Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Jim Ridley on I Know Who Killed Me (Commonplace Book)

Jim Ridley, a few weeks ago, wrote an article called Ten Movies in 2007 That Deserved More Attention. HIs brief comment on Lindsay Lohan's flop I Know Who Killed Me encapsulates the kind of criticism I like best -- criticism that makes genuinely surprising observations about trash and gets me to re-think something. There are quite a few folks around here in the "I don't care what kind of smart thing you can say, that still sucked" camp, often followed by a compliment along the lines of "the criticism is more interesting that the film." I have taken this position myself, at times. Nevertheless I still think it is a substantial accomplishment to make me go back and at least question my initial judgement, as this comment did. Here is what he said.

I Know Who Killed Me. Not even Lindsay Lohan's sojourn in the tabloids stirred up much interest in this marvel of trashy delirium. A pity, too: Chris Sivertson's mystifying mood piece about a demure honor student who morphs into a mutilated stripper was sold as torture porn, but it's closer in spirit to a glue-huffing remake of Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. As psychodrama, it was even more potent. Try finding a more eerie metaphor for a child star's uneasy transition to adulthood than pole-dancer Lohan facing her Disney-princess self packed away in a casket.

4 comments:

Marc Caputo said...

Good Christ, only on the Internet could you find someone ready, willing AND able to successfully put LiLo and Kieslowski in the same sentence.

What did these people do before the Internet - try to win a bet? "Hey, watch me link Kurosawa and NKOTB while talking about 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'"

Funny thing is - I REALLY want to see this now.

Scene -- said...

^^^great response. and i'm going to hate myself when i rent it. (b/c i am.) (going to rent it, that is.)

Geoff Klock said...

Oh get over yourself. You LOVE me for giving you an excuse to watch Lohan pole dance. :)

Unknown said...

Eh, I'm pretty sure she doesn't actually get naked, which always bugs me about strippers in movies (see also: Jessica Alba in Sin City). I do kind of want to see the movie, but only in a "My Year of Flops" sort of fashion.

There are some interesting ones on the list (like Paprika, which I had in my top five for the year). I'm always interested in those movies that fall through the cracks for some reason. I did think Music and Lyrics wasn't too bad, and I would definitely like to see End of the Line; that one sounds crazy. And I've got Joshua on my Netflix list, so I'll see it one of these days.