Hump Fest

Before reading any further, I must bring to your attention a warning that I posted when I started Feelms. I will be posting about movies that touch on a very broad range of subjects, many of which will offend a lot of people. If you are concerned about being offended, now is your chance to go to your favorites menu option and surf away from the land of weirdness that makes up the following post.

Still with me? Pervert! (and that includes you Princess Snow Pea!)

Hump Fest 5, was an incredibly fun, although sometimes disturbing, collection of short amateur porn films. The premise is that some very rough guidelines are put out there like max length of film (5 mins) and some bonus points were awarded if the film makers used particular props or shot at specified locales. Some of the props this time included Mormon underwear, a pink slip and some local food called Applets and Cutlets. The locales were located in both Seattle and Portland as the Rose City was invited to submit their own contributions as well. After watching all of the entries that made the final cut, all of the viewing audience was asked to vote on the sexiest and the funniest.

The films started off on a hilarious note as three naked people (two ladies and one guy) performed a very nicely choreographed dance to a Beyonce tune. The guy had a great attitude and had the crowd howling! I was wondering before the show, just how porn the films would be. The first one wasn’t that hardcore, more just funny naked dancing people. Film two pretty much let you know this was a hardcore porn film festival as a young guy from Portland was documented doing his Johnny Appleseed imitation, only it wasn’t Apple seed he was leaving everywhere as he tried to pleasure himself as many times as possible in a 24 hour period.

From there it was just a hilarious, sexy, disturbing romp through just about every variation of sex acts you could imagine. Some of the highlights for me were the Larry King interview, Saran Wrap 50s spot, Beyond Gay and the Opening Dance film.

This just in! The voting results have been published and all four of the films I mentioned before made it into the awards. Funniest – 1st: Beyond Gay, 2nd: How to Please Your Man (the Larry King interview), 3rd: Dance Belt     Sexiest – 1st: The Modern Housewife (Saran Wrap), 2nd: Cyclust, 3rd: Trolley Tryst.

Like I said when I started Feelms. There may be things I enjoy watching that I wouldn’t be able to recommend to many people and Hump Fest certainly fits that category very well.

Bill

The Dinner Game – Le diner de cons (1998)

The Dinner Game is a delightful lighthearted French comedy, that still manages to pack some social commentary punch.

Pierre Brochant and a group of his affluent friends host a weeky dinner party where each of them try to one up each other and bring the biggest idiot. Pierre thinks he has a winner in Francois Pignon and invites Francois to his house before the dinner party to get to know him. Between the invitation and the dinner party. Pierre hurts his back and decides he can’t go to the party this week, but can’t get to Francois in time to stop him from coming over. When Francois shows up at his house and tries to ‘help’ him, the hilarity ensues.

Francois is a lovable loser, who turns out to have some incredibly insightful views on life and love. His claim to fame is his matchstick replicas of great feats in architecture like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower. Pierre’s day starts off with him thinking he has the winning idiot and then the days goes downhill from there, to the point he realizes he is the idiot, not Francois.

Francois’ performance reminds me of one of Peter Seller’s great roles in The Party, where despite their good intentions, everything they touch turns out wrong.

Enjoy

Bill

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari – 1920

Want to know what a Tim Burton movie would have looked like had he made a silent movie filmed in 1920 in Germany? Give the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a whirl. This movie defines creepy and you can see so much of its influence on Burton’s work, in particular all of the scenes from hell in Beetlejuice.

The movie centers around a mental patients telling of a story of Dr. Caligari and his sideshow freak Somnambulist (sleep walker) and the rash of murders that seem to accompany them every where they go. The movie plays on your perceptions of reality and is a visual eye candy feast for its imagery. One repeating scene that I like is the way the people in the government agency that Caligari keeps visiting sit all stooped over in their weird, incredibly uncomfortable stools.

I have a fondness for movies that provide a visual stunning experience and I frequently use them as “background visual noise” when I have a social gathering. This movie would fit the bill just fine.

Enjoy

Bill

Team America

From the makers of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone comes the incredibly inappropriate and even more incredibly funny, Team America. It is hard for me to type Team America and not want to complete the chorus from the theme song with a F**k Yeah!

This movie makes fun of everything and everyone. Every time I watch it I find something else to laugh at. For any parents considering letting your children watch, “The Puppet Show”, you have been warned, this is an adult movie, in fact it should be rated X even though it is a puppet show.

This movie takes aim squarely at the Bush years of America and hits it square between the eyes. Yea were fighting terrorists at any cost dammit! It will be interesting to see what Parker and Stone come up for their parody of Obama.

Enjoy

Bill

Shallow Grave

I found it interesting that the next movie I was to review on my five e feelm list was Shallow Grave, the cinematic directorial debut of Mr. Danny Boyle, whose most recent effort, Slumdog Millionaire just ran off will all of the Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Most people will label Boyle as the Trainspotting guy and rightly so, but I have enjoyed some of his lesser known works like Millions and Shallow Grave.

In Shallow Grave, three friends and roommates must decide on a course of action when a new fourth roommate turns up dead and to complicate matters, leaves a suitcase full of money behind.

The movie is dark, gruesome, hilarious and thought-provoking. A younger Ewan McGregor stars, but I think the best performance is put in by Christopher Eccelston who appears to be the sane one at the beginning of the dilemma, but comes unhinged the quickest. His scenes from the attic as he frantically drills holes in the attic floor to keep tabs on the other two roomates are priceless.

How well do you know your friends?

Enjoy

Bill

Sexy Beast – 2000

Ben Kingsley  is an actor I have utmost respect for. He can play a myriad of roles and always manages to transform himself in a brilliant performance. Unfortunately for me, even though he was acting brilliantly, my eyes kept prompting me to ask, “Why is Gandhi in this movie?” Kingsley’s performance as Gandhi defined him for me for many roles to come. It wasn’t until his role as Don Logan in 2000, that I was finally able to break the stranglehold Gandhi had on my definition of Kingsley and it was my ears this time that broke the paradigm as I was then prompted to ask, “Why is Gandhi uttering the F-word every other word?”

Beyond a swearing Gandhi, Sexy Beast has a great story and incredible style. The imagery is amazing. I swear I can feel the sun on me as the main character, Gary “Gal” Dove is laying out burning in the Spanish sun at his villa by the pool. What interrupts his baking in the sun is visually stunning in a great opening scene. Gal is a retired gangster who Logan comes to harass out of retirement.

I really like this little known jewel of a movie and find that as long as people can get by the aural assault, it is a movie that most people really enjoy.

Enjoy

Bill

Secretary – 2002

In an opening scene that pretty much guarantees you won’t be sitting down and watching this movie with the inlaws, Secretary sets the stage for a sensual cinematic joy ride. Lee Halloway, played brilliantly by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is scantily clad in sexy lingerie her hands shackled to a bar that runs behind her neck, performing a normally routine admin task of stapling a document together, but due to her rather abnormal predicament she is using her nose to operate the stapler. And thus, the journey begins or more appropriately ends as the movie then takes you back in time to catch you up on how Lee ended up in this rather unique secretarial position.

Lee is a recently discharged mental patient that finds a job working for Mr. Grey played by James Spader. It was a role that the creepy  Spader was born to play. I put this role right up there with his role as Lee Woods in Two Days in the Valley, where he..ahem..entertains another hottie, Charlize Theron. Mr. Grey and Lee struggle at first to figure out how to work together, but then Mr. Grey figures out that Ms. Halloway likes to be corrected when she makes mistakes. I mean LIKES to be corrected. From there it is a funny, sexual, creepy look at a very strange working relationship.

Enjoy

Bill

Lola rennt – 1998

Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) is yet another movie that dicks with your mind regarding time and what version of reality is the real one. Instead of intertwining different realities, Lola rennt uses the approach of taking you completely through one scenario, then starts you over with one changed variable and then you see where that reality goes and the movie concludes with the 3rd version of reality.

Franka Potente, who made her splash in American cinema as Matt Damon’s co-star in the Bourne Identity, stars as the punked out, on the edge Lola who is running against time to try and help stop her boyfriend Mani from robbing a supermarket and ruining his life.

The movie is non stop action, fast paced and the director, Tom Tykwer keeps you right in the middle of the action. Tykwer also does some imaginative animation sequences as well. Don’t rent this movie if you are looking for a movie to sit down and relax with your sweetie. This one takes you on a wild ride!

Bill

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Joins Feeeeelm Collection

Just watched another IMDB top 250 of all time gem, Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das. A German silent film released in 1920 starring Werner Krauss, the movie takes you on a Tim Burton-esque journey into mental illness. If you remember the scene from Beetlejuice when Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin were walking through hell, you have a glimpse of what all of the sets were like in this movie. Incredibly creepy and way ahead of its time.

This is a movie I will have to buy to have in my library and was an easy addition to my list of films that garner the five e Feeeeelm rating!

Bill

Reservoir Dogs

Only Tarantino could tell a simple “Who is the Rat?” movie with such eloquence. A jewelery heist is foiled when the cops show up at just the right time and when the surviving perps return to their rendezvous point all hell breaks loose as they try and figure out who the rat is.

Like all Tarantino movies, dialogue and violence carry the film. It was as if Tarantino read my thoughts on tipping when he put pen to paper to write the classic scene as all of the criminals settle the bill in a coffee shop. Another trademark for Tarantino movies is a great cast. This one is no exception with Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen and Tim Roth. Madsen in particular puts in a great effort playing an incredibly sadistic torturer, who captures a cop and does a dance of the macabre to the sound of Stuck in the Middle with You.

Violent, edgy, great soundtrack, great dialogue, the first Tarantino classic.

Enjoy

Bill