The Heart, She Holler

Well, that was pretty great.

The Heart, She Holler was a six episode miniseries on Adult Swim, created by PFFR, the same people who brought us Xavier: Renegade Angel and Wonder Showzen. So two things about it were pretty much be guaranteed: it would be totally disturbing, and pretty damn funny. And Holler was definitely both. It begins when the head of the Heartshe family, rulers of the town Heartshe Holler, dies, and leaves his inheritance to his son, who he had previously kept secret, hidden in a cave behind a wall. That son is played by Patton Oswalt, and after he learns how to dress and say "hot dog" and gets his penis swapped with his father's through a misunderstanding, tries to run the town while coping with his own insecurities and the meddling of his power hungry sisters; one who can read minds and has other mysterious powers, and another played by Kristen Schaal who will sleep with anything that movies and his pretty impressive physical strength.

That that summary only begins to describe the insanity of The Heart, She Holler should say plenty. There's plenty of gross moments, including repeated references to incest and bizarre imagery like a wall socket being connected to some sort of intestine, but the show doesn't just rely on shock value to get laughs. It's mostly a bunch of insane rambling, but it's clever insane rambling, and running jokes like the former patriarch's seemingly infinite supply of instructive video will VHS tapes and the tons of jabs at religion and insular southern towns keep it from relying on disgust to drive the story. The whole thing barely lasts over an hour, and by the end I was wishing there was more to see, especially because of the distinct lack of closure in the ending, even though describing what came before as a plot would be very generous. It's well cast, funny, and just has the right amount of horror to definitely be a PFFR creation. If you're really into alt comedy, it's definitely worth seeing.

Magnolia

This is only the second film by Paul Thomas Anderson that I've seen, but he's more than convinced me at this point that he's one of the most talented directors working today, and moreover one that will do nothing to compromise his vision in order to appeal to a wider audience. This is a movie I can easily see a lot of people hating, either because it's too long and boring or because it's pretentious or because there are some pretty eccentric scenes and performances or because the ending is one of the most out-of-left-field things I've ever seen. Only the first one really bothered me at all, not that it was boring, but that three hours is a lot for a movie about the strange connections between regular people, and they probably didn't need all that time. But the most part I loved the movie, enjoying the twists and turns of its coincidence-driven plot, laughing at the funny parts, and being impressed by the power of the dramatic parts.

The crazy part about the movie being three hours is that it's not even the whole story - there's a subplot with a body found in apartment that is touched on again but not resolved. It's tangential to the real movie though, which is about a group of characters played by an all-star cast of actors as they experience one of the most eventful and unusual days to go by in their city. A lot of the characters are larger than life, especially the ones played by Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore, who are both affected by the looming death of a bed-ridden old man.The main thing that ties everything together is a long-running game show that pits regular adults against smart children, a show that everyone seems to be watching as the current group of kids approaches the record for longest run on the show, and one that William H. Macy's character was on as a kid before he grew up to become William H. Macy. My favorite character was probably John C. Reilly's, a bumbling cop with a good heart and a particular distaste for foul language. If you're going to watch Magnolia it should be with the knowledge that it's a strange movie, but if you have the same taste for unique experiments and genuinely shocking and entertaining moments as me, you'll probably like it.

Ratatouille

I have finally seen every full length Pixar film that people actually seem to like. Ratatouille was one of the better ones, sliding nicely into my favorites with The Incredibles, Wall-E, and Toy Story 3. Like the first one it was directed by Brad Bird, who also did the excellent The Iron Giant before joining America's best animation studio. He's moving on now to live action with the next Mission: Impossible, and it will be interesting to see how his great storytelling talents survive the transition to huge budgets and name brand actors. Ratatouille does everything that Pixar is good at extremely well, and except for a couple hiccups here and there is really just a great movie from start to finish.

A lot of Pixar stories can be boiled down to "The Secret Lives of _____", and it's not inaccurate to use that formula here by filling in the blank with rats. The movie portrays them as more or less the creatures we know them, except with intelligence enough to fully understand English and grasp how they're regarded by humans. They're still mostly content to eat garbage and avoid direct contact, but due to an advanced sense of smell and taste Remy, played by Patton Oswalt, has developed an appreciation for human cooking, and the food of a famed French chef who claims that "anyone can cook" in particular. After his family is forced to leave their home he winds up in Paris, in the kitchen of the very same chef he admires, two years after his death. Through an unlikely but entertaining series of events he ends up helping a hapless but likable garbage boy become a successful cook in the restaurant, and even more unlikely he turns out to be the cook's heir, and that's where the real story begins.

The highlight of the film is the animation, which is both technically impeccable and marvelously kinetic and fun to look at. The animation of the rats is lifelike, to a creepy extent when there are swarms of them on the screen, and the humans are wonderfully characterized through unique mannerisms as well. The absolute best bits are whenever Remy is tugging on the garbage boy's hair to trigger his muscles and perform the steps of cooking without being seen, an idea that is hilariously absurd and even more hilariously animated. It's just the essence of pure physical comedy, perfect in how it doesn't need dialogue even while the boy's meek excuses for his awkward actions accentuate the humor. The relationship between them is a really interesting one, Remy unable to actually speak to humans but able to get his points across with squeaks and gestures. There's plenty of talent to go around with the voices, including well-known comedians, great actors like Ian Holm and Peter O'Toole, and some solid work by people you've never heard of.

If I had an issue with the movie, it's that a large part of the conflict that makes up the meat of the plot in the later stages isn't really justified in the movie. A rift forms between the human and rat leads, and there's no real reason for it, especially since the apparent cause is in complete opposition with what they seemed to want only a few scenes earlier. The movie needed something to happen, and they just sort of swept the need of actually having it make sense under the rug. It doesn't do to much to damage the rest of the movie though, which while not as deeply emotional as the most recent Pixar outfit, is still incredibly entertaining work. It's amazing how an action sequence featuring a rodent trying to get through a window in a busy kitchen can be more exciting than live action stuff that can cost millions to film. I guess I'll watch Cars some time and hope it's at least a fraction as compelling as stuff like this.

Blade: Trinity

It's sort of hard to believe that the guy most responsible for this mess co-wrote two of the best comic book movies ever with Christopher Nolan. Then again, he co-created FlashForward, so maybe it isn't that surprising. David S. Goyer wrote the whole Blade trilogy, though this is the only time he directed his own work. To be clear, I think this movie is more of a failure on Goyer the writer's part than Goyer the director. If the story wasn't moronic, I would have been fine with the general film work at hand here. Then again though, was Ryan Reynolds such a failed character because he was written poorly or directed poorly? It's hard to tell. He's his general wisecracking self in this movie, and it's only the addition of a beard and muscles that makes him at all different from his usual comedy work. And I usually like that persona for the most part. But I don't here. Really, I didn't like almost anything.

The vampires' big plan in the beginning is to get Blade arrested... because of... something. It all amounts to a hill of beans because his new hip and sexy friends bust him out and introduce him to their merry band of vampire hunters. Jessica Biel obnoxiously listens to an iPod while fighting (good job inhibiting your senses in the middle of combat!) and lets vamps think they've got her for no other reason than to play to the camera when she takes them out. Patton Oswalt puts in the most disappointing cameo of his career, showing little gumption and then disappearing from the film without so much as a death scene. The previously mentioned Reynolds tells bad jokes and shows a bit of pube when he reveals to Blade that he was once a vampire, but had been cured. Wait, what? You can cure vampires? So why are you guys killing all of the ones you come across? Cure more! There are a couple other good guys but the movie didn't care about them so neither do I.

So anyway the vampires resurrect Dracula as a beefy, bald dude named Drake (no really, they do that) who's played by the meat head older brother from Prison Break (the one who can't act at all, not the one who can barely act) and kind of acts like a giant puss the whole time even though he's fucking Dracula. People get captured, stuff happens, and then there's a fight where all the bad guys die. The action isn't really incompetent, but it isn't exciting enough either to come close to saving the movie from its completely ineffectual and uninteresting story. I wasn't invested at all and the only time that changed is when it occasionally managed to downright piss me off. It's just one of those films that I can't imagine anyone caring about and don't really understand why they bothered to make it.

Observe and Report

This was an unusual film. It had the slightly unfortunate position of coming out around the same time as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and they share a similar premise on the surface, but from what I know about that film, there's really almost nothing in common. The movie is surprisingly dark, much more of a black comedy than they really advertised. It's less about Seth Rogen hitting on Anna Faris and pursuing a flasher, and more a story of a bipolar man with serious delusions of grandeur trying to make himself into something. I don't want to overplay this side of it, because first things first it is a comedy, but I was fairly impressed with Rogen's performance, and there were some fairly disturbing (if still funny) moments when you see more into the crazy things he actually thinks about himself and his abilities.

Both the funniest and most tragic thing about his aspirations of being a real cop if it weren't for his medical issues is that he would actually be pretty good at it. A lot of the movie is fairly mundane, but there are a few scenes that get violent and are actually pretty effective as action and show an unexpected degree of skill with weaponry in Rogen's character. I don't want to spoil what actually happens, but they're some of the most memorable scenes from last year. Jody Hill seems as much concerned with shocking the audience as making them laugh, but not in a gross-out way, and it's an approach that mostly works for me.

There's some pretty funny stuff with Rogen and his fellow mall security guys, and his antagonistic relationship with Aziz Ansari is terrific. Not every scene really meets its potential, though. His confrontation with Patton Oswalt's asshole food court restaurant manager could have gone farther, and the sidekick character is definitely a situation where he was probably funnier on paper. It's not an outstanding movie, but it does a lot to stick out from the crowd, especially the climax, which I'd rather not spoil but is one of the best scenes I've seen in ages. It really has to be seen to be believed. I actually thought the ending was a bit too upbeat for the story, but a lot about the film is going to stick with me for a while.

Reno 911!: Miami

I like Reno 911! well enough, though I never go out of my way to watch it. It's funny, but never that important to really follow it closely, so it's the kind of show you enjoy when it's on but maybe you don't care about it that much. I remember seeing a trailer for the movie, but it came and went without me even being aware it did. When I had the opportunity to check it out, I did.

The movie is chock full of entertaining cameos and funny guest stars. The Rock's one minute of screen time is classic, and Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt are great in their roles. Reno 911! is one of the better current examples of retroscripting, where the plot is known but almost all the dialogue is improvised by the actors. It makes for a slightly different style of humor that comes off as a bit more natural, while still being funny most of the time. They make good use of the movie format. There are a lot of over-the-top deaths in the movie with blood spraying everywhere, and it adds to the absurdity immensely. There's also liberal cursing and sexual humor, especially a great scene where Deputy Jones is running in horror from the sight of his coworkers doing some inappropriate things.

They do actually attempt to do a story with twists and a climax, and for the most part it works out all right. It's all done with a bit of a smirk, and it works out to a very funny movie that anyone who likes the show or characters, or even just the form of comedy, should probably enjoy.