Reviews

This film should have rang my "wise-ass" sensor alert from the very first second, and it actually did, but I preferred to sit through this whole jazz only because it was based on Daniel Clowes' Eightball story with the same name. I loved the 20th Century Eightball book with Clowes' early stories, despite some kiddish stances and statements - I guessed it was Clowes' intent to somehow parody his own tendencies of being too smart for its own sake, and I loved it. That is why I strongly believe that people who haven't been exposed to the comic story will either hate this film's guts, either like it more than it should actually deserve. I could've been more disappointed, but every now and then the film would remind me of the tone of the original story.

The first negative aspect that comes to mind is the fact that the movie has got a real protagonist, a sensitive boy that renders the whole production cornier than it should be allowed. Clowes' story was more of a vignette, true, but more often than not, even when it seems the most egocentric, Clowes' writing discards the sentimental bits and presents structures and patterns that suppress the individual. Sure, those are obvious here too and ring true to the "you can't win" mindset of the art school freshman that kisses the ground way too quickly, but with incorrigibly high-school characters popping in (the movie guy and the "class d-bag" line?) everything gets too juvenile, and Malkovich and Buscemi's performances, as nice and professional as they are, can't push the whole plot forward.

Then, the crime/art shtick pulled towards the end of the movie: I've seen Scarlet Street and A Bucket of Blood - the first one works much better as a melodramatic masterpiece and the second one is much better conceived from a comedic standpoint than Art School Confidential. Yes, a 1959 B-movie is funnier AND more subtle than this 2006 production. Or Natural Born Killers, which addresses the transformation of serial murderers into media icons way earlier and more efficiently than Zwigoff's movie...

I can't consider this a bad movie, but it loses a lot by recycling clichés in order to "add" (?!) to the appeal of the story and adopting a cheap drama line in the second half. Sure, while there are productions where the drama of a single person can be presented in a truly impressive manner, this film didn't succeed in doing so. Quite a mediocre movie, probably not going to watch it any time soon.

I cannot believe what I have seen. I had heard enough bad talk about Ayn Rand and instead of having a bad literary trip with the book, I just preferred to watch the "triumph" that had been given thumbs up by the author itself. Sounds rather logical, right?

So THIS kind of discourse is the spiritual child of Ayn Rand? So sorry, but all she did was aping ideas from authors like Nietzsche and Spencer regarding the importance of the individual and treating them with a solid coating of cheese and pretense. Considering the dialogues contained within this "triumph", you just can't win. The screenplay is too rigid to be fluent literary, emotional, and at the same time it's too laden with cheap drama and extremely superficial conflicts to be worth analyzing. How could somebody who has actually read any tiny bit of philosophy be attracted to this? It's sheer pompousness that disguises itself as some sort of cerebral, metaphysical, meta-common sense power struggle, yet this struggle is carried between unbearably dull characters, and almost null personalities, just voices in Rand's head that serve the same bloated slogans during the entire movie. I couldn't blame Gary Cooper for acting with the vivaciousness of a sloth with a pole stuck up his heinie, since the lines are embarrassing even to people who stumbled upon a Socrates story in a coloring book. The general view is darn poor and incorrigibly didactic: there are good guys and there are bad guys. Good guys are those who do whatever their gonads want (My idea! My life! My spirit! My etc.) and bad guys are those who don't. It's all about me and mine, mine, mine, repeated so incessantly that it might give Stingy from the Lazy Town kids' show severe headaches.

Not even Patricia Neal, who is/was such a charming presence, could do anything to prevent the disaster. She just joined the dance, obeying to Rand's murky stage settings - talk about losing your individuality. This is actually losing everything to a Z-grade scenario and screenplay. The music is also apparently unfitting, with those overblown weeping and squealing strings so characteristic to old glamorous Hollywood. But only apparently, since it matches the obnoxious romanticism of the relationship between Roark and Francon - the superhuman architect who gets turned on after getting whipped on the cheek and the rather neurotic goddess of ice who can find a match only in the greatest individual in a world that has succumbed to compromise. The goddess of ice is some sort of Penelope Pitstop, and Gail Wynand is as subtle as Dastardly, save for the unsurprising end when he decides to end his miserable maggot existence. Horrid, horrid stuff... I am no specialist, therefore I couldn't appreciate the scenery at its full potential, but King Vidor is such a kick-ass name. Three reasons to watch this failure would be the following: 1) King Vidor. What a name. Sounds like a meanie lifted straight from the Lord of the Rings elite troops of evil. 2) You might be curious what Rand's blabberfests were about, so you should get this film instead of wasting precious hours/days with her (coloring) book. 3) You might want to have a big laugh with your drunk friends. And this film can also help you find out more about the character of your best friend, girlfriend, whatever. If at the end of the movie, the person you're with is actually impressed by the "plot" and doesn't start laughing, you have to ask yourself if you really are in good company. Start panicking.

Pfff. Talk about "science" borrowed from bad graffiti. That is pretty much what Dr. Nut and Marty Midget's grand designs are. By the way, if I tell you that this film is *gasp* actually more entertaining than the first one, will you believe me? There's no point in debating: they're both trash. But while the first film was slow-mo, dusty, claustrophobic trash, with the good ole doctor giving life to his (lame) fantasies through a complicated process (for the mentally challenged) this one gets a little bit more peppered, to say so. There are some scenes that are actually close to classic! Sure, you don't have to agree with me, but as far as I can tell, there are some gems like these: 1) kitchen raid! You've got to love that at a wannabe doctor. 2) "what's that thing between your shoulders?" moment, a la Herschell Lewis. 3) cut that butt! Nope, you've overdone it. There is classic camp. Or trash. Like Lewis' Something Weird or the hilarious Gore-Gore Girls, but blame me for being just nostalgic, or for liking their soundtracks. Human Centipede is somehow misleading as a film title, it makes you think "boy, there has to be some serious stuff going on here", it makes you think of something complex. Yet the biggest pleasures exhibited by the Doc in the first sequence and Marty in the retard sequence were related to... seeing their great creations chain-pooping.

That's right, folks, if the mad scientist inside you decides to abduct and get some people really close together like Marty did, it's because they look really wacky while chain-pooping with each one's mouth sewn to another one's black cherry. This is almost as awesome as having a discussion with Marie Curie or Thomas Kuhn only to interrupt her/him if you happen to see two dogs after intercourse: " har-har, they look stupid". Marty's attitude is rather ambiguous: does he feel something for his moronic creation, for what it symbolizes, or he just wanted a cheap laff but goes gaga and kills 'em all after he gets the razz from a woman who gives birth to a healthy baby boy/girl and escapes his circus attraction claws? Beyond this, Marty is really, really, infinitely repulsive. Congrats to Mr. Six Synapses for finding the perfect lizard boy, though I doubt that he would be any good for a non-horror movie role. His whole presence screams: "lemme kill the normal people or at least those with no man-boobs!". However, I couldn't shake away the satisfaction when seeing Marty deliver some crowbar delight or a lead intoxication to irritating folks like his mom or his psychiatrist, or whatever that guy was. They were every bit as loathsome as him. And while this movie isn't devoid of loathsome characters, it's quite devoid of any factor that would make you come back for another round. P.S: That's a ridiculous amount of crowbars to the heads. He has to whack them almost every time they start moaning, yet they still BREATHE! Marty is such a magnet for human beings with strong craniums.

After seeing this movie, I felt divided between two worlds: the world of Scott Adkins' admirers and the world of jaded viewers. Scott Adkins is indeed stunning as a fighter and he can be more than merely satisfying as an actor, but simply seeing this movie's premise already sabotages half of the interest or respect that it should gain. "Shadow of a Tear"...? A movie about an American (oh, great) ninja gone fluffy who is ready to avenge his deceased pregnant wife and becomes the leading badass again? Ninjas are trained in "schools" and any person would see their faces before getting her rear slammed on the tatami? From what I knew, ninjas weren't secretive, they were the incarnation of the notion of "secret", and from a fighting perspective, they weren't keen on taking on N guys and engaging in big fights, they were super goal-oriented and didn't enjoy martial arts fireworks - they were much more akin to a very discrete religious sect than a martial arts school. This conception is more adequate for cartoons than for a movie, especially one that pretends to be rather serious or at least gloomy, but is more likely to elicit laffs and probably a long chain of goofy jokes about Asians, barbed wire, the Indian accent and so on. There should be a stark difference between Undisputed's Yuri and this production's Casey, yet this movie fails to do the difference (arguably minus the array of weapons used by the characters). The plot itself, as a structure, is pretty obvious and devoid of surprises - almost from the beginning of the movie, you can count on at least one of your co-spectators to nudge and whisper, "betcha that X is the guy who did that, though he's faking it?", and most probably, he or she will be right. Great fighting, of course, and Casey's final opponent delivers quite an impressive performance which gets a righteous treatment from the professional camera work, but honestly, it's not the kind of movie that I would want to see more than one time. Not even when sitting around with the chums. I'd pop Undisputed 3 or even 2 (for the n-th time) instead of this.

Before seeing this, I recall seeing another "grand" production, Wrath of The Titans (little kids that are close relatives really need to drag older folks into such dirty business). It didn't necessarily leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but I didn't regard it as a masterpiece - not even a good movie.

Immortals manages to be even lower than Titans, but the catch is in the laffs that it is able to trigger so ruthlessly. Starting with Mickey Rourke's utterly goofy performance (being a boss of evil = bashing skulls randomly), continuing with the cheesier-than-thou "tuff warrior meets hot mystical chick" scene (thus being even more mainstream than Wrath, which didn't obey to this standard) and Theseus' super-bloated motivational discourse and the finale with Hyperion, it's all downhill. The loads of CGI and all the cybergore employed in the second half of the movie can't compensate for the paper-thin plot and acting. Sure, my greatest complaint consists after all of the absence of any connection between this movie and any of the true Legends of Olympus (save for the Minotaurus part, and it's still a very pale one).

Enjoy the cheese made by milking the finest cameras and graphic engines on Mount Olympus, but take care because it might get mouldy rather quickly.

This would be the general tone of the movie in my opinion.

It is like a triad of "gak"s. You feel a "gak" in your throat when all the violence comes in, and it's here to stay. You might feel a "gak" screaming for freedom when everything going on between the film's characters goes darker than night itself. And, ultimately, it's a "gak" for the suffocating tone of the film.

Call it a comedy of errors, then it is a comedy of big, ugly errors. Starting with the family junior Chris's decision to gather big dough from the murder of a person whom he realizes he didn't know very well in his short life, and ending with doublecrossing wifey Sharla messing with the wrong kind of guy and also Chris trying to confront an evil that proves itself to be much greater than he had expected, it's all red and black, with no other colour sandwiched inbetween. And in the center of the whole storm, stands the merciless, ruthless, and almost otherworldly character of Killer Joe. McConaughey surely does pull out a performance in this movie, both comical and frightening in his lack of vocal inflexions, acting more like a very uncomfortable presence, impossible to eliminate, than a human being. With the exception of his love for Dottie, which blossoms nonetheless in most sordid circumstances. Nobody is able to escape his revenge in the little town he's watching over.

It's not a pleasant ride by any means, and oddly enough, it's not a film that I would come back to. It's all perfectly produced, the acting is very fine, but there is something that makes it feel a little bit rushed... Or maybe it's just the very, very demoralizing ending that all things come to. Good to see especially for McConaughey's acting, but I guess it remains more of a curiosity needing to be satisfied than an enduring work of filmmaking.