Seconds -- I was a bit disappointed by this one. It'd been on the queue for ages along with another Frankenheimer flick Seven Days in May. I guess from what I'd read I was expecting a bit more of a mind fuck than what was delivered. The pitch is basically a feature length Twilight Zone episode where through a shady business deal an old guy gets to become young again and have a second shot at an ideal life doing whatever it is he really wanted to do with his life before he gave up on it all. Of course this is going to come back and bite him in the ass with regret and an evil twist at the end. There are good performances all around but Frankenheimer gets a little too experimental for his own good throughout much of it. It was interesting to see Spike Lee's actor-cam being used -- as far as I know it may be the first feature to use it (you know, where the camera is attached to the actor while he walks around leaving the guy in place and everything else in motion). There's also this laughable hippy freak-out scene in the middle that's like dates it rather badly -- but is mostly forgivable as the majority of the movie gives you this feeling that it's going to be a fun ride watching the second half of this guy's decent into what should be a disturbing end. But alas, the disturbing end isn't much more than a yeah, well, that sucks. But I still give it a 3 out of 5 for the performances and the effort and enthusiasm.
Errol Morris' First Person -- Okay, now you talk about your disturbing – some of these episodes that comprise Errol Morris’ short lived Bravo series are downright spooky. And all they basically are, as anyone familiar with Morris’ work, are interviews. You may remember Mr. Morris from such films as Mr. Death, The Thin Blue Line, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, Fog of War, Vernon, Florida, Gates of Heaven, and A Brief History of Time (which sadly has yet to come to DVD). Now these individual 17 interviews are a bit spotty – there are a couple early on that fall a bit flat, but taken as a whole there are interesting themes that get woven from one subject to another. These are people that have nothing at all in common with each other and yet… do. Some of the standouts are: the woman who came home to find her son-in-law had killed himself in his bedroom and decided to become a professional crime scene cleaner, the man with the highest documented IQ (who happens to be a bar bouncer), the pen pal of the Unabomber, the seemingly insane lady who falls in love with a death row serial killer, and the pilot who got on the wrong plane home and helped “land” that DC-10 in Ohio. This is a great collection and a brilliant example (as all his films are) of how to make an interview interesting on film. Check this shit out. 5 out of 5
Battle Royal -- Now this is one that’d been on the queue for a long while, had heard much hype about, and did not fail to deliver the goods. Long story short, it’s Lord of the Flies on an amphetamine overdose. In Japan. Each year they take the rottenest group of high schoolers, send them to an island with a small bomb strapped to their necks, give each one of them a different weapon and treat the last one standing like the winner of American Idol. Meanwhile the disgruntled teacher (in this case the always watchable “Beat” Takeshi) cheers them on over an intercom in the island’s control center. We watch as friendships are tested, cliques get splintered apart, and bottled-up revenge is had with or without consequences. High school’s a bitch. 4 out of 5
Slaughterhouse 5 -- Another somewhat disappointment. Though this one didn’t have too much expectations going into it. I swear I’d watched this movie 7 or 8 years ago as I remember pulling it from the shelf of the Pleasant Street Video in Northampton, but I think I was completely stoned at the time of viewing so I couldn’t remember a single scene from the thing. And Filmbrain had recently posted about it’s values and I hadn’t been steered wrong by him yet so… I’m not saying it’s a bad movie by any means – just not a wholly enjoyable one. I’m not too up on my Kurt Vonnegut, I’ve only read two of his books, but I did enjoy those two. And I have to agree with both sides on this one – Slaughterhouse 5 is a bad book to try to make a movie and the movie that was made is as good an adaptation as there’s ever going to be. Michael Sacks does an award worthy performance in this as the main character Billy Pilgrim who lives his life constantly shuttling back (“unstuck in time” as it were) and forth from being a WWII POW and dealing with his unrewarding family life afterward, his institutionalized life in between and a somewhat parellel existence being observed in a bubble on a distant planet. Now, like I said, Sacks inhabits this role perfectly and George Roy Hill (coming into this after Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid and The Sting) films it beautifully… but at the same time you wish it was something else. It’s a movie where you know the book is much more enjoyable – and during the whole thing you’re only able to watch the characters and never really get to understand them at all so you feel that you’re being held at a distance that prevents you from getting involved in what’s going on. 3 out of 5*********************************************************************
Oh, and in case for some ungodly reason you haven't seen it --
40 Year Old Virgin -- Go now. See this movie, and cry the tears of joy I cried. The trailers and commercials are simply unable, through cetains laws that are in place in our society, to show you the greatness that lies with in this movie. I'm unable right now to even recall a movie that I've seen recently that has as much hilarity as this. [Oh yeah, and watch Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared while you're at it.]
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