SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features VII - Fighting Fascists Double

One of these movies caused an international incident and was pulled from most theaters. The other played a month after the 2016 election, when America had just elected its own fascist.

The Interview (2014) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 16 (2014)

Trailers: American Ultra, Team America: World Police

Haters gonna hate. And ainters gonna ain’t. We saw this at BNAT riiiiiight before the shit hit the fan – three days before all the theaters started pulling the movie. So this turned out to be one of the more infamous screenings of the event, although there’s not much in the film that is actually infamous. The plot revolves around a celebrity talk show host who gets the opportunity to interview North Korean president Kim Jong-un; meanwhile, the CIA sees this as a chance to "take him out." Some aspects of this movie aren’t as funny now as they were eight years ago (not in an offensive way, just a bit stale), but it mines its pop culture references better than most comedies. The skewering of “celebrity news” is as sharp as ever, though. It also brought the term “honey-dick” into all of our lives, and for that I am grateful. And on a personal note, because of this fanfic, I laughed way harder at “you just got f***ed by Robocop” than anyone else.

#theyhateuscuztheyaintus

'Pimpernel' Smith (1941) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 18 (the last, 2016)

Trailers: The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Great Dictator

BNAT 18 was about a month after the 2016 election and some feared it would be the last BNAT – which would turn out to be true, but not for the reason suspected. In any case, after living through that election and facing at least four years in which America’s worst person was going to be in charge, this movie was something I needed very much. Directed by Leslie Howard, who also stars, this movie takes the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel (which Howard also played previously) and places him (or rather a Cambridge professor facsimile) in WW2, where he surreptitiously helps artists, scientists and other notable figures escape Nazi Germany. There's a romantic element that I loved, particularly as Smith seems to have a lot in common with Pygmalion (Howard also previously played GB Shaw's version of *that* character -- better known as Henry Higgins). The final scene is incredible, particularly the “You are doomed” speech. Howard’s practiced aloofness makes the movie funnier than you might expect, given the subject matter. And his character is practically porn for sapiosexuals like myself.

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features VI - Bros on a Mission Double

"Men on a mission" has been a time-honored trope of adventure movies since just about the beginning of movies. And today's movies are a couple of great ones.

(No link to a BNAT 17 LJ post because I did not attend that year; I did an HPNAT with a friend that weekend instead.)

Gunga Din (1939) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 17 (2015)

Trailers: Soldiers Three, Kelly’s Heroes

There’s no doubt this movie is well made and that the actors are great in it. And the story is certainly well told. But the story itself gets on my nerves, not only because of what it has to say about the Indian people (not to mention that Gunga Din is portrayed as a hero for betraying them) but also because the whole story only happens because these soldiers want to see some action (which they think will convince their friend to not get married and stay in the army – which is actually what ends up happening!) and so that Cary Grant’s character can steal some gold. These three/four guys just go off half-cocked and write checks the British Army has to cash. It all seems so unnecessary to me. Having said that, I do love this movie in spite of itself. It has also obviously inspired many other filmmakers, perhaps especially George Lucas, who based Jar-Jar Binks on the title character (even giving his race the name "Gungan") and apparently originally planned to give Jar-Jar a similar character arc. The extreme backlash to the character convinced him to drop it. This one is a classic, but with a LOT of asterisks. Hardly the only one of these to play BNAT (or indeed this week’s doubles).

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 5 (2003) (Theatrical Cut)

Trailers: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

(Please note that the BNAT 5 post linked above was written in 2003, when I felt somewhat differently about the final film and before most of us had learned many unpleasant things about its director.)

This one is well into the mission, but a mission nonetheless (I didn't have time for all three). Another one about which everything has already been said (and I’ve said plenty myself in other places). Yes, I watched the theatrical cut because it’s the one we saw at BNAT (and Wahleecon, incidentally -- still LOLing at "His name is Faramir," Emily). Don’t worry; I’ve seen the extended edition many many times. My favorite moments are still the lighting of the beacons (*happiest sobs*) and that silent moment with the hobbits in the Green Dragon at the end, but there are so many more noteworthy and iconic moments that it is fruitless to even start listing them. I do feel the need to shout-out both the Pelennor Fields battle sequence and the Black Gate battle sequence as absolute master classes in editing and the way they both push forward ALL of the competing story threads and character beats more effectively than just about any action movie (or any other kind) I’ve ever seen. And I love watching the credits roll with Alan Lee's excellent drawings of the cast, remembering how the whole room at BNAT 5 applauded each name like it was a curtain call. Well, except John Noble, poor guy. Fringe didn't exist yet and most people only knew him as this shitty father. :P

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features V - Family Values Double

I hope I haven't opened a portal to a dark dimension by watching these two back-to-back.

Night Warning (1981) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 4 (2002)

Trailers: Next of Kin (1982), Pieces

Still probably my favorite vintage movie that played at any BNAT. There is no reason for this to be as good as it is. A former “video nasty” powered by two absolutely unhinged performances (Susan Tyrrell and, to a lesser degree, Bo Svenson), it’s part slasher, part after-school special. It’s also an uncharacteristically sympathetic (certainly for the time) portrayal of gay characters. Coach Landers is the real hero of the movie and it’s the homophobes who are the villains. It starts with an almost Final Destination-esque action/horror sequence. It has one of my favorite lines EVER (“College is for rich kids and people with brains. You wouldn’t fit in there.”). And every single moment after Aunt Cheryl cuts her hair is 24 karat GOLD. I finally cracked the seal on my Code Red Blu of this, and it looks incredible (though I'm still partial to the VHS version, which seems like the most appropriate way to experience this).

Toys Are Not for Children (1972) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 6 (2004)

Trailers: The Corruption of Chris Miller, Angel (1984)

I’m always surprised by how thoughtful and artistic this actually is because I always lump it in with other exploitation movies and the story seems ripe for exploitation. But as shocking as so much of this movie is, it takes its characters and story dead serious. And the filmmakers are flexing their muscles and being inspired by all the new wave films coming out of the 60s, which you can see in the editing and the nonlinear storytelling. (I just had a thought that this would make an interesting double with Poor Pretty Eddie, but I don’t think I could bring myself to do it. :P) I recently got the Blu-ray, which really brings out how beautiful and colorful it is. Marcia Forbes, in her only film role, gives a genuinely great performance and plays the lead role with a childlike naivety that is never over-the-top or a joke. The ending is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve EVER seen. Still. Unforgettable.

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features IV - "Woke Nonsense" Double

Remember when movies were pure entertainment and didn't have all that woke crap? Yeah, me either. Here are a couple that ring my SJW bells.

Inherit the Wind (1960) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 8 (2006)

Trailers: 12 Angry Men, Judgment at Nuremberg

I first saw this 16 years ago, and I wish it were not even more relevant now than it was then. Based on the stage play, it’s a fictionalization of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and -- having come out in 1960 -- a pointed response to the McCarthy era. Spencer Tracy and Fredric March are titans, obviously, and Gene Kelly is an amusing sort of troll in this. But the standout for me is Dick York, who plays the beleaguered schoolteacher on trial for breaking the law by teaching evolution. Nonetheless, Tracy gets all the good dialogue (though Kelly’s “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is truly a gem), and his questioning of March’s character on the witness stand is legendary. The only strange thing to me is what’s so special about sour apple trees – the mob is determined to hang every heathen on one.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 12 (2010)

Trailers: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

If the only version of this story you’ve ever seen is the Disney version (which I also love, in its own way), you should check this one out. Not quite as depressing as Hugo’s novel but much closer to it than the Disney film, which can barely touch on the darkness of the story (though wow, Frollo’s song “Hellfire” certainly goes there). Charles Laughton as Quasimodo gives one of the all-time great performances, conveying so much through heavy makeup and not much dialogue. While the protagonist of the novel is Esmeralda, most adaptations center more on Quasimodo, and this film is no exception – though one could argue the poet Gringoire is a secondary protagonist and gives the movie most of its message. This is such a wonderful movie, and there are few moments more triumphant than Quasimodo’s rescue of Esmeralda from the gallows. Just as there are few things more heartbreaking than the movie's final moments.

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features III - "All Out of Bubblegum" Double

Today's movies have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And they're all out of bubblegum.

The Dragon Lives Again (1977) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 15 (2013)

Trailers: Sting of the Dragon Masters; Fist of Fear, Touch of Death

I love this wild-ass movie. One of many “Brucesploitation” movies to come out in the wake of Bruce Lee’s death, this one sees "Bruce Lee" arriving in the afterlife. They explain that when you die, your body changes, which is why our Bruce Lee doesn’t look like the real one. Off-brand Bruce meets a bunch of other off-brand cultural icons (James Bond, The Godfather, Popeye, Caine from Kung Fu, Dracula, The Exorcist, and even Emmanuelle). Bruce teams up with some of them and fights against others, and the whole thing is peppered with Bruce Lee dick jokes. Two drawbacks to this rewatch. First, this is a movie best experienced with a group, which made my solo viewing not as awesome as it could have been. Second, this movie is in dire need of a higher-quality home version. The DVD is ripped from a VHS and it is near unwatchable.

Kick-Ass (2010) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 11 (2009)

Trailers: Lucky Seven, Kingsman

This was such a blast to see at BNAT and I still remember all the beats we went nuts for all those years ago. After recently seeing Thor: Love and Thunder and its use of “November Rain,” I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sadness that that needle drop couldn’t be used in this movie (that and “Planet Krypton” as Dave looks at himself in the mirror with the suit on – both music cues were part of the working print we saw). I still can’t get over all the pearl-clutching from when this movie first came out from people who did not understand the tone of this movie at all. Maybe the biggest change between when I first saw this and today’s rewatch is that I have become a devoted Sparks fan in the years since. I did not like “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” at ALL when I heard it in this movie. It was too weird and I didn’t understand the lyrics and what was that falsetto all about ... bleh. I can’t tell you how differently I feel now. In a movie full of happy moments, hearing the opening strains of that song is one of my happiest.

Side Note: If you've never seen it, by all means check out the trailer for Lucky Seven, which I played before Kick-Ass and which is one of the more hilarious and insane trailers I've ever seen for a mind-bogglingly brutal kids movie.

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features II - Ambiguous Baddies Double

I love a good complex character who challenges my expectations of whether I'm supposed to root for them or not, and today's movies have some great ambiguous baddies.

I've also included links to my old LJ posts about the relevant BNATs, where they're mentioned underneath the photos. You know, in case you really need a life. :P (I didn't do it for yesterday's post because I didn't attend either of those BNATs.)

Pickup on South Street (1953) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 9 (2007)

Trailers: The Naked Kiss, Night and the City

This is an interesting Cold War noir from Samuel Fuller. Jean Peters plays Candy, a woman who is running an errand for her ex-boyfriend and is unaware that she is actually passing sensitive information to the Russians. Things get even more complicated when her wallet (containing the item she was to deliver) is stolen by a pickpocket (played by Richard Widmark). Widmark and Peters are both excellent, but the absolute MVP of this movie is Thelma Ritter in maybe her best role – the stool pigeon (and necktie saleswoman) Moe, who’s saving up money for her funeral. This is genuinely great, and a rare noir that has a relatively happy ending.

The Professionals (1966) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 7 (2005)

Trailers: The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen

Ralph Bellamy assembles a team of tough guys to rescue his wife from a Mexican revolutionary-turned-bandit (played by Jack Palance). We follow Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan as they face all kinds of obstacles to get to the woman in question (played by Claudia Cardinale). As one might expect, things turn out to be more complicated than they bargained for, both in terms of the trouble they experience trying to complete the job and the question of whether the woman needs rescuing in the first place (and from whom). This is a great movie, maybe my favorite Lee Marvin role. And he has an incredible final line in the movie, delivering one of the sickest burns I’ve ever heard.

 

SUMMERFEST '22: BNAT Fave Double Features I -- Musical Double

Whatever my feelings (and I have many) about the person who founded Butt-Numb-A-Thon, the fact is that the times I went were some of my favorite moviegoing experiences ever. So I wanted to do a week of rewatches of some of my favorite movies that screened there. Of course, with somewhere around 200 movies that played BNAT over the years, there's a lot to narrow down. So I picked one movie from each year and paired them up into double features -- which left four movies out in the cold, so sorry to BNATs 3, 10, 13 and 14 that I couldn't represent you.

I'm kicking off today with a Musical Double.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 1 (1998)

Trailers: Phantom of the Opera (1962), This Is Spinal Tap

I love this movie more every time I see it. The music, the style, Jessica Harper’s weirdo dancing … everything is just on my wavelength. While this is William Finley’s story, Paul Williams is the real star of this show. He’s not only the co-star but he composed all of the music, including several incredible songs (not a new thing for the guy who wrote Rainbow Connection, Evergreen, and We’ve Only Just Begun, among many other classics). Maybe my favorite bit (and one of the most impressive musical moments) is when his character, Swan, is auditioning acts to sing Leech’s cantata at the Paradise. We see five or six different artists/groups and Williams is deliberately parodying all of these very specific musical styles of the time. The story is part Phantom of the Opera, part Faust, part Dorian Gray, and I love once the story is finished, the movie just spins into decadent chaos. That’s the hell of it.

Wonder Bar (1934) (rewatch)

Played at BNAT 2 (1999)

Trailers: Grand Hotel, Dames

This movie was ahead of its time in a lot of ways and incredibly backward in at least one ginormous one. It reminds me a lot of Grand Hotel, which came out two years before, in that it has several disparate characters and storylines -- some melodramatic, some comedic, some heartbreaking -- that all converge on one central location. This, however, is also a musical, with a handful of musical numbers choreographed and directed by Busby Berkeley. And hoo boy, the last one of those is unforgettable. “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” is one of the most staggeringly racist things you’ll ever see in a movie, with basically a laundry list of Black stereotypes – dancing watermelons, pork chops growing on trees, and oh yeah … lots of blackface (including on CHILDREN). I don't think there is a single actual Black person in this movie, just dozens of white people in blackface. I mean, I love this movie as a whole, but sometimes you see something and you have to take a minute to process that yes, this is a thing that exists.

Final Girl Film Club - Frozen

February's Final Girl Film Club is the ski lift chiller (*rimshot*) Frozen.


BRRRRRRRRR!

I'm tweaking a previous review here, but giving it a bit more context. I was fortunate enough to see this at Butt-Numb-A-Thon (BNAT) in Austin (held at the Alamo Drafthouse) in December 2009, about a month before it made a more official bow at Sundance. This film played roughly 2/3 of the way through our 24-hour cinematic journey (roughly 2am) - the 8th film out of a total 12 - and was sandwiched between Jean-Pierre Jeunet's then-new film Micmacs and the banned Shaw Brothers flick Centipede Horror. (NOTE: Centipede Horror is not to be confused with Tom Six's The Human Centipede; Centipede Horror has REAL centipedes, not to mention flaming zombie chickens.) We'd had a couple of mild forays into semi-horror already that evening, with Shutter Island and The Lovely Bones, and everyone expected great things from Adam Green, the guy who made Hatchet and who showed up and braved a probably very ripe-smelling and farty room to personally introduce the film to us.

As with most of the films over the 24 hours, this one was preceded by some appropriate vintage trailers.


The Ski Bum

and


Hot Dog: The Movie

I love the Alamo Drafthouse.

So anyway ... FROZEN.



This movie is about three young people - a guy, his girlfriend, and his best friend - who go for a short ski trip. They spend most of the day on the bunny slopes, because the girlfriend is not an experienced skier, and the guys decide to go up again that evening by themselves to do some real skiing. After some arguments and hurt feelings, however, the girlfriend ends up going with them, and they get stuck on the chair lift while the place shuts down for the week.



Okay, so let's get the implausibilities out of the way, because they are many and pretty egregious. These kids must have driven a car to this place (though it's possible they took a shuttle). If they drove, someone would have noticed an extra car and asked whose it was, realizing that someone could still be on the mountains, possibly even trying to get a free night's stay or extra skiing they didn't pay for. Second, no skiing establishment is that lackadaisical about people being on the chair lift or on the mountain. You wouldn't be able to bamboozle someone into letting you on the chair lift without paying in the first place, and you certainly wouldn't have one solitary chair lift operator be the final word in whether everyone was down from the lift and the mountain. There are way too many precautions in place at ski resorts for what happens in this movie to happen. Third, wolves don't hang out where there are loads of people skiing.

HOWEVER. Forget about all that for a minute. What if you DID get stuck on a chair lift and there was no way down and no one would find you for several days? If you take it from there, this is a pretty fantastic scary movie about the series of bad decisions you might make in the huge effort to get out alive. Decisions that are bound to be further hampered by the extreme cold weather and its effect on your brain.



The first huge mistake is made when the boyfriend decides to try and jump down, however much it might injure him. Well, it injures him a hell of a lot. Both his legs snap (there were some excellent sound effects in this film, by the way), and when he tries to move himself, he just injures himself exponentially more and more. A wolf finds him and eventually leaves after a stare-down, but this is not a victory for our poor broken-legged hero. Oh no. The wolf went and got a few friends and they proceed to eat him alive while his girlfriend and best friend can only listen to his screams and do their best not to watch from above. This was fairly affecting to me, actually, as the guy screams to his best friend not to dare let the girlfriend look. Story issues aside, there was still some pretty great acting in this, I have to say.

The rest of the movie alternates between the girlfriend and best friend blaming each other, consoling each other, and making fresh attempts to get out of this situation. Strangely, they make little attempt to huddle together and actually keep each other warm, which might have been helpful. And I can't figure out why the girl, after losing one of her gloves, didn't pull her coat sleeve over her bare hand. That would have saved a lot of pain, especially when she wakes up with her bare hand frozen to the safety bar.


OWWWWWWWW!

The movie manages to be very effective, though, despite it's implausibility issues, and was one of the better examples of audience reaction of the evening. A woman in our audience actually FAINTED during this movie (she was alright, by the way, just overcome by the movie, it seems). This was probably the most talked about film at the post-BNAT dinner and party. Several in our crowd were from Minnesota and had HUGE issues with its plausibility. But there was no doubt that it made an impact.

Regardless, though, if you can let go of the need for accuracy and credibility, it's a pretty dang good scary movie.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Avatar

I had been dubious about Avatar screening at BNAT. I knew nothing of the Fox fiasco. It just seemed both too close to the release and too high profile a release. But it was still a possibility, as Harry is friends with James Cameron. I started thinking we might when Anne Thompson ran her piece on IndieWire about the possibility. Not that she had any real information, but she must have gotten the idea from somewhere, even if it was just vague murmurings. Then, as I looked through my goodie bag the morning of BNAT, I noticed an Avatar shirt and another flag was raised. And finally, I noticed a Real-3D standee propped up right outside the BNAT theater, and when we hadn't seen anything else in 3D, it started looking more likely. Oh, and also there were a gaggle of security guards in the corridor to the exit door.

So Harry started to introduce the final film, not naming it, but casually dropping Cameron's name, so we know what we're building up to. Lots of excited murmurs. He explained about the, ah, antipathy between Twentieth Century Fox, especially Tom Rothman, and himself, but said that Cameron was determined to bring it to us. So much that he went to Fox THREE times, and was told no three times. And then something happened. Went a little something like this.

CAMERON: Can I?
FOX: No.
CAMERON: Okay, seriously, can I?
FOX: No!
CAMERON: For the last time, can I?
FOX: For the last time, NO!
CAMERON: *RAGEOMGIKEELYOU*
FOX: ... okay

So the 3D glasses elves passed out our newfangled 3D glasses, the kind that don't give you a headache and that you can use as actual sunglasses. And the movie started.


Avatar
I need to see this again before I can really say much of substance about it. I know a lot of you are pretty sick of all things Avatar, and I can't say I blame you. They've been marketing the crap out of this movie, because they can't really afford the luxury of a demographic-driven campaign with a film this size. I was ready for a huge thud when people started seeing this film. It couldn't possibly live up to all the hype, even in the effects department.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've forgotten who James "King of the World" Cameron is. There is a reason he hasn't made a whole bunch of films in his career and yet most of those films are iconic in our culture. The man has reinvented sci-fi at least once and made the most financially successful film of all time (and before you start, the Leo fangirls could not possibly have done all that Titanic business themselves). Love him or hate him, Cameron knows how to reach an audience.

I won't pretend the story is anything special. That is not a criticism; just an observation. This is not literature. It is, however, a good, straightforward piece of storytelling. It is also first-rate worldbuilding - the kind we haven't really seen from Cameron and which we associate more with the original Star Wars movies. Some of what follows you've gleaned from the trailers, but most you probably haven't.

Pandora is a distant planet - I'm afraid I can't remember much more detail than that, but I do know that I've forgotten stuff that's definitely in the movie as regards where it is. A great deal of Pandora's topography is made up of rainforest, and it is a rich source of a valuable mineral that people on Earth call "unobtainium" - go ahead and laugh, most of us did, and it is a pretty weak name, but I can totally see someone thinking it's brilliant for five minutes and then wincing by the time it sticks. There are several teams of Earth people on Pandora, not just to get the (*cringe*) unobtainium but to learn about the planet and the creatures that live there. The human equivalent on this planet is a species called the Na'vi, and you've seen them - they resemble, as 's husband remarked, ten feet tall blue cat people. That's fairly accurate, I'd say. As humans can't breathe the air on Pandora without special masks, they have taken DNA from the Na'vi and mixed it with human DNA to create Na'vi "avatars" - bodies that the humans can inhabit with their minds so that they can move about the planet and experience it more fully and efficiently.

The Na'vi have a tremendously intimate and spiritual relationship with their planet. They are plugged into it, as it were, not unlike an organic form of internet. A part of their anatomy can connect with a corresponding part of certain animals on their planet and forms a bond between animal and rider. They have enormous respect for the life cycle and the cost of the death of something in their world. So when the "sky people" come and start trying to rape that world and drive them into another area, it's much more than an inconvenience. It is, in fact, a sacrilege.

At the center of the story is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). His twin brother, a scientist, was part of a mission to Pandora but was killed. So they bring Jake in, despite the fact that he's a soldier and has not been trained to use an avatar. Jake is reckless and impulsive, like many mythic heroes before him. His presence annoys the other scientists, who don't see what use he'll be. He is particularly a fly in the ointment of Grace (Sigourney Weaver). But he proves to be a quick study, with good instincts and resourcefulness, and he is soon given the task of learning the Na'vi culture, absorbing himself into it and gaining their trust, so that he can persuade them to move to another area before the big machines come in and start tearing everything up to get to the unobtainium (*snort* yeah, sorry, I'm not quite done laughing at that).

Like Kevin Costner's soldier in Dances With Wolves, the closer Jake gets to the Na'vi culture, the more highly he regards it, thanks in no small part to the female Na'vi who is tasked with teaching him their ways. Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is the chief's daughter and, as you might expect, is none too fond of our cocky hero. However, also as you might expect, they eventually fall in love. I'm not always fond of how Cameron does romance, and he doesn't always get it quite right, but he's capable of doing so and I think the romance here is pretty wonderful. The scenes where Jake interacts with the Na'vi are the best parts of the movie, particularly his scenes with Neytiri, and Zoe Saldana is one of Cameron's great heroines (he does TOO write great women) and gives the best performance of the film by far, in my opinion.

Of course, now that Jake has bonded with the Na'vi and understands much more about them, the issue of asking them to move and let the sky people come in and rip up their rainforest has suddenly become very complicated indeed. He switches sides fairly quickly, but not implausibly, because he's absolutely right. What his side is doing is wrong. And that's as far as I want to go into the plot, because there's so much in the third act that I couldn't possibly absorb it all.

I don't think anyone is overstating anything by saying that Cameron has changed how movies are going to be made in the future, but I'm not sure people understand what that means. The brilliance of the effects are that they're so masterfully done that you forget about them. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Pandora was a real place, and I'd swear that the Na'vi exist, that some of them have studied acting, and were cast as characters in this film. It is that freakin' real. This is thanks, at least partly, to the participation of WETA, and if you remember how well Gollum was done in Lord of the Rings. this is on a much larger scale and, in my opinion, even more impressive. I don't know how they did it, and I don't really care. All I know is that this is the most detailed, gorgeous, and fully realized fictional world that I've ever seen. And it's not just window dressing. It serves the story and makes you give a damn about the world and characters that have been created. That's movie magic, my friends.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Kick-Ass

Now at the two-films-to-go mark and knowing that both would be premieres, anticipation levels were rising. But even if we had known what film we were about to see, we could not have predicted the awesomeness of what happened when we watched it. People started ordering breakfast and trying to get that extra steam to plow through to the end. But first some clips.

Tim League showed us something, curious for our thoughts as to how appropriate it would be for children, so we obliged. What looked like a generic sumo wrestling clip soon took a turn when horny dogs were brought in to hump some guys' legs and ... other things. I'm pretty sure I witnessed a 69 humping. After this, and after assuring Tim that nothing could be more appropriate for children than dog humping, we saw the "AICN True-ish Hollywood Story," which was basically a collection of sarcastic insults and birthday wishes to Harry from various film personages, including Jon Favreau, Danny McBride, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, JJ Abrams, and "Michael F***ing Bay, Motherf***er!" Jon Favreau concluded his birthday wishes and the entire clip by telling us we were going to be the first to see the Iron Man 2 trailer. Mickey Rourke is awesome. That is all.

Okay ... here goes. First, some trailers - Fearless Frank (with Jon Voight), Animal Protector (with David Carridine - audience love), and OMGIHAVETOSEETHISRIGHTNOW Return of Captain Invincible (a superhero musical spoof with Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee - WIN).

Harry then set up the next film by reminding us of the several films this year about endangered children, pointing out that Fearsome Toddler was turning the tide towards kids fighting back, perhaps even ... kicking ass. (*THUNDEROUS CHEERS*)


Kick-Ass

Sweet Holy Lord, what an awesome movie, even as a rough cut. The basic story, if you haven't heard much about it, is that a teenager named Dave, wondering why no one ever tried to be a superhero, decides to try and be one himself. He orders a wet suit and mask online, which becomes his costume, and goes out to help someone. Of course, not possessing superpowers or supergadgets, he gets his ass kicked on his first attempt and lands in the hospital. When he comes out, he's had metal implants and his nervous system is all jacked up, so he can take a lot of pain without passing out.

He goes back to school, amid rumors that he is gay (fueled by the fact that he stripped off his costume before the paramedics came, in order to protect his identity), and the girl he's got a crush on suddenly wants him to be her gay BFF. He makes a second attempt at thrilling heroics, and this one is much more successful. He saves a guy from a multi-thug beating, and someone captures the whole thing on a cell phone, asking Dave after the beatdown what his name is. Dave's response ... "I'm Kick-Ass."

Dave's video goes viral and catches the attention of a father-daughter duo, played by Nicholas Cage (sporting a mustache that makes him look like Stanley Tucci's child murderer in The Lovely Bones) and the unbelievably awesome Chloe Moretz. Not just any father-daughter duo, though. This father spends quality time with his daughter by teaching her how to take a bullet in the chest while wearing a Kevlar vest (do they even make those in kids sizes?) without flinching. Inspired by Kick-Ass, they become the vigilante heroes Hit Girl and Big Daddy.

Kick-Ass meets this duo on his next mission, trying to persuade a drug-dealing thug not to bother his girl-who's-just-a-friend anymore. Just when it seems he's in over his head, a knife appears out of the chest of one of the thugs and Dave meets the unbelievably ass-kicking eleven-year-old Hit Girl, who utters some choice profanities and proceeds to lay waste to the entire room to the strains of the Dickies' cover of the Banana Splits theme song ("Tra la la, la la la la!"). The musical cues in this movie were nothing short of INCREDIBLE, and it makes me sad that not every single one of them (15% of the music is still temp) will be in the final version. I think "Tra la la" will be, though, which is awesome. The movie was a genuine hit with the audience already, despite the fact that something seemed wonky with the sound, but right in the middle of Hit Girl's bullet ballet, wonky turned into dead.

The sound was out and the film stopped completely. The lights came up and Tim came out to explain some technical sound stuff I didn't understand. Something about a Tweeter. Twenty minutes passed while our very own Drafthouse superheroes worked tirelessly to get the sound restored, which they eventually did. The problem now, of course ... would the interruption ruin the screening? Would the audience be able to get back into the movie?

The answer came when the lights went down and the movie started again. But not at the point where we'd stopped. No, we were going to watch the entire sequence again - before Hit Girl's appearance, from Kick-Ass first going into the thug's apartment. The room positively shook with applause and cheers when they saw going to see that whole scene again. It was the second most amazing audience response in the whole film. So okay, Hit Girl opens a can of whup-ass, it's very very awesome, and we officially meet her and Big Daddy. And they kind of make fun of Kick-Ass a bit (Big Daddy actually calls him Ass Kick). But they're going to be allies, even though Kick-Ass would rather just sit back and let them be the heroes, since they're much better at it than he is.

There is the obligatory bad guy, Frank D'Amico (played by Mark Strong, who worked with Matthew Vaughn on Stardust playing Septimus). I don't think it's too clear (not that it needs to be) what exactly he does, but it's kind of general organized crime, drugs, etc. He's made lots of money by not-honest means, yet he's still a family man. Kind of a less likable Tony Soprano. His son Chris (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who most of you know better as McLovin) wants to be part of the family biz, and when Kick-Ass, Big Daddy, and Hit Girl start getting in D'Amico's way, Chris offers to don a superhero costume himself and help out. He therefore becomes Red Mist, and due to daddy's money he has all the cool gadgets, including a badass car (complete with MIST ACTION - this car now belongs to Matthew Vaughn, by the way). He befriends Kick-Ass, who D'Amico believes is solely responsible for all the damage being done to his operations, and intends to deliver him to his father.

I'm not going to get into the rest of the plot - God knows, this is long enough - but this movie is an absolutely fantastic deconstruction of the superhero genre. By someone who actually loves the genre, as opposed to someone who, as Vaughn said in the Q&A, is just trying to be cool. The film is kind of a natural extension to the superhero phenomenon as a whole, as its focus is on people who admire superheroes and have grown up with these mythologies, much like the film's target audience will have done. It acknowledges how silly the idea of dressing up in a costume and kicking the bajeezus out of people is, but also kind of revels in the wonder and awe of what it might be like to actually try and do it.

I have to mention the most amazing bit of audience response. There's a moment during the climax, a calm before a storm, one of those moments where you know something amazing is about to happen, but you don't know what and the film wants to build it up a little bit. Another amazing music cue is used here. I'm sure most of you can call up a few bars of Guns N Roses' "November Rain" into your memory. Remember the bit at the end, when it kind of turns into a different song entirely and you hear those driving strings? That's the music used here, and it really effectively sets up the "something's coming" mood. So much so that the entire audience began clapping to the beat. This happens in concerts and sporting events, but not in movies, and if you've ever done this at a concert or something, you know there's always that point where it goes on a smidge too long and the clapping kind of peters out. Not so this time. The music and the moment in the film lasts just as long as they should, and everyone kept clapping the rhythm until there was nothing more to clap to. And amazingly, the scene this was building up to was every bit as awesome as such a build-up like that demands, which is rather rare.

I wasn't at the first 3 BNATs, but I'm fairly sure this was the most incredible audience reaction to any film at any BNAT. Director Matthew Vaughn and Red Mist actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse came to the front to a huge standing ovation and answered questions from the techinical (they're only just now beginning the grading process, and Vaughn thinks the print we saw looked terrible) to the mercantile (many, many ladies in the audience - including me - want a Hit Girl costume) to the inevitable talk of sequels (Chris reminded us that the film was not out yet and we should probably not be talking sequels until we know how well it does). Vaughn mentioned that they'd gotten permission for all the temp tracks they used, except two - the Dark Knight and the Superman theme. I confess, I didn't even recognize the Dark Knight music, but that Superman track is perfect, and I hope something can be done to keep it.

I'm so glad I got to be at BNAT for this.

BNAT 11 - [VINTAGE] The Candy Snatchers

The Candy Snatchers

Trailers preceding this film were The Honeymoon Killers, Mr. No Legs, and Lunch Wagon. There were some pretty awesome trailers this year.

This film reminded me of Teen Lust, if that says anything, and I think it should if you were at BNAT9. Three dumb kidnappers decide they're going to kidnap the daughter of a guy who runs a jewelry store so they can ask for precious stones as ransom payment. They take her and bury her alive, with some device so that she can breathe, but they're not yet aware of a force near their burial space that is more than they could ever have bargained for. The three-year-old special needs child in the above picture. FEAR HIM!

Seriously, the kid seems to be the only person who cares about the kidnapped girl at all. The father, who's being asked to put up diamonds as ransom, is actually her stepfather and will receive a large sum of money if she dies, which is the eventuality he is hoping for.

Most of the memorable scenes for me did not include the kidnappers or their victims. In fact, if it were up to me, I'd have made the whole film about the Fearsome Toddler and his exploits. I distinctly remember wanting to choke the life out of the Fearsome Toddler's annoying mom during the excruciatingly long scene in which she calls him (and calls him and calls him) for dinner, which I feel sets up some serious audience satisfaction with what happens to her later. There's a weird old man whose significance to the story is a mystery to me, but his hysterical laughter at the very idea of a kid who doesn't talk (i.e., our Fearsome Toddler) is both hilarious and a bit scary. But perhaps greatest of all is Fearsome Toddler's interpretation of the kidnapped girl's exhortation to call the police. He finds his policeman doll, calls a nearby store, and pulls the doll's talk string to have it say "Police! Open up!" over and over again into the receiver.

What a weird little movie. Proof that you could get any film made in the 1970s.

BNAT 11 - [VINTAGE] Centipede Horror

So, at this point we were coming to that part of the evening where it's just too hard to stay completely alert and awake, and a lot of times the movies don't help. Next up was a movie we were told had been banned because it was so horrifically gross.


Centipede Horror

I think I was starting to hallucinate at this point, so I may not remember precisely what this film was about. I remember there was a young woman who was begging her brother to be allowed to take a trip with her friend to Southeast Asia, and the brother was very reluctant because apparently due to something with their grandfather they are not supposed to go to Southeast Asia ever. As it's going to be a short trip, however, he relents, on the condition that she wear a special talisman for protection.

One day of their trip, however, the girl takes the talisman off. So of course she and her friend get trapped in the woods with a bunch of centipedes and die. The brother goes to her sick bed and eventually has to make the funeral arrangements, and we find out more about why they were not supposed to go to Southeast Asia ever. Their grandfather had killed his wife and his mistress and started a fire to cover it up (which leads to a shot I absolutely did not need to see of a charred baby). Some weird magician put a curse on their grandfather and his family, which is why the current generation is having so much trouble traveling to Southeast Asia. Or something. Honestly, there's not much in this movie that makes a lot of sense.

There is a very disturbing ritual where a woman vomits up centipedes and a bloody goo. And in the film's interminable climax, two dueling magicians duke it out for the souls of our surviving heroes, one using hordes of trained centipedes (some of which are, once again, vomited up by a woman) and the other with flaming zombie chickens. No, I'm not kidding. And I'm fairly certain I did not hallucinate it.

Maybe the most disturbing thing about this movie was that, to my own personal horror, I was neither as terribly squicked by it as everyone else seemed to be nor as grossed out myself as I thought I should be.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Frozen

At past the halfway mark, it was getting to the hour where horror tends to dominate, and after trailers for The Ski Bum and Hot Dog (the movie), we saw this great little horror film, a selection at next year's Sundance Film Festival, from the guy who made Hatchet (Adam Green).


Frozen

This movie is about three young people - a guy, his girlfriend, and his best friend - who go for a short ski trip. They spend most of the day on the bunny slopes, because the girlfriend is not an experienced skier, and the guys decide to go up again that evening by themselves to do some real skiing. After some arguments and hurt feelings, however, the girlfriend ends up going with them, and they get stuck on the chair lift while the place shuts down for the week.

Okay, so let's get the implausibilities out of the way, because they are many and pretty egregious. These kids must have driven a car to this place. Someone would have asked whose car it was and realized that someone could still be on the mountains, possibly even trying to get a free night's stay or extra skiing they didn't pay for. Second, no skiing establishment is that lackadaisical about people being on the chair lift or on the mountain. You wouldn't be able to bamboozle someone into letting you on the chair lift without paying, and you certainly wouldn't have one solitary chair lift operator be the final word in whether everyone was down from the lift and the mountain. There are way too many precautions in place at ski resorts for what happens in this movie to happen. Third, wolves don't hang out where there are loads of people skiing. The Minnesota BNAT-ers had huge problems with this movie.

HOWEVER. Forget about all that for a minute. What if you did get stuck on a chair lift and there was no way down and no one would find you for several days? If you take it from there, this is a pretty fantastic scary movie about the series of bad decisions you might make in the huge effort to get out alive.

The first huge mistake is made when the guy who brought his girlfriend decides to try and jump down, however much it might injure him. Well, it injures him a hell of a lot. Both his legs snap (there were some excellent sound effects in this film, by the way), and when he tries to move himself, he just injures himself exponentially more and more. A wolf finds him and eventually leaves after a stare-down, but this is not victory for our poor broken-legged hero. Oh no. The wolf went and got a few friends and they proceed to eat him while his girlfriend and best friend can only listen to his screams and do their best not to watch from above. This was fairly moving to me, actually, as the guy screams to his best friend not to dare let the girlfriend look. There was some pretty great acting in this, I have to say.

The rest of the movie alternates between the girlfriend and best friend blaming each other, consoling each other, and making fresh attempts to get out of this situation. Strangely, they make little attempt to huddle together and actually keep each other warm, which might have been helpful. And I can't figure out why the girl, after losing one of her gloves, didn't pull her coat sleeve over her bare hand. That would have saved a lot of pain, especially when she wakes up with her bare hand frozen to the safety bar.

The movie manages to be very effective, though, despite it's implausibility issues, and was one of the better examples of audience reaction of the evening. And I can't leave this film without telling you this - a woman in the audience actually FAINTED during this movie (she was alright, by the way, just overcome by the movie, it seems). They should so put that in the film's marketing campaign, like Last House on the Left (To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie ... only a movie ... only a movie...").

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Micmacs à tire-larigot

After Le Magnifique was part 2 in what turned out to be a French double-feature. The new film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet.


Micmacs à tire-larigot

I'm afraid I was nodding off for a bit during this film. Not at all a reflection on the movie itself, just the late hour. As it is, however, I don't feel confident going into a lot of detail.

The film centers around a man named Bazil, whose father was killed by a land mine and who himself was hit in the head by a stray bullet. He choses to leave the bullet in, because taking it out might put him in a vegetative state, but leaving it in means that if he experiences too much stress he could die.

Soon, with the help of a ragtag group of quirky homeless geniuses, he is taking down the weapons company that made the land mine that killed his father and the company that made the bullet that resides in his head. It's a revenge flick, but not a bloody one. The entire climax is an exercise in awesome, but the real gem is the section just after that, where they take the heads of these two companies to receive their real punishment. In the Middle East. Or so they think. Best use of YouTube ever.

BNAT 11 - [VINTAGE] Le Magnifique

Next up, we had a change in pace. We saw trailers for James Tont Operazione U.N.O., Maniac Cop 2 (I must see this!), and Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. And the actual feature was so over the top and hilarious right from the start that it took me a minute to realize that it wasn't another trailer.


Le Magnifique

In the opening minutes of this film, we witness a man in a phone booth being eaten by a shark. That alone would have been enough to win me over. The over-the-top spy movie sort-of-spoof is entertaining as all get-out, but it possibly would have grown tiresome after a while. Once we realize, however, that all the super-spy silliness is the imagination of a fiction writer, the movie becomes something else.

François Merlin writes potboiler spy novels about Bob St. Clair, who is his wish fulfillment self-insertion character. He has a frustrating life, struggling to make ends meet and wishing he could write something that's actually good instead of all the, as he considers it, trash. Many of the characters in his real life show up as characters in his novels. His publisher and other "enemies" turn up as villains, which St. Clair either lazily dispenses with or, in the case of the publisher/supervillain, struggles to overcome repeatedly over the course of several novels. And his beautiful upstairs neighbor Christine appears in his latest book as his love interest (and, if memory serves, fellow spy).

What's cool about this film is watching Merlin deal with his real life problems in the pages of his novels. For example, Christine thinks his books are fascinating from a sociological standpoint, because she's interested in why people (including herself) are so compelled by such tripe. This kind of hurts Merlin's pride, even though he agrees about their quality, because he wants to be a real writer and genuinely impress her (and probably in part because he identifies with St. Clair in a way, however ridiculously he is portrayed). His back-and-forth about whether to write St. Clair as the perfect, suave superspy or make him a bumbling idiot comes and goes, depending on his confidence in what Christine thinks of him.

Jean-Paul Belmondo is fantastic (and fantastically gorgeous) here in the dual role of Merlin and St. Clair. And you dudes can enjoy the charms of a young Jacqueline Bisset. And loads of making fun of spy movies and writers. This was one of my favorite cracktastic vintage titles these many BNATs.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Shutter Island

When I first heard that we were seeing The Red Shoes (which I previously posted about here), I glanced ahead on the fake list and had a strong suspicion about what was going to be next. The Red Shoes has perhaps had no greater champion in Hollywood than Martin Scorsese, and I can't help thinking of him whenever I think of that film. And, as it turned out, my suspicion was correct. After trailers for They Call Her One-Eye (with the slowest mo I've ever seen) and Sudden Death (not the Van Damme one, but I'm not sure if it's the 1985 or 1977 one), we saw a not-quite-finished print of...


Shutter Island

Harry had written to Scorsese to see if we could get this film, and this was apparently something of a personal struggle, as writing to one of the gods of film well ought to be. He knew the letter needed to be short, because, as he told us, "[Scorsese's] answer would be." As it turned out, Scorsese loved the idea of what we were doing and loved the lineup that preceded his film, with one exception. He wanted Harry to screen The Red Shoes before his film instead. So, after a couple of exchanges, because the change would add 40 minutes to an already tight program, Harry finally asked himself why he was arguing with Martin Scorsese and stopped. Knowing that Martin Scorsese programmed a film at BNAT fills me with immeasurable joy.

Shutter Island is not what you think it is (unless, of course, you've read the Dennis Lehane novel on which it is based). I was expecting an exploration of psychological horror, along the lines of Scorsese's earlier Cape Fear (which is actually one of my favorites of his). Oh, and with the super-creepy setting of a mental institution. Seriously, there is nothing that frightens me more than insane asylums.

But the movie is very different from what I thought. It starts as a missing patient mystery, and I got some distinct Wicker Man vibes, possibly in part because I'd been thinking about that film recently, hoping (and ultimately failing) to get a post about it up in time for the Final Girl Film Club. I don't even know that I'd call this film a horror film. There are definitely frightening elements, and there's a certain "haunted house" feel to it. But though the island is inhabited by the criminally insane, they don't really pose that much of a threat. There are several twists and turns in the story, much like The Prisoner (as pointed out in his own report), and as such I'm afraid to start explaining what it's about for fear of falling into the wormhole, but I'll try to at least scratch the surface.

Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are U.S. Marshalls called to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who is in the institution for killing all three of her children. The two of them don't get very far with the other patients and the hospital staff before things start to look incredibly fishy. It turns out that Teddy specifically took the case because he wanted to look into the disturbing medical practices the place was involved with. There are lies on top of lies on top of lies, people are not who they say they are, and you're never really sure who's telling the truth and what's real. All you know is for God's sake don't smoke their cigarettes.

I have to say a word about Leonardo DiCaprio here. I have long been a fan (not to be confused with fangirl) of his, and I've been interested in the choices he's made as an actor, especially in his now fairly long-standing artistic relationship with Martin Scorsese. I'm going to step up and say that I think his work here is a career best so far. At times frighteningly intense, and at others deeply moving. There's a moment near the end where he completely loses it, and I was so afraid that it was going to cause some laughter, because it's one of those moments that, through no fault of the actor, could just hit the audience wrong. Thank goodness it didn't, because it's one of the most heart-shattering things I've ever seen from an actor. Amazing.

I will join the throng of BNAT-ers who've said that if you spoil this movie you should be locked in a cell with Jackie Earle Haley so that he can rip your face off. I hate even saying that it's a highly spoilable movie, because that's a kind of spoiler in and of itself, you know? Now that I've seen it all the way through, though, I can't wait to see it again with the full knowledge of what's going on. Great, great movie, and a wonderful addition to the BNAT lineup.