Domino

I doubted Keira Knightly in this. I did. Even in Pirates of the Caribbean, where she was meant to be an uppidy princess who becomes a reckless tomboy-esque semi-heroine, she is as sweet as a peach and just as lovely. But girlfriend takes this role, and doesn't just kick its ass, she picks it up by the eyelids, slaps it across the face, asks it who its mama is, and then kicks its ass again.

On the DVD cover, they called it "Bounty Hunting on Acid", and boy is it ever. The jarring movements and muted colors of the cinematography were the perfect gritty edge that this movie needed. Not since Novalee Nation have I heard a name like Domino Harvey, and if I didn't know better I would have thought it a figment of a poor imagination. But she was real, this one-time Beverly Hills debutante reject, and she did indeed become one hell of a bounty hunter. The movie takes that and pleads guilty to but is unapologetic about its drastic off course changes into Hollywoodland from the true script of her life. We all know that if an FBI helicopter crashed into the middle of the Las Vegas strip we would have heard about it, but damn is it fun to watch. You know it didn't really happen but it doesn't stop you from doing what a good fiction movie should do: wish that it really did. All of it.

Domino is a woman both sexual and elusive, which makes her even sexier. She knows what she is, and the advantages it presents, and uses them fully, but don't mistake her as a slut. She will just as easily gut you as hear another line of your misogynistic bullshit. You might raise an eyebrow to watch her give a lapdance to save her life (actually, it really works with the movie. They managed to make it believable!), but you will only shout happy words when you see her break Brian Austin Green's nose. And he's not playing a character. He's just Brian Austin Green, playing Brian Austin Green, along side Ian Zeiring, as those two douche bags who semi-starred in the 90210 series. Yes, it is as funny and badass as it sounds, thanks for asking.

Men will enjoy this movie because it is fast paced, a lot of stuff blows up, and you see Keira Knightley's naked breasts long enough to know what they look like. Women will enjoy it because they found Charlie's Angels to be too slutty, and Kill Bill to be too unrealistic and long desperately for a woman who is smart, mean, and real. And her clothes are cute as hell.

I walked away from this movie wanting a few things: Keira's haircut, Lucy Lui to dream about pussy, and to break off Lateesha's fingernails before she put somebody's eye out.

Domino gets the Joon rating of Awesome: Bow to it you ungrateful bastards. And you should. Its that good.

Thumbsucker

When I saw this movie in the video store I had never heard of it, which surprised me considering it had a cast that was not necessarily to be scoffed at: Vincent D'onofrio (Law and Order CI's Det. Goren, Full Metal Jacket's Pile), Tilda Swinton (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe's White Witch), Benjamin Bratt (One bad movie after another), Kelli Garner (Dreamland's Calista), Keanu Reeves (more on this bastard later), Vince Vaughn (if you don't know who he is by now you shouldn't even be reading a movie review), and the unknown but amazingly talented Lou Taylor Pucci (who you don't know, but you will).

Now, the casting was a bit off in two respects: Keanu Reeves should be dead. He shouldn't be making movies, and he certainly shouldn't be in a movie so real, funny and poignant that it makes Crash look like a pile of horse crap (granted that isn't very hard for me to say since I wasn't all that fond of Crash). Every nuance of this movie is real, except everything that Keanu Reeves says and does. I honestly expected that at any moment he would bust out and say, "Dude! Most righteous!" and then do air guitar. Honestly. He was that bad. Now, I loved Devil’s Advocate, and Speed and I could absolutely die with happiness when watching Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, but this man can’t act and this movie might as well have had a big flashing Las Vegas size sign pointing at him and blinking “Sucks! Sucks! Sucks!”. End of story. Just take my word for it.

Next is Vince Vaughn. His part was unfunny and totally wienerish. Is wienerish a word? My spell checker says its not, but I defy thee! Vince Vaughn should have had Keanu Reeves part. It may not have been funny, but he wouldn’t have had to act like a wiener. Still, I’m glad he was there. I didn’t like him in Psycho, but he saved Wedding Crashers, and lets face it people, its tough to save anything that Owen Wilson is going south in. (PS If Owen Wilson is reading this I still totally love you and will always love you because you played Eli Cash in the Royal Tenenbaums, one of my favorite movies of all time. Didn’t you help write that too? Jebus! Thank you). Moving on.

When I started watching Thumbsucker, I thought it was going to be so quirky and ridiculous that in the end I would wonder what in the hell I had just watched and what the hell had the damn point been anyway? But if nothing else I feel like I can trust Vincent D’onofrio’s judgment (I even like The Cell. Stop laughing.) So watch I did and I realized that this movie didn’t just delve into the heart and life of a teenage boy (Justin Cobb, played by Lou Pucci) to whom thumb sucking had been an addiction his entire life. No. Get this: it covers drug addiction (both behavioral drugs as well as street drugs), married life in all that it is and seems to be, the alpha male family dynamic, sex and that life is everything and nothing you expect all at once. The movie I was watching was a picture of that same thought: everything and nothing I expected. It managed to cover all these topics in a way that Hollywood has forgotten completely: without utter alarm and panic. Imagine that, if you can.

D’onofrio and Swinton play the parents, who are in a strange mishmash of a marriage, and both play their roles so naturally that you are so happy when their place in Lou’s story goes from dangling subplot to front stage, because you just want to watch them work. Its that good. Kelli Garner plays Justin’s “girlfriend” Rebecca, who comes and goes in the story but is so deliciously sensual and aloof you want to bite a hole through your lip. And lastly, but people he ain’t the least, is Lou Pucci who plays Justin.

Horrified by his addiction to sucking his thumb; which makes his father disgusted with him, is only one more thing for his mother to just roll over and ignore about him and that leads him in the most stressful situations to the bathroom stall to partake in, he decides to part ways with his habit which turns not into a silly journey through a pathetic excuse for withdrawals, but which leads you through the many ins and outs of his life, his school, his family, his future. Can he quit? Should he have to? What is it about being a thumb sucker that marks him in the way he has marked even himself? But what its really about is the world and the people in it, and our perception of them, ourselves and the events and places that make up our lives. NO ONE could have played this role like Lou Pucci. He is the next Leonardo Dicaprio and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that he’s handsome, and breathtakingly talented. I ate up every word he spoke. If Lou Pucci kicked me in the boob, I’d ask for another. Write that down somewhere, I want you to remember that I said it. Johnny Depp? Orlando Bloom? Lou Pucci. Just watch.

Joon gives Thumbsucker the Joon rating of Awesome. That means watch it. Or someday when you’re watching Lou Pucci on Inside the Actor’s Studio you’ll be thinking “You know, I really should see that movie. They say it was his springboard!”. It’ll be like DiCaprio’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. It’ll be Johnny’s 21 Jumpstreet. It’ll be Basic Instinct for Sharon Stone and The Mask for Cameron Diaz. Only you’ll want to watch it.

Full Metal Jacket

I'd never seen this movie before, which seemed sad, so when there were no good movies on the new releases racks to partake in, I had to indulge. My first clue that this movie was something to be reckoned with was the fact I had never seen it on television. If they can edit down Se7en for cable, then this movie must whoop the FCC's ancient booty.

I brought the DVD out to the car and showed my choice to Mr. Joon. The cover shown a combat helmet, across which was written "born to kill", and was adorned with a peace sign pin. "The duality of man." said Mr. Joon, which meant nothing to me at them time, but set the stage. There's something there, if you can scratch away the grimy surface. Beneath the pussy jokes and the rough exterior of men beating each other with bars of soap and the far too young and bitter Vietnamese prostitutes, there does lie a moral. A moral that tells of just what Joker says: "the duality of man". (I like how everything Joker says if half a joke. Its a truth with a smile. That's beside the point.)

The point is this: we expect our men to be one way and they better be that way or they're in for it. We expect our men to go to war and fight. We expect them to win, because if they don't then not only are they failures, but our country looks like one too, and in turn so do all the people within it. So off they go, and they better smile like they mean it when they do. They have to go where the people are trying to kill them, look through their sights at another person and shoot them down lest they be shot. They shoot again and again.

That's all their life is after a while, you know? This life. These men that try to kill them everyday, who they are supposed to kill first lest they shame their country. When that's your life every day, then dammit, just screw the girl. She doesn't seem to care and you're so drunk with disillusionment and bitterness that you couldn't care less either. What do you do when you hate and kill for your own survival, and can't let morality break that down? You want peace; you want to go home and forget anything that ever was or will be of what you did but at the same time you can't care about that hippie bullshit because that's not the thinking that will get you through the day alive.

That’s what it is. That way of thinking, of living and surviving, that is the layer that surrounds their hearts and thoughts to get them through it with some semblance of humanity. That state of being is their full metal jacket.

Still, if I had to hear one more “gook” or “me so horny” or any of that crap I was going to barf a little in my mouth. So this was a tough movie to rate. Obviously Stanley Kubrick is a genius of astounding proportions. However, to me there’s realism and then there’s just a lot of potty talk and ickiness. By the end I totally thought they were going to rape that girl as she lay shot and dying and begging for death, because that’s how much it all disturbed me. The Joon rating Full Metal Jacket receives is Pretty Damn Cool. Because it is definitely something you need to see once, if only to know where that whole, “Me love you long time, sucky sucky 5 dollah” thing comes from.

Memoirs of a Geisha

First and foremost you should understand that Memoirs of a Geisha is one of my favorite books and when I got it I read it 3 times almost back to back. So I had highly anticipated the arrival of the movie. Maybe I had a lot of expectations, and my disappointment was a result of that. But I don't think so. I think that the movie industry has become a money grubbing machine of crap that just spews and spews endless excrement. I think they saw an intimate "memoir", fueled with imagery that was vivid enough to be seen even without a screen. What they didn't seem to see, however, is the most important thing of all: the methodical, purposeful use of every word and every moment. You can't take a book in which everything has meaning, and condense it into nothingness. You can't, but they did. Let's begin.

A brief history of the book for those of you who haven't partaken (by the way: READ IT!): Memoirs is the story of a young girl, Chiyo, from a small fishing village whose father sells her and her sister into the slave like Geisha life. She is sold to an 'okiya' where she is schooled for years on how to sing, dance, and play the shamisan, as well as speak, dress, apply makeup, put on the very elaborate kimono and obi, and to beguile the gentlemen they will entertain. (Don't get this wrong: geisha are not prostitutes. They are like escorts, they are to be looked at and watched, and they talk and entertain. If a geisha is adored enough by a particular man, he will become her 'danna', and she will be for him alone and he will pay all her expenses and will keep her well. Its a complicated tale. She is a slave to the okiya, and owes them all her expenses, to be paid back when she works as a geisha. She will owe them her costs for her schooling, food, even the cost of what they paid for her. ) Chiyo's okiya is home to Hatsumomo, her antagonist, an evil, jealous woman who does all in her power to bring poor Chiyo down. And Pumpkin (a nickname) a little girl of the same age who came a few months before Chiyo who will also train to be geisha.
She meets the Chairman, falls in love with him and spends the rest of her time trying to be a geisha that he will fall in love with. Chiyo is 'adopted' for training by Mameha, a renown geisha and Hatsumomo's arch nemesis. Mameha decides the Chairman won't work for Chiyo (whose name becomes Sayuri when she becomes geisha) and decides her future relies on Nobu, a gruff man who was debilitated in the war and has only 1 arm and horrible burns all over his face.
That's as much as you need to know. Now lets rip this bag of crap apart.

They hollowed out all of the characters so badly you don't care about a single one of them. In the name of expediency they took carefully cultivated relationships and subtle nuances of character, and cut gaping caverns in them that are so wide they are impossible for the viewer to cross. The Chairman becomes less of a mysterious character that alludes her throughout and becomes just another Hollywood love interest. Her relationship with Nobu, a delicate but powerful relationship with astounding complications, becomes another nuisance on her road to the Hollywood ending. An ending, might I add, that they also change for the movie. Hatsumomo was supposed to be a villainess for the ages. Like a samurai sword, a work of art indeed but dangerous and cold. In the movie, she is a disheveled slag. Psychotic and reckless. And Pumpkin becomes just another sub-plot.

My biggest problem with this movie, is that they took the term "based on the book" and stretched it to the nth degree. Based on the book? Bitch, please. They added things that never happened in the book, but not little things, huge things! Like Hatsumomo burning down the okiya. Never happened. They took out major dialog of such importance to the storyline that my husband, who has never read the book, spent half the movie scratching his head and saying "What's going on?" My answer: "Hell if I know." They hacked apart major plot points and character relationships so badly they were unrecognizable, and consequently made poetic dialog seem like over dramatized tripe. It all ended up with the feel of being man-handled. Awkward at best.

The only thing this film had going for it was the same reason it won an Oscar for cinematography; its absolutely stunning. Frame for frame it is a work of art. Flawless color, lighting and movement. But what do you get when you take something that should be slow and deliberate and intelligent, and simply give it a pretty face?

Like Paris Hilton's head. Beautiful and empty.

Memoirs of a Geisha gets Joon's worst movie rating: You sons-of-bitches. I wish I had a time machine simply to stop this movie from ever being made. Ever.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Ladies and Gentlemen, Tim Burton:

"Today I’m introducing my newest stop motion animation masterpiece, Corpse Bride. You may be wondering, Tim, how could it possibly be as good as its predecessor The Nightmare Before Christmas? To which I answer It couldn’t, and its not. Thank you for coming, and have a good night!"

Did that sum it up for you? Because it should. Let me start by saying that I expect a lot from Tim Burton. A lot. He’s a fucking genius, okay? Did you see Big Fish? TNBC? We’ll ignore Batman for now, but what about Edward Scissorhands? Come on! The man has more gothic creativity in his pinky nail than in Rob Zombie and Anne Rice combined. And that’s saying a lot.

Let’s start with the cast, shall we? For the most part, he did decently this time around. For the most part. I think he faltered a little by having an all-star cast because they don’t all have all star voices, but Helena Bonham-Carter did way better than I expected her to as the title character. The English actors piled up like keys in a bowl at a swinger’s party and that was cool. There were not one, but 2 actresses from one of my all time favorite shows Absolutely Fabulous (Patsy and Bubble). However, and this is a big “however”, Johnny Depp? Bad idea. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to say that dear Johnny should be seen and not heard, though he isn’t hard on the eyes is he ladies (and gentlemen of that persuasion)? He is in fact a pretty good actor (see Edward Scissorhands, above). But to voice this character he, for some reason that only god and Johnny know, raised his voice an entire octave. The voice is so overacted and effeminate that its almost difficult to separate his character from just being the voice-of-a-really-girly-Johnny-Depp. Do you follow? Moving on.

The plot? This sucker's got more holes than a colander. Which brings me to the question I was faced with on a smaller scale with The Nightmare Before Christmas: who is this movie for? In TNBC it didn’t matter, because adults and children alike could enjoy it. My 2 year old son was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with it. Everyone wins in that situation. But the problem with Corpse Bride is, its not really for anyone. The morbidity is up a notch and a half from his last movie, it has drunks, and a 19th century theme that would go way over the head of any child. How many kids do you think knows what a chaperon is anymore? But at the same time the plot is so watered down that no adult could really get into it either. The biggest problem with the plot is that its not really funny, or sad, or exciting; its not really anything. What's the point of a movie that doesn’t make you feel anything except a vague sense of still being impressed with stop motion animation? The plot is predictable at best, and the circumstances under which the main character, Victor, comes to be “married” to said bride is, at best, a stretch of ginormous proportions. And to top it all off, the music sucks. Come on, Danny Elfman. I know you can do better. I know every word to every song on TNBC by heart. You could have squatted and dropped this stuff in the ditch out back.

Which brings me to the characters. Granted, I wasn’t able to get too attached to the characters in TNBC either. Alas, that is Burton’s fatal stop motion flaw that he mysteriously does not possess in flesh and blood cinema. The corpse bride, Emily, is likable, which is the saving grace of this movie. Otherwise you wouldn’t give two shits about any of it. And when she’s pissed, get out of the way cause bitch is wicked awesome. Then there’s Victor and Victoria, and no they aren’t the same person, but I wish they were because that may have been more worth watching. They were, however, both bumbling, soft-spoken pussies with giant emotionless eyes that made me want to blink profusely (see picture).

There were some good parts. I don’t know if “good” is the right word. Let’s see, “interesting”? No…I know: “not an inhumane disappointment of epic proportions”. There is a piano duet between the bride and Victor which is lovely in a way that makes you stop and watch. There is a musical number with skeletons that, if you can ignore the music, was really creatively choreographed. It was like the pink elephants montage in Dumbo, only all the elephants are dead and the acid is laced with a little, I don’t know, meth. And the ending, which true to form I will not reveal here, involving the Bride’s ascent, is pretty damn neat.

So. Nutshell time. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride gets the Joon rating of Huh…Because I expected better from people who have to go through months of painstaking, perfectly planned work every hour of every day. Everything is picked apart so thoroughly. How could you miss all this? You didn’t, I’d wager, and shame on you for that.

Constant Gardener

Spoiler Warning.

Let me start this review with a letter I am fully intent on sending:

Dear Focus Features,
I just watched Constant Gardener, and first and foremost I must say “Bravo for releasing the first film from your company in a million years that isn’t dominated by pointless scenes of people staring. Jolly good."
I would also like to thank you for releasing a movie that is kind of like Hotel Rwanda (a damn good movie in and of itself) but with caucasian heroes, which is kind of weird and squeamishly unpleasant if you think about it. It makes you glad you don’t live in Africa while at the same time thinking Why the hell are there parts of the world like this? Tell me the solution so I can fix it. Good job casting, by the way. Ralph Fiennes did such a good job of playing a huge pussy driven to courage by guilt and anger. Seriously, if he had rolled over in the face of indignity one more time I would have stabbed my eyes out with a pen. Rachel Weisz: faaaabulous. Every cheeky comment she made to stuffy, overly important men made me happy a little inside.
I was so glad you filmed on location in Kenya. How else would you have done it, I guess, but all those real people made it cut so much deeper. The little children, the young mothers. Sigh. What’s that solution again?
I also liked the sex collages. It really made me think of cool sheets and soft skin, and not the stinky sticky sweatiness that sex usually is. Well done.
Things I hated: The teasing. Breast feeding the black baby? Could you please make my heart ache a little more? But it was all a farce, wasn’t it? The “marriage of convenience” talk. Damn you for making me doubt Tessa. Damn you. I also hated the way that you showed Ralph Fiennes just shifting his eyes around a lot. We get it. He was confused and distraught. Don’t belittle his ability. Did you see the English Patient?! Well, I didn’t, but he did get nominated for an Oscar for it! He didn’t actually win, but that’s beside the point. Its demeaning, damn it! I also could have done without the whole “crucified-guy-with-his-own-detached-manhood-in-his-mouth” thing. Could have gone my whole life without that mental picture, thanks.
Long story short, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the sadness, and the grossness. I enjoyed the paranoia I shared with Justin. However, I didn’t walk away from it like I did with the other movies that it seemed to be reminiscent of, like Hotel Rwanda, or Schindler’s List for that matter. I walked away from those movies aching for change. For a time machine, or insurmountable cosmic power. This made me sad, a bit queasy, but in the end I didn’t feel what I know that I was supposed to feel. Maybe that’s me, and not you. But I don’t think so.
I promise to forgive you for ever so slightly missing the mark if you will please never make another Broken Flowers.

Sincerely,
Joon

Joon gives The Constant Gardener the rating of Huh…because I just wasn’t blown away. And damn it, I expect cinematic perfection. Especially for a movie that is supposed to impart such human importance.

Waking Ned Devine

This week's movie review is for an oldie, but a goody, Waking Ned Devine. I had never seen this before but a long time ago a very trustworthy source told me it was one of the best movies he had ever seen, so I had to give it a try.

Admittedly, I am a total movie snob. To the nth degree. If it isn't entertaining to perfection, it might as well be invisible. For instance, the movie Crash. Liked it. Totally got, and agreed with the theme. However, when rich black lady (played by Thandie Newton) goes on a swearing rant, for some reason the dialogue rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn't get into it completely after that. And I loved her on ER, and in Interview with a Vampire, so I don't know what the hell, but I snobbed it up and I have no shame. So back to my point.

I really liked this movie. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING cuter than naked little old men. Just chillin' and ridin' their mopeds and takin' a dip. You know, whatever. I love the village they live in and it makes me want to be a totally stinky pig farmer just so I can live there. I love the accents. But I could have done without some of the farty dialogue (I use the word farty a lot. Its a very versatile word, don't you think?) and maybe just a tiiiiny bit less wrinkled booty.

Lets get specific, shall we? Resident old farts Micheal and Jackie, two lottery hounds to begin with, find out their old friend Ned Devine, in a village of only 52 residents, has won a very substantial lottery. Unfortunately, (and isn't that just Murphy's Law) he gets so psyched that he keels over. Sad. But the movie isn't really about the money, is it? Isn't it really about the village rallying together like a big family to better the lives of everyone there? To share in what one member, in passing, did for them all? Isn't it about life long friendships, and love, and how much more important they are then money? The ending tells it all and more. When Mummy says her son is kin to Ned Devine (otherwise thought to be without relation), and asks, "What does my son need more, 7 million pounds, or a father?" and really also means, "And I totally love Pig Finn and, oh yah, and who would want to leave here?" I say who indeed? Certainly not I. (Then rotten old lady's telephone booth is plummeted off the cliff, and I said good riddance in a very nonchalant way that might mean I have no soul but I'm ignoring that. Bitch had it coming. )

I love the feeling that I'm left with. That Ned Devine did the best thing he could do for anyone in his life, in his death. He solidified a family of 51 souls. That no matter what money they might have, that I could enter that tiny village today, and not a stone or piece of moss would have changed. Well, maybe more carefully tended gardens, more music hanging in the air. Wouldn't it be loverly?

I give Waking Ned Devine the Joon rating of Pretty Damn Cool. I wouldn't have given it the Oscar, but I'm glad I watched it. It makes the idea of money vs life completely different. And that's really what it is. Money vs. Life. Those are two separate things. Have you noticed that lately?

Leon/The Professional

Oh Leon, Leon. Why did you you torment me so? Why did you release yourself as The Professional in America, but Leon everywhere else, so that when I looked for you in my local video store they said they didn’t have you. Well, I forgive you, because you are one of the best movies ever made and I could just eat you up.

I would like you to take this review as an example of what a movie is supposed to be. In all its unique, loving, funny, bittersweet, and actiony glory. Actiony is so a word. Because I said so.
Let us, for instance, take the beginning. Now, there is a point in the very beginning that is a bit campy. Very mafia stereotype, very cheesy dialogue. I like this and I’ll tell you why: because when the average person watches Leon, on say (perish the thought) TV, they would watch the first five minutes and think Another bang em up shoot em up mafia flick, and turn the channel. I say Good. Most people probably aren’t good enough to be allowed to watch Leon anyway. Ingrates. But if you are patient, if you wade through this tiny puddle of scripted disappointment, you won’t long feel wronged by Hollywood once again. (Maybe because it was made by mainly French filmmakers? Perhaps?)

Remember in my Emily Rose review, in which I said that the movie should have started out with a bang? Spinning heads and devil vomit from the outset. This movie does this. Not in a pathetic Rambo way. In a way that makes you think I don’t know who this guy is, but I must learn his ninja like ways. Indeed. Lion is as easy to catch as smoke.

Enter Natalie Portman. If you were unfortunate enough to see Anywhere but Here , first I apologize, and second I say, “Watch this movie. You will never doubt her again.” And to the very core of my tar filled movie heart, I mean it. She plays 12 year old Matilda, a girl ravaged by life. But not in a Jodie-Foster-in-Taxi-Driver sort of way. In a way that is Annie meets L7 and they have a love baby with Leonardo DiCaprio’s character on Growing Pains way. Did I lose you? Just trust me. The bottom line: mature beyond her years, street smart, with a mouth that could rival a construction worker.

Here are a few things I love about Leon: the milk thing. I think it is supposed to represent the innocence that he craves. The return to naivety that will never come for him. Matilda begins to hate the milk because she doesn’t want the innocence to return, she wants to mature so Leon will love her. Which is another thing about his movie that I love. The creepy love dynamic between Matilda and Leon that Leon is obviously fighting, which makes me love him even more. It makes me so sad for Matilda because you can tell that she is just so afraid, and using sex to get love as so many young women do when their lives fall apart. But alas, Leon just wants her to be normal, so his life can be normal. Take the plant, for example. Its so important to him because it is the only constant thing in his life. Something he can love and nurture without having to worry about fucking it up. It is the only thing in his life that is constant, but isn’t death.

I love the role reversal with Matilda and Leon. He is so brutal, but wants to be so naïve. And she is so naïve and wants to be brutal. He is constantly confused and saddened by her maturity and I love him so much for it. When he storms through the DEA office to save her, totally reckless in his love for her, I actually cried! Nothing matters as much to him as she does. How wonderful for them both!

Team all this with a deliciously crazy bad guy (what the hell are in those pills?) played by Gary Oldman (of Bram Soker's Dracula fame) and the movie is completely perfect. I’m sorry, but it is. Actually, I’m not sorry. The ending, which I will not give away here, is so amazing its almost poetic. The flash of light, the graceful fall to the floor, the ring in the hand.
Beautiful.

If you’ve seen Leon, then you love it. If you haven’t, there’s not anything wrong with you YET, but if you don’t make some small effort then you are at least a little bit dumb. You will say, very nonchalantly, “Edward Scissorhands? What’s that? Oh just another trying to be normal movie that is totally inept next to Leon.”

So of course, Leon/The Professional get the highest Joon rating of Awesome. What else is there to say?

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

This week I watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a movie I had highly anticipated the release of because I totally dig all those religious horror movies. The Omen, the Exorcist, whatever. Well…not Constantine. But I did like Devil’s Advocate. Anyway, I expected great things from this movie “based on a true story” about poor Emily Rose, the victim of possession by not one, but SIX evil demons.

Where to begin, where to begin. How about the beginning? And the fact that nothing interesting happens for the first 20 minutes. I don’t know about you, but I like my horror movies to have immediate head spinning and devil vomit. Then we begin to realize that just like little Linda Blair’s character in the original Exorcist, Emily is a sweet, endearing child with a nun-like religious conviction (Catholic of course, because only Catholic people are possessed by demons), infallible obedience and all the hope in the world. Played by Jennifer Carpenter , who really turns looking ugly and scary into an art. Moving on, insert dedicated Priest here. Tom Wilkinson (Father Moore) does a mediocre job of carrying what was such terribly written dialogue that it made One Life to Live look like Shakespeare.

Next, let me cover another main character, Father Moore’s attorney, Erin Bruner, played by Laura Linney . In case you don’t know, Laura Linney played the happy apple pie wife of Jim Carrey in the Truman Show. All grins and dimples, I had a hard time seeing her in a serious role, and an internal religious crisis. But whatever, maybe its just me.

An attorney? you may ask. Yes. Because what drives the final nail into the coffin of a movie that advertises itself as a horror movie is that its not. It’s a bad Exorcist rip-off being brutally raped by a terrible episode of Law & Order. Its twists and turns are seen from so far away that they may as well have been the sun on the horizon. Yah, the doctor thing? If you didn’t know how it was going to turn out than shame on you, stop seeing movies, because you’re the reason they’re allowed to suck. The only relief I found was that they didn’t make a big deal out of the Priest taking oath before going to the witness stand. If they had offered a dramatic presentation of him saying, “So help me god” I would have probably turned the movie off completely. Long story short, there’s maybe 10 total minutes of anything minutely scary, and then the ending makes you go, “Blah blah blah. Just roll the credits.”

I give this movie the Joon rating of "Huh…” because while it didn’t make me necessarily sleep, I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater or pay to rent it. Just know going into it that you will pretty much know every single time they stray from what realistically happened and you’ll roll your eyes so many times they’ll start to ache.

Rain Man

Let me make one thing clear: growing up, my family was about as classy and cultured as a death match between Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man Randy Savage. So needless to say, I never read the more "cultured" books like Catcher in the Rye, and I never saw the good movies, like Citizen Kane and today's movie: Rain Man. So watching these now is all new to me, in a very 80's nostalgia kind of way.

Rain Man, now that I've seen it, is important because without it would there ever have been I Am Sam, The Other Sister or Sling Blade? Who better to open the door than Dustin Hoffman, a man so recognized for his talent that it was almost difficult to accept him as such a broken character. Likewise, it was hard to see Tom Cruise who had until then and does still play all the good guys, play the arrogant asshole that Charlie Babbitt was. One character I loved, was Charlie's girlfriend, Susanna , played by Valeria Gollino, who was absolutely delicious but that is somehow beside the point.

First, I love watching dated movies. There’s a scene where they are driving, and you see a long long line of Ford pickups and I thought to myself Why does that junkyard have so many of that same pickup? Then I realized, it wasn’t a junkyard, it was a new car lot. Doy.

I love movies about people with issues like this. I loved The Other Sister, I loved I am Sam, I loved What's Eating Gilbert Grape (though it didn’t help that I had to watch gorgeous Leo drool on himself), and I will probably love whatever comes next. So of course, Rain Man was immediately tops with me. Cold, heartless Charlie Babbitt being brought to his knees by a man who isn’t supposed to be able to feel anything for anyone? Loves it. Dustin Hoffman farting in the telephone booth with Tom Cruise? I’m sorry, and maybe its my unclassy, uncultured background surfacing here, but I laughed my fool ass off.

Forget what I said in the last review, I do need my movies in a neat bow. It does leave me with a sadness when the ending isn’t perfect and happy with singing birds and everyone skipping tra-fucking-la. And when Ray boarded that train, I thought til the very last No, he’s going to jump off the train and run to Charlie! I mean, the credits had to roll before I gave up hope. But of course he doesn’t, and as my husband pointed out, that ending wouldn’t really have been happy for Raymond, would it? Wouldn’t he just end up freaking out and slamming his head into a window until it broke, like a demented bird? Would Charlie ever get laid without an audience again? Alas, I digress, the ending wasn’t perfect, but it hit the spot.

So I give Rain Man the Joon rating of Pretty Damn Cool. Because it was, and I’ll watch it again next time its on television. Maybe every time. Even if Tom Cruise does keep acting like someone hit him in the face with the crazy stick.

Broken Flowers

You all saw Lost in Translation, right? This movie is like that, only there's no Scarlett Johanson (she is instead replaced with multiple botoxed old women. Believe me, they needed a few more of them to take the place of her) and you know those long “artistic” scenes where you just stare at the characters as they just look out the window, or drive in a car, and nothing happens and no one says anything? Without those scenes, this movie would have only been 30 minutes long.

Now there were a few good qualities about this movie, though I wouldn’t call them ‘redeeming’. For one thing, no one is better at playing a man who says little and does even less but still manages to pull you in than Bill Murray. I will see his next movie, even if its just like this, because I love him. I don’t know what my life would be if I had never met Raleigh St. Clair from the Royal Tenenbaums. And to be fair, there were a few funny scenes. But again, and I must stress this to maintain my credibility: these were not redeeming. Not.

Now, I am not the kind of movie goer who needs all my movies to be wrapped up in a neat little bow, but from start to finish this movie left me feeling like my watching it was a high-five, and someone left me hangin’. The ending, which I will not give a way here, made me actually scream, “WHAT?! THAT WAS IT? FUCK!” and I don’t use that word often.

My final word on this movie is to give it the Joon rating of a reluctant WTF?. The only reason it didn’t get my lowest rating is because I don’t want Bill to die in a fire.

You can feel free to leave comments about the many wonderful things in this movie, but they will fall upon ears deafened by the silence of watching Bill Murray’s thought process for 1 ½ hours. See example in picture above.