The American Jerk

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I love movies, but I hate going to movies. When you go to the movies in 2010, you are voluntarily subjecting yourself to scumbags with cell phones and H1N1 infestations… at best – I still maintain that someday I’ll design and sell a t-shirt reading: “I Saw Twilight at Comic-Con, and All I Got Was This Lousy Impetigo.”

So for me, Netflix’s streaming video service on the XBox 360 is a Godsend. They provide hundreds of (usually) HD movies from every age and genre of film for real-time viewing. Sure, it’s no Blockbuster Video… but these days, neither is Blockbuster unless you want to watch an understated yet classic For Lease sign.

Streaming Netflix gives me the vibe of an old-school 80’s video store, back in those heady days when any dipshit with decent credit and enough friend-of-a-friend Mafia ties to score porno tapes to stock behind the swinging saloon doors at the back could open a video store. As you enter, you see a “New Releases” section that looks like a polypropylene-entombed monument to the past eighteen months of unmitigated box office failure, offering satisfaction only to those who either love, or want to perform sudden and rudimentary dental work upon, Michael Cera and / or Jack Black.

Further up, there’s an action-adventure section custom-made for the discerning gentleman who wants to spend Friday evening doing some Van Damage. Finally, there’s the Sci-Fi / Horror section, stocked with titles that all seem to be about masked chaps interested in spraying red goop into the cleavage of terrified blondes, marketed to pre-pube boys with the same interests (short the “red”).

And just like those proto-video stores, sometimes you come across what seems to be an old gem that you never got around to seeing for whatever reason that you pick up on impulse. Which is exactly what I did last night with Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which I missed the first time around because, well, I was seventeen so I was probably at Nightmare on Elm Street 4 instead, hoping to spray goop into NAME REDACTED TO PREVENT LIBEL SUIT OVER THE IMPLICATION THAT SHE KNOWS ME‘s cleavage.

In reviewing Last Temptation of Christ, Roger Ebert wrote:

Here is a film that engaged me on the subject of Christ’s dual nature, that caused me to think about the mystery of a being who could be both God and man. I cannot think of another film on a religious subject that has challenged me more fully.

Roger has also written that he is a long-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the only possible explanation for such a glowing review of the most Goddamned schizo, self-congratulatory jacking off onto expensive celluloid I’ve since I got whiskey-shitfaced and videotaped myself watching Wings reruns while scratching my scrote and calling Crystal Bernard “The hottest bitch on television except for two or three others” for two straight hours.

The flick starts with Jesus, living in poverty and working hard on a contract gig making crucifixes for the Romans, which immediately punted my suspension of disbelief since there has never been a contractor that finished on time without skimming ten percent off the top before subcontracting the actual work to Mexicans (And don’t give me any shit about this being Israel 2,000 years ago. He was Jesus. If Jesus wanted Mexicans to handle the scut work, there would be Mexicans, you fucking blasphemer).

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