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JACKASS NUMBER TWO / Jeff Tremaine (2006)

September 22nd, 2006 by Scott Marks

Jeff Tremaine’s JACKASS NUMBER 2

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Jackass Number Two (2006)

Directed by: Jeff Tremaine

Written by: Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze

Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn, Jason Acuña, Preston Lacy, Dave England, Ehren McGhehey, Jess Margera, Brandon Dicamillo, Mat Hoffman, Tony Hawk, Mark Zupan, Jeff Tremaine

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Genres: Documentary, Comedy

Running Time: 99 min.

Rating: ★★★½☆

Several years after sound robbed him of his career, Buster Keaton visited his doctor in excruciating pain. After consulting his X-rays, the doctor asked Keaton when he broke his neck. “Never,” was Buster’s reply.

It seems that midway through filming the astonishing Sherlock, Jr., a powerful spray from a water tower nozzle he was hanging from propelled the daredevil twenty feet to the train tracks below. He called an end to the day’s shooting, but was back on set the next morning completely unaware of his injury.

Why am I mentioning the cinema’s single greatest source of comedic invention in the same space as these 21st Century homoerotic Stooges? Not since the Great Stone Face (and later Jackie Chan) have performers literally broken their bones to fracture an audience. The boys even pay homage to Buster when Johnny Knoxville recreates the famous collapsing house gag from Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Of course the similarities stop here. The only thing the Jackass boys have in common with Keaton and Chan’s meticulously executed frames is that they all eventually run through a projector. Keaton slaved over timing and execution, using surveyor’s equipment to map out some of his more elaborate gags. All Steve-O has to do for a laugh is staple his nutsack to his inner thigh.


People were stunned by the success of Jackass: The Movie. Pop culture is currently stuck in a reality TV mode, and it doesn’t get more real than this. I was the first kid on the block to discover the MTV series (stuff like this finds me). I even went so far as researching one of the show’s rude progenitors. Jackass is a kinder, gentler form of Bam Margera’s supremely mean-spirited CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) videos. Four DVD volumes exist. Get to work!

How fitting that John Waters has a cameo, for not since Divine smiled at the camera with dogsh*t covering her teeth has my gag reflex kicked in during a movie. Even with a black bar slapped over it, probably to prevent an NC-17 rating, the sight of a man sipping from a cup of fresh hot horse jism literally found me retching with laughter.

The last thing I want to do is give away too many of the hilarious gross out gags. If you liked the first installment, this is one sequel that never disappoints.

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THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED / Kirby Dick (2006)

September 18th, 2006 by Scott Marks

Words to Live By

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This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)

Directed by: Kirby Dick

Written by: Kirby Dick, Eddie Schmidt

Cast: Kirby Dick, Ben Affleck, Becky Altringer, Allison Anders, David Ansen, Tom Arnold, Darren Aronofsky, Jamie Babbit, Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Christian Bale, Maria Bello, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Berkley, Halle Berry, Jason Biggs, Juliette Binoche, Selma Blair, Rachel Blanchard, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Burton, Raquel Castro, Thomas Haden Church, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Sandy Dennis, Paul Dergarabedian, Michael Douglas, Atom Egoyan, Stephen Farber, Colin Firth, Jane Fonda, Peter Gallagher, Martin Garbus, Louis Garrel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Joan Graves, Eva Green, Mary Harron, Will H. Hays, Richard Heffner, William Holden, Cheryl Howell, Lindsey Howell, Jeremy Irons, Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Wayne Kramer, Diane Lane, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lawrence Lessig, Eugene Levy, Jon Lewis, Natasha Lyonne, Kyle MacLachlan, William H. Macy, Olivier Martinez, Maggie McNamara, Sandra Oh, Kimberly Peirce, Michael Pitt, Dan Rather, Bingham Ray, David L. Robb, Peter Sarsgaard, George Segal, Chloë Sevigny, Kevin Smith, Kevin Spacey, James Spader, Matt Stone, Sharon Stone, Hilary Swank, Elizabeth Taylor, Justin Theroux, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Tucker, Liv Tyler, Tracey Ullman, Deborah Kara Unger, Mark Urman, Jack Valenti, Jon Voight, John Waters, Marlon Wayans, John Wayne, Steven Weber, Robert Wisdom

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Genres: Documentary

Running Time: 97 min.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Did you hear the one about how the Motion Pictures of America Association (MPAA), a lobbying organization for the movie industry, rates movies? If you show tits, they give it an NC-17. If you take a chainsaw and lop them off, it gets an R and parents can bring their kids.

They must be right, for if anyone was to blame for giving me access to “dirty” movies it’s a set of parents who never once censored or questioned their kid’s moviegoing habits.

Mom and Dad probably thought Midnight Cowboy was a sequel to Stagecoach and didn’t flinch when it came to taking a fourteen-year old to a drive-in screening of the then X-rated drama. Seconds after Bob Balaban orally relieved Joe Buck, my dad leaned across the front seat and whispered to my mom, “I don’t think this was a good movie to take the kid to.”


Being big for my age, or “husky” as slacks salesmen used to say, the MPAA only got in my way a few times. At age sixteen I didn’t make it past the box office for A Clockwork Orange. A painfully withdrawn fellow sophomore, void of humor and, being smart for her age, a full year younger, decided to exercise what little power she had. With a voice more vomit-inducing than ipecac she refused my admittance on the grounds that she knew “for a fact” that I was not eighteen-years-of-age.

Nor did I have much luck at a thousand-seat suburban dream palace where the white-haired, well-groomed manager personally sold and ripped tickets. Not only wouldn’t he entrust the cash drawer to his teen staff, he was always the first to caution my father against bringing his son to certain R-rated movies. After the Midnight Cowboy fiasco, any hopes of seeing Harold Robbin’s smutty The Adventurers were quickly dashed and replaced by Disney’s homogenized The Barefoot Executive.

Even more deflating was an underage visit to Russ Meyer’s Cherry, Harry & Raquel where friends and I actually managed to gain access to the auditorium. Halfway through the opening credits a nervous manager rethought his decision, yanked us out and cheerlessly refunded our money.

After turning eighteen the MPAA could kiss my husky ass. Satan knew better than to allow me to spawn and a lack of parental responsibility (and a penchant for profanity) always drew me to R-rated features. It wasn’t until years later, flanked with the knowledge that most newspapers refuse to run ads for NC-17 films that I began to reconsider the perils of rating movies. Should a handful of “average” Republican parents and an appeals board complete with two priests, one Catholic the other Episcopalian, be allowed to rule on cinematic morality?

Not much has changed since the late twenties when Will Hays (a Kiwanian, Roatrian and Presbyterian Elder) was called upon to rid Hollywood’s screens of morally pernicious material. People who refuse to watch old black-and-white movies because they’re “corny” frequently have the puritanical ratings board to blame. Find some of the “pre-code” films released between 1928-1934, before Hays’ list of “don’ts” and “be carefuls” became law. You’ll discover a world filled with vice, corruption, brutality and reel after reel of wanton sexuality. The “Hays Office,” as it collectively came to be referred to, quashed any form of free expression for almost the next forty years.

While Hays’ equally repressed successor Catholic Layman Joseph Breen is never mentioned, This Film Is Not Yet Rated is careful to rigorously examine the words of his present day incarnation Jack Valenti. Until his retirement a couple of years ago, Valenti spent decades riding herd over the MPAA. For all his well-intentioned public relations razzle-dazzle, Valenti can only come up with one sound argument. A truly great film will find an audience no matter what it’s rated. Unfortunately, it takes an audience of paranormals to find a film that has no advertising.

From the standpoint of a single, childless male well past his eighteenth birthday, I am not entirely against a system meant to alert parents of a movie or CD’s content. The hard part is how one goes about defining and categorizing obscenity. Whether prefaced with a “Wanna’” or followed by a “you,” f*ck is f*ck. According to our current arbitrary standards, one “f*ck” will earn you a PG-13. Say it twice and you’re guaranteed an R.

Short of installing an alligator-filled moat, you can’t find a more inaccessible edifice than the MPAA fortress on Ventura Blvd. in Encino. With a horde of prospective P.I.’s, to choose from, director Kirby Dick awarded the surveillance job to Becky Altringer, an extremely likeable gay single mom. She and her lover’s daughter Lindsey spent weeks parked outside the MPAA’s garage keeping track of members’ license plate numbers. Her defining moment arrives when a security guard leaves his station long enough for her to videotape a list of coveted phone extensions tacked to the booth wall.

The film consults many artists whose work was taken to task by the almighty board. The strongest of the talking heads is Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce who argues that a film is more likely to get an NC-17 if the sex depicted involves gays. She was equally stunned to discover that the board sanctioned Hilary Swank’s brains splattered on a wall, but found Chloe Sevigny’s extended orgasm over the line.

Another witness to the insanity is director Atom Egoyan whose Where the Truth Lies was awarded an NC-17 kiss of death. When I interviewed him, Mr. Egoyan kept referencing the fact that the board insisted that he limit the amount of “thrusting” depicted in a pivotal MMF three-way. Sure enough, excessive thrusting is one of the key violations the MPAA looks for. Why can’t I make a living watching movies and counting humps?

Needless to say, due to a glut of sexually explicit clips This Film Is Not Yet Rated is playing unrated. While much of it is intended to illustrate, some scenes, particularly a montage depicting violence against women, are borderline gratuitous. The filmmakers were so eager to earn the ratings board’s scorn that they appear to take an almost schoolyard delight in pushing the envelope.

From a strictly historical perspective, the first movie to challenge the ratings board (and win) was the Italian import The Bicycle Thieves, not The Moon is Blue as this film contends. There is also a great story behind how violence in the first Indiana Jones sequel coupled with a Gremlin in a microwave forced the board to dream up the child (and box office) friendly PG-13 rating. Instead of presenting a more concise overview, the film settles on a couple of Super-Size Me-styled sidebars, childish, sub-South Park animation, a score reminiscent of TV’s Charlie’s Angels and one too many back-seat shots of a giddy Dick.

Aside from its historical shortcomings, the film is most negligent for not damning several prime culprits. Cowardly newspapers that tow some invisible moral line by refusing to run ads for NC-17 movies are given a pass. Complacent audiences, eager to lap up whatever slop is heaped on their plates, also deserve a share of the blame. The reason that so many contemporary films rake in millions is due in large part to America’s indiscriminate taste for the undemanding.

If the film’s main goal was unmasking all of the MPAA’s players, the detective work paid off. We now know their identities, but their logic, not unlike their lodgings, remains impenetrable.

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TIME TO LEAVE / Francois Ozon (2005)

September 11th, 2006 by Scott Marks

Francois Ozon’s TIME TO LEAVE (2005)

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Le Temps qui reste (2005)

Written & Directed by: François Ozon

Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Jeanne Moreau, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Daniel Duval, Marie Rivière, Christian Sengewald, Louise-Anne Hippeau, Henri de Lorme, Walter Pagano, Violetta Sanchez, Ugo Soussan Trabelsi, Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi, Victor Poulouin, Laurence Ragon, Thomas Gizolme

Aspect Ratio: cinemascope5.jpg

Genres: Drama

Running Time: 85 min.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

In his latest film, Francois Ozon, France’s master of erotic despair, continues a “trilogy about mourning” that began with Under the Sand. No matter how stylishly he may serve it, what remains is a basic set-‘em-up-to-watch-‘em-die.

Time to Leave tells the story Romain (Melvil Poupard, in what may amount to the performance of the year), a successful thirty-one-year-old gay fashion photographer living the good life. After collapsing during a photo shoot, his doctor informs Romain that AIDS isn’t going to end his life, but a malignant tumor. The cancer has spread to such an extent that even with chemotherapy, which Romain declines, he only has three months to live.


This is a story about one man living life with an ever-tightening noose around his neck. Instead of transforming his last days into one long party, Romain grieves in his own selfish manner with little or no interest in making peace with those around him. His parents are ridiculously supportive; dad even sits in the car while his son runs out to score some coke. Romain hates his sister and proves it by refusing to photograph her children because they sprang from her. His final instruction to his lover is, “I don’t care. I just want you gone.”

While the storyline may be hackneyed, Ozon’s presentation is anything but. When Romain finally consents to take a picture of his niece and nephew it is without their mother’s knowledge. In a rare instance of a director knowing precisely how to employ a rack focus shot, we see Romain in the bushes behind his sister surreptitiously photographing the children.

A great deal of the film focuses on Romain’s attempts to come to terms with the inner-child he despises. The only person he informs of his illness is his grandmother (Jeanne Moreau in the Maria Ouspenskia role). The reason he decides to confide in her is because she too is old, and like him will die soon.

Early memories come rushing back while at grandma’s house. According to the director, “facing death is like seeing yourself as a child,” and throughout the picture we are presented with flashbacks to Romain’s youth. The first image of a child alone on the beach heralds sentiment, something normally out of line for the director. While it may not have the flagrant manipulative pull of Terms of Endearment, I was disappointed that the generally detached Ozon asked us to reach for a hankie.

Never one to shy away from championing deviant sexual behavior, I was wondering how Ozon was going to work his patented brand of kink into this somber material. He doesn’t disappoint. No one is more surprised than Romain when he accepts an infertile couple’s request for him to impregnate the wife. In the year’s most sensually charged scene, Romain joins the wife and husband in a steamy baby-making ménage.

According to the press notes, Time to Leave was inspired by Douglas Sirk’s supreme 1950s melodramas. If that’s the case, the film is a resounding failure. Sirk was all about style, presenting biting satiric indictments of his tortured, narcissistic characters. No matter how brittle their emotions, Sirk’s surface visuals refused to simply compliment his characters’ miseries. Check out Imitation of Life or Written on the Wind; if anything, his ironic use of cheery color plays diametrically against the story’s grain. Ozon’s dance of death is good, but not that good.

Here is a rare instance where a film’s poster may actually provide a clue. In an image that never appears in the film, we see Romain lying naked with a newborn infant at his side. Is it a summation of the birth and death of Romain or an artist in bed with his final act of creation?

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HOLLYWOODLAND / Allen Coulter (2006)

September 5th, 2006 by Scott Marks

Recreating a scene from the “Superman” TV show in HOLLYWOODLAND (2006)

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Hollywoodland (2006)

Directed by: Allen Coulter

Written by: Paul Bernbaum

Cast: Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins, Lois Smith, Robin Tunney, Larry Cedar, Jeffrey DeMunn, Brad William Henke, Dash Mihok, Molly Parker, Caroline Dhavernas, Kathleen Robertson, Joe Spano, Gareth Williams

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Genres: Crime, Drama, History, Mystery, Thriller

Running Time: 126 min.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

The first two deaths I remember leaving an indelible impression were those of my grandmother and George Reeves. Grandma Marks was as big as a sofa, seldom moved and had a voice that only dogs could hear. We never spent much in the way of quality time together. Superman, on the other hand, was a welcome visitor in my home every week.

Even though I was in kindergarten and yet unable to read, the sight of Clark Kent splattered across the front page of the Chicago American signaled more than a mere career move for the mild mannered reporter. Word on the playground painted a disillusioned Reeves so drunk at a party that he jumped out a window in order to prove that he really could fly. For decades I followed John Ford’s maxim, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend” and embraced the urban legend as gospel.

What actually happened in George Reeve’s (Ben Affleck) L.A. home on the night of June 16, 1959 has forever been shrouded in mystery. Was he accidentally shot during a tussle with then girlfriend Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney)? Perhaps it was spurned ex-love Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), wife of M-G-M studio head Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), who called in a couple of goons to perform a mob hit.

More than likely it was a self-inflicted gunshot administered by a washed up, bourbon-swilling character actor who began his career in Gone with the Wind and saw nothing ahead short of a stint as a professional wrestler.

Hollywoodland never attempts to supply a concrete explanation. We are shown the three versions of Reeve’s death, all from the point-of-view of fictionalized fifties gumshoe Louis Simo’s (Adrien Brody), and asked to draw our own conclusion. The final eight years or so of Reeves’ life are intercut with Simo’s investigation and the private dick trying to establish a name for himself off the scandalous murder.

Attempts to flesh out Simo’s character lead nowhere. A cuckolded client is tacked on to underscore the cheap detective’s anything-for-a-buck nature. He has an ex-wife (Molly Parker) and young kid (Zach Mills) tucked away in the suburbs. Simo’s relationship with his boy must have had more meaning in an earlier draft, and why the film ends on a shot of father and son reunited doesn’t compute.

A favorite occupational pastime is playing Spot the Character Actor. No matter how many times you see Gone with the Wind or From Here to Eternity projected with an audience, invariably someone points to the screen and with a burst of laughter shouts, “Hey, it’s Superman!” In the film’s most poignant scene, Reeve’s attends an audience preview of FHTE where his brief on-screen appearance opposite Burt Lancaster is met with cheers of “Great Caesar’s Ghost!”

The sharpest name for the film would have been Who Killed Superman?, but Warner Bros., who owns the rights to the multi-million dollar franchise, would never have let it fly. They nixed the original title, Truth, Justice and the American Way, and insisted that Focus Features refrain from using the ‘S’ insignia in any promotional material. Ironically, they did let Affleck don the costume for a couple of scenes, but wouldn’t license the TV show’s opening credits which had to be re-filmed.

Some films don’t hold up well on a second viewing and such was the case of Hollywoodland. George Reeve’s death has followed me my entire life. I’ve read all the books and studied both A&E’s Biography and the E! True Hollywood Story. Initially, I was in this for the plot, not the artistry, and managed to have a pretty good time. When an out of town guest asked to attend a subsequent preview, I gladly obliged.

The second time around the performances looked even better. There isn’t an actor alive today more suitable to playing beefy dunderhead Reeves than Ben Affleck. Both are marginally talented pretty boys who used their looks to launch Hollywood careers. Although his accent wavers, this is the closest Affleck’s come to handing in a full-scale performance. Brody is perfectly cast in a role originally intended for Hugh Jackman, and Diane Lane is once again indispensable.

The film’s alternating Brody/Affleck/Brody/Affleck structure didn’t improve with age and Coulter’s direction is at best impersonal. Here is an example of the story as auteur and as such would make a four-star episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

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