Viewing Log:
Avatar (James Cameron, 2009): I might have been the last member of the forum to finally see this film, but now that I have I can honestly say that I was a wise man to have avoided it before. Jesus fuck, this is one awful movie! Wrong on every level, this maudlin piece of shit does everything it can to suck out any good will it may have earned with pretty pictures by constantly undercutting its own narrative with writing even more corny and hackneyed than anything that ever escaped from George Lucas's pen. I'm sorry if this sounds like more a string of invective than an actual review, but it has left me that angry at the world. The only good to come out of watching this was that it allowed me to go back and read all 16 pages of the
Avatar thread. There's some comedy gold in there that is far worthier of your time than this nasty piece of garbage.
Hands Up! (Clarence G. Badger, 1926): Raymond Griffith stars as Jack a beloved rogue/spy for the Confederacy who is charged with either intercepting or destroying a shipment of gold on its way to fund the Union army. Jack quickly makes his way to the Army unit transporting the load, but wacky hijinx cause him to alternate several times from being identified as a spy or mistaken as a Union hero. Having never even heard of Griffin before, I count this one as a major discovery, with jokes that are up to the same caliber of any silent era comedy from Chaplin, Keaton, or Llyod. The obvious comparison here is with
The General, but Griffith's performance isn't on the same physical level as Keaton's. Instead Griffith excels with jokes that result from lighting fast sleight of hand. It's a different kind of Civil War comedy, but I think that I might actually prefer this one. Both, however, make me feel a bit awkward for liking them. The Confederacy were clearly on the wrong side of history, and the decision to make the protagonist on the side of those fighting for the right to own slaves takes the air out my sails.
The Laughing Man (Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, 1966): Ex-Nazi and current soldier of fortune "Major" Siegfried Müller gives an hour long interview dealing with his experiences in war. As we find out, the chain smoking Müller never achieved any rank in the German army, but was rather bestowed the title of "Major" by the men who hired him to kill in their wars. Sporting a smile that makes him look like Batman's arch nemesis, Müller recounts some truly sick shit that he did for a paycheck in various conflicts around Africa (e.g. shooting a POW in the head just so a Western journalist could get a picture of a corpse for his assignment). All of these transgressions are, in Müller's mind, justified in his fight against communism and a defense of European values. The film comes off as a particularly interesting interview, but it does make for some strange cinema, feeling more like an hour long segment of
60 Minutes than anything else. Regardless, it's a fascinating look into the mind of a monster that I'm very glad I watched.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011): Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) is a biomedical researcher on the verge of curing dementia with a viral infection that promises to restore the cognitive functions in the afflicted. After one of his chimp test subjects goes on a rampage, Rodman's boss orders him to kill them all. He sneaks one day old Caesar out of the lab, who has inherited the genetic modifications from his mother and has an IQ that puts him ahead of most humans. Caesar's life is mostly idyllic until he defends Will's father (John Lithgow) from an attack from a boorish neighbor. Caesar's point of view changes then when he's forced to spend an extended period in a hellish animal rescue where he experiences abuse at the hands of both humans and fellow apes. Caesar then turns into a chimp Fidel Castro and leads an army of hyper intelligent apes (the result of his handiwork) in a lengthy battle against their human oppressors. It's probably the best of the
Planet of the Apes movies that I've seen, but that's not saying much. It's a mildly diverting flick, but very far from greatness. I'm also surprised at just how mooted the violence is in the film with Caesar stopping his fellow apes from killing anyone and...
The destruction of mankind apparently coming from a virus created in Rodman's lab instead of our simian revolutionaries.
The Tower of Lilies (Tadashi Imai, 1953): An ensemble cast headlines this postwar film chronicling a group of Japanese boarding school girls and their teacher who forgo their studies in a effort to tend to the wounded and starving soldiers in their area. I've watched a few films about the Japanese experience during the war for this project, and this melodrama shares the same desperate sense of inevitable doom that the others have. Since this was made after the war was over, we get to see how the Japanese government lied to their citizens through state propaganda declaring numerous military victories and the effect that it has on the girls who spend their time in the underground hospital singing patriotic songs to inspire each other to stay up one more hour. Of course, things go from bad to worse as the food runs out and the American forces approach, resulting in...
pretty much everyone dying.
This is another great tragedy about the Japanese experience in WWII. It along with
Under the Flag of the Rising Sun stand a good shot at making my list.