This week we’ve got an Oscar winner, a couple Oscar nominees, and a couple Oscar snubs. Additionally, we’ve got the latest usual Hollywood and indie picks, something new from The Asylum, one of Burnsy’s guilty pleasures, old German gore porn, and a movie called Coonskin.
The DVDS:
The Descendants
My Week With Marilyn
The Adventures Of Tintin
Young Adult
Melancholia
Happy Feet Two
The Three Musketeers
My Joy
Stuck Between Stations
The Dish & The Spoon
Grimm’s Snow White
American Mobster: Miami Shakedown
Coonskin
Absentia
Wound
The Burning Moon
Do click on to see the DVDs, there are some really worthwhile choices and trailers this week. As usual, click here for your Netflix options.
This George Clooney dramedy was Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor and won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. I liked it well enough, but what Vince would really want me to say about it is that it co-stars Frotcast guest Rob Huebel. He has scenes with George Clooney and everything. It’s like Vince practically knows Clooney now.
At 31 years old, Michelle Williams already scored her third Oscar nomination with her performance as Marilyn Monroe in this movie. I haven’t seen it, but I don’t think she deserved the praise. How hard could it have been for her to tap into the psyche of a super popular Hollywood star who threw it all away by overdosing on pills only to be found dead by their maid? I wonder who’s going to play her in My Week With Heath?
[Vince’s note: I don’t “get” Michelle Williams. She just looks like the kind of person who’d cry if you farted near her.]
I never thought I could be so ambivalent about a movie co-written by Edgar Wright and co-starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. For what it’s worth, the movie reviewed pretty well and everyone I know who saw it really liked it. It was nominated for the Best Original Score Oscar, so the animation’s probably pretty good. I guess I’m still confused that it isn’t about that dog from WWI.
This is the first of two releases today that people thought would be guaranteed some Oscar attention and ended up receiving none. Although giving it a generally positive B- review, Vince was disappointed by this movie. He finishes his review by wishing the whole film had just been about Patton Oswalt and the dog. Of course that is how Vince ends every movie review, but there you go.
This is the other new release that was an Oscar lock but really wasn’t. I watched this last week and I kind of liked it. I can’t say I could recommend it outright, but it is two and a half hours of people yelling at Kirsten Dunst and all she does in response is show her tits. Pretty much keeps her mouth shut too, so that helps. P.S. This is the movie Lars von Trier was promoting at Cannes when he outed himself as a Nazi.
Critics and audiences alike loved the original from 2006 and hated/ignored this sequel five years later. I don’t know what the problem was this time but if I’m being optimistic I’d say that the movie-going public has lost its tolerance for Robin Williams voicing cartoon characters. Either way, I hated the original and I don’t expect this one to be good either. Surf’s Up is really a much better film. Seriously.
This 1000th film adaptation of the famous book justifies its existence by having nothing to do with the so-called source material. Burnsy hits the nail on the head: this movie is actually quite fun to watch. Quentin Tarantino put it in his top eleven, so you know it goes well with some high-quality cocaine inhaled off of some hooker’s left foot.
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My Joy
This movie, about a truck driver in Russia, was in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. That wouldn’t sell me on it either, but the trailer looks pretty interesting. It basically seems to fulfill all of my preconceived notions of Eastern Europe. The only thing missing is a little kid drinking vodka from a Batman Returns collector’s cup .
While watching the trailer for this indie feature, I was pretty sure the female lead was the actress who played Jon’s girlfriend on Delocated. I looked it up on IMDb, and sure enough, I was right. Evidently she’s now on Whitney, so despite having to do this film with the always creepy Josh Hartnett, the experience of making this movie will not be the low-point of her career.
Alison Bagnall, this film’s writer/director also co-wrote Buffalo ’66, so I’ll admit she’s versatile. This looks to be in the same vein as last week’s Like Crazy, so while I bet it will be insufferable, Vince will probably like it. If nothing else, Olly Alexander takes the Jew-fro to some pretty impressive places, so it has that going for it.
The Asylum, everyone’s favorite provider of blockbuster knock-offs, turns their attention to the disappointing trend of edgy Snow White movies. Based on the trailers alone, this one is probably the best film of the three. Seriously though, I’m annoyed that -by virtue of having an Asylum knock-off- these flicks are anticipated to be blockbusters.
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While certainly looking amateurish and awful, this film (originally titled This Is Who I Am) has a certain authenticity in its trailer. I honestly suspect that this film was made by actual members of the mafia. It just feels too real to me. I bet writer/star Nino Cimino is a real-life Christopher Moltisanti, earning for the family by using Hollywood accounting to launder money while fulfilling his dreams of being an actor. Plus Frank Stallone totally seems like the type of guy who would pay off some gambling debt by appearing in a mob-funded movie.
Holy living f*ck. I’ve heard of pretty much everyone involved with this movie, and yet somehow this has been entirely off my radar until now. The trailer is NSFW, and gloriously so. I honestly don’t know what to make of this, other than the 1970s were a different time in pretty much every way. Is this movie racist? Is it the opposite of racist? All I know for sure is that the theme song is pretty catchy. And possibly racist. And also NSFW.
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Coonskin’s theme song:
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Absentia
The biggest name actor in this horror flick is Doug Jones. He’s been in plenty of movies and TV shows. He played Abe Sapien in Hellboy, The Faun/ The Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth, the freaky ass Gentlemen in that silent episode of Buffy, and even the mother*ckin’ gay robot on Nick Swardson’s Comedy Central show. The geniuses behind this movie cast him as ‘Walter Lambert’, some dude who looks kind of sick-ish. Money well spent.
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Wound
Full disclosure: While preparing this post every week, I try to find a few movies to write about not because they look good, but because they look so bad. Shocking, I know. I was pretty sure this would be one of those picks until I got to the point in the trailer where somebody’s wearing a black vinyl pig mask and the calliope music kicks in. Trailer gets NSFW right at the end.
Remember the last section of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, where Lionel starts kicking ass with the lawnmower? Leave it to the Germans to see that and say, “How quaint, but what’s with all the humor getting in the way of the gore?” Sure this movie may be 15 years old, and the trailer may be only 39 seconds long, but I venture a good number of you reading this will seek this flick out, and if you watch the trailer at work you will get your ass fired.
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My Joy is the only new DVD that is also streaming this week. If that looks too bleak or European for your tastes, check out these other new Netflix additions:
True story: My brother read this book cover to cover to his toddlers. He also won’t abide any references to Santa, and regularly tells his kids they are out on their asses on their 18th birthdays, despite his living with my mother rent-free until he was 26. This movie might be worse than my brother.
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Grizzly Man
If you haven’t yet seen this Werner Herzog documentary, you really should. Besides being fascinating, it features Herzog at his most Herzoggy. Never has a film maker been so suited to his subject matter.
This Chinese film stars Jackie Chan as the brave revolutionary who brought communism to China. I hear it’s downright offensive from an historical perspective and insultingly transparent in its pro-Communist message. Still, it has got to be better than Atlas Shrugged.
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This German flick is about a middle-aged couple both falling for the same man. I mention it only because the director is Tom Tykwer, whose previous films include Run Lola Run, The International, and the underrated Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.