Saturday

I Know Who Killed Me

With a serial killer on the loose, a promising young female student (Lindsay Lohan) is kidnapped after a high school football game. The police find her in a remote field some two weeks later, alive but missing some limbs.

Or do they? The girl they find looks exactly like the missing girl, but insists she is not. She claims she is a crackhead and stripper named Dakota. More and more evidence piles up showing that she really is the missing girl: (1) they have the same DNA; (2) her injuries are identical in every way to the pattern established by the killer, down to details never released to the public; (3) her mother still has her ultrasound exam, showing only one baby in the womb, so a twin is ruled out; (4) even if there were a missing twin, both girls could not have identical injuries; (5) the missing girl's password on her Mac, previously known only to her, is "dakota," obviously indicating that the missing girl's subconscious fabricated the other personality. Despite all that evidence, Dakota insists that she is a different person, and that her injuries just sort of happened to her out of mid-air, having been done by nobody.

It sounds at least mildly intriguing, but it isn't. It's a "reverse Hitchcock" thriller. By that I mean that Hitchcock's films often seemed to have some irrational or supernatural elements which turned out to have perfectly logical explanations. If you keep your head in the game, assume that the laws of the natural universe have to apply, and try to think through Vertigo, for example, you have a reasonable chance to solve the mystery before the protagonist. In the reverse Hitchcock plot, on the other hand, the mystery at first seems to be explicable by natural science or psychology, but once the various twists have painted the plot into a corner, the script has to resort to a bullshit supernatural explanation which could not possibly be true, and therefore could not be guessed by anyone playing along at home unless they are prepped with the same information I am now giving you, which is that when all the possible explanations have been exhausted, the solution must be something impossible. If you want to guess along, just go for the craziest possible explanation. I won't tell you precisely what the gimmicks are, other than to note: (1) the solution involves in some way one of the most common plot twists used in cheese-fests; (2) there is no evil dwarf; (3) it was not "all a dream." If you know your B-movie scripts, you probably already have it!

I think it was Roger Ebert who pointed out that bad scripts require everyone to act as stupid as possible at all times, because if the characters were as smart as the audience, the film would be over too quickly. That's precisely what happens here. The FBI seems to have about half of its personnel assigned to this investigation, and the entire case hinges on whether "Dakota" is telling the truth or not. There was a perfectly simple way to find out: ask her which strip club she worked at, and take her down there to meet her boss. If she is deluded, she and everyone else would immediately realize it, and she might even snap back to her "other" personality. If she is telling the truth, then the feds would immediately realize that Dakota and the missing girl are in fact two different girls and, since they have the same DNA, must be identical twins. Despite all the law enforcement personnel assigned to the case, including a psychologist, nobody ever says simply, "Which strip club did you work at?" Hell, they wouldn't even have had to go to the club. They probably could have figured out everything they needed with a phone call. On the other hand, that would have made for a mystery movie without its central mystery.

That wasn't the only case of the characters having to act as stupid as possible. Once Lohan and her father (or the other Lohan's father, as the case may be) determine the killer's identity, they drive off to his torture lair by themselves because they have "no time" to call the cops. What the ... ? How much time does it take for the passenger of a car to dial 911 on a cell phone while the driver continues driving? And what made them think that a suburban dad and a girl with one arm and one leg would be a good match for a psychopath with a house full of blades and saws and other weapons?

I have a few more items like that down in my notes, but I can't see any sense in turning this into a litany of similar items. I think you already have the idea. The one plot-related item I want to add is that there is one character within the narrative who possess additional information about whether the missing girl could have had a twin sister despite that having been ruled out by ultrasound, but he or she chose to remain silent on the matter, apparently for the usual reason, that the mystery movie would then be absent a mystery.

The film is not redeemed by guilty pleasures unless you like torture, in which case there is some occasional gore for your entertainment. If your pleasures incline more toward seeing Lohan naked, you can forget it. Although she has three strip scenes while drugged and boozed up in a hell-hole of a sleaze joint, she dances fully clothed. She also has a sex scene with her boyfriend, and again manages to stay dressed. Oh, yeah, and a shower scene - with no flesh other than her head, shoulders and fingers. That modesty is all rather astounding since (1) the film was already a hard R for language, torture, and drug abuse; (2) other female characters in the film are naked; and (3) everyone in the Western world has already seen all the details of Lohan's genitalia in graphic close-up, so the lack of flesh here can't be chalked up to the actress's prudish and maidenly airs.

Here are the clips, such as they are. You will get several looks at the bottom half of Lohan's ass, but that's it.

 

 

Sex and Death 101

I will cover this tomorrow. The general outline is this: a modern Casanova receives a mysterious e-mail telling him every woman he's ever slept with. This is only mildly baffling until he scans down the chronological list and notices that it continues into the future. It includes every women he will ever sleep with in the future. He thinks it is a joke played by a friend, but the list soon turns out to be accurate. How should he use this information? What if he finds his true love and she's not on the list?

It's played for laughs, and there's plenty of nudity.

You can see from the premise that I could easily be writing about one of those high-concept 1970s Italian sex farces that Tuna likes. It is not. It's a new movie which made the festival circuit in recent months. For our purposes, the biggest news is that some of the nudity consists of a topless scene from Winona Ryder. We've waited a few years for that, and Winona is 36 years old now, but the ol' chest still looks fine.

Here are some Winona caps I made

 

And some film clips made by other guys.

 I do have the DVD screener sitting here, so I'll watch it and have a complete overview tomorrow. Oh, yeah ... somebody else did this sample cap of Sophie Monk

 

* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

* White asterisk: expanded format.

* Blue asterisk: not mine.

No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sopranos Season 3

 (2001)

Now that the series has ended, I will get through all of the seasons I skipped.

The plot:

  • Christopher becomes a made man.
  • There is dissension in the ranks while Uncle Jun battles cancer.
  • The organized crime unit is trying very hard to build a case against Tony, who is still suffering from panic attacks.
  • Tony's mother dies.
  • Tony's sister starts a feud with the Russians, which she loses.
  • Dr. Amalfi is raped.
  • Tony has a fling with one of Dr. Amalfi's patients, and Carmella goes with him to therapy.
  • Meadow is discovering her sexuality and making bad choices in men.
  • Anthony Jr. is in trouble at school, despite doing well on the freshman football team.

This season, to me, was disappointing. I didn't feel like they ever really got any momentum going. Getting rid of Tony's mother was a plus because Meadow deserved the additional screen and plot time, and Christopher was doing a good job as the "young and eager guy with lots of growing up to do." But some of the interesting plot threads just died, such as Dr. Amalfi's rape

The season ended with nothing making me want to see the next one.

 

There was a fairly high body count on the season, but in terms of nudity, all of it came from strippers at the Badda Bing.

 

 One of the strippers, Ariel Kiley, was identified, and was part of a major subplot in two episodes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Luther the Geek

It's a 1990 gore fest which features Stacy Haiduk showing off the hooters in the shower and in the bedroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

part 5 of ?

Dolly Parton

 

 

 

 

 

 

A film clip of Juliette Binoche in Rendez-vous. The quality is not so good - video tape dubbed in German - but I don't know where to get a better transfer of the full-screen version. The DVD (see Tuna's caps in the Encyclopedia) cuts off her pubic area in a key scene. Even at video tape quality, this is a must-see, take my word for it. I wish we had this exact same framing in DVD or even HD quality!

If you don't take my word, perhaps this (the scene cut off by the DVD) will help you make your decision:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tesseract

A minor-league drug trafficker Sean (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is waiting at a hotel to pick up a small but valuable shipment which he'll then pass on to exporters who are waiting at a dock.

Also in the hotel is Rosa (Saskia Reeves), a British psychologist who's in town to interview street children about their dreams. It's her way of coping after losing her own young son to a fatal illness. Rosa latches on to young Wit (Alexander Rendel), a street kid who does  odd jobs in the hotel. Wit is also a petty thief given to rifling through the guests' luggage while they're out and selling their goods on the black market.

Wit takes Sean's Package and puts him in a lot of trouble.

 

Larkana Vatanawongsiree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little Trip to Heaven

 

 

Julia Stiles