Picking up one of our cats and going “I’m gonna hold him and squeeze him and call him George” while cuddling them so close the cat stares at us in disdain is not uncommon in my household. Seemed like a good time to revisit the classic Chuck Jones cartoon that inspires those outpourings of affection. Bugs and Daffy take that wrong turn in Albuquerque and wind up in the domain of the Abominable Snowman. But the extent of his abominability is that he just might love you to death. Filled with classic Jones face-pulling and bright, minimalist backgrounds.

Rest in Peace, Jackie Treehorn. Ben Gazzara died today of pancreatic cancer.

2012 is starting out surprisingly strong, isn’t it? We look at the just-released Chronicle, and the notion of “found footage” movies in general, and then step back by a week and examine the reborn career of Liam Neeson, c/o The Grey.

Mamo #239: Neesonomics [ 30:00 | 0.01 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup

To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo239.mp3

I could not tell you what this film is about from this minimalist design, but could tell you the film has played a lot of festivals! Actually, the third film from Russian visual-stylist Andrei Zvyagintsev (Think the Russian version of Anton Corbijn) is a cause for celebration. While The Banishment didn’t light the festival circuit on fire (it was really solid – I liked it), the director’s debut, a meditation on manhood and fathers and sons, The Return, was one of the best films of 2003, period.

…Or a lady with a body from outer space. Mere child’s play to what The Crüe has in store for us this Sunday.

The internet these last few days has been abuzz with Super Bowl commercials. I don’t even need to watch the game this year. Usually I watch to see some of these fun ads and eat mini-wieners. These days I’ll just eat the mini-wieners as I’ve already seem all the good ones.

So in am effort to be more of a sheep than I already am and conform even further, how can I not post my favorite pre-Super Bowl ad right here on our movie site?

Now you might be thinking, “This is Andrew so he’s totally going to post the dogs barking out The Imperial March.” But you’d be wrong. And of course Old Spice has been a champ for the last couple of years. But remember, I’m a child of the 80s who dreamed of being a rock star. So ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the carnival that is Mötley Crüe (and bronco rhinos, flaming face kicks, giant sandwiches and lumberjacks)…

[This is an ongoing series where Cinecast regular and antagonist (He is our "Q") Matt Gamble offers an immediate reaction to new movies coming to a theatre near you; they are cross-posted from his corner of the internet, Where The Long Tail Ends]  

I’m sure you’re quite aware of my fondness for comic books. I’ve been reading them, fairly faithfully, since the early 80′s and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. That being said, as I’ve aged I’ve drifted further and further from reading mainstream titles from Marvel and DC. Nothing against them, I’m a pretty die-hard fan of Vertigo, but I just don’t have much interest in most superhero titles these days, and Marvel and DC’s primary publications focus almost entirely on superheroes.

Nothing against superhero comics, I’m just a bit worn out after almost 30 years of reading them. They are still great when done well, but I simply don’t have the free time to wade through mediocrity, and unfortunately, in recent years too often mainstream superhero comics have been more concerned with just getting by then trying anything different or interesting.

Oddly enough, certain cinephiles are undergoing similar reservations when it comes to superhero movies. Sure they are one of the most popular sub-genres in recent memory, but man if critics don’t seem eager to crow about their downfall. Populism doesn’t pay the bills when you are a movie critic. Well, unless you are Peter Travers. That shill will rave about anything put in front of him.

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[Because The Innkeepers is graduating from Video On Demand to Theatrical Exhibition today, we revisit Kurt's Toronto After Dark Review. If you want to go further back in the archives, Jandy's review is here.]
 

There is a scene, perhaps midway through Ti West’s most recent film of spooky interiors and patient tracking-shots, where an underpaid employee struggles to get a bag of garbage in to the rear alley bin. It is as good of a touchstone for what he has been managed thus far with his career, going against the grain of mainstream horror trends (torture, found footage, etc.) by making more patient, measured films which rely exclusively on atmosphere and tension. Making a horror film in this day and age that eschews gimmickry and/or mounds of bad CGI (and worse dialogue) while actually getting it out into the marketplace is a herculean task in and of itself. Alas, for all the chatter (and wonderful key art) posted on the internet about The House of the Devil, the film is only a success within the select niche of genre aficionados. Notwithstanding some very minor issues with its digitally-flat (and rather abrupt) ending, it is one of the great horror pictures of the past 10 years. I have little reservation in calling it a master-work in terms of generating both tension and anticipation, which when you boil things down is damn near everything in the horror genre. Yet, suspense seems seems to be dying off with each new re-invention of horror-formula with only a few notable exceptions.

Back to the bag of garbage.

The employee is Claire and she is one of only two remaining staff serving a meagre three guests living at the The Yankee Pedlar Inn until the business shutters at the end of the week. The bag is leaking some sort of fluid as she drags it haltingly across the uneven cracked asphalt. She makes several Sisyphean attempts to heave the hulking sack into the bin whose lid seems close just a millisecond too soon. The whole scene plays out as a charming bit of physical comedy, a levity that rests purely on the comic timing and chummy vibe of Ms. Sara Paxton which, more than a bit, reminds me of Anna Faris’ endearing goofiness in Smiley Face. And so goes The Innkeepers, a haunted hotel story that trafficks in the gentle, snarky comedy of its pair of underpaid and unambitious wage-slaves before breaking out the Shining and the ghosties and turn-of-the-screw tension to become one of most effective horror films of 2011. One of the smartest, too. An early gag in the movie, which threatens to echo/resonate in the films final shot, is one hell of a deconstruction of the jump-scare and its often gross misuse in the genre. This is a good sign that West has his brain and his talent laser focused on the nature and the possibility of this type of filmmaking. The syntax similar to The House of the Devil, but the tone could not be more different. Gone is the late 70s early 80s setting, although it retains a feel of classic, vintage filmmaking that outside of a few laptop computers, and a latte bar across the street, could place the film anywhere in the 20th century. Horror and comedy are rarely mixed well, but resulting cocktail here is shaken and stirred. Hell, it is downright effervescent. The icing on the cake is that the ending here feels far more organic to the themes brought out in the storytelling than House of the Devil. In its own fashion The Innkeepers turns the rules of this sort of film inside out while still managing to follow them. It’s a neat trick, and a welcome one.

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The first time I saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up, I made the mistake of watching it as a simple narrative story and so by the end of it I was not only slightly confused but also a bit frustrated. It had a sudden, abrupt ending and some very odd scenes of shifting perspectives. For example:

1) Photographer Thomas (played by David Hemmings) is rolling around the floor with two young nubile models. As the expressions on the faces of the young women seem to alternate between happy and frightened, you become unsure whether they are participating in this willingly.

2) While at a club, Thomas witnesses the crowd fighting for the broken neck of a guitar which was thrown into the crowd by an angry Jeff Beck (while the rest of The Yardbirds – including Jimmy Page – keep playing). Thomas jumps into the fray, desperately grabs the guitar neck and dashes toward the door. The crowd follows him as if getting that broken piece of wood was the most important thing they’ve ever had to do. Thomas escapes to the street, looks over his prize, then tosses it to the ground and walks away.

I left the film with a frown on my face. But it stayed with me and it kept rolling around in my mind. What I came to realize was that those scenes only make sense if you look at them (and the entire movie) as showing different perceptions of reality depending on given contexts and points of view. So within that concert hall, the guitar neck is important – outside, not so much. Thomas thinks the young women are having a great time rolling around on the floor with him – the women, not so much.

This changing of one’s perception also goes for one of the best sections of the film. Thomas re-examines some photos he took in the park as he suspects they might help him unravel a mystery. He blows up a number of the pictures and scatters them on the wall. He looks from one to another, blows up some further portions and then, as he thinks he has put it together, we see a set of images from his photos in order:

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(3.5/5)

On paper, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ought to be a film I absolutely love. Film noir homage? Check. Twisty turny crime plot? Check. Self-aware meta narration? Check. Robert Downey Jr? Check. Yet when I first saw the film several years ago I remember being underwhelmed and every time I’ve thought of the film since it’s been with a sort of vague discontent. But a lot of people who generally like the same stuff as I do constantly praise it and think it’s brilliant. I couldn’t really remember enough about the film to identify what it was that left me cold, so I figured it was time for a rewatch – maybe I’d get it this time, or at least be able to pinpoint what about it didn’t work for me.

The initial premise is pretty great, with RDJ as a small-time crook who stumbles into an audition as he’s running away from the cops after a badly botched job (in which his partner got shot and killed). Unwittingly playing along, he winds impressing the casting directors and is carted off to Hollywood, where he’s assigned to shadow a real detective (Val Kilmer) as preparation for this role he might get. Even though the detective, nicknamed Gay Perry (“because he’s gay”), insists that real life detective work is boring and not like the movies, bodies soon start piling up, seemingly unrelated events turn out to be intertwined, and RDJ ends up right in the middle of all of it. Meanwhile, he offers almost continual narration of the most self-aware type; he comments on how things like this play out in the movies (“don’t you hate in movies when it seems like that one guy died, and then it turns out he didn’t and jt’s so fake”) or how bad a narrator he is (going back to tell a part of the story he neglected to tell earlier).

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Finally explained to us in 101 English so we can all learn from this very important day.

There’s no mention of Torque in this list so I almost want to immediately cry “fail,” but there are some seriously great moments in this list that are a little more than just the obvious. The list is put together by some insurance company, but whoever put it together at least did some amount of homework. I’m reposting here so don’t click away just yet.

Another glaring omission I can see if the motorcycle chase in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. What say you? Find anything particular smart in here or is there some big missed opportunities?

Over the course of film history, the motorcycle, be it a souped-up chopper or humble scooter, has become much more than a symbol of rebellion, sexual prowess, and freedom. Well, maybe the two-wheeled ride is still all of that. But, as you’ll see below, great motorcycle moments have appeared in movies other than so-called biker films.

10) Zed’s dead, baby!, Pulp Fiction (1994)
“It’s not a motorcycle, baby. It’s a chopper.” There’s nothing more stressful, after you’ve just escaped the dungeon of two sadists and narrowly avoided getting killed by the local crime boss, than trying to hurry up your wife so you both don’t miss a train. It’s enough to tear a couple apart and tears are inevitable. But a gentle word with a big hug goes a long way when two people love each other. Having a tricked out chopper ready to go doesn’t hurt either. No doubt these two will make that train. But what will they do with the chopper?

9) Buster Keaton’s motorcycle ride, Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Okay, so there are a few camera tricks here and there, but for most of this crazy montage, it’s just Buster Keaton riding, block after block, street after street, on the front handle bars of a policeman’s motorcycle with nobody in the driver’s seat. Keaton’s stunts prove that today’s CGI is for sissies. The final crash through the wall of the hideout probably put Keaton in the hospital. That said, it’s still incredibly funny. The soundtrack you hear in this clip is a new one created by The Clubfoot Orchestra.

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Director: Léa Pool
Screenplay: Léa Pool, Patricia Kearns, Nancy Guerin
Producer: Ravida Din
MPAA Rating: G
Running time: 97 min.

(4.5/5)

As the closing credits rolled on Léa Pool’s excellent documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc., I was boiling with anger. I wasn’t angry with the corporations which use an ugly, deadly illness to grow their bottom line. I wasn’t even angry at the organizations that make it their directive to dispense millions of dollars for cancer research that has yet to yield any major breakthroughs. I was angry at myself that this “pinkwashing” (using cancer to sell goods and services) has been happening right in front of me, that I’ve seen it and even contributed to it and never considered the bigger questions. I blindly bought into the capitalist marketing machine that stands behind cancer research and never thought to make a stink about it because I, in some capacity, thought it great that companies were stepping up to the plate and helping the community at large by investing money and effort to try and save lives.

What a joke.

Based on Samantha King’s book which various sources note as being very academic in its approach to breast cancer philanthropy, Pool’s film takes a much more human and easily accessible approach to the subject. Questions on everything from where the money comes from to where it goes are addressed and Pool doesn’t shy away from the difficult questions. In some cases, we just don’t know the answers and it’s infuriating. How a disease that has been in the public eye since the 1940s with the Women’s Field Army for Cancer Control and for which various organizations have raised billions of dollars, still doesn’t have a cure… it’s staggering. There’s a good reason for this of course: money. It all comes down to money.

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