Sunday 1 May 2005

Crap Movie Roundup

I'm not earning enough money with my current chosen mode of earning money, so I was wondering if maybe I could get paid to review movies, or at least get free tickets and popcorn, that would probably save us about sixty dollars a week.

I would be the movie reviewer with the "angry despair" shtick, and also when appropriate the "bad language" shtick. That means I would tell you straight down the line which movies were a piece of poo and not worth wasting time on, and I would swear and curse if that was the most economical way of getting the message over. Perhaps if the movie were unusually bad I might also recommend a similar but better movie that you could rent from the video shop instead.

It seems to me there is a definite need for a critic willing and able to perform this service. At the same time, I imagine it's not the kind of thing newspapers are really interested in paying for since they like the film industry to keep paying for advertising in their publiciations.

Well, if somebody sometime should really and truly offer me a well-paid job writing angry, despairing movie reviews, I shall perhaps need to start practising now.

A quick warm-up:

Ong-Bak: If you enjoy punching, this is your scene. I thought it was stupid and average. The main guy had to recover the head of a statue called Ong-Bak, and the subtitlers must have been under very strict instructions never to translate him as saying "I have to get Ong-Bak back", becasue he never did, though I never gave up hoping that he would.

Bad Education: overrated, pointless, showy, you'd be better off renting either Carrie or Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Benny's Video: This is a movie that seeks to be profound and only manages to be vile. You may see it if you wish, just don't go around afterward telling people that Michael Haneke is some kind of god.

Assault on Precinct 13: Ethan Hawke - why? Otherwise, moderately entertaining. If you are very bored.

Guerrilla The Taking of Patty Hearst: Hey, not bad at all, despite being subjected to The Nova's horrible methods of video projection. Rare is the political doco that manages to avoid soapboxing & platitudes. This one didn't even use 60s protest songs on the soundtrack! good work!

The Castle: Not the adventures of the Kerrigan family, but an adaptation by Michael Haneke of the Kafka novel. This one of the lamest, dullest movies ever made. Never be tricked into going to see it. Words can't describe the fullness of its awful boringness. (The first two minutes, I did like, however.)

The Amityville Horror: again, a totally worthless piece of crap without one redeeming feature. NOT EVEN SCARY! Hire The Shining instead.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: not bad, however it adds nothing at all to either the book or the radio show, or even the tv show. The only conclusion one can possibly draw is that it exists purely to make vast sums of money, which is a terrible reason for foisting a movie upon the world.

Tonight we also saw Crash, not the agreeably perverted Cronenberg/Ballard movie from a few years back, but a lame-arse imitation P.T. Anderson multiplot thing set also in Los Angeles, and somehow trying to be "about" race (though whenever Americans shoot each other in movies and the movie intimates it's because of societal inequities, I can't help thinking it might also have a little something to do with the gun-craziness, too.) This movie might have been OK if there were no Magnolia to compare it with, but there is, and it's not OK. See Magnolia instead.

16 comments:

lucy tartan said...

commenting on my own post!!!!

Dorian has pointed out - most fairly and accurately - that I steal all his ideas and pass them off as my own. This is true. There are bits in my thesis that Dorian thought up.

From the preceding, Dorian pointed out that Crash would've been OK if you weren't constantly forced to compare it to Magnolia. Yes, he said it first. But I thought it before he said it.

Phantom Scribbler said...

I'm hiring you, Laura. Especially since I never go to the movies, so the only information I know about them is from reading reviews -- the snarkier, the better.

Ooo. Except I don't have any money. Will you work for comments?

Anonymous said...

You know, I've been trying to figure out how to get similar work. Like you'd save a tidy sum of money even if I could just see the films for free....

My "preview review" of Crash (I still haven't seen the film) was Magnolia meets Collateral. The moody cinematography reminded me a lot of Michael Mann's film last summer.

Maybe we should set up a tip jar system for starving film buffs....

Scrivener said...

What I think is so funny about this post is the claim that you can be the "bad language" reviewer followed in the very next sentence by use of the word "poo." I think you might need to work on your bad language if that's gonna be your shtick. Unless you Australians attach some very different connotation to the word "poo."

Though, I agree that this would be a valuable service indeed.

Scrivener said...

And I've looked at your bags and such and think they're quite cool. I can't though, help you to support yourself in said endeavor by ordering them as gifts because, well, you don't ship all the way over here.

lucy tartan said...

I do ship to USA! Maybe I've made a mistake - highly likely - the last few uploads. But don't try to buy any, because I won't ship to people who I suspect are simply buying bags out of the goodness and kindness, rather than out of the neediness. OK? There may be a real job available soon, but I'm not getting too excited just yet.

None of those movies really warranted a major dose of swearing.

I will work for comments. Better than nothing :-)

Yup, Collateral is in there too. Chuck, I'm looking forward to reading what you think of it.

Anonymous said...

I always want to be meaner about films I don't like but I'm so worried I'll end up seeming like a misery guts who only really likes 9 films in the whole world (this is not true - I'm actually quite an upbeat person who likes many films. but also hate more).

I would love to read more of your film reviews. But you do need to practice the cursing ;) I would happily join in, right here in the comments.

Also, am I the only human in the country who doesn't think David and Margaret are like the best film reviewers ever? Personally, I think they're senile, boring old farts who need a few good sessions of colonic irrigation. Maybe that will shut up all their smug comments about how they're such good friends with director X, or thought actor Y was just delightful to spend time with. Plus, I'd like to be actually surprised by their responses once in a while.

Vom!

lucy tartan said...

Ok then: I will try to force myself to write some sort of conversation starter enrty on every movie I see. Those things are good even as records of movies for future reference. I'm jealous of people who can figure out something coherent & connected to say about a movie straight after seeing it, I guess it might get easier with practice. But better even than being able to say clearly what you think, is the chance to talk about movies n shit with other people. So yeah. :)

David & Margaret are pretty annoying, in their way -- but so are the "groovy" ones on SBS -- in a different way. I never have the telly on, so I don't care about either.
If i had to choose one set of annoying gits, though, think i'd choose D & M. But that's not an endorsement!!!

lucy tartan said...

Also, because I have a houseful of sims who look like and are named after Australian movie critics, I can't be taking D & M seriously any more.

I'm a bit tired of them, though: I was thinking of drowning the lot of them and getting a whole new town full based on bloggers.

lucy tartan said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Scrivener said...

Oh, wow, a whole town full of Sims based on bloggers! Will I get to be the hunky playboy? Or are you gonna make me some stumbling bum on the corner? Or will I even make it into your God-fantasy?

lucy tartan said...

Maybe you'll be the clerk who would prefer not to do any actual work.

lucy tartan said...

I'm just thinking over the logistics of it before going ahead and murdering all my existing ones. It might be just too hard to make bloggy sims stop playing on the computer and do their assigned tasks, go to work, study cooking, get in the sim hot tub etc

Anonymous said...

Airline magazines need articles submitted about literary tourist destinations - S Kurosawa knows nothing about Austen - nudge her aside.
My cousin Terry Brown is the Manager at the George Cinema. He was projectionist at the Longford for 14 years.

Ampersand Duck said...

I've never forgiven David Stratton for missing the point that Team America: World Police was a Thunderbirds parody. He complained about the use of unsophisticated marionettes (sp? too far from my dictionary today). At least Margaret does her homework. And I can't even look at the SBS team without wanting to pick up a good book instead. I'd love to use you as my movie barometer, if you've still got time to write reviews whilst juggling your new job with your own business...

Anonymous said...

I'm thinking about seeing Crash this weekend--it hasn't made it to Atlanta yet....

The blogger-based Sims world sounds like fun. I haven't played The Sims in a long time.