Intended to amuse younger viewers and send older ones to Urban Dictionary, Douchebag‘s title is, unfortunately, its most noteworthy aspect. Clocking in at an official 81 minutes that, in reality, proves to be barely 70, director Drake Doremus’s debut is an indie in a standard mumblecore-style mold, its shaky handheld DV camera trained on two everyman twentysomething brothers and their unexceptional road trip of personal discovery.
Archive for September, 2010
The One Movie You Should See This Week (9/30/10)
Published September 30, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: andrew osborne, Chloe Moretz, Let Me In, scott von doviak, The Social Network
by Scott Von Doviak & Andrew Osborne
SCOTT: I caught the premiere of this latest American remake of a foreign horror movie last week at Fantastic Fest in Austin, so I’m in a good position to tell you what you probably suspected already: if you’re not allergic to subtitles and you’ve already seen the 2008 Swedish version of Let the Right One In, you don’t need to bother with this one. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with writer-director Matt Reeves‘ take on the material, exactly; it’s just that there’s nothing substantially different about it. Reeves gets good performances from his young leads, Kodi Smit-McPhee (as the lonely boy who befriends a vampire) and Chloe Moretz (continuing her Kick-Ass killing spree), and he effectively recreates the low-key melancholy tone of the original. But it’s still just a really crisp Xerox copy.
by Scott Von Doviak and the AV Club Staff
Yoshihiro Nakamura may be virtually unknown outside of Japan, but he’s developing a sterling reputation at Fantastic Fest. The director of the 2009 fan favorite Fish Story, Nakamura returned this year with Golden Slumber, an anti-Hitchcockian “wrong man” story. Here, our patsy is a deliveryman now two years removed from the 15 minutes of fame he enjoyed after rescuing a pop star from a burglar. He thinks he’s meeting an old friend for a weekend of fishing; instead he’s being framed for the murder of the prime minister.
by Leonard Pierce & the A.V. Club Staff
1. The Social Network (2010)
Movies have always had trouble conveying the drama, suspense, and excitement of the online universe, because there’s nothing less compelling than people clicking away on their keyboards, or virtual figures interacting in cyberspace à la Disclosure. But the trailer for David Fincher’s Facebook movie The Social Network—set to an eerie cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” performed by an all-girl Belgian choir—gets across the site’s extraordinary breadth in a rush of familiar images (photos, status updates, the “Add As Friend” button, et al.).
by Scott Von Doviak and the AV Club Staff
The first day of any film festival ought to act as a bellwether, and if Fantastic Fest 2010’s initial 24 hours are any indication, we’re in for seven days of genre curveballs, amiably circumvented programming glitches, and Tim League removing his pants. While all that continues to happen, The A.V. Club will be there, allowing our notebooks to be stained by pizza sauce and fake blood. Here’s the first of several Fantastic Fest dispatches to come:
A portrait of the prick as a very young man, The Social Network uploads a fictionalized account of the birth of Facebook and the monumental success it reaped for noxious billionaire co-creator Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). David Fincher’s film is, of course, concerned with the already-clichéd topic of “how we live now,” yet unlike a fraudulent poseur like Catfish, it occupies itself less with underlined questions about “the online experience” than with the relationship between the site and its forefather, a Great Gatsby-lite Harvard undergrad driven by a need for acceptance from the school’s elite, an ego consumed with Big Idea aspirations, and a nagging need to compensate for his personality failings through unbridled ambition.
Fantastic Fest: Must See Films Unleashed!
Published September 24, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Commentby Scott Von Doviak & The A.V. Club Staff
It’s what some describe as “the most wonderful time of the year”—an all-too-quick season of brutal violence, heart-pounding terror, edge-of-your-seat action, and “should I be laughing at this?” comedy. Yes, another Fantastic Fest opens at the Alamo Drafthouse today, and as is The A.V. Club’s ridiculous wont, we’re dispatching five writers to South Lamar to soak it all in—or soak in it, as would be the case with the fest’s gorier offerings. The following are the films we’re most excited to see—if only to one day be able to tell friends, “Yeah, I saw that movie before it was an Internet meme.”
The One Movie You Should See This Week (10/23/10)
Published September 23, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: andrew osborne, scott von doviak, shia labeouf, Wall Street, Woody Allen
by Andrew Osborne & Scott Von Doviak
ANDREW: Okay, pros and cons time. Pro: a film about greed being good for the weasels of Wall Street is even more timely now than when Oliver Stone wrote and directed the first Gekkopalooza back in the go-go ’80s. Pro: Michael Douglas‘ recent brush with mortality is making his late-career screen presence ever more compelling. Pro: no movie with Austin Pendleton in the cast can ever be totally bad. But the flipside of that truism is also the film’s biggest con: no movie with Shia LaBeouf in the cast can ever be totally good. Why, Hollywood? Why all the LaBeouf? Does he have incriminating blackmail photos of you or something? Why?
