Dad bod Farrell by tooth, by claw. There’s a lot of talk of stabbing stomachs at the Last Chance Hotel. Verdant bracken, the bay laps the shore. Feral singles in the turgid wood. A brutal film, richly imagined. John C. Reilly would like to be a macaw when the torture’s over.
There’s nothing surprising in Turbo Kid, you’ll know going in whether it’s your bag or not. It’s ambitions are meager and it executes them with aplomb. A penchant for gore & commercial 80’s youth nostalgia above all will get you into this robot girlfriend movie. It is tired and thoughtless and niche but it has heart. It’s somehow both sweet and mean. It’s unfunny and boring. Shares DNA with the inferior Hobo with a Shotgun and the superior (slightly) Beyond the Black Rainbow. I watched it with people who loved it and you might too, I dunno man. Pffffttt.
Sometimes the loneliness catches up, the void inside. Your own stupid voice. You lie down in your fat and blood and wait for the call. American brand names enter and exit your windshield. The old lady up the block calls for Cancer. There are other, funnier Solondz pictures.
In dreams Dolly’s office opens on the Mojave. She steps away from staplers and collating machines and enters that hot home of the desert tortoise. The sun is very bright out here, the air dry. The trees are named Joshua and aren’t trees at all. Cartoon birds flit down from the mountain and whisper memories into her Cinderella shoulders. They take pratfalls and scream “guh-guh-guh-ghost!” This is a cheerful reminder to be militantly feminist. By evening she’s on top of a gulch looking down. The moon is a glowing sliver of thumb nail behind her and the stars are manifold. She sits. She breathes.
This is the movie the fan’s demanded Marvel make. I like that the line is blurred between actor Ryan Reynolds and character Wade Wilson. Other things I liked: the dated USSR giant metal X-man guy, the animation sequence featuring unicorns. The plot is pretty boring and the jokes are kinda bad, not Robot Chicken bad, but close. For those logging this kind of thing, Ryan Reynold’s dick makes an appearance. He’s impaled on twisted rebar in a burning medical lab in the film’s big serious origin moment and boom, there it is, shrouded and murky behind smoke and flame, Reynold cock. I dunno, it might just be CGI.
Nazis exhume secret soldier corpses in the Kharkiv forest. Gretel’s witch turns gingerbread into boat and floats down the Amstel seducing little boys. There’s a joke about how Americans can’t tell Marx from Lenin. There’s a lot of fucking & shitting, some stabbing. Sweet Movie is really gross and acrid and fun. Here’s an essay by Lorraine Mortimer.
Gothic canals, f bombs and child murder. It’s not so much In Bruges is milk that’s coddled and gone lumpy from neglect as I’m no longer in my twenties. Should do well for all you Boondock Saints but my fellow depressive neurotics should steer clear. Belgium looks nice though.
Philosophers, poets, and laborers. In hotel rooms, bars, and bookstores. The highway winks away over the horizon. We have time enough to choose our words precisely, to etch and carve the minutes into these salty bed sheets. There are such things as love & lust & God & consequence. The pistol has one loaded chamber and Chekhov demands it must be fired.
It’s refreshing to see trans folk and Armenian cab drivers represented in the movies. A picture, more a window than a card trick; I feel these sun beat streets. This corner of Wilshire and La Brea. Miss Sin-Dee speed walks in heels past spent liquor bottles and dog turds. Miss Alexandra blows Razmik in a car wash. The frothing suds are a stand-in for spittle & semen. It’s a Christmas movie.
Jasper At The Movies 