Category Archives: Movies
In which Liz tells Frank about klassic kinema.
Liz Tells Frank “Sucker Punch” LIVE: Coming Soon!
Dear Frank,
Where are you gonna be Friday, November 14th? Same place I’m gonna be — in a world of pain.
It’s happening. It’s in North Hollywood. It’s open to the public. It’s Sucker Punch, easily one of the dumbest movies ever, and thus ripe for the Liz Tells Frank Live treatment.
Info available here on Eventbrite or on Facebook. Made possible by the wonderful gentlemen of Nrdfit.
Like the Sucker Punch trailer promises, Frank — you will not be prepared.
Love,
Liz
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Snowpiercer”
Dear Frank,
I have missed you! I have missed this humble blog! And I have also missed watching movies that just cry out for your attention! But I can address these issues to some degree this evening! It’s all thanks to Snowpiercer.
This movie is the best sort of bonkers, Frank. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, a Korean director who also made the really delightful The Host (starring Doona Bae from Cloud Atlas!), it’s pretty easy to distill to its core plotline: It’s the apocalypse and every human still alive now lives on a train.
However, Snowpiecer is also so much more than that. What happens in it? Oh, so much stuff. SO MUCH STUFF. I really don’t want to spoil it for you. But there are a few things YOU NEED TO KNOW. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “After Earth”
Dear Frank,
As I write this, let me tell you — I’m not feeling great. Some sort of head/chest congestion thing. It’s way better today than it was on Sunday, thanks to the joys of modern medicine, but it also means that I write this now after having just taken my second dose of DayQuil of the day, and I’m gonna tell you, I feel a little bit loopy.
Which is probably the best possible place from which to approach After Earth.
Yes, Frank, technically I know what I’m getting into. I know this movie is not good. But I need to know JUST HOW BAD.
Because here’s the thing — the question I pose today isn’t “is After Earth a terrible film?” but rather “is After Earth WORSE than Battlefield Earth?” It’s time for the Scientology Metaphor Movie Showdown! Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah”
Dear Frank,
Monday night, about ten minutes before a screening of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, I made the following joke on Twitter:
Do you think I’ll have a hard time understanding “Noah” if I don’t read the book first? (I remember hearing it was based on some book…)
Not exactly groundbreaking, as jokes go. But it happened to be couched in some amount of truth. I would probably consider myself a spiritual person, but that spirituality owes absolutely nothing to the Good Book and any knowledge of the material within is due largely to pop culture’s appropriation of it. Like, I know what Gethsemane is, but only because there’s an X-Files episode called that, you know?
(DAMN IT I almost made it a full 24 hours without referencing The X-Files in some context. Frank, I was doing SO GOOD.)
Point is, I know the basics of the Noah story — God decides to punish Man with flood, one guy builds a really big boat to save the creatures that can’t swim to survive it — and went into Aronofsky’s interpretation assuming that the rest of what happened in the film would be drawn from the original text.
But the next day, when I was talking with people online about what I’d seen, I was surprised to learn that NOPE. Not only is the original text, in one person’s words, “really bare bones” but Aronofsky took some, um, liberties with the source material. And Aronofsky’s version? BONKERS. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In TNT’s “The Librarian”
Dear Frank,
The other day, as I looked through my media collection, I was reminded of how many kinda stupid things I kinda totally love. Like, the 2002 Jennifer Lopez movie Enough, where Billy Campbell beats the shit out of Jennifer Lopez until she says ENOUGH! It’s through-and-through Lifetime crap, but I have seen it at least a half dozen times, the guilt tearing at me inside.
There’s so much other stuff I haven’t seen, Frank! And good stuff, too! The Internet won’t stop yelling about True Detective, but I’m rewatching a movie that contains lines of dialogue like “You have a divine animal right to protect your life and the life of your offspring.” STOP ME, FRANK. HELP ME SAY ENOUGH WITH ENOUGH.
I bring up stupid things I love apologetically to provide a contrast to stupid things I love unapologetically. Like, for example, the TNT original film series The Librarian: [Let’s Go Looking For Insert Precious Relic Here], which (it was recently announced) will soon become fodder for an upcoming TV show! Holy shit, Frank! Is it fucking CHRISTMAS? Read the rest of this entry
John Tells Liz What Happened In “Endless Love”
Dear Frank,
Look who’s back! That’s right, our dear friend John Ross is back to continue his anthropological survey of what teenage girls seem to be into these days. His dedication to science is a blessing to us all.
Love,
Liz
Dear Liz,
Scott Spencer, the author of the novel Endless Love, really, really regrets selling the movie rights to his book. In this devastating op-ed in The Paris Review, he equates viewing Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 movie adaptation to being stabbed in the heart, and predicts that the 2014 remake will be a “Valentine’s Day massacre.”
My reaction to the new remake was somewhat similar in that it also involved stabbing. That is, during the film, I wanted to stab myself in the eyes and ears, and when it was over, I wanted to go to a crowded place and see how many people I could stab before the police shot me. That might maybe cancel out the experience of watching the new Endless Love remake.
Spencer himself describes the book as an “unhinged novel about the glorious destructive violence of erotic obsession,” and from what I’ve read of it, that sounds about right. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In... 