TV
9/3
Michael & Michael Have Issues Season 1 (Michael Ian Black & Michael Showalter, Comedy Central) - 7.0
Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are making a tv show, and having issues with each other all the time, and sometimes there are sketches. Not too amazing, but a lot of pretty funny stuff.
MOVIES
9/2
District 9 (2009, Neill Blomkamp, 35mm, Kabuki) - 8.0
An alien ship ends up suspended above Johannesburg, and all the aliens inside are removed and forced to live in the slums, segregated from human society for 20 years, and then a government agent accidentally sprays himself with some alien shit, and starts growing an alien arm (I don’t know why everyone considers this a spoiler, it should’ve been a selling point), and because of this new connection he has with them, he tries to help one of them get their ship working again so they can go home. There’s some decent action and effects, and an adorable child alien. I wasn’t as blown away by it as I had hoped to be, but it was a very good sci-fi movie.
9/4
Risky Business (1983, Paul Brickman, 35mm, Castro) - 9.0
Tom Cruise’s parents go out of town, and he hires a prostitute, who steals one of his mother’s belongings when he can’t pay her, so he tracks her down, and they end up becoming friends and helping each other out, and they throw a prostitute party. It’s really good, and Rebecca De Mornay is really fucking cute in it, and I loved the Tangerine Dream score that barely fits the movie and turns it into more of a drama than it needed to be.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Rewatch, 1982, Amy Heckerling, 35mm, Castro) - 11.0
Perfect 80’s high school comedy dealing with sex, dating, abortion, jobs, stoners, car crashes, and Phoebe Cates’ tits. This is one of 3 or 4 movies I’ve seen like a hundred times, and basically have memorized, but I still feel exhilarated while watching. As soon as I see the Universal logo, and hear the opening drumbeat from The Go-Go’s We Got the Beat, I start tearing up with excitement. Every performance and character is amazing, all the way down to the extras, and it goes through a year of high school life with brilliant pacing.
The Last American Virgin (Rewatch, 1982, Boaz Davidson, 35mm, Castro) - 9.0
Three high school friends try to find sex and love, usually unsuccessfully or with comical results. I realized on this viewing that the main character is actually really creepy. He becomes obsessed with a girl who he barely knows and who, at no point, shows any reciprocal interest in him. He seems delusional about some deep connection that they have, even though they’ve hardly spoken to one another, and he just kinda mopes about it for the whole movie, and continually tries to win her over, and gets mad about his asshole friend sleeping with her. It’s kind of a huge flaw in the movie, but it makes up for it by it’s bizarre change of pace 3/4 in. What starts as a retarded sex comedy ends traumatically with abortion and tears (which might have made a better title for the movie, or any movie). It’s really oft-putting and amazing.
9/6
The Final Destination (2009, David R. Ellis, RealD, Van Ness) - 10.0
A guy has a vision about himself and his friends getting killed at a racetrack, so he drags them out of there, along with a few other people. But Death is still after them, and it’s gonna fucking get them in the most absurd ways imaginable, usually through something flying at them or by something long and pointy, using the film’s 3D to it’s full potential. Like My Bloody Valentine earlier this year, I think this is a great movie regardless of how many dimensions it’s in, but the 3D definitely doesn't hurt, and adds a considerable amount to how fucking fun and amazing it was. The deaths are creative and knowingly hilarious, and it breezes along quickly, without ever settling down, reaching an incredibly satisfying climax a mere 80 perfect minutes in. There is one absolutely brilliant sequence that takes place in a movie theater showing a 3D movie, where a character exclaims “This is where I’m supposed to be. I was meant to see this movie.” mimicking my exact feelings in that moment. This movie seemed to have been made just for me, and I was meant to fucking see it. Erin described it as a “joyous celebration of retarded death.” Yes! Exactly. It is easily one of this year’s finest films.
9/9
Virtuosity (1995, Brett Leonard, 35mm, Balboa) - 8.5
Russell Crowe is a villain in a virtual reality game, and Denzel Washington is an imprisoned ex-cop who is forced to play the game all the time because that’s just something they do with prisoners in the future, and then the creator of the game finds a way to bring Russell Crowe into reality, for reasons I wasn’t very clear on, and sets him loose on the world to kill people and make club mixes of people screaming. It’s really good. Russell Crowe is ridiculous.
7/29 & 9/9
Johnny Mnemonic (1995, Robert Longo, Download/35mm, Balboa) - 9.5
Keanu Reeves has a bunch of computer storage space in his brain where there used to be memories of his childhood, and uses it to make money smuggling information, but his latest case ends up going way over his capacity (320 gigabytes, and he can only hold 160 with a booster), so he needs to get the shit out of there as soon as possible before it kills him, but he lost half of the download code during a Yakuza attack! This movie has an incredible cast. Keanu Reeves is in top form, and Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Udo Kier, Henry Rollins, and Beat Takeshi are all fucking amazing. The real standout here, though, is Dolph Lundgren, who is completely brilliant as a preacher who worships violence, and kills people with a knife shaped like a crucifix. Amazing. Everything about the movie is perfect and great, but I think when it really peaks is with the introduction of the junkie hacker dolphin. A fucking dolphin who is a code-breaking hacker and is addicted to some kind of drug that needs to be injected. Unfortunately, though, it turns out that the dolphin’s drug problem is only in the Extended Japanese Cut that I had downloaded, and was cut out of the US release. I learned this while watching the 35mm print that Omar bought and now owns for us to watch at any time. But even without the dolphin being a junkie, or the extra violence the Extended Version has, it’s still fucking great. This movie is the best.
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