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.