Kids These Days: Some Nights, Reviewed

by Chris Marshall:

Greetings, dear readers. I know it’s been ages since I posted anything. I’ve got an excuse, sort of, in that I stopped posting regularly right around the time I took on a new position at my job that required me to write 17 articles every week, and after all that, I never really felt like writing anything else.

But the itch has struck me again. Those work articles are often interesting, but they are formulaic, and I never get to write freely. So here I am again with the first (and hopefully not last) entry in a new blog series idea I came up with, which I’m calling Kids These Days.

It all started about a week ago, when I was reading Entertainment Weekly’s preview of the Grammys, which will have aired earlier tonight, by the time this post goes up. I was looking through the nominees, and I realized that, not only had I never listened to any of them, I’d never even heard of quite a few of them.

So I Broke My Kneecap, Pt. II

by Mike Hanus:

I should note that I’ve been hesitant to write part II-it’s a lot less funny, and a lot more drugs and sleep and vomiting.

Anyway, after a good bit of time waiting in the ER I was finally transferred to my room. At this point it was about 9:30pm and I hadn’t eaten since 10am. I had only until midnight to eat, because of whatever complications that come from eating too close to anesthesia. Amanda, my nurse, was a rockstar. We went over the basic stuff, and she answered all my questions, including whether I could wear contacts during surgery (no) and how to use the restroom-which involved a convenient little bottle that you clipped to the side of the bed. “Just sort of tilt over and use it, or however guys go.” It attached to the trademarked “Uri-Clip” that hung on the side of the bed. This was all very exciting. I am also buying one for my home.

The bed itself I was laying in was pretty crazy. It could do all the leg and back raises I ever needed, and came with a nice remote that turned on the TV and called the nurse. Moving a piece of the bed up or down activated the jet engine under the bed, which would rattle the windows, raise me half an inch, and then stay on for 10 extra minutes and sometimes randomly lift and lower my lower back.

So, I Broke My Kneecap Pt. I

by Mike Hanus:

"A patella looks like a cookie. Yours is cracked in two." - Dr. Quackenbush.

On Monday, February 4th, around 6pm, I broke my kneecap. I decided to write this to record this major life event, organize my thoughts, and be able to say "you mean you haven't read my blog?!" when people see me walking around on crutches. It contains some gross details, lots of drug references, and a lot of exaggeration concerning my toughness. Let's begin.

On Monday I went to the gym with my grad school buddy Carlos to play basketball. In the locker room, as we were changing, I ran into a current student I had. It's always terrible to run into students at the gym, because any chance of authority I may have built up is instantly ruined as they see me flailing around on the court, my entire shirt covered in sweat about 20 minutes in, and in this case, my pale and soft stomach (which, of course, I sucked in).

Ruptured Reasoning: ATM (2012)

by Chris Marshall:

Director: David Brooks

Cast: Alice Eve, Josh Peck, Brian Geraghty

Netflix Synopsis: When three coworkers make a midnight stop at a glass-enclosed ATM after their Christmas party, they find themselves trapped by a menacing man outside. Soon they're fighting for their survival as the temperature plunges and the man toys with them.

Chris: I’ve watched a lot of movies this year. Like, a whole lot. Most were quite good, thanks to The Oscar Project, where even the “bad” entries tended to be of a pretty high caliber. I’ve seen some really bad ones as well (I’m looking at you, Project X). But purely in terms of realism, Project X looked like a documentary in comparison to ATM, which hinged entirely on the stupidity of its main characters.

This isn’t exactly a revolutionary phenomenon. Roger Ebert, in his Little Movie Glossary, refers to it as the Idiot Plot: “A plot that requires all the characters to be idiots. If they weren't, they'd immediately figure out everything and the movie would be over.”

Ruptured Reasoning: The Burrowers (2008)

by Chris Marshall:

Director: J.T. Petty

Cast: Clancy Brown, David Busse

Netflix Synopsis: When the men on a pioneer homestead are brutally murdered and the women and children go missing, a posse sets out to find them, assuming they've been abducted by Indians. But they soon discover that the truth is much more horrific.

Chris: I was mostly interested in The Burrowers because it fell into a genre I had never seen before: horror western. I guess I just hadn’t ever thought about it before, but I realized I couldn’t really think of any other examples of the genre. I’m sure it exists—Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series could sort of be considered horror western, I suppose—but I had never seen such a movie.

As it turned out, the film had plenty to offer outside the peculiarity of its subject matter. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. Sure, there were some flaws, but for a movie that never saw a theatrical release, it was quite well made.

Ruptured Reasoning: The Final (2010)

by Chris Marshall:

Director: Joey Stewart

Cast: Mark Donato, Jascha Washington, Whitney Hoy

Netflix Synopsis: Unpopular high school student Dane leads a group of outcasts seeking revenge on the "cool" kids who harassed and humiliated them for years, and their plan includes gruesome forms of torture learned in history class and horror films.

Chris: Whew. There is one good thing about this movie. It allowed me to do some expert-level trolling of Justin after it was over. Other than that, it was an abomination.

I almost don’t even have the energy to write about it. This is everything that’s wrong with America. This is everything with wrong with humanity. There is no redeeming value, only a glorification of evil. I really wonder who gave this project the go-ahead. What kind of person thought this would be even slightly okay?

Ruptured Reasoning: The Innkeepers (2011)

by Chris Marshall:

Director: Ti West

Cast: Sara Paxton, Pat Healty, Alison Bartlett

Netflix Synopsis: In this eerie ghost story, a venerable inn closes after a century in business and the two remaining employees are determined to uncover the truth about longtime rumors that the majestic mansion is haunted -- but will they survive their explorations?

CHRIS: I was mentioning to Justin a night or two ago that, even with no conscious planning on our part, our first few movies in this series had all been completely different styles of horror. Pontypool was zombies, The Snowtown Murders had serial killers, Crawlspace kind of fell into 80’s slasher territory, Vile was a torture movie, and Eyes Without a Face was a classic old-school movie. We were pretty much just missing ghosts, monsters, and vampires.

Ruptured Reasoning: Vile (2012)

by Chris Marshall: 

Director: Taylor Sheridan

Cast: April Matson, Akeem Smith

Netflix Synopsis: Ten[1] captives have 24[2] hours to mount an escape from a locked room[3], but they must endure excruciating pain to win their freedom.

Chris: I went into last night’s film, Vile, with the absolute lowest expectations. I’d never heard of it in my life, and the synopsis made it sound like a complete Saw rip-off. Which I suppose it kind of was, but it was so much better than I ever would have anticipated.

It was not a great film, by any means, and I’d even say that “good” is a stretch. But it was very entertaining, and I have no regrets at all about my choice. When it comes to movies where people torture each other for an hour and a half, you can do way worse.

The plot is simple enough. Nine people wake up and find themselves trapped in a house. It’s dirty and dingy, but in every other way it’s just like any other home. There aren’t any of the typical horror movie trappings, except for a large video screen, where a pre-recorded message tells them what they have to do to get out, and steel doors preventing them from escaping.

Ruptured Reasoning: The Snowtown Murders (2011)

by Chris Marshall:

In case you missed the first post in this series over at Movie Coda, my roommate Justin and I are going to watch a horror movie each day until Halloween and write our thoughts about it. Any kind of horror is fair game, but the films must be available either on Netflix Instant or Hulu Plus. Each day we will alternate blogs, but I’ll link to the previous day’s post on here as well.

Sometimes we’ll have conflicting opinions, and sometimes we’ll agree. We’re not playing the game where we each take a different side of the argument. In other words, I’ll always have the correct opinion about each film, and every once in a while, when he agrees with me, Justin will be right too.

My first pick was The Snowtown Murders, a rare horror biopic. I had wanted to see it when it was in the theater in Ohio, but it had such a short run that I never made it. We’ll see if it was worth our while.

Ranking the Best Picture Winners: The Top Five

by Chris Marshall:

Although I now wish I would have done them all at one time, I held off on revealing my five favorite Best Picture winners in the last post. At the time, I didn’t expect it to be another 10 days before I posted them, but, you know, the Olympics happened, and I stopped having any time to do anything else. But now it’s time, at long last, to finish the list.

Ranking the Best Pictures, Part Three: 28-6

by Chris Marshall:

Finally, at long last, we come to the Tier One movies. The best of the best. The cream of the crop. Again, it’s really, really long, so I’m going to get straight into it. The shortest one of these rankings posts is still 500 words longer than the previous longest Oscar Project post, and it’s 1,000 words longer than the average.

In case you missed them, here are links for parts one and two:
Part One: #84 through #57
Part Two: #56 through #29

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Ranking the Best Pictures, Part Two: 56-29

by Chris Marshall:

I realized a little too late yesterday that these articles are going to be super long, so I’m just going to jump right into the rankings. Tier two movies commence!

In case you missed it, here's part one, which ranks the winners from 84 to 57.

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Ranking the Best Pictures, Part One: 84-57

by Chris Marshall:

At long last, it’s time for the Ultimate Best Picture Winner List! I’m going to post these over the next three days, 28 movies at a time. Before I get into it, I just want to point out that there were very few of these I disliked. Ok, I probably disliked most of the movies in today’s post, but even those ranked in the 50s and 60s aren’t that bad. They’re just comparatively worse than many of the top-ranked films.

All right, that’s enough of a preface. This post is going to be long enough as it is. Let’s get into it, shall we?

The Oscar Project Coda: Best of the 2000s/Best Decades

by Chris Marshall:

It is so, so strange not having any more Oscar winners to watch. I mean, I guess I could go back and watch all the nominees, but there’s a limit to my masochism. Besides, there are no existing prints of one of the early nominees, so I would always feel like there’s something missing. On the other hand, I am very much looking forward to watching movies that are more fun, more offbeat, and more interesting than the standard Oscar fare.

Most Best Picture winners are obviously high-caliber films, but the Academy virtually never picks anything that comes out of left field. I complained in my last post about people who called The Artist a safe pick. I stand by what I said, simply because by Best Picture standards, it was actually quite a bold choice. But compared to what exists out there in the wide world of cinema, it’s pretty tame.

The Oscar Project #84: The Artist (2011)

by Chris Marshall:

I think the symmetry between the first and most recent Best Picture winners is absolutely perfect. Way back in 1927, Wings became the first film to win the top award at the Oscars, and as it turned out, it was the only silent picture to ever win… until this year.

Yes, in some sense, The Artist is not a true silent film. There are moments of sound and even color in the movie, but I have to imagine it’s the closest we’ll ever get to it again. And in another fitting connection, The Artist was set in 1927, the year Wings came out. I know this symmetry only exists because I happened to choose to do The Oscar Project this year, but it almost seems pre-ordained.

I do have to admit that I prefer this year’s winner to the first one, as much as I’ve defended the quality of some (thought definitely not all) of those early winners. But that’s mostly because The Artist is a very good film, finely crafted and well-acted. It didn’t win because it was a gimmick. I wouldn’t say it was the best movie of 2011—that title goes to Drive, based on what I’ve seen from last year—but it was certainly one of the best.

The Oscar Project #83: The King's Speech (2010)

by Chris Marshall:

It’s hard to believe that I’m at a point in The Oscar Project where I’m watching a movie that I originally saw in a theater in Ohio. While watching The King’s Speech, my main thought was, “Didn’t I just see this?” It has, amazingly, been a year and a half now, but it still seemed so fresh in my memory.

I genuinely enjoyed the film, both this time and the first time, but I also believe it was nowhere close to the best movie of its year. I thought that honor went to The Social Network, and I say that even though I hate, hate, hate Aaron Sorkin. But there’s nothing wrong with The King’s Speech, and it certainly feels like the type of movie that the Academy loves.

It recounts the true story of George VI’s[1] struggle with his stuttering problem and his efforts to overcome it, at least to a great enough extent that he could deliver speeches when World War II broke out. His speech impediment was quite severe, and it was made worse considering how, shall we say, insensitive people were back then. If you look back at the Best Picture winners from the 1930s, you will often see stutterers portrayed as the bumbling comic relief.

The Oscar Project #82: The Hurt Locker (2009)

by Chris Marshall:

In 2009, a war film once again won Best Picture, and like all the previous winners, it focuses on a small group of individuals rather than providing any broader context for the events depicted. This time around, our protagonists are members of a bomb squad in Iraq, faced with the extremely dangerous task of defusing IEDs.

We spend an extensive period of time with three different characters, but the true focus of the film is on William James (Jeremy Renner), who takes over as head of the squad when the previous leader (Guy Pearce) is obliterated by a remotely detonated bomb[1]. James seems like a normal enough guy at first, but it soon becomes apparently that there is something a little off about him. It’s as if he cherishes the thrill of his job.

That’s a positive characteristic in many occupations, but when your job entails a significant risk of dying every time you do it, it can be a little unsettling, especially if you are one of the guys with the duty of protecting him. Making matters worse is that James is not much of a communicator, going so far as to remove his headset during one mission.

The Oscar Project #81: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

by Chris Marshall:

On the surface, a movie about trivia seems like it would be perfect for me. I’ve virtually dedicated my life to the pursuit of becoming a great trivia player[1]. Then again, Slumdog Millionaire is no more about playing trivia than No Country for Old Men was about finding a briefcase full of money. It’s a love story, and the game show plot is only a contrivance to facilitate the real point of the film.

Jamal Malik finds himself on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and stuns the world (well, at least India) by advancing all the way to the final, 20 million rupee question. The buzzer sounds, though, meaning he will have to wait until the next night to see the question. Immediately after walking out of the studio, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating.

Why does he seem so suspicious? He’s from the slums and has extremely little formal education. How, then, could he possibly advance so far when doctors, lawyers, and professors can’t advance past the 16,000 rupee question? After some rudimentary torture at the hands of the police, he explains how he knew each answer.

The Oscar Project #80: No Country for Old Men (2007)

by Chris Marshall:

Even though it is starkly different from most of their earliest movies, No Country for Old Men is one of the finest Coen Brothers films. It takes a very serious, somber tone, but it would be a mistake to say there are no laughs; they are just of a much different variety than typically seen in their past work.

But that makes sense. This is by no means a comedy—Cormac McCarthy has never been considered much of a jokester. Instead, its goal is no less than to personify Evil in the character of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Is he human? Is he a monster? Some combination of the two?

He actually reminds me in many ways of Leonard Smalls, the biker from Raising Arizona. They both seem to appear out of nowhere and take joy in killing the innocent. Even animals aren’t spared. Smalls blows away a rabbit and a lizard as he rides down the highway; Chigurh shoots at a crow with his shotgun. Both of them seem, paradoxically, more and less than human simultaneously. Chigurh appears completely unfazed by pain. Even he’s limping or otherwise physically impaired, his face betrays nothing.

The Oscar Project #79: The Departed (2006)

by Chris Marshall:

At this point in The Oscar Project, it’s hard to summon up much excitement about the last few films. It has nothing to do with their quality—all the remaining movies range from good to great—but rather the realization that there’s nothing new left to watch. The true point of this endeavor was to give me motivation to watch all the Best Picture winners I’ve never seen, and now that there are none of those left, it feels like I’m just going through the motions.

That’s not to say I won’t finish; I would have to be a crazy person to quit at this point, something I have no intention of doing. But it is true that I’m more looking forward to the Director/Franchise/Genre of the Week posts than I am the last few Oscar winners, simply because those are all movies I haven’t seen before.

That’s enough navel-gazing for one post, though. Let’s move on to the film. The Departed is a very good movie, both in terms of its technical merit and how enjoyable it is to watch. I don’t, however, believe it achieves the same level of greatness as some of his previous films that were unfairly passed over for Best Picture, such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.