Only Lovers Left Alive

Sexy... kinda.

Films first screened at the Cannes Film Festival need no taglines, that's for those tacky plebes making movies all about boobs and explosions! I guess! Anyway, today I'm going to be talking about Only Lovers Left Alive, a film about how depressed and gothy Tom Hiddleston is. Okay so it isn't really ABOUT that, but it does kind of come into play at points. I'm talking of course about Only Lovers Left Alive, a 2013 film that is just now seeing circulation here. This film is a moody, languid, romance story about two very old vampires, Adam (Tom Hiddleston, aka every 13 year old girl's boyfriend Loki) and without a hint of irony his wife Eve (Tilda Swinton, who I just can never get over how weird she is seriously she weirds me out big time). The two live separetely, with Eve in Tangier and Adam living on the outskirts of Detroit as a reclusive musician, with little contact to the outside world. This works for him just fine, as Adam sports a growing disgust for the human world at large, thanks mostly to what he refers to at one point as their "fear of their own imaginations." Over the centuries Adam has been influential in the lives of many scientists and engineers, and is especially bitter about the way the great minds of past generations were marginalized and destroyed. Adam's house is powered by a device he created from parts of various Tesla inventions, and so he is an island in the way that I've heard no man is. Of course even island guys need to head inland sometimes, and so Adam deals with rock scene kid Ian (Anton Yelchin), paying him to run various errands and to find him rare and vintage musical instruments, among other things (like a wooden bullet he considers using to kill himself).

Veronica Mars

CAMERA ACTION

"She thought she was out."

I'm sure we've all thought that once or twice, but let's face it, you never really get out do you? That sure seems to be the case for Veronica Mars, and maybe fans of the show as well. How's it going folks welcome back to The Tagline. Today I'm going to be giving my thoughts and impressions of the recent Veronica Mars movie, which has a neat story behind it before I even get to the actual movie part. So let's talk about how a Veronica Mars movie even happened to begin with. If you aren't familiar, Veronica Mars was a show that ran for three seasons, from 2004 to 2007, about a teenage girl who becomes a private investigator in her rich meets poor hometown of Neptune, CA. If this sounds ridiculous... well it kind of is, but she's only sort of an actual PI, see she works for her dad, who actually IS a licensed private investigator, so that gives her the in to the biz (I don't know how much you know about it, but to be a private detective in most states you need to either have worked under another PI or have been a cop for a pretty substantial amount of time). After three seasons of struggling to keep themselves on the air despite flagging ratings, Veronica got the ax from the CW so they could fit in more reality TV (I'm not even making this up). Despite not having a huge viewer base, what Veronica did have was a really hardcore fan segment, and they were raring for more V Mars man. So Kristen Bell and director Rob Thomas (not the singer for Matchbox Twenty a different guy) started a kickstarter. Their goal was to raise more than 2 million dollars. Point in fact they ended up raising something closer to 6 million dollars (5,702,153 according to the page) which I think expresses in clear green numbers with dollar signs just how badly people wanted to see Kristen Bell being tough on crime like Scruff Mcgruff only much hotter (this sentence is like a runaway train I want to get off but I can't). Anyway that weirdness aside the point is thanks to fan support, the movie was made, and I got to see it.

Only God Forgives

He's a really bad boxer.

"Time to Meet The Devil."

Hello again friends, it is once again time for The Tagline. I know I promised true holiday horrors today, but you'll have to wait a bit longer to realize my darkest nightmares. Frankly speaking... some things are just TOO terrible. I'm afraid dear readers, afraid of what I will do in the pursuit of your entertainment. So in the meantime, I offer up something less horrific, and not as seasonal, while I steel myself, body and mind, for what might be the worst thing I've ever watched... again. Instead, let me reach into my bag of stupid, and pull out a movie that was bad, but not in a particularly holiday way. I'm talking about Only God Forgives, a film starring Ryan Gosling as Julian, who runs a muay thai club in Thailand that's actually a front for a drug operation. His brother brutally murders and rapes a prostitute (and probably in that order too the twisted sack of shit) and then is killed in turn by the prostitute's father, with the consent of the fucked up Thai police, who play things kinda fast and loose as you can probably guess. After the death of Julian's brother, his horrible crime boss mom shows up to run the show, and tells him to go out and even up the score. This is about what you can sort out as regards the plot of this movie.

Drinking Buddies

This sums up the whole movie.

"A comedy about knowing when to say when."

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! I'm attempting to get through The Mortal Instruments, which I swear to god has to be like 70 hours long (that's how the first 40 minutes felt at least) so in the mean time I'll have to entertain us by talking about that not so good movie that I watched over the weekend. That movie was Drinking Buddies, a thrilling film with the tagline above, that I think was dubiously about any of those words. Starring Anna Kendrick (see her more relevant work here), Jake Johnson (his more relevant work here) Olivia Wilde (All over the place, here have Deadfall) and Ron Livingston (The guy from Office Space you know) as they drink lots of beer and carry on with their intensely mundane existences. It features drinking in a bar, making phone calls to potential clients, walking in the woods, and moving furniture. Yeah I can see you all practically falling off your chairs you're so into it. I'm gonna go into more detail though, so hold onto your hats kiddies.

Stoker

I don't think there was innocence to
begin with.

"Innocence Ends"

Welcome to Tuesday at the Tagline! Grasping after a movie to review, I sought out some new movies to take in. I ended up through a series of events settling on Stoker, a film directed by Park Chan-wook, a Korean director I was already familiar with from his earlier movie Old Boy (a movie I can heartily recommend you watch if you like dark dramas) Stoker stars Mia Wasikowska (who I previously enjoyed in the most recent rendition of Jane Eyre) as India Stoker, a moody, creepy girl whose father has just died as the film begins. At the same time, her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, probably you know his as Ozymandias from Watchmen), whom she did not know existed, comes to live with her and her eccentric mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Immediately it is apparent that Charlie is a not okay guy, India is a not okay girl, and her mother is also... well not okay. I wasn't sure what exactly was going on at first , but it was clear that something very strange was occurring. Murder was clearly in the offing, but I couldn't be sure who was doing all that murdering.

Evidence

Evidence that guys with cameras will get
you killed.

Welcome to Tuesday at The Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about a movie I watched on the Netflix last week: Evidence. This continues my horror movie tear (I guess this is the time to do it right?) Evidence was an interesting film, shot on a very small budget and using the "found footage" approach to movie making that was first popularized in horror by The Blair Witch Project, a movie which bored my pants off with its boring woods scenes. As the name might indicate, the film itself is the 'found footage' shot by 4 friends filming a documentary in the deep woods, when things go wrong. Really wrong. The footage serves as evidence of the bizarre experiments that seemed to be conducted in the area. There were a lot of neat ideas on offer here, and certainly I was impressed by how far they managed to stretch their budget, but the movie had plenty that was wrong with it too, and I'm not going to gloss over it. Warning for everyone, I have to spoil some stuff to explain some of my criticism.

Sunshine Cleaning

Pretend the title is a couch soaked in blood and you'll get the idea.

"Life's a messy business"

Welcome back to pretentious indie week, where I will now be discussing a movie in this category that actually had a 8 million dollar budget. I know when I set out to do things, I always come at it with at least 6 mil in cash up my sleeve! Sunshine Cleaning was originally released in March of 2009 with a limited release, but a month later was given a wider release, though that didn't do much for its grossing (bigger is not always better for budgets  I guess, and this movie only ended up taking home around 16 mil all together).

The Go-Getter

No one stands on a car in this movie.

"Life doesn't come with a roadmap."

As promised this week will be all about movies that are not considered big Hollywood. Don't be fooled though! That only means that they're small Hollywood! While it might be considered a minor project released at the Sundance Festival, let me put things into perspective. The Go-Getter stars Lou Taylor Pucci (I would guess he is best known for his performance in The Chumscrubber if you know him at all) opposite Zooey Deschanel (currently she stars on the TV show New Girl but she's appeared in a variety of other movies, including (500) Days of Summer and Elf to name a few) and Jena Malone (probably best remembered as Gretchin Ross in Donnie Darko). The movie ran for only 3 days and grossed over 11 million. That's not exactly mom and pop, and director Martin Hynes spent around 23,000 dollars just on establishing and location shots (large sections of the movie are actually shot on location, which is a pretty big deal because it is a road trip movie).