The weather was shitty. The husband was out of town. The mind, body and soul were weary. Yes, the conditions were primed for a movie weekend. It turned out to be a cinematic trinity of violence, foul language, and sex.
[Violence]: First, Inglorious Basterds. Wow. Quentin Tarantino has proclaimed this as his masterpiece, and while I don’t have the requisite film chops to confirm or deny his pronouncement, I will say that Inglorious Basterds is, by far, the most entertaining, ambitious, and gripping Tarantino flick I’ve seen (and I’ve seen all except Death Proof). The audacious plot involves multiple Hilter assassination plans, but the plot is secondary to the tense, often violent action as it unfolds. I loved it. Tarantino’s bally-hooed narcissism and bravado aside, he has made a clever, exciting, kickass movie that I want to see again and again.
[Foul language]: Idiocracy is a 2006 movie by Mike Judge that received little attention when it was originally released in a limited run (perhaps due to the foul language? perhaps due to the depiction of Fox News in the future?) but is growing into a cult classic with enough buzz that I finally Netflixed it. This is quintessential Mike Judge satire: It has all the pretenses of being dumber than Beavis and Butthead, but it’s actually quite subversive.
An Army hibernation experiment goes bad, and Joe and Maya, two average people, wake up in 2505 to find that they’re the smartest people on Earth due to the high birth rate of dumb people. The Earth is a dysfunctional, dystopian pop wasteland where the President is a former pro-wrestler, cabinet posts are won in contests, Starbucks is a sex shop, and the corporate motto for Carl’s Jr is “Fuck You, I’m Eating.” Everyone is a slack-jawed idiot who talks in foul slang, shuffles around Costco like a zombie, and responds only to the prospect of money, violence, sex, and fart jokes. Idiocracy is so ridiculous, so crude, so stupid that any elitist with a sense of humor will be tickled, because it seems so true.
[Sex] Betty Blue: The Director’s Cut reminded me of one of my cinematic mantras: Always, always check the running time! Especially if the title of the movie is appended by the words “The Director’s Cut.” This French movie was originally released under the title 37.2 le Matin in 1986 with a running time of 120 minutes, but the re-released Director’s Cut clocks in at a whooping 182 minutes. That’s an extra hour of watching Betty, an absolutely gorgeous French girl, descend into madness as her boyfriend Zorg smokes cigarettes, drinks shots of tequila, deals with writers block, and cops feels and kisses from Betty.
The opening scene is pure soft-core porn, as Zorg and Betty engage in stark, passionate sex that sets the stage for the ensuing 3 hours (although this scene is never trumped erotically). Zorg falls hard for Betty, who can be a sweetheart one minute and an abusive hellcat the next. Zorg and Betty drift to Paris, and then to a small French town, where Betty’s mental illness manifests in earnest. Betty Blue becomes darker, and sadder, and scarier. When the 3-hour long epic of sex, nudity, hedonism, and moods swings came to a close, I was exhausted. Such a tragic paradox: truly, the hottest girls are always the craziest.
