Mina Rhodes (Cvalda)

Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie R

Once again proving the Law of Sketch Comedy Not Translating Well to the Big Screen, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie takes their by turns brilliant, repulsive, and occasionally downright awful (intentionally and otherwise) sketch TV work and expands it from 11 minute packets of delirious lunacy into a 90 minute manifesto that, like the Strangers With Candy movie before it, makes one yearn for the more focused craziness of the TV show that spawned it.

Their Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! boasted hilariously scathing parodies of trash culture, from hideous infomercials to wretched 80s rock videos, B-movies and, my personal favorite, small town TV news, in the form of "Married News Team" Jan and Wayne Skylar (assisted by the terminally clueless Dr. Steve Brule, played by John C. Reilly, who shows up here in a different role). Whereas those shows thrived on the menagerie of grotesque Americana characters constantly hurled at the screen, "B$M" focuses almost exclusively on the titular duo's fictional counterparts, and while the in-universe Tim and Eric make for amusing straight men to the ridiculous goings-on around them in their TV incarnations, their constant presence here eventually proves off-putting. Heidecker and Wareheim predictably ratchet up the f-bombs, violence and body humor--to alarming degrees in the latter case--but somehow fail to recognize that part of what made their skit work so funny was the barriers imposed upon them by standards and practices, and the often disturbing ways they subverted them. Here, with no such limitations, they go off the deep end into full blown frat house humor. Worse still, the celebrity cameos ("Chef" Goldblum aside) are distracting and mostly unfunny--Zach Galifianakis is cringe-worthy as always, in a bad way--and the mean-streak that lurked within Tom Goes to the Mayor and Awesome Show becomes far too prominent, lending many of the jokes and the film's climax a nasty aftertaste.

Granted, it's all still pretty amusing, and the duo sporadically manage to deliver the kind of brilliantly hilarious nightmare fuel that is their stock and trade, but they fail to fully capitalize on their abandoned shopping mall locale and the opportunities for biting satire it presents. Nevertheless, the absurdly horrific revelation of "Shrim" will surely linger in audience's minds long after they've left the cinema (or their rental window has expired)--for better or worse.

Blade Runner R

Okay--I'm finally starting to come around. Several viewings later, director's cut to "final cut", my initial misgivings slowly fall by the wayside. I'm still not convinced Blade Runner is the masterpiece everyone says it is, but I do appreciate it more with each viewing. My initial gripe with the film (the first of many) is that for all the talk bandied about of it being "visionary science fiction", it sure as hell doesn't feel like it--at its core, Blade Runner is simply a neo-noir outfitted with the some of the most overblown production design in all of cinema. It's only now that I approach the film not from the angle of hard sci-fi, but from something akin to a stylish graphic novel or one of Ridley Scott's beloved Moebius strips, that the film starts to make sense.As with ALIEN, all the depth and subtext inherent in the story and design is either accidental or completely attributable to the writers and designers--Ridley Scott himself isn't interested in the story except at its most basic level, concerned with it mainly as the rack upon which he can hang his spectacular images (check out his audio commentary on the Blu-ray, wherein he completely misses the point of his own film's climactic showdown). But they are indeed, for the most part, spectacular--the special effects here are still jaw-dropping and imaginative, the cityscapes busy and ludicrously overdesigned, but still packing a whallop. Vangelis' score is still a haunting, beautiful masterwork (the "Love Theme" is so gorgeous it almost makes you forget that the romantic subplot playing over it is completely inexplicable and uninvolving), and Terry Rawlings proves his masterful cutting on ALIEN was no fluke, and the strikingly artful editing is still one of the film's biggest strengths.Unfortunately, not all of Blade Runner works as well. While ALIEN has aged like a fine wine (a few dubious effects aside), Blade Runner, while expertly acted from most of the principals, suffers from more than a few lackluster performances--the less said about Brion James and William Sanderson the better--and the science is so poorly developed, dated and wishy-washy that it's hard to take any of it seriously (why build artificial snakes and owls when you can clone them, for starters). The focus here is entirely on the mood and style, and Scott supplies both in spades, even if he frequently overshoots his mark and ends up being wildly pretentious, i.e. that damned dove at the end. While his disciples would eventually go on to best him (Oshii with his Ghost in the Shell, which united the dystopian cityscape with genuinely profound thematic material and hard science), Scott's reputation as one of the genre greats is still unchallenged.

Alien R

Most kids had Star Wars--I had Alien. I was either four or five at the time, when I looked up from my Jurassic Park coloring book to see an ad for ALIEN on the Sci-Fi Channel. It looked like the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I managed to remember the day it was on and begged my parents to change the channel to Sci-Fi--and after much whining they complied, but, alas, I had missed most of it and only saw the last act. No matter--that was enough to galvanize my love of all things Alien. I found out our neighbor had the trilogy on VHS, and so I innocently knocked on her door, asking to borrow it. I can still recall perfectly the nervous double take she gave, considering these were R-rated films and I was barely out of kindergarten. "Do you have your parents' permission?" I lied and said, "yes." Victory was mine! I took the boxset home and duped it in our VCR, and then proceeded to watch all three of them nearly every day for what must have been a couple of years. I cannot begin to estimate how many times I've seen the original trilogy--to paraphrase Ripley in Alien³, "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else." I credit my intense devotion to Alien and its three sequels for giving me an instant dose of cinematic "taste" at such a young age--and I can trace many of my principal interests back to the series. It is a singular achievement in the history of film, managing to combine Freudian psychosexuality, feminism, avant garde/neo-classical scoring, cynical left-wing ideology, existentialism and hard (well, the original trilogy, anyway) science fiction into something that will never be equaled. Is there any other series that challenged what franchise cinema could be on such a grand scale? While Star Wars and its ilk descended into crass, juvenile pandering and commercialism, the Alien "quadrilogy" never took the easy way out, never conformed to what people wanted. Even in the face of nervous studio executives and unadventurous American audiences, it soldiered on with grim determination to be something artistically conscious, unafraid to broach themes and ideas that ordinarily wouldn't make it past a first draft in the conservative studio machine. It all starts with the original: 1979's Alien. The film is a miracle, one in which everything falls into place in such a ludicrously perfect fashion, as though assembled according to some divine cinematic plan--a convergence of multi-faceted brilliance ranging from Ridley Scott's impeccable visuals, the pitch-perfect cast, Jerry Goldsmith's influential score, Walter Hill and David Giler's elegant screenplay, the ingenious editing job by Terry Rawlings, and most importantly, the unforgettable conceptual designs of H.R. Giger. Alien remains Ridely Scott's only true masterpiece (if anything, the man is more craftsman than filmmaker), and is both the best of the sci-fi genre (next to Kubrick's 2001) as well as the horror genre--a lofty accomplishment. Like 2001, it is endlessly imitated and its influence is inescapable. It shattered the cinema screen's glass ceiling in ways only its sequels (and possibly Terminator 2) managed to live up to, and impacted filmmaking in ways more subtle and meaningful than Star Wars ever did. To continue praising the film and expand on its myriad of merits would be redundant in the massive wake of literature that has been justly written about it (despite its initially mixed reception from typically short-sighted critics--even Ebert disliked the film when it was first released, yet it somehow found its way onto his list of "Great Movies" decades later). Its greatness is simply a stone cold fact. One can only hope Scott's upcoming prequel, Prometheus, reclaims similar heights.

Mulholland Drive R

David Lynch's masterpiece (out of several masterpieces), Mulholland Dr. is staggeringly brilliant in its execution. Volumes have already been written on the film, and a small but growing minority of film critics share my view that it is the greatest film ever made. Mulholland Dr is the art form at its most perfect--indeed, the film, in terms of story, can only exist as what it is: a film. Written as a novel, for example, it would be impossible to convey the images and dream-like plotline that Lynch brings to the screen. Mulholland Dr is, for it's first two thirds, a dream (and everyone knows dreams in written fiction are usually beyond tacky), and one of the myriad pleasures of the film is watching how Diane's dream is influenced by her wretched waking life (seen in the last third of the film): the way she lifts names for dream characters off name tags, incorporates individuals randomly glimpsed, twists events and interactions into her favor. The dream section of the film is not just a glib representation of Diane's wish-fulfillment, however; the looming tragedy of the film's climax grows stronger as the dream persists, and the audience feels growing sympathy for poor Diane, whose emotional and mental turmoil is glimpsed in symbolism that is--for once in a film!--not simply representative of cliched Freudian or Jungian archetypes. In many ways, it is Lynch's most humanistic film, and introduces the theme that would dominate Lynch's next (also brilliant) picture as well: the way Hollywood uses and destroys women. Added to all this are the usual Lynch gags, which for once showcase his sense of humor without coming across as masturbatory (Wild at Heart, ahem). Composer Angelo Badalementi's cameo appearance as a supremely picky espresso drinker easily wins top prize as the funniest moment in any Lynch film, and his score itself is among his best. It seems the thing that throws most people off about Mulholland Dr. is its plotline. This is a result of people going in and expecting to work through it intellectually, which is not how the film should be viewed. Dreams themselves are never intellectual--they are driven by emotions and anxieties from the subconscious, and to truly grasp the film, one needs to feel their way through instead of think (the exact opposite of my "grand" life philosophy, but there are always exceptions to the rule).