Wild Things (1998)

Wild Things (1998)

Directed by: John McNaughton

Starring: Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell

Yeah, I gave Wild Things two stars. You wanna fight about it? I just want to prove once and for all that, even though I consider myself to be pretty inured to movies like this by now, I’m not completely immune to the massive amount of cheesecake included in here. Also, if you don’t understand that last sentence, that’s fine, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.

Wild Things starts as a movie about a teacher who gets accused by two of his students that he raped them. After that bit ends and he gets exonerated (mostly thanks to his lawyer, Bill Murray. Why was Bill Murray in this movie?), an almost completely different movie starts, which consists of eight or nine plot twists the likes of which M. Night Shyamalan would be proud of. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it’s really dumb, and by the time it finally gets there you really don’t care anymore.

This movie is well known for one thing and only one thing: The half-naked lesbian makeout scenes between Denise Richards and Neve Campbell. I think after that part was written in, the writer realized nobody would ever see this movie for the actual story, so he went completely out of his gourd and added in as many double-crosses as he could possibly fit. Literally, there’s no way there could be any more double-crosses in this movie. And good on him for trying to take the attention away from two of the hottest young stars of the 90′s having sex all the time. I… guess. Then again, he wrote those parts in too. Never mind, I rescind my kudos.

Wild Things is not a good movie. However, if you want to see boobs and girls kissing each other, this movie’s got plenty of that. Of course, with the invention of the internet, movies like this almost have no point whatsoever. Thanks a lot, the internet.

The Aristocrats (2005)

The Aristocrats (2005)

Directed by: Paul Provenza

Starring: Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, George Carlin

Not to be confused with the Disney movie The Aristocats, The Aristocrats is a documentary about one of the most famous and pervasive jokes in modern times, known as “The Aristocrats”. Obviously. I mean… why else would they name it that?

The film is a series of interviews with A through C-list comedians, getting all of their opinions on the Aristocrats joke. For those of you not in the know, the basic premise of the joke is that a family walks into a talent agent’s office, performs an incredibly vile act, and when the agent asks them what the name of their act is, they say, “The Aristocrats!” It’s not really a joke that comedians tell to audiences, but more of something they use within themselves. Because the meat of the joke is just nothing but the most disgusting thing the person telling the joke can think of, it’s something that can be personalized to each comic, and this film has… well, dozens of different tellings of the joke.

One of the coolest parts of this movie is that it’s got maybe a hundred different people in it (they don’t all tell the whole joke, but they’re in it in some way), and that number covers just about every funny person I’ve ever liked. They’ve even got Steven Wright doing a version of the joke, maybe the last person I’d ever expect it from. Actually, I take that back, I was more surprised by Carrie Fisher. However, the two big standout versions of the joke in the film are by Gilbert Gottfried (which is the recording from when he told it on the Comedy Central roast of Hugh Hefner) and Bob Saget, who does one that is both amazingly disgusting and funny as hell.

This movie is definitely not for people who don’t want to hear about disgusting things like incest, scatology, beastiality, racism… basically anything. The Aristocrats joke is specifically designed to offend as many people as possible, so keep that in mind before deciding to see the movie. However, if you get past that, I’d recommend it. It’s a really funny and interesting look into a very particular branch of humor.

And no, I’m not going to do my version of The Aristocrats here.

The Dark Crystal (1982)

The Dark Crystal (1982)

Directed by: Jim Henson, Frank Oz

Starring: Jim Henson, Kathryn Mullen, Frank Oz

I’ve been on a big muppet kick the last couple weeks, for the simple reason that muppets are awesome and Jim Henson was awesome. I’m pretty sure there’s nobody who would disagree with that. That being said, The Dark Crystal is pretty much the worst thing he ever did.

The story of Dark Crystal is pretty simple: A group of evil people rule over the land, but a prophecy about a smaller guy destroying them and freeing all the good people comes true over the course of the film. In fact, it’s such a simple plot that it’s used in almost EVERY SINGLE FANTASY WORK MADE SINCE THE GODDAMN HOBBIT! C’mon, people, you can come up with ONE original idea for the fantasy genre, can’t you? (No, they can’t. Not even Jim Henson could.)

As you could probably expect, the plot is really not a big part of this movie. It’s all about the visuals, and by god, what amazing visuals they are. I think Dark Crystal is the first big project that Henson’s Creature Shop did, and those guys have always been just amazing. Unfortunately, and I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks this, as a kid, every SINGLE ONE of these creatures is goddamn TERRIFYING. A little unfortunate for a movie targeted at kids. Dark Crystal has enough nightmare fodder in it for a year of bad dreams, and hell, even as an adult half of these things creeped me right the fuck out.

Because the visuals and creatures were the main point of the movie, there were a ton of deus ex machina-type plot points where the characters would find yet another weird species to interact with, which, if you were blind or something and didn’t pay more attention to the monsters than the plot, you would be in a screaming rage by the third time this happens. Luckily, not even I am that bad, and I only just tried my best to ignore anything anybody said and just watch all the pretty (yeah, pretty SCARY) puppets.

Basically, everything they tried in Dark Crystal was done significantly better in Labyrinth, plus that movie has a good story to it, as well as multifaceted characters. I would definitely watch Labyrinth instead of Dark Crystal any time.

Adventureland (2009)

Adventureland (2009)

Directed by: Greg Mottola

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kelsey Ford, Michael Zegen

I have no idea why I watched this movie. In fact, I’m having trouble figuring out why this movie was made, or why it was advertised as a comedy. Comedies usually at least attempt to be funny. Adventureland is about as much a comedy as Romeo and Juliet. And yes, that was a massive insult to Shakespeare by even comparing the two.

Adventureland is the story of a privileged kid who has to work at an amusement park for a summer. What a DRAG! While there, he befriends a geek and a girl with boatloads of emotional damage, and they start a tepid romance. There’s also a subplot about Ryan Reynolds having affairs with a bunch of teenagers. WACKY!

This movie takes place in the 80′s… for no reason whatsoever that I can tell. The only thing it affects in the movie are the clothes of some people (most people still looked mostly modern). Even the terrible music was mostly modern garbage (mixed in with some garbage from the 80′s. And Judas Priest, but now I’m just rambling). So… why go out of your way to make this take place in the 80′s? The only answer I can see is that the main character is just a Mary Sue for writer/director Greg Mottola (who also directed the ever-so-slightly better Superbad). Even then, most people have the decency to not make it so damn obvious. Well, most people who write big boy movies and not online fanfiction about their favorite animes.

Besides that, what I found a little weird about the movie (besides the previously mentioned lack of even trying to be funny ever) were the messages it promoted. Thanks to this movie, I now know that all women are either sluts or terribly damaged, that men are either cultured poets or dumb hillbilly chucklefucks, and that the only reason anyone ever hung out with the director in high school was because he had pot. Important things to know, thanks.

Let It Be (1970)

Let It Be (1970)

Directed by: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison

I’ve never been all that big a fan of the Beatles, but I do like their later stuff (you know, after they stopped just doing Chuck Berry songs?). After doing some wikisurfing the other day, I ended up reading about this film, and how it subtly documents the dissolution of the most famous band in history. So… why wouldn’t I want to watch it?

The majority of the movie is the Beatles practicing together for the first time in a long time apparently (there’s no narration or anything, so if I hadn’t read up on the time surrounding when the movie was made, I wouldn’t have known). They play a bunch of random songs, from material off of the albums Let It Be and Abbey Road to old classic rock standards, and nobody seems to really get along with each other.

The most interesting part of this movie to me, since I wasn’t watching this in 1970 and I don’t dig really deeply into everything the Beatles did to find hidden messages or meanings or anything, was the last half hour of the movie, which documented the Beatles’ famous rooftop concert, the first concert they had done in five years, and the last time they played together. They decided to just get up on the roof of the recording studio and play a set in the middle of the day. As the concert goes on, more and more people gather around, and the filmmakers get some short interviews with some of them, which is also really interesting.

All in all, this documentary is more impressive for being a big part of history than anything else. It’s really less a documentary than just an hour and a half of Beatles music. Not that… that’s a bad thing. Now we just have to wait for McCartney and Ringo to die so it can get released on DVD with all the cut footage that apparently had all the juicy bits of tension.