Ticket Stubs #28: A Cut Above the Foot
As I have been doing lately, I used to post on an irregular schedule (i.e.: whenever I felt like it), and would occasionally ask my fellow GOMers (if I haven't done a joke about that yet, be patient; an upcoming Ticket Stubs will satisfy your thirst for TV Land-based punnery, I promise) to keep the tradition going in my stead. None ever obliged me in that regard, but despite the few sabbaticals I took from the Blogosphere, my desire to share my opinions on the variety of cinematic efforts put forth over the years has never waned. As we once more travel back in time, note that if you give me an A for effort, I'll give you an F in spelling. Time now for a day of blood, sweat, and tears.
From February 23, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #33: A Cut Above the Foot): Reviews will be few and far between lately. I am three weeks behind schedule in the Hollywood Video movie guide. Hopefully, I will get posts out for The Grudge, Metallica, Pauly Shore is Dead, Taxi, and a few others. If anyone feels like submitting a Cryo Ticket, Stealth Ticket, or Cube Ticket (or whatever your GOM name might be), go ahead and post. The whole reason I started this series in the first place was to piss people off and get a dialogue going, but cursing about crappy movies and drooling over good ones is fun, too. Onward, upward, and downward...to the Reviewmobile, Batman!!
First on the list today is Friday Night Lights, a movie (so to speak) about smalltown Texas football starring Billy Bob Thornton and a bunch of no-name prettyboys. The cinematography is documentary-style, somewhat shaky with obvious zoom adjustments, but never blurry or dizzying; signs of an experienced amateur. The quiet musical interludes (and there are a few) look more like footage out of a Budweiser commercial than actual quality film, and tend to show how little life and brainpower football-crazed Texans have outside of participating in football (and even during football season, the sum of intelligence is quite low). If you live in Footballtown, Texas, you better play football and be good at it. Otherwise, your daddy will beat you within an inch of your life, your mama will disown you and kill herself, college won't take you, and the sheriff will likely arrest you for being normal.
The town businessmen make empty threats to the coach just in case he doesn't want that state championship. The players cry for their disowning, suicidal mamas if they don't win or they lose last year's championship ring. The drunk father (played to anger-inducing perfection by Tim McGraw) is a figure to be hated, and his quarterback son is a pussy to be hated as much as, if not more than the father simply because he won't raise a hand to his old man.
The only slightly redeeming character is Billy Bob Thornton's Coach Gaines, a man who talks about perfection so often that you could shake his hand, punch him in the face, and be completely sincere about both actions. He cares passionately about the game, but he is the only character willing to show that he feels pressured to do his job, the only one willing to stand up to empty threats from fat men with empty lives, the only one to take a loss like a man. But in the end, the players stay in their hometown to pass on the uselessly pressing tradition of football to impressionable young minds who will no doubt feel stuck in their lives and pass the tradition on to further impressionable generations. I am on the fence with this movie, but slowly sliding toward the sub-par abyss of cinematic suckitude.
C-
Saw is a twisted take on the serial killer genre, not that the twist is new, but that the slight twistiness of the plot makes this particular piece somehow different from other serial killer flicks.
It opens with two men chained in a filthy room--one awake and the other just waking up--and working together to figure out what kind of situation they're in. The first is a doctor, played quite badly by Cary Elwes (the incompatible stepfather in Liar Liar, who is apparently as bad at being a dramatic actor as he is at doing "The Claw" in imitation of Jim Carrey--not that anyone can play Jim Carrey better than Carrey himself, but Son of the Mask is a piece of crap for another issue), who is supposed to kill the other man (actor unknown and occupation ommitted to allow some suspense) by six o'clock to save his family from the Jigsaw Killer.
This particular madman selects the scum of the earth (doctors, lawyers, drug addicts, blackmailers--but not pedophiles...veery interesting) and devises ingenious deathtraps with which they are supposed to kill themselves.
Some of these are devices MacGyver would be proud of, others only another sicko would appreciate. In any case, an obsessed cop (Danny Glover, not yet too old for this shit) is on the Jigsaw Killer's trail, providing the appearance of just another serial killer flick.
But when a crappy ending appears to be in sight, Cary Elwes starts crying like Will Ferrell in Anchorman, and everyone starts dying like actors in a Shakespearean tragedy, things get turned on their heads and a very cool movie emerges. If not worth listening to because Cary Elwes won't shut up, then definitely worth watching for the unexpected.
B+
SW@ Ticket reminds you to Be the Purple Cow!, Move Your Cheese!, and Find Your Fry!
Quote of the Week: "I don't know whether to punch you or kiss you.... So I'm gonna do both!"
-Homer Simpson to Moe the Bartender, The Simpsons
Can you believe they actually made Friday Night Lights into a TV series? Neither can I. I'm just glad that like countless NBC shows I've forgotten the names of, it didn't stay on air for very long. Metallica, Pauly Shore is Dead, and Taxi went unseen and un-reviewed, and you all know that I tore Son Of the Mask a new orifice already, but in keeping with the tradition of this post-Retribution cycle of Ticket Stubs, next issue will feature J-Ho in all its gape-jawed victim-y, dark-haired, wall-crawling, ghostly glory as I take on The Grudge.
Also stay tuned for the fairy-tale-inspired return of Stay Tuned and some Critical Quickies featuring Snow White. Speaking of oddball period pieces and Critical Quickies, here's a look at an OPP I really enjoyed (yeah, you know me. I'm down with OPPs):
Hysteria--Hugh Dancy (The Jane Austen Book Club), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Won't Back Down), Rupert Everett (Shrek 1-3). This "true story" of the invention of the vibrator marks the first time I've seen anyone in a period film step in horse crap. Unknown director Tanya Wexler takes a Mel Brooks approach to Victorian cinema here that crafts some surprisingly intelligent commentary, using the exploits of Dancy's forward-thinking physician (and vibrator inventor) and Gyllenhaal's "hysterical" independent woman to highlight the medical practices, turd-ridden streets, and chauvinistic mindset of the time for the antiquated punchlines they are. Alexander Graham Bell, can you hear me now?
B+
From February 23, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #33: A Cut Above the Foot): Reviews will be few and far between lately. I am three weeks behind schedule in the Hollywood Video movie guide. Hopefully, I will get posts out for The Grudge, Metallica, Pauly Shore is Dead, Taxi, and a few others. If anyone feels like submitting a Cryo Ticket, Stealth Ticket, or Cube Ticket (or whatever your GOM name might be), go ahead and post. The whole reason I started this series in the first place was to piss people off and get a dialogue going, but cursing about crappy movies and drooling over good ones is fun, too. Onward, upward, and downward...to the Reviewmobile, Batman!!
The town businessmen make empty threats to the coach just in case he doesn't want that state championship. The players cry for their disowning, suicidal mamas if they don't win or they lose last year's championship ring. The drunk father (played to anger-inducing perfection by Tim McGraw) is a figure to be hated, and his quarterback son is a pussy to be hated as much as, if not more than the father simply because he won't raise a hand to his old man.
The only slightly redeeming character is Billy Bob Thornton's Coach Gaines, a man who talks about perfection so often that you could shake his hand, punch him in the face, and be completely sincere about both actions. He cares passionately about the game, but he is the only character willing to show that he feels pressured to do his job, the only one willing to stand up to empty threats from fat men with empty lives, the only one to take a loss like a man. But in the end, the players stay in their hometown to pass on the uselessly pressing tradition of football to impressionable young minds who will no doubt feel stuck in their lives and pass the tradition on to further impressionable generations. I am on the fence with this movie, but slowly sliding toward the sub-par abyss of cinematic suckitude.
C-
It opens with two men chained in a filthy room--one awake and the other just waking up--and working together to figure out what kind of situation they're in. The first is a doctor, played quite badly by Cary Elwes (the incompatible stepfather in Liar Liar, who is apparently as bad at being a dramatic actor as he is at doing "The Claw" in imitation of Jim Carrey--not that anyone can play Jim Carrey better than Carrey himself, but Son of the Mask is a piece of crap for another issue), who is supposed to kill the other man (actor unknown and occupation ommitted to allow some suspense) by six o'clock to save his family from the Jigsaw Killer.
This particular madman selects the scum of the earth (doctors, lawyers, drug addicts, blackmailers--but not pedophiles...veery interesting) and devises ingenious deathtraps with which they are supposed to kill themselves.
Some of these are devices MacGyver would be proud of, others only another sicko would appreciate. In any case, an obsessed cop (Danny Glover, not yet too old for this shit) is on the Jigsaw Killer's trail, providing the appearance of just another serial killer flick.
But when a crappy ending appears to be in sight, Cary Elwes starts crying like Will Ferrell in Anchorman, and everyone starts dying like actors in a Shakespearean tragedy, things get turned on their heads and a very cool movie emerges. If not worth listening to because Cary Elwes won't shut up, then definitely worth watching for the unexpected.
B+
SW@ Ticket reminds you to Be the Purple Cow!, Move Your Cheese!, and Find Your Fry!
Quote of the Week: "I don't know whether to punch you or kiss you.... So I'm gonna do both!"
-Homer Simpson to Moe the Bartender, The Simpsons
Can you believe they actually made Friday Night Lights into a TV series? Neither can I. I'm just glad that like countless NBC shows I've forgotten the names of, it didn't stay on air for very long. Metallica, Pauly Shore is Dead, and Taxi went unseen and un-reviewed, and you all know that I tore Son Of the Mask a new orifice already, but in keeping with the tradition of this post-Retribution cycle of Ticket Stubs, next issue will feature J-Ho in all its gape-jawed victim-y, dark-haired, wall-crawling, ghostly glory as I take on The Grudge.
Hysteria--Hugh Dancy (The Jane Austen Book Club), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Won't Back Down), Rupert Everett (Shrek 1-3). This "true story" of the invention of the vibrator marks the first time I've seen anyone in a period film step in horse crap. Unknown director Tanya Wexler takes a Mel Brooks approach to Victorian cinema here that crafts some surprisingly intelligent commentary, using the exploits of Dancy's forward-thinking physician (and vibrator inventor) and Gyllenhaal's "hysterical" independent woman to highlight the medical practices, turd-ridden streets, and chauvinistic mindset of the time for the antiquated punchlines they are. Alexander Graham Bell, can you hear me now?
B+
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