a charismatic wise-cracking male mantis. Finally, she can resist no longer and allows herself to fall madly in love with him. In the climatic ending, Mandy and Jerry share one long intense passionate kiss ……,before she bites Jerry’s head off. Love conquers all.
10. Bill declares to the world, “I love chocolate cake!” His friends tease him, “Well, if you love it so much, why don’t you marry it!” – And so he does. On their 50th anniversary, he tells her, “You’re as fresh as the day you were baked.” It’s all the sugar, she tells him.

WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY – you’ll love this story.
Enjoy.

official wristcutter’s site

watch the trailer

Sometimes, you don’t know anything about a movie. You’ve never seen commercials for it, it’s never played at any theater in your neighborhood, and no one has ever said, “Hey, this is a really good movie. You should watch it.” Sometimes, you’re just at the video store, and they don’t have the movie you went there to rent, and now you’re staring at the box for “Pieces of April”. The description really doesn’t tell you much, and so you take a chance.

I’m really glad I took that chance with this movie. This little independent film is much better and funnier than you would gather from the description. It was unexpectedly good. Patricia Clarkson, who plays the mother, received an Oscar nomination for this role.

It also makes for a great Thanksgiving Day Movie.

Rent.

Eat popcorn …. turkey …. whatever.

Enjoy.

I’m not going to get this right. If I tell you too much about this movie, you’re going to get the wrong impression and probably won’t want to see it. But, if I don’t say anything, why would you want to watch a movie you’ve never heard of – just on my say so? I guess I’ll just have to take that chance.

This movie consists of nine scenes from nine stories about nine different women. Each scene, shown in a single unbroken shot, shows a slice from that woman’s life. You don’t get to know what came before (although you can guess for the most part), and you don’t get to know what comes after (ditto). I, at first, felt a little let down because I wanted more – but that’s the whole idea. You fill in the rest.

I found myself thinking a lot about these women since I saw the film, wondering what became of them, running through all the little scenarios through my head. Even though this is only one film, you remember nine of them.

This is NOT a movie review site. I won’t tell you if a movie is good or bad. If I think a movie is bad – I just won’t recommend it. These are movies that I liked and I’ll tell you why I liked them. There are no guarantees that anyone else in the entire planet will like the film. That’s up to you to discover on your own.

If you’re not already on my email list, and would like to be, just post a comment to that effect, or email me direct at fheirtzler@verizon.net . I’ll notify you approximately once a week when the new movie has been posted.

This week’s movie:
TWIN FALLS IDAHO

It’s a love triangle!

Real life brothers (and filmmakers) , Mark and Michael Polish, play real life brothers who suddenly fall in with a young prostitute, Penny. I know your imagination is probably taking you in a bizzare direction right now, but it’s not that sort of film. I won’t tell you any more about the plot. You could look up the whole plot synopsis if you want to, although I would recommend going in knowing as little as possible. (It’s R rating is for language – not for “adult situations”).

I really like the atmosphere of this movie. I’m not sure how to explain this. The sibling bonding, I think, is dealt with in a very realistic way. The brothers are withdrawn at first, and so you only get to know them gradually.

The few people that I know who have seen this film, have all loved it.

Maybe you will too?

Not what you think. It’s not about the war in Iraq. It’s not about Saddam. It’s not about WMD’s, or terrorists, or AlQueida. It’s not even about Iraq. It’s not even about Bagdad. I don’t know why it’s called Bagdad Cafe. I don’t even remember if it’s the name of the cafe in the story. I don’t care – it doesn’t matter. Enough with all the tacit implied questions.

It’s funny and smart and moving, and filled with characters you don’t normally see in movies. I have yet to find anybody, who has seen this, that hasn’t liked it.

I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. You should rent and watch it without any preconceptions. But if you absolutely must get a more in-depth review, the link below will take you to Roger Ebert’s review of the movie. More info can be had at the Internet Movie Database link above (on the movie title).

Roger Ebert’s review of Bagdad Cafe

Enjoy.