The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)


Director: Robert Wise
Writer: Edmund H. North (screenplay), Harry Bates (story)
Starring: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal

Synopsis
Alien ship comes to Earth amidst a huge fanfare.  One dude gets out and is immediately shot by some stupid kid in a tank.  Labeled a fugitive for escaping the hospital, he goes on the lam and rents a room at a boarding house where he meets a bunch of people, including a kid and his single mother.  His goal is to tell everybody to cut the shit with the nukes or the interplanetary community will blow up the planet.

The Woman
this was ok for a moldy oldie. nothing much has changed in humanity since it was made. people are still assholes, and i think we would still shoot first ask questions later. we're prejudice against aliens man, ever since independence day.... those jerks.

solid three starrer on netflix. it wasn't amazing, but it was well done, and the story was good. MESSAGE!

MOster
I appreciated this.  It's telling how even though we understand that nuclear holocaust is bad the smaller parts of the message (e.g. persecution without understanding) are just as relevant today.  There were a couple of twists in the story, even though the climax is aided by a fairly lazy deus ex machina.  I'm also not sure I buy that NO high level people would be there when the saucer landed nor that there wouldn't have been some explicit orders handed down to the troops, but it's not worth going on about.

Acting was pretty good, I guess.  The dude who played the alien was really good as a cool customer, and while the kid was pretty shitty the grownups were fine.  The douchy boyfriend dude did a good job of slowly becoming douchier as time went on.

Leila credits at least some of the technical stuff to remastering, but I couldn't find any information to support that.  Much like Sunrise, I thought that there were some really cool tricks for the period.  While here they're more evident when it comes to the alien tech stuff such as the flying saucer over Washington, I don't think that really makes a difference.  It was nice to see what must have been some real innovation... even if some kids on a computer cleaned up the edges a bit.

I don't need to give this movie more than a 3 but I do recommend it.  It will be interesting to see how it compares to the new one when we watch it in another month or so.

The Pajama Game

The Pajama Game (1957)

Director: George Abbott, Stanley Donen

Writer: George Abbott (book and screenplay), Richard Bissell

Starring: Doris Day, John Raitt, and a bunch of other people

Synopsis

a musical set around a pajama factory, the people who work there, and their union fight over a 7.5¢ raise. bob fosse choreography

MOster

This is the sort of musical I'd been expecting.  Plenty of big numbers and dancing and singing and harmonies and humor.  The notion of this pajama factory owner pinching on such a small raise seems ridiculous, but $2.80 was a lot of money 60 years ago.  There were some interesting internal things with the superintendent dude uncovering an important secret, but at the end of the day that just played into the standard storyline.

But the standard storyline was fun, and the actors were all above average.  I like how Doris Day is cute--but not hot--and gets the guy because she's also actually smart and independent.  Speaking of "unlike Funny Face," the musical numbers were really cool here with good ensemble work balancing out the duets and plenty of tricksy work on all sides of the camera.  More of the lines were funnier and the comedy was the good kind of risque.  

I had a good time watching this movie.  Again it's not high art or anything, and of course by the end of the day we learn that one plus one does in fact equal two.  But so what?

The Woman

this was way better than any of the 3 or four movies we've watched in the past couple of weeks. it was everything a musical should be which is campy and lots of ensemble and funny supporting cast numbers. the plot was a little fast, but hey, you gotta fit a musical in an hour and a half right? so they fall in love in twenty, and then relationship drama, until everything works out great at the end. yeah for musicals.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
Written by Peter Straughton, Jon Ronson (book)
Directed by Grant Heslov
Starring Mark Renton, Doug Ross, Jeffrey Lebowski, (spoiler alert!) Keyser Söze

Synopsis
Reporter goes to the Middle East to cover the Iraq war.  There he meets a man who claims to be a retired (and later, re-activated) member of an army psi-ops division.  Jinks ensue.

Woman
i can't figure out what this movie was missing, but it was something. it just didn't have that extra umpf to make it really good. i still don't really know what it was about. maybe a lack of direction to something. maybe psi-powers just aren't enough to carry the whole plot. i thought the flashbacks were really the meat of the movie, but there was a lot of focus on ewan and his deal with clooney in the present. i really wanted to like this movie but it just fell short. all the good parts were in the preview and they were just glued together with uninteresting gobbledygook.

i do believe that most of this movie is true. i can see the military competing with the ridiculous rumors of the cold war in the 80's, and the bureaucratic ridiculousness of our involvement in the middle east in the present.

good concept, good cast, shmeh movie.

MOster
This movie had almost all the right ingredients, starting with a stellar cast.  Ewan does a pretty good American accent (as usual) and he's opposite Clooney, who I tend to really enjoy in comedies.  And then you have Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, complimented by some other great supporters including a neat little bit by Robert Patrick.

The film includes a series of flashbacks, and the standpoint of the viewer shifts seamlessly through each time period and voiceover-or-not in each of those periods.  The few action sequences took on various styles which really helped to bring the satire to the fore, but only where it made sense; and the other scenes felt both specific to their needs and general to the movie. 

But the production was better than the material.  While the outline of the plot was really good, the script was only mediocre.  There were some good jokes and we actually laughed maybe a handful of times.  I'm not sure if I hope that the Star Wars jokes were written with Ewan McGregor in mind or not; but while they're funnier with him they are--with the exception of the most-circuitous one--not funny enough.  The jokes could have hit harder, and while the end of the film was  fine (and it probably shouldn't have been funny) the resolution of the actual story was neither all the way there nor particularly funny.

Finally, and apropos of nothing, fuck you George Lucas.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday (1953)
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton
Starring Audrey Hepburn, young hot Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert, a whole host of actually Italian people

Synopsis
A princess from an unnamed European country (which was probably a joke 50 years ago that I don't get today) gets pissed off at all the bullshit and runs away.  She intends to go for a couple of hours, but since her handlers drugged her she ends up being away for a full day.  She meets a reporter and he takes her around the city, starting as a bottom feeder (promising the story to his editor and a piece of the dough to his photographer friend) they end up falling in love.  (spoiler alert?) Bittersweet ending.

Woman
i have seen this before and i disliked it then, aaaaaand i still dislike it. i grrrrrred and pouted when moster put it on the queue, and i grrrred and pouted when it came to the house. i don't know why. i just find it stupid. they fall in love in less than a day. eye roll. she has a taste of life, wonderful life. then she, boo-hoo, goes back to her life of obligation not as a child, but as a woman. somebody please hand her a cross. slumming it is so attractive.

MOster
I don't know why Leila hates this movie so much.  I thought it was very nice and actually bittersweet.  The story is simple, but that doesn't matter.  The little things they do and the sights they see make for a bunch of fun scenes in a row.  While it's unlikely that they would have a nice long life together if they had even tried, I buy that they felt the love that they showed, and I really liked the looks in the last couple of scenes.

Hepburn here does a great job as little more than "herself," Gregory Peck just smolders, and Eddie Albert has fun as the photographer, getting what little  "zany" there is to be had.  The ass-sticks in the castle really come off as they should, and the little bit of local flavor also does a good job... especially since for many of them English isn't necessarily their first language.

The directing here was competent, if not mind-bending; but it doesn't have to be mind-bending.  There were some really cool shots in a couple of spots, with the best sequence being the party-on-a-barge which turns into an all-out brawl.  The rest of the production was also admirable, and again I appreciate how much of this was filmed in Italy with Italians.

I think this was a fine move and I do recommend it.  It would make a good date movie with 95% of the female population, I think.

I will fight for the 3 on this one.

Funny Face

Funny Face (1957)
Written by Leonard Gershe
Directed by Stanley Donen
Starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, you don't care about anybody else.

Synopsis
sketchy old photographer for a fashion magazine comes up with a plan to rejuvenate the image of said fashion magazine ( ha. the irony) booky chicky poo becomes the new "smart" model. makeover. paris. love.

MOster
I think I should have liked this movie more than I did.  This is one of two movies this week where I think we were witnessing an early iteration of a formula which has played out hundreds of times.  That part of it was fine for me, I guess.


The acting was just fine here.  Astaire and Hepburn are cast into types which they created, and while the supporting cast did their jobs pretty well they didn't make much of a difference at all.  The woman who played the editor of the magazine was fine.

This is a Stanley Donen movie, and I absolutely loved Charade and I appreciated the similar tricks that he used both in the standard action and in the musical pieces. The area where this fell apart for me was in the musical interludes, however.  I don't know that there were quite enough numbers to count as full on "musical," and with the exception of the first one in the darkroom (which was really cool) they all ran too long for me.  Maybe they weren't actually too long.  Maybe they just got boring.  Maybe we were both in crappy moods.  I don't know.

The rest of the production was pretty good, though some of the shots of Paris appeared to be in front of screens or on soundstages, but there were definitely some location shots as well.  Costuming, by Edith Head, was first rate as always; and everything else looked as it should.

I'm not sure how strongly I recommend this one, and I think I'll give up on the 2 vs. 3 argument when we have it at 10:00.

Woman
admittedly i slept through most of this, but only because i was so disinterested and unimpressed by the first half an hour. i woke up intermittently throughout and tried to give it a chance, but sleep won every time. look, fred astaire may be fred astaire, but he ain't no looker. he was smarmy and old enough to be audrey hepburn's father, maybe even grandfather.  the whole point to this movie was to get a model with brains, and hepburn's character was smart and philosophical, but everybody treated her like a child. especially her gross geriatric love interest. she, too, was no great shakes. it seemed, through my semi-conscious state,  she wanted to be a model secretly, but then she was using the photo shoot in paris as an excuse to go philosophize with beatniks, and completely disrespected the fashion magazine editor by not showing up anywhere for anything. so maybe she deserved to be treated like a toddler, and marry a man who is apt to die before she got to the end of the church aisle. production numbers were too long and boring too. boo. i'm not a musical hater,usually i'm quite the opposite, but this was so eh. GROSS. boring.

Return to Sleepaway Camp

R

Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)
Written by  Robert Hiltzik
Directed by Robert Hiltzik
Starring Big Pussy from the Sopranos (seriously), The most interesting counselor from the first movie, Michael Gibney, Isaac Hayes, who it appears died during production, spoiler



Synopsis 
20 years (or something) after the events of the first movie, the camp is back in operation with a similar name.  See Leila's synopsis of the first movie, because the same shit happens except that this one doesn't have the two awesome setup scenes from the first one. 

Woman
this just shows how awesome the first one is, and how difficult it is to recreate genius. the production value of this was like a disney channel sitcom. very strange. also, the gore effects of the one from twenty years ago were soooo much better. they tried too hard. it was obvious whoever made it [who was the same guy as the person who made the first one... and the second one... and the third one. - MOster] was obsessed with the first one, but instead of paying homage to the god of sleepaway camp, they just ended up pissing on the altar of gold that is sleepaway camp version 1.

the shorts were not short enough, the acting was bad, but not 'hey look guys i found this camera on the side of the road, let's make a movie with it', and the kid that everyone picked on was not sympathetic in any way. i was kind of hoping he would die too. poor and unfortunate.

MOster
Leila can complain about me critiquing this movie if she wants.  I don't care.  However, I won't spend nearly as much time as I did on the first one because this just isn't worth it.

I'm not sure what the intent was for this movie, and neither am I sure that they had an intent.  If the idea was to recreate the creepiness and atmosphere of the first one they failed miserably.  If the idea was to trade on the camp and make a farce of the first one one might say they succeeded but they did so in a totally unappealing manner.  I also sincerely hope that they failed to make any kind of money.

The kid in the first movie had an appealing backstory and was generally creepy; and while I don't want to say that the kid in this movie deserved the shit he took from the over-the-top "cool kids" he was a completely spoiled asshole who did deserve some of what happened to him.  None of these characters would even make it into a modern "parody movie" (e.g. Not Another Teen Movie).  If anything here betrayed any element of actual skill or craft it would be the production, but the glaring mistake in one character's makeup eliminates that chance completely.

We really did have fun watching the first one, and the first one actually made sense.  This is apparently the fourth in the series and it has not made us Sleepaway Camp completists.

Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Written by Robert Hiltzik
Directed by Robert Hiltzik
Starring Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, the dude from "The Manhattan Project," extremely short shorts, ridiculous cutoff muscle shirts, a couple of phalluses, a very large, 3-foot deep pond

Synopsis
boat accident involving father and two kids occurs. eight(?) years later surviving child goes to summer camp with the cousin she's been living with. short shorts, pedophiles, bitchy early teen ho bags, and a psycho killer on the loose. fun, fun fun!
MOster
Just like we can't come to a conclusion as to whether this movie should get a 1 or a 5 (though by the time you read this we will have), I'm not quite sure how to approach this review. 

This was a seriously flawed venture which still had a decent reveal/twist at the end; and Leila pegged it only a couple of minutes before it hit the screen.  The opening scene sets the stage for the rest of the movie, and the expectations are neither exceeded nor squandered.  I didn't understand how two people were killed and the murders hushed so poorly that (in a throwaway line which I didn't actually hear) parents were pulling their kids out of the camp at an alarming rate, but the number of extras never changed.  I didn't understand how the owner of the camp could let slide some things such as ten-camper brawls that happened literally under his nose.  However, in slaloming through the shit posts, I did come to understand the direct and oblique motives of the killer and that's what makes it difficult to decide how to take the experience.

Because the experience was joyfully entertaining for both of us.  I was serious about the opening scene setting the stage.  It was just too over the top for me believe that it came from humorous intent and that made it all the more awesome.  The screaming and the stupidity and the acting and the production had us giggling even though we weren't exactly sure who died and who didn't.  But if there was any doubt after the first scene, the second one just took it the rest of the way.  The mother of the two children was flamboyantly nonsensical. The utter impossibility of any serious approach to the role is so like the utter impossibility of (e.g.) Pat Robertson taking himself seriously that I'm forced to believe that there was no irony whatsoever.

Once we get to the camp, things can only go downhill; but they do so in such a waterslide-fun manner.  For example, how is it that nobody picks up the fact that the "head chef" is a pedophile?  How do the counselors (who were not really apparently counselors for another half-hour of screen time) look to be exactly the same age as the campers and why does it make sense that they take campers down to the lake in the middle of the night?  How does a team of apparent 12-year-olds defeat a team of apparent 17-year-olds at slow-pitch softball?  Who the fuck decided to wrap a single layer of bright red fabric so tightly around a giant whang that you can practically see the hole?  The answer to all but the last question is: who cares?

Therefore, much like, "American Ninja 4," I wholeheartedly recommend that you watch this movie solely for the gratuitous penis. Everything else is a bonus, but much like AN4 it's a 400% bonus at the end of a very successful year.

Woman
holy crap, this movie is awesome! i loved every minute of it. from the tight short shorts, so short and tight there was a question whether they were underwear or not, to the bad acting, to the special effects, to the most awesome plot and end. i'm kind of sad we sent it back today and i can't watch it again. sigh. seriously, this movie is amazingly bad and awesome and wonderful. it is everything a horror movie should be.

moster takes things far too seriously. this is not a movie to dissect and think about plot points. just swallow and enjoy. it's called fun.

i also think it's interesting that we watched this on friday the 13th......mmmm camp movies......