NEW MOVIE MONDAYS
The Last King of Scotland
It’s no secret that if you want to win an Oscar these days, all you need to do is play a real person. The last three Oscars for best actor and the last three out of four for best actress have all been given to people playing real people. Think about it. Charlize for Monster, Reese for Walk the Line, Nicole for The Hours, Phil Hoffman for Capote, Jamie Fox for Ray. It’s an eerie pattern. But what’s even eerier is that this movie, based on a book, sets a dangerous precedent by mixing real life people with fictional characters and stories. Aside from Idi Amin it’s mostly made up, which might explain why it fails. When real characters are pitted against fictional ones who behave in unbelievably stupid ways, the plot becomes completely unbelievable. The result is the kind of awkward situation (though a real credit to Forest) where you kind of understand where Idi Amin is coming from when he hangs the guy up with hooks through his chest.


Notes on a Scandal
Nobody puts Phillip Glass in the corner. If you get him to score your movie, he is going to score your movie. Whether it’s Judi Dench walking up the stairs or Cate Blanchette eating turkey, those moments are going to have even more meaning. They are symbolic, and Phillip Glass is gonna let you know. Judi Dench is walking up the stairs! Cue the most intense music you’ve ever heard in your life! Cate Blanchet is eating some turkey! Ready to suffer an orchestral heart attack?? All strings at the ready. And… circular piano rhythm! GO! Really, it’s all just a little much.


Freedom Writers
Wow those Blacks and Latinos are a nutty bunch. They are so different from whites. In every way. And they hate each other too! They’re always fighting, dancing, using guns and swearing and shit. In really dangerous places like Long Beach, a race war is literally exploding. Blacks versus Latinos is going down! Even in the high schools! In every sense of the word, those ethnic kids are on the brink of a modern day holocaust… But dang it if that Hillary Swank isn’t such a cute little guy. (p.s. This movie is extremely racist. Not kidding. You might as well be watching Birth of a Nation.)


History Boys
Right after watching a movie about high school students and their relationship with their teacher, the last thing you’re in the mood for is another movie about high school students and their relationship with their teacher. Since this is a British film and set in the UK, instead of absurd racial stereotypes we get really smart British high school student stereotypes. Oh those British kids. They just love quoting poetry, questioning their sexuality, sharing their feelings and accepting all races and creeds. And they’re smart and civilised too! So we chilled out and let this one chug along for a bit, trying really hard to give it the benefit of the doubt, but then the holocaust got brought up again. Trust us, after Freedom Writers you will never want to hear the word “holocaust” again. Once the that shit got mentioned we shut this one off.


La Haine
It’s totally unbelievable that La Haine is just being released on DVD in North America. But after having remastered The Rock and all those seminal “old” black and white French films, the folks at Criterion have finally managed to bring out a two-discer of this seminal “new” black and white French film. Easily one of the best films of the ’90s, it so vividly captures the political and cultural frustration bubbling in Parisian ghettos that it is as much a document as it is a product of a particular time and place. And if intelligent, hip-hop fueled anti-establishment, frustrated-youth-with-a-gun movies aren’t your thing, hey, there’s always Paris.


Smokin’ Aces
We reviewed this film when it came out in theatres and it hasn’t gotten any better.