Teeth

Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2008) - C

Tries to do two things with the vagina dentata concept: construct an allegory about a young woman learning to harness the power of her sexuality, and imply that the abstinence movement, such as it is, is grounded in a subconscious fear of sex. But the subtext is so obvious it's barely subtext, and the movie is overbearingly sarcastic and smug; Lichtenstein prefers to get laughs at the expense of his protagonist instead of taking her twisted psychology seriously, but his screenplay isn't that funny and Dawn is never convincing. Every guy she encounters is detestable in predictable ways (uber-Christian crush turns out to be a rapist; nerdy second choice a date rapist; gynecologist a pervert; don't even ask about the random guy who gives her a ride), and they all get their comeuppance in exactly the way you'd think, without question or much suspense. Not much of a horror movie -- Lichtenstein turns up the gore in the second half, but in an annoyingly self-satisfied way, trying hard to elicit horrified laugh-groans from the audience by (e.g.) lingering on a dog as it considers a severed penis (one of many in the film), picks it up, then spits half of it back out. (Eew. Why?) Everyone who's seen Teeth seems to be as enamored of its premise as Lichtenstein is, but I'm not buying. This is a huge, largely artless disappointment.

Love and Death

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) - A

Not sure I've ever seen a movie that takes so much joy in absurdity, really exemplified by the closing shot of Allen and the Grim Reaper jigging across the screen. Self-serious 19th Century Russian lit is vulnerable to the introduction of anything remotely modern, and Allen's sarcastic, hyperactive schlub is the perfect poison, dismantling the genre by introducing 20th Century neuroses (thereby also rebuffing, it seems to me, the view that Dostoyevsky et al. cannot be criticized except from the (necessarily imaginary) perspective of their contemporaries). Everything hits, from the straight-up Airplane!-style silliness ("No, YOU are Don Francisco's sister") to the often non sequitur wordplay ("Are you scared of dying?" "Scared is the wrong word. I'm frightened of it." "Interesting distinction.") to the bits that play more like Woody stand-up. Not a dull minute; endlessly energetic and pretty much perfect.

Silver Linings to the Strike

The obvious one, of course, is the cancellation of the Golden Globes, a.k.a. the gay second game of the Stanley Cup Finals. But one that would have flown under my radar had I not scanned Entertainment Weekly's terrible website this morning is that the only reality show I've ever enjoyed is coming back, baby.

As to the first point -- the "suck it, HFPA" point -- check out this fascinating Variety article on the collapse of the efforts to salvage the "ceremony." If nothing else, it makes it clear why the Globes are such a scam -- the last thing they were trying to save was the parties.

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 2004) - B+ [director's cut]

Fun to watch this again; everyone wrote it off as "goofy" three years ago, but I think people were actually responding to its brazenness, the extent to which it was willing to follow its premise to some genuinely (and perhaps incongruously) dark and unexpected places. Some of the small details are actually pretty silly (Evan's disturbing second-grade drawing looks like the work of a young Picasso; Kaylie's smooching her boyfriend just after a despondent and armless (!) Evan confesses his undying love seems a bit insensitive; Ashton Kuthcer is as intractable a presence as ever; etc., etc.) and there are serious metaphysical problems with the way the film plays out its time travel conceit (Why, aside from storytelling convenience, do all of the memories of the "newly created" Evan get "loaded" into the version of Evan that we've been following? Wouldn't his life have just continued uninterrupted all those years? The movie seems to assume that he has some sort of primary soul and that everything else is filler, which is a hell of an assumption.), but the movie's made with undeniable skill and a lot of guts; the "blackouts," in particular, are a terrific suspense device that's actually given some substance later on, and the way the script fills in the holes is neat, if not always perfectly logical. The new ending would have played into the hands of those who called the film goofy, but it packs a punch if you're willing to play along. I liked it then and I like it now.

I drink your milkshake

In an uncharacteristically half-assed rhetorical flourish, Mike D'Angelo claims that There Will Be Blood involves a "titanic battle between the worldly and the spiritual." This struck me as weirdly wrong-headed, since the spiritual never enters PT Anderson's masterpiece. It's clear to me that Anderson views Daniel and Eli as competing enterprises -- both surrender what principles they had (or claim to have had) for material gain, and then, in the film's view of capitalism, one has to destroy (or "eat") the other (hence the prophecy of the title). It's not clear whether Eli is sincere or a charlatan, and I don't think Anderson really cares, but there's certainly nothing "spiritual" about Eli as far as the movie is concerned. He's competition.

There are nuances and layers aplenty to the film, but I think the bird's eye view of it is actually a bit simpler than a lot of people are claiming. I could be wrong.