Director Gregg Araki created the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin, but here he’s just having fun. In the first hour of Kaboom, I lost track of how many characters had sex with each other – it’s just about non-stop and guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, guy-on-girl, guy-and-girl-on-guy, etc. I would characterize the sex as casual, but that would make it seem that the characters were having even a modicum of difficulty in finding partners. Anyway, the chaotic sexathon is fun and very funny. The last twenty minutes takes the film into a campy version of a paranoid apocalypse film, before an abrupt (and I mean abrupt) ending. Did I mention the bad guys in the animal masks? It’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids is surprisingly winning comedy about a guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience. Helm plays a character whose sincerity and decency elevate his guileless cluelessness. There are excellent supporting performances by Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the irrepressible John C. Reilly.
This could have been a much courser and a lesser movie in the wrong hands. It’s directed by Miguel Arteta, who also brought an appealing sense of humanity to the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.
Movies to See Right Now
You can still see True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter and Another Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Animal Kingdom. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV this week include Tom Jones, The Silence of the Lambs and All About Eve on TCM.
DVD of the Week: Animal Kingdom
Watch this, and you’ll be rooting for veteran Australian actress Jacki Weaver to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
In this 2010 Aussie crime drama, a high school kid’s mother OD’s on heroin, forcing him into her estranged family of brutal criminals, presided over by his sunny grandmother. Like many teen boys, he is terse in speech and impassive in demeanor. As he is plunged into increasingly desperate situations, neither the characters nor the audience knows what he is thinking in every instance. This, along with his peril, is the key to the movie’s success. Will the teen safely navigate through the maze of his murderous relations? Will evil prevail? We don’t know until the final scene…and then some questions remain. Animal Kingdom won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
Set your TiVo for Carlos
The Sundance Channel is broadcasting Olivier Assayas’ 5 1/2 hour miniseries Carlos again on February 23. Don’t miss this miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians. It turns out that he is way smarter and more nervy than the other dippy wannabe terrorists, so he rises to lead his own crew. At first he prudently tries to remain clandestine, but he inadvertently gains some celebrity, and he LOVES IT. After his first exposure in the media, he self-consciously dons a Che Guevara beret for his next adventure. Soon he is a legend in his own mind. Finally, he learns what happens when he becomes too hot for anyone to shield.
The action sweeps between atrocities in Paris and Vienna, a terrorist training camp in Aden, secret bases in Berlin and Budapest. Along the way, we meet European goofball radical posers and smarmy Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan intelligence officers. We see dynamite action scenes as Carlos must pull off escapes and attacks in compressed time.
Carlos is a star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who plays Carlos and has to carry almost every scene. Ramirez perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution. Ramirez plays a few scenes in the nude, with Carlos at first admiring his own beefy body and later lolling about with a pot belly.
Carlos is a French film, but is mostly in English; there are subtitled scenes with French, Spanish and Arabic dialogue.
Carlos has also been released in a 2 hour 45 minute version on Pay Per View. I strongly recommend the full length version on the Sundance Channel.
Great suggestions by you for my Oscar Dinner
You’ve sent me some great suggestions for my Oscar Dinner. Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man. We also had airplane bottles of liquor for Up in the Air, fastfood chicken for Precious and Middle Eastern fare for The Hurt Locker. I particularly relished having prawns for District 9; (“prawn” is the South African slur for the aliens). You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.
But this year, I was stumped on 127 Hours The King’s Speech and The Fighter and asked for your help.
127 Hours: imagemoved said, “all he had was freeze dried food and granola bars. He also left that bottle of Gatorade in his car. Maybe do something with that?” The Wife suggested a water bottle with the exact number of milliliters of water that he had when he got stuck. The Wife has so far vetoed my idea of a water bottle with faux urine (the protagonist recycles his own urine while trapped). But Ana may have a winning idea: “Ginger ale, pineapple, white grape, and cranberry juice punch with an ice hand floating inside (pour water in a latex glove and freeze, remove glove and place in punch) — A bit gruesome but funny too, right? …right..? lol”.
The King’s Speech: I think Ana also has a winner here: “English toffees. 1) They’re English 2) Their stickiness renders you temporarily incapable of speech. Get it? Eh, eh? 
“. They also made a big deal of serving tea in The King’s Speech, but I really like the idea of gumming up my jaw with the toffee.
The Fighter: Ana suggests “Boneless Buffalo Wings — They’re manly and something you’d eat while watching a boxing match…and their flavor is a real ‘knockout’.” But something tells me that Amy Adams would be serving the buffalo wings WITH bones in that bar. Maybe I’ll just pick up some MGD or PBR.
Any more ideas?
Once again, some promising new movies in the theaters
We’re nearing the end of that period in January and February where the theaters are filled with 1) Oscar nominees lingering from the Holidays and 2) the very worst Hollywood inventory. Some intriguing new films are now ready to be released. I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.
This weekend brings us Cedar Rapids and Kaboom. Cedar Rapids is an “aim low” comedy about a lame guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience. It’s got John C. Reilly as the Wild and Crazy Insurance Agent and is directed by Miguel Arteta, director of the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt. Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy from director Greg Araki, creator of the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin.
Here’s the trailer for next weekend’s Nora’s Will, a Mexican dramedy in which a man’s mother dies and he uncovers some jarring family secrets.
The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Troubadours, Certified Copy, Of Gods and Men, Carancho, Hanna, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.
Movies to See Right Now
The must see films are still True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter and Another Year. All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Inception. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV include Blow-Up, The Third Man, All the King’s Men, 8 1/2 and Tom Jones on TCM.
DVD of the Week: Inception
Inception was the year’s best Hollywood summer blockbuster. Because it’s written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight), we expect it to be brilliantly inventive and it exceeds that expectation. The story places the characters in reality and at least three layers of dreams simultaneously. A smart viewer can follow 85% of the story – which is just enough. Then you can go out to dinner and argue over the other 15%. The Wife said it was “like The Wizard of Oz on acid”.
Leonardo DiCaprio leads the cast, but the supporting players give the best performances: Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger and Tom Hardy.
New Movie Recommendations
True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter are all crowd pleasers. A bit more challenging, Another Year and Rabbit Hole are also on my list of Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours, The Way Back, Somewhere and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
I haven’t seen Cedar Rapids (opening tomorrow), but you can its trailer and those of other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is The Social Network. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
It’s a good week for movies on TV, including Quo Vadis, The Graduate, Gone With the Wind, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Victor/Victoria, Mon Oncle, The Stunt Man, Do the Right Thing and Blow-Up on TCM.