Lucky for you, in addition to all of those things, I am also willing to see a potentially terrible movie if I can see it for free. Which is how I wound up seeing the first half of Hot Tub Time Machine.

Yeah. The first half. For the first time that I can remember, I walked out of a movie. I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how we just didn’t get it, or how I am some kind of film snob because come on. I loved Legion! I am first in line for anything Apatovian! I even enjoyed Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and that came with its share of gross-out moments, but you know what it didn’t have? Endless rape jokes, for one thing. Or rampant homophobia. Or an utter lack of any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I was particularly taken aback by how terrible Hot Tub was, since there were so many free screenings of it. Like, 5 times as many as a typical movie, which had fooled me into thinking it might actually be a fun dumb movie and they were trying harder than usual to drum up word of mouth.

It’s not fun. It’s appalling. It’s one of those movies where you’re sitting there, listening to the audience laugh, and wondering if you’re seeing the same thing. If we were seeing the same thing, I am judging them harshly.

Much to our disappointment, the utter suck of Hot Tub eliminated another terrible movie from our schedule: She’s Out of My League. Same situation: never saw a trailer, Jay Baruchel is adorable (and carries the Apatovian vibe), but the screenwriters? Are the same as for Hot Tub. So, you know. Don’t see that one either. Don’t even put it in your Netflix queue, thinking “It can’t be that bad”. It will be.

It’s a shame, too, because I think I finally learned the title. For a solid week, every time I tried to think of it, I wanted to call it He’s Just Not That Into You. I could never remember if it was My League or Your League. By the end we had morphed it into something like He’s Just Not That Into A League of Your Own.

Which is possibly a movie we’d see, though how someone could *not* be into A League of Their Own is beyond me.

Animated:

French Roast (France): The coolest thing about this short is that about half of the action takes place in the mirror behind a customer in a café. The second coolest thing is what it has to tell us about nuns, namely, that they cannot be trusted.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty (Ireland): Great use of two different animation styles, one for the grandmother telling the story and the other for the story being told. I liked it a lot.

The Lady and the Reaper (Spain): Probably my favorite, if only because I enjoy rooting for death.

Logorama (Argentina): Which took home the Oscar, and which I rather hated. It’s a fantastic concept, and I get that it was supposed to be satirical, but that is no excuse for a totally crap script. I am not amused,

A Matter of Loaf and Death (UK): Latest Wallace & Gromit installment, which I was totally on board with until you discover that the murderer’s motive? Is that they have gained weight.

They also showed three bonus shorts: Partly Cloudy (which everyone had seen before Up), The Kinematograph (I wasn’t that into the story, but the texture of the animation was very cool) and Runaway (a fun Canadian short about a train and a cow and ensuing hijinks).

Live Action:

The Door (Ireland): Which would have made a lot more sense if we’d had the Chernobyl context at the beginning rather than the end.

Instead of Abracadabra (Sweden): Screwy, very Swedish short about a wannabe magician.

Kavi (India/USA): Frustratingly, only half of a good short on modern-day slavery. It ends a bit abruptly, and I would have really liked it to go on a bit longer.

Miracle Fish (Australia): Fantastic. Probably the best of the bunch, with true narrative tension and a great performance by the child star.

The New Tenants (Denmark/USA): The winner, dark, which reminded me a lot of Six Shooter.

It’s a different studio, and Alice is obviously a privileged character, but she is not a princess. She is a champion. It is seriously awesome. Dear Hollywood: More, please!

Going in, I was glad to know it was not a Tim Burton film in the way I’d expect. I’ve since learned that was deliberate. It is visually Burtonesque, but the story and pacing is definitely your straight ahead fantasy adventure. The opening title (including the score) felt extremely Harry Potter. There is definite cheese, particularly at the end — very “Oh, Hatter, I think I’ll miss you most of all!”

Our Alice is now 19, returning to Wonderland, and is played by the lovely Mia Wasikowska, who bears a striking resemblance to a young Gwyneth Paltrow, except she’s not irritating. Johnny Depp is, of course, brilliant as the Hatter, and Helena Bonham-Carter does great work, even through CGI, as the Red Queen. The voice casting is spot-on, particularly Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat & Alan Rickman as the Blue Caterpillar. The oddest performance is from Anne Hathaway, who reminded me of Michael Keaton in Much Ado About Nothing; you know they’re doing what the director has asked of them, but why he’s asked it is a mystery.

Visually, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. 3D was not part of the original plan, but works strikingly well, even though it’s apparently fated to always give me a headache. I do wish, clichéd though it may have been, that the 3D had only been used in Underland. In the above world scenes, it felt forced, but in Underland it lent a fantastic texture, particularly in the numerous scenes shot at ground level, and to anything involving mist, or smoke, or the Cheshire Cat.

It’s great fun overall, though, once Burtonspectations have been adjusted, and worth seeing in the theater.

Cera basically blew all the affection I had for him from “Arrested Development” and Superbad by hitting me with the one-two suckerpunch that was the god-awful adaptation of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist & the dull, self-indulgent mockumentary Paper Heart.

I haven’t read Youth in Revolt, so I can’t speak to it as an adaptation, but the film certainly felt like a YA novel, hormonal and hyper-real. If I were still in a position to do reader’s advisory, I’d hand it to someone who liked Rats Saw God.

Does it work? Sure. I particularly liked the animated sequences (very Better Off Dead). Does Cera act? Yes. Nick Twisp is definitely in the Cera mold, but his alter-ego, Francois, is great smarmy fun. (Though not as much fun as Justin Long as The Love Interest’s older brother, who was probably the best part of the movie.) And you gotta respect a film that has the guts to be an R rated teen movie.

All that said… eh. It took me this long to bother to post about it, holding up four many other films. Clearly I’m not excited.

A week ago Friday, for all of 6 bucks, I got to see Rebel Without a Cause in a sold-out theater, bookended with remarks by screenwriter Stewart Stern, and shown with a short film cut together from the production reunion ten years ago.

God, I love Seattle.

Stern spoke of course about James Dean (improvements he brought to the film, the impact of his death, their utterly charming first meeting) and just when I was thinking I would have loved to see the film with a predominantly queer crowd, he took what turned out to be his only audience question, one regarding the development of the character of Plato.

The answer turned into a meditation not only on Plato and Jimmy (including autobiographical elements), but on masculinity in general, male intimacy in particular, and his experience at the Battle of the Bulge specifically. Such a gift!

(And people wonder why I can’t get interested in spending $15 on Avatar. I have 9 bucks left! I’ll get a coffee and see Truffaut’s Small Change for my birthday. It’s not a difficult decision. Except for being a little concerned for myself, going to a children’s film festival without an actual child.)

…wait, I suppose I should say something about Rebel itself. Maybe. But we all know it’s great & influential, and if you haven’t seen it, you probably should. It’s certainly a weirder movie than expected, a teen melodrama where, watching it over 50 years later, you really wish everyone would get some intense family therapy.

At the same time, an inexplicably tattooed Paul Bettany has crashed to earth in LA (of all places), where he chops off his own wings & stitches up the wounds. Hard core, one might think, but still no Stephen Maturin. He loads himself up with weaponry (just like a good Boondock Saint), has a brief spat with another angel (who has the Master’s Excorcist-like knack for taking over other people’s heads), and speeds off for same diner.

Is he desperate for pancakes? No. No he is not, and more’s the pity, because they have a short stack for a mere $3.75. He is there to protect the baby! (This is not a spoiler. In fact, I could summarize THE ENTIRE FILM and still not spoil anything.) Protect the baby from what, you might ask?

God’s army. Which is? Zombies. Yes, essentially. Zombies sent as a second flood to eradicate mankind. Zombies! Zombies driving cars! Zombies carrying balloons! One zombie with a paper bag over its head for no apparent reason! And my favorite zombie, which I will not give away. You’ll have to go and make a guess.

Legion might be my new favorite movie. It’s so hilariously bad, I think everyone should see it. It’s essentially a Sci-Fi film, with (maybe) a slightly larger budget. More explosions. About the same level of script, which is to say, essentially no script at all. Acting ranging from a game effort all things considered to straight up camp. Cinematography that must have cost a whole buck and a half.

I want the soundtrack, so every time I give a nearly touching speech, angels will sing, and every time I walk down the hall at work there will be Chanting of Doom.

It’ll be amazing. But do you know what is even more amazing? That my beloved Mr Bettany has done a second feature with this director. It’s called Priest, and comes out in August. Want to know what it’s about? Of course you do! Per the IMDb: “A priest disobeys church law to track down the vampires who kidnapped his niece.”

PAUL BETTANY IS A PRIEST. THERE ARE VAMPIRES. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

Plot? Well. Better luck next time.

(No, you didn’t miss it, I *am* five movies behind. I lack patience.)

It’s kind of fantastic, in the way anything that validates your choices is fantastic.

Because I know you all are fascinated, the top ten in my zip code, and more, after the jump: (more…)

So, what we see from this is that the weird thing about this year is clearly that, even though I saw a lot of film, not much of it was actually released in 2009. But, onward! Totally random categories after the jump!

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I saw a lot of great stuff, that I’ve talked about before, but the best surprises had to be The Rain People (very early Coppola) & Salesman (a documentary about door-to-door Bible salesmen).

Ones I’m kicking myself for missing: too many to list. Pretty much everything where I decided I was too busy or too sick or too tired or flat-out misread the calendar. I particularly regret missing Fellini’s Satyricon, thinking it was playing the full week. D’oh.

The music’s still great, the effects are startlingly good considering their age, and the dream logic of it all was fantastic for me to revisit with my obsession with Where the Wild Things Are.

The day after I saw it, I threw Return to Oz and The Wiz into my Netflix queue. Return had given me nightmares as a child, where the Wheelers were racing after me, of course. Thankfully, that doesn’t hold up as an adult. And I’d never seen The Wiz before, so that was fun. I very much liked the concept of moving it to New York, since more Americans were living in cities (then and now). Take that, real America.