In theatres: Avengers Endgame.

At home: Gleaming the Cube.

A good movie today is harder to come by than a watchable television show. I have nothing to contribute here.

This week in The Deep Hurting Project: I Know Who Killed Me.

• The opening shot is this muddled-looking reflection of the strip club in a rain puddle that stays on just long enough to register what the fuck you're even looking at.
  
• One thing that keeps showing up in the movie is how, depending on which character Lindsay Lohan is playing, the scene will be bathed in red or blue. Sometimes, they'll go from simply having a lot of blue/red things in frame or bathing the whole thing in a certain colour of light Nicholas Windig Refn-style to going all black and white except that everything that's blue or red keeps its color. Or it'll just end a scene on a fade to that colour. And things will be in that specific colour even though they wouldn't be in real life (like a CSI investigator wearing latex gloves in International Klein Blue.) It's like there's supposed to be symbolism, but it adds up to nothing.
  
• We go from a scene where I think Dr. Hammond is talking about a serial killer (who only killed one girl) and an anatomy lesson that doesn't seem to be connected to much and also, for some reason, the teacher interrupts the class to find out that the girl the serial killer killed has been discovered. Why do they care? And why do they care enough to hold a moment of silence before the football game? If she was a student at that high school, then why does nobody say so?
  
• The filmmakers have done bugger-all to help the audience give a shit about Aubrey before she gets tortured. And it's not like this is a slasher movie. This is meant to be a psychological thriller where we're actually supposed to focus on her plight and spend an hour, 46 minutes, and sixteen seconds focusing on her mind. And despite her being a gifted author and pianist, we see bugger-all of that (except for the deleted scenes where this whole thing is meant to be a short story she's written, and if that's the case, she's clearly a shit writer.) Shit, Silence of the Lambs did that better in less than three minutes: 
  
  
  
  
• At least she tries to make up for it with her portrayal of Dakota Moss. Key word here being tries. This is still the same shitty script and the writing is still utter dogshit, and Lindsay Lohan still refused to actually get naked (despite the fact that her pussy was on prominent display in the tabloids the year before this movie was released, well before the movie was actually filmed) and so they had to do with a bikini top that just happens to have big buttons in the place nipples normally would be. She apparently took pole-dancing lessons and, I guess it shows, but honestly, given the constant slo-mo and the fact that as a somewhat miserly, teetotaling foot fetishist, strip clubs aren't really my thing, I may not be the best judge. At least she put some effort into this performance in ways she failed to do for Aubrey. 
  
• Also, the songs picked for the movie all suck. It's a shame that the actual score (by Joel McNeely) is actually fairly decent. It's actually legitimately baffling that most of the stuff he's done in the past few years is Disney DTV sequels and Seth McFarlane projects.
  
• You know what I never expected to see in a movie? Mr. Bigglesworth's ballsack. That said, I also never expected to see a montage intercutting a teenage sex scene (with ridiculous blue mood lighting in the daytime) and her mother trying to scrub the sink.
  
• Art Bell's cameo isn't as odd as I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be like the Samuel L. Jackson cutaways in Inglorious Basterds. It turns out that it was just a YouTube video (or whatever this version is supposed to be.) And it turns out that it explains what's going on: Aubrey and Dakota are apparently stigmatic twins. I should point out that this is not a real thing. Not even in the sort of paranormal circles that Art Bell likes to publicise. I have heard that there are some twins who are close enough that they can actually feel each other's pain. However, I have never heard of an example where, if one twin gets their hands tortured, the other one's hand starts to deteriorate and feel the same pain with no external stimulus. What's particularly damning is that, well, Art uses the name "Josef K" for his example of a "real-life stigmatic twin." It's one thing to give a character an obviously allusive name, but it's another thing to tie it to a ludicrous plot device that your piece-of-shit movie is no doubt going to make people want to look into it.
  
• When Dakota finally figures out who the killer is, WHY THE FUCK DOES SHE GO  ALONE? She's a small, drug-addicted girl who's had half her limbs amputated going up against a full-grown man who almost killed her identical twin! And how did her boyfriend go up against her and fail so badly? It's not like she's Rey, living a hardscrabble existence on a desert planet where she can actually fight a lot and figure out how to be good at it. Okay, she was raised by a crack whore, but that's not the sort of hardscrabble existence that lends itself to hand to hand combat. And there's no reason for her to not call the cops. I mean, sure, they might not get what's going on, (the audience sure as shit doesn't), but they'd still appreciate the information.
  

Well, this is actually a fascinating failure of a movie. It's one of the most fascinating failures I've watched for the Project.

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(June 30, 2019 at 11:54 am)Fierce Wrote: A good movie today is harder to come by than a watchable television show. I have nothing to contribute here.

This is where having a massive DVD collection (and also a library card for a library with a sizable collection of films you don't already have) really helps. And if you're somehow not finding any good films even in that, maybe you can do what I've done and look for bad movies and start up your own Deep Hurting Project. It will likely take several hours to go through this huge list and cross-reference them with the holdings of your local library, but it'll at least be interesting to see how badly filmmakers can fuck up.

(June 29, 2019 at 11:28 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: Here's the thing you don't seem to be getting: THIS IS NOT A STRICTLY HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADES. IT'S AN ALLEGORY FOR GETTING CAUGHT UP IN MASS MOVEMENTS. IF YOU CANNOT GRASP THIS SIMPLE CONCEPT, YOU SIMPLY CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE MOVIE AND CERTAINLY NOT WHERE I'M COMING FROM WHEN I ARGUE ABOUT IT.

LOL and what makes you the dictator of how I will interpret this movie?

(June 29, 2019 at 11:28 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: And, of course, in addition to being gay,Andrzejewski was also an atheist, so while a gay man might make unflattering views of gay people, it's harder for me to buy that an atheist in a communist nation would try to whitewash the Catholic Church's complicity in the Children's Crusade.

Doesn't matter if the author of the original novel was an atheist. He could have written it as whitewashing of Catholic Church if he is stupid. He may have been set on writing one story but got another one. This reminds me what Isaac Asimov remarked on people interpreting his stories:

Quote:On returning, I found a letter from one Gotthard Guenther, who was lecturing on science fiction at the Cambridge Center of Arts. The first lecture was on October 3, and I decided to attend. [...]

Take, for instance, he said, the story "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov. (At this point, I shrank lower in my seat.) It dealt with stars as instruments of madness, whereas in all Old World views of the universe, the stars were seen as gentle, benign, and friendly.

He continued to describe the manner in which "Nightfall" reversed or distorted common views and, in general, built up an interpretation of the story that had me gasping.

When the lecture was over, members of the audience flocked around him, and I waited patiently. When I was the only one left, I said, "Dr. Guenther, your analysis of 'Nightfall' is all wrong."

"Well, that is a matter of opinion," said Dr. Guenther, smiling gently.

"No, it is not," I said, forcefully. "I am certain you are wrong. Nothing of what you said was in the author's mind."

"And how can you know that?"

That was when I let the guillotine blade fall. "Because, Dr. Guenther, I am the author."

His face lit up, "You are Isaac Asimov?"

"Yes, sir."

"How pleased I am to meet you." Then he said, "But tell me, what makes you think, just because you are the author of 'Nightfall,' that you have the slightest inkling of what is in it?"

And of course I couldn't answer that question because it suddenly became clear to me that there might well be more in a story than an author was aware of.

Last night I watched "The Ledge" for the second time . For those who haven't seen it, it was about an atheist who has an affair with the wife of a fundy and ends up being the hero for saving her life because he is psycho.

I will admit the acting wasn't all that great. But it had it's good parts. I thought the guy who played the obsessive fundy husband did a great job. It was a little too long, but even with no so great movies, I have a tendency to hang in there if there is enough there to keep me in it.

And tonight, I watched a movie called "Red Eye". Relatively the same plot motif as "Nick Of Time".  Bad guy targets someone to force them to help commit an assassination. But in this case the bad guy targets a hotel employee knowing his target will be staying at a hotel that can be shot with a rpg from the ocean. So he stalks her(prior to the movie starting), and ends up on the same plane as the lady he targets and threatens to kill his dad if she doesn't call to have the hotel room switched to face the ocean where the RPG can be launched.  Campy, formulaic, but just enough there to keep me in it.

Hot Fuzz
8/10

Ultraviolet

A very confusing, poorly scripted, poorly acted, ineptly directed film about a dystopian future where an eleven year old boy somehow holds the key to what seems to be some sort of war between vampires and humans.  Stars Milla Jovovich's midriff, with her bum in a small supporting role (get it?).

2/10.

Boru

(July 7, 2019 at 5:36 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Ultraviolet

A very confusing, poorly scripted, poorly acted, ineptly directed film about a dystopian future where an eleven year old boy somehow holds the key to what seems to be some sort of war between vampires and humans.  Stars Milla Jovovich's midriff, with her bum in a small supporting role (get it?).

2/10.

Boru

"I live in a world you might not understand."

(July 7, 2019 at 5:53 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(July 7, 2019 at 5:36 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Ultraviolet

A very confusing, poorly scripted, poorly acted, ineptly directed film about a dystopian future where an eleven year old boy somehow holds the key to what seems to be some sort of war between vampires and humans.  Stars Milla Jovovich's midriff, with her bum in a small supporting role (get it?).

2/10.

Boru

"I live in a world you might not understand."  

Yeah, I kept thinking that all through the film.  Prophetic, that was.

Boru

The basic "Kill Hitler" plot. In spandex.