Three 4 Friday! (Some Brief Reviews…)

Bastards of the Party, The Relic and Marat/Sade

Playing catch-up here at LERNER INTERNATIONAL—

Today we’ve got one dopey pic, and two very political movies of genius—

Gotta counteract the downtime from being a Victim of the Economy…

Checkin’ Up On Kinema! (Four Movies Get Reviewed)

Silent House, John Carter [of Mars], A Marine Story, and The Parking Lot Movie

We’ll get to the movie reviews in a moment (two genre flicks, two flicks dealing with contemporary issues; three “thumbs up,” one “thumbs down”), but let’s talk about music for a moment.

LIE #47: Father Knows Best

World’s Greatest Dad (2009; Bobcat Goldthwaite) is about the venom—making the viewer squirm. But as long as you can appreciate acidic, nasty humor that takes no prisoners, while still delivering maximum laughs, you will enjoy this film and its vicious take on the “sympathy industry.”

LIE #46: Dolls Have No Feelings? A Review of 2009’s DVD MIA “Air Doll” (and some other films)

Air Doll (2009; Hirokazu Koreeda) is what you would get if Nagisa Oshima adapted a Hans Christian Andersen or Grimm’s fairy tale: a doll gets a heart and becomes human—with all the resulting pain and suffering that that offers.

But in this case, the doll is the type you inflate and have sex with—including a removable polymer vagina; and the overall film is a bleak metaphor/comment on the routine and system-wide subconsciously reinforced dehumanization of women, grounded by an impressive performance by lead Doona Bae.

In other words, a doll gets a heart and finds out that it’s not worth it.

LIE #45: The “Mom” Is a Harsh Mistress

Mom (1991; Patrick Rand) can only be recommended if you are a horror-comedy completist, or working on your graduate thesis on the topic.

Not to say there aren’t moments of almost pure genius, but they are few and far between, and I just don’t know if you should spend your time on this movie.

August 2012 INDEX: What We Watched As We Lost Our Jobs

In August, psychiatrists and Europeans take vacations.

But being neither, August found me getting laid off—after 12 years!—from my day job gig as one of the editors of a trade magazine covering the chemical industry. 

Twelve years…Scheisse!

So you can expect that last month’s movie viewing here at LERNER INTERNATIONAL might be a tad… influenced by this news.

That’s certainly why the majority of the images in this post will be of things blowing up—

Meanwhile, in August 2012, if a flick couldn’t keep my interest, I wouldn’t finish watching it: I was ruthless.

And they did have a chance. If your film can’t grab my interest in the first ten minutes, then get a new job, loser.