Hot Rod
Akiva Schaffer, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

I got to thinking about a movie starring Bill Hader in a semi-serious role, probably a pretty low-budget Sundance-type thing. He seems to always play the voice of reason (here, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) whilst also generating some laughs, but frequently a little too good for his role. Then again, pretty much everyone is too good for their roles here. This kind of felt like the SNL crowd does Napoleon Dynamite which in some cases kind of worked, but there were too few wildly original bits.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Indiana Jones 4
Steven Spielberg
US
@ Cinerama

There's definitely a point to be made about Harrison Ford's somewhat humorless performance here, although it works when he's playing against Shia LaBeouf. The look of the film though, was gross. Supposedly CG effects weren't heavily used, but there seemed to be a kind nostalgic sheen on everything that looked just a little fake, and a lot of the backgrounds had the look of Lucas' digitally generated sets for the Star Wars prequels. Very distracting when all I wanted was some grit and grime.

I'm considering among a few different projects trying to watch all the Spielberg I've missed over the years (basically all of it) to figure out just why he's so highly lauded, at least among certain people for certain traits. Currently I classify him along with Scorsese and Coppola (and maybe others) under 70's "mavericks" that I find almost entirely uninteresting, although at least Scorsese is one of the few most important and influential cinephiles of his time.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Newton Boys
Richard Linklater, 1998
US
@ home on DVD

This really lacked the charm of most of the rest of Linklater's work. Definitely at the bottom of the barrel for him with School of Rock. Bad News Bears was not at all this lifeless. Linklater was at least involved on the screenplay, although who knows exactly how much of the dialogue he had a hand in. I hope SubUrbia is a bit more worth catching up on.

See also: IMDb

The End
Nikkola Collins, 2008
UK
@ Harvard Exit

The only true disappointment of the festival. One of those experiences in which people with a kind of debased, sour outlook on life try to tell you, "That's just how life is," while simultaneously revealing both their limited purview and obvious artifice of the way in which they are attempting to persuade you of the fact. Ugly, grim, fatalistic, and kind of boring.

See also: Official site

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Jon Hurwitz/Hayden Schlossberg, 2008
US
@ Pacific Place

If comedy is largely the act of surprising the audience, with clever wordplay or unexpected situations or whatever, this feels like an utter failure. It's also an issue that the template for their adventures is so much less mundane. Finding a cheetah near the Jersey turnpike is hilarious, but stumbling upon a bottomless party at a mansion in Miami much less so. When the outline of the movie is already so outlandish, the gags fail to stick out. Particularly when they almost entirely mirror those in the first movie. Maybe this would be funny if you'd heard someone make a poor attempt at outlining the first movie at a party, giving you just enough incentive to see it but not enough prior knowledge to be bored.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Promotion
Steve Conrad, 2008
US
Preview @ SIFF Cinema

How does this movie go so consistently wrong, or if not quite that, how does it manage to be so boring? How is Fred Armisen's tiny role as the store manager better than both lead roles by Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly? Why is Jenna Fischer cast in a role that seems almost entirely unnecessary? Has Jason Bateman ever made a less interesting cameo? This feels entirely like some sort of by-the-numbers comedy written straight from a screenwriting manual, then directed by a precocious but very polite high-school student. There seems to be a lot of potential here, but except for a few bits of physical comedy and the self-help-tape gag, it's mostly squandered.

See also: IMDb

Feeders 2: Slay Bells
John & Mark Polonia, 1998
US
@ Brian's on DVD

It's kind of surprising that in comparison the original Feeders, looks like a pretty well-constructed movie. The acting is at roughly the same level, but the story there is a little more fleshed out. If more than five dollars had been spent on the sound design (or, conversely, if ZERO dollars had been spent, thus eliminating the alien sound effect) this could have pretty great.

See also: IMDb | Something Awful review

The Bet Collector (Kubrador)
Jeffrey Jeturian, 2008
Philippines
@ MoMA

What was the deal here? I think Manohla Dargis makes a good point, that we spend so much time on the story that we never really get to know the main character. Or if we do, it's mostly through the fact of her repeated actions (drinking lots of water, regularly solicitng bets/donations, etc.) and not any particular meaning conveyed through how she goes about them.

See also: IMDb | Distributor page | Manohla Dargis review

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007
Spain
@ IFC Center

There are a lot of similarities here to Cache. A well-to-do couple is haunted by mysterious figures related to a dark secret from childhood. The perpetrators here are at least mostly spectral, though. Again, the adult is ultimately held accountable for what really seemed to be an innocent misunderstanding, and again I'm baffled. Everyone, including the new widower seems weirdly pleased with the outcome.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Slant review

Family Ties
Kim Tae-yong, 2007
Korea
@ Cinema Village (New York Korean Film Festival)

I was shocked by how little I enjoyed this one. It won all kinds of awards and played a ton of festivals. There was a lot of laughter among the Koreans in the audience that I really couldn't understand all that well, so I have to assume that I missed out on some part of the movie culturally or linguistically. That said, I suppose I'm not as into really overwrought performances as the people who hand out acting awards or many types of critics. Perhaps it just seemed like we didn't really spend enough time with any of the characters to really care about their problems as much as we were clearly expected to. The film ties together various dysfunctional family groups over the course of a couple of decades. The families are all humorless and masochistic.

See also: Koreanfilm.org

The Magic Mirror (Espelho Mágico)
Manoel de Oliveira, 2007
US
@ Anthology Film Archives

I've heard Oliveira's name a lot in magazines, online, etc. so I felt like I ought to check this film out, though as Nathan Lee points out in his Village Voice review, this is one of the least accessible films in recent memory. I incorrectly described this to Charles as boring; I can get into slow, "boring" movies, but this is full of talking that goes in circles, or nowhere. I didn't find a lot to get excited about visually, either.

See also: IMDb | Nathan Lee review