Tag: films

david fincher

For whatever reasons, I’ve recently went through a David Fincher binge. And it occurred to me: I’m not a fan of his work.

That being said, The Game and Panic Room are his two best movies. Alien 3 is probably better than you remember. Se7en is alright.

Everything else is overrated. This includes Fight Club.

But The Game surprised me. It reminded me of one of my other favorite films: Roman Polanski’s Frantic. It’s hard to pull off these kinds of movies…watching a character descend into madness while information about what’s actually going on slowly leaks out.

Honestly, The Game doesn’t completely pull it off. Fincher’s visual style and Michael Douglas’s performance carry the film. But to completely enjoy it, one must ignore large plot holes and read more into subtext than what was probably intended (I assume).

I thought that Douglas’ character was suffering from the same madness that his father had and the ending indicated that “the game” was still being played. But I have the suspicion that this open ended interpretation bails out the script. In other words, Fincher’s direction saves the day.

As for everything else on Fincher’s resume, he seems to suffer from the same problem that Ridley Scott has: all style and the substance is overstated.

ac/dc

It’s never a good idea to drop acid around Halloween. But definitely make an exception for Highway To Hell (1991)

Is it funny?

Not really.

But then again, I’ve never laughed before.

Yet where Highway to Hell lacks in being funny, it makes up for in imagination. It’s certainly a more enjoyable journey through hell than say What Dreams May Come. (Hellraiser II slams as well)

Honestly, I don’t remember the plot. Something to do with Kristi Swanson getting kidnapped by a cop from hell and her boyfriend attempts a rescue. Ben and Jerry Stiller make an appearance. So do Lita Ford’s boobs.

But what makes this movie stand out (other than Lita Ford’s boobs) is it’s eclectic mix of genres and lack of fucks given.

The special effects are mostly shit, but who cares? Obviously they were trying and they get an easy A for effort.

Kids forget, but there was a time when people actually tried to make memorable films. Even when they are clearly taking the piss out of you it’s a more engaging experience than most Oscar bate that’s trotted year after year nowadays.

Hell, modern schlock sucks too. Just a bunch of dorks behind a computer throwing “special effects” on the screen like that’s supposed to be impressive. They don’t care anymore. As long as it makes $11 trillion at the box office, everything’s fine.

So shout out to Highway to Hell (and to Lita Ford’s boobs)

100 Girls: was that—a movie?

Kids forget, but there was a time before 9/11.

No one’s proud of it. But it happened.

Evidence for such a decade is the 2000 film 100 Girls. It’s hard to believe they used to make movies like that.

The plot’s pretty simple: some dude in college loses his virginity in an elevator like it’s some big deal. Then he spends the rest of the movie looking for this mystery girl in a dormitory.

His roommate also has a fucked up penis.

If this was a typical boner comedy, it probably would have been standard background noise.

You see, discussions on the differences between men and women used to be “interesting” to people. Not to me though. I thought girls were just boys with vaginas and left it at that. I would know because I’ve definitely seen a vagina. But 20 years ago, people didn’t know that.

So there were things like The Man Show, Kevin Smith films, American Pie, etc. The difference is though, occasionally those things would be funny.

100 Girls attempts to elevate the formula. And the moral of the story is this:

“Girls have boobs. But did you they also have personality? What a revelation!”

*Cue Bowling For Soup.

So be thankful that you live in a time of terrorism, pandemics, catastrophic climate change, massive wealth inequality, and dying democracies.

At least it isn’t the 90’s.