REVIEW -COLD WEATHER

Yea, i know. I have been bad and and neglecting my blog. I have been watching movies on netflix but have not seen any that have inspired me to review. I saw this movie in the theater a few months ago, it just got added to netflix streaming today so it now falls under my jurisdiction. yay!  I paid money to see this movie because i was intrigued by the idea of a "mumblecore thriller" and what that might actually look like.  Basically  COLD WEATHER combines the usual post -college whiny white middle class slacker characters /low budget approach but adds elements of the thriller genre.( shady characters,a briefcase of money,a missing woman,etc.)  The film was shot in portland with great use of the city's grey weather and old building to create a threatening atmosphere. In most thrillers the end of the film is a big showdown between the main character and the forces of evil but since this is mumblecore, the climax never comes. This movie wasn't much of a thriller to be honest. Instead it was a clever character piece about the ups and downs of a friendship between a brother and a sister.Please add it to your queue if you are  interested in seeing a good independant film and check out other films from  director Aaron Katz- DANCE PARTY USA  and QUIET CITY.                                

MUSIC DIGRESSION/THE WRESTLER

A MUSICAL DIGRESSION BASED ON A MINUTE OF DIALOG FROM THE WRESTLER(2008)

The wrestler was a great movie because Mickey Rourke was so much in character that you forget that he was acting. He seems tired and washed up just like you would imagine Rourke to be in real life. The best moments of the film are the moments that do not seem scripted. he seems to be improvising and ad libbing as the wrestler. my favorite scene is when he is at the bar with Marisa Tomei and the '80s hair metal band RATT comes on the jukebox and he gets over excited and does a little dance. "those where the days...... fuckin' GUNS AND ROSES.... then that pussy Cobain had to ruin everything! the nineties sucked!"  i loved that line. i was glad that NIRVANA came along and made all the crappy bands that he liked seem pointless and silly. to me it smelled like victory. you see kids, back in the '80s there was this thing called "alternative" music. Go ahead smartass, " alternative to what?" you ask. Back then MTV actually played music videos instead of reality shows, they usually showed videos from lame hair bands like POISON and tuneless wonders like Bryan Adams. Most commercial radio was just as bad. There was some great bands around but you had to read the right magazines or listen to college radio to actually know them.I was a college radio guy. it was the only thing i actually enjoyed about my collegiate experience. sure maybe only three or four people listened to me but i  kidded myself that i was making a difference. fighting the man by playing obscure bands on indie labels. It was 1988 when the first single from a band from washington state called NIRVANA got mailed to the station. I had never heard of them but they were on SUB POP so that meant that they were cool and worth some airplay.  i remember the band photo on the single, Kurt and the other two looked awesome. They wore leather and looked like bikers ready for a bar brawl. They looked like they couldn't give a shit if you liked them or not. i played that 45 a lot. The next year they released BLEACH and more people started to play them and to write about them.  i saw them in concert and they were a beautiful mess, they broke strings and fell down and still they could care less what you thought.  i was the first person at the Boston college station to play the new single from their second album. it was called ' smells like teen spirit"  and my first thought was " hey, they copied the guitar riff from one of my favorite KILLING JOKE songs ,nice"  it had a much better production than BLEACH but still had their trademark soft/loud/soft/loud style . Sometimes you could not tell what Cobain was singing but still you got the message, it was an extended middle finger to anything safe and mainstream. NIRVANA was here to make music dangerous again and to champion other "alternative" bands. Kurt appeared on the cover of SPIN wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed"corporate magazines(i.e SPIN!)suck!"  he became a spokesman and idol for a new jaded and apathetic generation that was tired of being told what to buy and to how to live.  I was working at tower records when "NEVERMIND" started to sell like crazy. It felt great! it was like we won!  one of "our" bands was on top. i felt a sense of pride whenever i saw someone buying a cd by the VASELINES or the PIXIES. One of the best nights of my life was being at a club and hearing the opening riff to 'smells like teen spirit" my friends and i slam danced and raised our drinks. It was a victory dance. Of course it was too good to last. Cobain was a heroin addict and shot himself after only two more albums. they held a candlelight vigil outside tower records. Nevermind,indeed.

REVIEW-ECHO

So why is it with the thousands of titles available on netflix streaming i often find it hard to find decent movies to watch? too many times i just give up and end watch some stupid horror film from Australia about killer crocodiles or a giant snake-ugh. i am more into psychological thrillers than slasher type films. they seem a bit more cerebral and less one dimensional. i had seen this movie listed before but at  first i over looked it for a couple of reasons. first the title, ECHO? is it a fucking dolphin movie? is it going to be heart warming? spare me. secondly the cover art does not help much, three disembodied heads staring out at me, why? also you would have to had watched the movie to figure out that those are waves at the top.Anyway, i ended up watching it because it was from Denmark and i am a big fan of Scandinavian films and it stars Kim Bodnia who was in two of the kick ass Copenhagen drug dealer movies -PUSHER and PUSHER II. I am glad i gave ECHO a shot because it ended up being a first rate,deeply strange,creepy, little(only 80 minutes-awesome) film. it was the first feature from Anders Morgenthaler who had previously only been know as an illustrator. He shows a special skill at creating atmosphere and tension out of small details and silence. the story is this: a father and a son on holiday in the countryside. it does not take you long to realize that something is not right. The father is starting to have weird visions of other people being in the house and starts to have flashbacks about his traumatic childhood while his son likes to carry around a loaded gun. you know that this is not going to end well. later we find out that the father kidnapped the son and is wanted by the police. there are several "black swan" moments where you wonder if things are happening for real or if he is going crazy. i really liked this movie because it did not rely on gore or shock value. there is no bogeyman. no monster. it is just a simple story told in an unconventional way. it wasn't scary but the creepy factor was high.

TONY MANERO DVD REVIEW

i was just a wee lad of 11 when i saw SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER in the theater. it was rated R because of the gratuitous amount of nudity and profanity which did not shock me that much at the time. i was mature for my age and had already seen A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and the EXORCIST without too much psychological scarring(i hope) so this movie seemed rather tame. john travolta's character in the movie had a much bigger effect on my impressionable mind however. travolta is tony manero. he rules the disco club with his smooth dancing skills and impeccable style. his day to day life was rather mundane but he became someone different when the bee gees song comes on and he could strut his stuff on the dancefloor. underneath the disco ball he became a sex symbol, a powerful man that had to be watched and admired by both sexes. like many others back then i watched the movie over and over. i studied and copied his dancing moves. i tried to coif my hair like he did and dressed in the signature black and white suite when i went to the local roller rink every saturday night for disco night. but as hard as i tried i never became him and by 1978 disco was out. punk was in.

  the movie TONY MANERO is also about someone who watched SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER way too many times and desperately wanted to be the disco god . raul is a 52 year old man living in chile and living the dream that he is tony manero. he lives by himself and has no job. he enters a tony manero look a like contest on a tv gameshow in order to give his pathetic life a purpose. by now you might think that TONY MANERO is a comedy. it is not. you see raul is also a serial killer. yep, when he is not working on his sweet disco moves, raul likes to beat people to death. TONY MANERO reminded me a lot of TAXI DRIVER another gritty movie about a man's dark obsession turned to violence. chile was not a happy place to be during the '70s. it was a police state and anyone who dared to question the government was thrown in the back of a car and never seen again. this environment makes it easy for raul to get away with his killing. he kills the couple that run the local theater for daring to replace his beloved SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER with GREASE. as the police get very close to nailing him, raul finally get's his shot to be his idol on live tv. does he win? does he get caught? does he kill again? watch it and find out.(not available on netflix streaming but available on dvd)

MISSION STATEMENT/ REVIEW UNMADE BEDS

the purpose of this awesome blog is to cut through and destroy the usual pretentious acadamic nonsense you usually see in movie reviews. i don't need to read quotes from howard zinn or whomever. i don't need to be impressed that you went to film school and know obscure technical terms. i just want to know if the bloody film is worth seeing or am i going to want to scratch my eyes out afterwards like when i saw the latest piece of crap from sophia coppola. kabish?  and movie critics don't get it. people don't see movies in the theaters anymore. everyone has netflix, dvd rental places are dead.  so it is up to me to review films you can see on netflix streaming. why me? i am a movie geek that knows a lot more about movies than you ever will. it is my passion and you better listen to me.                                                    
UNMADE BEDS: so what do you feel when you see young hipsters in their precious tight pants and early bob dylan hair? do you want to punch them in the face? tell them to grow up? if so,this flick is not for you. watch an adam sandler movie instead. me, i loved this film. it is the second effort from a  dude from argentina named Alexis Dos Santos. his first film was an awesome low budget coming of age movie called GLUE. GLUE was all about a teen punk riding his bike around his neighborhood, he talks to girls, he pretends to be in a band .that is the entire movie. nothing happens and that is the point. For his second movie he has a bigger budget,real actors and a plot. god bless him. UNMADE BEDS is all about young pretty vacant hipsters looking for something. one is looking for his dad. another one is looking for the perfect boyfriend. you get the idea. it's all set in three locations in swinging london,a warehouse where they hook up,a bookstore where one works and the club that they all meet at. there are lots of scenes of drunken undressing and yes god damn it-shots of unmade beds, numbered and listed no less. why did i like it so much? it made my pine for my youth when i did not have a care in the world and i often woke up in strange places next to people i could not remember the names of.  the cinematography is brilliant, lots of close ups without being herky jerky. the music by the tindersticks, good shoes and black moustache is indie/electro cool. the kids in the movie wear neat clothes. sure not a lot of happens but you won't be checking your watch. Dos santos is a young director that really has the potential to make great films.