Shipping Up To Boston

Cinema Nerds is taking a week off and heading to Beantown for a friend's wedding. Hope you don't miss us too much. To help you get through the week, you might want to check out the documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop. Though it's not weighty enough to win, it stands a fair chance of at least getting a Best Documentary Feature nod come awards season. And it's on Netflix streaming!

So until next week...au revoir les enfants.

MST3K: Tormented (1982)

Tormented (1960) is a fun campy "horror" film by itself, but I highly recommend watching it with commentary by the MST3K robots! In case you don't know about Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it's a program in which two robots and a man watch films of questionable quality and add their own hilarious comments. It's a good way to spend nights with friends when nobody can decide on what to watch.

Tormented is about a jazz musician named Tom, who is being blackmailed by his ex-girlfriend Vi, as he's about to get married to his fiancee Meg. Vi confronts Tom in a lighthouse, and she falls to her death after Tom fails to help save her. So, naturally, as any self-respecting crazy ex would, she haunts him, and his fiancee, and everyone he knows.

As far as B-movies go, this one is actually not too shabby. The fiancee's little sister is really cute, and there's a bit part played by Joe Turkel (AKA Lloyd the bartender from The Shining) as another blackmailer. The frequent appearances by Ghost Vi, looking like a poor man's Marilyn Monroe, are hilarious. Even more hilarious, of course, are the robots watching the film in the MST3K version.

If you've never seen a MST3K movie presentation, this is a good one to start with. It's streamable on Netflix, so get into the fall spirit with some good campy entertainment! You can't go wrong with disembodied heads and hands and craaaazy jazz music!
Here's a "best-of" clip, enjoy!

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Follow Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) a silver miner turned oil tycoon, on his ruthless and unending quest for wealth.

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A few months before production began, director Paul Thomas Anderson was asked if this film would make any sort of "statement" about the politics of the oil industry. Paul's reply was that, "...if we can just sort of focus on the small things, the big things might accidentally end up taking care of themselves hopefully."(1) Looking at the completed film, this was absolutely the right plan of attack. This film could easily have become yet another preachy hack/slash critique of the Bush Era. Instead it became a fascinating examination of a man rapidly descending into sociopathic madness...that also happens to have sociopolitical resonance.

Who Is Pablo Ferro?

Hey there cats and kittens!

Looking for something to do tomorrow night? I highly recommend you swing over to The Silent Movie Theatre for an amazing tribute to/Q&A with the legendary Pablo Ferro! Don't know who Pablo Ferro is? Check out this video!

Tickets are only $12!

Double Bill: Sexual Warfare

Carnal Knowledge and Closer

Misery (1990)

Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is a writer who has just finished his latest manuscript at a lodge in Colorado, where he writes all of his novels. Driving back home in a snow storm, he gets in a major car accident. Luckily he is rescued by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who happens to be a nurse and promises to take good care of him. Things go terribly wrong when it turns out that Annie is, well, crazy. REALLY crazy. She never told anyone where she was taking him, and he can't leave.

Kathy Bates is amazing in this. She seems all sweet at first, but then flips out when she learns that Sheldon has killed off her favorite character from his novels. She alternates between goofiness and violence, and screaming...I can't describe it. You just have to watch it. But she is SO good. Other favorite characters are Buster and Virginia, the sheriff who thinks Sheldon is still alive somewhere and his wife/deputy. They are so cute together. But, back to Kathy Bates. She is seriously fantastic. She won Best Actress for this role and she deserved it 100%.

This film has a lot of suspense and some good laughs here and there, but mostly it leaves you feeling creeped out. Oh, and one word: Hobbling. Holy crap. This is the perfect film to ease us into the October horror film season (everybody has October horror movie marathons, right? Or is it just me?). Misery is streamable on Netflix, so give it a go!

No Country For Old Men (2007)

After stumbling upon a drug deal gone bad, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds himself in possession of a LOT of money. Hot on his trail is the ruthless and unstoppable Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).

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SPOILER ALERT! Pretty much every Coen Brothers film can be boiled down to a simple statement: Much ado about nothing. People do terrible horrible things to each other and in the end it is all for naught. The money is buried in the middle of nowhere, Bunny wasn't kidnapped, the flood washes away the roll top desk, the secret CIA shit was just a lunatic's memoirs, etc. 

In 2003 the US went to war with Iraq over Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn't exist. Thousands of people died and continue to die as a result. Several "important" films have attempted to address the futility of the War on Terror and our post 9/11 world, this film succeeded. And it's set in 1980.

The Departed (2006)

Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a gangster undercover in the Massachusetts State Police, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a cop undercover in the mob. Shit gets intense. 

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I know a fair amount of people out there think of this film as "lesser" Scorsese. I also know that there are some people who take issue with him winning an Oscar for such a "lesser" film. To them I say, "Fuck You". Yes he should have won for Raging Bull, yes he should have won for Goodfellas. So what? He won for this one and it's amazing. I've watched this film countless times in the 5 years since it's release, and it just gets better. I honestly can't believe that the Academy saw fit to honor a film this nihilistic. It makes me smile. On the soundtrack The Rolling Stones cry out with "Gimme Shelter", but there is none to be found. Everyone dies. This is no country for old men. Good thing Marty is still making films twice as good as men half his age.

Seven Up! (The Up Series) (1964)

Seven Up! is the first film in an ambitious documentary series that follows 14 children from the UK and then plays catch-up every seven years. The children speak freely about the opposite sex, money, what they want to be when they grow up, where they plan on continuing their education. Some of the kids are very wealthy, some not so much. One kid claims that he reads The Financial Times so he can check his shares...haha, I'm pretty sure his dad told him to say that!

I've only watched Seven Up!, Seven Plus Seven (the kids at fourteen), and 21 Up so far, so I was hesitant about doing any kind of write-up on the films. But being that 28, 35, 42, and 49 are available as well, it might be a while before I finish them all! And even though I've barely glimpsed the kids in adulthood, I've found it to be very compelling anyway. Many of them are where they thought they'd be. Some work crappy jobs. Some seem content with life, others seem so sad. At seven, they all seem to be presented with limitless possibilities. Then real life grabbed a hold of them.

I'm very interested in seeing the twists and turns that their lives take in the upcoming films, and seeing how much their lives are affected by the fact that we've been watching them grow up, wondering how much is manipulated. Watching these films made me reflect on my own life. I wish somebody had interviewed me so I could see how different I am from the person I thought I might be. We all grow and change, and it's so amazing that this documentary series was able to capture that for the most part.

21 Up, 28 Up, 42 Up and 49 Up are streamable on Netflix, and the others are DVD only...definitely worth checking out!

The Wrestler (2008)

Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a pro-wrestler past his prime. Watch him as he tries to get his life together.

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With such stellar acting on display, some directors might opt to stand back and just let things run on autopilot. Fortunately Darren Aronofsky is not that type of director. If it seems as though he has ditched all of the stylish flourishes he’s famous for in favor of a documentary approach, you aren’t looking close enough. No documentarian could ever be this lucky. Whether it’s following behind Ram as he enters the ring or zeroing in on Cassidy while she has a personal revelation, the camera is always in precisely the right spot for maximum effect. Aronofsky is able to make the intensely planned look effortless.