I was so happy today and it didn’t even have anything to do with the movies, either! Early this afternoon, I was watching my cat twitch in his sleep (he has very violent dreams, apparently) when I happened to look out my bedroom window and you know what I saw? Snow! “Yay!” I yelled, waking up the cat.
Now, I know that everyone else in the country gets a blizzard every other month but I live in Texas so snow is kind of a big deal to me. I jumped off my bed, threw my Hello Kitty robe on, and went running down stairs. I threw open the door, ran out to the front porch, and then slipped and fell right on my backside.
My neighbor stared at me from his yard. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yay!” I replied, “it’s snowing!”
He nodded and then went, “Better hope those power lines don’t ice over or we might be without electricity.”
At that point, I resolved to never speak to my neighbor again.
So, I was very, very happy but now, the snow’s gone. It’s moved along to Arkansas and Mississippi. Now, the only thing falling rom the sky is freezing rain and the roads will probably be really icy and scary when I’m going to work tomorrow. So, as I sit here all kinds of pantsless with a big purple bruise on my ass, I’m cheering myself up by putting together the latest installment of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.
From 1970: Dean Stockwell kidnaps and brainwashes Sandra Dee and he’s doing it all in the name of all mighty Cthulhu. This is actually kind of a fun film as long as you can get the image of H.P. Lovecraft spinning in his grave out of your mind.
I’ve never seen this 80s slasher film but I’ve read about its troubled production on various web sites. I’m kinda embarrassed to admit it but I actually get scared when I see this trailer. First off, that mask is disturbing. And secondly, that doll…
Fortunately, even if this world does occasionally give us a demon doll, it can also give us a Black Belt Jones. I loved the trailer as soon as I saw Gloria Hendry shooting the dishes…
Jess Franco has directed close to a thousand films and approximately 12 of them are worth watching. This is one of the lucky dozen, a remake of Eyes Without A Face. The film gave Brigitte LaHaie her best role outside of the films of Jean Rollin and it also co-stars the great Caroline Munro. And since it’s a Franco film, Howard Vernon plays a character named Dr. Orloff. Plus, its got that cute little panther animation at the start of the trailer.
Finally, it’s up to Robert Blake to restore some order. This is actually a fairly interesting little movie as long as you realize that it’s such a 70s film, it might as well be wearing a suit with lapels stretching all the way to the end of the shoulders.
Cthulhu Saves the World, an Xbox 360 indie game from Zeboyd Entertainment, the same people who brought us Breath of Death VII: The Beginning.
Once again Zeboyd Entertainment resurrects the feel of an old school 16-bit RPG with the graphics and sound feeling like they’re right out of an old SNES RPG.
The plot of this game is that the evil Cthulhu is defeated in battle and is under a curse that makes him lose all his powers. The only way to regain them is to become a true hero.
Really the first thing that comes to mind is this… what would H. P. Lovecraft think if he were still alive today? First there’s the three-parter of South Park featuring Cthulhu and now this. He’s either rolling in his grave now or if he had a sense of humor he’d laugh. No telling unfortunately.
It features the gameplay and graphics of Breath of Death VII, but with improvements. For starters you can save anywhere but in battle which is a major improvement. It was annoying that you could only save at inns in Breath of Death VII. The game has still image cut scenes which are really cool, and of course there’s the dialogue. Some of the funniest dialogue I’ve seen in a game. Constantly breaking the fourth wall which in parody games is always a nice little treat. In addition to Cthulhu you have 6 other party members you can choose from to form your party having up to 4 characters.
Like Breath of Death VII each time you level up you have two options to customize customize your character, whether it be new spells, new effects for current spells, improving stats and more.
The best part about this game is it’s only 240 MS points ($3). Yeah Breath of Death VII was only 80, MS points, but trust me, the $2 extra is well worth it as this is the superior game.
If you enjoyed Breath of Death VII, I cannot recommend this game enough. Zeboyd Entertainment I look forward to your future games.
2003 marked a sort of a small comeback for Kevin Costner both as a director and as an actor. The work in question was the very well-done Western, Open Range. Open Range was a moderately budgeted film which has more in common with Costner’s first directorial work, Dances with Wolves than his last big-budget flop, The Postman.
The film was an adaptation of the Lauran Paine novel, The Open Range Men, and it captures much of the themes found in the novel. This was probably due to the fact that screenwriter Craig Storper didn’t deviate from the novel’s basic story. There were no superfluous action sequences and gunfights to ratchet up the action. Everything about Open Range was about the gradual and inevitable final confrontation between the “free-grazers” and the “barbed-wire” men. The free-grazers were played by Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall as Charles Waite and Boss Spearman, respectively. On the other side of the conflict was Michael Gambon playing Denton Baxter, the ruthless land-baron whose attempt to keep the free-grazers from grazing on his land also hides another agenda. Caught in-between these two strong-willed groups were the people in the town Baxter pretty much controls through his “town marshal” (played with fake bravado by James Russo) and the herd helpers under Boss Spearman’s employ.
The theme of freedom to roam the open country versus the rights of a landowner echoes throughout the film. Set in the latter end of the 19th-century, Open Range shows the clash of the more natural ways of the Old West slowly eroding to be replaced by the more industrial, monopolistic practices that became prevalent during the 1880’s, also known in US History as the Gilded Age. Even the personalities of the conflicting characters mirror this theme as the free-grazers only want to use the land as it has been used for years upon years and thats sharing between all men of the West. The land-baron has other ideas in mind and everything boils down to him owning everything around him, even if it means using ruthless tactics to gather even more property.
Open Range also has a bit of modernism in its subplot of Charley Waite’s growing attraction to the sister of the town doctor and the same sister’s well-rounded characterization. It’s not often that a traditional Western shows women in a very positive light instead of the usual submissive and stay-at-home characters of Western’s past. This could also be attributed to the wonderful, underrated performance by Annette Bening who plays Sue Barlow, the doctor’s sister and Charley Waite’s love interest. Bening doesn’t play Sue as the traditional Western female. She also doesn’t go overboard and turn Sue into a 20th-century feminist. She instead plays the character as someone who knows her place in the world, but also one who is strong-willed and willing to stand for what is right.
Open Range was a wonderful throwback to what made such modern Westerns like Unforgiven and Tombstone such a success both for traditionalists and new fans. Kevin Costner’s direction was very low-key. Allowing the story to tell itself at its own pace until the final confrontation. The final gunfight in the end gets a lot of well-earned attention from critics and fans. The entire sequence takes at least 10-15 minutes from start to finish. The fight itself was done in a realistic fashion. There was no sharpshooter dead-eyes in this film, but individuals who had skill but still missed. It was a fight where it wasn’t who was the fastest, but who was the calmest under fire. There’s also a suddenness to the brutality in the final gunfight that demystifies the old-style Western shootouts of past. Some complained that the film was very slow and took too long to get to the “good stuff”, but I actually thought the gradual pacing of most of the film’s length gave the final confrontation even more impact. Costner seem to have learned the lesson all good directors know: less means more.
Open Range won’t go down as a great piece of film making. It surely won’t go down as one of the best in history. What Open Range did accomplish was putting the Western back to its epic and majestic roots, but at the same time keeping the intimacy of a character-driven story. In time, Open Range would probably go down as one of the underrated gems of the last decade and find a place next to its closest comparison, Unforgiven, as one of the best Westerns of the new era.
I’ll readily admit, I’m not a huge fan of AMVs. Don’t get me wrong, when they’re good, they’re really fun and entertaining to watch. The thing is, 99% of AMVs suck. Seriously, most of them are just a mashup of some fan’s favorite scenes from an anime put to a song they like that really don’t fit together. But, the ones that are good, tend to be really good. You can tell when someone takes the time and the effort to put together something that they can be proud of.
This AMV is one of those good ones. There hasn’t been anyone yet that I’ve shown this to that hasn’t gotten hopelessly hooked on it. It’s the perfect blend of a high energy song, clips that make sense with the words of the song, and really good editing. It was made by JaddziaDax, but I’m not certain where it premiered at. All I do know is that it is impossible to watch this and not wind up singing along on the subsequent playthroughs. And there will be subsequent playthroughs. The first time I watched it, I immediately had to play it again, and again, and before I knew it I was on my fifth consecutive viewing. Now that’s a sign of a good AMV! So, feel free to watch this, but just be forewarned, you might not be able to look at a can of Bumblebee Tuna without thinking of this AMV again.
It’s been a while since I reviewed a real grindhouse/exploitation film on this site so I want to remedy that by talking about an English slasher film called Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas.
As the movie opens, we find ourselves in England with Christmas quickly approaching. The fog-drenched streets of London have apparently been besieged by drunk old men dressed up like Santa Claus. However, at least one citizen has taken things into his own hands by wandering the streets at night and killing anyone he comes across dressed as Santa Claus. Seriously, we see a lot of Jolly St. Nicks meeting an untimely end in this film. Most of them are done in by straight razor but at least one ends up getting shot and then another ends up bursting into flame and one Santa even up getting a spear driven through the back of his head.
That Santa has a daughter named Kate (Belinda Mayne) and Kate has a boyfriend named Cliff (Gerry Sundquist). While they make most of their money by standing out in the middle of street and playing the flute, Cliff also has a side job as just a generally sleazy guy. The day after Kate’s father dies, Cliff tries to convince Kate to take part in a pornographic, Santa-themed photo shoot. Needless to say, Kate doesn’t react well to this and storms out. So, Cliff convinces another model to wear the Santa suit. That model is later caught outside in that Santa suit by the killer. However, after opening the suit and giving the camera an excuse to linger over the model’s body the killer leaves without harming her. This would seem to indicate that he’s only looking to kill men in Santa suits. Normally, I’d be all for this development because fair play is fair play except for the fact that its eventually revealed that the whole Santa suit thing is pretty much just a red herring. But, more on that later.
Anyway, Kate wants justice for her father but unfortunately, the police investigation is being headed up by Inspect Harris and you know that Harris isn’t going to be much help because he’s played by Edmund Purdom. Purdom appeared in a lot of Italian and Spanish horror films in the 70s and 80s and he was always the epitome of British incompetence. Purdom is also credited as being director here but again, more on that later.
Now, by the time the 100th Santa has been brutally murdered, you might think that people would just naturally stop dressing up as Santa Claus when they’re out in public but no, that doesn’t appear to occur to anyone. Instead, we get a mall Santa getting castrated while standing at a urinal. And then we get another one getting killed while visiting a local sex shop and talking to a character credited as “the Experience Girl” (played surprisingly well by Kelly Baker). Yet another Santa finds himself getting murdered while backstage at a TV variety show. His body is discovered by Caroline Munro (star of Starcrash and Maniac) who plays herself and gets to sing a disco song before finding the body. She also gets to wear this really amazing red dress that I would kill to own because, seriously…
Suddenly, this guy named Giles (played by Alan Lake, who apparently died right before this film was released) pops up and tells Kate that he’s a reporter and he starts asking her all theese questions about her father. Kate gets mad and tries to call up Inspector Harris just to be told that Harris is out for the day taking care of some personal business. Hmmm…could Harris be our killer? It makes sense since he’s played by Edmund Purdom. Then again, Cliff could be the killer as well because, while Kate is doing all this, Cliff is making money by selling her sexual favors to his friends. Then again, it seems that Giles might be the killer because he then promptly shows up and kills Kate.
Meanwhile (we’re only about 40 minutes in to the film by this point), the Experience Girl is being interviewed by Harris’s partner, a tall guy named Powell who hates women. The Experience Girl tells Powell that she would know who the killer is if she saw the killer smile. Powell tells her she’s an idiot. So, the Experience Girl goes back to work. Giles shows up and smiles. Experience Girl screams. Giles kidnaps her but instead of killing her, he takes her to his flat and chains her up. Giles explains that he’s a killer because Inspector Harris is his brother and Giles is jealous. The Experience Girl knows who Harris is despite the fact that we’ve only seen her meet Powell.
Speaking of Powell, he investigates Kate’s death and realizes he may have made a mistake dismissing the Experience Girl. Then he tries to open a car door and gets electrocuted until he eventually ends up blowing up.
Now, none of this qualifies as being a spoiler because, even at this point, there’s still nearly 40 minutes of plot left.
Like a lot of 80s grindhouse films, the production of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is shrouded in mystery. Shooting on the film apparently started in 1981 but it the film wasn’t actually completed and released until 1984. Reportedly, Edmund Purdom was the original director but he ended up walking off the set which led to screenwriter Derek Ford taking over the movie for two days before he was apparently fired. The film was then completed by Alan Birkinshaw (and possibly a few other people), working under the name of Al McGoohan.
Certainly, this explains why the film is such a huge mess but it’s also a part of the fun as watching the movie becomes a game of trying to figure out who directed what.
Since Purdom walked off the film, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that he directed all of the scenes that he appears in. (It also explains why his character disappears from the movie after the first 40 minutes.) These scenes are all distinguished by the general immobility of the camera. Purdom’s scenes are so static and so defiantly dull that they almost work in a strangely Warholian way. The actors wander into frame, the actors wander out of the frame, the out-of-focus lens rebelliously refuses to follow them.
The non-Purdom scenes — the scenes in which men dressed like Santa are graphically murdered and the scenes featuring the “Rxperience Girl” — appear to have snuck in from a totally different movie and often, they’re only link to anything we’ve seen in the Purdom scenes is some awkwardly dubbed dialogue. These scenes feel as if they’re drenched in sleaze. The camera not only moves, it lingers and it invades like a voyeur looking at dirty pictures in a public library. Unpleasant on their own, these scenes somehow become even more distasteful when compared to the aritificiality of the Purdom scenes.
It all makes for a very disorienting viewing experience and if the film isn’t really well-done enough to ever become disturbing or nightmarish, it still had a very odd dream-like feel to it. Major characters wander through the film without every actually meeting each other. Seemingly important plot points are brought up just to be quickly abandoned and forgotten. Even all the multiple murders turn out to have very little to do with Santa Claus or Christmas. If nothing else, this is a unique slasher film in that the murders are pretty much just red herrings.
There’s a lot in this movie that doesn’t work but, as with many grindhouse films, that just adds to the charm of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas. Even the ending — which everyone seems to criticize — is oddly appropriate in that it makes as little sense as everything else we’ve seen on screen. Also, like most grindhouse films, there’s a handful of memorable moments that actually do work. For instance, the killer’s mask is genuinely creepy. The scene where Giles chases the Experience Girl through the streets of London is also handled well and is even more suspenseful in that it takes place during the day as opposed to expected dark and foggy night. And again, Kelly Baker is a sympathetic, if unexpected, protaganist in the role of the Experience Girl (though you get the feeling that the role was created and cast long after Purdom left the initial production). Finally, this is a film that epitomizes the spirit that makes the Grindhouse great — i.e., it may have taken two years and multiple directors and the end result might be kind of chaotic but, in the end, the movie got made.
I ended up watching Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas last night because there have been reports that its about to finally snow here in North Texas and, as a result, I was in a holiday mood. Since this is apparently one of those movies that has entered the public domain, the version I own is a part of one of those “50 Horror Classics” collections that Mill Creek puts out. As a result, the transfer looked and sounded terrible. But you know what? That terrible transfer added a certain charm to the film. Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is a movie that was meant to be seen with a lot of random scratches and faded colors flashing across the screen.
So, in the end, Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is a pretty bad movie but it’s an undeniably watchable and oddly memorable one. Plus, it features that really great red dress. Seriously, just to die for…
What is there to say about Dodgeball – A True Underdog Story other than it’s a no-brainer of a hilarious movie that doesn’t aspire to lofty heights. What it does do is come out firing with some of the funniest physical comedy and one-liners since The Farrelly Brothers’ Something About Mary. First time director Rawson Marshall Thurber does a good enough job to keep the laughs coming one right after the another to keep Dodgeball from becoming too repetitive.
The movie is a riff from the stock underdog sports genre with a Peter La Fleur (played by Vince Vaughn with his usual sardonic wit) having to find a way to save his Average Joe’s Gym from being foreclosed by his bank and turned by a rival hi-tech gym next door into a parking lot. Who else would be the perfect foil for Vince Vaughn’s Peter La Fleur but none other than Ben Stiller as the former-fatty turned workout fitness Nazi, White Goodman. Goodman’s Globo Gym is a state-of-the art, sterile and BALCO-like gym where insults and making its members feel ugly, fat and useless is the way to clean health and the perfect bod.
Already, within the first fifteen minutes, we know who to root for and who to boo. In one corner we have the Average Joe’s guys played with comedic timing by Justin Long, Stephen Root, Chris Williams, Alan Tudyk and Joel Moore. Stiller’s Goodman and his consigliere Me’Shell (Jamal Duff channeling Barry White) with a hand-picked ringer of a dodgeball team he calls the Purple Cobras. With the two sides set the dodgeball carnage begins as Average Joe’s must win the Las Vegas Dodgeball Invitational to earn the $50,000 needed to save the gym. To round out the Average Joe’s team will be the bank accountant who ends up sympathizing with the Joe’s, Kate Veatch (played by Stiller’s real-life wife, Christine Taylor) and Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn in a scene-stealing role).
Rip Torn is hilarious as the acerbic and insane former dodgeball great Patches O’Houlihan. He pretty much gets all the best one-liners in the movie the moment he appears on the screen. He coaches the Average Joe’s team by browbeating them, insulting them and, failing that, throwing wrenches at them to help them in learning the 5 D’s of dodgeball: Dodge, duck, dip, dive, dodge. In fact, I would say that if it wasn’t for Rip Torn’s character dominating the middle part of the movie, I think Dodgeball‘s constant ball to the groin shots would’ve gotten old. Instead Patches O’Houlihan constantly gave people watching a reason to laugh out loud.
Dodgeball – A True Underdog Story is a movie that the Academy voters will not go about showering with praises and awards, but I’m sure most of them will be watching it and laughing out loud like the rest of the general public. Dodgeball is one hilarious, one-liner after one-liner ball to the nuts funny and it doesn’t aspire to be anything else but that. This movie will never get old with each viewing and will continue to make people laugh out loud.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a new pick for “The Daily Grindhouse” but that should end today. I’ve picked a good one and it is one out of sight, stone-cold groove of a pick. The latest daily grindhouse pick is the sweet blaxpoitation crime/horror mash-up, Sugar Hill.
This blaxpoitation flick was directed by one Paul Maslansky (yeah never heard of him either but that’s the life of a grindhouse filmmaker) and starred Marki Bey (in what would be her one and only feature-length role). Sugar Hill was part of the rush to take advantage of the success of another classic blaxpoitation flick, Blacula. This one wasn’t a straight out horror, but one mashed-up with a mafia story and how the voodoo-revenge side of the film took the spot of horror.
Overall, the film is quite good despite some very awful acting (even for a grindhouse film). Marki Bey (in the title role) actually is the highlight of Sugar Hill as she channels the sexy and badass vibe which made Pam Grier an instant favorite when she did Coffey. But people who read the synopsis on this flick shouldn’t expect zombies in the way we’ve come to know them. These undead are old-school voodoo zombies. They’re not flesh-eaters, but slaves of the voodoo priestess who summon them from their resting place to act as mindless muscle. These zombie end up becoming Sugar Hill’s unstoppable hit-men as she wreaks vengeance on the mafia who took her man away from her in the beginning of the film.
Sugar Hill is one example of why grindhouse cinema will always live on and find new converts. It is one fun time to be had not by just those who made it but for those who will see and continue to see it.
It has been over ten years since one of the masters of horror has released a full-length feature film. Sure, John Carpenter has filmed episodes for two seasons of Showtime’s horror anthology, Masters of Horror. But it seemed like the bad experience he had in filming his last feature-length, 2001’s Ghosts of Mars, might have soured him in doing anything for the big-screen.
That was then and this is now 2011 and Carpenter looks to make his return to the big-screen with the horror film, The Ward. It will star one of the industry’s rising stars in Amber Heard with veteran performers both young (Danielle Panabaker, Lyndsy Fonseca) and old (Jared Harris) backing her up.
The Ward was first show in this past 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and the reaction to the film was generally positive with most saying this was a good return for one of the horror genre’s most admired and beloved filmmakers.
The film looks to be set in a 1960’s mental institution with Heard’s character the center of attention. Mysterious happenings involving the staff, current patients and the presence of a ghost seem to be the main plot of the film.
Will Carpenter’s bag of filmmaking skills remain as it was before he left feature-length filmmaking a decade ago or will he show that he’s learned a few new tricks to add to his considerable skillset? The film certainly seem to echo some of the Japanese-style gothic and ghost story films which still remains a staple of Japanese horror cinema. In the end, I’m just glad to see one of the masters of horror back in the driver’s seat. Time for him to show some of the young horror filmmakers nowadays how to do it.
I have to write this review quickly because I have a feeling that, in another 30 minutes or so, my body’s immune system will succeed in destroying any trace of Season of the Witch.
In Season of the Witch, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play two Crusaders who eventually get disillusioned with killing people so they desert the army, end up in a small village somewhere, and are informed that the town is being destroyed by the plague because a curse has been put on the town by a witch. Cage and Perlman are then recruited by the local town’s cardinal (Christopher Lee, who is pretty much wasted under all of this really nasty plague makeup) to take the witch to a monastery that is located somewhere else. You’re never really sure where any one location is in relation to another in this film, which is a bit of a problem since the majority of the film is taken up with the journey to the monastery.
Anyway, the Monks at the monastery have this ancient book that apparently contains all these incantations that can be used against evil. This book is the only one left in existence which leads to the question of why nobody ever bothered to make more than a handful of copies of all of these amazingly important books. I mean, seriously, people. So the idea is to take this witch to the monastery and read this book which will end the plague.
So, we go through the whole journey thing and a few unimportant characters are killed off along the way and Cage and Perlman discuss the meaning of life and faith and, at first, we’re led to doubt whether or not the accused witch is actually guilty but then she starts causing all of these supernatural, witch-like thing to happen so I guess the filmmakers got bored with that whole subplot early.
Then we reach the monastery and a whole other movie starts. Seriously, I cannot begin to put into words just how massively the tone of the film changes once they reach the monastery. The film actually becomes good in a kind of silly, over-the-top way as soon our knights are dealing with all of these flying demons and there’s disfigured monks all over the place, and the priest gets to say, “We’re going to need more holy water,” at one point. (“Yay!” I nearly shouted out in the audience, “Catholic action movie one-liners!”) The tone changes so massively that Season of the Witch actually becomes a really fun and entertaining little action movie but, unfortunately, just as soon as things start to get really fun — bang! Movie is over. Thank you for coming out tonight, folks. Now get the Hell outta here.
Season of the Witch is, to put it politely, a mess. This isn’t all that surprising as the movie is being released in January and January is, of course, reserved for either Oscar contenders going into wide release, films starring Jason Statham, or movies that are being released because the studio is contractually obligated. Ron Perlman, being a veteran of both Guillermo Del Toro and Jean-Pierre Jeneut, knows exactly how play his role but Cage just rides around on his horse looking like he’s late for Halloween party. Director Dominic Sena appears to have a mancrush on Zack Snyder and does the whole speed up the camera randomly then go into slow-mo even more randomly thing but it doesn’t really add up to anything more than just confusion.
Finally, I left this film feeling very betrayed because, seriously — how can you call your film Season of the Witch and not feature the classic Donovan song?
For some reason, I didn’t see Easy A during its initial run even though it was one of those films that, every time I saw the commercial, seemed to be beckoning me to come down to the theater. All of my girlfriends saw it and loved it and told me that I had to see it because apparently they sat through the whole movie going, “Oh, that’s so Lisa.” And then, before long, every guyfriend of mine ended up seeing the film and they all came back to me and said, “You have to see this film because my date kept going, ‘Oh, that’s so Lisa!'” Of course, when I heard that, it was time for me to start doing the whole talk-to-the-hand motion and going, “Oh no, she didn’t!” because that’s what you do when a guy says that his girlfriend was talking about you. Anyway, I got so busy pretending to be on Maury that I ended up missing my chance to see Easy A in a real theater.
Instead, I had to settle for seeing in a dollar theater on Thursday and can I just get off topic here for a few minutes? Can I? Will you indulge me for just a second for me to speak the truth? Okay, I know that some people kinda think I’m a film snob because I’m always raving about the Angelika and finding excuses to mention that I don’t have the read the subtitles when I go to a French film. Well, so be it. Call me a film snob because I am now convinced that Dante’s Inferno is a dollar movie theater. Seriously, until I saw Red and Easy A this week, I just assumed that people with really bad hygiene just didn’t go to the movies. Now, I see that they just hang out at the dollar theaters. And here’s the thing — even though they’re only paying a dollar, they still can’t show up for the freaking movie on time! Seriously, what is the deal with these dumbfug toadsuckers who just want to come in to the theater 30 minutes late and then spend 10 more minutes wandering around in the dark looking for a seat. Look, you can look in a newspaper, you can look online, you can call the mutherfracking theater — IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO FIND OUT WHEN YOUR FREAKING MOVIE IS STARTING, PEOPLE! And then, you not only show up late but you bring your own food with you because, of course, who doesn’t want to spend an hour listening to you trying to open up one of those loud, crinkly bags of Sun Chips while everyone else is trying to pay attention to the movie? I mean, you’re already late, you only paid a froking dollar to get in — JUST BUY SOME FRICKING POPCORN, YOU SELF-CENTERED, MYNA BIRD-LOOKING, DUMBFUG MOTHAFRACKER! I MEAN…GAWD!
I’m sorry…where was I?
Oh yeah, Easy A. It’s a good movie, probably one of the best high school films I’ve ever seen. How good was this movie? I still loved it even though I was watching it in Dante’s Inferno.
Emma Stone plays Olive, a high school student who — in order to get out of going on a weekend camping trip with her best friend — tells a lie about having a date with a boy named George. (And I can’t blame her because seriously, camping? BLEH!) The next Monday, Olive is asked for the details of her imaginary date and her inability to give anything more than the vaguest of details is interpreted to mean that she lost her virginity over the weekend. (Vagueness being interpreted as sluttiness happens far more often than most of us like to admit.) Olive’s story about losing her V-card is overheard by Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and soon the entire school is aware that Olive is no longer hymenally challenged. In short, Olive is now … a girl with a reputation! (Cue ominous music and Vincent Price laughter.)
Soon, Olive — previously a perfectly content wallflower — is the most notorious student at school. Popular boys want to talk to her. Unpopular girls want to be her. At first, Olive tries to tell people the truth, that she was just telling a story. After people refuse to believe her, Olive starts to go with the flow and enjoy the benefits that come from being extremely popular. After her gay friend asks her to pretend that she had sex with him in order to help him survive the homophobic world of high school, Olive finds herself being given money and giftcards from other boys in school, all of whom are paying for the right to say that they’ve had sex with her. Olive decides to embrace her new role of faux-fatale by dressing like she’s on the CW and stitching an A (a la the Scarlet Letter) on all of her clothes.
And then, she starts to discover the truth about having a reputation in high school. A reputation makes you both popular and an outcast at the same time and Olive finds herself trapped in a web made up not so much by her lies as by everyone else’s assumptions. Can Olive escape and find happiness? Can she find true love with Todd (played by Penn “Oh. My. God! He’s so freaking hot!” Badgley)? Will she get a chance to have the pointless musical number that she assures us, at one point, her story truly does need? Will Emma Stone receive an Oscar nomination for her performance as Olive?
Well, the answer to that last question is probably no (though she did receive a Golden Globe nomination) because Easy A is not the type of movie that usually gets nominated for Oscars. And that’s a shame because Stone gives one of the best performances of the year here. In the comedic scenes, she manages to generate a hundred more genuine laughs than Annette Bening did in The Kids Are All Right and in the dramatic scenes, she proves herself to an actress of true range. If you want to see some truly great acting, just consider the scene where Olive goes on her first actual date since becoming known as “the school slut.” Staring out nervously talking too much and giddily laughing at her own private dates (one of the many scenes that made me go, “Oh my God! I do that too!”), Stone effortlessly transitions to having an emotional breakdown in a parking lot after discovering that her date has no interest in her and is only with her because he heard she would be an easy lay. I don’t think there’s a girl over the age of 15 who doesn’t know how painful that feels, to be reduced only to what strangers think of you. It’s a pain that stays with you and Stone captures it perfectly and, silly as it may sound and at the risk of going all girl power here, I almost felt that when I saw Olive triumphing over it that there was hope for me and for everyone else.
Easy A rang very true to me, not the least because I was one of the girls with a “reputation” while I was in high school. Then again, I don’t think there’s many girls who didn’t have a reputation for something in school. Some of us had a reputation for doing it and some had a reputation for not but in the end, it was usually all used to keep us in the same prison of insecurity, resentment, and entrapment. To its credit, Easy A not only captures the negative side of having a reputation but also realizes and show that having a reputation can be fun and liberating as well.
Even beyond such larger concerns, Easy A is an entertaining, funny movie that not only rings true but is genuinely likable in way that a similar film like Juno never was. I mean, I loved Juno but in the end, you couldn’t hep but feel that the film was mostly about screenwriter Diablo Cody trying to make herself into a cooler teenager than she actually was. (And that’s not meant as a criticism, just an impression.) Juno was almost too perfect and too brilliantly sarcastic. You liked her but never quite believed in her. Olive, as played by Emma Stone, is a normal teenager who doesn’t always say the perfect thing and, who most of the time, is just as much of a dork as the rest of us. My favorite sequence in the whole film is one where Olive ends up spending a weekend growing obsessed with the song “Pocketful of Sunshine” and it wasn’t because it fed into some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy. Instead, it was because it was a scene that made me very honestly think, “Oh my God, I’ve done that so many times.”
Easy A is a surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent movie that just happens to be disguised as a breezy, teen comedy. That high school, in general, is a world full of fucked up ideas and attitudes about sex is no great secret but Easy A is smart enough to realize that the real world is pretty much just one big high school. I saw the movie too late to include it on my list of the Top 25 Films of 2010 but it is one of the best films of 2010.
Through the Shattered Lens 