The Screengrab : american psycho

In Other Blogs: Revenge of the '80s

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:30:00 GMT

At Hollywood and Fine, Marshall Fine dubs the plethora of recent ’80s-set films the revenge of Gen-X. “What does it mean to set a movie in the ’80s? We know what movies set in the ’50s mean: innocence and ignorance, a time of conformity and repression. It was the Eisenhower era, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the rise of suburbia and mass media. Set a movie in the ’60s and it means something else entirely: turmoil, upheaval, awakening. The rise of youth culture, civil rights, Vietnam, counterculture…What I see in movies about the ’80s, written and directed by people who were kids and teens during that period, is a certain disapproval of how their parents’ generation – the baby boom that lit the fuse on the ’60s – squandered their opportunity. Rather than build on the ideas of the civil rights and anti-war movements, they focused on themselves: on getting that great car, that great house, those designer clothes, that outrageous windfall profit.”

Bret Easton Ellis reviews the films made from his books at the AV Club. “Less Than Zero is obviously bad, and we don’t need to talk about why that didn’t work. And American Psycho—that is, I think, an impossible book to adapt. But whatever, it was the greatest hits from the book, more or less. Mary did a very good job of keeping that movie together, as did Christian Bale, and I think Roger did a terrific job. And with The Informers, I think there is really an outstanding movie floating out there somewhere, and I hope one day people might be able to see it. But it’s very interesting. I am not comparing The Informers to The Godfather on any level, but there’s that famous story where Paramount asked Coppola to cut like an hour out of the movie, because they didn’t want to release a three-hour movie. And Coppola did, and showed it to the executive, and it was terrible. It moved very slowly at two hours. And then when he put the other hour back in, it moved very quickly. And that’s all I want to say about The Informers.”

Beyond the Multiplex previews the Tribeca Film Festival, including Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. “You start watching Damien Chazelle's directing debut and you say, OK, it's a low-budget indie in black-and-white. Then you realize it's a low-budget indie musical in black-and-white. And finally you grasp that it's a low-budget indie jazz musical in black-and-white, with original songs written in the spirit of 1940s pop, swing and bebop. And tap dancing. So Chazelle gets an A-plus for concept and effort, and the question of whether the wistful, mumblecore-style love story lives up to its framing device maybe isn't so important.”

Slate’s Mark Harris takes a look at the Warner Archive Collection. “For movie lovers, this is heaven. Anybody can adequately take the measure of a century of film by leapfrogging across decades, countries, and genres from one masterpiece to another, and this is pretty much how we all do it, Netflixing our way through the Criterion Collection (great, but not for American movies) or checking off Oscar nominees from decades past (great, but only as a barometer of what people thought was great at the time). But movie history is also written in what happened between the great movies—in the ambitious and the mundane, the half-hearted and the forgotten, the unjustly overlooked and the justly dismissed.”

Current Movies celebrated Earth Day with their four favorite green films, including…Godzilla vs. Hedorah. “Directed by Yoshimitsu Banno, the film is a hodge podge of hippie-dom when Godzilla (everyone’s favorite foil for nuclear holocaust) must step up to battle the alien Hedorah who feeds off pollution and gives off all sorts of bad things. This somehow damages everyone’s favorite nuclear monster, but the Big Green Guy wins in the end.”

"Less Than Zero", Twenty Years Later Equals = What?

Phil Nugent — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

It's been 24 years since Bret Easton Ellis's debut novel Less Than Zero opened a West Coast branch of the '80s Literary Brat Pack franchise, an two years less than that since the movie version, directed by Marek Kanievska. Now, Ellis has written a sequel to the novel, called Imperial Bedrooms--the man does love his Elvis Costello references--and has informed MTV's movie blog that he can already see the movie version. Actually, it sounds as if he may have hatched the idea partly in hopes of reconnecting with the spectacular but unpredictable comet that is the career of Robert Downey, Jr. As one of our most stylish and perceptive voices on the contemporary movie scene noted last year, it was Downey's high-wire performance as Julian, a rich boy caught in a drug-fueled downward spiral, that first hinted that Downey, already a known commodity as a gifted comic actor, might be a performer capable of then-unimaginable levels of depth and daring. “It’s in present-day,” Ellis says of the new book. “You’ll find out where all the characters from the book have now ended up, for better or for worse...When I began to outline the book and figure out who’s going to be around and who’s not – some of the main people are going to be okay. There was some supporting cast that I realized was expendable – you knew something bad was going to happen to them. But the leads? Yeah, they kind of stuck around.” As for Julian, Ellis says that the character is "in the book is sober. Fragile, but sober.”

One clue that Ellis may be trying to hitch a ride on Downey's tail is that, although he has specifically talked up the attractions of the making a sequel to the 1987 movie, noting that "“The cast is still around", Julian died at the end of that movie. In fact, at the time, Ellis loudly disowned the movie, which altered his story and icy emotional tone and turned the material into a strident anti-drug melodrama. (The need to adjust rapidly changing attitudes towards sex and drugs in the late '80s also helped torpedo the movie version of the original East Coast Literary Brat Pack artifact, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, which came out the next year.) Although the MTV blog item stresses the fact that Downey and James Spader were in that movie, the leads were actually Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz, two long-gone candidates for Hollywood stardom who will never be gone far enough away for my liking. As for Kanievska, he didn't get to direct another movie until the forgotten 2002 Paul Newman picture Where the Money Is. Aside from Downey's performance, the Less Than Zero film is probably best remembered for its Rick Rubin-produced soundtrack album, which included two charting singles, L L Cool J's "Going Back to Cali" and the Bangles' cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter." Ellis has said that in recent years he has grown "sentimental" over the film and now appreciates it as a "snapshot" of its era, though many viewers probably still think that album is a better snapshot to listen to.

It could be that what Ellis is really sentimental about is his place in the Hollywood food chain, which isn't as firm as it might be for a writer whose stock in trade is suntanned, well-financed decadence. Of the movies made from his books--Less Than Zero, American Psycho, and The Rules of Attraction--only Mary Harron's Psycho has had much success or enjoyed much of a post-theatrical afterlife, and it's widely taken for a satirical deconstruction of the book on which it was based. The Informers, a movie based on his 1994 short story collection that is due for release later this month, will mark the first time that Ellis has worked on the screenplay for one of these films. (The script is co-credited to Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, who also both served as executive producers.) But that movie, which features the final performance by the late Brad Renfro, seems unlikely to do much for Ellis's reputation, and in its finished form may bear little resemblance to the author's intentions. "It’s hard to tell now," Ellis has said of the screenplay after the film's director, Gregor Jordan, had edited it, "but it was supposed to be like criminals and vampires and girls and young people. There were things I recognized, and a lot that I missed." The presence of a vampire in the book inspired a fair amount of discussion at the time, and Jordan did cast Brandon Routh in the role, but word has it that Routh's part and the supernatural elements have been completely excised from the finished film.

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Films Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

BUFFALO 66 (1998)

At some point in the recent past, we here at the Screengrab compiled a list of our guiltiest pleasures, and one of mine was The Brown Bunny, which I pretty much only wanted to see because of the notorious...uh...love scene between director/star Vincent Gallo and his co-star (and former paramour) Chloe Sevigny. Such a prurient interest is sad on two levels: first, that a grown, married man would rent a movie just to watch a quasi-famous actress get busy with an allegedly prosthetic schwanzstucker...but secondly that Gallo’s sophomore directorial effort would have so little else going for it after the flat-out brilliance of Buffalo 66. Starring as an ex-con loser who kidnaps a bored teen (Christina Ricci) in hopes of passing her off as his wife in a doomed effort to impress his hateful parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston), Gallo's Billy Brown is all jittery desperation and hostile self-loathing...yet somehow, by the end of the movie, you’re rooting for both the character and the director, while the grim, hellish landscape of upstate New York in winter (a perfect reflection of the protagonist’s stunted isolation) has somehow blossomed with unexpected hope.

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000)

Sundance, like most film festivals, has never lacked for sensitive dramatic films about dysfunctional families. This entry, which marked the film directing debut of playwright Kenneth Lonergan, stood out enough to count as a redemption of the genre. It also upped the profile of its star, Laura Linney, and all but launched the career, after some ten mostly uneventful years in movies, of Mark Ruffalo. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 festival, and Lonergan (who himself picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award) finally follows it up later this year when his second feature, Margaret, starring Anna Pacquin and Ruffalo, arrives in theaters.

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2001)

In the wake of The Blair Witch Project, Sundance slowly fell victim to that most dreaded of industry catchwords: “Buzz.” And as the fest’s spotty post-1999 reputation confirms, the most troublesome thing about encouraging and promoting buzz is that, when the buzzed-about don’t live up to their advanced billing, it’s the festival itself that suffers. Few films have ever arrived at Sundance with more early-bird hype than did Mary Harron’s American Psycho in 2001, given that, as an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous serial killer tome, its mixture of tongue-in-cheek ‘80s details and brutal violence, all wrapped up in a Kubrickian chill, seemed to make it, in the minds of many prognosticators, an “edgy” film with Fight Club-ish cult-fave potential. Such similarities, it turned out, were superficial at best. Still, American Psycho remains, eight years on, one of the few to match its lofty Sundance expectations, thanks to Christian Bale’s pitch-perfect personification of yuppiedom as a lethal mental affliction, Harron’s eerily composed, sterile direction, and a superlative murder scene set to the ominous sound of Huey Lewis and the News.

DONNIE DARKO (2001)

Every once in a blue moon, Sundance provides a platform for a truly exciting new voice, and in 2001, that was Richard Kelly, whose Donnie Darko received enthusiastic critical and audience response upon its premiere. Kelly hailed from a film-geek background but, with his debut, refused to simply indulge in name-check homages and cheesy nostalgia, instead creating an authentic sense of his ‘80s time period and suburban milieu (and the discomfort liberals felt during Michael Dukakis’ failed ’88 presidential bid), all while offering up one giant head-scratcher of a sci-fi saga involving time travel, Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” and a menacing, knife-wielding giant rabbit who foretells news of the coming apocalypse to Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal). As assured as it is beguiling, Donnie Darko, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (which preceded it by a year), is a genre piece that rewards and, in certain respects, requires repeat viewings to unlock its twisted chronological mysteries, something that can’t, unfortunately, be said of Kelly’s follow-up Southland Tales. Me, I say come for the mystery, stay for the entrancing atmosphere of doomed-teen-romanticism.

SUPER TROOPERS (2001)

Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe behind Super Troopers, Club Dread (2004) and Beerfest (2006), is a decidedly hit-or-miss outfit, inspired one moment and flat the next. That description certainly applies to their debut about a group of misfit-slacker state troopers, which first screened at Sundance 2001 and amounts to a series of gags that range from the brilliant to the dreary. If the latter slightly outnumber the former, however, they don’t overshadow them, thanks in part to some inspired casting – how Broken Lizard convinced serious thesp Brian Cox to participate in such inanity remains baffling – that energizes the film’s humor. But moreover, Super Troopers thrives thanks to its pièce-de-résistance involving a couple of troopers pulling over a speeding car in which the backseat teenage passenger, in an effort to avoid arrest and prosecution, has engulfed a giant bag of marijuana. The bizarre incident that follows is dim-witted goofiness of a virtuosic variety, delivering a hilarious high so powerful that it carries one through quite a bit of ensuing patchiness.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

Trailer Review: The Informers

Paul Clark — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

This, the latest Bret Easton Ellis adaptation to come out of Hollywood, is making its premiere at Sundance this week. As with all Ellis adaptations, this movie has to toe a very tricky line, trying doing justice to Ellis’ stories of hard-partying, disaffected people while coming off as something more than empty hedonism. The closest a filmmaker’s gotten so far is Mary Harron with American Psycho, not just because she could confine herself to one character’s viewpoint but also because her constitutional inability to buy into the world Patrick Bateman was selling allowed her to find the satire. Alas, The Informers looks to be closer to the Less Than Zero approach, with Gregor Jordon turning Ellis into a cautionary tale for the ennui that plagues L.A.’s privileged classes. That said, the cast looks pretty solid- why shouldn’t it be, given the number of showy parts to be found in Ellis’ works?- and it’s always nice to see Billy Bob Thornton in a meaty role instead of simply playing one-dimensional weirdos or cops.

Sundance Preview: Five Movies to Skip

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In anticipation of tonight’s kickoff of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, I’ve been previewing the must-see films: Tuesday we looked at documentaries and yesterday we checked out the narrative features. But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. Every film festival of note screens its share of duds, and you don’t want be wasting valuable time you could spend riding a giant inner tube down a snowy peak. (Seriously, if you’re in Park City this week, do this. It’s super fun.) Here are five movies I’d scratch off my list if I happened to be in town.

BLACK DYNAMITE

Sure, this could be entertaining. The trailer makes it looks like pure blaxploitation pastiche, as if it’s the missing third piece of Grindhouse. The Sundance guide does nothing to dissuade me from this perception: “Black Dynamite is a throwback with an attitude. Hilarious, campy, hot, and sexy, it plays with every cliché from 1970s film and television, with a few new ones thrown in for color.” Personally, I think that could get real old real quick, but then, I sat through both I’m Gonna Get You Sucka and Undercover Brother, so maybe I’m just burnt out.

THE INFORMERS

Less Than Zero and American Psycho have their defenders, I suppose, but none of them are currently typing these words. So this description doesn’t particular light my fire: “Sex, drugs, and new wave...Los Angeles in the early 1980s: a time of excess and decadence, and nobody captures it better than Bret Easton Ellis as he coadapts his own acclaimed novel for the screen.” That’s not a world I have any interest in revisiting, although given that the cast includes Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder and the late Brad Renfro, I wouldn’t mind seeing a warts-and-all making-of documentary. I’m guessing it was not a placid, well-oiled production.

SHRINK

In another time – it seems so distant now – I would have watched Kevin Spacey read the phone book. His string of ‘90s performances, including Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming with Sharks and The Usual Suspects left me eager to see what he’d do next. Then he caught the worst case of Oscar-itis since Nicolas Cage. (Pay It Forward. K-PAX. The Fucking Life of David Fucking Gale!) Now I can scarcely stand the sight of him, and Shrink sure doesn’t sound like the movie that will change that. “What happens when the people we count on to hold us together…are barely holding it together themselves? Jonas Pate's Shrink is a striking, fast-paced exposé of the ‘other’ Hollywood, featuring folks living outside their comfort zone and the people who put them there. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) is a psychiatrist with an A-list clientele, including a once-famous actress (Saffron Burrows), an insecure young writer (Mark Webber), and a comically obsessive-compulsive superagent (Dallas Roberts).” Kevin – get help!

SPREAD

The Sundance guide’s description of Spread is simply overflowing with sentences that make me never want to set foot in a movie theater again. ‘Los Angeles is often the customary site for mythmaking in the American cultural iconography. It is a place, for instance, where the legend of the sexual exploits of the male gigolo seems perfectly at home in the decadent universe of Hollywood dreams and nightmares. Surely inspired by the classic tradition of American Gigolo and Shampoo, Spread is such a perfectly tuned, contemporary depiction of the trials and tribulations of sleeping your way to wealth and success that, guilty pleasure or not, it’s irresistible. Especially so since it’s driven by the iconic persona of Ashton Kutcher. – ” Aaaand, this is the point where I make a break for the bathroom and hug the toilet close to my face. I didn’t even get to the part about his romancing of “middle-aged client” Anne Heche. There are some visuals I don’t need in my head.

SPRING BREAKDOWN

I don’t want to hate on Amy Poehler or (especially) Parker Posey, whose big screen appearances have been all too scarce of late, but this looks like absolute dogshit. “For Judi, Gayle, and Becky, tragically unhip bosom buddies pushing 40, “make-your-own-pizza night” constitutes the pinnacle of revelry. But when Judi’s fiancé turns out to be gay, Gayle’s face repulses a blind guy, and Becky’s beloved cat kicks the bucket, they’re ready for real pampering. Dusting themselves off, the trio heads for some R&R;on South Padre Island, where Becky’s supposed to chaperone her boss’s daughter.” Seriously, try to get through the trailer above. This is a Sundance movie? Time to hit the slopes!

In Other Blogs: Festivus!

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir previews the New York Film Festival. “Like any institution closely identified with New York City -- the Yankees, the Times, the Metropolitan Museum, the scum-sucking financial establishment that has ruined all of our lives and our children's as well -- the New York Film Festival makes a pretty easy target for crusading anti-elitists of all stripes…What's far more interesting about the NYFF after all this time is that it remains remarkably successful at its self-assigned mission, anachronistic and undemocratic as that may appear. In programming relatively few features (28 this year) -- most of them drawn from the major European festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice -- and in insisting on a pre-pop-culture vision of cinema as an art form, festival director Richard Peña and his staff have, perversely enough, proven to be shrewd table-setters for the fall film marketplace.”

Erstwhile Screengrabber Mike D’Angelo already has a page of NYFF reviews up, and it sounds like you can scratch Tony Manero off your list. “For those not temperamentally inclined to celebrate uncompromising cine-machismo for its own sake, however, this is pretty thin gruel, deeply unpleasant without ever coming within spitting distance of enlightening. Once you've been startled by Raúl assisting an old woman home and then unexpectedly pummeling her to death for her TV set, and then seen him pawn the TV in order to fund a replica of the multicolored Saturday Night Fever dance floor, you're good to go, literally -- everything that follows is more of the same. American Psycho didn't really work as a movie, but at least Bret Easton Ellis had a coherent idea, in that you can readily see the connection between '80s materialism, Bateman's sadistic violence and the transformation of Genesis into a Phil Collins solo act. How exactly does living under Pinochet translate to disco fever? Why are we watching Tony Manero and not, say, Roy Neary or Luke Skywalker?”

Also weighing in on NYFF is Vadim Rizov at The House Next Door, who finds Gomorrah comes up wanting when compared to our favorite TV show. “The problem with Gomorrah is that it could start and end anywhere. The Wire runs full arcs, tying social problems to well-developed characters; the war never ends, but the characters move on. Gomorrah is representative types running through a loop: today's Scarface-emulating young sociopaths are tomorrow's dead meat, but there'll always be someone to replace them. All five stories in Gomorrah's hydra-headed monster have rough conclusions, but anyone expecting a movie about mob life to end in any kind of upbeat fashion a) needs to watch more movies b) needs, indeed, to read up a bit more. Gomorrah is exactly what I thought it would be, which means there's no surprises.”

Dazed and Confused and Waking Life star Wiley Wiggins was a regular fixture around Fantastic Fest, and as this entry at his blog It’s Not For Everyone shows, he’s down with the Ozsploitation. “Brian Trenchard-Smith, fresh from his appearance in Not Quite Hollywood, introduced and answered questions about one of his very early films, The Man From Hong Kong. As one might expect from an Australian Kung Fu movie, the driving sequences are better than the fight sequences, and the main car chase in the. Movie is actually one of the most impressive filmed, mainly for the demolition-derby ferocity with which the cars slam into one another and a sureness in the photography and editing during the chase. The acting and plotting are the most memorable when they flirt with self parody. The movie was a lot of fun, but pales in comparison to some of Trenchard-Smith's crazier films.”

And in List-o-Mania this week, Filmbrain features Lost in the Sixties and Seventies: A Dozen I'd Kill to See. At number four is the 1971 obscurity You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat. “Easily the holiest of grails on the list, this is a film I originally heard about back in the early 80s, but only recently confirmed that it does indeed truly exist. Dig this: an anarchic anti-establishment comedy that skewers then-contemporary mores that stars Zalman King (yes, that one) as a young man trying to find his way in New York City. Add to that a cast that includes Allen Garfield, Richard Pryor, and Roz Kelly (Happy Days' Pinky Tuscadero), and features music by Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Oh yes, Wes Craven worked on the film as well. I have never met a single soul who can honestly claim to have seen this film, so if you have, please do speak up!”

Morning Deal Report: Heather Graham’s Hangover

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here’s a project I can identify with this morning: Heather Graham will star in The Hangover for director Todd Phillips (Road Trip, Old School). “The story revolves around three buddies, played by Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, who lose their best friend (Justin Bartha) at his Caesars Palace bachelor party just 40 hours before his wedding,” says The Hollywood Reporter. “The trio must attempt to retrace all their bad decisions from the night before and figure out where things went wrong.” Based on my experience, I’m guessing things went wrong at the Circus Circus buffet.

“Bruce Willis will make his directorial debut with the indie psychological drama Three Stories About Joan,” Variety reports. Camilla Belle will play the title role in the film that “centers on a young woman at three points in her life and the family tragedies that cause her to lose her grip on reality. Willis will play the father of Belle’s character.”

Are you ready for American Psycho: The Musical? “Producers are betting Bret Easton Ellis' novel and screen adaptation will translate to a stage musical, with original 1980s-inspired songs and familiar covers of hits from the era,” THR reports. That hangover isn’t getting any better.

Related:
Bruce Willis to Play Robot
Fincher's Musical, The Canon of Thor, and Justice on the Rocks

Take Five: HBO

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:45:00 GMT

Sex and the City: The Movie opens everywhere that Cosmopolitans are sold today, and the odds are pretty good that it will make enough money to keep Sarah Jessica Parker in sundresses for the rest of her life. There is little doubt as to whether or not the movie -- based on the inescapable HBO original series -- will be successful; the real question is whether or not it's going to be any good. One thing is for sure: it will at least make more money than the other films that have been made out of HBO's original television programming. They're a pretty dismal set of money-losers and critic-displeasers, ranging from the not good (Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) to the very bad (the Mr. Show movie, Run Ronnie Run) to the completely awful (the Tales from the Crypt spin-off Bordello of Blood). If the long-rumored Deadwood movie ever gets made, or if the Sopranos movie doesn't turn out to be a disappointment, this may change things, but in the meantime, HBO's television shows have yet to produce a movie worth watching. Less known, however, is that HBO has a production arm that has put out a number of worthwhile films, many of which had theatrical releases prior to their run on the pay cable network; some of them, in fact, were released exclusively for theatrical release through HBO Films or their sister company, Picturehouse FIlms. With their overseeing company, New Line Cinema, dead, the future of HBO Films is uncertain, but given the quality of their past releases, they're sure to find a new home somewhere with parent company Time/Warner. Here's five fine films that were released under the HBO Film distribution banner.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (2003)

The first, and arguably the best, of a rash of terrific film releases by HBO Films in the mid-2000s, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's inventive (and sometimes elusive) documentary about underground comics writer Harvey Pekar stands alongside the remarkable Crumb as a compelling, if sometimes troubling, look at an American original. The comparison is by no means coincidental: legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb is a longtime friend of Pekar's, and the man he first recruited to illustrate his stories of the struggles, victories, humiliations and triumphs of everyday life. If it's a little disengenuous to claim that Pekar is the indestructably normal person he claims to be (and it is -- normal people, after all, do not compulsively and sometimes brilliantly catalog the minutia of their lives in autobiographical comics), there's nothing at all phony about Pekar, his everyday heroism, the skewed attitude and refusal to surrender to the diificultues of an ordinary life, or his irascible and cynical -- if never openly cruel -- sense of humor.

ELEPHANT (2003)

The first of a series of collaborations between HBO Films and director Gus Van Sant, Elephant is the best of the lot -- and may in fact be one of the finest films of the decade. Inspired by the horrific mass murder at Columbine High School, the fragmented, almost dreamlike story of a pair of alienated high school students who go on a shooting rampage is a meditation on violence unlike any other in recent cinematic history. Elephant is a quiet, open, almost meditative film, breaking off to follow one character after another in order to present the day of the shooting as resolutely normal; but its greatest trick is to constantly dangle in front of us tantalizing 'clues' to the motivation of the killers, only to have every one of them lead to an unproductive, uncomfortable dead end. After the final bloodbath, we have an almost tangible need to know the whys and wherefores of the senseless killing, but the movie is wise enough to deny us an easy solution to an impossibly difficult question, and is brave enough to believe in its director's vision and leave us hanging without a quick fi or an easy scapegoat.

DEATH IN GAZA (2004)

One of the least partisan -- and most tragically unbearable -- documentaries about the Israeli-Palestine conflict was the 2004 film Death in Gaza, which concentrated largely on the impact the war had on children in the area. Focusing on a quartet of Palestinian kids, all in their early teens or younger, who take up arms against their occupiers, Death in Gaza neither exculpates the bad behavior of the kids (their anti-Semitism is extremely uncomfortable, especially from children so young) or glosses over why they might be so driven to militancy and violence (we are constantly exposed to the insufferable living conditions into which they are born and raised, and every one of them has a jaw-dropping horror story about the death of a friend or relative). What makes the move especially harrowing is that its 34-year-old British director, James Miller, was himself killed by the Israeli Defense Forces while filming in Gaza at night, a typically stupid, futile, and enraging event that is captured on film and shown matter-of-factly during the course of the documentary. Powerful and sad.

MARIA FULL OF GRACE (2004)

Joshua Marston's feature about a young Colombian teenager who becomes a drug mule in order to raise money for her impoverished family is filmed in such an effective, simple neorealist style -- and manages to so effectively encapsulate one of the most degrading yet banal aspects of the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism -- that it's hard to avoid comparisons to De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. And while it's not even remotely in that film's league, it's still very much a movie worth watching, updating De Sica's themes for a post-socialist age, and it does at least have one advantage over its spiritual forebear: the presense of the heartbreaking, compelling, fascinating lead actress, Catalino Sandino Moreno. The then-17-year-old Moreno turns in one of the most watchable yet tragic performances in recent memory as a headstrong, intelligent girl who has nonetheless begun to move in circles who will shape her into something she cannot control; it's almost impossible to take your eyes off her from the beginning of the movie to the end.

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE (2005)

The Notorious Bettie Page, a serviceable if never stunning biography of the legendary 1950s pin-up queen, was brought to us by the writer/director team of Guinevere Turner and Mary Harron. The duo also was responsible for the highly problematic American Psycho, and Harron also directed the truly discomfiting I Shot Andy Warhol. While its problems are different (a lack of depth and a somewhat flat visual style, neither of which were the difficulties with Harron's other movies), it does reflect the curate's egg nature of all three films. Clearly, it wasn't a movie made to do nothing more than titillate, but by the same token, we walk out of the theater knowing precious little more about the notorious Bettie Page than we did when we came in. That said, it shares with the other films a great deal of energy and feeling, and is supported by the sort of tremendous central performance Harron seems to coax so easily out of her stars -- Gretchen Mol is easily the equal of Christian Bale or Lili Taylor, and it's her charm and control in the role that makes this a movie worth watching.

Video of the Day: Yackety Flix

Peter Smith — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Boots Randolph, the southern soul saxophonist who was an important part of the early rock 'n' roll sound of everyone from Elvis Presley to Roy Orbison, died this summer. He deserves better than to be remember for providing the theme music for The Benny Hill Show, but it’s become a truism of internet comedy that everything is funnier with Randolph’s "Yackety Sax" played over it. Yes, everything. — Leonard Pierce

The Devil Wears Izod: The Ten Greatest Preppy Villains

sometripe — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:00:00 GMT

There's something about pleated khakis and navy-blue blazers that gives us chills. Clearly we're not alone — the preppy villain has been a staple of Hollywood's light fare for decades. You can spot him (and it is always a "him" — girls like the Heathers were the same genus, different species) by his ascot and asymetrically parted hair, or perhaps the pink Lacoste sweater tied loosely across his shoulders. Sometimes he wears only tennis shorts, a polo shirt and a sneer. He had a big hand in popularizing feathered hair — that's how evil he is. The preppy villain hit his stride during the Reagan years (60% of our featured preppy villains are of the '80s), but he still pops up now and again, a magnet for our disgust so there's nothing left but love for the little guy.

10. Vice-Principal Gills, Summer School (1987)

Gills (Robin Thomas) plays a leisure-suit-wearing high-school VP who assigns his gym instructor, Mr. Shoop (Mark Harmon), to teach a remedial summer English course so he can spend the warmer months wooing the history teacher (Kirstie Alley). He serenades her with vintage convertibles and well-prepared picnics that include expensive fromage. Being the villain, he also tries to sabotage Shoop's class by loudly pointing out their inadequacies. Evil-prep quirks include dropping fancy French phrases like "joie de vivre" and expressing exaggerated horror at a clip of Texas Chainsaw Massacre before running from the room. — Liz Nadybal

9. Mick, Teen Wolf (1985)

Somehow, Scott Howard was only briefly fazed by the whole being-part-wolf thing. Yet Mick, his arch-nemesis and star of the rival high school's basketball team, threw his life into complete disarray. Mick could usually be found coordinating his denim-on-denim ensembles and inappropriately groping his girlfriend. When he wasn't playing point guard for the Dragons, he enjoyed creating clever quips about Scott, like "Hope your acting's better than your hook shot, kid." — LN

8. Zachary "Sack" Lodge, Wedding Crashers (2005)

Sure, Bradley Cooper's portrayal of Rachel McAdams' fiancé is over-the-top. But what do you expect from a plot in which McAdams' mother makes Owen Wilson feel her up and her sister jacks off Vince Vaughn under the dining room table? This is not a subtle movie, nor is Sack a subtle villain. He's designed to be the character you automatically hate, in direct contrast to Owen Wilson's laid-back butterscotch stallion and Vince Vaughn's affable teddy bear. He hunts quail with a vengeance, kisses senator ass, takes a game of touch football to death-match levels and wears the perfect rugby-shirt-and-Abercrombie ensemble for each occasion. His shining moment takes place at McAdam's sister's wedding to Vaughn, where the Sack tells Christopher Walken he "don't know shit" and orders McAdams to "get your fucking ass on that altar right now." We all cheer when Vaughn knocks him out. Nobody can disrespect Walken. — Nicole Ankowski

7. Patrick Bateman, American Psycho (2000)

I'd always imagined Christian Bale smelled of high-end grooming products like Kiehl's Rare-Earth Cleansing Masque, a preppie of the truly classy sort. Then I saw American Psycho, a Bret Easton Ellis adaptation in which Bale plays a slick Wall Street financier with a penchant for after-hours rape and torture, and Kiehl's suddenly seemed a bit twee. Still, Bateman has a Newport summer home, a prep-school diploma and a collection of Hugo Boss three-pieces we'd like to get our hands on. If he didn't insist on disemboweling people, we'd be in love. — Steph Auteri

6. Stan Gable, Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Bright red short-shorts and feathered hair — we could never quite reverse that image of Ted McGinley, even after several years of his role as the girlish Mr. Marcy D'Arcy on Married...With Children. Nor the image of him tossing freshmen out their dorm windows after his frat house burns down, participating in a tricycle race, or pulling a jockstrap over the head of an Asian student while yelling, "Do you know karate?" Subtle! — Will Doig

5. Rand McPherson, PCU (1994)

Before he became the grizzled Dennis Finch on Just Shoot Me, David Spade played a pitch-perfect prep-frat leader, Rand McPherson, attending the counter-culturally diverse Port Chester University. Lackey to the university president, the sniveling Finch leads a group of Republican minions in a quest to rid the campus of binge-drinking, loud music and all things un-Izod. Obviously, he gets it in the end, locked into a room by Jeremy Piven with a stereo playing "Afternoon Delight" on repeat, though just locked in a room with Jeremy Piven might have been a more effective coup de grace. — SA

4. The tennis players, Trading Places (1983)
Philadelphia in 1983 was a septic system of crime and filth, so Louis Winthorpe III and his snotty friends played tennis at an upscale private club. Winthorpe's friends were the kind of old-money preps that almost don't exist anymore. They spoke with Katharine Hepburn accents and serenaded their female hangers-on with their Ivy League alma-mater song. They owned the kind of white tennis shorts that are now selling on eBay for triple digits. And they really didn't like prostitutes (Jamie Lee Curtis) or poor black people (Eddie Murphy). When Winthorpe loses his money, they drop him faster than you can say forty-love. By the time the second half of the film rolls around they've basically disappeared, but you have to assume they got cleaned out in that frozen concentrated orange juice debacle. — WD

3. Hardy Jenns, Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

With his popped collar and visible-from-space chin dimple, Hardy (Craig Sheffer) was quintessential '80s prep: rich, philandering, ready to embark on a college career of date rape and a professional career of white-collar embezzlement. "He's a total buck," as one character describes him, and even at twelve, I didn't understand that. Writer/director John Hughes does have a tendency toward broad stripes, and he painted Hardy with an industrial-size rollerbrush. "You walk out on me, where you gonna go?" he snarls at his beautiful girlfriend, played by Lea Thompson. Into the arms of true love, of course. Enjoy your status car and your receding hairline, buck. — Sarah Hepola

2. Johnny Lawrence, The Karate Kid (1984)

I still can't watch that Halloween party scene, when Ralph Macchio is running for the chicken-wire fence in his crazy shower costume and the skeleton thugs pull him down and kick the stuffing out of him. Johnny Lawrence isn't even a preppy villain in the fun way. I knew too many of him in high school to be amused. In fact, nine-tenths of the pleasure of watching The Karate Kid is simply seeing Lawrence get that screaming-bird kick to the face. They should put that on a loop and play it repeatedly for unpopular high-school kids with low self-esteem. — WD

1. Steff, Pretty in Pink (1986)

James Spader's Steff was the ultimate preppy villain during a time when wearing silk dressing gowns at keggers was cool. He spends the entire movie trying to bed Molly Ringwald's friend Andie while keeping his best friend, pretty-wuss-boy Blane (Andrew McCarthy), from getting into her pants. Despite being fabulously dressed in pastels and shoulder pads, he imbues his character with enough quiet slime that you can understand why Molly recoils every time she sees him. Spader so inhabited the bad boy with the pretty face that it launched his career, and you can still see some Steff in most of his roles today. — NA