Schlock and Awe

  The last part of my Cinematic Coen Itch.... BURN AFTER READING (2008) Burn After Reading is a movie I like with performances I love.  Everyone is great, and really builds and walks on that fine line of being Simpsons' characters and characters with depth and an inner life.  It's filled with characters the Coen's do best, like George Clooney, the idiot that thinks he's the smartest in the room.  It's a kind of performance where he is not taking it seriously and having fun, his main of the movie is to make a sex toy, which he makes himself out of materials from Home-Depo; the reveal of the penis seat is even on a second watch a brilliant moment.  You also can't help but feel sympathy for the likes of daffy Brad Pitt or unrequited Richard Jenkins, or Francis McDordmand who just wants her plastic surgery.  They have unwitting found themselves in a spy movie and don't know the rules.  But are all lonely and unsatisfied enough to go along with it.  Maybe that i

I miss going to the movies .....       Especially in August.  The Melbourne International Film Festival or MIFF is one of those great times to be alive in Melbourne.  Every year when the smell of spring hints the edges of the Antarctic Winds you can experience three weeks jammed with movies spread over multiple theatres scattered around the city.  Huddled together in all weather and over large jackets waiting in line, trying not to break your neck as you hurry over slippery streets to get to your next screening.  Living on a combination of wine, energy drinks and cheap cheese burgers because you are living in a theatre.  Who needs sleep when there are hundreds of movies on offer.  I'm not a critic, I just really love movies.  Sitting in a dark room that sliver screen portal open up, listening to the hummed reactions of the people around you.  MIFF is the best and worst way to watch movies, a lot of different movies but because you can easily watch up to five a day sitting in comfor

WONDER WOMAN (2017) - DIRECTED BY PATTY JENKINS  PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN (2017) - DIRECTED BY ANGELA ROBINSON Two movies that are about the same subject, but covering different aspects and styles.        Patty Jenkins' Blockbuster Wonder Woman from 2017 made a huge splash culturally and fiscally.  While Angela Robinson's The Professor and The Wonder Women is a much smaller intimate movie that follows the relationship between Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and his inspirations that lead to to the Goddess's creation. One is a Blockbuster, a mammoth investment that was meant to be part of a huge D.C shared universe.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women , while still distributed by Sony  (a smaller section of Sony, the section that likes awards) is a smaller and intimate movie, a single focus concerned with the inner emotions and desires of the characters.  One movie designed  to get the largest audience they can for that all important opening

SCHLOCK AND AWE DOUBLE FEATURE  A Few Good Men, Directed By Rob Reiner 1992 My Cousin Vinny, Directed By Johnathan Lynn 1992      It's usually on a Sunday afternoon  when I get an itch to watch a legal drama.  Manufactured tension feels natural in a court room setting.  Because at least in film, it is meant to be about argument, debate and trying to get to a sort of truth and being able to take the moral high-ground.  There are rarely blurred lines in a courtroom drama, which is why they tend to make terrific Oscar bate.  I sat down and watched 1992's A Few Good Men and My Cousin Vinny.  Both were more similar than I had remembered, especially when it came to their climatic third act Witness Box testimonies.  There is a push and pull them that make them feel like dialogue sex scenes.  One was instantly inducted into the p op culture.  The other won Marisa Tomei an Academy Award.  It's both of these scenes that I feel get to the heart of why Court Room dramas are so watchabl

THE COEN ITCH CONTINUES My Cinematic travels through the Coen Brother's filmography continues with some of their greatest achievements and lows in their career. THE BIG LEWBOWSKI (1998)      I could easily spend most of my time quoting The Big Lewboski.  It might be one of most quotable movies of all time. It tied the room together, did it not ? This is not Nam.  This is bowling.  There are rules . I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me.  That or His Dudeness, or uh Duder, or El Duserino, if your not into the brevity thing. I could go on .....      One of the reason The Big Lewboski is the perfect cult comedy, apart from being hilarious, is that it's about everything and nothing.  The genius of The Dude is he can be whatever you want him to be, profit, guru, smoking or bowling buddy.  The Big Lewboski is the Mark Rothko of comedies.  On this watch I noticed a weird military complex hanging over the movie.  The Coen's make it a point of set the movie at the beginni

DOUBLE FEATURE Wes Craven's New Nightmare Written and Directed by Wes Craven (1994) Nightmare Beach Written and Directed by Umberto Lenzi and  Henry Kirkpatrick  (1989) It was one of the coincidences that I was watching New Nightmare when I heard the news that genre movie legend John Saxon had passed away.  Saxon was one of those rock 'n' roll solid working  actors that made everything he was in better, no matter how Schlocky.  Many obituaries call him the Actor from Enter the Dragon or if you are lucky Nightmare on Elm Street.  But, John Saxon was so much more. In classic genre movies like: Black Christmas , Tenebrae , Battle Beyond the Stars, Queen of Blood and The Evil Eye .  If you are aware of these movies, all you you  want to do is watch these movies again cause they are all kinda great.  I wish I had included Tenebrae in this, cause that movie rocks, it would have been the perfect excuse to watch it again.  But this is a Double Feature of Schlock and Awe I am go