Nine Things about Frozen
1. Kind of based on the fairy tale “The Snow Queen”, this Disney film is a funny, charming throwback to their classic musicals of decades ago.
2. I can already see it being adapted into a Broadway musical.
3. As a technical accomplishment, this movie is a masterpiece.
4. The art direction is perhaps the most gorgeous of the year, and the animation is stunningly realized and detailed. The 3D effects are wonderful.
5. The number “Let it Go” is on my Top 10 movie scenes of the year.
6. It’s a good thing the movie is so much fun to watch, because the story is kind of thin.
7. It’s about a princess that somehow has magical ice powers. She gets upset and accidentally freezes the entire kingdom. Her sister tries to talk her down.
8. Since it is a Disney musical, it is partly about True Love.
9. Thankfully, the movie does make the point that True Love doesn’t spring into your heart out of nowhere. The main character, Anna, keeps getting mocked for wanting to marry the prince she just met. It’s about time we started teaching kids that lesson.
Nine Things About the Movie New Year’s Evil
1. This little cult film is one of those good “bad” films.
2. It’s about how radio and television’s hottest Los Angeles rock hostess Blaze throws a New Year’s Eve punk rock party and invites callers to vote on the best New Wave rock song.
3. The first caller proposes that the best New Wave song is “We Don’t Need No Education.”
4. The next caller identifies himself as Mr. Evil and tells Blaze that he is going to kill someone each time an American time zone hits midnight.
5. The New Year’s Eve concert is full of fake teenagers in a fake mosh pit to a band called Shadow. They dance like zombies, so I guess that means they are full of fake drugs.
6. Across town, in an insane asylum, the inmates are watching the concert and dancing like they have Down’s Syndrome.
7. My favorite murder in the movie is when Mr. Evil suffocates a gal with a bag of weed.
8. Since the psychopath is only trying to kill one person an hour, it’s not the most suspenseful slasher flick ever made.
9. I think the movie was trying to make a statement that when women work, it effectively emasculates their husbands.
Nine Things about the Movie The Act of Killing
1. Made with the help of Anonymous, this is probably the most psychologically complex documentary I’ve ever seen.
2. In 1960’s Indonesia, there was a failed military coup. As a result, thugs and small-time gangsters were turned into paramilitary death squads. They roamed the country and killed millions of people who were suspected of being “communist”. Anwar Congo was the most feared leader of one these death squads.
3. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer managed to make contact with Anwar, and asked him to recount his memories of that time. As the death squads are openly celebrated as heroes, Anwar eagerly agreed to make this movie.
4. The movie starts out with Anwar and one of his flunkies openly boasting about the ways they tortured and killed people. The stories then turn to actual recreations of some of the murders and massacres.
5. As the movie progresses, we meet other people who were involved with the murders. They all have their own ways of dealing with what they’ve done. They believe that the key to not be haunted by the ghosts of those they murdered is to never feel guilty.
6. In between the recreation of history, we also get a close look at the way Indonesia is run today – the rampant corruption, cynicism, and extortion. People love to explain repeatedly that the word “gangster” means “free man”. We come to understand that the death squads are part of an entire horrific pattern in the country’s psyche. This is normal life to them.
7. As Anwar recreates his “adventures”, he moves from playing himself to playing the victim’s role. Then he wants to act out the nightmares he has. The torture and murder scenes become increasingly elaborate. You can see him progress from self-important psychopath to trembling human being that questions everything he’s done. But he can’t apologize for it.
8. The movie is alternately absurd, nightmarish, horrific, and amusingly surreal. Anwar is sometimes glib (like discussing the best clothing to wear when you kill people), and sometimes regretful (such as when he admits that he usually didn’t close the eyes of the people’s heads once he cut them off).
9. The movie is long, running almost three hours. It’s hard to watch, because of the graphic discussion and re-enacting of torture and murder. It’s bizarre and unexpectedly beautiful. It’s an unprecedented look at the psychology of mass murderers and the effects of trauma on those who cause it.
Nine Things about Blackfish
1. Don’t be fooled by the oddly bland title, or the fact that you may not have heard of this film. This is a stunning and heart wrenching documentary - perhaps the best of the year.
2. In 2010, SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by a whale at the park. The official news story was that Dawn made a mistake by letting her ponytail hang out, and the whale grabbed it and she got pulled under. Filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite thought the story sounded suspicious, so she started digging around. The result was this film.
3. While the death of Brancheau is the hook of “Blackfish”, that topic isn’t really dealt with until the end. The movie is much deeper and more comprehensive than that. It’s a compilation of interviews, court testimony, SeaWorld commercials, and home video over several decades.
4. It documents 30 years of SeaWorld’s actions, including accounts of how they capture, treat, and train the orcas, especially one particular killer whale, Tilikum.
5. By contrasting SeaWorld’s public image with what really was going on behind the scenes, this movie reaches far beyond one sad incident and becomes a blistering indictment of SeaWorld itself.
6. SeaWorld is understandably upset at this film, and released a statement saying, in part, “Blackfish is billed as a documentary, but instead of a fair and balanced treatment of a complex subject, the film is inaccurate and misleading... to promote its bias that killer whales should not be maintained in a zoological setting, the film paints a distorted picture…”
7. Interestingly, the filmmakers repeatedly asked SeaWorld to be interviewed for “Blackfish”, and SeaWorld repeatedly declined, only releasing that statement after the film came out. That was probably smart on SeaWorld’s part. I don’t see any way they could successfully defend themselves here.
8. Pixar studios is currently working on “Finding Dory”, a sequel to “Finding Nemo”. When the director of that movie saw “Blackfish”, he rewrote parts of the film, including the ending.
9. If enough people see this movie, it may be able to single-handedly take down SeaWorld.
Nine Things About the Movie I Spit On Your Grave 2
1. In 1978, the original, notorious film “I Spit On Your Grave” was released.
In 2010, a pointless remake was made.
2. In 2013, the director of the pointless remake made this even more pointless “sequel”.
Even as a sequel to a bad movie, this movie sucks.
3. It has nothing to do with either previous version of “I Spit On Your Grave”. It’s just more of the same.
4. It’s about a Missouri girl who moves to New York to become a model. She runs into some sleazy photographers who kidnap her and take her to Bulgaria for some unexplained reason. Then they rape and torture her, and leave her for dead.
5. She survives and lives in the sewers under a church instead of going to the American Embassy which is like a block away. When she’s insane enough, she puts on her crazy face and takes revenge on her captors in the most cruel ways she can think of. Then the movie ends.
6. It doesn’t say anything new. It’s tedious and boring and less creative than the first one. The acting is terrible. Even the gore is kind of stupid.
7. I suspect the script was a reject from “Hostel 4”. Seriously, does everyone in Eastern Europe participate in slavery and sex trafficking?
8. It was released in one movie theater for one week and made $809.
9. For hardcore horror fans that just like to keep up with the various genres, it’s slightly interesting from a filmmaking perspective. But anyone else should just spit on its grave and walk away.
Nine Things about Escape From Tomorrow
1. This is a weird little surreal comedy psychological thriller that became an instant cult classic. It’s about a family’s vacation at Disney World, and how sinister things begin to happen to the father.
2. Director Randy Moore knew he wouldn't get permission to actually film in Disney World, because Disney would never allow something like this to get made. So Moore did the next best thing - he snuck cameras into Disney World and filmed it anyway.
3. In one interpretation, it’s about how “the happiest place on Earth” triggers a psychosexual breakdown of the dad while he follows a couple of underage girls through the rides.
4. In another interpretation, the dad catches a bizarre form of “cat flu” and hallucinates while he’s dying and the park covers it up.
5. Or maybe it’s about how the dad stumbles onto the fact that the princess characters in the park are high-priced hookers, there is a secret robot base underneath Epcot Center, and his grade-school daughter almost becomes a sex slave.
6. Whichever interpretation you go with, it’s not a positive portrayal of Disney. The film was made in secret guerrilla-style at Disney World without their permission or approval.
7. There are long, rather boring parts of the film. Half of it is basically just the family wandering around the theme park and going on rides.
8. But it does slowly build the paranoia, and there are several surreal and chilling moments that pretty much guarantee you won’t look at Disney the same way ever again. In some ways, this movie is similar to weird daydreams I would have when I was at the park. It's just too happy to be real. Or healthy.
9. Everybody assumed that Disney would sue the hell out of the filmmakers, but the director made sure to never actually violate any copyrights. Disney eventually decided to just keep quiet about it, so that it didn't get any more publicity than it already had.
Nine Things about Inside Llewyn Davis
1. Joel and Ethan Coen have been making movies for 30 years. This movie proves they still have the ability to come up with compelling quirky comedies full of even quirkier characters.
2. This movie shows a week in the life of a folk singer, Llewyn Davis, in 1961 New York.It’s based loosely on a real folk singer named Dave Van Ronk.
3. Llewyn is a talended singer-songwriter, but his musical career has just never caught on. He’s trying to decide whether he should keep trying.
4. Llewyn has a rather miserable life. He doesn’t have a place to live, he just couch surfs through the city, staying with whatever friend isn’t currently mad at him.
5. As the movie unfolds, we see that his problems come from a mixture of bad luck and bad decisions. Mostly the latter.
6. While this is a comedy, it’s a melancholy comedy with a kind of dark heart. It’s about coming to the realization that nobody cares about your dreams but you.
7. Justin Timberlake plays a small role as Llewyn’s friend. And Coen staple actor John Goodman deserves Best Supporting Actor of the Year with his portrayal of a cranky jazz musician.
8. Characters sing a lot of folk songs in this movie. I’m not a big fan of folk songs.
9. There’s a subplot about Llewyn’s relationship with a cat. That subplot could be a metaphorical representation of the entire movie.
Nine Things About the Movie Leviathan
1. This is what you would call an “experimental documentary”.
2. It’s about the fishing industry off the coast of New England in America.
3. There is no narration to explain what’s going on.
4. There is no soundtrack other than the sounds of the fishing boat and the ocean.
5. It was filmed by attaching tiny cameras on parts of the fishing boat and on the fishermen.
6. This movie makes fishing look really intimidating and scary.
7. Instead of being a traditional documentary that explains something, this one makes you feel like you are looking at a strange and alien job, full of people you will never understand.
8. There are lots of shots of dead and dying fish.
9. This is not meant for everyone. But it’s an extraordinary, non-linear way to tell a story. It’s one of the more memorable movies of 2013, and one of the more memorable documentaries I've ever seen.
Nine Things About the Movie Laurence Anyways
1. This is a bittersweet, whimsical romantic drama about a high school teacher, Laurence, and his girlfriend. When Laurence tells her that he is a woman trapped in a man's body, the couple struggle to figure out what their relationship means.
2. The movie handles the subject of being transgender with an even hand, without getting hysterical or exploitative.
3. It does a good job of explaining that being transgender isn't the same as being gay.
4. Given the struggles of transgender people for understanding and acceptance, there are scenes of discrimination and pain. We see the fallout with his girlfriend, his family, and his job.
5. But this isn't a pity party movie. It's strong and sensitive and even joyous, sometimes. And it's a realistic look at the pressures on a relationship when someone switches genders.
6. The movies shows the fluid nature of love and sexuality - and makes you think about what it means when you fall in love with somebody.
7. Visually, the movie sometimes leaves reality and reaches into the fantastic, and becomes a sort of visual poetry.
8. The movie is three hours long, which is a little too long. It drags some things out longer than necessary.
8. Despite the length of the film, this is a charming tragedy about difficult life circumstances.
