Ten Statements About....PIRAHNA 3-D (2010)

They're coming to et you...

1) You have to give Alexandre Aja credit for thoroughly and completely understanding the Hitchcock rule about following through on expectations....so when there's some attention drawn to Riley Steele's Crystal's fake boob job, you know you'll be seeing those popped saline bags floating in a mess of bloody water. And when Jerry O'Connell's Derrick complains that the pirahnas ate his penis, well....

2) Aja also studied the rules of early 70's nature gone amok pictures, as so much of this film--from the plain yellow arial type that make up the earliest titles to the way the cameos echo back to previous roles the cameo-ing actors had to the formula where asshole get punished for their assholery and the non-asshole victims die acting heroically--speaks of a respect for the genre and the original film.

3) And to make things even more satisfying--Aja knows that this is a 3-D picture and revels in the carnival sideshow-ishness of it all. There are loads of 'coming at ya!' moments and deep focus shots, although I could have done without the direct-to-the-camera shot of Jessica Szohr's Kelly puking....

4) Look up Milf in my personal dictionary and there you'll find a picture of Elizabeth Shue...

5) You know....even though this is obviously a movie aimed at the younger crowd, it's refreshing to see that the heroes are mainly middle-aged.

Laugh while you can, Jerry O'Connell...something dear to you
is about to get et....

6) And similarly--by introducing the 'Girls Gone Wild' manque of O'Donnell and his pair of nymphs into the mix, it allows him to focus on the very realistically cute-without-being-Caucasin-Wankery-Network-sexy Szohr as the female lead

7) Eli Roth utilizing a garden hose as if it is his spurting cock and talking about wet t-shirts and breasts....some things can not be unseen....sigh

8) If there is any doubt about how lowbrow this film's intentions are, the seemingly endless 3-D sequence of Steele and Kelly Brook's Dani playing nude Esther Williams before they get chopped into little pirahna-shaped pieces puts it clearly on the metaphorical glass...

9) Pretty much the bulk of the carnage comes at the beginning of the third act, when the monster pirahnas come a'snacking on all the dumb teenagers. it's maybe a ten minute or so sequence...but damn if Greg Nicotero and company make the most of their time to shine....

You may have been a shark hunter, pal...but you're gon' get et...

10) A lot has been made about Richard Dreyfuss' cameo....but it pales in comparison to Christopher Lloyd and Dina Meyer as a couple of wackdoole fish store owners/scientists Mr. and Mrs. Goodman. When he pronounced these things as prehistoric pirahnas, a wave of knowing laughter rippled through the theater...

In short. Aja knows exactly what he needs to do to entertain us, and acquits himself admirably. It prolly will be forgotten the moment you leave the theater, but while you're there it'll just make you laugh and cringe at turns.

This was my first time at the Loews Kip's Bay in Manhattan since my college days; it seems that the $6-before-noon policy is good all over the city for AMC/Loews' theaters (It's the only way I'll see a 3D film, as the policy makes them the same price as a regular matiness elsewhere). It's got one of the friendliest staffs I've experienced in a while...but the prices for concessions--even the vending machines--are insane.

The trailers contained the usual one of Machete that never gets old, a pretty decent one for Faster that gives me hope that Dwayne Johnson got all that family crap out of his system, the guardedly promising Tron Legacy, two airings of Resident Evil: Aftermath 3-D in both flatscreen and 3-D, and the nightmare-inducing-for-all-the-wrong-reasons collaboration between M. Night Shamalyn and Jim Dowdel, Devil. Of course, the biggest nightmare came from watching the puff piece for You Again?, in which Kristen Bell's tormentor from high school is marrying her brother (and what's more, her mom's tormentor is her tormentor's aunt, and they only discovered this juuuuuust now...it's as if Bell has decided she never wants to make another film that won't make me throw up again...

Ten Statements About....INCEPTION (2010)

And this behavior is business as usual in this film

1) Christopher Nolan's entire catalog is about perception--even the Batman films. And this one doesn't break that streak.

2) Some people may be dissatisfied that there isn't a tremendous about of the wacky 'bending space' sort of special effects the film's trailer was full of. But that's because the bending space stuff is not the focus of the film. At its core, it's a caper film that literally never leaves a single room...which oddly makes it part of that trend this year for caper films that also includes The Losers, The A-Team, and The Expendables. Hell, given the situation diCaprio's Cobb is in at the beginning of the film, this movie is a lot closer to those three than you would think.

3) Ellen Page (le sigh)'s Ariadne turns out to be the single most important character in the film--and her name makes it very clear. Just as the mythological Ariadne guided Theseus through a labyrinth, so does this Ariadne serve to guide DiCaprio's Cobb through his character arc.

Know the rules if you want to stay awake...

4) Nolan understands a simple precept far too many directors do not--namely, lay out the ground rules early on for your entropic elements, and stick to them. He spends so much time laying down the rules for the Extraction Method in the first act that when new paramutations are introduced, we can extrapolate the reasons why these things happen very easily.

5) Also, Nolan is able to make his action sequences work without all that caffiene-cam nonsense--even when dealing with actions that occur on several different planes of consciousness (each plane distinctive precisely so we, the viewer, never lose sight of where they are), we comprehend exactly what happens.

6) Nolan confines the bulk of the big special effects sequences to the first act, where Cobb introduces and trains Ariadne in the art of being an 'Architect.' And it's the kind of imagery CGI should be used for--the sort of weird 'what am I seeing?' sort of mind fuck that makes Dark City one of my favorite films. Plus, by hitting us full on with a series of big shouty effects, it makes us much more accepting of later, smaller effects when the caper is actually underway.

 7) The team--because what would a caper film be without a team to pull it off--is well-cast, and does create a certain level of chemistry between them. The real break-out is Tom Hardy's Eames, who has a very subtle sense of humor and whose brogue definitely acts as an aural contrast to the others.

8) I absolutely adore the way the film has absolute mastery of its interior logic--to the point where, when Cobb returns to a place he tells Ariadne he spent time in and abandoned many years ago, it's suffering from disuse and entropy.

9) I like how every level of the setting in which the bulk of this plot occurs gives the person on it a different puzzle to solve. While Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's Arthur is the most compelling, all of the controllers of the levels have something to work out.

10) And best of all--Nolan doesn't feel the need to wrap everything up in a nice little bow. The ending is consciously ambivalent, inviting you to decide whether Cobb was successful or not in his own quest.

In short...I love a movie like this that assumes we're smart, we're willing to follow the story through several literal and metaphorical levels and that we'd be willing to do some of the work ourselves. This is, I suspect, one of those films that will give up new treasures with every viewing.

The trailers were an odd sorting, including The Last Exorcism (Eli Roth wants in on all that Paranormal Activity money, and shows once again that he and subtlety has never met), The Social Network(I like the slightly unconventional approach to the trailer, although I wonder if its montage of people clicking on stuff to a female cover of Radiohead's "Creep" is just covering up that it's got nothing good to show me), the hideous looking Due Date, and the absolutely dire-looking Dinner For Schmucks. But the real question for me is what will I end up seeing first on August 13th--The Expendables or Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World? Which part of me do I feed--the testosterone-laden action fan or the hipster doofus who loves candy-colored storytelling?

Ten Statements About....INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009)

Ahhhhhh!!!  Get it away from me...and the knife, too!

1) I don't understand the complaints about the film's talkiness--it's a Tarantino film; what do you expect?

2) Someone seriously needs to sit Quentin down and explain to him that Eli Roth should not be placed anywhere near a camera. Whether in front of it or behind it, he's incapable of being entertaining.

3) No matter what the nature of the story, it always comes down to film with you, doesn't it, Quentin?

4) I was pleasantly surprised by how Tarantino fit in cameos by Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel in a way where they were recognizable without drawing attention to themselves.

5) No, seriously...Quentin, Eli Roth sucks.

6) It's not surprising Tarantino spend so much time with Melanie Laurent's Shoshana--she has the same looks and presence as his last muse, Uma Thurman, and her subplot leads to what is my favorite image in the film, and maybe my favorite image in his entire oeuvre.

7) Okay...enough with the foot fetish scenes. We get it. Really, we do.

8) Even though it's clearly stated at the beginning of the film, I was still pleasantly shocked by how cool Mike Myer's performance was.

9) Christoph Waltz's performance as the main villain is thoroughly enjoyable, at turns charming and vicious, and--most important--a credible threat.

10) I absolutely adore how there's a supreme bit of misdirection at the top of the second act that leads to a complication that throws everything into another gear entirely.

Overall...I liked it.