Shadow of the Vampire

The opening line of the film is John Malkovich saying "nice pussy" (in reference to the actual animal, followed by a mrow.  Only good things can come of this.

The opening credits were kinda overlong, but the music was nice and creepy.  There is a short backstory which they mercifully wrote up and it is on-screen to read rather than doing what most films do, and that is throwing away the first half-hour setting up.   Basically:  John Malkovich plays Murnau, a movie director who wants to make an epic vampire movie.  Actually he wants to make Dracula, but Bram Stoker's widow is like "hell no, I own the rights to that and you. can't. have. it."  So he has to change the story somewhat, changing the name and location to the Czech Republic.  The whole movie is based on the original Nosferatu movie.  Which I have never seen.

Ok so now Malkovich is at some old timey sort of gentlemen's club or a cabaret or something.  The scene changes before anything good happens.

The guy who is going to be in Malko's epic vampire movie is named Schreck.  Max Schreck.  Shrek.  Hee.  They're talking about him and how cast and crew will only see him/film him at night, while he's in full makeup.  They're saying he's a super, super method actor.  Nah.  This guy sounds like a real vampire to me.  I wonder if he glitters in the sunlight?  Max Schreck was a real guy.  Schreck means terror, apparently, and that is the coolest last name ever for an actor in a horror film.

Murnaukovich is giving what is actually a rather poignant speech about the power of film.  I wonder how he really felt about that line since he is partial to the theater in real life?  There's a good line in the beginning of the film about the theater giving life, while the camera takes it.  Not unlike a vampire.

Okay, the film location is sufficiently creepy.  Love it.   The film director is being all shady about the details of filming the "actor" vampire.  Now the crew members are in this creepy little cottage place with crucifixes everywhere.  Seriously they're adorning the walls and everything.  Wait, maybe it's a church actually. Not sure.

Here comes some guy with a ferret in a cage.  Oh no,  this is like that scene in Jurassic Park, except instead of a T-Rex coming to feast on a lamb, it is Willem DaFoe as a vampire, coming to feast on that poor weasel-y bastard :(   that's kind of sad.  This vampire's nails are super long and incredibly gross.

So they're filming the next day, when some random Czech lady messes up the scene.  ("Albin! There's a NATIVE in my scene!!")  She's very upset because the film crew removed all the crosses.  Well yeah, she's upset, because those crosses protect her from the ferret eating monster that lurks nearby. 

Ohhhh snap, they're filming a night scene and meeting Max Schreck/Count Orlock for the first time.  And he is just the creepiest thing I have ever seen.  Even the lead actor in the film is looking at Herr Direktor like wtf.

Something has happened to the cameraman or whatever he is.  Wolf/Vooooolf, since these people are German.  He was laying on the ground looking all despondent.  Then when they went back to the place where they're staying,  the lady who flipped about the crosses, called him "unclean" and acted spooked.  Did he get bit or something?

Next night of shooting....here comes Creepy Count Orlock, coming to scare the hell out of everyone.  He's giving Directovich the "I vant to drink your bloood" look, out the corner of his eye. 

They're about to start their scene, and it turns out, vampires are really shitty actors.  He is supposed to "read" a contract, and he flips out saying he doesn't know what to say.  Vampires can't improvise?  I call bullshit - the entire Twilight series was improvised.  Every one of those movies was like a bad episode of Whose Line is it Anyway.

Then he tries to change the subject and tells Malkovich, "I'd like some makeup."  And the answer is "Well you don't get any!"  Lol.  Malko is definitely going to be vampire food at some point with answers like that.

Hmmm...it turns out Max Schreck is a fan of the lead actress Greta.  He sees her picture and exclaims "This is Greta!"  Something tells me things are gonna get awkward.  No one wants the undead fapping over them.

The vampire just made this weird rabbit face with his teeth and I LOL'd.

Wolf is still acting really weird.  Something happened to him.

Back at the hotel or whatever,  everyone is talking smack about the vampire.  Except Malkovich, who is basically like stoppit you guys, he would never hurt anybody!  Funny since he was the one being looked at like he was dinner.

Now the vampire is being presented a big bottle of blood to drink.  He's pretty stoked. (Ahaha get it, like Bram Stoker? Ahhhaha)  But he's kinda bitter, talking about how he used to drink from golden pimp cups or something.  He's missing the good ol' days.

On the movie set: the lead actor, Gustav, just cut himself accidentally, mostly because Herr Director tricked him into it.  Jerk.  So when the blood appeared, our super method actor vampire leapt up and drank it out of  Gustav's hand.  I think Gustav needs to consult with his agent, because that doesn't seem OK. 

Malkovich gets in his face.  The frame cuts to Count Orlock doing the creepy rabbit face again.  He looks like Count Chocula. 

Malkovich has gone back to yell at him some more.  The vampire is playing it cool.  Oh okay, Malkovich/Murnau knows this guy is a for-real vampire.  What a good director.  The vampire is making Malkovich all upset and angry, and I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of hot.  Not the vampire part, just the upset and angry part.  They're negotiating terms of the film.  I get the sense this vampire is not happy about being a vampire ("Tell me how you could harm me, when I don't even know how I could harm myself?") Existential crisis, much?  Also it turns out he is obsessed with Greta because he wants to possess her eternal youth.  I assume this is code for "drink her blood".

Two of the crew members are trying to start shit with the vampire.  They're also drinking.  This will end poorly.  They have made the mistake of asking how he feels about the book Dracula, and you can tell how they immediately regret it because this guy won't stfu.  Then he catches and eats a bat out of midair.  Awesome.  The vampire just took a swig of liquor.  I don't think they're gonna ask for their bottle back.

Drunk vampires are trouble!  He just killed someone on set!

Here comes Cary Elwes, and his accent is as shitty as ever, but he just had the best line "Are you loaded? Good, well so am I". lol!

Malkovich has messed up.  He got mad and went after the vampire.  U DUN GOOFED.  I guess staring into a vampire's eyes is really terrifying.  But the way a vampire walks, is really really funny, as evidenced by the next scene.

Greta is out of her mind on morphine.  I didn't have that good of a time the last time I needed a morphine drip! And now the vampire is outside her door but can't get in.  Here's a thought,  use those long fingernails to pick the lock instead of clicking them around like an idiot!

So now Malkovich is basically in bed drugged out of his mind or something and he is confessing that Max Schreck isn't really Max Schreck,  he is a real vampire.  Well you don't say?  Oh, and that he promised that the vampire could have Greta.  No big deal.  No really, it's not a big deal, because Greta is a raging bitch and I would love for this vampire to eat her just so she would stop talking.  Also, the vampire's facial expressions are hilarious.

Greta just realized, before any of these other idiots,  that the vampire is a real one, because he has no reflection (yet he shows up on film...).  Seriously no one else discovered this already?  So naturally they're drugging her so she doesn't run away.

The vampire was promised that he can have Greta after his final scene in the film.  His death scene.  He is directed to die, by Malkovich, and the direction is followed up hilariously with: "Die, you fucking rat bastard, vampire pig, schweinhund shit, yes die alone!"  Lol.  And scene.

The vampire is feasting on Greta now and the men are filming.  The world's first snuff film.

Seriously, Cary Elwes, you can't shoot a vampire.  I can't believe he just tried that.  It cost him his life, and now the vampire appears to be killing the entire crew.  While Murnau films it. 

Ok, natural sunlight is coming in, the vampire is dying, Malkovich is filming, and rambling, because his character is crazy.  Everyone around him is dead, except the crew members who just showed up, who are looking understandably concerned by all the carnage.  Director Murnau doesn't care about their feelings (or about being prosecuted I suppose) and is all like "There.  I think we have it." 

Roll credits.

This movie was awesome.  Funny enough to provide some truly LOL-worthy lines, and plenty of creepiness to make me kinda want to turn the lamp on while I watched.  And now I want to see the real Nosferatu. 

 

Shadows and Fog

I admit, I watched the vast majority of this on fast-forward, because I think Woody Allen is a terrible actor and possibly a terrible human being.
I think the basic premise is there's a serial strangler, or something.  And it's foggy.  And dark.  Shadows and fog, ooh.
JM plays a clown.  A deeply introspective clown.  In a traveling sideshow thing.  He has a whiney girlfriend/wife(?) who is desperate to have a baby.  He's kinda like "whoa hold up" and goes on a walk.  On the way to "talk to his boss" he somehow magically falls into bed with the trapeze artist WHILE her strongman boyfriend is passed out nearby.  Because even dressed as a clown, Malkovich has swagger like that.

So then more stuff happens.  It's really boring and there's lots of Woody Allen. 

Then Malkovich reunites with his girlfriend, after she has slept with another man for money.  To his credit, he found out about it and went nuts on her.  But  he forgives her.  Then they happen upon a murdered girl and her still-alive baby.  So his crazy girlfriend decides the reasonable thing to do is to steal the baby and raise it as their own.  Yeah!   Clownkovich is skeptical of this, naturally, but because clowns are pushovers he soon is like "Oh, Ok."
Then there are some highly adorable scenes of him and the baby which made my uterus emit something akin to a schoolgirl giggle.

Then I think the movie ended.

So there you have it, Shadows and Fog.

In Tranzit

"Just because you weren't a Nazi doesn't mean you can't be a total asshole"

This movie has a lot going on.  Basically the story is this: a transport of Nazi POWs arrive at a Soviet camp run by women. 

A better summary is the one I pulled from Wikipedia:  "The film tells the story of German prisoners of war who are mistakenly taken to a Russian transit women's prison, which temporarily contains women before they are sent to the Gulag. The prison's wardens are women, who want to take revenge on the German soldiers who killed their loved ones during the war. As time passes, the female wardens overcome their hatred for the prisoners and begin to treat them as ordinary people, including engaging in intimate relationships with them."

So, yeah, that.  Beyond that main premise, there are quite a few subplots which make the film feel all over the place and it was difficult for me to focus on the characters, which means it was difficult to care about them.  Kind of like....imagine "Love Actually" except in a prison camp during the Russian winter.
And no Rowan Atkinson.

The shining star of the entire movie is of course Malkovich, who plays a soviet official named Pavlov, who is kind of a jerk.  But the way he looks in a uniform excuses any bad behavior.  You go on and be as jerky as you want to be, Pavlov.  Just look good doing it.

I actually enjoyed watching the film.  I like things set in that era, and this one is a different take on a certain type of film that has been done so many times.  The location was great, and I really felt like I could get a sense of how cold it must have been.

There are almost no moments of humor to break up the depressing subject matter.  The only one I recall occurs at this fancy ball type thing.  People are dancing.  This one Russian female officer extends her hand to Pavlov, inviting him to dance.  He turns and walks off.  He doesn't even decline, he just leaves while she tries to play that off.

It ended oddly.  It's a sorta happy ending, but with these types of films, it's not entirely upbeat.  Worth watching, mostly due to Malkovich, but a compelling story even without him.

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading was a strange movie.  I liked it, but when it was over, I thought to myself (in an Osbourne Cox voice) "whaat the fuuuck?"
I won't even try to recap it or type a synopsis.  If you've seen it, you've seen it.
These are my thoughts:

1.)  Brad Pitt is really funny in it.  I had never seen a Brad Pitt movie before and didn't realize he could be funny.  He made me LOL, particularly during the phone call scene and the car scene.

2.)  I still hate George Clooney.  Seriously, he is terrible.  He overacts the hell out of his role and I have no idea if he was supposed to overact, or if he just sucks that bad.  I'm going with the latter,  but I am blessedly unfamiliar with Clooney's work.

3.)  Malkovich.  Is.  The. Man.  I love him in this!!  Every scene he is in is epic.  From the opening scene, to the crazy final scene.  He made me laugh.  And no other man could make a bathrobe look sexy.  It just can't be done.

I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch this, but it wasn't the movie's fault.  It's just that I'm tired by the time the house is quiet and still enough for watching a movie to become a reality for me.  I picked up where I left off the following day, and must say I enjoyed it.

Except the ending which kinda sucked.  Did they just decide they had gone as far as they could with this story and should stamp a "shit happens, the end" onto it?
Because that's how it seemed.

Of Mice and Men

It makes sense to me to first share my thoughts on the first JM film I ever saw.  I happened upon Of Mice and Men on tv one night.  I was around 14 years old.  I had never been so moved by a film.  The story is so bleak, really the entire story is just sad.  And it spoke to the loneliness I felt inside.  Both then and often now.  I loved JM's portrayal of Lennie.  I felt for this character.  I felt for George.  I cried at the end. 
Immediately, I got a copy of the book.  Typically I would never see the film first, then read the book, but that is the way it happened.  And John's portrayal of Lennie helped me to visualize the character.  I could "hear" the dialogue.  It made the reading mean so much more to me.  I got a lot out of that book and it is one of my favorites to this day.

Filmography (according to IMDB)

In bold are the ones I have currently seen:
 
The Giacomo Variations (pre-production)
2012 Crossbones (TV series) (pre-production)
???? Cut Bank (pre-production)
2013 Red 2 (post-production)
2013 Educazione siberiana
2013 Warm Bodies
2012 As Linhas de Torres Vedras (TV mini-series)
2012 Lines of Wellington
2011/I Butterflies (short)
 2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2010 Drunkboat
2010 Cubed (TV series)
2010 Secretariat
2010 Red
2010 Jonah Hex
2010 The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer (video)
2008 Afterwards
2008 Disgrace
2008 Burn After Reading
2008 Mutant Chronicles
2008 Changeling
2008 Iи Traиzit
2008 Gardens of the Night
2008 The Great Buck Howard
2007 Beowulf
2006 Eragon
2006/ The Call (short) 
2006 Klimt
2006 Art School Confidential
2005 Color Me Kubrick
2005 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2004 The Libertine
2003 A Talking Picture
2003 Johnny English
2002 Ripley's Game
2002 Hideous Man (short)
2002 Les Misérables (TV mini-series)
2002 Napoléon (TV mini-series)
2001 Hotel
2001 Knockaround Guys
2001 Je rentre à la maison
2001 Les âmes fortes
2000 Ladies Room
2000 Shadow of the Vampire
1999 RKO 281 (TV movie)
1999 The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
1999 Being John Malkovich
1999 Marcel Proust's Time Regained
1998 Rounders
1998 The Man in the Iron Mask
1997 Con Air
1996 Der Unhold
1996 The Portrait of a Lady
1996 Mulholland Falls
1996 Mary Reilly
1995 Beyond the Clouds
1995 The Convent
1993 Heart of Darkness (TV movie)
1993 In the Line of Fire
1993 Alive
1992 Jennifer Eight
1992 Of Mice and Men
1991 Shadows and Fog
1991 The Object of Beauty
1991 Queens Logic
1990 The Sheltering Sky
1988 Dangerous Liaisons
1988 Miles from Home
1987 Santabear's High Flying Adventure (TV short) lol..."Santabear"
1987 Empire of the Sun
1987 The Glass Menagerie
1987 Making Mr. Right
1985 Eleni
1985 Death of a Salesman (TV movie)
1984 The Killing Fields
1984 Places in the Heart
1983 Say Goodnight, Gracie (TV movie)
1981 American Dream (TV series)
– American Dream (1981)
 1981 Word of Honor (TV movie)
1978 A Wedding

Introduction

I first found out about John Malkovich when I was 14 years old and happened upon Of Mice and Men.   I loved his portrayal of Lennie.  I went and read the book and felt that his acting gave me a point of reference for the dialogue,  I could more easily imagine his mannerisms and it brought a lot of depth to the reading.  Usually that doesn't happen when you see the movie before reading the book.

After that,  I discovered Dangerous Liaisons.  Which by all rights probably warped my fragile little teenage mind.  He was so hot in that,  there is no other word to describe him.  

Well, okay,  there are plenty of other words,  but I was a teenager and all I thought was "wow this guy is so hot he even makes 18th century Parisian wardrobe look sexy!"   He possesses this indefinable charm,  t
here is something really...almost intoxicating about his voice.  He is fascinating on screen.  And, I'd imagine on stage, though I've never had the pleasure.

Fast forward more years than I am comfortable discussing...I am now 28 years old and the love and appreciation for JM has never gone.  I recently said goodbye to my Direct Tv and got Netflix and a few of the other streaming movie services (well...the free ones!).   The first actor I looked up was Malkovich.   I was immediately struck by just how many movies he has been a part of.   Some of them I have seen, years ago, some of them I have never seen.   I decided it would be fun to go through the list and try to see every movie he has ever acted in.   I'm making some progress!

Some of them are proving a bit hard to find,  Shadow of the Vampire for example, is not available anywhere unless I purchase it.  So there will be no real rhyme or reason for the order in which I choose these movies.  I'll probably write up what I thought about each one...because I'm sure random people really give a damn about my opinion lol.