Superbad

In little more than a year I'll be 40. You'd think that coming-of-age teen sex comedies would be losing their appeal with me. Well, that all depends on how funny said teen sex comedy is. "Risky Business"? A classic that I've found stands the test of time. (Watching it as a married-with-kids adult for the first time was an unusual but pleasant experience.) "American Pie"? Dude, you stuck your dick in a pie! Now we have "Superbad", which is so damn funny I'll probably still enjoy it when I'm 70. I'll probably laugh so hard I dislodge my colostomy bag.

"Superbad" tells the story of Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), two virginal high school seniors trying to score alcohol for a big party in the hopes that it will help them get some sexual experience before college. Joined at the hip for years, Seth and Evan are also dealing with an accute case of separation anxiety, as they are heading to different colleges in the fall. When their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) produces one of the worst fake IDs in history (McLovin!) their plans begin to unravel into desperation, and it's all downhill from there. While Seth and Evan continue trying to score booze, Fogell winds up spending a wild night with two cops. Hilarity ensues. The cops, played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen (who also co-wrote), are two of the funniest cops in the history of cinema, right up there with the VT Highway Patrol in "Super Troopers".


Teen sex comedies live or die by their writing and the performances of the leads, and "Superbad" has both categories locked. The script is genuinely funny and even has a heart. The performances are comic gold. Jonah Hill shines as the desperately immature Seth, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse is so geeky he's almost cool. I've been a fan of Michael Cera since discovering "Arrested Development" in its second season, and its great to see him getting solid movie work. He reminds me of a young Bob Newhart, mild-mannered even when he's super pissed. Probably my favorite scene in the movie involves Evan (Cera) bitching out his unreliable cell phone, while his would-be girlfriend on the other end hears about every fourth word, essentially, "...fuck...fucking...piece of...unreliable...bitch slap you so fucking hard."

If you're young enough at heart to enjoy a good teen sex comedy, put "Superbad" on your list. It's a lot of funny, with solid writing and terrific comedic performances. It'll make you glad you're not a virgin anymore.

Oh, and the dick drawings are great. Absolutely inspired. Something like 8% of kids do it.

Zodiac (Director's Cut)

"I also killed those two kids last year. Goooooood-byyyyyyyyye."

From the late 1960s to the mid-1970s a deranged killer known only as the Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco area. He called the police to report his own crimes. He sent ciphers and taunting letters to both the police and local newspapers. He was never caught. To this day his identity remains unproven.

David Fincher's movie "Zodiac" is not a typical serial killer movie. It has almost nothing in common with Fincher's own "Se7en", save the quality of the finished film. "Zodiac" is not a suspense-driven police chase movie, nor is it a gore-fest that focuses on the commission of Zodiac's crimes. It is a taut, intelligent, and detailed police procedural. For that reason alone it will not appeal to the entire crime film audience. This is a movie that requires your attention, almost as if you are investigating the Zodiac case yourself. If you can focus for the nearly 2:45 running time and follow the many threads of the investigation, "Zodiac" is a highly-rewarding movie. If you're looking to switch your brain off and watch a bunch of cops running around dark alleys with their guns drawn, keep on truckin'.


Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, the movie's main character. Graysmith was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac began sending the paper his taunting letters and ciphers. (He also wrote the book the movie is based on and borrows its title from.) A puzzle enthusiast, Graysmith was immediately fascinated with Zodiac. Throughout the movie his fascination evolves into full-blown obsession. Likewise, Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery (an excellent and somewhat reserved Robert Downey Jr.) is drawn into the investigation, both professionally and personally after Zodiac singles Avery out in one of his letters. The straight-laced Graysmith and hard-drinking Avery team up in their search for Zodiac's identity, and their excitement is palpable, effectively driving a movie that could easily have been bogged down with the extensive details of the case.

The police investigation into Zodiac is also examined in rich detail. Mark Ruffalo plays SFPD homicide inspector David Toschi, a dedicated cop who, along with partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), devotes years of his life to the Zodiac case. Through them we get a glimpse of what real police work involves: interviewing witnesses (often multiple times), investigating every scrap of physical evidence, and coordinating with neighboring police departments in an age where inter-departmental cooperation was inconsistent at best. Fincher and his fine troup of actors take us along for the entire ride: the emotional high of finding a promising suspect and building a strong case against him, the devestation of having the suspect cleared by physical evidence, and the intense frustration of watching the case grow cold as the years tick by. Real police work is seldom glamorous, and the movie makes no attempt to sugar-coat the tediousness of a difficult and complex investigation.


The Zodiac case was incredibly hard on all the major players, as alluded to by the movie poster's tag line. More than anything else this movie is about that seldom acknowledged human cost, the personal and professional lives of those in the closest orbit to the Zodiac case. That's the film's heart. It's brain is its presentation of the Zodiac investigation, which is both highly detailed and relatively easy to follow. Repeat viewings are highly rewarding because the case is so complicated--you're bound to notice specifics you overlooked in previous screenings. The characters hold up to repeat viewings as well. They are real people and are depicted as three-dimensional human beings with strengths and weaknesses, not simplistic Hollywood stereotypes. The cast is outstanding throughout, and includes notable performances by the likes of Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch, Chloe Sevigny, Elias Koteas, Philip Baker Hall, and Charles Fleischer (aka the voice of Roger the Rabbit, aka Carvelli on "Welcome Back, Kotter", in a particularly creepy turn).

"Zodiac" is a movie I wanted to catch in the theater, but failed. (See this blog's first post.) I recently grabbed it in beautiful 1080p hi-def, and I'm glad I did. This is a gripping mature drama that rewards the effort you put into watching it. As an added bonus, it has caused me to pick up Robert Graysmith's book, which has sat unread on my bookshelf for several years, and start reading. If you have any interest in serial killers (above the blood-n-guts angle) or criminal justice proceedures, both film and book are highly reccommended.

Damn good stuff.

1st Review: The Simpsons, Seasons 1-19

As God as my witness, I thought this was a live-action show.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to One Man's Flix. This blog will be the dedicated outlet for me to satisfy my bizarre need to review movies I see whether I get paid to do so or not. Like the tagline says, I am not a professional movie reviewer. I'm just a hack. You could do this too, and why aren't you?

A little about myself. I am a husband and step-father with limited expendable income. I live in central Vermont, where less than 10 years ago it was impossible to see a theatrical movie in anything more grandiose than muddy 2-channel audio on a worn old screen that nobody cared enough about to maintain. I'm happy to say that Vermont has emerged from the movie-going dark ages and now features theaters with modern technology, run by people who care about their patrons' experience. Still, with a wife and two kids it can be hard to get out to the theater as much as I'd like. (It goes something like this: 4 tickets + 4 concessions = yikes!; 2 tickets + 2 concessions + baby sitting = not much better.) When I do get to the theater, it's not always to see a movie I have chosen. For example, I probably won't make it to see Grindhouse because the next few months are going to be a very kid-centric movie season: Shrek the Third, the next Harry Potter, the next Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. I'm happy to see each of them, but left totally to my own choice I'd probably sacrifice one of them to see Grindhouse. But that would be selfish.

Enter Netflix, the best thing to happen to home video since the defeat of the CSS copy protection scheme. Video stores are nice, and I've lived near a couple of terrific ones with great staffs and funky selections, but let's face it--most of them have the same assortment of big-name Hollywood fare (though never on the night you want it) and a poor selection of smaller titles and older fare. Netflix to a movie-loving Vermonter is like Randall walking into Big Choice Video in Clerks--the jaw drops at the sheer wonder of it all. Theatrical movies have to be planned according to budget, time off, and weather. For one monthly fee Netflix is always there with a new movie--all I have to do is send one back. It's the Tao of Netflix: to receive, one needs only to give back. But why am I wearing the watermelons on my feet?

On this site I will review movies, TV shows, music videos, comedy performances, stand-up tragedy, that video of a log burning in a fireplace, pretty much anything they shovel onto a DVD. Anything Netflix carries is fair game, naturally. If you're still here you've no doubt noticed the Netflix queue feed showing off my next 5 selections. If you're wondering what articles you'll see here in the near future, that's a pretty good indicator. My Netflix rentals come two at a time. We have the 4-at-home plan, and my wife has her own queue (even split of 2 each) for herself and the kids. My goal is to review each title I get from Netflix, along with whatever I manage to see at the theater. I'll sometimes review something from my wife's queue, but she gets plenty of stuff I don't watch, so I won't include her queue here. For example, right now she has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from the '80s at home for the kids. I'm not going to review that. I didn't want to watch it in 1985 and I don't want to watch it now. I might, however, randomly pull a DVD off my own shelves and review it for no good reason. Don't think I won't! I'll do it, man!

To paraphrase one of the rules of Fight Club, reviews will go on as long as they have to. I fully expect them to range in length from one word to something Coleridge would've written while on mescaline. It's unreasonable for me to expect myself to write a feature-length review of every single DVD I get from Netflix, but I can write something, some critical acknowledgement of time spent. And then you can read it. What you do with it from there is up to you and not really any of my business, unless you decide to post a comment about it. Like I said before, I'm just a hack. A hack with a blog.

Welcome to One Man's Flix.