Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)


Director: George Barry
Writer: George Barry
Starring: Demene Hall, Rusty Russ, and some other people you've never heard of
Synopsis
a demon's cursed bed is a death bed for several people....whom it eats.

MOster
I don't know quite what I expected of this movie, but this wasn't it.  It wasn't pretentious and it wasn't intentionally over the top.  I think this is more the product of a filmmaker with a dream and meager funds.


The story is actually presented as short stories connected by the death bed and the weird narrator dude.  There wasn't an arc, as such; and there wasn't anything more concrete which connected the characters we did see.  There could have been a better prologue about the origins of the bed; but again that was probably due to budget constraints.  There was a clear point of view through the whole picture and I can see how a cinema 30 years ago would be filled with a tooth-edgy feeling (which is a couple of steps before "seat-edgy" on the dread scale).  The inner monologue thing seemed a little sketchy at first, but I think that it ended up helping.

I'm not sure if I recommend this but it gets a 3 because I didn't NOT like it.

The Woman
um this was pretty straight forward in a weird and confusing way. there was no real main character except for an eaten guy who was somehow transported into his painting of the death bed: the bed that eats. most of the dialog was different characters inner monologues. i'm not quite clear on how the death bed: the bed that eats became the death bed: the bed that eats, or the way it was SPOILER ALERT destroyed. there was some sort of cockamamie story about a demon seducing a maid, and somehow she died (during or shortly after copulation?) and the demon cried blood? and the bed they had sex on became the death bed: the bed that eats, and the demon went to live in a tree where he only closed his eyes once every ten years and therefore made the bed powerless? i know, it makes perfect sense. so lots of people get eaten by the death bed: the bed that eats and then it eats more poeple and then it strips rusty russ' hands to the bone, and then the guy in the painting says that the demon has fallen asleep and then the bed is vulnerable, but no one survives anyway. the end.

i liked sleep away camp better, but this was a chuckle.

Doubt

Doubt (2008)
Written and Directed by John Patrick Shanley
Starring Phillip Meryl Streep, ("he IS") Seymour Hoffman (-Leila), Amy Adams

Synopsis
At a Catholic school / church in the 60s (?) the nun in charge of the school is concerned with the priest's attentions toward the a new student.



The Woman
very good. good acting, good direction, good concept. not the molestation bit, but the constant subject of doubt. i think every actor in this was pretty exceptional and the cinematography was really noteworthy too. all the structures and architectural shapes were yummy. nothing about this movie had even a scent of pretension in it and i appreciate that. especially since it was so good. it almost makes all the crap we watch worth it so we can recognize real intention and purpose with clarity.



MOster
This movie is deliberate, which is not the same as slow.  Nothing is rushed because nothing in the real world would have been rushed. Individual scenes have fervor which contributes to the perfect pacing.  Acting is exactly where it should be given the top-billings; and there are more than one scene-stealing smaller performance.  A lack of ostentatiousness separates this film from many of the "esteem pictures" we've seen lately.  Tricksy shots advance the story rather than hindering it.

Finally we've seen a 2008 Oscar movie worth our time.  "Doubt" is the title for a reason, but it's certainty which makes the characters interesting as no single action in the film originates in malice.  In addition to the excellent final scene, the philosophical questions transcend religion to stay with the viewer.

Yes Man

Yes Man (2008)


Director: Peyton Reed
Writer: Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul
Starring: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Rhys Darby

Synopsis
bank loan guy who is a miserable shut in, goes to a self-help lecture about "saying yes!" suddenly his life changes!
MOster
This film's most interesting, entertaining scene occurs between approximately 15:00 and 19:00.  Because it has Terence Stamp in it.



The Woman
watching this travesty called a comedy made me finalize in my brain old jim carrey shtick is not funny. fire marshal bill is 20 something years old. it's time to move on now. this seemed like a desperate attempt to relive the golden jim carrey years from jim carrey. not only was it not funny, it was kind of revolting to me. jim's looking a little "long in the tooth" as my mother said and he's dating zooey deschanel who is younger than i am. it kind of makes me shudder while i type it. this was typical hollywood machine plot A. you knew exactly what was going to happen details and all in the first, say, 5 minutes. (i might be a little generous with that allotment of time too). not funny, just sad. did he really need a paycheck that badly? he's capable of so much more.....i think.

The Girlfriend Experience

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: David Levien, Brian Koppelman
Starring: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos

Synopsis
this is about an escort. she has a boyfriend.

The Woman
this totally sucked ass. i watched it because it was short and had been on our instant queue for awhile. in the info the first thing it says is that this was made for under $2 million. really? to brag about that is not cool. i should have known right there. clerks was made with a quarter of that and it could eat this movie for a tasty snack. there was all this political rambling done by her clients (it's takes place right before the 2008 presidential election) and whining about the economy. look i'm living that shit right now. i don't need a look back two years ago. i remember. especially from the rich assholes of manhattan who caused this to happen in the first place. boo hoo. i'm making a third less than what i used to. that house in the hamptons might have to go on the market. boo hoo. high class escort is losing clients because they can't afford to poop that kind of money down the toilet. booo hooo. there were all these scenes with her boyfriend's life as a personal trainer too. they seemed to me to be random and pointless. they only showed them together as a couple hanging out in their apartment twice maybe. i don't need his story because his life and background are not important to the "story" being told. he was a huge douche anyway. yes, she spends time in sweats on the couch watching tv with her asshole boyfriend. that scene and the fact that he knew she was a hooker are the only facts i need to know about that situation. all in all i didn't get it. there was no clear point to the movie. and SPOILER ALERT! they break up at the end. but their relationship isn't the focus of the movie anyway so who cares. the girlfriend experience is what she gives to her clients. there. now you don't have to watch the movie. if you're into watching things about escorts, watch the "secret diary of a call girl" because that is waaayy better. and more serialized which makes it...hold onto your hats...entertaining.

 and p.s. even the poster annoys me. there is nothing sensational anywhere near this movie. there aren't even any sex scenes. that would have driven the budget up i'm imagining and then they couldn't boast about how inexpensive it was.

Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Starring The Princess Who Wrote the Diaries, Don Draper's Super-duper-duper-duper Sexy Bohemian Girlfriend , Mr. Noodle (!), everybody else, everybody else's parents

Synopsis
This one woman who used to be famous (or something, which is not explained at all) got high and killed her brother when she was supposed to be babysitting him.  She comes out of rehab on some kind of temporary release to attend her sister's wedding and adds drama to the already-dramatic circumstances.

Woman
 i kind of dug this one. i'm writing this waaay after we actually watched it because i've been slacking, so i can't think of any specifics. very uncomfortable in parts......great acting...... the camera work was a little much at times. i kind of understand the point of it (the camera work) but it's not a documentary so i think it was a little too excessive with the zooms and stuff. i also understand why my friend found it too difficult to watch and turned it off... mothers of young boys, and all. but considering all of that i liked the way it was done over the couple of days up until the wedding and how it was over the morning after the wedding. um i think that's it...

...and i disagree with almost everything moster wrote.

MOster
Here's another "yeah, OK" movie.  Everybody has a pretty shitty deal, even though some of them are getting married and having lots of sex and things.  The status quo is slightly better in the end.

I had a hard time caring about these inexplicably wealthy characters and their crap.  It was a real tragedy that the kid died, but with the exception of one scene it's played for way too much sympathy.  The acting was generally good and it's nice to see Anne Hathaway growing into something less candy.  Midge plays most of the movie with that same self-satisfied smirk that was so sexy in Mad Men but doesn't quite fit in here.

The direction in this movie has to be broken into its two components.  The "telling the actors what to do" was more than adequate, but the "telling photographers what to do" more than made up for that.  We start with a fairly standard approach and then when we get to the rehearsal dinner shakicam is introduced in such a way as to feel like it's guests with their video cameras.  But there's no recovery (heh) from that crap and it continues through most (but not all) of the rest of the film.

There were some interesting elements of the production and most of them centered around the Indian aspect of the wedding between a white chick and a black dude (which is probably the most interesting--also unexplained--part of the whole story).  Other things were, again, overdone.  The drab nature of the backdrop with rain all the time and other such student tricks didn't do any favors for anybody.  I just don't feel the hype here.

Finally, the band was really annoying and I think it was supposed to seem really cool.  This another example of a movie which comes from undeserved pretension.

Vicky Christina Barcelona

Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansen, Rebecca Hall, (I always groan when I see) Penelope Cruz

Synopsis
two young american touristas spend time in barcelona. they couldn't be more different, but they are attracted to the same spanish painter guy. they each, in their own time have sex with said spaniard. then SPOILER! they leave barcelona.

MOster
This was alright.  I don't think it's a standout in the Allen oeuvre, all time or late-period.  Writing, direction and acting came to us through the standard Allen naturalistic lens and the characters and their interactions were all close enough to believable to be acceptable.  But that's all it was, and telling a story that's good enough well enough doesn't get anybody anywhere.

The story was a story that you could hear one of the principals telling their grandchildren--in fact, that framing device might have been preferable to the third party narration that we got--and you could see people doing what these people did.  But so what?  Is it supposed to be revelatory that a Bohemian-type woman enters and exits a multi-party relationship with a Spanish artist?  That a tighter (inexplicably the best friend of the freer) woman briefly escapes her engagement in the bed of that same passionate Spaniard?  That that Spaniard's passion needs taming by one of those women for his life to be constructive?

No.

The Woman
i'm not a fan of woody allen. his older stuff is too manhattan paranoid for me, and the newer stuff i always feel like i'm digging it, and then it ends, and i think to myself  "yup. still don't like woody allen stuff" why do i fall for it every time? it's like the weatherman, i inevitably fall for his bullshit, and then remember their craft is shit. and they have no clue what the weather will be like. do i believe in magic? no. do i like woody allen? remind me to read this next time an allen movie is up on our list. it's entirely frustrating. i could have really liked this movie. i was with it right up until the last 15 minutes. i don't exactly know how it could have ended, or what i was looking for, but when i walk away from a movie regretting the time i wasted watching it.... i mean, really. what is the point? there was no real self discovery, there  was no development....wait a minute....i would use those exact sentences to describe the twilight saga. is stephanie meyer really a pen name for woody allen? is he trying to draw the affections of teenage girls? i'm sensing a pattern here....holy crap. i think i'm on to something....something way more interesting, and way more worth my brain thought, and with a better, more entertaining ending than that movie. 

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Director: Charlie Kaufman
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Tom Noonan, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest...did i forget anyone?

Synopsis
Ostensibly about a stage writer/director's use of a MacArthur Genius Grant to create a fully immersive theater experience, this is more of an exploration of the consciousness of that person... or of our own individual consciousnesses and individualities...or of the collective consciousness and togetherness... or of something less determinate.
The Woman
well, i didn't not,like it. i didn't exactly like it either. i can see this derived from a fork in the road when he made "adaptation" (which i liked). some sort of reality based theater production where the viewer and the actors and the director can't tell where they are and what the heck is going on and how did i come to be here exactly and i am dreaming?, am i mentally ill? have i died? 2 hours, or 50 years later, yes, he did.  
MOster

I tend to enjoy tings which are unclear and require a good amount of interpretation and philosophising, and this certainly was that.  This was a fine progression into direction from the screenwriter of Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine....

Whatever one thinks about the story itself, the telling was well above "competent."  Great performances were wrung from ample sources like Hoffman and more-difficult ones like Davis.  The construction of the immersive world-within-a-world was reminiscent of Gondry.  In addition to capturing the interpersonal and solely personal moments with ease, cameras helped to show how the overall production was just at the level where we could tell if we were in what was perceived to be reality or what was perceived to be fiction.  Contrariwise (but not really) the editing worked to blur the total universe so we were never sure exactly where we were.

It's difficult to talk about the story as a story because of the nature of the background, but  I got a lot out of this experience both intellectually and emotionally.  Leila's right that there are no truly redeemable characters but I don't think that's bad or unrealistic. Rather, it serves to showcase how it's easier for people to sugarcoat views of their own lives rather than face the fact that at some level each of us is an asshole.  That that realization is couched in a story where it's impossible to identify the point at which we entered the Hoffman character's mind serves to reinforce that point rather than to undermine it and that's the ultimate triumph of this film.