B & B

Boring & Bad
*Stray Dogs- This Japanese film noir was suggested to me by netflix. It wasn't THAT bad and boring...but it's still enough to go in this category. It's about some young police officer who's gun gets stolen while he was on a crowded bus. He then has to solve some crimes and trace back down his gun. Plot sounds ok, but ended up being B&B.

*Gigantic- Zooey Deschanel plays a rich lady who doesn't really do anything except dress really well and help her father (John Goodman). She starts doing it with Paul Dano after he sells her pops a mattress. They start dating and fall in love even though they have NOTHING IN COMMON. They should have a miserable relationship but somehow they don't. So the question is: if i straighten my hair and take of my pants will someone want to date me?

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Oh God. What the hell, people? Why is this movie so famous and so popular? This is not a good movie, everyone. I watched this in a theater full of people who had all seen it before, and who thought it was the best thing ever, and boy was that frustrating. Luckily I didn't have to pay for it, since I'm a Brattle Member.


So apparently the premise of Dirty Dancing is that a family goes on a three week long (!) vacation to some resort where the main activities are eating breakfast and seeing Patrick Swayze dance with some woman nobody cares about. The hero (some girl) finances a lousy abortion, which means she also volunteers to dance on stage with Patrick Swayze at a different resort (the movie takes place in the Resort Valley found somewhere along the east coast). Despite having no formal training and only like 3 days to prepare for the performance she still manages to somehow become a professional dancer and fall in love with the Swayz. Too bad that’s a problem or something, because then her dad is mad at her (or whatever). And oh by the way this resort is maybe traveling at the speed of light, because despite this whole ordeal of a plot taking place over the course of 3 weeks standard time, it still manages to feel like forever, and all the characters act as though the events taking place in this little vacation-universe are the Most Significant Ever Ever of Their Lives (HINT: they’re not, except for the abortion lady - that’s usually a Thing).

I knew this movie wouldn’t be my thing going into it, and I appreciate that these sorts of movies (where a lady and a dude want to get together but stupid reasons act as obstacles to their stupid love until the end of the movie when everything works out SPOILER ALERT) are some people’s thing, but this was just stupid. I also resent it for tearing me away from my main activity of the past 24 hours. Also sorry I didn’t blog for a bunch of days, I was too busy watching Better Movies than this one.

2 out of 10.

Shampoo vs. Black Shampoo

What a surprise, another movie redone with the word black in front of it.

Here is the premise of both Shampoo and Black Shampoo: A male hair dresser is extremely overbooked by rich white lady clients because he not only does hair but also bones pretty much all the ladies. In S the hair dresser wants to open his own hair salon and tries to get a loan from the husband of a lady he's doing it with, but in the process he also does it with the husband's mistress. In BS the hair dresser's receptionist gets into some trouble with her old pimp and the hair dresser and receptionist work together in an action-packed chase. One of these is way more exciting than the other. Did I mention that you don't really get to see any of the doing it in S and the chase in BS involves a CHAIN SAW. And a way better chain saw fight than SOME OTHER MOVIE.

Here is a venn diagram to help explain this movie:

If you notice the cross section of this diagram brings up some pretty horrible things that these two movies have in common. How could you have a movie from the 70s about male hair dressers without homophobia? A blaxploitation movie without racism? Going to beauty school just to sleep with women after they've been under the hair dryer for hours so their judgment is lowered isn't misogyny? Both of these movies have lots of problems.

Shampoo: 1 out of 5
Black Shampoo: 3 out of 5