Another Detour: Free Movies Website

February 28, 2010

Website: Indie Movies Online

Reviewed: Three Feature Length Films, and One Short Film

Well, I’ve heard mention lately of this thing online called Twitter. Always wanting to be the first one to the party when it comes to such things, I decided to check it out. It’s kind of cool. I’d explain a little more about it, but like with so many things in the early stages, I don’t want to jinx it by giving away too much about it. It looks like something that has potential, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you start to hear about it some time soon.

Anyway, while investigating this interesting phenomenon, I thought it might be fun to see what a gentleman who goes by the name of Roger Ebert might have to say. Some of his tweets have made the news in recent weeks, so I thought it would be interesting to see firsthand for myself. It turns out he is quite the avid tweeter. Just his tweets alone can keep you occupied for a quite some time, but if you follow the links he posts you will find a multitude of ways to while away the hours, most of them quite interesting.

One of his tweets told of Indie Movies Online, for a place to check out movies that are not only free, but legally so. In keeping with this current phase of procrastination I’m in, I did indeed check it out, testing the waters so to speak, by taking in three movies and a short film, all of quite disparate degrees of goodness (maybe my list of movies that I think ain’t all that hot will grow now—not that it’s a goal of mine).

[A note on spoilers: Yes, there are plenty, including one in the note on spoilers. This is a review of approximately three-and-a-quarter movies. There are sure to be a few spoilers here and there, but none that really give away the whole farm. As an example, I made an attempt at humor with a reference to The Crying Game in which I did give away a significant plot point, but I didn’t give away the Big Surprise (though I was mightily tempted when talking about Brian’s Johnson—oh my, I think I just secured myself a special place in hell, but I don’t know if it’s in the ring reserved for those guilty of egregious use of puns, or the ring for those soulless cinematic sinners who not only serve up spoilers, but do so in the warning about spoilers—and I suppose it’s too much to ask dispensation for style and creativity in brazenly combining the two offenses for a wicked double-whammy!).]

[A note on the note on spoilers: The parenthetical pun above really turns out to not be a pun at all. I have this little quirk of sometimes getting names that bear some sort of similarity mixed up. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson (explaining why I try not to date women with similar names, past or present), but apparently was able to mix up Jones and Johnson (which is a bit of a stretch, though much more understandable than mixing up, say, “Bonnie” and “Mariana,” so I suppose it’s an improvement). The guy’s name is Brian Jones, not Brian Johnson. Why did I go to the bother to explain the mistake, yet not correct it or erase it? Well, I do think that if the guy’s name really were Johnson that it would be somewhat funny. And what funniness may be lost in the fiasco is actually made up for, at least a little bit, by the funniness of making such a silly error. And, again, sorry if the lame joke really did spoil anything about The Crying Game for you—but, as old is the movie is, if you haven’t seen it yet, you probably already know all about it.]

Sex Sells: The Making of Touché (2005, Comedy, 96 minutes):

The first movie I checked out, Sex Sells: The Making of Touché, is a mockumentary on the making of an “adult film” director’s last hurrah, a pornographic production with aspirations to set a record for the world’s largest orgy ever captured on film. One of the stars is Priscilla Barnes, who is likely best known as Suzanne Somers’s replacement on “Three’s Company.” Though she was pushing fifty when this film was made, she wasn’t modest in portraying a porn star—and had no reason to be.

It appeared to be cheese-ball flick, but sex does sell, after all, and I was sold enough to at least give it shot. It did look like it was gonna suck, but it quickly grew on me (swear to god, none of those multiple puns were intended, and I didn’t even notice them until proofreading). It certainly has some redeeming values. The man with the plan of filming the über-orgy is named Chuck Steak (pronounced stee-ack), played by Mark DeCarlo, who I found to be rather reminiscent of Paul Reiser. Steak’s ambitious goal, as may be expected, is threatened to be derailed by a variety of mishaps and dramas. I thought the character was going to be way over-played, and was at moments, but for the most part was reined in enough to achieve the humor intended. He gets to shout out some fun lines when blocking out his pièce de résistance scene while under duress.

As far as mockumentaries go, it falls far short in its attempt. To compare it to This is Spinal Tap or Best in Show would be unfair, because that would be like bashing the local high school’s production of Hamlet for not being of the same caliber as that of The Royal Shakespeare Company (or comparing Mel Gibson to Laurence Olivier, for that matter), but you can give ‘em an “A” for effort. I guess where they fall the shortest, is that supposed documentarian, Bernard Heiman (pronounced hymen in an obvious play for a cheap laugh), played by Jay Michael Ferguson, is too much a part of the story. He’s in almost every scene, plays a key part in the plot (which there actually is), diminishing the whole documentary feel almost completely, but it still works.

If there is any one thing that makes this flick worthwhile, it would be a clip of an “old” movie shown when the cast gathers to reminisces about their early days in the industry. It’s a grainy segment of light saber dueling nymphos in a Star Wars rendering aptly titled Star Whores. It’s a wonderfully cheesy ode to vintage seventies porn, and any sci-fi geek will love the tributes to “Space: 1999,” “Lost in Space,” “Star Trek,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and of course Star Wars, complete with “Darth Vibrator” and cameos by some familiar but very well-endowed robots. A light saber serves dual purpose, prompting the question, “Can you feel the Force glowing inside you?”

It certainly has its lowbrow humor, such as what purpose pineapple juice may serve, and a man looking for a world record with his exceptional tool of the trade (yeah, lowbrow humor begets lowbrow humor). But it’s the type of humor I can appreciate and they’re not too far off the mark.

All in all, in spite of its shortcomings, this movie does achieve what it sets out to accomplish, whether or not the director achieves his swan song goal (which does require a significant suspension of disbelief considering that orgies of greater magnitude than the supposedly epic-size one offered in the movie can readily be found in the back alleys of the Internet, shot on a cell phone no less—or so I’ve heard, anyway). And, though there is nudity it is by no means gratuitous based on the foundational premise of the movie. This flick is a nice diversion if you’re looking for one.

The Phantom of the Opera (1998, Drama, 99 minutes):

Nope, not that Phantom of the Opera. Or that one. Yes, there you go, that one there. The one from 1998, directed by Dario Argento starring Asia Argento and Julian Sands. It’s the one that tried to play up more of the horror aspect of the oft-told story, but just ended up being scary, in a rather more dreadful than horrific kind of way.

I knew I shouldn’t have clicked on this one, but my morbid curiosity got the better of me and I went there anyway. Then, once witnessing the train wreck, I couldn’t turn away. The setting is Paris, populated mostly by Italians, and everyone speaks perfect English, albeit with a wide array of accents. From there, it just gets weirder.

For this translation, the Phantom’s mask, the fame of which is probably rivaled only by the mask of Jason Voorhees, is nowhere to be seen. This Phantom is not disfigured but, rather, dashing. Well, supposedly, anyway. Instead, Julian Sands just comes off as kinda creepy lookin’. He has the stringy-haired look of the guy in the dilapidated house at the end of the street who does little to assuage the rumors of a possible pedophiliac penchant. (But, you can rest assured the Phantom is not a pedophile, for that position is already filled by a fat bourgeois pig who lures the pubescent ballerinas-to-be into his snare with chocolates—and meets with subterranean vigilante justice—of phantasmal variety—as a result. No, the Phantom’s perversion of choice is not children, but one that is no less disturbing.) Instead of bearing a physical affliction, the Phantom’s misanthropic attitude is rooted in a supernatural bond with the rats that raised him.

Inexplicably abandoned as a child, he was tossed, Moses-like, into the river flowing beneath the opera house where he was rescued by rats that chose not to eat his face (which they probably should have). Instead they raised him, clothed him in dandy attire, taught him perfect English, how to play the organ, how to rip out a woman’s tongue with his teeth (yeah, that’s one way to make the bitch shut her screamin’ yap), how to impale a man on a stalagmite (the big, long pokey rocks that stick up from the ground) and, oh yeah, mental telepathy. In case there was any misinterpretation, blood red words on a black background and a melodramatic voice spell things out, “Thus, by chance, a mysterious bond is forged between the abandoned child and the inhabitants of darkness,” so that the situation is crystal clear. The mysterious bond also means the Phantom has it in for the Quasimodo-looking opera house rat catcher and his midget (little person?) assistant who is charged with gleefully separating the tails from the rats to pickle them in formaldehyde as both trophies and a running tally of the rodents exterminated. On a side note, there is moral to be learned here, too. Although by all appearances and actions, the soulless murderer of rats doesn’t possess the mental acuity to count his own balls and get the same answer twice (with the assumption that it’s not for lack of trying), he is able to build an H.G. Wells-lookin’ contraption capable of wholesale slaughter of the long-tailed vermin. Later on, Asia Argento’s Christine spies the Phantom at “play” with some of the rats in a way that strongly suggests his mysterious bond transcends normal creepy to super-icky-creepy. It wasn’t explicitly shown, so that interpretation of his relationship with the rats is left somewhat to the imagination, but hardly at all. And, if I am misinterpreting the scene I really need to get my imagination some intense therapy, though I believe it may be Dario Argento who is in need of some sort of therapy for creating this scene of man-rat affection in the first place.

The movie has dialogue. It’s not good, but it has it. It also has some special effects. They’re not good, but it has them.

This movie does have its good qualities, too, such as a beautiful sets and costumes. The opera house is impressive, but not quite so much as the bathhouse, complete with hookahs that apparently produce smoke from sources other than regular tobacco, and extraordinarily voluptuous (read, very rotund), and equally immodest, patrons and staff.

Asia Argento is probably the only thing that makes the movie endurable at all. She does a marvelous job of inexplicably swinging from true love to pure hate and back to love that is so pure it can only be expressed in bloodcurdling screams and sobs. And, you know, she’s purty.

I think it would be fair to say it’s a bad movie. I guess the reason I hesitate to say it sucks is because it is right on the cusp of so-bad-it’s-good. I did see that there are two versions of this movie floating around out there, the one I saw, and the director’s cut, which runs about seven minutes longer. I going to guess that those seven minutes are comprised mostly of the tawdry bits that were deemed too salacious for American sensibilities. I would go out on the limb even further to guess that within those minutes lies the secret to why the bodice of Christine’s dress was torn asunder and her sleeve ripped when she arose alone from the Phantom’s bed after demonstrating his “courting skills” (perhaps the planting of the seeds for a sequel, one can only hope). As it is, it’s not so bad that I could bear to sit through it once, but it might be what’s in those missing minutes that determines if it’s so bad that it’s good enough to endure again. That’s not to say it takes nudity to make a movie good, but in the case of this movie, coupled with Asia Argento’s attributes, it sure can’t hurt.

Stoned (2005, Adaptation, 102 minutes):

Long, long… long, long, long… l-o-n-g, long ago. I mean like a really fuckin’ long time ago, there was an era on this planet called Earth when its terrestrial inhabitants had yet to be acquainted with the, ah, uniquely striking visages of the Rolling Stones. (Which reminds me, did you know Mick Jagger’s daughter just had a birthday? She turned 72! Rotflmfao!!!)

Oh, before I go on, I must beg forgiveness for the sophomoric humor. I’m operating on very little sleep, so that’s making me a little slappy. Despite the cheap jabs at the Rolling Stones, and there are more to come, I say with all seriousness that I do indeed like them, as I’m sure will be made a little more evident whenever I get around to reviewing Gimme Shelter. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it. With the lack of sleep coupled with the fact that I just watched some very cheesy movies, I am in quite the mood for pedestrian jokes, and really have no qualms about it. Now, back to the riot wagon…

Before there was Sir Mick Jagger and his undead “partner” Keith Richards, who have become the poster boys for immortal rock-stardom, there was Brian Jones, without whom there would be no Rolling Stones. It was he, who through blind luck brought about the genesis of the band that defies death (in a 2004 Blender.com scientific study, Keith Richards’s projected year of death was 1995—though I suppose it would be fair to point out they projected Ol’ Dirty Bastard had another twenty-three years before meeting his maker but ended up going only nine months before shaking hands with the Grim Reaper, and they over-estimated Micheal Jackson by one-quarter of a century, so either we write it off as total hooey or go with the obvious and apply those lost years to Keith Richards with the confidence that he will certainly live to be 108, rocking every day along the way), apparently pulled the band’s iconic name out of his ass in a panic when on the phone and had to come up with something quick and pilfered it from the title of a track on a Muddy Waters LP that happened to be lying about (I looked that up and found as many variations of how the name came to be as sources I could find; I went with what was stated in Wikipedia’s article on Brian Jones, all others be damned), acted the primadonna for a while, realized he couldn’t carry Mick and Keith’s collective jock, further increased his musical and managerial inadequacy by turning his brain into the proverbial eggs that fried in the proverbial skillet of drugs, (though I haven’t confirmed that Mr. Jones partook of the mighty heroin, Rachael Leigh Cook made a pretty good case against smack, too, and “Robot Chicken” goes the extra yard to erase any possible remaining doubts that drugs=bad), dabbled in debauchery and a bit of domestic violence, lost his girlfriend to Keith Richards (go figure), got himself mired in a legal morass that prevented him from touring the U.S. with the band, which led to his firing by Mick and Keith, and then drowned to death at the age of twenty-seven, apparently in a spiteful attempt to play contrarian to Keith’s unlikely longevity. His passing was ruled “death by misadventure,” which I think is Limey-speak for “accidental.” Ah, but, was it?

The thrice-aptly title Stoned (1. It’s a play on the Rolling Stones. Get it? It’s even more appropriate because it’s in the past tense and the main character is dead, so he was a Stone, but is no more, ergo, “stoned”; 2. It’s a play on being stoned, as in the dude was stoned to the bejeezus-belt, as Carl Spackler so eloquently puts it; and 3. It’s a play on the manner of his death—found at the bottom of his swimming pool—as if he sank like a stone, though I think that meaning may not have been intentional) is a movie about the life—and death—of Brian Jones, played by Leo Gregory. Take all the pieces laid out above, throw in the house where Winnie-the-Pooh was born, a hot ex-girlfriend (the one who bails on Jones to strut her stuff under his nose with Keith) played by Monet Mazur, a super cute current girlfriend played by Tuva Novotny, a chauffeur who borrowed his glasses from Drew Carey, played by David Morrissey, a couple of guys who kinda almost resemble Mick and Keith who really don’t have more than bit parts in this flick so don’t really need to be acknowledged by their real names, and an impressionable construction worker who looks a little like Stephen Rea when he played the IRA guy in The Crying Game who broke the number one rule of terrorist kidnappings: don’t get emotionally involved with your kidnapping victims ‘cause it makes it that much harder to execute them when your demands aren’t met (which follows the same logic for not naming the turkey designated to be the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving dinner trimmings, though without the macabre irony of having the turkey mowed down by a rafter—turkey-speak for flock—of turkeys when it blindly flees once you find you ain’t got the cajones it takes to drop the axe), named Frank Thorogood, played by Paddy Considine, who becomes a bit of buddy, butler (I hope I didn’t give the ending away by comparing this flaky fellow to a butler—saying “the butler did it” is just too cliché), and plaything for Brian Jones who likes to mind-fuck Frank for shits and giggles from time to time.

The movie starts with a seemingly pointless shot of Brian in one of those goofy red London telephone booths making a phone call and booking a gig. I suppose it is in order to establish Jones’s role of importance in the band’s nascent stages. Then, for the opening credits, it rolls into what I gather is supposed to resemble archival footage of the young Stones performing at said gig, complete with camera flashes leading to temporary still images of each of the band mates that I gather are to show how they got actors who almost resemble the actual band members, all the while a cover of “Little Red Rooster” is being played by a band that almost resembles the Rolling Stones doing a cover of “Little Red Rooster.” It all does very well in confirming any suspicions one may have that every aspect of the movie is fake. But, that’s cool, because it is a movie after all, and one should expect fakery. It then jumps right to Brian Jones’s lifeless body being dragged from the pool. As two chicks and a dude try to pull him from the pool with the all the grace of a monkey fucking a football, the camera drifts to a statue of a kid sitting on a log reading a book. Since it’s later revealed that the house once belonged to A.A. Milne, I assume that the boy with the book is Christopher Robin, and it is supposed to highlight the poignancy of such a tragedy taking place on the same site where such a loveable creature as Winnie-the-Pooh was created. As they try to revive him there is a montage of the carefree days of yesteryear, I suppose Brian’s life flashing before our eyes, such as driving through the mountains with his mates, naked chicks, sexual fetishes, dropping acid, painted faces, and a goat having its throat slit in an apparently ritual manner that don’t get taught in Sunday School. So the movie is off to quite a rollicking start. Then the intrigue really begins to set in: the gumby-looking, pasty white dude with bad hair, even by late-sixties standards, finally goes to phone for help. But, why does he call who he does? Archival radio and television broadcasts announce the death of Brian Jones in very stiff manner to show just how square people still were and to emphasize just how big the Stones will eventually be even though they are all still clueless to this fact. The announcer with the last word says that “the cause of death is still unknown.” Ah, but will it still be unknown to the discerning viewer ninety-some minutes later, at film’s end?

To aid in solving the mystery, the story helpfully goes three months back into the past so we can get to know Brian and the rest of the key players. The rest of the movie is a bunch of flashbacks intercut with the past-of-three-months-ago to show all the events of Brian’s life that led him to be in the state he was in at the time of his death as well as to establish man, method, and motive for what may not be such a “misadventurous” mortality after all. Keep a close eye on things as they are revealed, layer by layer and level by level, and you may just be able to figure it out for yourself.

I must warn all of the big Rolling Stones fans in the house that I was unable to detect a single note of actual Rolling Stones music being played in the movie, and the soundtrack information I located seems to confirm this belief. But, no worries, what this movie about the founding member of the Rolling Stones lacks in Rolling Stones music is compensated for by more than a modicum of nudity. And, they were kind enough to think of the ladies in the audience, too, for there is also man-nudity! More than just a fleeting cameo that raises the question, did I just see what I thought I saw? The twigs and berries get enough screen time to raise the question, why would Brian’s girlfriend really leave him for Keith?

Okay, now I gotta come clean. It certainly comes off like I’m dissing this poor movie big time. Yeah, I admit it, I am, but it is very unfair to do so. It’s just a symptom of the sardonic mood I was in when I started writing about it. In all actuality, it is quite a worthwhile flick. It’s not a great flick, I mean there’s a reason it didn’t draw any Oscar nominations, but it did get nominated for the Golden Hitchcock (seriously!) at the Dinard British Film Festival (don’t let the title fool ya, it’s French!) and it received not one, but two Empire Awards nominations. And, it is still free to watch at Indie Movies Online, so what do you really have to lose other than 102 irretrievable minutes of your life? I mean, seriously, if you’ve read this far you have more than enough time on your hands, so don’t go getting all indignant and self important now. Instead, just enjoy an interesting take on what happened to that one guy who started the Rolling Stones, but has been dead for four decades.

Traffic Warden (2004, Comedy, 11 minutes):

My last full sample from the free movie feast was a charming little ditty called Traffic Warden. I think the tag on the site sums it up best: “A comic short – in fact, a bite-size romantic comedy – in which a serendipitous series of events leads a traffic warden (played by David Tennant) to find true love.”

It uses dialogue most sparingly. By my count there were three spoken words, maybe four—they were spoken so quickly it was hard to tell if a contraction was used or if they were two separate words. Other than that, the expressions and looks speak volumes. The musical score really adds to the spirit of this sweet short. It’s something that can bring a smile to your face when you’re looking for one, or maybe to unwind with something pleasant before going to bed.

I suppose I do have two caveats about this short film. If you really love goldfish, this movie may not be for you, because the cute little buggers do suffer a tad bit of trauma, but it is tastefully done and does serve to advance the plot. And, if you really hate goldfish, this movie may not be for you, because they are just so dad-blamed cute that it would be sure to get your ire up if you’re a true hater. I guess there is a third caveat, and that would be if you watch this with your children you may want to shield their eyes at the end, because I’m not quite sure, but I think that shot of the tower may be a subliminal sexual reference. Maybe not, but better safe than sorry.

And, all kidding aside, I really did enjoy this short. Even the opening credits were done in a cute and refreshing manner. Enjoy!

Final Analysis of Indie Movies Online:

It is a cool and fun site. The free movies are not “for a short time only” and there is no limit to how many or how often you can watch them. There doesn’t seem to be an astronomic selection in the library right now, but it appears that in the few days since I discovered it new ones have been added. I’m sure there will be a dud or two in there, but I’m sure that they will be compensated for with some gems.

Speaking of duds, I just remembered, there was one that I tried, but couldn’t get through the first scene. On here it’s called Sleeping Dogs Lie, but goes by the aka Stay at IMDB. It’s written and directed by the one and only Bobcat Goldthwait. I’m not typically one to shy away from the cruder forms of humor, but wasn’t able to make it through the opening scene. Anyone else wanna give it a try, and then see if I can be enticed to give it another shot myself?

I was happy to see that they had the short film Creature Comforts (along with other Aardman shorts) available. It’s something a friend of mine showed me several years ago, and I liked it so much that I bought the DVD. Sadly, I had to give up the DVD as part of the settlement, so it’s nice to see it again. I heartily suggest giving it a look.

I really liked what this website is all about. It appears to be all above board as far as legality. There is no registration necessary, but registration allows access to some features that aren’t available otherwise. I do intend to register. Something like this is almost too good to be true, but it’s there, and highly recommended.