No Direction Home

The problem with streaming is that you get used to bein' able to watch something whenever ya want, but then the moment you really want to watch it, the darn thing isn't available on any of the services anymore. Fucking dumb.

No Direction Home

I defy you to look at this album cover and tell me it doesn't represent everything you want from life.

Wassup Rockers

Some folks say Larry Clark must like boys 'cause his movies have lots of scenes where shirtless fifteen year olds make out and act silly. The Highland Cinema says Larry Clark must like boys because Wassup Rockers feels like it was written by one.

Derailroaded

Wild Man Fischer: developmentally disabled vagrant or exemplar of unadulterated self expression? To our eyes he looks like a guy hollering at passersby for nickels, but to Mark Mothersbaugh he's a Platonic form. We've tried to put ourselves on both sides of the Outsider Music fence and as far as we can tell the dialogue is equal parts record geek snobbery, half-baked and horn-rimmed undergraduate theorizing, and the privileged elite's sublimated mocking of retards.

One thing we do know is that someone really should do a documentary on this Dr. Demento fella. We thought he was just a trivial novelty like Weird Al, but it turns out he's a music historian like Tiny Tim!

No Direction Home

Looks like we're finally comin' to terms with the fact that even though it all reminds us of a super lame dumbed-down basic cable documentary, some of this stuff from the sixties was pretty fucking good.

Tsotsi

Remember that scene in Get on the Bus where the Muslim guy confesses how he smoked them fools back when he was gangbangin' and then cop sitting next to him says, "Yeah, that's nice you turned your life around and straightened up, but once we get back to L.A. I'm booking you into county"? Remember that? How you felt like the cop was being a dick, but also how there's no fucking statute of limitations on murder and how you wouldn't want a killer to skate no matter how much he'd reformed? The final scene in Tsotsi is kinda like that. The kid's a cold-blooded murdering thief, but, yeeaaaah, he did shape up a little bit when he had to take care of that baby. You know, the baby who's mother got shot just so Tsotsi could steal her car!

We Jam Econo -- The Story of the Minutemen

We watched this again just to see if it'd convince us to buy Double Nickels on the Dime. We still don't have it, we've still only heard "History Lesson Part II," and we think it's gonna stay that way.

Not that we think the Minutemen weren't the the real deal. It's not that they're lame-ass or pretentious. Not that Watt isn't doing exactly what YOU wanna be doing right this very moment. In fact it's far from it. We just think we finally figured out that the music wouldn't mean anything to us. Yeah, we'd appreciate it. We'd dig a song or two on the iShuffle, but if we were without it...well, we'd be just as well off.

Remember when we watched that Tad movie awhile back? The whole time we could see ourselves at a club just rocking the fuck out to that shit. The music had all of those qualities that make us want to spend our Friday night talking about rawk music instead of doing anything else. But as we sat there watching fat guys in flannel, we knew something just wasn't there, and that we'd never ever have a drunken spiel-session about 8 Way Santa. We'd never like Tad as much as we would have in 1990. And y'know, we'll never get into the Jesus Lizard or the Birthday Party or the Cows or any other one of these bands that were brimming with dangerous, challenging, and goddamn exciting rock music because everything they did is two decades old.

The Minutemen are right alongside 'em.

We're not going to stop romanticizing these guys. We're not gonna stop reading Watt's hootpage. We're not gonna quit copping a bastardized Pedro 'tude. But we know that when the day finally comes that we cash in our record store punch card for SST028, it'll be an acquisition we'll listen to once and only so we can get some more cred on the Electrical Audio forum.

Hostel

Remember when we drove down to Arroyo Grande to see this opening night and it was sold out so we went to that bar in Pismo Beach instead and our friend tried to hook us up with that middle aged lady while a bar band played Ozzy covers? And then how we called up our bros later that week and they'd all caught Hostel without us? We weren't that heartbroken 'cause we were still looking forward to all the other sleazy horror flicks coming down the pike, but we're sure we'd have loooooved this Eli Roth torturefest oodles more had we caught it in its first run.

Watching Hostel the other day, the Highland Cinema was struck by how...well...just plain not good it was. We know we're tough to please (and tough to gah-ross out), but we expected so much more from this thing, 'specially considering its legendary hype. We were actually let down by the lack of torture (confined to the second half!) and to the not so squirmishness of the much-lauded blowtorch/tin-snips/buckets of pus eyeball scene. Funny enough the stuff that impressed us most was the wince-worthy Achilles heel slicin' and the super street cred Miike cameo. Hostel's notoriety is still well-deserved, even in the middle of this Saw world it helped spawn and the Last House world it helped resurrect; just that something this repulsive got a major studio release is a thing for the record books. And speaking of repulsive, the thing that bothered us the most? The film's overt Maxim-linity wherein pompous, unsophisticated, arrestedly developed college fucks drink and screw their way through Europa. What a bunch of douchebags.

Feast / Cradle of Filth -- Peace Through Superior Firepower

A double feature! This one courtesy of a dear friend who hates on Priest, but digs on zombies!

Feast was chock full of the kind of bloody, sloppy, and gloopy effects that just tickle us pink, so even if its standard Living Dead stuck in a house setup was, well....standard we couldn't help but smile. We really liked it when that Best Week Ever guy oozed maggots and monster puke, and the way that newly-pubescent creature humped that lady's face before being blown to smithereens was truly inspired. Feast also hit us with gratuitiuos Jackson-esque fluid sprayin', hip fourth-wall commentary, and tough actin' talents of Young Guns II's Balthazar Getty and the ever-classy Henry Rollins. In fact, ol' Hank's the only reason we watched this in the first place! We chuckled at his pink sweatpants and wept at his demise. Recommended!

And while we're doling out the accolades we'll also recommend this here Cradle of Filth concert. Here at the Highland Cinema we're seriously into the spooky black metal. Our lobby's been blasting the Wolves of the Throne Room, the Mayhem, the Watain, and even the mighty Frost during the many moons of '07 and now that we've upgraded our theater's specs we've decided to screen every concert clip we can get our hands on. So when the of Filth came our way how could we say no? These guys and their corpse-painty Robert Smith style never appealed to us, but it turns out they have many things we do enjoy, specifically things like blastbeats, tremolo pickin's, and glass-shattering screeches! We don't thinks we'll ever get behind their limey Poe-boy shtick, but when the stage spectacle has acrobatic ladies, comin'-to-life gargoyles, and headbanging demon robots we can't help but give 'em the benefit of the doubt. We're also glad the castle lore and lacey vampires didn't scare our guests like that Carpathian Forest concert did. Yeesh.

Inside Deep Throat

Isn't it funny how it all seems so quaint? This Golden Age of Pornography, why it was nothing but lovemaking strangers and super-8's. Everyone having a good ole libertatin' time 'til Big Brother came in to rain on the parade. At least you wore your coat!

Lunacy

Outstanding. This is the first time I watched something nightmarish and surreal and enjoyed what I saw instead of worrying about what every little thing meant. One of the best things the Highland Cinema has shown and I'm even taking the scratched-disc delay into account!

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Honesty's the only thing that matters, right? People like Johnston 'cause he lays out all his vulnerability and romance and sadness and doesn't hold anything back. His proto-Oberst quivering and ham-fisted chord strums are charming, but the fact he had no choice but to sit in a basement and record hours and hours and hours of naive mash notes made the cool kids swoon and lecture their friends about genius, goddamnit.

Or maybe they just like the mental illness, demonophobia, and XXXL sweatpants.

You're Gonna Miss Me

Reviews were never the intention of the Highland Cinema. What came to mind, now that was the intention. So here's a few thoughts I had during this one:


(1) There's no reason you should listen to shitty music. None. You have no excuse. I'm not here to convince you Roky Erickson is some genius or visionary or that he's the reason you shouldn't listen to shitty music, but in this sad and beautiful world where there's so many fucking bands out there you're a real idiot if you're gonna listen to junk like "Ridin' With the King." See, here at the Highland Cinema we thought we knew everything we needed to know about the cool and angry post-punk rock music of the 1980s. We had all the Big Black and Butthole Surfers records. We knew the names of the guys in the Birthday Party and the Swans. But you know what? We found out there was a whole shitload of music we didn't know anything about! Nothing. Turns that before Reagan took office there was a whole lot of fucked up proto-industrial noise and weird rock bands out there. Whitehouse, NON, Helios Creed, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle...the list goes on and on and on and on. And how about Jandek or Can or Keiji Haino? Guys who've been putting out wicked strange records for a long long time. There's a TON of really really really interesting music out there, music you may not like or get, but music that you might as well expose yourself to since you're just gonna die pretty soon and no one wants to hear you complain about Nickelback all day. Lucky for you, this modern age has rendered your musical pretension only a few clicks away! Why, just look at me! Thanks to Mark Prindle, Electrical Audio, and Steve I listen to all kinds of stuff I never would've found on Clear Channel. In just the past few months alone I bought a super-girlified pop record, the Pig Destroyer catalog, and sat through two hours of shrieking bass feedback. I might just pick up some more ambient drone before I listen to even more black metal. Keep in mind that all this stuff is completely new to me and I didn't think I'd ever dig any of it. It's all stuff I found out about as an adult and then really enjoyed as an adult. There's no reason to grow out of anything.


(2) Just like Crumb, this Erickson family is fucked up. If you just peruse Roky's bio you'll see a big ol' tragedy of mental illness, but when I sat here and watched this thing I had a hard time getting past the fact that Mama Erickson has some serious problems of her own what with her hoarding and religious fanaticism and vehement distrust of the medical industry. And then there's younger brother Sumner Erickson, a guy who seems so noble the way he fought a court battle to get custody of the middle-aged Roky just so he could get the guy's schizophrenia under control and turn him into a productive citizen. Looks like it all worked out so well, right? Not three months back Roky played right down the street at Bumbershoot like a real functional music-makin' adult would. But watch You're Gonna Miss Me's bonus feature and catch how Sumner talks about how mental illness is a way of acting rather than a chemical imbalance. Wait, what? Are you serious? His story's just as much documentary fodder as Roky's is, no doubt. Picture it: younger brother of nutcase cult rocker rises out of his dysfunctional family to become wealthy Philharmonic tuba player and New Age devotee. Wow! Sign me up!

(3) This movie was really good. It's always nice to know that you started a movie feeling like you didn't know shit about someone and by the end feel like you truly got it. All of it. Why the music was important. Why the story was important. Why Thurston Moore, Byron Coley, and the fucking Austin City Limits give two shits about the guy. Bravo.

Waking Up Dead

Look, we've all been watching Behind the Music these past ten years. We've all seen Nikki Sixx talk about shooting up and dying and then OD'ing immediately after. We all know how Zeppelin put a shark in that lady's special place and how Def Leppard enjoyed mother-daughter teams under the arena stage. So why should anyone care about Phil Varone? He played with..who?...oh, yeah, Saigon Kick and then for the post-Baz Skid Row. Wow. He's addicted to coke and has less than $2 in his bank account, and all he wanted to do with his life was play the drums. Hey, it's not like I'm saying his story isn't sad or unfortunate, but I think it's safe to say that if any one of us wants to hear about the perils of rock and roll decadence there's a ton of better places to do so.

Shopgirl

I really like how no one likes this movie and I fucking love it. So sad and so well shot. Thanks, guy who works for David Cronenberg!

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Sorry, but I'm tired of this unnecessarily stylized post-Tarantino Get Shorty junk. The story itself is good enough for this Guy Ritchie world, but why drag it down with smarmy obliterate-the-fourth-wall narration and overly chummy back-and-forth rapport? Hipster tricks like the wink-wink Sam Spade noirisms turned this thing into watchable if not memorable Saturday afternoon on Showtime fare when it certainly could have been more.

But we still think Val Kilmer's cool.

Match Point

You guys remember how Ewen Bremner absolutely killed it in julien donkey-boy? That one scene where he's on the phone with Chloe Sevigny and they pretend he's talking to his deceased mother...wow. Dogme95's finest moment. So many great performances in that film and so full of choice reviewer fodder, but we could never understand why none of those guys ever talked about that scene where Julien dons Nazi garb and talks about Hitler. They went on and on about Korine's exploitation/empowerment of the differently-abled and went overboard trying to form a schizophrenic narrative out of it all, but we can't remember any real mention of that basement scene. Weird.


Oh, Match Point. Yeah. The best SERIOUS one since Interiors. Actually we'll amend that to say, "The best SERIOUS one since ever." And that capitalization ain't no joke. Unlike some other heartbreaking Allen dramas there's no comic relief anywhere. No nebbishes. No Dixieland score. No foibles, no "bends/breaks" supporting characters, and no suede elbow-patched psychoanalytic banter. The Woods turned out quite the well-crafted flick, one that's cold and reserved and yet completely understandable, a feat we found all the more remarkable considering the sheer assholery of the main character. Don't cheat on someone, especially if that someone is your wife who loves you. Even with Scarlett Johansson.

Hey, speaking of assholes, here's another thing we don't understand. How is it possible that we like Harry Block but can't stand Alvy Singer? Everyone says, "I love Annie Hall," but when we gave it a second, third, and even a fourth chance it always failed to charm us. Our rational mind says Singer's only a kinda-jerk and Block's the hostile sonofabitch, but damnit if our irrational mind feels for the latter way more than the former. Strange, huh?

We also can't figure out why we never ever made it to the Cineplex to see Match Point. It played there for, like, six months and we saw Melinda and Melinda opening week!

The Russian Specialist

Dude, I totally have to buy that Dolph t-shirt.

Lady Vengeance

Our least favorite Chan-wook Park/Park Chan-wook outing. I'm supposed to have sympathy for Lady Vengeance but I neither cared about her nor her predicament. Not once. And I should've! She was blackmailed into confessing to one of the worst of crimes (child murder). She's out to exact revenge on the sleazebag responsible (schoolteacher). There's women in prison doing things prisons are most famous for. All my favorite stuff. Problem is, there's no passion, no sadness, no bloodlust...no fucking feeling in any of this movie. Seriously, I "whatever'd" it through this whole thing, something made even more lame since crying kindergarteners should ruin my week and sweet ladies turned bad should ruin my pants.

Spoiling either of the preceding revenge flicks this dude put out would've made me feel guilty, but this one? Who cares? I already sorta-spoiled it for you anyway. Finale: serial child kidnapper tortured and killed (mostly offscreen... = ( ...) by abductees' parents. Oh, and Lady V loves her adolescent daughter whom she hasn't seen since infancy. Cue pretend snowfall. Cue credits. Cue the Cinema removing other Park flicks from our acquisitions list.

The New World

I hear-tell that this here Terrence Malick is some sort of philosophical genius. I totally dig that, don't you know, but it's a tad unfortunate since it means that if watching this movie wasn't already hard enough, I've still got to write about the darn thing. And with dasein scholars in the room I'll have to watch what I say and how I say it. You know those philosophy types, they have to determine what the meaning of "is" is. Me? I haven't even read Being and Nothingness! (Although I do know Satre is smarter than this guy.)


We'll leave ontology out of this for now, and instead I'll assure you that every single goddamn shot for the entire two hour run time is both undeniably gorgeous and unpretentiously contemplative. The New World is so visually striking you'll feel bad your living room set's only 20 inches. I did. And how 'bout those twenty minutes where brooding-eyebrows Farrell and fawn-ing Q'Orianka Kilcher fall in love? Among the greatest performances captured on film, and I'll stand on Renee Jeanne Falconetti's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. We had some real emotions welling up inside us during some of those scenes what with all the red lips, fingertips, and silent stares. So good you'll want a ladyfriend by your side. Maybe two.

But the forty-five Xian Bale minutes are boring.

Still recommended, but we issue our official "all parts, no sum" caveat.