More Movie Reviews

January 2, 2008 | Filed Under Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy, Movie Reviews | No Comments

Despite our recent “Girls Horror Night Out”, I haven’t actually seen all that many movies lately.  I used to head out to the local repertory cinema for “films” (as my friends would call them – you know, the ones where you usually have to read subtitles), at least twice a week.  These days, I just don’t have time. Lately it seems that when I *do* see a movie, it’s usually on one of the movie channels on TV.  Not generally high-quality viewing, unless it happens to be IFC, but sometimes a girl just needs to watch some mindless entertainment, right?

I’ve seen some BAD movies that way – I recall one bf looking at me after a particularly lame movie and stating, “Now THERE’S two hours of our lives we’ll never get back.”  But I’ve also seen some real gems.

One such gem is “Hard Candy” with Ellen Page – a brilliant young Canadian actress who is best known for her role in X-Men, but in my opinion is an actress who has amazing talent and potential. (She also rocks because she “considers herself to be a Feminist and tries to steer clear of the stereotypical roles for teenage girls because she finds them to be sexist”). Hard Candy is not for the squeamish, and virtually every male watching will be VERY uncomfortable, but it’s an excellent psychological thriller. The premise is this: Hayley,  a  brilliantly smart but crazy 14-yr old meets Jeff, a 32 yr old photographer in a chat room.  She agrees to meet him in person after chatting online for 3 weeks, and then convinces him to take her back to his place. Convinced he is a pedophile, she drugs him and ties him up in order to expose him, and ultimately decides to torture him.

While it starts off slow, Hard Candy develops into an intense psychological roller-coaster ride.  I really don’t want give too much away, but the performances were stellar, and Hayley is one twisted Heartless Bitch.

As a side note, just before Christmas I was invited to a premiere showing of “Juno”, also starring Ellen Page. It was absolutely delightful.  A comedy about a 16-year-old disaffected teenager who is too smart for her peers, Juno decides to have sex with Paulie, her best male friend. Paulie (played brilliantly by Michael Cera) looks like a deer in the headlights the entire time, and of course, Juno becomes pregnant. She decides to continue the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption.  This is not your typical teen-comedy that revolves around scatological humor and slapstick pratfalls -the dialogue is witty and quote-worthy, the characters are 3-dimensional and the story engages the audience completely. The soundtrack is highly original and cracked us up – the song lyrics are hilarious.  Definitely worth seeing.

Less on the “gem” side, and more just some ass-kicking gratuitously violent fun (if you are into that sort of thing), is Quentin Tarantino’s 1/2 of the “Grindhouse” double-feature, “DeathProof“, starring Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, and a whole host of other characters.  Kurt Russell plays Stuntman Mike, a psycho ex-stuntman who stalks and kills women with his “deathproof” car. Until, of course, he meets his match in the form of three Heartless Bitches.  In classic Tarantino fashion, it’s over-the-top violent, gritty and sexy.  Zoe Bell is a stunt woman and she plays herself in this film, doing some pretty amazing stunts as well.  While I’m not a person to recommend revenge in real life, in this movie it’s decidedly sweet and nasty.

Now, of course, I have to see the other 1/2 of Grindhouse, “Planet Terror” (which I just received for Christmas!), simply because of the trailers where you see a woman with the machine gun strapped to the stump of her thigh taking out zombies. Now THAT’S my kind of Heartless Bitch!