I Spent $300 on Curtains

It was a damn fine weekend for movies this year. Well, that's strictly speaking for Boston that is. We got The Aristocrats, Last Days, and Grizzly Man (Broken Flowers came out the week before). Though, of course, none of these movies even made a dent in the top 10 B.O. results, what with Duke's driving around and Mark Wahlberg taking no prisoners...

I managed to see two of them -- Broken Flowers and The Aristocrats.

I'll just say that I found myself crying with laughter more then a couple times during The Aristocrats. That doesn't happen very often. I will say it's the funniest movie that I've seen this year, but it's also a bit exhausting – as you may guess from a 90 minute movie about a joke. But in a larger sense it’s more about the art of comedy itself and I’m sure any budding comics out there will treat this like a tutorial.

Bob Saget and Gilbert Gottfried pretty much come off as the stars of the film and Saget does indeed kill the audience in this with by far the best version of the joke. He’s the most creatively obscene and that’s really what the success of this joke hinges upon – the most relentless and imaginatively degrading and filthy is the stuff that wins. Or else you find a creative alternate way to tell the joke like the card trick guy or the mime – both winners as well.

I recommend the movie – but it might go by a bit more smoothly if you’ve had a few before hand and aren’t going in with impossible expectations like I did.

For something completely different Broken Flowers is a superb Jim Jarmusch film. Bill Murray is pitch perfect and gives a beautifully subtle and muted performance that easily stands out and differentiates itself from his recent work in Rushmore, Translation and Zissou. But Jeffrey Wright nearly steals the show as Murray’s neighbor and instigator. I’ll still sit and watch Basquiat whenever it’s on and think his performance in that is amazing.

And to wrap this up I’ll mention a few things about 2046, Wong Kar Wai’s sequel to In the Mood For Love, which I was able to get a free pass to tonight. Now I won’t by any means say I was disappointed – it’s just that it’s kind of impossible to not to compare it to the first. Now, I’m not sure if I’d mentioned it here before but I only saw In the Mood For Love around February or so and was pretty much floored by it. I’d seen Wong’s Chungking Express and have much love for that one, but In the Mood is another kind of movie all together. The look, fetishistic eye for details is pretty breathtaking.

Anyway, 2041 keeps all of these elements going and is for the most part enjoyable. But you find youself enjoying the bits and parts of it moe than the story itself. The beauty of the shots and the art direction, the music, the acting – all top notch and worth the price of admission. But the story itself isn’t quite as engaging as it’s predecessor’s. Really though, the more I think of it, it may just be that it just doesn’t quite have the same impact the second time around. Not to say that this is just a retread of the first movie – it’s definitely it’s own thing, but just not quite as affecting this time. But again, it’s a damn fine film that’ll probably grow on me the next couple days, and I’m going to see what I can do about getting my hands on the soundtracks to the both of these movies…