(1 Apr) Gilmore Girls 2.11 (2002) [ review ]
(3 Apr) Lucky Number Slevin (2006, Paul McGuigan) 45
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(4 Apr) Take the Lead (2006, Liz Friedlander) 59
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(4 Apr) South Park 10.2 (2006, Trey Parker) 62
[ “You’ve gotten so smug that you love the smell of your own farts!” ]
(4 Apr) Kinky Boots (2006, Julian Jarrold) 34
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(5 Apr) South Park 10.3 (2006, Trey Parker) 70
[ “You hear me, Kyle? Compare me to Family Guy again and I will kill you where you stand!” -Cartman ]
(7 Apr) Un fil ร la patte (2006, Michel Deville) 61
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(8 Apr) Brick (2006, Rian Johnson) 67
[ This high school film noir might be too clever by half, it’s stylish but not that stylish, and the cast is not quite as turned on as it should be, though Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes a damn fine melancholy/cynical (self-proclaimed) detective. The story of a misanthropic teenage loner who investigates the mysterious death of his ex-girlfriend, who’d gotten involved with a clique of dope dealers, “Brick” is kind of a cross between “The Rules of Attraction” and “Memento”, or maybe a less comedic “The Big Lebowski”. The labyrinthine plot, snappy dialogue, shady characters, femmes fatales and sudden bursts of violence all work on their own, but the sum is somehow not as great as its parts. I could equally see people making this into a cult film or being annoyed by it. Favorite scene: the high school twist on the classic hand-in-your-gun-and-badge scene, where the vice-principal played by Richard Roundtree threatens Gordon-Levitt with being suspended from school if his investigation keeps drawing heat. ]
(8 Apr) Cigarette Burns (2005, John Carpenter) 69
[ Part of the Directors Series ]
(11 Apr) Gilmore Girls 2.12 (2002) [ review ]
(11 Apr) Punch-Drunk Love (2002, P.T. Anderson) [ review ] 94
(12 Apr) South Park 10.4 (2006, Trey Parker) 72
[ CARTMAN – “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
BART SIMPSON – “I stole the head of a statue once.”
CARTMAN -“Wow, that’s pretty hardcore. Geez. That’s like this one time, when I didn’t like a kid, so I ground his parents up into chili and fed it to him.” ]
(13 Apr) Gilmore Girls 2.13-2.14 (2002) [ review ]
(14 Apr) The Wild (2006, Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams) 24
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(16 Apr) Les siamoises (1999, Isabelle Hayeur)
[ Anti-establishment psycho-sexual feminist sci-fi philosophical drama… Whoa. And a teenage Isabelle Blais acting all kinds of fucked up (along with split personality Jessica Barker)… Double whoa. ]
Full disclosure: Isabelle Hayeur is an acquaintance, so it wouldn’t be really appropriate to rate the movie.
(16 Apr) Gilmore Girls 2.15 (2002) [ review ]
(17 Apr) Stagecoach (1939, John Ford) 73
[ Part of the AFI list (#63) ]
[ Part of Les Chefs-d’oeuvre ]
(18 Apr) Gentlemen prefer Blondes (1953, Howard Hawks) 70
[ Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are two showgirls who sail off to Paris looking for good times, gentlemen and, of course, diamonds (cause diamonds are a girl’s best friends). This is a bouncy, bubbly, sexy musical comedy, as light as air but fun fun fun. Viewed today, some of the sexual attitudes feel wildly old-fashioned, misogynistic even but hey…
“I might as well warn you, flattery will get you anywhere.”
“If we can’t empty his pockets between us, we’re not worthy of the name Woman.”
“I won’t let myself fall in love with a man who won’t trust me no matter what I might do…”
“He never wins an argument, does anything i ask, and has the money to do it with. How can I help falling in love with a man like that?”
“Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?”
“I can be smart when I need to be.”
“Remember, honey, on your wedding day it’s alright to say yes.” ]
(19 Apr) The Sentinel (2006, Clark Johnson) 28 [ review ]
(19 Apr) Stick It (2006, Jessica Bendinger) 47 [ review ]
(19 Apr) Cidade de Deus (2003, Fernando Meirelles) [ review ] 92
Man, CBC keeps showing these GREAT movies in the middle of the night… You stumble upon them and you just can’t stop watching.
(20 Apr) South Park 10.5 (2006, Trey Parker) 80
[ “Shut up, you miserable old cow or, so help me, I’ll blow your brains out! I want a chopper, you got that, and a jet waiting at the airport!” -Oprah’s minge ]
(21 Apr) Silent Hill (2006, Christophe Gans) 73
[ Love the Radha Mitchell, hottie lady cop, lots of atmosphere, quasi-industrial score, the feel of a nightmare, crane shots, snowing ashes, sleepwalking, Boromir, burning babies, Ring of Fire, religious fanatics, more motion than emotion, like a videogame, mindless assailants, cockroaches, Pyramid-Head Dude with a big-ass knife, “What the fuck is going on?”, boring exposition, Japanese horror little girls, the zombies from the Thriller video, the Reaper, barbed wire! ]
(22 Apr) Lost: “Pilot part 1 & 2” (2004, J.J. Abrams) 90
[ Part of the Directors Series ]
(24 Apr) les Amateurs (2006, Martin Valente) 46
[ Reviewed for Voir ]
(24 Apr) RENT (2005, Chris Colombus) [ review ] 83
(25 Apr) No Day But Today (2006, Jeffrey Schwarz)
[ This full-length documentary about how Jonathan Larsen created his musical theatre masterpiece is almost as moving as RENT itself. It’s painfully ironic how he spent the last years of his life perfecting a show about how you must live lift to the fullest because each moment could be the last then suddenly died the very night before the premiere… ]
(25 Apr) Gilmore Girls 2.16 (2002) [ review ]
(27 Apr) The Promise (2006, Chen Kaige) 54
[ This latest sprawling martial arts epic goes all out into overblown fantasy, making “House of Flying Daggers” look like a realistic intimate drama. The Shakespearean tragedy of the love triangle story and the gravity-defying fight sequences are very similar to those in Zhang Yimou’s masterpiece (and its companion piece, “Hero”) but, while Chen Kaige pulls off the romantic stuff pretty well, the action scenes are rather poor, especially those that rely on ridiculously bad CGI. ]
(27 Apr) South Park 10.6 (2006, Trey Parker) 51
[ “Dude, did Cartman just crap treasure?” ]
(29 Apr) United 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass) 90 [ review ]