Over the holidays, my dad threw me his usual "You haven't seen...?" accompanied with his usual wide, incredulous eyes when I answered "no", which was then followed by his usual "Oh, you have to see it. It's great." The movie in question was Under the Skin, which I had just happened to have received on loan from a friend. My other parent and her husband and I watched it later that evening at the house; her husband got bored about thirty-five minutes in and went to do other things around the house, while my mom gave it about fifteen more minutes than him and requested that we try something else. Every once in a great while, my dad's seal of "great" does not match up with my own, and this was one of those times.
Not to say that there weren't a couple of great things about it. It looked good, and it garnered a lot of style points, despite the blatant Kubrick-borrowing. The set-up: Scarlett Johansson is a mysterious woman driving around Glasgow in a van seducing men. She lures them back to her place, strips off her clothes, and, without giving anything away, they disappear. The way that these drunk, often nude men disappear looks cool cinematically, but is beyond ridiculous. When she ends up taking in a disfigured man to disappear him, something snaps inside her and she takes pity on him and lets him go. This does not go over well with her boss, a menacing motorcyclist who has exactly zero lines of dialogue in the film. From there, everything changes for Johansson's character.
Look, that's about all I can say about Under the Skin without giving away the major twist surrounding Johansson's character. If you already know, cool. If you don't, I can tell you that many respected, actual film critics really liked it and so did my father. I didn't really care for it. Here's why:
1) The pace was outlandishly slow. 2) There didn't seem to be much of a point. 3) I understood the point that was being made, but I didn't really care. 4) I thought the resolution was not worth the wait. 5) Too many naked guys.
Nah, I can deal with reason #5, especially when the tradeoff is ScarJo in the nude (even though it was "bad naked" a la' Seinfeld's nudist girlfriend). There's certainly the part of me that's like "Hey, wait...I like Scarlet Johansson, and I like Stanley Kubrick movies!" As such, I kind of do want to recommend this one and I think, to a degree, it's worth checking out. You could like it more than I did. Just be warned-it's slow as hell and it's all style, no substance.
44) We Don't Wanna Make You Dance
In the early 1980s, a young band emerged on the New York music scene. They were funky, fun, fresh-faced, and three out of the four of them were brothers. Miller Miller Miller & Sloan had a short but prominent run for a couple of years, opening for the Clash, Tom Tom Club and others at famed venues the Ritz and CBGB's. They were destined to be the next big thing. But like so many talented bands, it never was.
Filmmaker Lucy Kastalanetz filmed their gigs and interviewed them during that time, when everything was bright and new. She filmed them when things were starting to fall apart in the early 1990s, and she found them again almost 20 years later and interviewed them again, this time to find out what they had been up to all these years. And that's when the movie lost its steam. Dan Miller became a struggling animator, Mike Miller is now a solo act called Mr. Shy, Barney Miller started a record business, and Blake Sloan was a computer programmer who had invented a kind of cool bass guitar hybrid. They all seemed like they were okay, but you could tell that there was a certain level of ennui and disappointment hovering below the surface that MMM & S never broke big. Having been in the same band for 10 years, I can relate. But I still have all of my awesome memories, and this movie didn't spend nearly enough time digging up or showcasing theirs, including their catchy tunes.
43) Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Hey, do you remember 2000's Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, starring Jason Alexander as Boris, Rene Russo as Natasha, and Bobby DeNiro as fearless leader? It's a live-action/animation mashup, and it catches up with R & B 35 years after the cancellation of their show, with the cartoon duo living off of royalties and doing all types of nothing. Boris, 'Tasha and Fearless leader (the cartoon versions) escape out of Pottsylvania and are accidentally pulled out of the television by a producer and become the aforementioned human versions. Then, they try to hypnotize America with their own TV network, and-
You get the picture. The first attempt to movie-ize the beloved franchise was for all intents and purposes a failure, one that Jason Alexander said on record that he "only did for the money." So on the plus side, the bar was not set very high for Peabody and Sherman. We follow Mr. Peabody, (voiced by Ty Burrell) genius, inventor, olympian, and his son Sherman as they take the Way-Back machine to the past so that they can interact with famous folks from history. When the Shermanator brings back special lady friend Penny from school (fellow Modern Family ensemble member Ariel Winter) to the house, he wants to show off the goods, so they take the machine on a history's greatest hits tour, most notably through ancient Egypt where she becomes Cleopatra-lite. Of course, being kids and all, they don't account for the famed "butterfly effect" and the usual time travel plot lines are kickstarted, such as the Bill-and-Ted like "historical figures trying to navigate the present" story, and the "abuse of the technologies has created doubles of the protagonists involved in the time travel procedure and thus how can they simultaneously exist" action. Covering plenty of familiar territory, Peabody and Sherman still manages to have a heart, especially when dealing with Mr. P's struggles with parenting a human child. I know, I know. But the way that it is handled actually worked some of the time.
Not to say that there weren't a couple of great things about it. It looked good, and it garnered a lot of style points, despite the blatant Kubrick-borrowing. The set-up: Scarlett Johansson is a mysterious woman driving around Glasgow in a van seducing men. She lures them back to her place, strips off her clothes, and, without giving anything away, they disappear. The way that these drunk, often nude men disappear looks cool cinematically, but is beyond ridiculous. When she ends up taking in a disfigured man to disappear him, something snaps inside her and she takes pity on him and lets him go. This does not go over well with her boss, a menacing motorcyclist who has exactly zero lines of dialogue in the film. From there, everything changes for Johansson's character.
Look, that's about all I can say about Under the Skin without giving away the major twist surrounding Johansson's character. If you already know, cool. If you don't, I can tell you that many respected, actual film critics really liked it and so did my father. I didn't really care for it. Here's why:
1) The pace was outlandishly slow. 2) There didn't seem to be much of a point. 3) I understood the point that was being made, but I didn't really care. 4) I thought the resolution was not worth the wait. 5) Too many naked guys.
Nah, I can deal with reason #5, especially when the tradeoff is ScarJo in the nude (even though it was "bad naked" a la' Seinfeld's nudist girlfriend). There's certainly the part of me that's like "Hey, wait...I like Scarlet Johansson, and I like Stanley Kubrick movies!" As such, I kind of do want to recommend this one and I think, to a degree, it's worth checking out. You could like it more than I did. Just be warned-it's slow as hell and it's all style, no substance.
44) We Don't Wanna Make You Dance
In the early 1980s, a young band emerged on the New York music scene. They were funky, fun, fresh-faced, and three out of the four of them were brothers. Miller Miller Miller & Sloan had a short but prominent run for a couple of years, opening for the Clash, Tom Tom Club and others at famed venues the Ritz and CBGB's. They were destined to be the next big thing. But like so many talented bands, it never was.
Filmmaker Lucy Kastalanetz filmed their gigs and interviewed them during that time, when everything was bright and new. She filmed them when things were starting to fall apart in the early 1990s, and she found them again almost 20 years later and interviewed them again, this time to find out what they had been up to all these years. And that's when the movie lost its steam. Dan Miller became a struggling animator, Mike Miller is now a solo act called Mr. Shy, Barney Miller started a record business, and Blake Sloan was a computer programmer who had invented a kind of cool bass guitar hybrid. They all seemed like they were okay, but you could tell that there was a certain level of ennui and disappointment hovering below the surface that MMM & S never broke big. Having been in the same band for 10 years, I can relate. But I still have all of my awesome memories, and this movie didn't spend nearly enough time digging up or showcasing theirs, including their catchy tunes.
43) Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Hey, do you remember 2000's Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, starring Jason Alexander as Boris, Rene Russo as Natasha, and Bobby DeNiro as fearless leader? It's a live-action/animation mashup, and it catches up with R & B 35 years after the cancellation of their show, with the cartoon duo living off of royalties and doing all types of nothing. Boris, 'Tasha and Fearless leader (the cartoon versions) escape out of Pottsylvania and are accidentally pulled out of the television by a producer and become the aforementioned human versions. Then, they try to hypnotize America with their own TV network, and-
You get the picture. The first attempt to movie-ize the beloved franchise was for all intents and purposes a failure, one that Jason Alexander said on record that he "only did for the money." So on the plus side, the bar was not set very high for Peabody and Sherman. We follow Mr. Peabody, (voiced by Ty Burrell) genius, inventor, olympian, and his son Sherman as they take the Way-Back machine to the past so that they can interact with famous folks from history. When the Shermanator brings back special lady friend Penny from school (fellow Modern Family ensemble member Ariel Winter) to the house, he wants to show off the goods, so they take the machine on a history's greatest hits tour, most notably through ancient Egypt where she becomes Cleopatra-lite. Of course, being kids and all, they don't account for the famed "butterfly effect" and the usual time travel plot lines are kickstarted, such as the Bill-and-Ted like "historical figures trying to navigate the present" story, and the "abuse of the technologies has created doubles of the protagonists involved in the time travel procedure and thus how can they simultaneously exist" action. Covering plenty of familiar territory, Peabody and Sherman still manages to have a heart, especially when dealing with Mr. P's struggles with parenting a human child. I know, I know. But the way that it is handled actually worked some of the time.
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