Saw the theatrical cut of Baby Face (thanks, Lea!) It was a 1933 sex comedy. It stars a woman who is born in poverty but ascends to the upper reaches of corporate culture on her back. Of course, given the era, everything is weirdly raunchy but understated. For example, the manager bursts in on her and her boss in a bathroom. We see the manager's shocked face and then see her smoking and it's pretty clear what was seen. The gender politics are of course regressive, the men being wolves every one and the women either gossipy rivals green with envy or successful sluts, as the main character is. It's tremendous fun to see her flounce and flirt and not give a damn though and I loved her cruelty and her boyfriends' self-deluded vulnerability. The film's a lot of fun.
It's a little rough at parts, the film stock gone grainy or jumpy. Also there's a black maid who is the protagonist's companion. She's treated a bit better than other servants I've seen. For example, she's allowed a bit of sororal rapport with the main character as they chuckle over their gains. It's not flawless of course (she's still a servant after all) but better than you'd expect. The film as a whole is that way: not without fault but a lot better than you'd think on first blush. It's one of those films that you kind of can't believe is as old as it is. Saucy but old fashioned, it winks and then balks, almost flirtatiously, teasing greater interest.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 29, 2014
First Person
Saw First Person, the Errol Morris interview show. (Remember Errol Morris? I'm still working through all of his films.) This one opens with credits played over anatomical diagrams, glass eyes, brains in jars, etc. Morris normally interviews oddballs and weirdos but we are now out of his usual compassionate realm and getting into a kind of exploitative place. Some of the people he interviews are complicit in their own exploitation, such as the grotesque Josh Harris, but others are more unaware of or indifferent to their strangeness, such as Joan Dougherty, a crime scene cleaner.
The series is like a curiosity shop, or a book of outlandish facts. Very disjointed but chock full of fascinating tidbits. The episodes range from the cheerily macabre (such as Joan Dougherty and Gretchen Worden, director of this museum) to the freakishly grotesque (Josh Harris and Christopher Langan who is perhaps tricked into expressing support for eugenics) to the bewildering and geeky (Richard G. Rosner, a professional high school student, and Clyde Roper, a giant squid expert.) Every single episode would make for excellent water-cooler dissection. The topics are outre but humanized by the people talking about them. The show is uneven but has something for everyone.
Also interesting is the constant presence of Errol Morris. He uses a new-fangled method of interview by close-circuit television, allowing the interviewee to look directly into the camera and simultaneously at the interviewer at all times. The effect is that we the audience are having a conversation with the freak du jour. However Morris slightly gets in his own way by making the television constantly tilt and shift like the head of a confused puppy. This keeps the subject compositionally off-balance, but renders every angle a Dutch one. It gets a little aggressively annoying sometimes. Also there's Morris himself. He often shouts his questions at the subject, perhaps seeking honesty out of ebullient confrontation. A few times I felt he was feeding his interviewees, suggesting ad-ready tease-able phrases or more colourful analogies. The best episodes are the ones where he is most able to remove himself, but the worst ones, where he is clearly editorializing and feeding, cast a pall over these "good" episodes. I suppose I didn't want to see how this particular type of sausage was made. Again the nature of reality in documentaries rears its ugly head.
The series is like a curiosity shop, or a book of outlandish facts. Very disjointed but chock full of fascinating tidbits. The episodes range from the cheerily macabre (such as Joan Dougherty and Gretchen Worden, director of this museum) to the freakishly grotesque (Josh Harris and Christopher Langan who is perhaps tricked into expressing support for eugenics) to the bewildering and geeky (Richard G. Rosner, a professional high school student, and Clyde Roper, a giant squid expert.) Every single episode would make for excellent water-cooler dissection. The topics are outre but humanized by the people talking about them. The show is uneven but has something for everyone.
Also interesting is the constant presence of Errol Morris. He uses a new-fangled method of interview by close-circuit television, allowing the interviewee to look directly into the camera and simultaneously at the interviewer at all times. The effect is that we the audience are having a conversation with the freak du jour. However Morris slightly gets in his own way by making the television constantly tilt and shift like the head of a confused puppy. This keeps the subject compositionally off-balance, but renders every angle a Dutch one. It gets a little aggressively annoying sometimes. Also there's Morris himself. He often shouts his questions at the subject, perhaps seeking honesty out of ebullient confrontation. A few times I felt he was feeding his interviewees, suggesting ad-ready tease-able phrases or more colourful analogies. The best episodes are the ones where he is most able to remove himself, but the worst ones, where he is clearly editorializing and feeding, cast a pall over these "good" episodes. I suppose I didn't want to see how this particular type of sausage was made. Again the nature of reality in documentaries rears its ugly head.
Apr 28, 2014
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Saw the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead. It's much darker than the original but also wears its allegorical heart on its sleeve. No longer a parody/critique of consumer culture, it's very clearly got a post-9/11 America on its mind. This is made clear during an opening-credits montage of zombies scarily devouring victims that kicks off with a field of Moslems kneeling for prayer. Scary, right? I guess they couldn't find any footage of Christians quaking with the holy spirit. This montage also plays over the sweet, sad voice of Johnny Cash soulfully singing about the welcome certainty of death. This warns us that the film is not going to join us in being repulsed by the situation. This zomb-pocalypse is a reckoning and the best that can be had is a ghoulish delight in the proceedings.
So our heroes (a female nurse,Carl Weathers Ving Rhames, a guy in a dress shirt, and others) hole up in a mall. They are at first imprisoned by dumb security guys but soon turn against them. The security dudes are carted off to mall-prison shouting dire warnings about letting "the wrong kind of people" into the mall. To the film's credit, the nurse (the main-est of the main characters) calls them out on their weird phrasing. Throughout she's kind of the moral compass of the film, but the film cuts her off at the knees by providing little reason for anyone to stay moral. Often her pleas for dignity are silenced by further violence and emergency. Sure enough, havoc breaks loose and the guards are proved kind of right during a sequence in which a crazy-evil low-income biracial baby appears(!!!) and the security dudes are let loose again, to help out (oh ho ho! They have have given the foxes free reign over the chicken coop in exchange for the illusion of security! Oh ho ho!)
In addition to all this commentary, the film is quite entertaining. It's got a lot of cute musical cues. When they first get into the mall, a muzak version of Don't Worry Be Happy plays. The song Down With the Sickness is frequently played during kick-ass scenes. The thematic bits make for an entertaining symbolism-decoding session and the ghoulish delight which I mentioned in the first paragraph is there in places (during the end credits, we get a hilarious/cruel joke in the form of a zombie-head in an ice cooler.) It's very bleak, but it came out during the collective sadomasochism of the early '00s (the era which gave us Hostel, Saw, House of 1000 Corpses, and the also-about-9/11 The Devil's Rejects) when America just wanted to see someone suffer. I found this film most interesting as a cultural artifact. Bleak and slightly crazy, the film is kind of a downer but is also, in a weird way, kind of a nihilistic upper, with its guns-blazing dive into doom and its seductive surrender to the peaceful rest of mindless rage.
So our heroes (a female nurse,
In addition to all this commentary, the film is quite entertaining. It's got a lot of cute musical cues. When they first get into the mall, a muzak version of Don't Worry Be Happy plays. The song Down With the Sickness is frequently played during kick-ass scenes. The thematic bits make for an entertaining symbolism-decoding session and the ghoulish delight which I mentioned in the first paragraph is there in places (during the end credits, we get a hilarious/cruel joke in the form of a zombie-head in an ice cooler.) It's very bleak, but it came out during the collective sadomasochism of the early '00s (the era which gave us Hostel, Saw, House of 1000 Corpses, and the also-about-9/11 The Devil's Rejects) when America just wanted to see someone suffer. I found this film most interesting as a cultural artifact. Bleak and slightly crazy, the film is kind of a downer but is also, in a weird way, kind of a nihilistic upper, with its guns-blazing dive into doom and its seductive surrender to the peaceful rest of mindless rage.
Apr 27, 2014
Sweet Smell of Success
Saw Sweet Smell of Success, a noir's noir. Snappy lines, moral ambiguity with a heavy dose of pessimism, jazz, reefer, noir, baby! And in a big way. The plot follows the scheming press-agent Sidney as he runs to the beck and call of Hunsecker, a Heast-ian businessman who has narcissistically conflated his own and the public's interests so thoroughly he considers them identical (Coen bros fans, note the names.) The conflict arrives in the form of a decent jazz-man who loves Hunsecker's sister. Hun can't have this and dispatches crooked cops and scheming newsmen to dispatch him. The sister is one of those wilting women who quake and treble and are always about to scream or cry. Not exactly a fatal, but this is a deliciously evil nether-world where women are only exploited. There's molls as well, tough broads who begrudge but accept their exploitation. Deliciously evil, sour and mean. It reads like a poison pen letter to us about the world.
Almost the entire film takes place during a seemingly eternal night, everyone up too late and jangling with booze and coffee. The deadly Hunsecker is cruel and magnificent, the only smug man in a world of suffering. Behind every sentence he utters seems to lurk the threat of immediate and personal harm. He reminded me of less nuanced Daniel Plainview and I could easily imagine him bludgeoning someone who had displeased him sufficiently (I was really rooting for this during the climax.) Because the film was made in the 50s, the noble and upright jazz-man gets a lot of good lines which pleased me immensely. For all my gleeful preceding description of the nastiness, the virtuous bits provide welcome relief from all the bile.
The closing scenes are great, revealing all the supposed sophistication of Hun and Sid to be mere sophistry and giving us a pale sunrise, suggesting a better tomorrow. So, the film is delightfully fun. Full of everything that made noirs great. The people are evil, the sets blackened with shadow, the dialogue peppered with strained analogies, the men brutal, and the women weak. A glorious romp, a cliche which has wrapped around into an archetype. A wonderfully fun film.
Almost the entire film takes place during a seemingly eternal night, everyone up too late and jangling with booze and coffee. The deadly Hunsecker is cruel and magnificent, the only smug man in a world of suffering. Behind every sentence he utters seems to lurk the threat of immediate and personal harm. He reminded me of less nuanced Daniel Plainview and I could easily imagine him bludgeoning someone who had displeased him sufficiently (I was really rooting for this during the climax.) Because the film was made in the 50s, the noble and upright jazz-man gets a lot of good lines which pleased me immensely. For all my gleeful preceding description of the nastiness, the virtuous bits provide welcome relief from all the bile.
The closing scenes are great, revealing all the supposed sophistication of Hun and Sid to be mere sophistry and giving us a pale sunrise, suggesting a better tomorrow. So, the film is delightfully fun. Full of everything that made noirs great. The people are evil, the sets blackened with shadow, the dialogue peppered with strained analogies, the men brutal, and the women weak. A glorious romp, a cliche which has wrapped around into an archetype. A wonderfully fun film.
Apr 26, 2014
Out of Sight
Saw Out of Sight, a not-bad-not-good heist film. A bank robber with a heart of gold (evidence: he never kills anyone and is George Clooney) is planning to rob a white-collar criminal who was in the pen with him and unwisely bragged about having a bunch of uncut diamonds. Throughout, he's being tailed by a tough lady-cop. The lady-cop is an almost hilariously cliched character. She makes dark reference to having to face sexist discrimination, showing how tough she is, but this toughness is only used to make her into more of a ferocious amazonian sex queen. Also there's implied daddy issues which are referenced exactly once, like the film is ticking off a box in some checklist. And does Clooney sleep her? Of course he sleeps with her. (Characteristically, she disrobes to reveal lacy panties while he shuffles off his pants to reveal white boxers. But it's not sexist. She's a tough cop.)
Anyway, there's also another gang of black dudes who are after the diamonds and Cloon has a black side-kick to help him out (the film flirts with racism the same way it flirts with sexism.) The film also tries to imply that Cloon is just too free, man, for your button-down office jobs and that something wild and untamed inside him compels him to rob banks. He's just so much better than us, and so dashing too!
I'm being mean, but the film is really not very good. That said, it's not terrible either, just kind of stupid. It's always competently entertaining and the protagonist is noble and respectable enough that we are never prevented from identifying with him. It makes no risky or even interesting moves. The romance angle is a bit limp, but it's there for those who want it. Actually, that's a good description of the whole film: "There for those who want it." It sums up my apathy and lack of reaction to this film. I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to hate it.
Anyway, there's also another gang of black dudes who are after the diamonds and Cloon has a black side-kick to help him out (the film flirts with racism the same way it flirts with sexism.) The film also tries to imply that Cloon is just too free, man, for your button-down office jobs and that something wild and untamed inside him compels him to rob banks. He's just so much better than us, and so dashing too!
I'm being mean, but the film is really not very good. That said, it's not terrible either, just kind of stupid. It's always competently entertaining and the protagonist is noble and respectable enough that we are never prevented from identifying with him. It makes no risky or even interesting moves. The romance angle is a bit limp, but it's there for those who want it. Actually, that's a good description of the whole film: "There for those who want it." It sums up my apathy and lack of reaction to this film. I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to hate it.
Apr 24, 2014
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (thanks, Basil!) It was a spy thriller. Well, more subdued than a thriller, more like Enigma than James Bond, a sort of BBC Mystery meets Tom Clancy. Very classy (almost to a fault.) The colour pallet is subdued pastels and browns, even blood (when it comes) is a the almost black colour of red ink. The soundtrack is all brooding clarinets and obsessive violins. The film is set in early 70s London and stars a bunch of familiar Brits (such as this guy, this one here, and this other guy) who are MI6 managers of some kind. We find them in the wake of a disastrous liaison with a Hungarian operative, lead by a recent ex-chief who has vanished (more on this later.) The ex-chief was convinced there was a mole in the operation and it's up to the protagonist, Mr Smiley, to find out who it is (if a mole there be.)
The protagonist has a wife but we never see her. She is alluded to and we hear her voice in flashback. I assumed she was dead but it turns out that she isn't at all. It's just that this movie takes place in a world so obscured by shadows and half-heard details that every fact becomes a sort of crossword puzzle which must be solved. This is very interesting and would bear repeat viewings, but is a bit too much for poor old me. For example, I have no idea what happened to the ex-chief. I think he must have died, but I'm guessing. He just stops being in the film and probably some character darkly muttered he went on a trip or retired or something and I missed it! It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but the film's plot and exposition are a bit too baroque for me to follow.
That said, I believe this is mainly a product of the perverse way that I watch movies. If I were to watch it with other people (and therefore more eyes,) or again, or not in my usual post-coffee slump, I expect these 'mysteries' would readily unfold. I don't begrudge the film my confusion in any case. I kind of hope the movie does leave some things unexplained, just to heighten the theme of obscurity. It would be some much more interesting that way.
The film is dry but interesting, as watching someone solve a puzzle should be. There's enough torture and gun-shots to keep things interesting, but nothing is allowed to break the chilly atmosphere of the film. A thoughtful film. (Also, I was about to attack the little hints of homosexuality about one character as I thought gays were barred from British intelligence back then, but upon doing some research (ie googling,) it turns out that gays were actually kind of common. So I guess the film's historical accuracy should be lauded as well.)
The protagonist has a wife but we never see her. She is alluded to and we hear her voice in flashback. I assumed she was dead but it turns out that she isn't at all. It's just that this movie takes place in a world so obscured by shadows and half-heard details that every fact becomes a sort of crossword puzzle which must be solved. This is very interesting and would bear repeat viewings, but is a bit too much for poor old me. For example, I have no idea what happened to the ex-chief. I think he must have died, but I'm guessing. He just stops being in the film and probably some character darkly muttered he went on a trip or retired or something and I missed it! It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but the film's plot and exposition are a bit too baroque for me to follow.
That said, I believe this is mainly a product of the perverse way that I watch movies. If I were to watch it with other people (and therefore more eyes,) or again, or not in my usual post-coffee slump, I expect these 'mysteries' would readily unfold. I don't begrudge the film my confusion in any case. I kind of hope the movie does leave some things unexplained, just to heighten the theme of obscurity. It would be some much more interesting that way.
The film is dry but interesting, as watching someone solve a puzzle should be. There's enough torture and gun-shots to keep things interesting, but nothing is allowed to break the chilly atmosphere of the film. A thoughtful film. (Also, I was about to attack the little hints of homosexuality about one character as I thought gays were barred from British intelligence back then, but upon doing some research (ie googling,) it turns out that gays were actually kind of common. So I guess the film's historical accuracy should be lauded as well.)
Apr 23, 2014
Enter the Void
Saw Enter the Void, a film based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the book which inspired Synecdoche New York and Jacob's Ladder, so I knew I was in for a bit of a ride. Sure enough, we start the film from the point of view of Oscar, a small-time drug-dealer, who's hallucinating DMT-bred anemones and starfish. We get a Cliffs Notes version of the Book of the Dead and he dies soon after, to begin his journey. From this point, the film floats figuratively and literally from character to character, "seeing" through the eyes of Oscar's soul. We mostly follow his stripper sister (who works at a club called "money, sex, power," (ie distraction, distraction, distraction,) which throbs with a cardiovascular beat.) and his druggy friends. There's a good dose of pain in the film. We witness the untimely and horrible death of his parents more than once. The pain is more poignant than punishing however and it left me feeling equal parts exhausted and soothed.
The visuals are a thing to behold. Neon, psychedelic, amorphous images fly by us as we drift through walls and over cities. When this was in theatres there was an epilepsy warning posted on the teller's booth. They were not joking. Apparently Irreversible, another film by the same director, has a club scene with similar visuals where the camera tilts, whorls, and slides dizzyingly. This film is less abrasive and strident than a lot of visual-centric films I've seen. It evokes David Lynch, but without the morbid intensity, dreamlike and only fleetingly nightmarish.
The film follows Oscar's soul right up until reincarnation (which I felt was slightly too long. After the psychedelics of the after-life what interest does mundane reality hold? This proves I care more about visuals than plot.) He also has a strange relationship with his sister (don't worry, it never gets full-blown incesty but it's a lot closer than me and my sister would be comfortable with.) Frustratingly, the copy of the film I got was slightly fuzzy, enough so that I'm certain I missed some important details (was that Victor in the elevator at the end?) The performances are great however, and for all the visuals the story unfolds quite naturally, in an almost pedestrian, kitchen-sink-ish way. Melodramatic but clumsy, kind of private and quite real-feeling. There's a good sense of voyeurism. A trip of a film which rises a bit above being a mere trip.
The visuals are a thing to behold. Neon, psychedelic, amorphous images fly by us as we drift through walls and over cities. When this was in theatres there was an epilepsy warning posted on the teller's booth. They were not joking. Apparently Irreversible, another film by the same director, has a club scene with similar visuals where the camera tilts, whorls, and slides dizzyingly. This film is less abrasive and strident than a lot of visual-centric films I've seen. It evokes David Lynch, but without the morbid intensity, dreamlike and only fleetingly nightmarish.
The film follows Oscar's soul right up until reincarnation (which I felt was slightly too long. After the psychedelics of the after-life what interest does mundane reality hold? This proves I care more about visuals than plot.) He also has a strange relationship with his sister (don't worry, it never gets full-blown incesty but it's a lot closer than me and my sister would be comfortable with.) Frustratingly, the copy of the film I got was slightly fuzzy, enough so that I'm certain I missed some important details (was that Victor in the elevator at the end?) The performances are great however, and for all the visuals the story unfolds quite naturally, in an almost pedestrian, kitchen-sink-ish way. Melodramatic but clumsy, kind of private and quite real-feeling. There's a good sense of voyeurism. A trip of a film which rises a bit above being a mere trip.
Apr 21, 2014
The Crazies
Saw The Crazies, a horror. The idea is that a secret government experiment gets out of hand (but don't they always?) and infects a small town with crazy. Specifically, the shamble-around-and-kill-everyone type of crazy. The hero is the sheriff, his doctor wife, his trusty deputy, and some other chick. They do their best to survive in face of the zombie crazy-person hordes and the SWAT teams that have been sent also to kill everyone. There's a lot of tense scenes where pressure builds and there's flickery lights and a single high-pitched note on the soundtrack. Scary, but not very original. Don't get me wrong, I had to keep turning down the volume, tensing for a jump-scare, but then I'm a wimp. You get no points for scaring me.
The film uses a super-efficient government as an omniscient and malevolent god, shaping the landscape and outcome of the story. The small-town values are parodied at various times for the sake of either satire or cruelty. For example, after three hick-ish hunters get infected, they begin hooting and high-fiving over the corpses of humans. This could be a PETA commercial. Walking through a burning town, the quartet hear two mad teenagers giggling as they make a hell of a racket beating a dumpster. Childish exuberance becomes malevolent barbarity.
At one point one of the quartet of heroes self-righteously kills some zombies. The other three regard them with suspicion and hostility, wondering if the virus has infected them (which of course it has. If there's more than one or two people, one of them's getting infected. I don't make these rules.) The passivity and empathy of the heroes is unusual in the zombie genre which, as I've pointed out before, often places heavy value on self-reliance, paranoia, and fortresses. In this film, most zombies are known individuals and the weight of the catastrophe seems to take a visible toll on the heroes.
I'm probably reaching on this last point, but I thought there were a few allusions to WW2 as well. There are several SWAT-run camps where people are herded around and, spoiler, the film ends with a bomb. But there the similarities end. In all the film is interesting but sort of in spite of itself. There are some good scenes (the burning town was really great. In fact, any time there's fire things get good) but a lot more self-indulgent ones (the stupid car wash, the surgical saw goin' for his nuts (wakka-wakka!!))
The film uses a super-efficient government as an omniscient and malevolent god, shaping the landscape and outcome of the story. The small-town values are parodied at various times for the sake of either satire or cruelty. For example, after three hick-ish hunters get infected, they begin hooting and high-fiving over the corpses of humans. This could be a PETA commercial. Walking through a burning town, the quartet hear two mad teenagers giggling as they make a hell of a racket beating a dumpster. Childish exuberance becomes malevolent barbarity.
At one point one of the quartet of heroes self-righteously kills some zombies. The other three regard them with suspicion and hostility, wondering if the virus has infected them (which of course it has. If there's more than one or two people, one of them's getting infected. I don't make these rules.) The passivity and empathy of the heroes is unusual in the zombie genre which, as I've pointed out before, often places heavy value on self-reliance, paranoia, and fortresses. In this film, most zombies are known individuals and the weight of the catastrophe seems to take a visible toll on the heroes.
I'm probably reaching on this last point, but I thought there were a few allusions to WW2 as well. There are several SWAT-run camps where people are herded around and, spoiler, the film ends with a bomb. But there the similarities end. In all the film is interesting but sort of in spite of itself. There are some good scenes (the burning town was really great. In fact, any time there's fire things get good) but a lot more self-indulgent ones (the stupid car wash, the surgical saw goin' for his nuts (wakka-wakka!!))
Apr 20, 2014
The Mother and the Whore
Saw The Mother and the Whore, a film which, in spite of its saucy title, I found to be quite dull. It follows the adventures of this dude whose main means of support is from his girlfriend. He wanders around 1970s Paris, always hitting on some woman. He has long conversations in cafes about not much at all. He is an intellectual dilettante, more interested in pretty thoughts and little phrases that you have to think about before discovering that they're bullshit. Now, it may be that in these discursions lies the heart of the film and I'm just too tired/dumb to see it, but it felt like shallow sophistication and Oscar Wildean "paradox." I believe I'm reading his character correctly in any case. At one point he's flipping through a book on the German S.S. and lightly quipping about the pictures in it. He then turns to a page where an officer is lynching a woman and hastily puts the book down before changing the subject. From this I gather that, for all his refinement, he's more comfortable toying with ideas than actually coming to grips with them.
So anyway, his girlfriend is long-suffering and tolerates his womanizing with relative grace (she has this ironic hipster thing going on. Either due to suppression or malaise, nothing seems to really reach her.) She provides shelter and emotional support to him in exchange for being tossed a bone once in a while. She is clearly the mother of the title. (I was wondering at first if she played the dual role of both mother and whore or if he was supposed to be the whore, but I was wrong.) He hooks up with a nurse who treats him like the amusing sack of meat he treats his usual hookups as. She discusses his anatomy with clinical precision and later Freudianly penetrates him with a shot of vitamin-C. She is also kind of a man-eater, being the titular whore and all. She is irresponsible but a lot of fun. So, he has two women who love him, both of whom he loves. What's a guy to do?
Well, the answer is talk endlessly and drunkenly about sex and love, obviously. The film climaxes in an hour-long makeout-session/chat-a-thon which I had to take in 15-minute segments (the whole movie is 3.5 hours long. I knew I wouldn't have the attention span going in.) It tries to be very transgressive and progressive but it's a bit tame to anyone who is aware that women also enjoy sex and that polyamorous relationships exist. Also there's boobs a-plenty, so whoop-de-doo. There's meta-level references to acting, roles, and films which is typical of French New Wave. This in particular suggests to me that there is something deeper that I'm missing here. There's also plenty to be said about the protagonist's fraught relationship with both women and with womankind in general, but unfortunately there is nothing to be said which I care about. It's devoid of the mind-games that I like and not very gripping either and so whatever there is to grasp slipped entirely through my fingers. Approach with caution.
So anyway, his girlfriend is long-suffering and tolerates his womanizing with relative grace (she has this ironic hipster thing going on. Either due to suppression or malaise, nothing seems to really reach her.) She provides shelter and emotional support to him in exchange for being tossed a bone once in a while. She is clearly the mother of the title. (I was wondering at first if she played the dual role of both mother and whore or if he was supposed to be the whore, but I was wrong.) He hooks up with a nurse who treats him like the amusing sack of meat he treats his usual hookups as. She discusses his anatomy with clinical precision and later Freudianly penetrates him with a shot of vitamin-C. She is also kind of a man-eater, being the titular whore and all. She is irresponsible but a lot of fun. So, he has two women who love him, both of whom he loves. What's a guy to do?
Well, the answer is talk endlessly and drunkenly about sex and love, obviously. The film climaxes in an hour-long makeout-session/chat-a-thon which I had to take in 15-minute segments (the whole movie is 3.5 hours long. I knew I wouldn't have the attention span going in.) It tries to be very transgressive and progressive but it's a bit tame to anyone who is aware that women also enjoy sex and that polyamorous relationships exist. Also there's boobs a-plenty, so whoop-de-doo. There's meta-level references to acting, roles, and films which is typical of French New Wave. This in particular suggests to me that there is something deeper that I'm missing here. There's also plenty to be said about the protagonist's fraught relationship with both women and with womankind in general, but unfortunately there is nothing to be said which I care about. It's devoid of the mind-games that I like and not very gripping either and so whatever there is to grasp slipped entirely through my fingers. Approach with caution.
Apr 19, 2014
Xanadu
Saw Xanadu, a disco musical which is certainly spectacular but also very facile and queasily dream-struck. It feels very enthusiastic but overwrought and kind of calculating. Also, this may be incorrect but it felt very gay to me as well (I know, right. A disco musical feels somehow gay? Preposterous!) It stars some dude as an artist lacking in amusement. So he teams up with Gene Kelly and opens a roller-disco with the help of a mysterious woman who may or may not be one of the nine muses (but is pretty obviously definitely a muse.) The muse and the dude fall in love, providing various "magical" sequences which span from actually delightful (the animated sequence) to queasy and freaky (Gene Kelly's horrible makeover montage.)
The bits between the fabulous dance numbers are almost entirely limp. Only Gene can act of the three of them so the other two just provide connective-tissue performances, mouthing words until they get to sing and dance and be just generally attractive again. I feel kind of cruel knocking this film because it's clearly trying to be whimsical and free-spirited and so forth. such films rely on us suspending our powers of disbelief and asks us to throw off our jaded cynicism for a while. I understand movies that are swooning and ethereal, but this one just feels so artificial to me (and not the good kind of magic-show artificial.) As an example, we frequently see dancers who are unaware that their faces are on camera. They energetically twirl and gesticulate, but their faces remain robotically blank. What should be a fun explosion of colour and movement feels flat, controlled, and creepy.
Anyway, it has its moments (the animated scene is really, truly fun and the half-animated Mount Olympus was good too) but on the whole I think I'm more laughing at it than with it and cringing more often than I feel comfortable.
The bits between the fabulous dance numbers are almost entirely limp. Only Gene can act of the three of them so the other two just provide connective-tissue performances, mouthing words until they get to sing and dance and be just generally attractive again. I feel kind of cruel knocking this film because it's clearly trying to be whimsical and free-spirited and so forth. such films rely on us suspending our powers of disbelief and asks us to throw off our jaded cynicism for a while. I understand movies that are swooning and ethereal, but this one just feels so artificial to me (and not the good kind of magic-show artificial.) As an example, we frequently see dancers who are unaware that their faces are on camera. They energetically twirl and gesticulate, but their faces remain robotically blank. What should be a fun explosion of colour and movement feels flat, controlled, and creepy.
Anyway, it has its moments (the animated scene is really, truly fun and the half-animated Mount Olympus was good too) but on the whole I think I'm more laughing at it than with it and cringing more often than I feel comfortable.
Apr 18, 2014
Phantom of the Paradise
Saw Phantom of the Paradise (thanks, Lea!) It was a very messy musical. Loosely based on Phantom of the Opera, it has a struggling composer who is abused by an evil music mogul. In response, he becomes a twisted but sympathetic Marilyn Manson and takes on the evil mogul, John Denver. The film is crazy and campy, one moment a gay guy is outrageously mugging and hamming it up, the next moment a lanky ghoul is screaming in a robotic voice. Very strange, almost abrasive, best enjoyed as a sort of wild ride. Very operatic in its simplicity of motivation and convolution of plot, very theatrical too. There is a theme of birds which doesn't really go anywhere (although it does imply things will work out for a certain character.) It has the trappings of class which it flaps about as great gaudy set dressing to the central spectacle.
It's very pulpy and fun though, don't get me wrong. It's a screaming mess, but not a snotty mess like the Troma films often are (this is not a Troma film, btw. It's a De Palma.) There are scenes that seem custom-designed for airbrushed murals, plastered across buildings. There's a German expressionist song at one point that's just amazing. It's huge and as a result kind of grand but unwieldy. It has some 70s ickyness too. The gay guy is just an "outrageous" symbol of the excess of musicians and women are kind of treated as sex objects throughout (I believe the anti-feminist backlash was fully underway at this point.) Then again the central female rebels against this but then-again-then-again later succumbs to the devilish charm of John Denver.
So this film hit me in a pretty sweet spot. It's not a great or brilliant film, but it's fun and strange and would be good at a party. It's a film that knows very well how ridiculous it is and plays that ridiculousness to the pompous hilt. Not a comedy, but ridiculous none-the-less.
It's very pulpy and fun though, don't get me wrong. It's a screaming mess, but not a snotty mess like the Troma films often are (this is not a Troma film, btw. It's a De Palma.) There are scenes that seem custom-designed for airbrushed murals, plastered across buildings. There's a German expressionist song at one point that's just amazing. It's huge and as a result kind of grand but unwieldy. It has some 70s ickyness too. The gay guy is just an "outrageous" symbol of the excess of musicians and women are kind of treated as sex objects throughout (I believe the anti-feminist backlash was fully underway at this point.) Then again the central female rebels against this but then-again-then-again later succumbs to the devilish charm of John Denver.
So this film hit me in a pretty sweet spot. It's not a great or brilliant film, but it's fun and strange and would be good at a party. It's a film that knows very well how ridiculous it is and plays that ridiculousness to the pompous hilt. Not a comedy, but ridiculous none-the-less.
Apr 16, 2014
Dead Ringers
Saw Dead Ringers, a Cronenberg film about two identical twin brothers who share everything, including their identities. Beverly is the shy intellectual one, Elliot the brave charismatic one. This difference is only known to themselves and us audience members however, and they swap places with each other so often that it's very hard in any scene where they don't name each other for even we, who have been let behind the scenes, to tell them apart. The nature of their relationship is explored in a manner that is alternately leering and compassionate. There's a scene midway through the film where they are both dancing on either side of a woman, Beverly in front and Elliot in back. The woman seems to be more interested in Elliot, and he moves his hands over her hands, guiding over Beverly's body. Is Elliot providing for his brother by redirecting the woman's advances, or is stealing her away from him. Or is he perhaps making some kind of love to Beverly, by means of this woman? An ambiguous scene which I believe perfectly encapsulates the film as a whole. Ambiguous, oddly sexual, fairly grotesque.
The brothers are gynaecologists due, thematically, to most of their issues arising from women. Indeed, when Beverly falls in love with an actress with three cervixes is when shit starts to hit the fan. Elliot struggles to recapture Beverly from the actress and to "resynchronize." they bring up the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, who both died in the same night. Chang in his sleep and Eng, according to the movie, from fright at his dead brother. I think it would have been more thematically appropriate to nix this flummery about being frightened to death for the truth: that Eng's heart pumped his oxygenated blood into Cheng's corpse where it stayed until he bled to death into his brother. Something more along these lines is what happens in the film (although ultimately crisis is averted (in a way.))
The body-horror Cronenberg is known for is slow coming but eventually gets there. His interest in obsessions and madness is a more through-going theme. The brothers and their creepy but tender relationship (and it's eventual dissolution) is the central focus of the film. Their emotional co-dependance is linked with the physical co-dependence of Chang and Eng. A kind of a freakshow of a film, high on sensation and light on insight but it's Cronenberg, so it's a hell of a freakshow, at least.
The brothers are gynaecologists due, thematically, to most of their issues arising from women. Indeed, when Beverly falls in love with an actress with three cervixes is when shit starts to hit the fan. Elliot struggles to recapture Beverly from the actress and to "resynchronize." they bring up the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, who both died in the same night. Chang in his sleep and Eng, according to the movie, from fright at his dead brother. I think it would have been more thematically appropriate to nix this flummery about being frightened to death for the truth: that Eng's heart pumped his oxygenated blood into Cheng's corpse where it stayed until he bled to death into his brother. Something more along these lines is what happens in the film (although ultimately crisis is averted (in a way.))
The body-horror Cronenberg is known for is slow coming but eventually gets there. His interest in obsessions and madness is a more through-going theme. The brothers and their creepy but tender relationship (and it's eventual dissolution) is the central focus of the film. Their emotional co-dependance is linked with the physical co-dependence of Chang and Eng. A kind of a freakshow of a film, high on sensation and light on insight but it's Cronenberg, so it's a hell of a freakshow, at least.
Apr 14, 2014
Sullivan's Travels
Saw Sullivan's Travels, a sweet old black and white film from Preston Sturges. It follows a director who's trapped in the comedy genre when all he wants to do is make important message pictures. He decides to dress as a tramp at the height of the great depression and travel the country to see what's really going on. Almost immediately his proper, mincing butler delivers a searing indictment of the scheme. He warns that poverty is not ennobling or romantic, that people will not take kindly to his masquerade, that he may well be killed if he is discovered, and that he may well die anyway. Ignoring all of this, he first teams up with Veronica Lake (whose later life would render this casting eerily appropriate) and dives into the skiddiest of skid row. (A little aside about Veronica here, she has the greatest, iciest, femme-fatale-iest persona and delivery. I think it's supposed to be kind of a defence mechanism in this film, but it seems a lot more genuine than when she's giggling and kidding around later. Anyway...)
The film is a comedy however and the awful choking struggle of the homeless and destitute is never really given much room. The closest we get is a montage of crowded shelters and breadlines. It's pretty sad, but in the next moment we have a motor-mouthed Hollywood exec getting hilariously flustered, so we are mercifully distracted. Eventually the butler's prediction comes true and the director is mugged and left for dead. The mugger meets with justice, by the way, which annoyed me a great deal. Think how much more honest and cruel it would have been had he just capered off into the night with our hero's money and shoes. Anyway, stricken with amnesia, he beats up a rail worker and is sent to a prison colony where things get Cool Hand Luke-level shitty. He then, in a marvellous scene, has his revelation that what the poor really want and need is not more instruction and moralizing, but entertainment and laughter.
This message is extremely kind and indulgent. I bristle slightly at the indulgence and I feel compelled to point out that people are usually clever enough to not go to movies they won't like and that therefore you should make whatever you damn please, Mr director, but I have a hard time actually seriously objecting to it. Films with messages and philosophy are fun for those who want to learn something from a film and when I was younger (and not much younger either, I'm ashamed to say) I used to think that not wanting to learn from a film was tantamount to not wanting to learn at all. That to watch purely for entertainment was to waste time and to delude oneself. Eventually though, I gained the insight this film gives for free. There's nothing inherently wrong with wasting time or even self-deception. Yes these can be harmful in excess, but if you've had a hard day (or just any day,) why not switch off your analytical brain, settle down, and just believe that there's justice and simplicity in the world, just for a few hours? Why should everything be real and honest and trenchant and fraught? Ah, this may seem obvious to you, but to me this was a minor revelation. The protagonist delivers the film's central thesis beautifully but then ends it with "It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." Ah, 1940s! Never change!
The film is a comedy however and the awful choking struggle of the homeless and destitute is never really given much room. The closest we get is a montage of crowded shelters and breadlines. It's pretty sad, but in the next moment we have a motor-mouthed Hollywood exec getting hilariously flustered, so we are mercifully distracted. Eventually the butler's prediction comes true and the director is mugged and left for dead. The mugger meets with justice, by the way, which annoyed me a great deal. Think how much more honest and cruel it would have been had he just capered off into the night with our hero's money and shoes. Anyway, stricken with amnesia, he beats up a rail worker and is sent to a prison colony where things get Cool Hand Luke-level shitty. He then, in a marvellous scene, has his revelation that what the poor really want and need is not more instruction and moralizing, but entertainment and laughter.
This message is extremely kind and indulgent. I bristle slightly at the indulgence and I feel compelled to point out that people are usually clever enough to not go to movies they won't like and that therefore you should make whatever you damn please, Mr director, but I have a hard time actually seriously objecting to it. Films with messages and philosophy are fun for those who want to learn something from a film and when I was younger (and not much younger either, I'm ashamed to say) I used to think that not wanting to learn from a film was tantamount to not wanting to learn at all. That to watch purely for entertainment was to waste time and to delude oneself. Eventually though, I gained the insight this film gives for free. There's nothing inherently wrong with wasting time or even self-deception. Yes these can be harmful in excess, but if you've had a hard day (or just any day,) why not switch off your analytical brain, settle down, and just believe that there's justice and simplicity in the world, just for a few hours? Why should everything be real and honest and trenchant and fraught? Ah, this may seem obvious to you, but to me this was a minor revelation. The protagonist delivers the film's central thesis beautifully but then ends it with "It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." Ah, 1940s! Never change!
Apr 13, 2014
Sucker Punch
Saw Sucker Punch. It made a small splash a while ago when it was accused of being sexist only for the director, Zack Snyder to retort that no, it is actually feminist because this film is a clever skewering of sexist tropes. Well, that sounds like a challenge, Mr Snyder. Let's see if we can tease this question apart. It was with this spirit that I undertook this film and after watching it myself... I still have no idea who's right.
Let me explain: the film is about a girl who is sent off to Crazy Acres because of an inheritance scheme. There, she is scheduled for lobotomy by shish kebab. At the moment of penetration, she escapes into a fantasy where she is a newcomer in a whore house. The whore house is pretty clearly a fantasy-version of Crazy Acres though and everyone has double roles. The head doctor becomes a choreographer, the crooked orderly who forged her papers is the pimp of the house. In the whore-house she has the power to entrance anyone who watches her dance. When she dances, we audience see visions of epic nerd-bait badassitude. In one vision, she and the other whores slice their way with katanas through hordes of steam-powered WW1 Germans, all to a remixed version of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly fun. This is allegory inside of metaphor though, so the going quickly gets tricky.
The interpretive dances are exploitative, definitely. They deal in the kind of babes-n-guns, bikinis-are-best-armour, strong-female-character pandering we're used to receiving from video games. They have a self-serious tone which I assume is a joke (anyway, it would be really hard to take steam-powered people seriously so I'll be ingenuous) and lots of clever ties to "reality" which I dug. The girl seems to make her sexiness and pathos into a distracting, fascinating weapon. This is interesting and an idea that's not usually brought up in modern film, but mainly because it's been kind of done. The idea of a person being so purposefully helpless that their oppressors look like monsters in contrast is as old as the Age of Martyrdom and the idea of women demurring their oppressors to death is a mighty hard sell. I like the idea of making weaknesses into weapons, but I don't really believe it (not that sexiness is a weakness anyway... hmm.)
Then again, the film deals heavily with fascination and self-delusion. Particularly men's fascination with women and the self-delusion of those women. Could it be that the girl sees herself as the object she's being treated as? She's a tough fighter in her fantasies, but these are only fantasies and they anyway most closely resemble the fantasies of Rob Liefeld. The dazzling nature of the fantasies is thematically appropriate then because it suggests she has been deluded as we and her audience are too, by overwhelming amusement.
I'm kind of drifting off into navel-gazing nonsense here, but then I'm ill-equipped to wade into gender politics. I'd like to repeat that this film is tremendously fun. There's a lot of grist for a spirited sexist-not-sexist debate (and lots of phallic symbols. We are definitely dealing with gender politics here.) At worst, the film is sexist junk-food. At best it's junk-food with some kind of buried triple-negative feminist message. So come for the lovely junk, stay for the mind-games.
Let me explain: the film is about a girl who is sent off to Crazy Acres because of an inheritance scheme. There, she is scheduled for lobotomy by shish kebab. At the moment of penetration, she escapes into a fantasy where she is a newcomer in a whore house. The whore house is pretty clearly a fantasy-version of Crazy Acres though and everyone has double roles. The head doctor becomes a choreographer, the crooked orderly who forged her papers is the pimp of the house. In the whore-house she has the power to entrance anyone who watches her dance. When she dances, we audience see visions of epic nerd-bait badassitude. In one vision, she and the other whores slice their way with katanas through hordes of steam-powered WW1 Germans, all to a remixed version of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly fun. This is allegory inside of metaphor though, so the going quickly gets tricky.
The interpretive dances are exploitative, definitely. They deal in the kind of babes-n-guns, bikinis-are-best-armour, strong-female-character pandering we're used to receiving from video games. They have a self-serious tone which I assume is a joke (anyway, it would be really hard to take steam-powered people seriously so I'll be ingenuous) and lots of clever ties to "reality" which I dug. The girl seems to make her sexiness and pathos into a distracting, fascinating weapon. This is interesting and an idea that's not usually brought up in modern film, but mainly because it's been kind of done. The idea of a person being so purposefully helpless that their oppressors look like monsters in contrast is as old as the Age of Martyrdom and the idea of women demurring their oppressors to death is a mighty hard sell. I like the idea of making weaknesses into weapons, but I don't really believe it (not that sexiness is a weakness anyway... hmm.)
Then again, the film deals heavily with fascination and self-delusion. Particularly men's fascination with women and the self-delusion of those women. Could it be that the girl sees herself as the object she's being treated as? She's a tough fighter in her fantasies, but these are only fantasies and they anyway most closely resemble the fantasies of Rob Liefeld. The dazzling nature of the fantasies is thematically appropriate then because it suggests she has been deluded as we and her audience are too, by overwhelming amusement.
I'm kind of drifting off into navel-gazing nonsense here, but then I'm ill-equipped to wade into gender politics. I'd like to repeat that this film is tremendously fun. There's a lot of grist for a spirited sexist-not-sexist debate (and lots of phallic symbols. We are definitely dealing with gender politics here.) At worst, the film is sexist junk-food. At best it's junk-food with some kind of buried triple-negative feminist message. So come for the lovely junk, stay for the mind-games.
Apr 12, 2014
13 Assassins
Saw 13 Assassins (thanks, Basil!) The film was about a colossal fight between 13 assassins vs 70 grunts. The film is fairly restrained, considering this premise. The assassins are not excessively cool and they don't have gratuitous show-off scenes. The mood is not so much kick-ass as just grim and cynical. The lead-up to the fight is spent subtly reassuring us viewers that the good guys will win and that the fight will be epic and motivating the heroes' actions. Shit gets quite grim here. There's a lot of super-cruelty that I was at first enjoying the grotesque excess of. The Asian lack of filmic restraint (which I've brought up before. It is my pet theory, nourished with gobs of confirmation bias.) serves this film well. The bad guy is just so psychotically evil, we want to see him punished. The good guys are motivated to rebellion against their will and we feel for their weary "well someone's gotta do something" attitude. And then, oh lordy, that fight scene.
The fight scene is really worth it. It's just so kick-ass. There's flaming bulls, man. Flaming bulls. After this heady climax, things sober up a little and the red corn syrup drenches our heroes. There's 13 of them, so what's one or two less, you see? The ending is very bleak and weary, leaving us a little disillusioned and (if we are not self-indulgent) a little disgusted with ourselves. When the baddie is defeated, and when the grunts are being mowed down in that fight, it is awesome and satisfying, but I can't help remembering the moralizing of Tarantino. Our schadenfreude taints us as well and tugs at our facile sense of own decency.
A good movie, it's definitely the best action movie I've seen in a while. Check it out. The biggest flaw, I would say, is that I had to read subtitles. Really there should be a shot-for-shot remake with American actors to correct this travesty. And also that way there can be one-liners! And/or dubstep! And Wilhelm screams! And also, why do *none* of the horses talk? Hollywood, you've been asleep at the wheel.
Edit: oh wait, Takashi Miike directed this? The super-cruelty and grimness make sense now. As does the ending. He is another director who argues for necessary evils, and whose logic makes me uncomfortable. Good show, Miike. I really should watch more of you.
The fight scene is really worth it. It's just so kick-ass. There's flaming bulls, man. Flaming bulls. After this heady climax, things sober up a little and the red corn syrup drenches our heroes. There's 13 of them, so what's one or two less, you see? The ending is very bleak and weary, leaving us a little disillusioned and (if we are not self-indulgent) a little disgusted with ourselves. When the baddie is defeated, and when the grunts are being mowed down in that fight, it is awesome and satisfying, but I can't help remembering the moralizing of Tarantino. Our schadenfreude taints us as well and tugs at our facile sense of own decency.
A good movie, it's definitely the best action movie I've seen in a while. Check it out. The biggest flaw, I would say, is that I had to read subtitles. Really there should be a shot-for-shot remake with American actors to correct this travesty. And also that way there can be one-liners! And/or dubstep! And Wilhelm screams! And also, why do *none* of the horses talk? Hollywood, you've been asleep at the wheel.
Edit: oh wait, Takashi Miike directed this? The super-cruelty and grimness make sense now. As does the ending. He is another director who argues for necessary evils, and whose logic makes me uncomfortable. Good show, Miike. I really should watch more of you.
Apr 11, 2014
Tideland
Saw Tideland, a Gilliam film. This one was about death. An adorable little girl and her heroine junkie father move to a house on an endless, sweeping prairie. The junkie father rambles endlessly about Norse legends and bog mummies, and he wears a yggdrasil symbol on his back (about the Yggdrasil, several important scenes happen in the shadows of gnarled old trees and holes and tunnels feature prominently.) His Norse obsessions leads him to surround his dead wife with her favourite possessions before trying to set the whole heap on fire.
A crazy neighbour lady spouts kinda-christian rhetoric and clearly her interests are more to do with resurrection. We discover she's twisted this idea away from the metaphysical and attempts to give the dead a literal, corporeal life after death. She is deathly allergic to bees, which are sometimes symbols of resurrection, signifying her corruption of the concept. Resurrection is also a mini theme. A one point the girl dreams her dolls are resurrected as angels and babies. Throughout, the adorable girl is trying to come to terms with the deaths around her (which I found a bit hard to swallow. She looks old enough to recognize death, if perhaps not to deal with it appropriately.) This she does mainly by means of escaping into increasingly elaborate dream worlds, starting with Alice in Wonderland and soon compounding her own whimsy with the other characters' madness and imbecility.
Waves of water and grain are used to symbolize the process of death (especially her father's death. Note his dying words.) By the end of the film, the girl has dived deep and can only be rescued by one of the neighbours who owns a (pretend) submarine. Only by the cataclysmic "end of the world" can she move on with her life.
Note of course that all of the above is just my reading. I tend to get carried away by perceived patterns and themes and symbols and so forth, so have a few grains of salt, won't you? Symbols & c aside, the film is quite grotesque, featuring a lot of queasy bits. There's a healthy dose of splendid visuals and one or two breathtaking scenes (the fall down the rabbit hole, the crawling through the closet) but be warned: this isn't the kind of film to watch with other people present.
A crazy neighbour lady spouts kinda-christian rhetoric and clearly her interests are more to do with resurrection. We discover she's twisted this idea away from the metaphysical and attempts to give the dead a literal, corporeal life after death. She is deathly allergic to bees, which are sometimes symbols of resurrection, signifying her corruption of the concept. Resurrection is also a mini theme. A one point the girl dreams her dolls are resurrected as angels and babies. Throughout, the adorable girl is trying to come to terms with the deaths around her (which I found a bit hard to swallow. She looks old enough to recognize death, if perhaps not to deal with it appropriately.) This she does mainly by means of escaping into increasingly elaborate dream worlds, starting with Alice in Wonderland and soon compounding her own whimsy with the other characters' madness and imbecility.
Waves of water and grain are used to symbolize the process of death (especially her father's death. Note his dying words.) By the end of the film, the girl has dived deep and can only be rescued by one of the neighbours who owns a (pretend) submarine. Only by the cataclysmic "end of the world" can she move on with her life.
Note of course that all of the above is just my reading. I tend to get carried away by perceived patterns and themes and symbols and so forth, so have a few grains of salt, won't you? Symbols & c aside, the film is quite grotesque, featuring a lot of queasy bits. There's a healthy dose of splendid visuals and one or two breathtaking scenes (the fall down the rabbit hole, the crawling through the closet) but be warned: this isn't the kind of film to watch with other people present.
Apr 10, 2014
Drag Me to Hell
Saw Drag Me to Hell, a deeply silly movie. It's a supernatural horror/comedy about a blond girl trying to survive a gypsy curse. The film has a few genuinely tense moments (in my cowardice, I brought the volume down a few times) but it's all slathered in a thick layer of ridiculousness. For example, she's being stalked by a creepy old gypsy woman in a garage. She sees the old lady's silk handkerchief wafting creepily to the ground. She turns and THE HANKIE IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER OH MY GOD!!! It's just fabric, a limp piece of cloth, and it's being treated like The Monster. Later on, the hankie is stuck to her face and she's trying to pull it off as it makes sucking and squealing noises because why not?
The film takes itself seriously so far as it is necessary to make the plot feel important, but it's clearly much more preoccupied with scary/silly jokes. There's just way too much goofy inventiveness and gross-out gags. At one point, our hapless heroine gets a bad nose-bleed at work. Her manager comes over to help and she begins vomiting blood. Aghast, she clamps her hand over mouth and, after a tiny pause, the blood then shoots out of her nose with a cork-popping sound. This is more ghoulish than scary, and more ridiculously silly than anything else.
The film is weak in the unimportant plot. There's a lot of little weaknesses in the characters too. For example, the manager is clearly crazy-manipulative, but I think he's supposed to be more paternal. At one point the kind-hearted main character must pick someone in a diner to 'transfer' the curse to. She picks an ill-looking old man but then changes her mind when an equally ill-looking woman joins his booth. Oh, he's married? Why then maybe his life isn't worthless after all.
But the film's mind and heart are clearly not in these scenes. The manager is not intended to be thought of at all. His manipulations are perhaps merely cynical window-dressing in this curse-riddled world. The old man is meant to signify not the girl's callousness but rather her desperate state of mind. The film's problems are no more than those of, say, The Mummy which is a (not-so-)guilty pleasure of many of my friends. This film is goofy, a little scary, and gross-out gory. I liked laughing at/with it.
Edit: Oh, Sam Raimi directed this. Well that explains everything.
The film takes itself seriously so far as it is necessary to make the plot feel important, but it's clearly much more preoccupied with scary/silly jokes. There's just way too much goofy inventiveness and gross-out gags. At one point, our hapless heroine gets a bad nose-bleed at work. Her manager comes over to help and she begins vomiting blood. Aghast, she clamps her hand over mouth and, after a tiny pause, the blood then shoots out of her nose with a cork-popping sound. This is more ghoulish than scary, and more ridiculously silly than anything else.
The film is weak in the unimportant plot. There's a lot of little weaknesses in the characters too. For example, the manager is clearly crazy-manipulative, but I think he's supposed to be more paternal. At one point the kind-hearted main character must pick someone in a diner to 'transfer' the curse to. She picks an ill-looking old man but then changes her mind when an equally ill-looking woman joins his booth. Oh, he's married? Why then maybe his life isn't worthless after all.
But the film's mind and heart are clearly not in these scenes. The manager is not intended to be thought of at all. His manipulations are perhaps merely cynical window-dressing in this curse-riddled world. The old man is meant to signify not the girl's callousness but rather her desperate state of mind. The film's problems are no more than those of, say, The Mummy which is a (not-so-)guilty pleasure of many of my friends. This film is goofy, a little scary, and gross-out gory. I liked laughing at/with it.
Edit: Oh, Sam Raimi directed this. Well that explains everything.
Apr 9, 2014
Monsieur Verdoux
Saw Monsieur Verdoux, a Charlie Chaplin film, though not starring the 'little tramp.' This one follows the murderous seducer Monsieur Verdoux. This film is a comedy and set in the early 40s however, so the murders are never on screen and the women are rich twits one and all. It supposed to be ghoulish fun but in these jaded times it comes off quite soft. Chaplin does his usual mincing and winking but this time it's supposed to be kind of ghastly and effete and Peter Lorre-ish. He is also supposed to be an increasingly sympathetic character. Everyone remotely sympathetic seems delighted by the morbidity of his livelihood and the cops and witnesses on his tail are shrill, hick-ish types (also has a cameo from Fred Mertz AKA William Frawley.)
As the noose tightens around Chaplin, he becomes introspective and grandiloquent. The stock crash and world war form the backdrop of the third act, lending an apocalyptic air to the story. There's much talk of murderers with mass killing machines (which is of course how they referred to bombs back then) which I believe s supposed to be sobering and sophisticated but feels more sophomoric and cynical to me. It's a bit too self-serving to excuse your actions by the actions of nations. So, okay, his character is definitely flawed but then he is a murderer so this has been some sterling detective work on my part.
The film is a farce, a genre I usually hate, however it is a farce with a bit of heart to it and for me that redeems it. It's very much sympathy for the devil (literally in the end scenes) which I've decried in other pictures (usually ones helmed by Tarantino et al) but at least this film was not just watching jerks be jerks. Chaplin can't stand to let his characters be hated and the 10% pathos this brings is refreshing (for a farce.)
As the noose tightens around Chaplin, he becomes introspective and grandiloquent. The stock crash and world war form the backdrop of the third act, lending an apocalyptic air to the story. There's much talk of murderers with mass killing machines (which is of course how they referred to bombs back then) which I believe s supposed to be sobering and sophisticated but feels more sophomoric and cynical to me. It's a bit too self-serving to excuse your actions by the actions of nations. So, okay, his character is definitely flawed but then he is a murderer so this has been some sterling detective work on my part.
The film is a farce, a genre I usually hate, however it is a farce with a bit of heart to it and for me that redeems it. It's very much sympathy for the devil (literally in the end scenes) which I've decried in other pictures (usually ones helmed by Tarantino et al) but at least this film was not just watching jerks be jerks. Chaplin can't stand to let his characters be hated and the 10% pathos this brings is refreshing (for a farce.)
Apr 7, 2014
The Blues Brothers
Saw The Blues Brothers. It was a lot of fun! The film follows Jake and Elwood as they try to get The Band back together and save the orphanage. The early sequences with the nun reminded me a lot of the Coen brothers' stuff. It's very straightfaced and absurd with a hint of ominousness strength about it. The characters are often starkly framed by doorways and windows. Later on, the film reveals a deeply comic undercurrent, under the self-serious facade. I caught on about the time a random woman fires an RPG round at them and they kind of dust themselves off, unfazed. There's a lot of great jokes throughout (and these aren't heavy-handed, gag-centric jokes, but character and story-driven jokes. You know, the good kind.) They get their first gig playing at a bar that's so depressing a waitress is literally crying. Also, when things start heating up, the endless 20-car pileups of cop cars was always hilarious. Also the spectacular free-fall from above the skyline that the neonazis (neonazis are involved) do after falling off of a bridge. That's just amazing.
There's also cameos from a lot of old soul singers (James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and apparently most of the members of the band are famous although I didn't recognize them (but then, I'm not very musically cultured.)) which are fun but I felt were kind of wasted on me (again, musically uncultured.) The music's great though and there's lots of it. I dug this film. Comedy is tough for me to enjoy because my instincts to tease apart just how it works kind of kills the magic. Maybe I was too tired for analysis this time around though, because I really liked this one. Yeah.
There's also cameos from a lot of old soul singers (James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and apparently most of the members of the band are famous although I didn't recognize them (but then, I'm not very musically cultured.)) which are fun but I felt were kind of wasted on me (again, musically uncultured.) The music's great though and there's lots of it. I dug this film. Comedy is tough for me to enjoy because my instincts to tease apart just how it works kind of kills the magic. Maybe I was too tired for analysis this time around though, because I really liked this one. Yeah.
Apr 6, 2014
The Oscar
Saw The Oscar (thanks, Lea!) I loved to hate it. It's about an arrogant, self-absorbed man who becomes an actor and is nominated for the Oscar award ("but does he win?" the film endlessly teases us.) I think he's supposed to be fascinatingly flawed, a brutal but honest man whose brutality helps in his rise to fame. Sort of like Plainview in There Will Be Blood. Unfortunately it comes out more like The Room. Nobody behaves in a way that I recognize as human behavior. The central character is clearly some advanced form of sociopath (which, ok, is intentional) but everything he does rings alarm bells all over the place. I can't believe that anyone could stand his presence for more than an hour and yet he's given a lick-spittle sidekick and women lining up around the block to love and defend him and this is even before he hits Hollywood!
In humble beginnings, he has a clearly abusive relationship with this stripper. She throws him out after he rages at the audacity of her asking him to get a job. He then meets up with a fashion designer who is inexplicably charmed by his relentless, lowbrow "can we just fuck already" conversation. She unwisely takes him to a play rehearsal where he first exhibits his star quality by threatening an actor with a knife and then publicly breaking up with his fashion-designer girlfriend. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Hollywood stars are born, I guess. (Later on in the film, after money has happened, he shows up at the fashion designer's doorstep to win her back. He asks her to visit him on his boat for old times' sake. She does.)
There's also some deeply uncomfortable suggestions that this central jerk is actually a genuine Real Man, like he's some kind of beautiful beast. Most of these assertions come from him, so they may be intentionally worrying, but there's a scene where a panel of agents declare him to be a real man no less than five times, one after the other. Also, in a semi-showdown with the fashion designer, he suggests she likes it when he's mean to her. This makes her contort her face and hiss "Shut up! Shut up!" Ugh. Just walk away, honey.
Even when the his defeat comes, it's less triumphant and terrible and more just plain hysterical. Fortunately the film also has a hefty dose of weird old 50s-isms ("You got a glass head, I can see right through it! It's how I know you're stupid!) which provide much grist for bewildered repetition to your equally drunk friends. This would make a great party movie. The central character is abhorrent, the acting and shooting is either bewildering or pedestrian, and the script is full of delightful little zen koans. A wonderfully horrible film! Go see it!
In humble beginnings, he has a clearly abusive relationship with this stripper. She throws him out after he rages at the audacity of her asking him to get a job. He then meets up with a fashion designer who is inexplicably charmed by his relentless, lowbrow "can we just fuck already" conversation. She unwisely takes him to a play rehearsal where he first exhibits his star quality by threatening an actor with a knife and then publicly breaking up with his fashion-designer girlfriend. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Hollywood stars are born, I guess. (Later on in the film, after money has happened, he shows up at the fashion designer's doorstep to win her back. He asks her to visit him on his boat for old times' sake. She does.)
There's also some deeply uncomfortable suggestions that this central jerk is actually a genuine Real Man, like he's some kind of beautiful beast. Most of these assertions come from him, so they may be intentionally worrying, but there's a scene where a panel of agents declare him to be a real man no less than five times, one after the other. Also, in a semi-showdown with the fashion designer, he suggests she likes it when he's mean to her. This makes her contort her face and hiss "Shut up! Shut up!" Ugh. Just walk away, honey.
Even when the his defeat comes, it's less triumphant and terrible and more just plain hysterical. Fortunately the film also has a hefty dose of weird old 50s-isms ("You got a glass head, I can see right through it! It's how I know you're stupid!) which provide much grist for bewildered repetition to your equally drunk friends. This would make a great party movie. The central character is abhorrent, the acting and shooting is either bewildering or pedestrian, and the script is full of delightful little zen koans. A wonderfully horrible film! Go see it!
Apr 4, 2014
The Fly (1986)
Saw the Cronenberg version of The Fly. It was amazing. Cronenberg does his usual intense body horror thing. The festivities start simply enough, with the central scientist being pricked by an IC. Then he makes a sudden realization that the reason his marvellous teleporter doesn't work is because the computer is "going crazy over the flesh." He continues to wax crazy about "the flesh" (shades of Existenz here) while his girlfriend buys him a thematically appropriate leather jacket. Soon there are phallically squirting fingers and blunt, writhing maggots. Horrible! Awesome!
The central scientist is played by Jeff Goldblum who has his hair long and has obviously been working out. He resembles a sort of science-infused Mowgli, with his own private supply of baboons. After the famous teleportation mishap this image was strengthened for me as he enjoys some fly-powered gymnastics. He becomes more obsessed and intense as the mutation progresses, mistaking the tainting of fly DNA for a purification of some kind. This is Cronenberg's private obsession with purity vs corruption (and later of humanity vs barbarity) coming out here. Eventually the human/fly becomes yet further corrupted by a second infusion, this time with machinery.
The film is shot with a hazy look, almost every shot seems covered by mist or dust. The characters affect trench coats and Jeff's girlfriend is a reporter. These are weird throwbacky references to noir, I think (at one point his girlfriend says she has to "scrape the residue of an old life off of her shoe.") The dustiness reminded me of Naked Lunch, with its roach-powder drugs. The body horror is really great. Each transformation is more uncomfortable than the last culminating with the moment when, at the height of his defeat, we are made to feel a hideous compassion for the fly. Really fun stuff.
Edit: Originally a Tim Burton film? Huh. That would been completely different and interesting.
The central scientist is played by Jeff Goldblum who has his hair long and has obviously been working out. He resembles a sort of science-infused Mowgli, with his own private supply of baboons. After the famous teleportation mishap this image was strengthened for me as he enjoys some fly-powered gymnastics. He becomes more obsessed and intense as the mutation progresses, mistaking the tainting of fly DNA for a purification of some kind. This is Cronenberg's private obsession with purity vs corruption (and later of humanity vs barbarity) coming out here. Eventually the human/fly becomes yet further corrupted by a second infusion, this time with machinery.
The film is shot with a hazy look, almost every shot seems covered by mist or dust. The characters affect trench coats and Jeff's girlfriend is a reporter. These are weird throwbacky references to noir, I think (at one point his girlfriend says she has to "scrape the residue of an old life off of her shoe.") The dustiness reminded me of Naked Lunch, with its roach-powder drugs. The body horror is really great. Each transformation is more uncomfortable than the last culminating with the moment when, at the height of his defeat, we are made to feel a hideous compassion for the fly. Really fun stuff.
Edit: Originally a Tim Burton film? Huh. That would been completely different and interesting.
Apr 3, 2014
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Saw McCabe & Mrs. Miller. It was a western by Robert Altman. He directs in a sort of spacey, vague way, everything improvised and points not really made so much as revealed. The film opens with McCabe, a gunslingin' card shark who at first seems to be cut straight from a John Ford film. We discover though that he's far from deadly and competent. Rather he is cowardly, stupid, and easily misled. He is not even virtuous. The film has a lot of these little inversions of the usual Western formula. Instead of being set in the desert in the south, it's set in the mountains of the north. Instead of an honest man rising against forces of corruption, we have a crooked man sinking into a fight with better organized crooks. He does not get or save the girl so much as she gets and saves him. Even the climactic shootout is largely ignored by the citizenry because a church is burning down at the same time. The rugged individual is ignored for the larger society.
So, what do all these reversals add up to? Unfortunately they cumulatively act as a sort of double-negation, leaving the essential spirit of the Western intact. We are left with a superficially clever film which is interesting but not illuminating (or if it is, I missed it anyway.) There are hints of themes of devotion and morality, but I was too caught up in gleefully spotting reversals. Robert Altman is kind of hit-or-miss for me and I fear this one missed me a bit.
So, what do all these reversals add up to? Unfortunately they cumulatively act as a sort of double-negation, leaving the essential spirit of the Western intact. We are left with a superficially clever film which is interesting but not illuminating (or if it is, I missed it anyway.) There are hints of themes of devotion and morality, but I was too caught up in gleefully spotting reversals. Robert Altman is kind of hit-or-miss for me and I fear this one missed me a bit.
Apr 2, 2014
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
Saw Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. It was a muddy film about music. Lots of misdirection and conflicting readings. Young Corinne is the lead singer of a very garage-band-y group called The Fabulous Stains. She is wallowing in teen angst and surrounded by dissipated hypocrites and suburban drunks. She gets her big break and begins touring with a punk band, The Looters. After she turns a bomb performance into a free-associative rant at the audience she hits the big time and gains a cult following. The media reports on the phenomenon, guessing at and accidentally supplying The Stains with an overarching message (which is essentially, "don't let yourself be taken advantage of." This is thematically interesting.)
There's something clever to be said here about the way mass media exploits and subverts social movements, using them for airtime and then blithely moving on. Doubly interesting that this don't-be-fooled message is directed at women and girls. Corinne empowers herself by preforming in a sheer top and panties. But her fans, imitating her, only supply men with free lingerie ads. Then again, Corinne herself is not so philosophically pure. She rips off the punk stylings of The Looters and one of their songs. Is the punk band, then, meant to be the authentic voice of rock? Well, they're in turn shown ripping into an old Kiss-style rocker whom they hate. They eat him alive as The Stains will eventually devour them. Does no one win in this merry-go-round of exploitation? A moving scene with Corinne's aunt on the TV suggests otherwise. The closing moments of the film show The Stains achieving wealth and fame but The Looters are nowhere to be seen and the song they're singing is a lot more synth-pop-ey than it once was. Then again Corinne was always self-serving. Is she embracing her ideals by selling out? Like I say, a muddy film.
Frustratingly, the subtlety of the film's message is not mirrored in the characterization. The media personalities are simpering and paternal and clearly, blatantly evil. The suburban housewives at the beginning are snickering and vile, the punk band is authentic and attractive. It's always very clear how we're supposed to feel about any new character. Indeed, the manipulation of the audience is perhaps thematic. The film supplies its own hall of mirrors, warning me not to be manipulated, and then doing its best to manipulate me. A discussable film.
There's something clever to be said here about the way mass media exploits and subverts social movements, using them for airtime and then blithely moving on. Doubly interesting that this don't-be-fooled message is directed at women and girls. Corinne empowers herself by preforming in a sheer top and panties. But her fans, imitating her, only supply men with free lingerie ads. Then again, Corinne herself is not so philosophically pure. She rips off the punk stylings of The Looters and one of their songs. Is the punk band, then, meant to be the authentic voice of rock? Well, they're in turn shown ripping into an old Kiss-style rocker whom they hate. They eat him alive as The Stains will eventually devour them. Does no one win in this merry-go-round of exploitation? A moving scene with Corinne's aunt on the TV suggests otherwise. The closing moments of the film show The Stains achieving wealth and fame but The Looters are nowhere to be seen and the song they're singing is a lot more synth-pop-ey than it once was. Then again Corinne was always self-serving. Is she embracing her ideals by selling out? Like I say, a muddy film.
Frustratingly, the subtlety of the film's message is not mirrored in the characterization. The media personalities are simpering and paternal and clearly, blatantly evil. The suburban housewives at the beginning are snickering and vile, the punk band is authentic and attractive. It's always very clear how we're supposed to feel about any new character. Indeed, the manipulation of the audience is perhaps thematic. The film supplies its own hall of mirrors, warning me not to be manipulated, and then doing its best to manipulate me. A discussable film.
Apr 1, 2014
Reign of Assassins
Saw Reign of Assassins (thanks, Basil1) It was another Chinese wire-fu. This one was about a female assassin who defects from her assassin-cell with part of an ancient Chinese MacGuffin. She goes into hiding with unnecessarily complex plastic surgery where she becomes a clothing merchant. She falls in love and starts a new life, but her past (of course) catches up with her and, in an interesting variation, she must protect her hapless husband. The film is not a comedy, however, and therefore this ridiculous reversal cannot last. He reveals late-stage badassitude and she becomes kind of hapless soon after. Ah well. Also there's evil eunuchs, just for tradition's sake.
The film recurrently refers to a Buddhist story about a monk who wanted to be reborn as a bridge. This symbol of devotion is swooningly returned to at various times, sometimes in grotesque, corrupt ways (the villain knows this story too.) I suspect there's also some allusions I'm missing out on (the villain is called the "Wheel King" which is apparently a reference to some Buddhist entity about whom I know nothing.)
That said, I didn't like this film very much. It's not bad, mind you, but it has the feel of the same old thing. I decry its lack of subtlety (though the usual caveat applies that without having caught most of the references, I may simply be deaf to the subtler notes) and its adherence to formula. What was once novel is now routine. I missed out on this one. Blarg.
The film recurrently refers to a Buddhist story about a monk who wanted to be reborn as a bridge. This symbol of devotion is swooningly returned to at various times, sometimes in grotesque, corrupt ways (the villain knows this story too.) I suspect there's also some allusions I'm missing out on (the villain is called the "Wheel King" which is apparently a reference to some Buddhist entity about whom I know nothing.)
That said, I didn't like this film very much. It's not bad, mind you, but it has the feel of the same old thing. I decry its lack of subtlety (though the usual caveat applies that without having caught most of the references, I may simply be deaf to the subtler notes) and its adherence to formula. What was once novel is now routine. I missed out on this one. Blarg.
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