On this week's Voice Film Club podcast, Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice and Amy Nicholson of L.A. Weekly discuss Kimberly Peirce's reimagining of Stephen King's Carrie -- and Nicholson convinces Stephanie to go see Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa.
Photo by Michael Gibson - © 2012 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. and Screen Gems, Inc. All rights reserved Kimberly Peirce and Chloë Grace Moretz in Carrie.
See also: American Horror Story: The 10 Best Sex Scenes (NSFW)
"It didn't work for me," says Zacharek of this new Carrie, but she adds that Chloë Grace Moretz brings something to the role that Sissy Spacek couldn't in Brian De Palma's 1976 version of the film: "She's probably closer to the Carrie that Stephen King described in the novel. Physically clumsy...she doesn't have that fragility [that Spacek possesses in the '76 film]."
Nicholson says she enjoyed this new version because as viewers, we knew what was going to happen: "You're still filled with dread because you know what [Carrie] doesn't know, and for me that really worked," Nicholson says.
Nicholson tells us about Bad Grandpa, the latest in the Jackass franchise, a movie with great moments of emotional terror -- and many more of Johnny Knoxville and an eight-year-old boy walking around trying to pick up women and other taking part in other inappropriate activities.
"It's a road movie with a strange narrative," says Nicholson, who also praises young actor Jackson Nicoll (who was in last year's Fun Size.)
Recommendations:
Nicholson recommends Tucker and Dale vs Evil, a horror comedy that she says is "a weird little film that plays with our assumptions about blue collar culture and men who wear overalls." It's now available on Netflix.
"If you have a conservative uncle, this is the time to bury the hatchet and get a six-pack of Coors Light," Nicholson says of Tucker and Dale.
Zacharek recommends Blue is the Warmest Color -- currently showing New York and L.A. -- a love story of two young women who begin an affair that turns into years-long relationship. "The three-hour film gives you a sense of how the relationship unfolds. Blue is the Warmest Color does include some explicit sex scenes that are extremely naturalistic," Zacharek notes. For those sex scenes, the movie has garnered controversy from critics who've come out against the movie because of them.
"Ultimately though, the emotional texture of their relationship should what moves viewers," says Zacharek of Blue.
