Worst Movies I've Ever Seen Pt. I: I Know Who Killed Me

I Know Who Killed Me is, by far, the worst movie I have ever seen.

I Know Who Killed Me. Yes, the one with Lindsay Lohan. The one with Lindsay Lohan on a stripper pole. The one where Lindsay Lohan's career jumped the shark for good.

Everything about I Know Who Killed Me was wrong. The cinematography was horrible, the acting was bad, and the plot made absolutely no sense.

Here is brief plot summary, entirely from my memory:

Aubrey (Lohan) is a well-mannered girl who is kidnapped and found beaten up on the side of the road. YouTube's Lonelygirl15 plays Aubrey's friend, who is worried about her in a dramatic, overly acted way. Aubrey's parents come to get her at the hospital and she claims to be not Aubrey but Dakota, a stripper. We somehow find out that Aubrey and Dakota are actually different people, both played by Lohan. In fact, they are twins who were separated at birth, I think for reasons related to drugs and/or an accidental hospital switch-a-roo. While Aubrey is being tortured by a man with weapons made of ice, Dakota feels Aubrey's pain and loses the same fingers/limbs spontaneously. This is because they are "Stigmatic Twins"--which apparently is a real thing, and I distinctly remember one of the characters looking "Stigmatic Twins" up on the Internet and watching a YouTube video about it, thus proving its veracity. So, while Dakota is pole dancing, her finger falls off. And then she is stalked by a man at a bus stop (this scene was actually genuinely scary). Then at one point she has sex with Aubrey's boyfriend.

The kidnapper/torturer/murderer turns out to be Aubrey's piano teacher. *Spoiler*? We find this out because Dakota follows an owl to the cemetery, to the grave of another murdered girl whose grave has a piano ribbon on it. The house where the piano teacher does the torturing is somehow near the cemetery, and Dakota goes in with the owl to save the day.

And now, here are actual portions of the plot summary from Wikipedia:

"Aubrey and Dakota are twins, born to Virginia Sue Moss, a crack addict. Moss gave birth to them the same time the Flemings had their own child, who died in the incubator. Daniel Fleming quietly raises one as his own daughter, paying Virginia over the years by mail. Dakota finds the envelopes and attempts to find her parents, when she suffers sympathetic resonance from her twin's wounds, and is found by the highway. It turns out they two are stigmatic twins, with a strange mental connection that lets them share pain, communicate, and even share experiences, which explains some of Aubrey's stories."

"After investigating the grave of Aubrey's recently murdered friend, Jennifer Toland, Dakota finds a blue ribbon from a piano competition, with a message from Jennifer's (and Aubrey's) piano teacher; Douglas Norquist (Thomas Tofel). Dakota realizes Norquist, the teacher, murdered Jennifer and abducted Aubrey after they expressed intentions to quit their piano training, taking off their fingers, arm, and a leg in a twisted retribution...Dakota manages to cut off Norquist's hand and stab Norquist in his gut and neck with one of his own blades. She then finds Aubrey where Norquist buried her alive and frees her. The movie ends with the two lying together on the ground, looking out into the night."

Any way you slice it (no pun intended), this movie was insane. What the plot summary fails to convey is, firstly, the strange cinematographic choice to make all of the props in Aubrey's scenes blue, and Dakota's red. You know, as a metaphor. And so you don't get the characters confused.

Secondly, the plot summary could never convey how bad Lohan's acting was in this, and I say this as a huge Lohan fan. I loved her in Mean Girls and The Parent Trap, and I'm rooting for her in her real life. But this was bad: it was a lot of fake tears and that peeved/defensive tone of voice she uses in every interview.

Finally, the combination of PG-13 sex/stripping scenes (no Lohan nudity, folks) and Hostel-esque torture porn was really disturbing. And the torture devices were all made of blue ice, which, again, makes no sense.

In all, I Know Who Killed Me was almost bad enough to circle back around to being hilariously good, but the cinematic experience was so unpleasurable the film failed even at that.

The Brothers Bloom

Last night The Brothers Bloom just may have made it onto a short list of films that I buy and then watch incessantly--for no other reason than the fact that I can't get enough. A few faults aside, The Brothers Bloom was 90 perfect minutes of funny, clever, endearing, and captivating entertainment.

Without appearing to try too hard, director Rian Johnson creates a convincing world for his characters to exist in. And it's the characters that make this film so great. Bloom (Adrienne Brody) and Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) have been con men since they were children, imagining and enacting elaborate crimes that involve not just millions of dollars but sweeping narratives and "thematic arcs." Bloom grows tired of being a fictional character in the narratives Stephen dreams up, and he attempts to elude his brother and lead his own "unwritten life." Stephen, however, convinces Bloom to participate in one last con involving a shut-in millionairess/epileptic photographer/"collector of hobbies" named Penelope (Rachel Weisz). Bloom is charged with sweeping the eccentric Penelope off her feet for the sake of the brothers' plot--and, unsurprisingly, the two develop a real-life romance, slowly, beautifully and hilariously. As the brothers' con progresses, the film's plot grows increasingly confused. The audience and characters becomes trapped in a con within a con, perhaps within another con, and the ending--though heartbreaking--doesn't feel as satisfying as it should.

Adrienne Brody and Mark Ruffalo deliver great performances, but Rachel Weisz steals the show completely. Her character is one quirk after another, but it never feels forced; Weisz delivers every line (and slap-stick motion) perfectly. Her performance is a testament to her talent as well as that of Johnson as a director. Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), the brothers' mysterious, non-English speaking assistant/"muscle"/explosive expert, also provides much of the film's humor.

Coincidentally also on the list of films I can never get enough of are Brick, Johnson's first film, and Rushmore, my favorite film by Wes Anderson, whose influence on The Brothers Bloom (and our culture at large) is clear. The Brothers Bloom is a worthy second film for Johnson, although Brick felt a bit richer and deeper, and certainly darker. Brick is a (darkly) funny thriller, while The Brothers Bloom occasionally doesn't know what it is (romance? action film? whimsical comedy?). And The Brothers Bloom does in some ways resemble, as Slate puts it, an "Andersonian quirkfest." The prologue in particular--which details the Bloom brothers' migratory childhood emphasizing their eccentricities and the carefully constructed eccentricities of the almost fairy-tale world they live in--was distractingly Anderson-esque. The rest of the film, however, overcomes this association, and turns "Andersonian quirks" into a heartfelt, engrossing film for me to buy into, and buy on DVD.

Free the weed

This is the video from my blogging communications class about Ann Arbor's annual Hash Bash. It somehow has 22 views on YouTube, which is funny because I don't remember watching it 22 times and I can't imagine who else would.

The video was a pain in the ass -- but fun! -- to make. The week my group and I were slaving away on this is the same week a guest speaker from NPR told our class that all journalists today are multimedia journalists; you can't just write and interview anymore, you have to do stuff with cameras, radio, web, blogs, etc. etc. etc just to stay relevant. He then told us he was "exhausted" and never got to see his family. bleak...

This video is also the reason everyone at the CIC Spring Staff Retreat thought I was high, because I showed up after Hash Bash tired, smelling like weed and carrying french fries. And when our boss tried to take a group photo for the website, I attempted to lean myself out of the frame and fell down. I still ended up in the photo:

Up

Sitting through the previews for Pixar's Up, I racked my brain for the last animated film I actually enjoyed. I missed out on Wall-e and Ratatouille, didn't care for The Incredibles, hated Night at the Museum (that was animated, right?)...until I finally settled on Finding Nemo, from 2003.

As a result I honestly wasn't expecting to love Up. I had heard mixed reviews, and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I paid for the ticket ($10.25!??) as we sat through what felt like hundreds of farting animal jokes during the "previews."

But after the film's first 15-minutes, which I found to be mildly depressing and centered a bit too much on the realites of growing old (a trait in films that tends to turn me off completely, see: Benjamin Button), I fell in love with Up. It was touching, colorful, absurd, and hilarious in equal measure. The somberness of the prologue allowed the rest of the film to soar (not a pun). It was aesthetically beautiful (even cooler in 3-D I bet), occasionally heart-breaking, and adorable in the way only a Pixar film can be.

In the film, Carl Fredrickson, the elderly protagonist, is forced to leave his beloved home for a retirement village. But on the morning they come to "get him," his house, outfitted by Carl with thousands of helium balloons the night before, takes flight. Along for the ride by accident is young Wilderness Explorer Russell, who provides much of the humor while proving to be (heart-breakingly) desperate for a father figure. From there, I'll abandon the plot summary, because the narrative grows increasingly unbelievable (at one point there are dogs in fighter jets quoting Star Wars) and I'm afraid of using the word "adventure" too many times. Suffice it to say that Dana, in the seat next to me, cried, squirmed and repeatedly shouted at the screen -- in a good way!

The only major flaw I saw in Up is something critics have been pointing out to Pixar for years: where are the females? The only female characters in Up either died within the first twenty minutes (oh, um *spoiler!*) or was a monstrous female bird...named Kevin.

To quote Linda Holmes's open letter to Pixar: "Of the ten movies you've released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men...I want so much for girls to have a movie like Up that is about someone they can dress up as for Halloween...Not a girl who's a side dish, but a girl who's the big draw. And I'd really, really like it not to be a princess." I couldn't have said it better myself. Up though, Pixar, was great.

My love for Steve Martin

"Well I'm gonna to go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything except this [ashtray]. And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair. And I don't need one other thing, except my dog...I don't need my dog."
-Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), The Jerk

The quote above is--obviously--the namesake of this blog, and it come from one of my favorite movies of all time. In The Jerk, Steve Martin plays the exaggeratedly "slow" but kind-hearted Navin R. Johnson, who (though clearly white, and an adult) believes himself to be the natural child of a family of black sharecroppers. One of Martin's first lines--"I was born a poor black child"---sets the ridiculous tone of the film, as Navin moves away from his family to (kinda-sorta) live out his own life. The movie is surreal and over-the-top: think Zoolander, but thirty years ahead of its time.

I have always adored Steve Martin and found him hysterical. There is something about his spastic, non-sensical, stupid-but-wait-was-that-actually-smart? brand of humor that appeals to me. I was raised by a father who punned endlessly, embraced subtle slapstick and occasionally sang and danced around the house with complete disregard for social graces. My father ingrained this silliness in me, while playing The Jerk and Martin's old stand-up and SNL skits on the family TV--until recently, though, I never made the connection between the two. It's an infantile sense of humor, sure, but it can also be intelligent and calculated. Martin's recent book, Born Standing Up (which I would recommend for anyone remotely fond of Steve Marin) explains just how smart, calculated and reflective his humor is.

That is not to say that I've loved (or even seen) every Steve Martin movie. Many of the films he has made since his "peak" in the 1980s have made me smack my forehead in dismay. Shopgirl was painfully slow and lacked wit. Hillary Duff was in Cheaper by the Dozen (enough said). His small role in Baby Mama, however, and this scene in Pink Panther give me hope; and, of course, he is much more than an actor--he is an excellent writer with a surprisingly serious side.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure why I decided to take myself so seriously with this first blog post. Thanks for reading if you did...more random posts to come!