Sunday, November 27, 2005
Flix
Silenus, when I told him that this was coming from Netflix, warned me. "It's really fucking stupid," he said. Let's call that an understatement. Velvet Goldmine is tragically fucking stupid, and is one of the worst films I've ever seen.
All the ingredients are there for at least a decent rock film: good actors, hot gay sex, hot straight sex, hot bi sex, drugs, glam rock--but nothing works in this pathetic mish-mash. The sex, drugs, and rock alone should make things interesting, but anything resembling entertainment drained out of this sucker before it was printed. Instead of developing the filmstock I think they embalmed it. Pretentious, witless, and pointless, Velvet Goldmine has as its central characters a thinly disguised David Bowie and a thinly disguised Iggy Pop. How can you fuck that up? How can you make that boring? Wretched pap! The only redeeming quality is Ewan MacGregor's cock (my wife enjoyed at least 10 seconds of this movie), and there are much better films during which you can view that particular organ. Avoid at all costs, especially if you like glam rock.
I need to watch Hedwig again to cleanse my cinematic pallet; or at least Oliver Stone's The Doors, which is so wretchedly bad it's vastly entertaining.
The Dazzling Urbanite knows more about film than anyone, but when he told me Constantine was good I ignored his advice. P-Man brought this over Friday and Tito Tito and The Nameless wanted to watch it; I reluctantly agreed but was pleasantly surprised. Leave your brain at the door and you'll enjoy this wild ride to Hell and back, it's a veritable comic-book exorcist film on steroids. Conceptually beautiful but with "no there there," Constantine almost avoids taking itself too seriously, and Keanu is serviceable in his Clint Eastwood-with-a-crucifix role (several moments of Reeves' un-intentional self-parody provoked guffaws). Worth a visit.