T's Take on FATAL ATTRACTION

I hate to say it, but don't impregnate strange women. Michael Douglas is just slimy enough to be perfect for this role. A grown man with a wife and son sleeping with a business associate is wrong for (at least) four very big reasons. And then, no protection? Talk about flirting with disaster.

The whole thing feels very overblown to me. Baby or no, I cannot believe this woman felt honestly that her course of action could lead to anything but a massive explosion of hate and drama. Some women want that, I'd discovered in my life, but they also tend to be very easy to spot.

This was a horror movie more than a thriller, if you ask me, with everything about it blown out of proportion to chill us to our bones. People like this woman tend to be in jail or a psychiatric facility by the time they're thirty-six. For her to just snap and self-destruct at the notion of rejection, well... While I cannot speak to the plausibility of it, because indeed, it is the plausibility of such a scenario that makes it so bone-chilling, the likelihood is rather slim. Like, one in five hundred thousand, minimum.

Movies made for the express purpose of revealing the destruction of a family are things I rarely frequent. With So I Married An Axe Murderer, it was a goofy foray into unbelievable silliness, touching briefly on the idea that you never really know who somebody is. Fatal Attraction shoves misery in your face for an hour and a half. It was like watching Audition. I guess I'm glad I saw it, if only because I know what people are talking about now, but I'll probably never watch it again. I was grateful for the semi-happy ending, though, which is to say the only person who died was the insane lady.

It was fine, I guess, for an unpleasant movie that went out of its way to be weird and unnerving.

Don't watch Fatal Attraction.

T's Take on SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER

What a delightfully dark movie. It reminded me of Envy, with that intentionally uncomfortable tinge of loathing and desperation. I liked Envy, just like I liked Axe Murderer, because I respect a filmmaker who doesn't care whether their viewers feel uncomfortable.

That was meant as a compliment.

Mike Myers does his best to be entertaining, which can be compelling and distracting moment to moment. I can see the director waving his hand at Mr. Myers and saying, “Just do something funny.” It felt unfair to leave the guy hanging with ballerina prancing in the quad at Buena Vista park for a solid two minutes while Ms. Cardboard offers the same cryptic open-ended statements we come to expect.

It's his winsome, pure enthusiasm that carries him through performances like this, but the guy just falls flat sometimes. It's not his fault. The movie leans on his personality too much. We just cycle back to the same two notes the whole movie through, which is enough, but barely. Jim Carey, John Candy, Robin Williams, whoever – we can't just throw these people into a movie and let good intentions carry them through. Mixing slapstick and mothers-kissing-friends fodder with the notion of brutal serial axe murdering is an uneasy combo at best, and shifting back and fourth between touching “take me seriously” romantic sequences and the abusive drunk Scottish father screaming at his child and wife made me wince more than once.

I like this movie. I honestly do. However, it feels conflicted, and that conflict muddies the fun I feel like we were supposed to be having here. The bits that included Mike's cop friend were hilarious, and the trip to Alcatraz was perfectly uncomfortable. Bryan Cranston absolutely nailed his role – the guy had me rolling. The spoken word segments were a lot of fun too, and the beat generation references made me feel comfortable and warm inside. All in all, it's a win. I can't really imagine another way it could have come out.

Watch So I Married An Axe Murderer

M's Musings on SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER

So I Married an Axe Murderer.  Dir.  Thomas Schlamme.  Screenplay by Robbie Fox.  Ft.  Mike Myers, Nancy Travis and Anthony LaPaglia.  Sony Pictures, 1993.

Well, no actually, you didn't.  While the idea of her being an axe murderer was an excellent one, what is the point if it is actually her crazy ass sister?  So there was some kind of weird sexual tension between the two of them that was never resolved...  Between who, you say?  Well, between all of them, in a weirdo sort of way.  Pick your two.


My favourite part of the movie was the decision to make the love interest a butcher.  The jokes throughout those sections made my day.  I liked the tension and hilarity it added to this idea of her being a murderer.  Somehow, the film never stopped being lighthearted, even in its most serious moments.  Instead of almost dying... Mike Myers gets kicked in the balls.  So, he kicks back.  Huh.


I am not much of a laugh out loud kind of girl, nor am I super into romantic comedies.  I liked that this particular comedy played down the romance in favour of the crazy.  I was not surprised to learn that Mike Myers is the same kind of comic in every film he played.  I guess I was expecting something a little different.  I see exactly how he "evolves" as an actor throughout the last couple of decades.  In most ways, he really doesn't.  Its just the same jokes for a new, slightly more youthful audience.


Okay, so I hated the scene where he first goes to her apartment.  She didn't turn on the light until they were in the middle of the hugest room I have ever seen.  Can you imagine following someone you just met more than 20 feet into a dark house before turning on the light?   I realize this is petty and pathetic, but that is the one thing that really caught me up.


The Scottish parent storyline made me happy.  As did the World News.  My grandmother also reads tabloid magazines, though unfortunately she does not read them in earnest (to the best of my knowledge).  This just made me wish that she did.  I hope that she does, and that she secretly looks for photos of our family and friends... just hoping to solve a crime or be horrified at the depraved way in which we lead our lives.


Do redheads go grey in that particular fashion?  I hope that I don't.  I kind of hoped that I would never go grey, except in the most uniform of ways.


Final thought:  I enjoyed this movie, but it didn't overwhelm me.  I didn't laugh out loud one time.  But, I am still glad I saw it.

T's Take on SCREAM

What can I say? A couple of dudes with Halloween costumes stab people to death for almost no reason. It's one of those movies that enjoys itself, and rollicking and laughing into slaughter about as generically and offensively as it can get away with while reaching that invaluable 13-20 age range. Whenever I watch a movie that injects comedy into gore I usually like it. Scream is one of those movies you can just have going on in the background while you play a video game or surf the internet. It's meant to be talked through and poked at and made fun of. It's not good, but at the very least it has a strong grasp of what it's trying to be. I like that. There's nothing wrong with being fun and stupid.

I always resented that they forced rape into the storyline, but the nature of this movie is to take horrible parts of humanity and casually throw them in your face. It's for desensitized slasher fans, and as a member of that demographic I cannot help but be appeased. I had to laugh to myself when one of the characters said something to the effect of "Anything can happen. It's the Millennium!"

The story makes a demented kind of sense that only a mother could love, and I'm sure if you pay close enough attention to the details it all works itself out, but whatever. It's fine. This movie is fine. I remember sneaking into a theater to see it and getting a kick out of the giddy sense of humor playing out here I could only liken to Evil Dead 2, not that the two could ever be compared.

I will say that this movie was important for its time, but I will also say that it could be safely forgotten. M informs me there's going to be a fourth coming out in April 2011, the first of a new trilogy. I'm sure I'll see them and I'm sure they'll be good enough for homework and a killing an afternoon.

That's good enough.

Watch Scream.

I guess.

M's Musings on SCREAM

Scream.  Dir. Wes Craven.  Screenplay by Kevin Williamson.  Ft. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette.  Dimenson, 1996.

In celebration of Hallowe'en, we decided it was time to catch up on our reviews, and watch something "scary" for a special Hallowe'en issue of MT Sentiments.  Like every other genre of classic film, I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies.  So, like 95% of the movies we watch and review on our blog, I had never seen this classic which was an important part of my childhood and young adulthood.  I simply never had the experience in the moment.  For films like this one, you just can't re-live it once you are past your teenage years.  I think I would have thought this film was a lot more clever if I was a 15 year-old virgin.  Ah well.

The one thing I kept going back to while watching this movie was how old the actors are who play the teenage roles.  When you ARE a teenager, you don't find it strange, because you want so badly to have the maturity of those people.  The kids who are actually 16 are playing 12 year olds.  There is no way they could handle the range necessary to be an angsty youth.  Angsty youth have no idea what life after high school is like, so there is no way they can ever be convincing in these roles.  You need the wisdom in order to recreate the experience.  Remember, teen movies are always about re-presentation, they are never about the original experience.

This statement is an excellent segue into the most interesting feature of this film.  Its self-reflexive discussion of the genre of the teen slasher provides another level of experience onto the conventional story it is telling.  Its awareness of its own limitations is parodic and charming at times, even if it is a bit over the top.

I made jokes to T throughout like this is so meta.  And the movie is deconstructing itself.  It is so pomo.  While I was making fun of the convention of being aware of the conventions of a genre, I am sure that as a teenager I would have been really impressed by this.  This is the time in our lives when we first really start to see the broader patterns that reappear in various cultural phenomena.  We know enough about genre that we can anticipate action and talk about the predictability of a story in a way that is a mix of disdain and superiority which is unique to the high school moment.  It is important to feel better than the entertainment you are mindlessly consuming.  You have to be too cool for your own life.


Overall, I thought this movie was really fun.  It helped get me back into a moment when the "millennium" was an ominous event looming in the horizon.  It helped me remember what a horror movie the whole high school experience really is.  Perhaps the various hacking and slashing is closer to the truth than we like to imagine.  Everything feels like the end of the world or the end of your life, even when nothing is going on that you will remember in six weeks, or even six days.

It was fun to re-live the up-and-coming actors of the mid-90s.  Though I really didn't see most of Friends until it had already ended, and only ever saw the last episode of Party of Five, I was immediately presented with these two women who would occupy so many people's tv sets for a good five to ten years.  It was a very nostalgic experience for someone who is not very violent and doesn't really enjoy watching violence on tv.

I don't think this movie is supposed to be scary.  It is too self-aware of its conventions to be overly outrageous in its portrayal of the various murders.  Instead, it is just silly.  The killers are in a Hallowe'en costume and talk on cell phones.  They get stuck in garage door openers, and string up principals on the football field.  It is just supposed to be over-the-top.  It doesn't actually need to keep you awake at night.

I'm glad I watched this, but now I am safely ready for bed.  Stuffed with mini-chocolate bars and a late night dinner of chicken wings, all in all it has been a pretty good Hallowe'en.  We even stuck a carrot in a pumpkin to make a witch nose for our Jack o'lantern.  Hope everyone did something fun and didn't get up to too much trouble.

T's Take on NEVER LET ME GO

I lied.

It IS okay for a movie to be depressing and unredemptive. There was nothing happy in this movie, nothing was resolved, and every character here starts out with a lot and ends with only a little. It's about people being bred to donate organs to everyone else. Big business has taken to cloning, and these people are trained and forced to submit to the surrendering of their vitals one piece at a time until creeping inevitable death ceases to linger over their heads, much to the hasty delight of the operating teams that hover around them throughout their adult lives like vultures. It's sick, and depraved, and a hideous reflection of humanity and values.

I loved it. It moved me. It was gorgeous and provocative and a multiple of everything I wanted it to be. I'd recommend it to anyone.

So what's the difference between this and Great Expectations? I guess it has something to do with the message. Expectations' message was that everything sucks, and sometimes you just have to loose, because you're a looser. And the everybody hates you. And as difficult as it might be for you to believe, the people you love are secretly out to get you. Here? This movie? This is done for a reason. Here we find human, believable characters living out destitute shadows of lives for a reason. Not to say that the in-movie organ farming is legitimate reason, but the statement that makes about medicine and technology is powerful.

This is a warning. At least, that's how I took it. The author of the book is cautioning us to value life wherever we find it, because if we don't, or can't, the lives we're looking to prolong cease to matter. We, the willing beneficiaries of that death and suffering, are become monsters. That vampiric visage of that alternate humanity must be avoided at all costs. Very important. Very striking. The fact that the movie starts in the seventies and moves into a present that does not exist is important. Instead of moving forward and showing a horrific destiny, it says, 'what if this had happened?', offering the viewer respite from a point of view that is indeed depressing, but not altogether bleak. By assuring us that it is not real now, we know this as a story, and not a depiction of the future, although the intonations are definitely there.

Casting, directing, screenplay, whatever... Tens all around. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Maybe not great for a first date or a lazy Sunday afternoon, but important, and a must-see.

Watch Never Let Me Go.

M's Musings on NEVER LET ME GO

Never Let Me Go.  Dir. Mark Romanek.  Screenplay by Alex Garland.  Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishigiro.  Ft. Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley.  Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010.

Never Let Me Go was pretty much the only book I read for pleasure in the entire 2009-10 school year.  I read it in November during a very difficult and emotional time in my life.  I knew it was going to have a large impact on me, and I was looking to gain some much needed perspective to help get me out of a bit of a funk.  Contemporary dystopic fiction is my very favourite genre, particularly when it is written by such a fine author.  Kazuo Ishigiro is just awesome, and I looked forward to a few hours alone with this book for at least two years before I finally let myself read it.

I loved the slow-paced journey the story took me on.  So many pages of knowing and not knowing the fate of this story.  So much waiting for it to get better for the characters.  So many frustrated expectations, dashed dreams and misguided hopes.  Even more slowly knowing, but also coming to grips with the idea that I wasn't going to get the release I deserved in the form of a happy ending.  I experienced real catharsis after reading this book.  I like dealing with the possibility that you can't escape your fate, and that sometimes there is no going back and saving the past through redemption in the present.

This book made me ache.  I half-hated Kathy from the first page.  She was never going to be the plucky, independent heroine.  She was going to passively let her love fade away from her.  She was going to hold onto objects and stories for years after they ended, nostalgically re-living a childhood past without real happiness.  Everything just hurt.  It was based on false information.  It was based in deception and hope that wasn't grounded in reality.

How could they possibly capture all this emotion in a film adaptation, particularly one with a pretty small movie budget?

When I saw that Alex Garland, another excellent author, wrote the screenplay for this movie, my overall hopes were very high.  As I sat down in the Oxford in Halifax after a wonderful meal with the love of my life and best friend T, I knew that no matter what this movie threw at me, I was going to have an excellent cinematic experience.

The film really capture the pacing of the book, which, is agonizingly slow.  As the various layers are slowly revealed, you constantly are going through a process of reinterpreting the past action in light of the new information.  By the time you discover that the characters are clones, that the gallery was to prove the children had souls, that Kathy was looking for her Original in the porn magazines, and that Kathy was going to start her first treatment... it is always too late.  These moments constantly frustrate the reader, demanding that we too take on this perspective of grasping at straws and re-writing history in order to deal with all the various knowledge we gain as we go through a process of maturation and growth.

By the time Kathy gets to start her relationship with Tommy, all the passion and emotion from their childhoods is long gone.  The sex she has waited so long for is difficult, and often ends in a more domestic cuddling.  The love they need to prove is jaded by the years of separation, and the emotional and physical loss of their bodies.  The idea that parts of their bodies are physically taken from them to keep other people healthy is fascinating.  The fact that morality becomes a non-issue when mortality is on the line make it even more fascinating.  When you look deep into the recesses of society and see the darkness you fear... it is a very powerful literary moment.

Keira Knightly was a great choice for Ruth, though her big name kind of took away from the lead actors.  Interestingly, I would argue that this was also a good choice, because it makes it harder to connect with Kathy.  I thought that Ruth's death scene, and her confession at the boat, were both bang-on.  I was really, really happy with how her character came together.

My only complaint was that I felt the ending wasn't hard hitting enough.  When Ruth is laid open on the surgeon table in that long, slow scene, the detachment with which the doctors pillage her body and then leave her splayed open and dead was really moving.  Watching Tommy's last moments of life was positive, but without that connection to the reality of the death, it really didn't hit the same way.

The fact that Kathy is about to start her first treatment is supposed to shake you to your core.  You are supposed to be so caught up in her own reliving of the past that you also are looking for Tommy over the hill.  I feel like those last scenes went through the motions of the text, but they just weren't able to bring me back to the emotional space of the book.  I think its just because the attachment isn't the same in a two hour movie.  You just don't invest as much into the film as you do in a book.

I am interested to see what T says about this one, and what the critical feedback looks like.  I am not sure if I would have had the same experience if I couldn't map my experience of the book onto the film.

I am really glad I got to see this film.