THIS WEEK IN NETFLIX

"Zardoz"

OH. WOW. Like I told my boy JoJo this morning, I may as well have just shoved a magic wand into my eardrum and cast a spell on my brain instead of actually watching this movie. This shit strives for and 200% attains a higher level. This isn't so much a film as something that has been floating around inside those parts of your head that have appeared dark and mysterious in CaT Scans since the day you were born, finally harnessed in celluloid and allowed to blossom into its full cosmic potential. There's no way you've ever seen a single movie comparable to this one, unless you actually saw "Zardoz" yourself and we're talking about the same movie but neither one of us can figure it out because you were 7 when you saw it and I was stoned when I watched it 2 nights ago. Eventually the conversation turns into an argument and we both leave exhausted and angry. Then we go to our respective homes and go to sleep. While lost in slumber, forgotten synapses inside of our minds start firing and before the morning light comes crashing through the windows to wake us, the oldest and holiest fibers of our psyches have recreated this movie in its entirety. Inside of both of our brains. Now there are two Zardozes. Holy shit.

"Synecdoche, New York"

HRMPH. I don't think I'm old enough to like this movie. Or maybe I haven't suffered enough artistic crises. Or maybe I was supposed to have a huge cock surgically implanted into my check and equipped with a powerful motor so that it could always be moving around in my mouth having virtually the same effct as that "i'm-sucking-a-dick" gesture that people do when the person who is speaking to them is laying down some serious bullshit. That's a good phrase for this movie, right there. Serious bullshit. Charlie Kaufman, crown prince of screenplays, has finally blown his massively built-up writer/DIRECTOR wad and it's just ended up a sticky mess on his stomach. He couldn't have created a better representation of awesomely pretentious neuroses-mired art school twattle if he had been paid to create a mockumentary of sophisticated and ridiculous film-snob asses. Hopefully that would at least have been blessed with a better director. I suppose it could get pretty good at the halfway point, but I straight turned the shit off after about 45 minutes of watching Philip Seymour Hoffman stress his way through his role as the obnoxious aging psychological doppleganger of my hypochondriac ex-roommate. PSH is my nig but you have seen him do all of this before and in much better films. A bevy of critics nutted all over this film though so it must have something going for it. Maybe the dialogue is well-written. I wouldn't know because I make it a point to fully avoid conversation with the kind of self-obsessed first-world-minded faux artistic intellectuals that float around in their own bubbles and sum up their worries with the line that is often repeated in this film and that should be etched across Kaufman's directorial tombstone: "I don't know what I'm doing."



"Cadillac Records"

This movie is sort of a taint. I mean "taint" as defined as the weird strip of sensitive skin between my nuts and my asshole. If this movie was actually my asshole, then it would be a whole lot darker and yes, I'll go ahead and say it: a tad bit more deep. On the other hand, it would reek of shit. Especially if it were my current asshole which is still recovering from a 3-day bout with food poisoning. Now if this movie were my nuts, then it would be a whole lot more polished (no shame in my game) and would certainly be filled with a lot more content. Especially if it were my current nuts which are still recovering from a 3-day bout with my girlfriend who was disgusted by my food poisoning. Yet as a whole, an encounter with it--much like an encounter with my nuts--would be a very pleasant and memorable experience. But this movie is not my asshole and it is not my balls. It's a taint. Not even my taint, and I barely know what I'm supposed to do with that one. So this movie is a stranger's taint. It's not the most offensive thing in the world (like an asshole) but it also lacks the full-swinging bravado and meaningful existence of a nice pair of balls. It's so middle of the road I might as well have just watched my hand for the whole 2 hours. Beyonce' is pretty good and is as hot as always, but Adrian Brody creeps me out and he looks like someone told Art Speigelman to re-do "Maus" but to draw all of the Jews as penises instead of mice.