Forget Wolf. Forget Hustle. Forget Gravity. Forget whatever else came out. Fruitvale Station is the Grilled Life BEST FILM OF THE YEAR. A high distinction, but one that I, of course, do not bestow lightly. It’s always difficult for me to emotionally connect with a film to the extent that I will be shedding tears, but I at least came close with Fruitvale. Powerful and depressing and shocking and wonderful and terrible. Such a useless death.
Hello, Lake Bell!
I never would have guessed you had something like this inside your mind! I have to admit that I am not the biggest Lake Bell fan. First of all, she was on Surface, a show about watery creatures or aliens or some shit like that, I don’t really know cause I never watched it. But the commercials were always on TV – SURFACE!! – accompanied by gurgling water noises and the – BUM BUM – noise that means This Show Has Some Creepy Supernatural Weird Shit In It – BUM BUM. You know the sound, I don’t need to act it out.
Alright, I understand I’m getting a bit of a reputation around these parts because I rated two 2013 high school coming of age dramedies the very, very high score of 9.5/10. The Spectacular Now and The Kings of Summer. “What does this mean, Dom? Are you trying to make up for your own shitty high school experience by vicariously living through a movie? Do you regret doing nothing in high school except watching movies, and no, we’re not joking, we really mean NOTHING BUT WATCHING MOVIES, ya damn slag!”
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT DRINK FUCK ATTACK SHIT FIGHT FUCK ATTACK DRINK DRINK ATTACK MUSIC ATTACK DRINK DRUGS DRINK DRUGS FIGHT ATTACK DRINK DRUGS FUCK FUCK DRINK DRUGS ATTACK ATTACK
Much of this movie feels like someone is standing next to you screaming in your ear. And I mean that in the very best way possible. I am frightened to see people acting this way in front of my eyes. It’s something I can’t comprehend. It’s something foreign and abrasive. But so much energy! I want to jump into the crowd and thrash around, throwing out my elbows and socking someone in the face, blood billowing into the air like a cloud above the spitting mass, writhing together like a thousand dying… octopuses.
A nice little gay love story for the whole family. No, really it’s great. Realistic, passionate, well-acted, and involving. The plight of two gay men who only have a handful of hours to spend together before one of them leaves the country. I can identify. I’ve been there. No, I’m not gay (well, probably not), but I am an old soul when it comes to brief, wonderful, and transitory relationships.
Wow. By far the greatest movie ever made about pedophilia (I’m assuming, it’s not like I specifically set out to watch movies about pedophilia [although I did just see Hard Candy as well…]). Incredibly dark and disturbing, but god damn is it funny. This is black black black comedy at its finest. A world so cruel and bizarre and amazing that it stops being a story and transforms into a horribly realistic portrayal of dysfunction.
I saw the 2011 remake of Straw Dogs in the theater. I was in the middle of a random city in the middle of nothing and nowhere Pennsylvania for a two night work-sponsored educational trip. It was a slow night and everyone else wanted to sleep, so I headed out into the shit and found my way to a movie theater. I had never heard of Straw Dogs at that point – which was unusual since I’m often informed about every single thing that will be arriving in theaters. But I paid it no mind because it was the only movie starting soon and it was the one I would be watching. The 2011 remake of Straw Dogs will forever live on in my mind –
AS ONE OF THE WORST MOVIES OF ALL TIME
It’s one of the greatest films of all time. It’s Sidney Lumet’s first (!!!) film. It’s awesome. I can’t really say much more about it…. but…. what’s that? I hear a beat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah…
12 Angry men.
12 Angry men, yo
It’s 12 Angry Men, you ready?
Truly the kind of film you want to live inside, with the people you want to know, and doing things you want to do. Greta Gerwig is excellent excellent excellent. The whole cast is excellent. Adam Driver is becoming reliably excellent. Noah Baumbach is becoming one of my favorite directors. Ooooooooh. And also, on this day (which is actually the 14th not the 6th as I am still trying to catch up), on this day – my FIRST OFFICIAL PAYING ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED. So, fuck yeah! Dreams of Brooklyn nights and skyscapers and hobos huddling together in the cold and stepping carefully through half thawed pools of sludgy sludge ice and snow and salt and grime mixture and the wind whipping down through the long corridors of my buildings, up my coat, through my hair and back into the sky like a hawk flitting through the air after a kill. Brooklynnnnn. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, Brooooooooooooklyn stand up! When I move you move (just like that?), when I move you move (just like that?), when I move you move (just like that?) hell yeah mutha fucka now bring that ass back!
New Joiesy. I’m from New Joiesy, ya heard? Da fuck ya lookin’ at? Yer a fuckin’ mook!
This is how people from New Jersey talk, or at least this is how they talk in Don Jon, because where I’m from (“The countryside, the central Jersey side, apple pies so good you can cry – side”) nobody talks like that. So, Donny Don, you don’t mind if I call you Donny Don, do you? No? Okay, good. So, Donny Don is addicted to porn. He likes to beat his meat. He enjoys strangling the chicken. He gets a kick out of stroking the sausage. He has fun rubbing the Orangutan. He clearly doesn’t mind spending time putting a bind around the thick line between his thighs. So, fine! And perfectly understandable. Though I think I understand for different reasons than are in the film. What is the difference between a one-night-stand and jerking off? Both are climactic releases of energy (and semen) that don’t go any further than that one single moment. There’s no romantic intimacy, there’s no true connection. It’s just a man and a woman (or a man and a computer/magazine /tablet/photograph/memory/whatever) fucking. The man puts his dick inside a hole in the woman. The man pushes in and out a bit. The man says something like, “Ohhhh” and grunts and shudders and then pulls out and rolls over and goes to sleep. And the woman stares up at the ceiling and wonders what the fuck she just did that for and why it was so unsatisfying and what and what and what and just what the FUCK. Damn! Damn!
Dominick Grillo 