Monday, June 01, 2009

FILLMORE DISCOS 27

The Girlfriend Experience (***)
as an experience, Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience is ultimately as fake and superficial as would be a date with an expensive escort girl, and I suspect that its glossy contemporary exterior is going to date pretty fast - despite that, it has much to admire: she, Sasha Grey, is impressively laconic and charismatic throughout in the lead role and only falls somewhat short in the two scenes in the film where some real emotion needed to be displayed - and the vagueness in plot development and timelines giving it its distancing effect was refreshing; dare I say, however, that there just wasn't nearly enough sex?!

Obsessed (*)
poorly executed, laughably miscast, hopelessly generic garbage

Mum & Dad (*)
staggeringly amateurish even by the UK's anthologically woeful standards - my words cannot even begin to communicate how atrocious this drivel is (in truth, 'Lottery-funded' and 'BBC' should be warning enough)

Vinyan (*)
Vinyan is a directorial disaster terrifying only in how catastrophically it implodes before your very (tired) eyes - it's a mess that simply should never have been released in its current form

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (**)
while it has all the right heartwarming Spinal Tap moments and caricatures, at its heart Anvil is a fraudulent piece of work - a manipulative piece of PR for what is - and this is painstakingly left unsaid throughout its 90 minutes - an eternally dreadful heavy metal band

State Of Play (*)
a tedious and contrived political thriller

4 comments:

! said...

Also saw 'Anvil' in the theater here recently. Although I'll agree it was a manipulative p.r. ploy on their behalf, I'll have to say it did little to make me appreciate them as being anything more than that novelty band that re-imagined the vibrator as an instrument.

The tour scenes from Prague hit a little close to home as well. Brought back bad memories of encounters with arrogant 3rd-tier American artists who felt that their mere presence in a former Eastern Bloc country should be met with blanket approval, and thus they should feel free to disregard all local customs regarding language, decorum, and (in Anvil's example) showing up for their fucking shows on time.

Guess I should have seen 'Girlfriend Experience' instead, although the promo poster suggested that I see it "with someone you **** [asterisks theirs]" and there was no one in our little group that fit that particular bill

William Bennett said...

I'm glad you mentioned the scene in Prague, Thomas - very true what you say; added to that is the smug note at the end of the film that they took the guy to court to win a 100 measly euros

The Shivering Manatee said...

I thought the girl who played the Eastern European "victim" in Mum and Dad was fantastic. Can't say the same about anyone else.

mat.desma9 said...

Is anyone else bored of the inevitability of Sasha Gray's ascent to hipster icon? So far all I have seen from her is that she can read into a microphone, stare blankly into space and take multiple insertions at once. Is that really a criteria for credibility and success?