Well, I just finished up watching the movie Punch Drunk Love. Ok yeah, everyone knows this movie, but it has a very strong experimental streak running through it and is often called "an arthouse Adam Sandler movie" so I reckon that gives me license to talk about it here.
This really ranks up there with some of my favourite movies. I've seen it a whole bunch of times. The film's writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson, is probably my favourite filmmaker, and definitely among the best of his generation. There's something about his movies that means I could just watch them and talk about them forever. They all have such an independent arthouse sensibility yet also recall classic Hollywood in the best way possible (the Goodfellas meets porn industry tale of Boogie Nights, the Citizen Kane in the old west through Kubrick's lens of There Will Be Blood...this is simplifying and making stupid comparisons but what you get my point).
Punch Drunk Love is no exception. It's sort of a closeup look at the Adam Sandler movie persona, that immature, mumbling child of a guy who is prone to a little violence now and then, who still manages to charm the girl (with some persistence). All this is there, but it's magnified. With the character of Barry, his mumbling childishness becomes a much more real and crippling lack of self-esteem, bubbling over into outbursts of violence (he smashes a window at his sisters house when she jokingly calls him gay, smashes up a restaurant bathroom and more). In contrast to the usual Sandler roles who live it up in an average joe fantasy (see Sandler as marine biologist in 50 First Dates), Barry owns his own business, but lives a lonely life in his stark apartment calling sex hotlines.
So thats all good and interesting, and much has been made about how good Sandler is in this movie. And I love all those things. But Punch Drunk Love is also such a FEAST. Visually, it's simply beautiful. The sets have a very neon and strip light feel to them, it works perfectly for the LA setting, which makes Barry's deep blue coloured suit and Lena's colourful dresses stand out even more. The details are amazing. Every time he meets Lena, the tie Barry wears is the same colour as the dress she was wearing the last time they met. In the first scene, Barry's assistant (who is wearing a Hawaiian shirt) asks him why he's wearing a suit today as he doesn't usually, to which Barry replies he felt like dressing up smart for work. The next time Barry goes to work, we see in a brief shot, not commented on or highlighted as a joke just a neat visual gag, his assistant wearing a smart suit. After he punches a wall, a closeup slyly reveals to those paying extra attention, that the cuts on Barry's knuckles spell out the word "love". The direction and cinematography is typically superb for a Paul Thomas Anderson, but even for him I think this broke new ground. I think it's here that he really came into his own as a filmmaker. This isn't saying anything bad about his previous movies, Boogie Nights is one of my favourites too, and Magnolia is pretty great (though I have a couple of issues with it), but whilst they're long and sprawling and flawed in their own way, Punch Drunk Love is small and compact. The camera moves around almost all the time, (there's a great shot that follows Sandler back and forth as he paces round his office), but stays still when it needs to. My favourite shot of the film comes when Barry's shadow is seen on a lit up wall as he is running. The music too! Apparently Jon Brion and Anderson were working on ideas for the score whilst the movie was still being written, so that shows how integral the music is to this film. For the most part, the score is pretty percussive and does a good job of keeping the audience on edge. Now and again some sweeping string will introduce the refrain of 'He Needs Me' from the Popeye movie, and Punch Drunk Love begins to feel like an old Hollywood romance.
Almost.
To sum this movie up, I'll use a quote from the film itself.
Barry: I'm looking at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
This really ranks up there with some of my favourite movies. I've seen it a whole bunch of times. The film's writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson, is probably my favourite filmmaker, and definitely among the best of his generation. There's something about his movies that means I could just watch them and talk about them forever. They all have such an independent arthouse sensibility yet also recall classic Hollywood in the best way possible (the Goodfellas meets porn industry tale of Boogie Nights, the Citizen Kane in the old west through Kubrick's lens of There Will Be Blood...this is simplifying and making stupid comparisons but what you get my point).
Punch Drunk Love is no exception. It's sort of a closeup look at the Adam Sandler movie persona, that immature, mumbling child of a guy who is prone to a little violence now and then, who still manages to charm the girl (with some persistence). All this is there, but it's magnified. With the character of Barry, his mumbling childishness becomes a much more real and crippling lack of self-esteem, bubbling over into outbursts of violence (he smashes a window at his sisters house when she jokingly calls him gay, smashes up a restaurant bathroom and more). In contrast to the usual Sandler roles who live it up in an average joe fantasy (see Sandler as marine biologist in 50 First Dates), Barry owns his own business, but lives a lonely life in his stark apartment calling sex hotlines.
So thats all good and interesting, and much has been made about how good Sandler is in this movie. And I love all those things. But Punch Drunk Love is also such a FEAST. Visually, it's simply beautiful. The sets have a very neon and strip light feel to them, it works perfectly for the LA setting, which makes Barry's deep blue coloured suit and Lena's colourful dresses stand out even more. The details are amazing. Every time he meets Lena, the tie Barry wears is the same colour as the dress she was wearing the last time they met. In the first scene, Barry's assistant (who is wearing a Hawaiian shirt) asks him why he's wearing a suit today as he doesn't usually, to which Barry replies he felt like dressing up smart for work. The next time Barry goes to work, we see in a brief shot, not commented on or highlighted as a joke just a neat visual gag, his assistant wearing a smart suit. After he punches a wall, a closeup slyly reveals to those paying extra attention, that the cuts on Barry's knuckles spell out the word "love". The direction and cinematography is typically superb for a Paul Thomas Anderson, but even for him I think this broke new ground. I think it's here that he really came into his own as a filmmaker. This isn't saying anything bad about his previous movies, Boogie Nights is one of my favourites too, and Magnolia is pretty great (though I have a couple of issues with it), but whilst they're long and sprawling and flawed in their own way, Punch Drunk Love is small and compact. The camera moves around almost all the time, (there's a great shot that follows Sandler back and forth as he paces round his office), but stays still when it needs to. My favourite shot of the film comes when Barry's shadow is seen on a lit up wall as he is running. The music too! Apparently Jon Brion and Anderson were working on ideas for the score whilst the movie was still being written, so that shows how integral the music is to this film. For the most part, the score is pretty percussive and does a good job of keeping the audience on edge. Now and again some sweeping string will introduce the refrain of 'He Needs Me' from the Popeye movie, and Punch Drunk Love begins to feel like an old Hollywood romance.
Almost.
To sum this movie up, I'll use a quote from the film itself.
Barry: I'm looking at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
Your Pussy's Glued to a Building on Fire
"We're gonna live like kings! Damn hell assed kings!"
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"We're gonna live like kings! Damn hell assed kings!"
www.myspace.com/tvdreams
www.myspace.com/untitledhead