Hiatus Ended

While I worked through some last minute 2008 misery, I obviously left this here blog unattendiated (now that Bush is gone, I'm going to have to come up with these words myself). Well, playtime is over. It's back to the horrific grind of typing 4-sentence reviews of movies while on company time at an almost bi-monthly pace.


Lower Learning
It's a shame this went straight to DVD. Lower Learning is a solid R-rated comedy about an elementary school on the verge of collapse. Jason Biggs plays the downtrodden vice principal of the school who has to use all his might just to find the will to keep on working. Rob Corddry is the scheming principal who is planning to get the school closed and steal millions of dollars from the state by exploiting an accounting error. On what should be the school's last day, inspector Eva Longoria-Parker shows up to confirm that the school should actually be closed (rather than the elementary school with the massive heroin problem, which provides my favorite moment in the film). Longoria-Parker suspects that Corddry is up to something, and goes along with Biggs in an attempt to save the school. Critics hated this movie (as of this writing, it only has a 3.4 IMDB rating), and I only decided to watch it based on Nathan Rabin's DVD review. Much of the backlash comes from the film enthusiastically creating situations where adults are saying horrible, horrible things to children. This is especially true in the case of the other teachers at the school, hilariously portrayed by Will Sasso as the recently divorced gym teacher("You punch that girl right in her happiness!"), Nat Faxon as a beloved homeroom teacher who pines for the school nurse ("I'm looking for a different kind of love, the kind that's wet and smells a little."), and a scene-stealing Monica Potter as Sasso's depressed ex-wife (when a child asks a question, she just sighs, lights a cigarette and tells him to go fuck himself). Anyone who is easily offended should not be watching this movie. I imagine this film will find a cult audience, because there are tons of quote-worthy lines and throwaway gags (my favorite being Longoria-Parker very casually huffing spray paint while trying to inspire Biggs to overcome his self-doubt). It is absolutely worth a Netflix rental.


Repo! The Genetic Opera
This movie is frickin' surreal. It's a futuristic Goth horror musical with a cast that makes no coherent sense:

Alexa Vega, the girl from Spy Kids
Anthony Head, the guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Sarah Brightman, the Broadway singer
Ogre, the lead singer from industrial band Skinny Puppy
Bill Moseley, from lots of horror movies
Paris Hilton, from......uh.......
Joan Jett, from music
and Paul Sorvino, who you should just know by now.

It's bad, but so very, very fascinating. The songs are not good, and are barely songs. Most of the time it seems like the script had regular dialogue, and the actors just chose to sing the lines instead of speaking them. This sing-speak is annoying at first, but starts to get really addicting after awhile. Writer Terrance Zdunich has the best role as the sometimes-narrator, sometimes-character Graverobber, who has 2 of the film's better songs. Brightman's singing unsurprisingly towers over all the others, but the rest of the cast runs the whole gamut, from the terrible (Moseley, Hilton) through the mediocre (Vega, Sorvino) to the very good (Zdunich and Head, who actually sounds a lot like Bowie). While not a success, this film is certainly a unique experience and ambitious effort, and I will likely end up rewatching it several times.