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Anton Sirius In Toronto!! He Has A Gander At The Lastest From Diablo Cody, Terry Gilliam and Nick Hornby!!
I am – Hercules!!
“Anton Sirius” has seen three movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, and recommends all of them!
On “The Imaginarium of Dr. Pannassus”: “a triumph, one of the miraculous high points of [Terry] Gilliam's accursed, roller-coaster career.”
On “Jennifer’s Body”: “'Jennifer's Body' not only made it clear that not only is [Mega] Fox capable of recognizing a good script when she reads one, it also shows that she's capable of doing something with one.”
On “An Education”: “Well worth seeing, not just to watch [Carey] Mulligan blossom into a star but simply to enjoy a story worth telling, being told very well.”
Details:
Greetings, starkinder! The first couple of days of the film festival have been something of a roller coaster. The movies have been good to genius (with the exception of one, which shall remain nameless until I savage it in my review) and the weather’s been pleasant to good (not always a sure thing in Toronto in September) but everything else has gone to shite, a situation capped off when my primitive Terran laptop decided that Friday afternoon would be a great time to commit suicide.
Still, the shoe must go on, as Ed used to say.
Three reviews down, which means I’m only a half dozen or so behind – not bad after two and a half days, all things considered.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009, directed by Terry Gilliam)
Gilliam films of recent vintage (all two of them... it's still hard to believe he's only managed to complete three projects in the decade following Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) have a spotty pedigree at best. The Brothers Grimm is tired studio hackery, and Tideland is almost universally reviled as unwatchable (even though I may go to my grave arguing that it's probably the greatest film he's ever made.) Add to that all the projects that failed to make it across the finish line, and it's easy to have doubts about what Gilliam has left in the tank as a film maker.
Doubts = assuaged. No, more. Doubts = buried, very very deeply.
Gilliam's back, baby.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus might be the perfect summation of Gilliam's own completely individual ouevre, the film his career has been angling towards all along. In fact it's almost too perfect a summation. It'd be easy to dismiss it as a Gilliam greatest hits package: the wonder of Baron Munchausen mixed with the fantasy/reality juxtaposition of the Fisher King and the dark heft of Brazil, with a little person from Time Bandits and a leftover Monty Python sketch for garnish. But there's more than enough originality and genius here for it to be something greater than just a nostalgia trip.
For one thing, I don't believe Gilliam has ever made a film this autobiographical before. It's hard not to see Dr. Parnassus (played so ably by Christopher Plummer, looking like Dumbledore's broken, beaten-down brother) as a stand-in for Gilliam himself, a storyteller dressed in rags tossing gems to an audience of philistines, drunks and video game-obsessed children (when, that is, he gets around to finishing a story at all...) It's all clearly more than a little personal for Gilliam, and his investment in the story shines through in every frame.
For another, Gilliam has a ton of help. The focus is obviously going to be on Heath Ledger's performance and he's great as the charismatic, treacherous Tony, but he's not the only person rising to the occasion. Plummer is utterly fantastic. The three Ledger amigos who stepped in after his death (Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, in order of appearance) all bring different and interesting things to the table, although Law once again struggles to prove he can hang with the big boys when it comes to acting chops. Tom Waits is flat out fucking awesome as Mr. Nick. Boy A's Andrew Garfield is brilliant as the kid with the cool name. And hell, even Verne Troyer is more than just a prop.
And then there's Lily Cole.
Sweet Jesus.
Every once in a while the slow chaos of the universe resolves itself in such a way that little human brains think they can see patterns in it (this is what is known as the Aneristic Illusion). Often these phenomenon translate into religions, and religious experiences, since the patterns otherwise defy explanation.
Lily Cole's existence is one of those patterns. Lily Cole doesn't just make me believe in God; Lily Cole convinces me that God is benevolent and that God loves me, because otherwise God would not have put a woman as incredible and perfect and sweet and sexy and awesome as Lily Cole on the same planet as me.
There are times in the film where her sheer stunning presence is almost distracting, in a way I haven't seen since a young Angelina Jolie burned through the screen in Foxfire. She's the best special effect Gilliam has in his arsenal. All the other crazy, enchanting visuals are just parlor tricks. Cole is the real deal, Magick of the ancient sort, and it makes perfect sense that she would be the ultimate prize in a battle between two potential lovers, or between her father and Satan himself.
Right at this very moment, somewhere in New York or London or wherever, she's the most beautiful woman in the world.
As a film, the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a triumph, one of the miraculous high points of Gilliam's accursed, roller-coaster career. As Ledger's final performance, it's a send-off more than worthy of his talents. But as a Lily Cole delivery mechanism, it's a gift from heaven.
Thank you, Terry. For everything.
Jennifer's Body (2009, directed by Karyn Kusama)
Tales of teen demonic possession are nothing new in the horror movie world. It's too perfect a fit as a metaphor, too short a jump from some frumpy matron describing rampaging hormones and youthful rebellion with the phrase "They've got the devil in them!" to actually, y'know, putting the devil in them, for the idea to remain in storage for long.
Most of the time though, the idea is handled with full Catholic seriousness. For every campy Idle Hands there's a handful of Exorcists and Emily Roses trying to make the concept seem real. What very few of them ever do, though, is put the girls in a position of power. Teen girls in demonic possession flicks are always either the afflicted victim, or the target. They're never in control.
Never, that is, until Jennifer's Body.
Obligatory plot description: School uberhottie Jennifer and her slightly dorky BFF Needy go to a local dive to see a local crappy emo band because Jennifer has the hots for the lead singer. The band does what rock bands have done since the Dave Clark Five originated the practice, namely offer up her virgin soul in sacrifice to Satan in exchange for a successful career. Unfortunately Jennifer wasn't exactly a virgin (as she says, "Not even a back-door virgin") so instead of staying dead she comes back as the vessel for a demon who takes great delight in eating the flesh of horny high school boys. Hijinx, and corpses, ensue, as Needy tries desperately to figure out what's going on and to try and stop her boyfriend Chip from becoming Jennifer-Chow.
Despite Diablo Cody's presence behind the pen... err, typewriter... err, XPS 16 with Final Draft 8 installed, I didn't have especially high hopes for this one. I mean let's be honest, given her track record so far at picking quality material it's hard to get your hopes up for any Megan Fox movie (what's been her best film to date, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen?) But Jennifer's Body not only made it clear that not only is Fox capable of recognizing a good script when she reads one, it also shows that she's capable of doing something with one. Her Jennifer is deliciously, obliviously bitchy even before she gets possessed, and she dives into her role as a literal hellcat with great glee.
It's Amanda Seyfried as Needy who really owns this movie though. They don't go full Now Voyager on her, but the makeup and wardrobe folk do an amazing job of hiding her Bette Davis eyes behind a veneer of geekiness (at least until the inevitable transformation at the prom) and she does a fantastic job of playing a girl who'd been content living in the shadow of her more glamorous friend until circumstances forced her to find her own strength and her own place in the spotlight.
The obvious comparison here, given the subject matter, is to Joss Whedon's Buffyverse and Jennifer's Body more than holds its own. Cody's dialogue doesn't have the pop culture references cranked up to 11 the way Whedon's does, but it's just as quick and smart, and she knows how to give even small supporting characters their moment in the sun. Cody also does a fine job providing a solid foundation for her paranormal craziness. What really puts the script, and the movie, over the top though is its completely frank treatment of teen sex. The girls aren't treated as prudes or sluts (well, OK, Jennifer kinda is a slut), and sex isn't an unforgivable sin that leads to inevitable doom. It's simply a fact in their lives -- at times a silly, awkward one, but not something that is a Big Deal. Demonic possession, now that's a Big Deal. Teh buttsecks? Not so much.
If I've got one little complaint about Jennifer's Body as a horror film it's that it's not especially scary and that the gore could have been a little bit gorier (Kusama tends not to show Jennifer's kills but merely their aftermath), but on the other hand there's an absurdly hot make-out scene between Fox and Seyfried, so given a choice between one or the other I'd have to say Kusama made the right call.
An Education (2009, directed by Lone Scherfig)
It's Britain in 1961. Jenny is a world-weary 16, with her road in life already lain out before her: Oxford (Latin grades permitting), then either marriage or a career following in the footsteps of her instructors. Excitement isn't really on the agenda; excitement still means the Blitz in the minds of her elders, and loud noises in the night, and is something to be avoided at all costs.
Jenny's careful road ahead finds a detour, though, when she crosses paths with a dead-sexy maroon Bristol 405 (look it up, you philistine! You're on the internet!) driven by the equally dead-sexy David, a charming ne'er-do-well twice her age...
It's very, very hard to find something new to say in a coming-of-age story. Hell, we've all lived our own*, so anything pop culture puts together on that front already has the high bar of self-centeredness to clear. That said, if anyone is qualified to make the attempt, Nick Hornby's the guy to do it. Between High Fidelity and About a Boy he's set the gold standard for modern tales of arrested adolescence finally bursting forth into grown-up bloom.
Which is maybe why I can't decide whether I'm surprised he turned out to be such a perfect choice to write An Education or not. An Education is almost the polar opposite of those two stories -- Hornby's previous efforts in the genre have been from the perspective of a David, not a Jenny. But perhaps it was exactly that experience which allowed him to see the story from the other side.
It helps that everybody else working on the movie is uniformly brilliant. Lone Scherfig, best known (until now, methinks) for Italian for Beginners, is an effortlessly excellent storyteller in her own right. She knows where to look to find the little details that magnify the whole, and how to keep things flowing in perfectly natural and yet still surprising ways. And she gets amazing work out of an amazing cast. Peter Sarsgaard is the quintessential British charmer, the kind of guy for whom they would have had to invent words like 'rake' and 'cad' and 'bounder' if they didn't already exist. Alfred Molina is inevitably tremendous as Jenny's dad, while Cara Seymour quietly matches Molina chop for chop as Jenny's mum, and Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams both give sharp turns as faculty at Jenny's school.
But the movie hinges on the actress portraying Jenny herself, and there Scherfig struck gold. Carey Mulligan (probably best known to you lot as Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode Blink) is note-perfect as the smart, capable Jenny, a girl who knows where she's going and knows she can handle anything life throws at her... right up until the moment the bottom drops out and she finds out she can't. The part requires a really delicate balancing act between strength and vulnerability, between self-awareness and self-absorbsion, and Mulligan dances along that line like a ballerina. She's an absolute gem, more than up to the task of going toe to toe with the likes of Thompson or Molina, and someone well worth keeping an eye on.
The other thing that sets An Education apart is its setting. In many ways the film isn't just Jenny's coming-of-age story, it's Britain's too. The country became dreadfully dull and safe post-war, but as the 60s began the country started to find its voice again. It's that new, dangerous, exciting Britain that David introduces Jenny too, that David represents, and Jenny's awakening to the fact that she has the power to choose which road to take (the drab, safe one or the exciting, dangerous one) mirrors Britain's own.
Well worth seeing, not just to watch Mulligan blossom into a star but simply to enjoy a story worth telling, being told very well.
* - 93.23% of AICN Talkbackers excepted
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Still, the shoe must go on, as Ed used to say.
Three reviews down, which means I’m only a half dozen or so behind – not bad after two and a half days, all things considered.
Gilliam films of recent vintage (all two of them... it's still hard to believe he's only managed to complete three projects in the decade following Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) have a spotty pedigree at best. The Brothers Grimm is tired studio hackery, and Tideland is almost universally reviled as unwatchable (even though I may go to my grave arguing that it's probably the greatest film he's ever made.) Add to that all the projects that failed to make it across the finish line, and it's easy to have doubts about what Gilliam has left in the tank as a film maker.
Doubts = assuaged. No, more. Doubts = buried, very very deeply.
Gilliam's back, baby.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus might be the perfect summation of Gilliam's own completely individual ouevre, the film his career has been angling towards all along. In fact it's almost too perfect a summation. It'd be easy to dismiss it as a Gilliam greatest hits package: the wonder of Baron Munchausen mixed with the fantasy/reality juxtaposition of the Fisher King and the dark heft of Brazil, with a little person from Time Bandits and a leftover Monty Python sketch for garnish. But there's more than enough originality and genius here for it to be something greater than just a nostalgia trip.
For one thing, I don't believe Gilliam has ever made a film this autobiographical before. It's hard not to see Dr. Parnassus (played so ably by Christopher Plummer, looking like Dumbledore's broken, beaten-down brother) as a stand-in for Gilliam himself, a storyteller dressed in rags tossing gems to an audience of philistines, drunks and video game-obsessed children (when, that is, he gets around to finishing a story at all...) It's all clearly more than a little personal for Gilliam, and his investment in the story shines through in every frame.
For another, Gilliam has a ton of help. The focus is obviously going to be on Heath Ledger's performance and he's great as the charismatic, treacherous Tony, but he's not the only person rising to the occasion. Plummer is utterly fantastic. The three Ledger amigos who stepped in after his death (Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, in order of appearance) all bring different and interesting things to the table, although Law once again struggles to prove he can hang with the big boys when it comes to acting chops. Tom Waits is flat out fucking awesome as Mr. Nick. Boy A's Andrew Garfield is brilliant as the kid with the cool name. And hell, even Verne Troyer is more than just a prop.
And then there's Lily Cole.
Sweet Jesus.
Every once in a while the slow chaos of the universe resolves itself in such a way that little human brains think they can see patterns in it (this is what is known as the Aneristic Illusion). Often these phenomenon translate into religions, and religious experiences, since the patterns otherwise defy explanation.
Lily Cole's existence is one of those patterns. Lily Cole doesn't just make me believe in God; Lily Cole convinces me that God is benevolent and that God loves me, because otherwise God would not have put a woman as incredible and perfect and sweet and sexy and awesome as Lily Cole on the same planet as me.
There are times in the film where her sheer stunning presence is almost distracting, in a way I haven't seen since a young Angelina Jolie burned through the screen in Foxfire. She's the best special effect Gilliam has in his arsenal. All the other crazy, enchanting visuals are just parlor tricks. Cole is the real deal, Magick of the ancient sort, and it makes perfect sense that she would be the ultimate prize in a battle between two potential lovers, or between her father and Satan himself.
Right at this very moment, somewhere in New York or London or wherever, she's the most beautiful woman in the world.
As a film, the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a triumph, one of the miraculous high points of Gilliam's accursed, roller-coaster career. As Ledger's final performance, it's a send-off more than worthy of his talents. But as a Lily Cole delivery mechanism, it's a gift from heaven.
Thank you, Terry. For everything.
Tales of teen demonic possession are nothing new in the horror movie world. It's too perfect a fit as a metaphor, too short a jump from some frumpy matron describing rampaging hormones and youthful rebellion with the phrase "They've got the devil in them!" to actually, y'know, putting the devil in them, for the idea to remain in storage for long.
Most of the time though, the idea is handled with full Catholic seriousness. For every campy Idle Hands there's a handful of Exorcists and Emily Roses trying to make the concept seem real. What very few of them ever do, though, is put the girls in a position of power. Teen girls in demonic possession flicks are always either the afflicted victim, or the target. They're never in control.
Never, that is, until Jennifer's Body.
Obligatory plot description: School uberhottie Jennifer and her slightly dorky BFF Needy go to a local dive to see a local crappy emo band because Jennifer has the hots for the lead singer. The band does what rock bands have done since the Dave Clark Five originated the practice, namely offer up her virgin soul in sacrifice to Satan in exchange for a successful career. Unfortunately Jennifer wasn't exactly a virgin (as she says, "Not even a back-door virgin") so instead of staying dead she comes back as the vessel for a demon who takes great delight in eating the flesh of horny high school boys. Hijinx, and corpses, ensue, as Needy tries desperately to figure out what's going on and to try and stop her boyfriend Chip from becoming Jennifer-Chow.
Despite Diablo Cody's presence behind the pen... err, typewriter... err, XPS 16 with Final Draft 8 installed, I didn't have especially high hopes for this one. I mean let's be honest, given her track record so far at picking quality material it's hard to get your hopes up for any Megan Fox movie (what's been her best film to date, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen?) But Jennifer's Body not only made it clear that not only is Fox capable of recognizing a good script when she reads one, it also shows that she's capable of doing something with one. Her Jennifer is deliciously, obliviously bitchy even before she gets possessed, and she dives into her role as a literal hellcat with great glee.
It's Amanda Seyfried as Needy who really owns this movie though. They don't go full Now Voyager on her, but the makeup and wardrobe folk do an amazing job of hiding her Bette Davis eyes behind a veneer of geekiness (at least until the inevitable transformation at the prom) and she does a fantastic job of playing a girl who'd been content living in the shadow of her more glamorous friend until circumstances forced her to find her own strength and her own place in the spotlight.
The obvious comparison here, given the subject matter, is to Joss Whedon's Buffyverse and Jennifer's Body more than holds its own. Cody's dialogue doesn't have the pop culture references cranked up to 11 the way Whedon's does, but it's just as quick and smart, and she knows how to give even small supporting characters their moment in the sun. Cody also does a fine job providing a solid foundation for her paranormal craziness. What really puts the script, and the movie, over the top though is its completely frank treatment of teen sex. The girls aren't treated as prudes or sluts (well, OK, Jennifer kinda is a slut), and sex isn't an unforgivable sin that leads to inevitable doom. It's simply a fact in their lives -- at times a silly, awkward one, but not something that is a Big Deal. Demonic possession, now that's a Big Deal. Teh buttsecks? Not so much.
If I've got one little complaint about Jennifer's Body as a horror film it's that it's not especially scary and that the gore could have been a little bit gorier (Kusama tends not to show Jennifer's kills but merely their aftermath), but on the other hand there's an absurdly hot make-out scene between Fox and Seyfried, so given a choice between one or the other I'd have to say Kusama made the right call.
It's Britain in 1961. Jenny is a world-weary 16, with her road in life already lain out before her: Oxford (Latin grades permitting), then either marriage or a career following in the footsteps of her instructors. Excitement isn't really on the agenda; excitement still means the Blitz in the minds of her elders, and loud noises in the night, and is something to be avoided at all costs.
Jenny's careful road ahead finds a detour, though, when she crosses paths with a dead-sexy maroon Bristol 405 (look it up, you philistine! You're on the internet!) driven by the equally dead-sexy David, a charming ne'er-do-well twice her age...
It's very, very hard to find something new to say in a coming-of-age story. Hell, we've all lived our own*, so anything pop culture puts together on that front already has the high bar of self-centeredness to clear. That said, if anyone is qualified to make the attempt, Nick Hornby's the guy to do it. Between High Fidelity and About a Boy he's set the gold standard for modern tales of arrested adolescence finally bursting forth into grown-up bloom.
Which is maybe why I can't decide whether I'm surprised he turned out to be such a perfect choice to write An Education or not. An Education is almost the polar opposite of those two stories -- Hornby's previous efforts in the genre have been from the perspective of a David, not a Jenny. But perhaps it was exactly that experience which allowed him to see the story from the other side.
It helps that everybody else working on the movie is uniformly brilliant. Lone Scherfig, best known (until now, methinks) for Italian for Beginners, is an effortlessly excellent storyteller in her own right. She knows where to look to find the little details that magnify the whole, and how to keep things flowing in perfectly natural and yet still surprising ways. And she gets amazing work out of an amazing cast. Peter Sarsgaard is the quintessential British charmer, the kind of guy for whom they would have had to invent words like 'rake' and 'cad' and 'bounder' if they didn't already exist. Alfred Molina is inevitably tremendous as Jenny's dad, while Cara Seymour quietly matches Molina chop for chop as Jenny's mum, and Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams both give sharp turns as faculty at Jenny's school.
But the movie hinges on the actress portraying Jenny herself, and there Scherfig struck gold. Carey Mulligan (probably best known to you lot as Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode Blink) is note-perfect as the smart, capable Jenny, a girl who knows where she's going and knows she can handle anything life throws at her... right up until the moment the bottom drops out and she finds out she can't. The part requires a really delicate balancing act between strength and vulnerability, between self-awareness and self-absorbsion, and Mulligan dances along that line like a ballerina. She's an absolute gem, more than up to the task of going toe to toe with the likes of Thompson or Molina, and someone well worth keeping an eye on.
The other thing that sets An Education apart is its setting. In many ways the film isn't just Jenny's coming-of-age story, it's Britain's too. The country became dreadfully dull and safe post-war, but as the 60s began the country started to find its voice again. It's that new, dangerous, exciting Britain that David introduces Jenny too, that David represents, and Jenny's awakening to the fact that she has the power to choose which road to take (the drab, safe one or the exciting, dangerous one) mirrors Britain's own.
Well worth seeing, not just to watch Mulligan blossom into a star but simply to enjoy a story worth telling, being told very well.
* - 93.23% of AICN Talkbackers excepted
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yeah!
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In the face.
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Jesus can't these chick flicks be about twenty somethings? Thirty somethings?
I'm so fucking tired of teenager flicks about kids acting out adulthood. Wait a couple years until your knocked up, hubby is jobless, and the welfare don't pay enough.
That is FUCKING ADULTHOOD! -
And e4very other review of Jennifer's Body has been terrible. Even the single Fresh review says "the film isn't that great."
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looks very imaginative and seems very much to be a huge passion project for Gilliam. I don't realaly trust this guy's review of Jennifer's Body though. Film just looks like total shite.
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Sep 12, 2009 5:52:06 PM CDT
TIFF! Anton Sirius blah blah blah Diablo Cody in Toronto!!!
by god's brother
Remember the headlines for all the TIFF articles from last year? remember how arbitrarily pissed off people were about how each one started with TIFF! ? Ahh, the good old days, when Talkbackers could get so pissed off at such an offensive acronym.
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It's maybe the worst script I've read in ten years. Just absolutely terrible all around and they throw these "cute" phrases at you, like in Juno, and they just sound awkward. It'd MAYBE all work if this was done exactly like an '80s horror film, in a grindhouse sort of fashion, but that's not how they're presenting it. It's just my opinion obviously, but I'd say avoid it at all costs.
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And, coming from a Juno-hater, the script IS actually pretty great. It's the direction that's pretty blah. Cody's cute dialogue is restricted to the two main best-friend characters, with other people in the film occasionally remarking on why they talk so funny... Pretty neat, in a character development kinda way.
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Juno wasn't great to begin with.
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Thanks for the "Tideland" kudos Anton. I actually understand the antipathy for the film among american cinema goers given their provincial sensibilities, but it is at the least a cinematic tour de force IMO. The term " Masterpiece" is thrown around far too often these days in my estimation, but Tideland may very well turn out to be Gilliam's.
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Sep 12, 2009 6:29:29 PM CDT
Jennifers Body is great...but its not for viagra popping film cr
by thedark0knight
Its very much a movie made for young people...Its not as universal as Juno was, but it is a very funny horror movie that I think will satisfy a lot of the aicn readers. Theres a lot of undeserved negative press surrounding this flick right now, hopefully when more people see it that will change.
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... At least so far anyway, lol. Can't WAIT for "Parnassus". Woo hoo!
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...about JENNIFER'S BODY? Maybe it's good...a guy that's right about TIDELAND is right about life...
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movie
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shes unreal.
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Sep 12, 2009 6:39:09 PM CDT
"the pop culture references cranked up to 11 the way Whedon's do
by jimbo6666
Really? I don't remember that many pop culture references in Buffy.
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...want to write Gilliam a fan letter or something...maybe he'll invite me over for Thanksgiving with the other fourteen fans...
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You're a subversive TB genious Anton. I'm RingOTFLing at this point! BRAVO!
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But keep in mind that you are cinematically challenged dipshit, um, judging strictly from your "contributions" to AICN TBs,
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... cinematically challenged..." etc.
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...you seem to be...special...care to talk about it?
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when referring to child-like mysticism and innocence to the world around them.
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...please accept my sincere apology. Had a few beveverages this afternoon. Apparently, my short term memory is rather 'on the blink' at the moment - jumped to an invalid intepretation like a motherfucker. Please forgive me.
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...no worries. I drunk post from time to time...the drunk posts lack the wisdom, insight, grace, exquisite taste, pugnacious good looks, and unusually large and firm pink parts that FlickaPoo is otherwise famous for...
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... not in laughing at Anton's apparently (so far) undetected "little joke".
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makes your clothes soft!
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... Shit, I am a huge Gilliam fan and huge Juno hater. Anton praises Parnassus & Jennifer equally? No! This makes me fear Gilliam has laid another turd.
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I think that "Tideland" is significantly superior to P's L. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wavering in my appreciation of "Pan's Labyrinth" but GdT is not Terry Gilliam's equal by any stretch of a fanboy's imagination IMO. Did you happen to catch my "Bravo Waqman" post in the TS2 Tb?
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... if his review was the only praise that's been heaped upon "Parnassus" thus-far, but that's not the case. And what makes you so sure that he's off base in his take on "Jennifer's Body"? Have you seen the film? I caught the trailer this afternoon before I read Anton's review, and I have to say that it looks rather intriguing. But then again, I liked "Juno" quite a bit..
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...LABYRINTH against each other in a death match. Here's my little theory...PAN is a great movie. TIDELAND is more like...art. I couldn't even say if I enjoyed TIDELAND, but I loved it....and my imagination will never be the same after having seen it. Mrs. FlickaPoo (who has excellent taste in movies) was so disturbed by it she had to leave the room. Everyone who likes movies should enjoy a good movie...TIDELAND was something......else...
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Is making making a comparison of how effectively each film drives home their shared central themes of children's innocence and powers of imagination.
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Waq's assessment has nothing to do with why I admire Tideland more. In fact I don't agree with him on that point. I think they both examine those themes equally well intheir individual ways. For me, Tideland delivered a greater "emotional gut punch" than P's L, for reasons I'm not entirely clear about. Tideland is absoluty fearless filmaking, but so is P's L in most respects IMO. My opinion is that it comes down to a matter of taste between these two films. What I do know is that Mrs. Moaters liked P's L quite a lot, and though she hasn't seen Tideland, (knowing her as I do I kind of warned her away from it), I'm pretty damn sure she couldn't bear to sit through it anymore than your wife could. And honestly? (no offence Waq), I think it's pretty pointless to compare these two films, but I do admire Tideland more.
So, yeah, I guess I agree with you more than I agree with Waqman on this one. -
was a great movie, one of Gilliam's best.
And Juno was ok. I think the weird Diablo Cody hate comes from the same place Scriptgirl hate does: FUCK IT'S A GIRL SHE'S STUPID GO AWAY. -
why didn't she use a condom? Stupid bitch. Megan Fox can pick a script? Yeah, or her agent was like, "It's the writer of Juno. Just do it." It's not gorey or scary? Then FUCK IT! Whats the point. Gilliam is great and I can't wait for that one.
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for the movies! are you trying too get a caption on the poster for one or all? Or do you really not like these films and are trying to tell us through overt passes at fake complimentary trivialities?
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13% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Sep 13, 2009 1:40:39 AM CDT
Thank you Terry, for everything
by the_ad_wizard_who_came_up_with_this_one
Cringe worthy review. But still i can't wait to see Parnassus.
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It's not so much that it's a bad movie, it's a good movie. However, every critic was telling the world it was a GREAT movie! A life changing experience. The hype mad me dislike it.
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Otherwise it did what it set out to do pretty well, I thought. People that loathe it usually do so because it did just that.
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Is it too much to ask you to be right at least once? Do it, man. Do it for your country, if nothing else.
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It's a diofficult and harsh movie to endure, yes, but it takes a specialy kind of Hollywood bullshit hack loving idioticy to not understand why it's a great movie. Tideland is thye kind of great movies that only very talented filmmakers have the emotional and intellectual integrity, and the courage to make. It is not a movie for emo pussies and dumb action movies loving pseudo-geeks.
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At Rotten Tomatoes, every critic has nothing really but bad things to say about it. The movie will be just as shitty and shoddily written as we've come to expect.
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You've had your fifteen minutes, love. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out...
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Seriously. Merrick is killing this site.
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Fuck off.
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Maybe some of you guys are seeing what you want to see? A quick google search finds extremely positive Jennifer's Body reviews from Moriarty, /film, Movieline, and Vanity fair. There have only been like 10 reviews so far.
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You mean Alta Vista right? No one uses that lame ass site anymore.
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It wasn't perfect but it wasn't the piece of shit you guys make it out to be either. MacReady 452, just because she got pregnant, doesn't mean they didn't use a condom. You need to know this, otherwise you may encounter some problems in the future...well, maybe not. Savagedave, I read in Entertainment Weekly that she named herself Diablo.
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Sorry, I meant Ask Jeeves.
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Ironically, it's true. Tideland is both utterly unwatchable and also Gilliam's best movie. I dragged a friend to see it during it's (very limited) theatrical release and when it was over, he swore he would never go to the movies with me again. Even then, I couldn't blame him. The movie is fucking brilliant... but watching it causes physical pain.
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