Mark S.
Allen, again
Hey whore,
how's the whoring?
Enemy at the
Gates is "a
poignant and suspenseful war epic that is masterfully directed."
(by the way,
Enemy's two-page ad in the New York Times is a virtual
who's who of quote whores)
See Spot Run is "The best family film
of the season!"
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Graham Greene - The
Captain and the Enemy
The Go-Betweens - The
Friends of Rachel Worth
The
Wild One Aside from
The Godfather, Marlon Brando is pretty overrated. He chewed up
a lot of scenery when he was young in order to get as fat as
he did. Why anybody says that A Streetcar Named Desire is anything
more than a bunch of actors screeching at each other is beyond
me. The Wild One is one possible exception, though. It ain't
a masterpiece, but Brando is pretty tough, and watching him strut
around, even with that stupid hat on, is amusing enough.
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©2001 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Enemy at the Gates
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Filthy says:
"There's about an hour and a half of good movie hidden in
here." |
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I always figured that when those pig-fuckers in Hollywood
finally get around to making a movie about my life, they would
want to concentrate on the interesting stuff and leave out the
boring shit. Nobody wants to watch me jerking off to Confessions
of Coed Hookers on Cinemax after Mrs. Filthy goes to bed.
But maybe they'd be interested in seeing that one time when I
threw rocks at those stupid neighbor kids who were trying to
knock a robin's nest out of a tree. Give the audience the heroics
and then get the fuck out. Quit hanging around just to use up
film.
But I guess they're brains have all gone to shit from all
the blow-jobs they get from skanky teenagers who they've promised
to make into stars. As Enemy at the Gates proves, they're
just interested in taking what could be an exciting, tense story
and padding it with more fluff than my fifteen year-old niece's
bra that night she went on a date with that oily kid in the Trans
Am.
Enemy at the Gates tells the story of the Commies resisting
the Krauts in Stalingrad, a turning point in Hitler's conquering
of Europe. The Soviets are getting their Marxist asses whipped
by the Nazis, and can't seem to get their pussy soldiers to happily
sacrifice themselves for the good of the cause. The ruthless
commie officers (remember, commies are bad, nobody's saying commies
are heroes) have to shoot their own soldiers, because they're
running away from the Germans. The Soviet's morale is falling
faster than Meg Ryan's tits.
In steps Jude Law as Vassili Zeitsev, a peasant from the Urals
who happens to be an expert at shooting wolves, a skill which
he uses to put holes in the heads of German officers. In one
of the movie's better scenes, he saves his own ass and Joseph
Fienne's as well. Too bad Law didn't know how annoying Fiennes
was going to be for the rest of the movie, because he could have
saved everybody a lot of grief by popping one into his skull
right then, too.
Fiennes is Danilov, a propaganda officer looking for somebody
to make into a hero, and Law fits the bill perfectly. He's modest,
tough, and soaks the panties of any woman who prefers men to
cucumbers. Fiennes writes up Law's exploits, and he becomes a
national treasure.
In between picking off Krauts and answering fan mail, Fiennes
and Law both fall in love with Tania (Rachel Weisz, who it turns
out, has a great ass, although you hardly get to see it).
The Germans send their own sharpshooter, Major Konig (Ed Harris),
to take care of Law and buck up the Nazis so they can finish
off those pesky Soviets. Harris and Law then proceed to stare
intently at each other through rifle scopes for hours on end,
occasionally shooting, just to see if they can shock the people
in the movie theater so bad that they piss their pants.
The movie looks fan-fucking-tastic The producers spent a ton
of dough on recreating a half-destroyed Stalingrad. Red Square
is muddy and filled with dead bodies. The bombed-out tractor
factory where Harris and Law do most of their crouching and intent
staring is more pock-marked than that oily Trans-Am kid's face.
Unfortunately, the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, is so impressed
with his creation that he wants everybody to hang around for
about an hour longer than they have to, just to show off his
set.
Instead of letting Harris and Law get it over with, he throws
in a ton of unnecessary crap, like the "love-triangle"
between Law, Fiennes and Weisz. The director needed something
to do in between the scenes where Harris and Law try to outfox
each other, so he invented this completely unbelievable subplot.
Jesus Hotpants Christ, how fucking long would it take any right-minded
girl to choose between Law, who is so hot that I practically
want to fuck him, and the artist formerly known as Joseph Fiennes?
He spends half the movie rubbing his chin and staring off into
space, like he's thinking about how much happier he'd be in an
episode of Masterpiece Theater.
The World War II subtext is handled with all the delicacy
of my retarded cousin Larry playing with the (now dead) rabbit
at the home. You mean Jewish people didn't like the Nazis? And
Stalin wasn't Mr. Rogers crossed with a big bowl of marshmallows?
No fucking shit, Jean-Jacques. We already know this, and we don't
need you wasting forty minutes of our lives telling us. It's
like the studio told him he could make the movie, but only if
it was painfully obvious that everybody except Americans and
a handful of Soviets with posh British accents are bloodthirsty
assholes.
For no apparent reason, other than a ham-fisted plot device
to show us just how terrible the Germans are, Law and Fiennes
hang around with the most wholesome and mind-bendingly boring
family in all of Stalingrad. The little boy, who looked like
he got lost on his way home from playing Oliver Twist in his
school play, only exists so he can be killed. We're supposed
to be furious at the barbaric Germans, but not having to look
at his big eyes and wait for him to hold out a bowl and say,
"Sir, more porridge please" was more a relief than
anything else.
The scenes where Harris and Law hunt each other are pretty
riveting for a while, but in the end they're like an old hooker
- the first time it's tight and exciting, but after about the
billionth, it's just sloppy and sad, and you can't wait to get
it over with. You stop rooting for the good guy and just wish
somebody would get his head blown off already so you can go home.
One thing I will say, though, is that if there's one thing
the frogs do well it's sex scenes, and Annaud tosses in a great
one, just so he won't lose his French Director's card. When Weisz
reaches her grubby hand into Law's pants, and they frantically
hump amongst the sleeping Russian soldiers, I practically creamed
my shorts right there. If I had only known that the next ten
minutes of the movie were going to be so dull, I could have locked
myself in the bathroom stall to finish the job.
Two Fingers for Enemy at the Gates. It could have been
three if it was much shorter. And Five dirty Fingers
for Rachel Weisz' grabby hands and wild-eyed orgasms.
Want
to tell Filthy something?
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