JordanHoffman.com is where you go to learn about Jordan Hoffman. He is a filmmaker and a licensed New York City tour guide, and blogs about various mundane aspects of his life (oftentimes working in Mr. Spock.) He makes wages as the editor of UGO.com's movies channel and has a cat named Goober. Take a look around and tell us what you think.
I think there is some sort of rule that if you are an Eastern European filmmaker you have to have at least one scene of marathon group drinking in some sort of brightly lit holiday ball room. (Hell, Milos Forman managed to squeeze a whole movie outta that.) The Prefab People doesn’t disappoint on this measure, but it does disappoint if you are looking for a dreamy, surreal cinematic symphony like Tarr is known for. (I’ve only seen his Werkmeister Harmonies which is a carnival of long takes, music and tracking shots.) This is more of a kitchen sink, Mike Leigh-like slice of life presentation of a marriage falling apart. We open with the man stomping out the front door and leaving the woman behind, crying, with the scared kids and then we flash back to fragments of scenes of what got them there. We don’t really know who these people are - we just get to observe the moments, knowing they are leading to an unhappy end. Very low-budget and low-fi (those aren’t sound effects, that’s the rattle of the camera), the performances are sincere and the camera is probing. Not a pleasant film, necessarily, but an interesting experiment, especially considering where this filmmaker is headed.
Much like The Simpsons Movie, this direct to DVD feature can best be described as one long Futurama episode. One of those really confusing heavy SF twisty-turny ultra nerdy paradox-laden Futurama episodes with Al Gore in them. You know, the best ones.
Can’t wait to watch this one again with graph paper to see if I can actually follow all of the shifts in the space-time continuum!
I know I am in the minority here, but here goes: Alien is a work of art, Aliens is a fun movie.
There is a subtlety of tone to the original film that is completely disposed of in Cameron’s film. The dialogue in Alien felt like direct cinema, like Casavettes, dare-I-say. In Cameron’s film, it is all “Game over, man!” Fun, yes, don’t get me wrong, but hardly believable.
I also don’t like how the “world of the film” is given such mundane specificity. “The Company” has a name and the Colonial Marines have US flag patches on their uniforms. What is so wonderful about the first film is that you have absolutely no idea about when this is all going down. Tying it down to the US Flag kinda cheapens it.
And the little girl is annoying. And the device on her wrist is hokey. (Actual line of dialogue, “We can find her with THIS!” as the prop introduced earlier as a TRACKER is re-introduced. Eeegads.) Frankly, even as a kid I knew this was idiotic. When Ripley showed up in that forklift skeleton and my friends shouted “Awesome!” I was thinking, “Eh, a guilty pleasure.” Yeah, I was an annoying 12 year old.
But it is fun to watch shit blow up. And fun to see the aesthetic of every single stinking video game get created.
A monster movie, I guess, sure, and not much more, but Scott’s Alien is a landmark in tone. It is all tone. From groggily waking up in the neat-looking but dingy Nostromo to sittin’ around griping about work as though in an off-broadway black box theater (meant as compliment.) Even though this is just a monster movie, you still have to pay attention to find out what is going on.
They’d never make a movie like this anymore, as made evident by every sub-par entry in the franchise after this point.
I’m using the revisionist name ’cause that’s the one on the cover of the new DVD collection that was recently handed to me. I watched this 756 times (approx.) as a kid, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. Here’s what I got from it this time.
1 - Marion Ravenwood - what a great character. So much more than just “the girl.” She’s tough and scrappy and attractive but not a ditz and still needs the help of a big, strong man but not, like, for everything. Fantastic.
2 - Awesome script. The exposition is laid out expertly and with humor. Humor all around. Fabulous stuff.
3 - There’s hardly any dialogue! Like I said, awesome script. This is visual storytelling. There are giant swaths of screentime where not a word is spoken. Fantastic.
4 - This movie stars the trumpet. During those dialogue free speeches, the talking is all done with John Williams’ killer brass. Not just “Indy’s Theme” but all the music. So awesome.
5 - The truck sequence is the best one. When Indy busted out on that horse I shouted “YAY!” in my home with no irony.
I’ve seen Transporter 2 (okay, most of Transporter 2) but not this and since every article I publish at UGO seems to reference this film as a hallmark of our time I thought it appropriate that I check this out. The action sequences are indeed dazzling and the bizarre choice of music on the soundtrack makes it clear that you should be having fun. And much of it is fun. Lots of jumping and stuff.
There are a hundred different ways to interpret Lacombe, Lucien and that ambiguity is part of its perfection.
On the surface, it is a GoodFellas-like look into the waning days of Vichy-France. A young, dumb kid wanders his way into being a member of the Gestapo. Is the propaganda forcing him? Is he just naturally a brute? Is he just trying to impress the girls? Doesn’t he realize the girl he is trying to impress is Jewish?
Malle offers no answers, just observation, and lets you draw the line of culpability. One thing is clear: so much of history goes the way it does for “unofficial” reasons. Had Lucien been a little bit older (or the recruiter less of a stickler) he would have joined the Resistance. Had his mother not been sleeping around once his father had been takes as a POW, he might have just stayed on the farm. And on and on.
There are many remarkable settings in this film - the police station in the converted hotel with its never closing bar, Django Reinhardt records, aging film star and upstairs torture chamber. The ant-ridden, Malick-esque rural retreat where Lucien and “France” (the Jewish daughter of the patrician Parisian tailor) make their last stand. The Resistance-sympathizing doctor’s home where Lucien goes on a loot-filled sting. The detail is remarkable (lots of animals get killed in ways that don’t look fake); sadly, there is a lot of truth in this story.
French cinema is often unfairly dismissed as slow, talky and plotless. A ridiculous statement, obviously. Which is why a movie like this is doubly awful. It is a carnival of French movie stereotypes. And also - flat out lies if you read the back of the DVD box that calls it sexy and sensual.
As far as I can tell it is about a violin repairman who is a snooty douche who is quiet all the time. A violinist decides she is in love with him, but he doesn’t much care. Then everyone looks sad. Seventeen hours later, the damned thing ends.
And it isn’t really good corn, unfortunately. This well-told and humorous doc manages to be informative and helpful without being a pain in the ass. Unlike other, better known documentarians, the King Corn team lets you draw your own conclusion and goes easy on the pedantics.
On the surface, just watching the way modern corn is grown, sold and used is pretty fascinating. I know so much more about corn, now. And I’m never drinking soda again.
Some critics ragged on this movie because it doesn’t have any unpredictable twists and turns. I say that is part of what makes it work. It is a straightforward cops & criminals movie that is more about terrific acting and realistic setting than anything else.
I always take an interest in a movie set in New York’s “Outer Boroughs” and this is one of the few that really nails it. The clothes, the furniture, the attitude. This movie is the anti-Guide To Recognizing Your Saints.
This movie won’t change your life, but it is worth checking out.
A tremendous amount of fun. Robert Downey is a blast to watch and watching him build the Iron Man suit both raw-dog style in a cave and hi-tech with Stark Industry’s 3-D GUI is worth the price of admission.
Far and away one of the most enjoyable comic book adaptations I’ve seen, Favreau keeps it light and fun. The only complaint could be that the final battle seems a little less-than-epic, but how much screen time can you devote to two robo-men banging metal at each other? The Tron-inspired/Sabbath-tuned closing credits are neat, too.
The wallpaper is terrific, really it is. And the hand-stitched tablecloths. Seriously, fabulous. But surface delights aside, there is no connection to the characters here. With about twenty minutes left in the picture I asked aloud, “when is the movie going to start?”
Rarely do Ann and I disagree on a movie this much (she really dug it) but I just couldn’t get past the problem that I just couldn’t find the story. What was the conflict? Where are these people coming from? What do they want? What are we rooting for? And, frankly, the whole Kipling-esque sub-continent gawking seems a little bit crude. The only thing to actually happen in this movie is the death of a poor village boy - an opportunity for our three rich travellers to examine their place in the world? Sure, maybe - but, better yet, an opportunity to blast the Kinks and have a meaningless slo-mo tracking shot as hipster in cool haircuts walk across the frame.
Wes Anderson makes terrific AT&T and American Express commericals. Feature films just really aren’t his calling.
The annoyingness of the above poster kinda sums up the movie. Chest-pounding Jewish mothers and surface conversation about the Rosenbergs aboud in this cliche-ridden and predictable film.
It is very well intentioned and (I’m sure) exctracted directly from Mazursky’s experience. But - oy - subtle it is not.
I give it a “Gentleman’s C” because its heart is in the right place and they at least had the decency to shoot the Cafe Reggio scenes at the Cafe Reggio. Supporting role by Christoper Walken is entertaning, and a cameo by the young Jeff Goldblum is fantastic, too. The rest, I’m ashamed to say, sucks quite badly no matter how much Dave Brubeck is on the soundtrack.
Although I’ve never sat down and hammered this out with my co-conspirator Kerry Douglas Dye, I think the two movies that we were holding up as our ultimate goal for Body/Antibody were Roman Polanski’s The Tenant and David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. I’m not egotistical to think we actually achieved this, but the mix of eerie isolation and comedy (and, yes, Cronenberg’s films are meant to be funny, as my recent UGO interview proves) is a particularly hard nut to crack.
The main difference between a movie like Body/Antibody and Dead Ringers is the latter doesn’t need support from a complex plot. I mean - what is the plot of Dead Ringers really? Twin brothers - one starts taking drugs. I mean, that’s kinda it in terms of surface. How you fill in the rest of the two hours is what makes this such a fascinating piece. I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t blown away by this movie - it is just so fucking creepy - and, really, when you get down to it, not all that much happens. Same goes for The Tenant. THAT’S genius at work.
Ann had never seen this before & she liked it a great deal - and was all worked up when she found out it was based on a true story. Indeed, she hit the microfiche at the local library trying to find a write-up about it. Alas, our branch only has the Times. This is much more a Daily News type of story.
Stylish and slick James Fox hires what seems like the perfect manservant in Dirk Bogarde. The American or J-Horror remake would lead to blood. The ‘63 UK version leads to….class consciousness! Lots of cool ties and upper crust accents in this well-loved flick with the Pinter dialogue. Good stuff.
I say as a legitimate compliment that Zombie Strippers is much better than it has to be. Geniune laughs keep this surprising: Robert Englund prancing around; Nietzche, Sartre, Camus and Ionesco jokes; a sight gag with a donkey that had me spit Miller Lite out my nose. And Jenna Jameson can actually kinda act. (And shoot pool balls out of her ladyparts.)
Jay Lee has tapped into the John Waters vibe and I expect good things from this entertaining chap.
