For the Love of Film

It took 5 years for filmmaker David Lynch to shoot and put together his first feature-length film in 1976’s Eraserhead. This is somewhat odd considering the dialouge in the film is extremely sparse and the overall low-budget look of the movie. But Lynch was able to scrounge up enough money from friends to put together the film that quickly became a cultural phenomenon and very early on defined what kind of films he made.

Eraserhead tells the story of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), a quiet man with black, fright-wig style hair. He lives alone in his little apartment and is currently on ‘vacation’. But he gets a call from his old girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart) asking him to join her family for dinner. They have an akward dinner complete with squirting (don’t ask) chicken and Mary’s mother trying to seduce Henry before telling him that Mary is pregnant. So Jack, being the honorable man that he is, agrees to marry her. So they move into his apartment along with the ‘baby’. I use that term very loosely as the thing born is hardly human, is completely grotesque, and never stops making noise. Ever. Mary soon abandons them and Jack is left alone with this thing and suddenly starts seeing things like an ugly woman in the radiator, a man in a planet, and he even seemingly has a fling with an attractive neighbor. But the baby’s presence leads to him have weird dreams that involve his head and pencils. And suddenly Henry can take no more. It’s him or the baby. One walks (or crawls) out alive.

Right off the bat the dinner scene, the scenes with the baby, and Henry’s dream sequence will stand out as some of the most bizarre things you’ll ever see. I can only imagine what audiences in 1976 thought about them. Variety said that the film was a ”sickening bad-taste exercise” while other reviewers and publications felt it was ground-breaking. Because of all of this press it quickly became a hit as a cult midnight-movie in the vein of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Night of the Living Dead. Those are both fairly normal when compared to Eraserhead.

Eraserhead is a film that you can look for deep meaning in but it’s doubtful you’ll find one. It touches on child birth, isolation, and dreams but doesn’t exactly paint a clear picture of Lynch’s particular feelings on any of these things. Variety may have found it to be an excercise in bad-taste but it’s an exercise in surrealism more than anything. There’s only a story in the vaguest sense and the film is primarily comprised of odd imagery. You can’t take your eyes off of it and it’s quite funny at times.

Check out Eraserhead if you don’t want to be bogged down by the silliness of things like ’dialouge’ and if you want to ensure that you won’t be sleeping later that night.

There’s no set barometer for these things, but usually it’s about halfway through a really good movie is when I find myself thinking “I love this film”. Wes Anderson’s latest film, his first PG rated and (stop-motion) animated one, only needed a half hour to get me thinking it. And by the time the credits rolled I felt like I had watched my favorite animated film ever.

Mr. Fox (George Clooney) lives with his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) and awkward son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) in their home underground. He was a thief for a number of years, stealing chickens along with other items from farmers until he swore to Felicity that he would give it up. So he became a columnist. But he isn’t happy living underground so he decides the family, along with Ash’s cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson) who is staying with the family because his father is ill (and who is smart, athletic, good looking - everything that Ash isn’t), should purchase a home in a tree. Fox ignores the warnings of his lawyer Badger (Bill Murray) who tells him that it’s a bad idea to live near the three evil farmers Boggis, Bean, and Bunce. But Fox has a master plan: He has his friend Kylie Opossum (Wallace Wolodarsky) help him steal from all three farmers. But soon enough the famous farmers realize what is going on and set out to put an end to Fox, his family (featuring a mini-feud between Ash and easy going Kristofferson), and his friends once and for all.

What makes Fantastic Mr. Fox so fantastic? The stop-motion animation utilizes a number of puppets while still looking much more slick and realistic then, say, Nightmare Before Christmas. The Fox family in particular look amazing but all of the animal characters look great. The humans are portrayed as odd looking, particularly our three farmers, which fits the ‘wild animals’ theme.

The voiceover talent for the film is second to none. George Clooney is cagey, witty, and sly as Mr. Fox, a character who admits he wants to be loved and appreciated even if it means showing off or doing dumb things. Meryl Streep isn’t given a large number of lines but she brings an emotional core to the film that seperates it from your typical ‘cartoon’. A line she delivers in particular about her marriage is heavy stuff for a light family film.

The rest of the cast is compromised primarily of Anderson regulars: Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, and Willem DaFoe. All do a good job with their roles even though Wilson’s probably could have been cut and not changed the film. Schwartzman shines as Ash who is just different. And he gets jealous easily. But Schwartzman keeps him likeable. Two other Anderson regulars who aren’t actually regular actors provide the voices for Kristofferson and Opossum. Eric Anderson is Wes’s brother and does a good job as the humble Kristofferson and former Simpsons writer and Anderson friend Wally Wolodarsky is hilarious as Opossum.

Based on a novel by the famous children’s author Ronald Dahl, the screenplay by Anderson and Noah Baumbach is filled with great running gags like Opossum’s stare and the use of the word ‘cuss’. And the reaction by Bean to a song by Jarvis Cocker (playing a character named Petey) is classic. The film uses a playground song about Boggis, Bean, and Bunce in a number of different ways and it never grows tiresome as it becomes a mantra of sorts.

In short the soundtrack is catchy (even featuring my favorite Beach Boys song!), the writing is sharp, the voice acting is great, and the story is just incredibly fun. This was just a cussing great movie.

Released in early 2007 Smokin’ Aces was labeled a Quentin Tarantino knockoff and was met with generally negative critical reviews despite grossing a decent amount of money and gaining a bit of a following. A sequel (or prequel) was even released last year directly to DVD although it was met with even more, justifiable, criticism. But what of the original film itself?

Buddy Israel (Jeremy Piven) is about to make a deal with the feds ratting out everybody he’s been involved with in organized crime, specifically longtime mob boss Primo Sparazza. FBI Detectives Richard Messner (Ryan Reynolds) and Donald Carruthers (Ray Liotta) are assigned by Assistant Director Locke (Andy Garcia) to get to Israel and take him into protective custody before he winds up in a body bag for being a snitch. Two former cops join Las Vegas bounty hunter Jack Dupree (Ben Affleck), who was hired by attorney Rip Reed (Jason Bateman), to keep Israel safe and make sure he doesn’t skip bail. But there a whole lot more people who want Israel dead and all sorts of assassians intend to collect the reward for killing Israel as well as ‘taking his heart’. There’s Georgia (Alicia Keys) and Sharice (Taraji P. Henson), with Georgia being more laid back while Sharice is a high-strung femanist who seems to really love Georgia as more than a friend. There’s the Tremor Brothers (Chris Pine, Kevin Durand, Maury Sterling) who are just these heavy metal redneck Neo-Nazi types who are like characters out of The Road Warrior only cranked up about 100 notches. There’s Pasquale “The Plague” Acosta (Nestor Carbonell) who once chewed off his own fingertips completely to escape identification. And lastly there’s Lazlo Soot, a man the other assassians barely know anything about because of his extraordinary talent at disguise. He is specifically hired by Sparazza to take out Israel.

The characters in Smokin’ Aces are painted with broad strokes. Writer and Director Joe Carnahan sets up our characters motivation (either wanting to save or kill Israel) and proceeds to delve into action. The action itself is slick, fast-paced and very, very violent. And as in most shoot ‘em up movies, almost nobody dies from just one bullet. There’s a nice Psycho-like misdirection early on in the film that I enjoyed and leads to the film’s funniest moment where one of the Tremor brothers performs an impromptu ventriloquist act.

Because the characters are fairly one dimensional ‘good’ acting isn’t required. That’s not to say there are bad performances because most are fine/good, but there were a number of characters and scenes that ultimately could have easily have been cut (strange karate kid and grandma, I’m looking at you) and still told the story perfectly well. Liotta and Reynolds are likeable as dedicated agents and Jeremy Piven plays the mentally checked-out asshole (quite a stretch for him) role well. And Alicia Keys certainly doesn’t embarrass herself in her film debut, giving a solid performance and looking absolutely stunning as well.

Smokin’ Aces sets up an interesting story but doesn’t quite deliver on the payoff it seems to have been building to. I feel like Carnahan tried to be too clever for his own good and it likely left more then a few viewers baffled. To me it felt very much like a SAW film type of ending and it felt a bit out of place in this environment.

Smokin’ Aces won’t ever play in an arthouse nor will it be shown in film school as a brilliant character study of original ideas but it’s a fairly fun movie to kick back and watch and think “Well this is completely ridiculous…but kinda cool”.

Any recommendations for me in the Film category would be GREATLY appreciated. I just gained a whole bunch of followers though and that already made my day. I promise Tuesday(s) will be the only day where I’ll bother you with non-review material.

A Scanner Darkly is one of those films where you watch it and your first reaction is “Wait…what?” But afterwards I sat down and thought about it and I realized that I liked it a lot.

A Scanner Darkly tells the story of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) who is an undercover agent for the police/state/government. You see in the future A Scanner Darkly tells we have lost the war on drugs, specifically to the dangerous Substance D. So Arctor lives, undercover, with addicts Ernie (Woody Harrelson) and James Barris (Robert Downey Jr) hoping to find out where the D is coming from and how to shut it down. Also the extremely paranoid/burned out Freck (Rory Cochrane) hangs around just to up the general insanity factor that the trio already has going on. The only problem with this undercover job is that Arctor himself is actually addicted to Substance D. Actually there’s another problem as well: The whole sting operation is completely secretive to the point where agents like Arctor don’t know who other agents are and they don’t know who he is. They wear these suits that are constantly changing and go by code names when speaking to each other, never revealing their true identity. Due to his addiction to Substance D Arctor is finding more and more difficult to carry out his job or even remember that he has one. And then there’s his relationship with fellow addict Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder) which only serves to drive a wedge between Arctor and Barris, the latter of which is revealed to be someone who would sell Arctor or any of his other ‘friends’ up the river in a heartbeat. Arctor’s world and grasp on sanity seem to be slipping with each passing minute, can he finish this job?

Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick (a famous science fiction writer who seemed to live in his own science fiction world), Richard Linklater wrote and directed A Scanner Darkly. In adapting it he kept the basic story structure and the number of twists and turns that I won’t spoil here. These are what confused me initially before I figured it out, partially thanks to the help of wikipedia. At a certain point the final ‘twist’ seems to be a little tacked on but it doesn’t detract from the film or it’s themes.

The film has no shortage of talented actors as Reeves, Harreslon, Downey Jr, Cochrane, and Ryder are all playing interesting, and complex, characters. Harrelson and Cochrane both provide some comic relief in a very dark and strange film while Reeves provides drama and Downey’s character just seems to have something lurking undernearth his exterior. And I’ve <3’d Wynona Ryder ever since I first saw Beetle Juice when I was younger. Oh and insane political activist Alex Jones even has a brief part.

A Scanner Darkly is presented in ‘rotoscope’, a type of realistic animation where-in the film is shot and then each layer is colored or ‘rotoshopped’ over. As reported by the Toronto Star ” Each minute of animation required 350 hours of work with 50 animators working full-time every day”. This basically blows my mind. There are a lot of stories and rumors indicating that Linklater basically left after only a few weeks of production, leaving everything to the overworked animators.

Whether those rumors are true or not the film’s animators and production staff should be proud of their pain-staking work as the film looks great. Treat yourselves to some Substance D fellas.

Wes Anderson is certainly a polarizing figure in filmmaking. His movies are beloved by some (yes, including hipsters) who praise them as witty and engaging and then when the general public watches them there seems to be a backlash of “…That’s it?” That was pretty much my parents after they watched The Royal Tenenbaums. I don’t think they’ve given ol’ Wes another chance. I’m a fan though albeit one who thinks his films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore,The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox) can be hit or miss but I think they’re all worth watching at least once. The Life Aqautic is one of Anderson’s best.

Our titular character, Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), is a 52 year old oceanographer who was once the toast of the nautical entertainment world with his documentaries but now finds his career on the decline. “I know I haven’t been at my best this last decade…” is how Zissou puts it. But after his latest film is met with critical failure and he loses his oldest friend Esteban, Zissou decides to go after the ‘Jaguar Shark’ that ate Esteban and make a great film. He is with his usual crew, with his second in command now being the surprisingly sensitive german Klaus (Willem DaFoe), but Kentucky boy Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) comes along as to help finance and make the film as he and Steve believe they may very well be father and son. Also on the trip is pregnant writer Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) who annoys Steve with her honest assessments but is attracted to Ned. The trip turns out to be something else though as they encounter pirates, and Zissou’s fellow oceanographer (who was once married to Zissou’s wife) Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum). Along the way Steve makes sure cameraman Vikram (Waris Ahluwalia) films everything. Everything. Oh and there is a corporate stooge and stuent interns along for the trip as well. And dolphins. Lousy dolphins.

Anderson directed The Life Aquatic and co-wrote it with fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg). The Life Aquatic succeeds in creating this weird little universe of red caps, speedos, and underwater adventure. The humor is subtle and quotable, but even though only a few lines stand out as actual ‘jokes’ there’s rarely a dull moment in The Life Aquatic.

Anderson wrote the part of Zissou specifically for Murray (who he’d worked with on Rushmore) and it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part. As Zissou puts it he comes off as kind of a showboat and a prick but he’s okay with that, and so are we. His scenes with Wilson are tough not to enjoy as Zissou is obviously a complicated man who can’t bring himself to let Ned call him ‘dad’, opting instead of ‘Stevesy’. He’ll settle for Papa Steve though. But it’s not the same for Ned who longs to be close with his father. Blanchett as ‘cubbie’ wasn’t exactly a well written character but her acting is fine and the character doesn’t bring the movie down. The ending of The Life Aquatic isn’t necessarily happy and makes you wish for something wacky to happen but it makes sense in telling the story and purposely leaves one loose end. The majority of the soundtrack is comprised of a member of Zissou’s crew, Pelé (Seu Jorge), singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese.

If you’re new to Wes Anderson I would suggest you watch Bottle Rocket first and The Darjeeling Limited last. In between, I would suggest The Life Aquatic.

I just love the idea of a person stranded all alone in space.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 may have been my favorite show for the way it made fun of bad movies but I even dug the whole idea of it: A guy alone in outer space with only robots as his companionship. It’s an idea that MST3K creator Joel Hodgson took from the 1972 film Silent Running but that’s been around even longer as 2001: A Space Odyssey plays with this theme as well. Similar to what I said in my review of Wendy and Lucy, Moon is a throwback to these types of simpler movies (Not to say there’s anything simple about 2001) that specialize in strong storytelling over explosions.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an astronaut who has long left his pregnant wife Tess (Dominque McElligott) back on Earth for this mission. He keeps in contact with her but it sporadic at best. Outside of his work to do on the ship there’s very little to actually do. All that he has to keep him company is the computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) and the knowledge that he only has a few weeks left before he can go back to his wife on Earth. That is until he crashes his rover while doing his outside duties. He awakes back inside with GERTY taking care of him and his wounds. But something seems off, and Sam overhears GERTY speaking with Sam’s bosses about not letting him go outside. Sam is eventually able to trick GERTY and manages to slip outside where he goes to the sight of the crash and sees the rover and a body. The body is his. There are two Sam Bell’s now on the ship. But which is the real Sam Bell? Will the real Bell ever get back to his family? And what will be become of the other Bell? THEN WHO WAS BELL!?

Co-written (with Nathan Parker) and directed by Duncan Jones I was surprised to learn that Moon is a British film because it has no real traces of location other than small scenes explaining exposition or summary. But Jones himself is British and the film was in fact shot in London. Oh and Jones is notable for being David Bowie’s son. That’s pretty freaky, Bowie. Isn’t it cold out in space, Bowie?

Moon is carried by the great acting of Sam Rockwell, at least until his clone shows up. Amazingly Rockwell did not play his own clone as stage actor Robin Chalk (who has Moon listed as his only film job) was credited with the role of Sam Bell clone and does just as good a job as Rockwell in his role. Spacey is calm and un-nerving as GERTY who we fear at any second will go into Hal 9000 mode.

Moon was made for a cheap $5 million (cheap in movie terms anyway and not, you know, real life) and far exceeded any other genuine science fiction movies in recent memory. We need more Moons, basically. Get on it, astronomers filmmakers!

A confession: I had honestly never listened to The Wall album before I watched the trippy movie based on it. I was familiar with Pink Floyd and most notably, Another Brick in the Wall (the music video came from the film and scared the living hell out of me at 6 years old), but I hadn’t really taken much notice of them or why they were so popular. I have since bought and listened to The Wall a number of times but with it’s stunning visuals and metaphors it was the film version of The Wall that first blew my mind.

Straight up: there’s no real dialouge in The Wall. There are some spoken lines but the vast majority of the film is told through the linear story-telling music of The Wall. The story is about Pink (Bob Geldof) a burned out rockstar who’s life is a total wreck as he needs various injections just to go out and perform and in his spare time he does things like cut off his eyebrows and trash hotel rooms. His wife left him for another man and he has severe mother issues. We find out about these mother issues early on as the film shows us young Pink growing up without a father (who died in the war) and his overbearing mother will always consider Pink her baby. All of these things add up to why Pink is the way he is now: isolated and aloof in a world and profession that demands he be outgoing and energetic. In his mind being a rockstar is akin to being a ruling dictator as you stand in front of an audience and tell them things they want to hear. There will always be this wall in front of Pink and the rest of the world. Tear down the wall!

Pink Floyd lead songwriter and co-vocalist Roger Waters wrote the film as he did the album and British director Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Evita) directed it. The two men worked closely together on it and even though it didn’t turn out just as they had planned they should both be very proud. Waters for how easily his songs told a story and Parker for the visual aspects of it. I really couldn’t see this idea or concept working on any other album but here it feels almost natural. Bob Geldof is great as Pink who barely utters a few words but has a mysterious and dangerous presence. And when Pink becomes Hitler as it were in leading his ‘Hammer’ party…Man. They could have made a whole movie on that alone.

The film is subject to a lot of debate among both critics of both film and music. Some feel it’s an extended music video and some find the story hard to follow but I disagree with both of these notions. This is a real film and it tells a very interesting story that requires your full attention.

I remember I showed it to a friend who fell asleep about a half hour in after 3 or 4 songs about Pink’s relationship with his parents. And I don’t blame him, he’s a Floyd fan but he’s not a real artsy movie kind of guy. The Wall is more about relatable emotions like feeling lost or alone than anything else.

Hey You. Out there in the cold. Getting lonely getting old. Watch this movie.

I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. It looked great on film and was filled with all sorts of cool little visual tricks. But outside of a general idea I had no idea what in the blue hell was going on. And I hate when that happens because I typically blame myself, but even reading through the plot description on wikipedia confuses me.

The plot for Ink…Well there’s this little girl named Emma and she is ‘taken’ into some other ‘dream’ dimension while her body goes into a coma. Her father John is a former drug addict who has rebuilt his business career after the girl’s mother died. He no longer has contact with his daughter so he refuses to see her in the hospital. Meanwhile in her other dimension there are a bunch of people who are storytellers, drifters, pathfinders, and Incubi. What these are I have no real idea. There’s this really ugly guy who may or may not be Ink who takes Emma and a storyteller named Liev. They are trying to bring Emma out of her coma and back to her father. In the end it turns out the ugly guy, Ink, IS actually John. Another version of John where he killed himself. It’s all a dream/metaphor or something. John and daughter Emma are once again reunited as she wakes up from the coma. Hooray.

Independent filmmaker Jamin Winans wrote and directed the film so I guess he’s who I have to blame for my confusion. I feel like this would have worked as a short film, perhaps 30 minutes top. But at an hour and 45 minutes the actors are forced to do more than the bare minimum and none of them are particularly gifted. I give the guy a lot of credit for producing a movie on tiny budget but the film takes itself too seriously and goes a loooooong, confusing way for such a cliched type ending.

Basically I think Ink was a pretty good idea, but the writing and acting weren’t nearly strong enough to match the imagery.

make For the Love of Film your Tumblr Tuesday pick in the Film Category, well, that’d be just swell.

Also here’s a picture of Steve Buscemi

“I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

With those lines, spit out through clenched teeth while Eastwood’s eyes are squinted towards the fallen criminal, Dirty Harry became a part of not only film history but pop culture history. Eastwood had already tackled and claimed the western genre but now he was the king of a new kind of police drama: Loose cannon cop who gets results, damnit.

Eastwood is Harry Callahan who his peers in the San Francisco Police Department call Dirty Harry due to his willingness to take on any job or case no matter how difficult or messy. Callahan has a new rookie partner (whose ethnicity you can take a wild guess at) named Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni) who he teams up with to try and find the ‘Scorpio’ killer (Andy Robinson) who demands ransoms in exchange for not killing more innocent people. Scorpio is clever not to get caught and continue his crime spree by raping and then burying her alive and demands his ransom be delivered or she’ll die. Harry and Chico (who is shot but not fatally wounded) get to the killer by (illegally) searching his house and so even though they capture him, he gets away free on that technicality. With Chico now off the force Harry soldiers on alone and continues to monitor the Scorpio killer who even hires someone to beat himself up so that he can then claim Callahan did it. Ultimately though Scorpio’s wild side shows up as he takes a busload of school kids hostage with the demand for a jet to take him out of the US. The mayor (John Vernon) is going to pay but Harry instead goes out on his own to take down the killer.

Directed by Don Siegel Dirty Harry was the first of it’s kind a film when it came to law enforcement with lots of shades of grey instead of black and white. The script went through a number of drafts and revisions before ultimately settling on San Francisco where it paralled the real life drama of the Zodiac killer at the time. The film is in many ways a cat and mouse game between Eastwood and Scorpio and so it relies on their acting to carry it. Both men are up for the task as Robinson plays the Scorpio as cunning and devious and Eastwood as dangerous and devoted.

There are three more films in the Dirty Harry film series. How does it all end?

I gots to know.

The Coen Brothers are geniuses. Period. Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, and A Serious Man. All tremendous films in their own right. There’s just something so special and unique about their films that seperates them from anything else in theaters. But of all of their great films, I think 1998’s The Big Lebowski is my favorite.

Jeff Bridges is Jeffrey Lebowski aka The Dude or His Dudeness or Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing. As The Stranger (Sam Elliot) tells us, The Dude is perhaps the laziest man in Los Angeles county. The Dude enjoys bowling with friends Walter (John Goodman) and Donnie (Steve Buscemi) and smoking joints and that’s about it. But he’s happy. That is, until two guys come into his house and beat him up demanding money from him to get his wife back. And one of them, the chinaman, even pees on Dude’s rug. Well that aggression will not stand (the rug really tied the room together) as Walter convinces Dude to go to the real Jeffrey Lebowski that the men were looking for and demand a new rug. The Big Lebowski verbally tears down The Dude but comes begging for him when his trophy whore wife Bunny (Tara Reid) is kidnapped. The Dude suddenly finds himself a lot more active as he is offered a reward to get her back but in typical Dude fashion things get complicated as the kidnapping has a lot of missing details. Run in’s with 15 year old Larry Sellers, porn king Jackie Treehorn, Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore as the elder Lebowski’s daughter), and a bunch of nihilists. Oh and a facist police officer. And that’s not even their biggest concerns: they have a semifinal tournament matchup coming up against pederast Jesus Quintana (John Turturro).

Written and directed by the Coens, The Big Lebowski may be the funniest movie ever. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man. It is just so insane and odd and the performances are so straight that it’s a perfect storm of hilarity. Almost everyline out of Bridges’ mouth is hilarious in it’s own way but his tendency to pick up words he hears and use them later in conversations is particularly inspired. John Goodman steals the show though as former ‘Nam vet Walter who is just an angry, angry man. And he doesn’t mean to be as he just wants to bowl, for Donnie to be quiet, to observe Shabbos, and for everybody to follow the rules. The conversations between the three friends are among the best of the film as The Dude tries to talk about all of this stuff that’s suddenly thrust on him, Walter will bring everything back to bowling, and Donnie is just out of his element. Turturro knocks his small part out of the park as the creepy Jesus who served time in Chino for exposing himself to an 8 year old and the nihilists include Peter Stormare and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And those nihilists stand for nothing, man.

There’s only one thing that bothers our narrator The Stranger: Does The Dude have to use so many cuss words?

Fuckin’ A.