Movie Reviews! - Mayans Are Dicks Edition

I recently joined NetFlix. This shit is on!

Gates of Heaven and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control – Errol Morris is one of my favorite directors. I have seen and loved almost all of his movies, although I refuse to watch his only non-documentary, Dark Wind, because it stars Lou Diamond Phillips (LDP!) and because it’s called Dark Wind. I’d sooner watch a Dogma 95 film called Dutch Oven. But I’d somehow never seen Gates of Heaven or Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control until a few days ago. His storytelling is so unfuckwithable. He finds great characters with fascinating stories, he never makes fun of them or appears to judge them, and his style of having the people look directly at the camera is so affecting. He’s great and these movies are funny, touching, and amazing.

LDP tangent: I have a friend who’s a doctor; let’s call him Schmarvin. A few years back, Schmarvin’s younger brother went through some difficult times and moved briefly away (I believe to Houston). So, to try to get Lil’ Bro to come back to the family, Schmarvin flew to Houston (?) to find Lil’ Bro and have a serious showcase bro-down. Before going to find his brother, I hung out with Schmarvin and joked that his situation was not unlike the plot of some shitty movie. When Schmarvin asked what actor would play his part, I answered immediately: Lou Diamond Phillips! For that reason, LDP will always have a place in my heart. That, and I loved Young Guns II.

Star Trek – When’s J.J. Abrams going to be able to make a movie of his own? His first was Mission: Impossible III, which was fine, and now this one, which is also fine, but is he ever going to get to make a movie that isn’t trying to invigorate a dying franchise? I’ve never been a big Trek fan, aside from the years in high school when I watched "The Next Generation" every Saturday night (I’ve always been a magnet for pussy), but this was a pretty good space action-y thing with a bunch young, pretty people. I call bullshit on the time travel stuff, though. You can suspend disbelief for most of it, but when they start explaining that future Spock opened a black hole after accidently destroying a whole planet, you start thinking, “I think this whole thing is bullshit,” and you just wait for the next space battle. Also, when will wormholes stopped being used in sci-fi stories as the go-to explanation for everything? Answer: Never!

Milk – Sean Penn acts his dick off in this movie. And speaking of dicks, why will you see more cock in the films of Judd Apatow than in a movie about gay dudes that have gay sex with lots of dicks? I'm not advocating more dicks on screen, but it's weird that it's okay to show dicks as jokes but not as sex-making objects, right? Anyway, really good story, awesome actors all around, and Gus Van Sant doing his nice-guy, mainstream, Finding Forrester shtick. Good times.

Gangs of New York – I'm in the bag for Marty Scorsese, but I had avoided this movie when it came out seven years ago for several reasons. First, when a director describes a movie as his "passion project," run the fuck the other way, fast. Passion projects mean that it’s something the filmmaker wants so badly to make, they lose all subjectivity and self-analysis, and end up making unwatchable, overly long, and very personal pieces of shit. Second, I was still mad at DiCaprio for Titanic. I’ve since gotten over it. Thirdly, a year before the movie came out, I read a huge feature story in GQ or Vanity Fair or some other upscale, bullshit magazine that went behind-the-scenes of this production. The article detailed Scorsese going over budget and filming in Italy to get that mid-19th century look, how Harvey Weinstein was up his ass to get the movie in on time and on budget and how that never happened, and other problems of the production. The descriptions from the article made the movie sound awful.

But I knew I'd come back to it someday, and I'm glad I did. Aside from some terrible CGI and some awful wigs, it’s a really good movie. It stumbles a bit as it tries to introduce everyone and get the story rolling, but when it does get going, it moves well. DiCaprio is good, Cameron Diaz is surprisingly good, Daniel Day-Lewis is great, and Brendan Gleeson is fucking awesome. Scorsese does this odd perspective thing a few times where characters look directly into the camera as if they’re looking at another character. But then their eye line moves to the right, and the person they were supposed to be looking at enters the frame. It’s beautiful and disconcerting at the same time. I also liked the Civil War subplot and the gang war finale being interrupted by the larger city riots and military quash of those riots. Marty’s the man. I'll never doubt him again, but I still won't watch Bringing Out the Dead. Fuck Nic Cage, man. Just fuuuuck Nic Cage.

Sex Drive – I watched this because it had Clark from “Clark and Michael.” It also had boobs and an Amish Seth Green. Hilarious, right? It also had one of my top 5, all-time teens gain access to a car then cut to montage of them driving while a catchy rock song blasts moments (in this case, the song was MGMT’s “Time to Pretend”). Great driving montages, but if it took more than $65 to make this movie, they got robbed.

2012 – Mayans are assholes. Does anyone else think that their calendar ends in 2012 because that’s as high as these small, dickheaded people could count? Also, John Cusack and Amanda Peet outrun earthquakes. I won’t see this movie.