MOVIES you watched this week? (DVD)

[TrueFaith77]

Originally Posted by TrueFaith77

I just watched the new John Boorman movie: The Tiger's Tail. Relegated to a straight-to-DVD release, it is the best film by this GIANT of filmmaking in over a decade (and I was moved by the cathartic In My Country). If it weren't so wise and elegant, I'd say it exhibits the youthful inventiveness of his Catch Us If You Can (yes, greater than A Hard Day's Night), while updating his complicated, humane view of Capitalism in Where the Heart Is (post-Reagan, pre-Clinton, it went unheeded) to the Obama era. Its insights into the human eternal adrift in the political-economic present couldn't be more urgently needed. Deep, mysterious, fun, funny, The Tiger's Tail swirls with intellectual romance and primal emotions, from its teeming traffic-jam opening to its final boat-trip punchline.

It joins Julian Hernandez's Raging Sun, Raging Sky and Andre Techine's The Girl On The Train as the best new movies I've seen this year -- all (thus far) unreleased theatrically in the United States.

Just felt I should re-post the above, especially as I now learn that Apres Luis has just been released straight to DVD. A Gael Morel film: straight-to-dvd!?!? This is officially a cinema crisis. SERIOUSLY: SEE THE TIGER'S TAIL!

Meanwhile, I caught up on some movies this weekend. Saw David R. Ellis' The Final Destination 3D, which was stupid and ludicrous. . . especially after the soulful Final Destination 3 by James Wong. Ellis is, officially, a hack who is nothing without Larry Cohen (screenwriter of Cellular). Ellis tries to get all racial here but he conflates critiquing racism with class bias, and Black perserverence with Black pathology (a ludicrous characterization) -- and deflates--buries--these matters with unimaginative shocks.

Also watched Watchmen. Unlike Ellis, director Zack Snyder is no hack. His mastery of cgi made visionary the fascist abstractions of 300; but here Snyder gets Fascism--and, more importantly, comic books--all wrong by taking too seriously the graphic novel's pseudo-intellectual approach to comic book mythology. It's better than The Dark Knight (of course) but it also shows us from whence The Dark Knight sprang.

The DVD of the remake of Black Christmas: well-cast (Andrea Martin! Mary Elizabeth Winstead!!) and well-made (by Glen Morgan), but this unpleasant movie's sick Christmas twist (warding off evil spirits in the righteous climax confuses paganism with Christianity. . . or does it?) seemed removed from the real-world anxiety that grounded Morgan's previous horror remake, Willard, via the uncanny--unforgettable--use of Michael Jackson's "Ben".

For more on MJ, Willard, and "Ben," check out Armond White's new book KEEP MOVING: THE MICHAEL JACKSON CHRONICLES.