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[V-Adore]

Is it worse than "Gigli," though? Because "Gigli" certainly had a budget and may be the worst film I've ever seen. (It certainly contains the worst single scene I've ever seen, namely the scene in which a mentally disabled man sings the entirety of "Baby Got Back" in a morgue while Ben Affleck attempts to saw off a corpse's thumb with a plastic knife. Except -- whatever you may be imagining at this point -- the scene itself is worse than that.)

[littlefallsmets]

In swatches and flashes, "Gigli" might be worse.

But... in total... we're talkin' holistically now... "The Guardian" completely beats "Gigli".

By like a million.

"Gigli" has some MIND-NUMBINGLY bad shit in it, there is no question. Some shit where you just wanna rub your eyes, look at a bottle of alcohol, shake your head, throw it in the trash and walk away. There is no doubt about that.

But, also, there are long stretches of "Gigli" where it is just... normal bad. Run-of-the-mill bad movie bad. Or there are parts that are really awful but, like, you could see where if it had been handled some way or another, it could've been potentially less bad. Regrettable but not heroically so.

But "The Guardian" is the fuck*ng Mike Tyson of bad movies.

It just keeps fuck*ng punching. It is a rogue railway of suck. You do not get time to rest, you do not get time to reflect, you do not get breaks, you do not get mercy, the punches do not slow down long enough for you to breathe.

It sucks from the first second of horrific fuck*ng melodramatic voice-over all the way through the seventeen-million false endings and right to the second when you have either turned off the DVD or bitten down on the poison tooth that they totally gave you to kill Baron Harkonen that one time.

To watch "The Guardian" is to be Sisyphus.

The endless series of mountains is the movie.

Your forever-rolling burden is two-tons of suck as dense as the heart of the sun.

Holy fuck, seriously. You're watching "The Guardian" and... when you get to the point where you realize they keep TALKING about something called "D.O.R." but have never said what that is... oh, man. You will be BEGGING to see J-Lo making turkey sounds about her pu$$y.

J-Lo making turkey sounds about her pu$$y will be like Christ's tears in the middle of the Sahara fuck*ng Desert compared to Ashton Kutcher looking conflicted and Kevin Costner swimming in slow motion.

I have warned you.

[CortJstr]

Wow. 40's cartoon cliches, Dune, and Sisyphus all in one post.

[littlefallsmets]

I am in training to be the anti-Dennis-Miler... basically using the powers of obscure reference and slightly-detached rage for good instead of evil.

Pretty much, imagine that I am Luke Skywalker and the ghost of Ben Kenobi is the ghost of Bill Hicks and we are pretty fuck*ng close to what is going on here.

...no, strike that, that is not quite weird enough a reference. Remember, I am still in training.

Pretty much, imagine that I am Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery is the ghost of Bill Hicks and we are pretty close to what is going on here.

...fuck, this is still not good enough. MY NINJA IS NOT STRONG ENOUGH.

Okay. Okay. Deep breath. Remember the mantra.

"Oooh, you're soooo meta... oooh, you're soooo meta... oooh, you're soooo meta..."

Okay.

Pretty much, you know how everyone has a little Elvis in them except for Michael J. Fox, who is the anti-Elvis? That is pretty close to what is going on here.

[pmcd9]

Slink!  Best is Show is... the best out of all three of those.  Though Spinal Tap beats them all hands down.

Quoted for truth.

[Nabubrush]

I kinda liked Buffalo 66. Of course, I really like football and Ben Gazzara. Well, and I want to get with Christina Ricci.

[littlefallsmets]

It was just... like... so pretentious and dumb at the same time.

So many weird arthouse-y moments, so many overthought camera moves, so many... cliched-beyond-belief "oh, you know, the criminals and low-lives, they're the ones who really have depth" moments... not to mention, so much of the movie being devoted to how handsome and dark the lead actor/director/writer/cinematographer/editor/caterer/driver/plumber is.

"It's an art film, so the old guy is gonna be sexually creepy!"

"It's an art film, so a guy essentially kidnapping a girl is gonna cause them to fall in love!"

"It's an art film, so sex is gonna be made to look like the most disgusting thing on Earth!"

"It's an art film, so she's gonna pole dance in a bowling alley and we're gonna say it was some kind of statement about the ugly beauty found in ugly places but we really just wanna make the girl from the Addams Family do a sexy dance!"

"It's an art film, so we'll stage a horrifically gory and over-shot murder sequence that even Quentin Tarantino would make fun of and then it will all have been a dream or an imaginary sequence!"

Blah. Everything bad about the "indie film" as a vehicle for a shallow pose-monkey to talk about how deep he thinks he is but can only generate cliches out of films he kind of half-saw in Sundance, while he was mostly concentrating on snorting blow and having sex with Eurotrash ladies.

Indie film as the cred-building pet-project gone horribly awry.

[slink]

Yep, I have no problem with overthought camera moves, IF THERE'S A fuck*ng PLOT to go with it. If there's substance beneath all that grimy style... And Vince Gallo seesm to be nothing but grime.
And I most certainly have no problem with the idea of getting with Ricci...

A friend and I tried to watch The Prestige the other week and decided after forty minutes that (not only did we want to kill Johansson, yet again... ugh...) Nolan was trying to direct a film about landscape, and thus using lush, slow camera work in carefully laid out, painting-style settings, but that the dialogue and plot pacing was totally mismatched with this. I'm just not sure he's that good. His remake of Insomnia was all very good, but you can't go wrong with that setting, or Pacino, and he didn't do much to adapt the original except make it less dark (the dog for instance...). And Memento was good... First time round! But someone said it was well worth it so we're going to try again.
We ended up watching Switchblade Romance instead, so we certainly weren't exactly in the mood for it at any rate. And she has a thing for circular saw killings I think.

(You could consider the saw killing a recommendation, Wombat?)

[Nabubrush]

What do you think about Brown Bunny, LFM?

[linnea]

What do you think about Brown Bunny, LFM?

Oh man, I stayed the fuck away from Brown Bunny after I heard that Gallo was involved.

[Nabubrush]

It wasn't the blowjob?
Sorry. I've been wanting to do something like that for awhile.

[littlefallsmets]

The idea of The Girl Who Looks Exactly Like a Heroin Junkie giving some dude an actual on-screen blowjob is not what turned me away from that film. It isn't hot because whenever I see that girl all I can do is look for trackmarks but... it's not so unappealing as to be a dealbreaker, either.

No. "The Buffalo 66" guy was involved.

The guy who did the only movie I ever rented for free off a friend at a video store and STILL demanded my money back did that movie and that was more than enough reason to avoid.

[Nabubrush]

The guy who did the only movie I ever rented for free off a friend at a video store and STILL demanded my money back did that movie and that was more than enough reason to avoid.

That's like perpetual motion! Also, The Guardian is playing this week at the theater here. I have advised everyone I know to give it a miss.

[theinevitable]

slink-- The Prestige. Not Enjoyable At All.

I got so mad at my friend's girlfriend. She said "you didn't like it??? Did you understand it, though?"
"yes. yes I understood it."
"I... I think if you'd understood it, you would have liked it."

[littlefallsmets]

See, I found The Prestige to be watchable. Not a great film by any means and... certainly predictable as hell but... beautiful looking, good performances for the most part.

David Bowie's understated performance as Tesla was sort of worth the price of admission alone.

Deeply flawed and... sort of reaching for meanings beyond the middle-brow means of the creative team, sure, but... I'll take an interesting failure over a really well-done piece of popcorn schlock any day of the week.

I mean, every Michael Bay film is pretty much perfect at being something totally distasteful and repellant. At least The Prestige was TRYING to get at something bigger, in a... sophomore Sociology-major kinda way.

Plus the idea of the mechanics of stage magic is an interesting thing to explore.