Saw Fragile, a horror film set at a hospital. The protagonist, a new nurse, arrives to replace another nurse who recently went gaga. The hospital is closing down and is completely empty save for the children's ward, an evasive co-nurse, an orderly who listens to deafening metal on his walk-man, and a doctor who is dashing but don't believe in no ghosts. The hospital's second floor, we are quickly told, has been sealed off since time immemorial (since the nine-teen fifties!) Yes, it's shaping up to be a boilerplate horror. These pieces are clearly the wheels and cogs of the scare-machine.
The scare-machine takes a very long time getting started. I think that what was presented here chronologically would have been presented as flashbacks in another film. As such, the film spends a lot of time teasing the protagonist's sleeping pills and bad dreams and one little girls imaginary friend (or is it!?) This was expected and not terribly inspired. The film (finally) really gets going once we get into that mysterious second floor, but by then the film's almost done.
Very frustrating, but oh well. The film is kind of sleepy and not too terribly scary. Also, I really didn't like the protagonist. She wasn't terribly written but, well, she petulantly hurls pill-bottles around and smacks herself in the head as she relives some past trauma (sleeping pills and bad dreams, remember!) For a woman who works with children, she sure seems fragile. Maybe I'm just misremembering my grade-school teachers.
Uninspired plot and wonky performances aside, it has some interesting things going on: for example, there's a repeated image of butterflies. This is meant, I think, to symbolize a soul, freed from its earthly body. A pretty image. Also, there's a royalty-avoiding animated version of snow white shown to the kids. As a man with a sick love for cheap animation, I felt as though I were seeing a rare treat. So, the film is a little crazy in parts but not too obnoxious. It's fairly boilerplate but not inept and not badly done. Bad in parts, but what was I expecting anyway?
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 30, 2015
Johnny Guitar
Saw Johnny Guitar, a morbid and hysterical old western about a woman who owns a bar in the wilds of somewhere-or-other. The town of upright stiff-necks is rigidly opposed to her and her wonton ways. She has monologues where she hints at "doing what she needed to do" to survive, but this woman is played by Joan Crawford, so whereas another actress might tearfully weep these monologues, Joan spits them ironically and harshly. The main antagonist is a fresh-faced spinster who is consumed with jealousy for Joan's apparent hold over a roguish maybe-outlaw. She is actually not interested at all in the outlaw. Indeed, in the first scenes, Joan seems to be heavily coded as a lesbian.
She wears pants and leather boots, she lectures the townsfolk for their narrow-mindedness and talks longingly of the day the railroad will bring city-folk to drive away the ranchers and preachers. It's fitting therefore that the central protagonist/antagonist relationship is between two women and that the plot be fueled by the hidden desires of one of them. Later on the film Joan gets a male love-interest, but those first few scenes are so deliciously ambiguous!
The rest of the film follows the machinations of both women as the tension ratchets up. In the first scene, the sheriff gives Joan 24 hours to get out of town, so the clock is ticking and there's plenty of hysterics and grand speeches and tension galore. I enjoyed this film a great deal. It's not as great as an actual lesbian-cowboy film would have been, but it's the best we can hope for from the 50s. Also, there's my favorite weakness: opera-level melodrama. Neat film!
She wears pants and leather boots, she lectures the townsfolk for their narrow-mindedness and talks longingly of the day the railroad will bring city-folk to drive away the ranchers and preachers. It's fitting therefore that the central protagonist/antagonist relationship is between two women and that the plot be fueled by the hidden desires of one of them. Later on the film Joan gets a male love-interest, but those first few scenes are so deliciously ambiguous!
The rest of the film follows the machinations of both women as the tension ratchets up. In the first scene, the sheriff gives Joan 24 hours to get out of town, so the clock is ticking and there's plenty of hysterics and grand speeches and tension galore. I enjoyed this film a great deal. It's not as great as an actual lesbian-cowboy film would have been, but it's the best we can hope for from the 50s. Also, there's my favorite weakness: opera-level melodrama. Neat film!
Mar 29, 2015
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Saw Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the fifth and final installment of the Planet of the Apes epic. So, this one has its work cut out for it: the last film, in what one can only imagine to be a fit of total obliviousness, cast the apes as black-people stand-ins and ended with the apes triumphantly casting off their human-imposed shackles. However, we know that the apes are destined to rule and the humans are destined to become brutes incapable of speech, so it's going to be tricky to have the underdog finally become the oppressive overdog without playing into the hands of bigots. A coming war against men/white people/straight people is after all exactly what they've been warning us about. So what's a writer to do?
Well, retcon as it turns out. One of the characters makes reference to a many-timelines theory which seems to imply that the oppressive future can be avoided. The subject is then uncomfortably dropped and the apes wage a war against some irradiated humans. I believe the film's writer originally did intend to have the apes conquer the humans outright and tried to figure out how to justify it. In their meditations, they hit upon the much more fraught problem of whether violence is ever justified and it is this they address in this movie.
A lot of war rhetoric is invoked however, which leads to a kind of confusing experience. An evil sub-faction of apes calls for the eradication of the humans, claiming themselves to be "superior" and a "super-race." When the ape-village, which consists of hut-like tree-houses, is bombed, it reminded me of the footage from Vietnam which would have been fresh in the public's mind back then (1973). The irradiated humans and the ape-soldiers lie to their leadership that the other is readying for war. This kind of evokes the cold war for me. There's a lot going on, but in a more evocative than analytical way.
Anyway the film is quite goofy. Really it's more interested in grand, Twilight Zone-esque speeches and in delivering entertaining sci-fi than anything else. The whole anti-war stuff is sort of tacked on and ill thought-out. The dramas of the ape-king's court and the wicked-awesome explosions of the battles account for more screen-time than anything else. The movie is very close to disappearing into its own navel. It's not an impressively shoddy mess, just a regular mess. Forgettable, but not totally regrettable.
Well, retcon as it turns out. One of the characters makes reference to a many-timelines theory which seems to imply that the oppressive future can be avoided. The subject is then uncomfortably dropped and the apes wage a war against some irradiated humans. I believe the film's writer originally did intend to have the apes conquer the humans outright and tried to figure out how to justify it. In their meditations, they hit upon the much more fraught problem of whether violence is ever justified and it is this they address in this movie.
A lot of war rhetoric is invoked however, which leads to a kind of confusing experience. An evil sub-faction of apes calls for the eradication of the humans, claiming themselves to be "superior" and a "super-race." When the ape-village, which consists of hut-like tree-houses, is bombed, it reminded me of the footage from Vietnam which would have been fresh in the public's mind back then (1973). The irradiated humans and the ape-soldiers lie to their leadership that the other is readying for war. This kind of evokes the cold war for me. There's a lot going on, but in a more evocative than analytical way.
Anyway the film is quite goofy. Really it's more interested in grand, Twilight Zone-esque speeches and in delivering entertaining sci-fi than anything else. The whole anti-war stuff is sort of tacked on and ill thought-out. The dramas of the ape-king's court and the wicked-awesome explosions of the battles account for more screen-time than anything else. The movie is very close to disappearing into its own navel. It's not an impressively shoddy mess, just a regular mess. Forgettable, but not totally regrettable.
Mar 28, 2015
Killing Season
Saw Killing Season (thanks, Basil!) It was a frustratingly predictable but beautifully shot anti-war film. Set in the wild mountains of somewhere-or-other in America, it stars Robert De Nero as a grizzled veteran of the Bosnian war. He is met by John Travolta, who is playing a Serbian veteran of some kind with tattooed-on hair ala François Sagat. Anyway, the Travolta is clearly back for revenge of some ominous kind and after some cat-n-mouse and some ham-fisted close-ups of knives and so on, the game is on and guns fire and it's a back-wood fight to the death!
The political backdrop of Bosnia is completely obscure to me. I know nothing about the fighting except that it happened and it's therefore refreshing to see something about it. This movie does a poor job of educating you about Bosnia, but then it's not a documentary, so okay. It's main preoccupation, rather, is to comment on the self-fueled nature of war. At one point De Nero gets the better of Travolta but instead of just calling the damn cops, he tries his hand at some amature torture. Travolta escapes as a direct result of this torture, revealing that war continues only because we continue to fight. Of course for this analogy to work we need a national-level, real-world analogue for the police which should have been called. The film's suggestion as to the nature of this cop is perhaps revealed via the repeated images of crosses and mentions of god. I don't know if I really buy this argument (to go full Godwin, were supposed to have surrendered to the Nazis, serene in the knowledge that God would somehow sort it all out? It's an interesting argument (particularly if you're a pacifist) but kind of a tough sell.)
So I don't think I agree with the film's conclusions, but at least it has an argument to make. Unfortunately, the rest of the film fell as flat as its arguments did for me. Travolta in particular was a fairly weak villain. At one point he wheedles De Nero into having a drink and then accuses him of habitually drinking to forget the past. Okay. Later, when the real fighting is happening, he monologues about how he always wondered who would win in a fair fight. De Nero, caught completely by surprize, retorts that this isn't a fair fight. "War is not fair!" Travolta sneers. Such stupidity. Travolta's character I think is supposed to be contrary and hypocritical, but having a straw-man of a villain makes any of the film's philosophical pretensions work even less. Also, the film is fetishistically interested in the iconography of back-woods Real Man. De Nero's factory-built, fiberglass, compound bow snaps in half instantly while Travolta's hand-made bow, which he fashioned under the approving eye of his "fah-der", can shoot through bone. All of this leaves me amused but cold.
So I didn't like it very much. I was glad I able to decypher the symbolic arguments of the plot, but the surrounding tissue is fairly weak. The woods and mountains are beautiful, but then there's Travolta and De Nero with upper and lower sets of teeth showing (respectively) lurching through it all, one being the Devil and the other being America. Well-made indeed, but cheap and silly stuff.
The political backdrop of Bosnia is completely obscure to me. I know nothing about the fighting except that it happened and it's therefore refreshing to see something about it. This movie does a poor job of educating you about Bosnia, but then it's not a documentary, so okay. It's main preoccupation, rather, is to comment on the self-fueled nature of war. At one point De Nero gets the better of Travolta but instead of just calling the damn cops, he tries his hand at some amature torture. Travolta escapes as a direct result of this torture, revealing that war continues only because we continue to fight. Of course for this analogy to work we need a national-level, real-world analogue for the police which should have been called. The film's suggestion as to the nature of this cop is perhaps revealed via the repeated images of crosses and mentions of god. I don't know if I really buy this argument (to go full Godwin, were supposed to have surrendered to the Nazis, serene in the knowledge that God would somehow sort it all out? It's an interesting argument (particularly if you're a pacifist) but kind of a tough sell.)
So I don't think I agree with the film's conclusions, but at least it has an argument to make. Unfortunately, the rest of the film fell as flat as its arguments did for me. Travolta in particular was a fairly weak villain. At one point he wheedles De Nero into having a drink and then accuses him of habitually drinking to forget the past. Okay. Later, when the real fighting is happening, he monologues about how he always wondered who would win in a fair fight. De Nero, caught completely by surprize, retorts that this isn't a fair fight. "War is not fair!" Travolta sneers. Such stupidity. Travolta's character I think is supposed to be contrary and hypocritical, but having a straw-man of a villain makes any of the film's philosophical pretensions work even less. Also, the film is fetishistically interested in the iconography of back-woods Real Man. De Nero's factory-built, fiberglass, compound bow snaps in half instantly while Travolta's hand-made bow, which he fashioned under the approving eye of his "fah-der", can shoot through bone. All of this leaves me amused but cold.
So I didn't like it very much. I was glad I able to decypher the symbolic arguments of the plot, but the surrounding tissue is fairly weak. The woods and mountains are beautiful, but then there's Travolta and De Nero with upper and lower sets of teeth showing (respectively) lurching through it all, one being the Devil and the other being America. Well-made indeed, but cheap and silly stuff.
Mar 25, 2015
Le Havre
Saw Le Havre. It opens with the protagonist, a shoe-shine man, sadly watching endless pairs of un-shine-able sneakers pass by. Suddenly a pair of dress shoes appear and what follows is a direct throw-back to the french New Wave films of the 60s. Men in matte, pastel trenchcoats and sunglasses assassinate the dress-shoe-ed man somewhere off-screen. From there, we follow the shoe-shine man who seems to be the consummate image of the picturesque French peasant. He lives down the street from a bakery and raffishly steals a baguette. His wife is sick with a baby or something and he lives in a little cobblestone alleyway.
Anyway, the plot proper starts when he discovers an illegal immigrant boy from Africa and, taking pity on him, gives him shelter. The film marries the thorny political issue of illegal immigration with the breezy airs of French cinema, so in love with the underdog, so in love with crimes of compassion. The film is fairly subversive in its way, but perversely tries hard not to be offensive or shocking. The African boy moves about almost catatonically, usually soulfully staring at whoever's around. The shoe-shine man blusters and bluffs with great self-assurance. Everything's very adorable.
There's a strongly Wes Anderson-esque feel of childishness and nostalgia about the film. Flat colors dominate the decor. The heavy stylization of the film renders everything very twee and cute but also very safe. We know, for example, that this is not the sort of movie where it turns out that someone is beating their wife. A man died in the intro, but it happens antiseptically off-screen. There is even a rock concert which is almost climactically adorable.
This is a nice film. It's the sort of film you take home and show your mother. It's progressive but not aggressively so. It's sweet without being treacly. It's about as challenging and edgy as a butter mint. It's not boring, mind you. Indeed most of its flourishes payed off for me. It reminded me of Waking Ned Devine or Bagdad Cafe; a delightful but essentially toothless film.
Anyway, the plot proper starts when he discovers an illegal immigrant boy from Africa and, taking pity on him, gives him shelter. The film marries the thorny political issue of illegal immigration with the breezy airs of French cinema, so in love with the underdog, so in love with crimes of compassion. The film is fairly subversive in its way, but perversely tries hard not to be offensive or shocking. The African boy moves about almost catatonically, usually soulfully staring at whoever's around. The shoe-shine man blusters and bluffs with great self-assurance. Everything's very adorable.
There's a strongly Wes Anderson-esque feel of childishness and nostalgia about the film. Flat colors dominate the decor. The heavy stylization of the film renders everything very twee and cute but also very safe. We know, for example, that this is not the sort of movie where it turns out that someone is beating their wife. A man died in the intro, but it happens antiseptically off-screen. There is even a rock concert which is almost climactically adorable.
This is a nice film. It's the sort of film you take home and show your mother. It's progressive but not aggressively so. It's sweet without being treacly. It's about as challenging and edgy as a butter mint. It's not boring, mind you. Indeed most of its flourishes payed off for me. It reminded me of Waking Ned Devine or Bagdad Cafe; a delightful but essentially toothless film.
Mar 23, 2015
Frontier(s)
Saw Frontier(s), a French horror. I don't know if I'd count it as "extreme horror" like I usually do with French horrors. This one follows a trio of young men with a girlfriend in tow who go to a hotel only to discover (surprise!) that the hotel is run by French back-woods actual-literal-Nazis. It was clearly mostly inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's a hand-tipping dinner scene which is very nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the famous Texas Chainsaw dinner scene. There's echos of some strange things going on however.
First of all, the film starts by telling us that the girlfriend is pregnant. At one point two of the guys crash their car and maybe it was just me, but the view of the car out of the mouth of a cave reminded me of a sonogram. Immediately after that, they crawl through a small, dark tunnel while crying for their mama. I think something's going on. But then again one of them is met out the other side with knives and the other back-tracks feverishly which is a bit confusing and anyway what's the symbolism here? Horror = blood = birth, like in Inside? I don't buy it, but the argument could be made.
Anyway, much more obviously is the racism angle. Let me preface this by saying that I know nothing about French politics. It's a touchy subject and one that, even for an American, I'm profoundly ignorant about. That said, the protagonists seem to be muslim (one of them explicitly says he is) and they're apparently fleeing from the Paris riots where we first see them, shooting at cops. They escape only to run into murderous, inbred, literal Nazis who rave about racial purity. I believe this is one of those sympathy-swaps that horrors like to do. We are supposed to identify the protagonists as definitely evil people only to have the table turned and be made to sympathize with them. It is symbolically revealed that it is we, with our prejudices, who are the real monsters.
Puzzle solved! So that's definitely going on I think (although, keep in mind: profound ignorance.) Apart from that, the film is kind of a romp. The hillbilly Nazis have a giant, sprawling complex, full of farm equipment and guns. The whole thing is kind of a rollercoaster. There are no jumps, more repulsive gore, horrible deaths, and deformed freaks. There's a creepy sensuality to the men and women of the compound which is entrancing and off-putting. At one point one of the women clutches the girlfriend like a lost child. She grabs her stomach and joyously chirps "you're pregnant!" By this point we know that this is not good news, rendering her merriment ghastly and chilly. There's also a death by tablesaw. Fun stuff! The politics may turn you away, but it's not a bad splatter flick after all.
First of all, the film starts by telling us that the girlfriend is pregnant. At one point two of the guys crash their car and maybe it was just me, but the view of the car out of the mouth of a cave reminded me of a sonogram. Immediately after that, they crawl through a small, dark tunnel while crying for their mama. I think something's going on. But then again one of them is met out the other side with knives and the other back-tracks feverishly which is a bit confusing and anyway what's the symbolism here? Horror = blood = birth, like in Inside? I don't buy it, but the argument could be made.
Anyway, much more obviously is the racism angle. Let me preface this by saying that I know nothing about French politics. It's a touchy subject and one that, even for an American, I'm profoundly ignorant about. That said, the protagonists seem to be muslim (one of them explicitly says he is) and they're apparently fleeing from the Paris riots where we first see them, shooting at cops. They escape only to run into murderous, inbred, literal Nazis who rave about racial purity. I believe this is one of those sympathy-swaps that horrors like to do. We are supposed to identify the protagonists as definitely evil people only to have the table turned and be made to sympathize with them. It is symbolically revealed that it is we, with our prejudices, who are the real monsters.
Puzzle solved! So that's definitely going on I think (although, keep in mind: profound ignorance.) Apart from that, the film is kind of a romp. The hillbilly Nazis have a giant, sprawling complex, full of farm equipment and guns. The whole thing is kind of a rollercoaster. There are no jumps, more repulsive gore, horrible deaths, and deformed freaks. There's a creepy sensuality to the men and women of the compound which is entrancing and off-putting. At one point one of the women clutches the girlfriend like a lost child. She grabs her stomach and joyously chirps "you're pregnant!" By this point we know that this is not good news, rendering her merriment ghastly and chilly. There's also a death by tablesaw. Fun stuff! The politics may turn you away, but it's not a bad splatter flick after all.
Mar 22, 2015
Zero for Conduct
Saw Zero for Conduct. It was set in a boys' boarding school. In a deeply allegorical move, the students decide to rebel against the teachers with their, like, rules man. To be fair however, the teachers are sufficiently harsh and repressive and cruel to make us side with the kids. Surrealist touches allow the film to safely talk about governmental and religious institutions and their, like, rules man.
The film is fairly brief at 45 minutes long and it makes a very distinct point about the administration creating its own enemies. One of the kids is not involved with the anti-teacher rebellion until he is lectured by the headmaster about his "unwholesome" relationship with one of the upperclassmen. This boy goes on to become the standard-bearer of the rebellion. Seeing as this film was made in the 30s, this is shockingly progressive.
Charlie Chaplin, who also used magical realism to great effect, receives a nod in the form of a playful teacher who does acrobatics and draws marvelous cartoons that come to life. Perhaps the director, Jean Vigo, sensed a kindred spirit in Chaplin, who seemed so sympathetic towards tramps and whores. Whores show up in this film, by the way. One of the kids is sent back home to his mother, a prostitute, who keeps his eyes covered with a blindfold when he's at home. The hypocrisy of middle-class pretensions is poked at once again.
The film hails from the heart of surrealism: anarchic, in love with chaos and disorder, totally against pretension and bureaucracy. The boys, the clear heroes, create glorious messes and hoot and shriek like monkeys. Yes, they are sometimes cruel to each other but, this film claims, they have good hearts underneath it all. I don't know that I completely agree with this conclusion, but then I'm not an anarchist, so this is hardly surprising. A clever little film. I enjoyed it.
The film is fairly brief at 45 minutes long and it makes a very distinct point about the administration creating its own enemies. One of the kids is not involved with the anti-teacher rebellion until he is lectured by the headmaster about his "unwholesome" relationship with one of the upperclassmen. This boy goes on to become the standard-bearer of the rebellion. Seeing as this film was made in the 30s, this is shockingly progressive.
Charlie Chaplin, who also used magical realism to great effect, receives a nod in the form of a playful teacher who does acrobatics and draws marvelous cartoons that come to life. Perhaps the director, Jean Vigo, sensed a kindred spirit in Chaplin, who seemed so sympathetic towards tramps and whores. Whores show up in this film, by the way. One of the kids is sent back home to his mother, a prostitute, who keeps his eyes covered with a blindfold when he's at home. The hypocrisy of middle-class pretensions is poked at once again.
The film hails from the heart of surrealism: anarchic, in love with chaos and disorder, totally against pretension and bureaucracy. The boys, the clear heroes, create glorious messes and hoot and shriek like monkeys. Yes, they are sometimes cruel to each other but, this film claims, they have good hearts underneath it all. I don't know that I completely agree with this conclusion, but then I'm not an anarchist, so this is hardly surprising. A clever little film. I enjoyed it.
Mar 20, 2015
Z.P.G.
Saw Z.P.G., a 1970s sci-fi, it predates Star Wars and is therefore a moody think-piece about man's relationship with his fellow man and with society at large. The film takes place in some authoritarian dystopia where floating blimps blare cheery music intercut with feedback noises because well, you know, dystopia 'n all. The central problem here is that no one is allowed to have children for the next 30 years. This causes quite a bit of dismay among the adult populace, but rules is rules. Predictably, the protagonists are a wealthy couple who of course catch the baby-fever and must find some way to deal with it.
The central preoccupation of the film is how our selfish natures will ultimately destroy us all. At one point, a character drops a ration-book and several hands instantly reach for it. Each grabbing a corner, the book is torn to shreds. There are always crowds of bovine, jump-suited people, standing placidly or walking slowly in the background of most shots. The whole baby thing comes about as a result of overpopulation and there is a constant, pea-soup fog that we are told comes from the greedy industrialists of yore. Subtle this movie is not.
I was fairly frustrated by how ham-fisted I found the film. They hammer the evils of selfishness constantly and mix this with bizarre artistic choices. For example, when a couple is caught with an illicit baby, they are condemned to death by suffocation. A perspex dome descends from the sky, trapping them. The dome is then industriously spray-painted pink and left alone. How odd. A few things they get right, like the omnipresent screens through which our wealthy protagonists shop and make phone calls, but then other things they get wrong, like the futuristic library made up of view-screens which are still, for some reason, organized alphabetically. Another odd thing: several times the action pauses and an audience of future-folk applaud. The first time this happened I thought they were revealing the protagonists to be actors of some kind, but it happens again in totally inappropriate situations. Deeply confused by this, I dismiss it as 70s-era nuttiness, but I don't really know.
Anyway, the film is essentially a less subtle Soylent Green (which is saying something because Soylent was never meant to be made of people. That was added in to goose the story a little (and also to get away from the whole birth-control = population explosion stuff which was the point of the book, apparently.)) It features a lot of hammy acting (check out the blond moaning "my bay-bee, my bay-bee!" near the end. Ell-oh-ell.) There's also some strange future-stuff floating about. The whole thing was just sort of overstuffed. It felt like it didn't have a huge amount to say, but repeated what it did have ad nauseum.
The central preoccupation of the film is how our selfish natures will ultimately destroy us all. At one point, a character drops a ration-book and several hands instantly reach for it. Each grabbing a corner, the book is torn to shreds. There are always crowds of bovine, jump-suited people, standing placidly or walking slowly in the background of most shots. The whole baby thing comes about as a result of overpopulation and there is a constant, pea-soup fog that we are told comes from the greedy industrialists of yore. Subtle this movie is not.
I was fairly frustrated by how ham-fisted I found the film. They hammer the evils of selfishness constantly and mix this with bizarre artistic choices. For example, when a couple is caught with an illicit baby, they are condemned to death by suffocation. A perspex dome descends from the sky, trapping them. The dome is then industriously spray-painted pink and left alone. How odd. A few things they get right, like the omnipresent screens through which our wealthy protagonists shop and make phone calls, but then other things they get wrong, like the futuristic library made up of view-screens which are still, for some reason, organized alphabetically. Another odd thing: several times the action pauses and an audience of future-folk applaud. The first time this happened I thought they were revealing the protagonists to be actors of some kind, but it happens again in totally inappropriate situations. Deeply confused by this, I dismiss it as 70s-era nuttiness, but I don't really know.
Anyway, the film is essentially a less subtle Soylent Green (which is saying something because Soylent was never meant to be made of people. That was added in to goose the story a little (and also to get away from the whole birth-control = population explosion stuff which was the point of the book, apparently.)) It features a lot of hammy acting (check out the blond moaning "my bay-bee, my bay-bee!" near the end. Ell-oh-ell.) There's also some strange future-stuff floating about. The whole thing was just sort of overstuffed. It felt like it didn't have a huge amount to say, but repeated what it did have ad nauseum.
Mar 19, 2015
Dracula
Saw the 1931 version of Dracula (thanks, John!) It's the absolutely classic, Bela Lugosi, "I vant to suck your blahd," definitive Dracula. It's fairly old and thus kind of kooky in parts. There's some horrendous silent-era mugging (Renfield...) and also some costumes of yore that have aged into absurdity (at one point one of the main characters is wearing knickerbockers. He looks like Mr Tumnus.) but the main story holds up very well.
I enjoyed that Dr Van Helsing (who is the vampire-expert) is not totally trusted. Several times the characters express doubt about his "expertise" and he keeps demanding absolute control with creepy frequency. He is right, of course, but the "are you sure?" bits are often skipped in other Dracula films. Also good is Renfield, for all of his grimacing and scene-chewing. He does sell the wild-eyed lunatic thing to the hilt. Very fun. There's also gloriously rubber bats and hokey wolf-howls that play well for not yet being worn-out staples. There's a sense of playful ghastliness and freshness about everything.
And then of course there's Bela himself. There's something very compelling about the intense foreigner who is entrancing our women. He's clearly aware that he's doing a great job here. He never really escaped this role, but it's easy to see why. This dude just is dracula. This was the definitive version that really everyone should see before seeing the many, many variations of the theme.
I enjoyed that Dr Van Helsing (who is the vampire-expert) is not totally trusted. Several times the characters express doubt about his "expertise" and he keeps demanding absolute control with creepy frequency. He is right, of course, but the "are you sure?" bits are often skipped in other Dracula films. Also good is Renfield, for all of his grimacing and scene-chewing. He does sell the wild-eyed lunatic thing to the hilt. Very fun. There's also gloriously rubber bats and hokey wolf-howls that play well for not yet being worn-out staples. There's a sense of playful ghastliness and freshness about everything.
And then of course there's Bela himself. There's something very compelling about the intense foreigner who is entrancing our women. He's clearly aware that he's doing a great job here. He never really escaped this role, but it's easy to see why. This dude just is dracula. This was the definitive version that really everyone should see before seeing the many, many variations of the theme.
Mar 18, 2015
Tyrannosaur
Saw Tyrannosaur, a miserable film. It opens with Joseph, a drunk, kicking his dog to death. From there he makes a racist joke at an indian dude before casually lobbing a brick through a store-front window. Just another day in the eternal hellscape that is misery-porn indie cinema. All of the husbands are beating their wives, all of the parents are cruel to their children, all of the cops are away on vacation, and all of the dogs are vicious and die. This film is a redemption picture. It starts off with things so bleak that they cannot hope to get better and then, by the end, somehow they kind-of-almost-sort-of do.
So redemption comes in the weak-chinned form of a vaguely religious and vaguely pretty woman who runs a thrift shop that Joseph hides inside of in order to cry for a while. She is to be his saving grace. She has troubles of her own, of course, in the form of alcohol and abuse. At one point Joseph visits a dying friend who, after wheezing for a bit, obliquely reveals that he had abused his daughter. Enough, at some point, is surely enough.
The miserable, miserable bleakness of it makes it almost hilarious. Every time, every single time someone is at all happy it ends in complete disaster. At one point Joseph knocks down a shed and from then on he often sits like a king, in an armchair, in the ruin of his building. Just a miserable sack of a film.
Clearly, it got to me. So it definitely provokes an emotional reaction but for me that reaction is heavily cut with frustration. The situations it depicts is realistic and believable and is frankly playing out right now. Joseph starts out as a man who uses rage to escape from the crushing misery of his life. He directs his self-loathing outward to prevent it from devouring him, little realising or caring that this only allows it fresh air and exercise. When he meets with mother-Mary woman, he is suspicious of her trust, sure that it will turn sour with sufficient poisoning. He's correct of course, but so begins his slow creep towards normalcy. The film has characters and has a plot, I just wish it weren't so hysterically grim. It's like if Gran Torino had been written by a high school student. Why have a man who is merely sad when a borderline suicidal depression is much more shocking?
So this is a film I wish I'd skipped. The suffering herein at least has meaning and is transformative, but ugh what a pain. Just re-read the Book of Job, you'll get all of the important bits.
So redemption comes in the weak-chinned form of a vaguely religious and vaguely pretty woman who runs a thrift shop that Joseph hides inside of in order to cry for a while. She is to be his saving grace. She has troubles of her own, of course, in the form of alcohol and abuse. At one point Joseph visits a dying friend who, after wheezing for a bit, obliquely reveals that he had abused his daughter. Enough, at some point, is surely enough.
The miserable, miserable bleakness of it makes it almost hilarious. Every time, every single time someone is at all happy it ends in complete disaster. At one point Joseph knocks down a shed and from then on he often sits like a king, in an armchair, in the ruin of his building. Just a miserable sack of a film.
Clearly, it got to me. So it definitely provokes an emotional reaction but for me that reaction is heavily cut with frustration. The situations it depicts is realistic and believable and is frankly playing out right now. Joseph starts out as a man who uses rage to escape from the crushing misery of his life. He directs his self-loathing outward to prevent it from devouring him, little realising or caring that this only allows it fresh air and exercise. When he meets with mother-Mary woman, he is suspicious of her trust, sure that it will turn sour with sufficient poisoning. He's correct of course, but so begins his slow creep towards normalcy. The film has characters and has a plot, I just wish it weren't so hysterically grim. It's like if Gran Torino had been written by a high school student. Why have a man who is merely sad when a borderline suicidal depression is much more shocking?
So this is a film I wish I'd skipped. The suffering herein at least has meaning and is transformative, but ugh what a pain. Just re-read the Book of Job, you'll get all of the important bits.
Mar 17, 2015
Martyrs
Saw Martyrs, the infamous apex/nadir of torture-porn and a member of the recent wave of French extreme horrors. I've been dreading/anticipating this film for a while. It follows a pair of women, Anna and Lucie. Lucie had been severely abused as a child and now, with Anna's help, seeks revenge on the family that abused her. She goes on a shotgun rampage, killing them, but worryingly there is no sign that these people are anything other than a happy, regular family. Anna can't help but wonder, is Lucy just crazy? Has she got the wrong house? No, it turns out. This is the right house, and Anna gets captured by a cult of people who are trying to produce a modern martyr by torturing people beyond endurance. Then the torture begins.
This is not a conventionally horrifying movie. There are a few jumps in the beginning to make us feel like we're on familiar ground but, like a joke that drags on too long, the film becomes more and more serious. There are no jittery shaky-cams or smash-cuts. Instead there are slow, somber fades to black and long takes. The torture of Anna has the solemn, sad feeling of a documentary on some tragic event. You know that feeling about 3/4ths of the way through a conventional horror, when the protagonists are all essentially just raw meat, exhausted and desperately trying to survive? That exhausted feeling comes over this film after about 15 minutes and stays for an hour and a half. This is mainly a depressing film. The filmmakers seem to be saying "You want to see someone suffer? Have it, then." The film is mean-spirited, forcing horror fans to linger on the un-entertaining and eternal suffering of a woman.
I'm not sure how to feel about this honestly. I'm not particularly a fan of torture-porn myself, so I don't feel personally chastised. Nor do I feel particularly entertained because that was quite depressing, actually. Nor, however, do I feel particularly repulsed. I think I built this film up too much in my mind, alas. I read about it obsessively, like it was a true story. The actual film itself is depressing but, due to my thorough spoiling of it, was about what I expected. For what it's worth, I don't think this film is really about anything, metaphorically speaking. I think it's concerned with horror and suffering and mass consumption of it. A bit of a miss for me, alas. Maybe this is how all of our monsters perish: with a whimper.
Edit: by the way, there are some obvious homages to The Passion of Joan of Arc. This reinforces the whole martyr thing, but I don't know to what end. Sometimes I am not a clever man.
This is not a conventionally horrifying movie. There are a few jumps in the beginning to make us feel like we're on familiar ground but, like a joke that drags on too long, the film becomes more and more serious. There are no jittery shaky-cams or smash-cuts. Instead there are slow, somber fades to black and long takes. The torture of Anna has the solemn, sad feeling of a documentary on some tragic event. You know that feeling about 3/4ths of the way through a conventional horror, when the protagonists are all essentially just raw meat, exhausted and desperately trying to survive? That exhausted feeling comes over this film after about 15 minutes and stays for an hour and a half. This is mainly a depressing film. The filmmakers seem to be saying "You want to see someone suffer? Have it, then." The film is mean-spirited, forcing horror fans to linger on the un-entertaining and eternal suffering of a woman.
I'm not sure how to feel about this honestly. I'm not particularly a fan of torture-porn myself, so I don't feel personally chastised. Nor do I feel particularly entertained because that was quite depressing, actually. Nor, however, do I feel particularly repulsed. I think I built this film up too much in my mind, alas. I read about it obsessively, like it was a true story. The actual film itself is depressing but, due to my thorough spoiling of it, was about what I expected. For what it's worth, I don't think this film is really about anything, metaphorically speaking. I think it's concerned with horror and suffering and mass consumption of it. A bit of a miss for me, alas. Maybe this is how all of our monsters perish: with a whimper.
Edit: by the way, there are some obvious homages to The Passion of Joan of Arc. This reinforces the whole martyr thing, but I don't know to what end. Sometimes I am not a clever man.
Mar 16, 2015
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Saw The Crime of Monsieur Lange, another black-&-white film by Renoir. Again with the nasal-voiced men and the high-toned morality! This time the film is about a publishing company headed by a charming swindler. He gets into one too many schemes and runs off, leaving the young and befuddled writer of a western serial to take over (more or less.) The film is predicated on the writer having committed some kind of terrible crime, but we see his girl-friend is telling the story, so we know that whatever he did, it wasn't too bad.
The film is alright. It has the sweet, genial feel of many old films about little communities (Little shop on the Corner springs to mind.) The film doesn't feel like it's about very much apart from stirring our sentiment. There's a vaguely leftist bent to the film. After the writer takes over, he quickly establishes it as a collective printing workshop and there's much merry chaos brought about by people cooperating. In his stories his hero takes on "the hooded fascist." Apart from this very minor theme I couldn't identify much meat to this story. Renoir I feel is very much a fantasist. His films are very dramatic and operatic, not so much philosophical as much as sophisticated. I'm much more caught up with the characters than with the plot, usually.
Anyway, not a bad film. It's entertaining and slightly maudlin. There are worse films and few that are conspicuously better. Not bad at all just not, I think, for me at this moment.
The film is alright. It has the sweet, genial feel of many old films about little communities (Little shop on the Corner springs to mind.) The film doesn't feel like it's about very much apart from stirring our sentiment. There's a vaguely leftist bent to the film. After the writer takes over, he quickly establishes it as a collective printing workshop and there's much merry chaos brought about by people cooperating. In his stories his hero takes on "the hooded fascist." Apart from this very minor theme I couldn't identify much meat to this story. Renoir I feel is very much a fantasist. His films are very dramatic and operatic, not so much philosophical as much as sophisticated. I'm much more caught up with the characters than with the plot, usually.
Anyway, not a bad film. It's entertaining and slightly maudlin. There are worse films and few that are conspicuously better. Not bad at all just not, I think, for me at this moment.
Mar 15, 2015
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Saw Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It was okay. The film is cut up into three distinct chapters, each separated by an interminable trek through the desert. The film starts with Max arriving at Bartertown, a little village populated by greased-up BDSM-enthusiasts, ruled over by a black Lady Gaga. She tries to hatch a scheme to tighten her control over the town (which, don't worry, does indeed involve thunderdomes.) Max runs afoul of this scheme and she casts him into the desert. There he meets up with a gang of kids who range from toddler to 20-something in age and who are also clad in leathers, but non-threatening, light-brown ones (none of that shiney, black, studded crap here in Eden.) In the final chapter these two populations collide and there's the inevitable car-chase.
The film is best viewed as a sort of fantasy. There's many clever touches which almost always revolve around world-building. For example, the kids have formed some kind of cargo cult around a downed jet-plane nearby. Neat. Unfortunately the characters are rather thin. Max has been becoming more and more stoic and sullen as the series wears on. I image if a Mad Max 4 were ever made he would at last be just a mannekin, always gazing at infinity with a furrowed brow, never reacting to anything. The townsfolk are all and grimily anonymous and the kids are so interchangeable that in some scenes they literally chant their lines in unison.
So okay, the characters aren't anything special, but the worlds are great. I got a very distinct sense of place and atmosphere from both locations. They were both messy, but in very distinct ways: Bartertown industrial and metallic, Eden baroquely over-decorated with feathers and sticks. Kudos to the art department.
Also the story, though plainly episodic, is pretty good. I didn't think things were too predictable but neither did they seem arbitrary. It is, ultimately, just a bunch of stuff that happens, but it is entertaining stuff and what more can we ask for?
The film is best viewed as a sort of fantasy. There's many clever touches which almost always revolve around world-building. For example, the kids have formed some kind of cargo cult around a downed jet-plane nearby. Neat. Unfortunately the characters are rather thin. Max has been becoming more and more stoic and sullen as the series wears on. I image if a Mad Max 4 were ever made he would at last be just a mannekin, always gazing at infinity with a furrowed brow, never reacting to anything. The townsfolk are all and grimily anonymous and the kids are so interchangeable that in some scenes they literally chant their lines in unison.
So okay, the characters aren't anything special, but the worlds are great. I got a very distinct sense of place and atmosphere from both locations. They were both messy, but in very distinct ways: Bartertown industrial and metallic, Eden baroquely over-decorated with feathers and sticks. Kudos to the art department.
Also the story, though plainly episodic, is pretty good. I didn't think things were too predictable but neither did they seem arbitrary. It is, ultimately, just a bunch of stuff that happens, but it is entertaining stuff and what more can we ask for?
Mar 14, 2015
Mimic
Saw Mimic (thanks, Basil!) It was a fun, messy little sci-fi thriller. The premise is that Scientists have released a sterile insect that mimics cockroaches and poisons them. They've introduced this insect into the wild to control the cockroach population which is spreading some kind of disease (this disease never really comes up in a meaningful way and is clearly an excuse to introduce the super-bugs.) So anyway, mysterious deaths are happening and clearly the super-bugs are bad in some way, so it's up to a brilliant entomologist woman and her CDC-employed husboyfriend to figure out what's up. Along the way are also an autistic boy and a curmudgeonly metro-cop. Also, we're in New York city.
The film is fairly unsurprising. We see, for example, that the autistic boy is good at imitating clicking noises and soon we see the super-insects clicking at each other and from there it's only a matter of time until the talent solves some problem. The obviousness of the setup robs the actual solution of any fun. The film is never really shocking but it is exciting and entertaining however, so it's definitely not a total wash.
Also, to its credit, the film does do some clever things: there's a sequence where the entomologist explains how a termite mound works, playfully calling it a "palace." There are subliminal but inescapable parallels between the tunnels of the termites and the human-constructed subways, where the film mostly takes place. There's also less clear connections between the castes of insects and the strictly demarcated jobs of the humans (the boyfriend in particular, spends a lot of time in bureaucratic turf-wars with cops and metro-cops and officials. I got the sense of teams at work.)
More interesting is the way the film tries to horrify us with the inhuman calculation of the insects. If a soldier dies, what matter to the colony? How ghastly, right? But when the going gets serious, everyone starts nobly sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Is this a slip-shod self-contradiction or a clever irony? I can't really tell. I also can't really tell what all of the Christian iconography is for. Crucifixes and priests feature heavily. A church is the site of the first infestation and glittering crosses pop up a few times throughout. Perhaps the film was establishing a theme of self-sacrifice which I mis-identified as a mechanic being used to creep us out about the insects? Maybe? If so, then this theme doesn't really go anywhere. Then again this film was apparently subjected to a lot of executive meddling, so maybe some larger point got lost in the shuffle.
Anyway, the film is not terribly surprising to me. The monster was novel but there are no real twists or turns. The film is exciting and fairly fun however.
The film is fairly unsurprising. We see, for example, that the autistic boy is good at imitating clicking noises and soon we see the super-insects clicking at each other and from there it's only a matter of time until the talent solves some problem. The obviousness of the setup robs the actual solution of any fun. The film is never really shocking but it is exciting and entertaining however, so it's definitely not a total wash.
Also, to its credit, the film does do some clever things: there's a sequence where the entomologist explains how a termite mound works, playfully calling it a "palace." There are subliminal but inescapable parallels between the tunnels of the termites and the human-constructed subways, where the film mostly takes place. There's also less clear connections between the castes of insects and the strictly demarcated jobs of the humans (the boyfriend in particular, spends a lot of time in bureaucratic turf-wars with cops and metro-cops and officials. I got the sense of teams at work.)
More interesting is the way the film tries to horrify us with the inhuman calculation of the insects. If a soldier dies, what matter to the colony? How ghastly, right? But when the going gets serious, everyone starts nobly sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Is this a slip-shod self-contradiction or a clever irony? I can't really tell. I also can't really tell what all of the Christian iconography is for. Crucifixes and priests feature heavily. A church is the site of the first infestation and glittering crosses pop up a few times throughout. Perhaps the film was establishing a theme of self-sacrifice which I mis-identified as a mechanic being used to creep us out about the insects? Maybe? If so, then this theme doesn't really go anywhere. Then again this film was apparently subjected to a lot of executive meddling, so maybe some larger point got lost in the shuffle.
Anyway, the film is not terribly surprising to me. The monster was novel but there are no real twists or turns. The film is exciting and fairly fun however.
Mar 13, 2015
Super 8
Saw Super 8, an exciting but sweet kid's film. It starts with Amblin entertainment's iconic E.T.-against-the-moon logo, strongly evoking the warm-blankets-made-film that is Spielberg's work. This film is actually directed by J.J. Abrams, the guy who directed Armageddon and Cloverfield. This film has similarities with those two films in as much as this is also a sci-fi. Anyway, the film opens with a funeral. A cute little boy sits sullenly on the swingset while his motor-mouthed friends eat hors d'oeuvres and rat-a-tat-tat talk about a zombie film they're making. The industrious, cheerful messiness of the fictional suburbs makes its entrance.
The cute boy and his cute girlfriend and his cute friends are making a cute little zombie movie when a train accident occurs right next to them and unleashes a Cloverfield (or Cloverfield-alike) on the populace. This film is live-action and the creature is never fully revealed. Its movements are spider or crab-like and the juxtaposition of adorable kids solving the grand mystery of the alien with a giant, horrible spider-creature which is eating people is jarring but also interesting fun. I wish the film had stayed longer in this uncomfortable space between cuddly kids and horrible monsters.
Instead, the film falls heavily into the cuddly kids camp. Most of the movie is taken up with the kids' relationships with their parents and each other. The film is sometimes frustrating the way young-adult fiction is (ugh! Who cares about his stupid dead Mom! Get back to what the alien is doing!) but this keeps your attention, I guess. There's also liberal amounts of little gags to lighten the mood. It always made me smile when that fat kid shouted "Oh my god! Shut up!" There's even some stoner humor.
The film was pretty fun. The monster-introduction is utterly weird and bewildering. It continues to be so far into the film. It sort of feels schizophrenically like two films mashed together, like the two halves of From Dusk 'Till Dawn were interwoven. They're both interesting and entertaining films, and I think this strange marriage doesn't hurt either story. It would be interesting if they would allow the conventions of one to actually interfere with the other but this way, where they more-or-less ignore each other, is fine too. An odd and interesting movie. Not brilliant but certainly (by my generous standards) worth a look.
The cute boy and his cute girlfriend and his cute friends are making a cute little zombie movie when a train accident occurs right next to them and unleashes a Cloverfield (or Cloverfield-alike) on the populace. This film is live-action and the creature is never fully revealed. Its movements are spider or crab-like and the juxtaposition of adorable kids solving the grand mystery of the alien with a giant, horrible spider-creature which is eating people is jarring but also interesting fun. I wish the film had stayed longer in this uncomfortable space between cuddly kids and horrible monsters.
Instead, the film falls heavily into the cuddly kids camp. Most of the movie is taken up with the kids' relationships with their parents and each other. The film is sometimes frustrating the way young-adult fiction is (ugh! Who cares about his stupid dead Mom! Get back to what the alien is doing!) but this keeps your attention, I guess. There's also liberal amounts of little gags to lighten the mood. It always made me smile when that fat kid shouted "Oh my god! Shut up!" There's even some stoner humor.
The film was pretty fun. The monster-introduction is utterly weird and bewildering. It continues to be so far into the film. It sort of feels schizophrenically like two films mashed together, like the two halves of From Dusk 'Till Dawn were interwoven. They're both interesting and entertaining films, and I think this strange marriage doesn't hurt either story. It would be interesting if they would allow the conventions of one to actually interfere with the other but this way, where they more-or-less ignore each other, is fine too. An odd and interesting movie. Not brilliant but certainly (by my generous standards) worth a look.
Mar 12, 2015
The Nameless
Saw The Nameless, a fairly standard horror. It hits almost every action-horror cliche: the still-attractive single mother, the booze-y ex-cop, the temperamental ex-husband, the investigative reporter who is working for a paranormal magazine (and does he clash with his editor? What a silly question.) There's also a creepy little girl, an evil scientist, and a run-down hotel (which could be an homage/rip-off of many things. Psycho and The Shining spring instantly to mind.) The film is certainly not awful, but is definitely marred by uneven pacing and a lack of originality.
The plot follows a woman whose daughter was murdered by evil cultists. Years after the murder, she starts getting phone-calls from someone claiming to be her daughter, begging the mom to come rescue her. I think this was peculiar to my copy of the film, but the daughter's telephone voice is very creaky and digital-sounding. There is an obvious doubt that the voice on the phone is actually her daughter, but I liked the added mystery of whether the voice was even female (or even human.) Anyway, she (the mom) teams up with the cop who is now an ex-cop who worked on the murder case all those years ago and also somehow recruits that journalist.
The characters do not show a great deal of autonomy. They rush from lead to lead, always being lead by the nose from one set-piece to another. I think the director/writers had some good ideas for creepy characters and locations and all, I just wish the film was a bit less obviously just a series of creepy events. Perhaps I'm crazy, but it felt like being on one of those haunted halloween fair rides, full of spookiness, but ultimately travelling rather sedately along a fixed track. There's also a lot of very obvious imagery. Near the end, the head cultist is revealing his grand plan and the image of a spider spinning a web keeps flashing up on screen. Derp.
One notable thing is how dark it is for its time. Near the end, they promise some really over-the-top super-evilness, which makes things become a wee bit silly (really? That's the most evil thing? What if Hitler were also involved somehow? Oh, he is? Ok then.) but my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist is that films only truly went crazy with bleakness and horror after 9/11 due to the overwhelming anger/sorrow of the American populace. This film came out in '99 and does it best to have a bleak-as-hell ending. I didn't think the ending totally lands (Hitler) but then I am very tired and kind of grumpy, so take that for what you will.
Anyway: unoriginal film, but not badly done. The film moves along on fixed rails, but it does move along at least. The characters are boilerplate, but at least we don't have to tediously get to know them. The ending is a tad silly, but at least it's not dull. I condemn this film to the limbo of the good-but-nothing-special.
The plot follows a woman whose daughter was murdered by evil cultists. Years after the murder, she starts getting phone-calls from someone claiming to be her daughter, begging the mom to come rescue her. I think this was peculiar to my copy of the film, but the daughter's telephone voice is very creaky and digital-sounding. There is an obvious doubt that the voice on the phone is actually her daughter, but I liked the added mystery of whether the voice was even female (or even human.) Anyway, she (the mom) teams up with the cop who is now an ex-cop who worked on the murder case all those years ago and also somehow recruits that journalist.
The characters do not show a great deal of autonomy. They rush from lead to lead, always being lead by the nose from one set-piece to another. I think the director/writers had some good ideas for creepy characters and locations and all, I just wish the film was a bit less obviously just a series of creepy events. Perhaps I'm crazy, but it felt like being on one of those haunted halloween fair rides, full of spookiness, but ultimately travelling rather sedately along a fixed track. There's also a lot of very obvious imagery. Near the end, the head cultist is revealing his grand plan and the image of a spider spinning a web keeps flashing up on screen. Derp.
One notable thing is how dark it is for its time. Near the end, they promise some really over-the-top super-evilness, which makes things become a wee bit silly (really? That's the most evil thing? What if Hitler were also involved somehow? Oh, he is? Ok then.) but my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist is that films only truly went crazy with bleakness and horror after 9/11 due to the overwhelming anger/sorrow of the American populace. This film came out in '99 and does it best to have a bleak-as-hell ending. I didn't think the ending totally lands (Hitler) but then I am very tired and kind of grumpy, so take that for what you will.
Anyway: unoriginal film, but not badly done. The film moves along on fixed rails, but it does move along at least. The characters are boilerplate, but at least we don't have to tediously get to know them. The ending is a tad silly, but at least it's not dull. I condemn this film to the limbo of the good-but-nothing-special.
Mar 8, 2015
The Shop Around the Corner
Saw The Shop Around the Corner, a sweet film about a small shop which is nominally in Hungary (but is really in Anytown USA) and its employee's comings and goings. Everyone is adorable, everything works out for the best. It is centrally a romance that ties up just exactly on Christmas Eve. It was made in the 40s, so it's a bit mean to the leading lady at parts (there is an ongoing deception perpetuated by the man. When this trickery is revealed she seems to uneasily sublimate any outrage at being tricked. Hmm.) but the film is so overwhelmingly sweet, these moments of meanness are immediately forgotten.
And anyway the moments of bitterness add piquance to an otherwise overwhelmingly saccharine film. As it is it's not saccharine but it gets damn close at times. What the film is, primarily, is adorable. There's a scene where the blustery shop-owner is looking for a friend go have dinner and hang out with. He chats with each shop clerk, too proud to admit that he's simply lonely. After exhausting everyone, he discovers by chance that the errand-boy is an orphan and he then grandly invites him to a meal. Adorable. There is also a kindly old Hungarian man who exists solely as adorable comic relief. He exists solely to comfort the protagonists and the audience.
I was very taken by the film. It had the harmless sweetness of It's a Wonderful Life or of the plays of Thornton Wilder. It's not terribly progressive or challenging, but progressive challenging work is difficult to render adorably and adoration is what this film seeks. For the most part, it earns it. Good show.
And anyway the moments of bitterness add piquance to an otherwise overwhelmingly saccharine film. As it is it's not saccharine but it gets damn close at times. What the film is, primarily, is adorable. There's a scene where the blustery shop-owner is looking for a friend go have dinner and hang out with. He chats with each shop clerk, too proud to admit that he's simply lonely. After exhausting everyone, he discovers by chance that the errand-boy is an orphan and he then grandly invites him to a meal. Adorable. There is also a kindly old Hungarian man who exists solely as adorable comic relief. He exists solely to comfort the protagonists and the audience.
I was very taken by the film. It had the harmless sweetness of It's a Wonderful Life or of the plays of Thornton Wilder. It's not terribly progressive or challenging, but progressive challenging work is difficult to render adorably and adoration is what this film seeks. For the most part, it earns it. Good show.
Mar 7, 2015
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Saw Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. It was a fun little dystopia. The absurd premise is that somehow world war 3 has broken out and gasoline and oil have become extremely scarce. Because of this for some reason cars become more popular. Indeed entire gangs now seem to exist solely to drive around and use up as much gasoline as possible. Strange. Anyway, the film does some commendable slight-of-hand to hide this inherent absurdity and it works more or less.
Although the film is set in the future, the story is very fable-like, very clear-cut good vs evil. The characters are even color-coded: the noble, kind-hearted villagers are clad in white robes and plastic football shoulder-pads while the evil gas-guzzling gang dresses in fetish-y black leather straps, their leader entirely nude but for some leather thongs, and the main antagonist evidently being a homosexual biker. The gay thing is meant to make us uncomfortable and in this it succeeds with me, but not for the reasons the film intended. Anyway, this bit of regressiveness aside, the color-coding clues us in to the nature of the titular Road Warrior. He's the hero but is wearing black.
This fact redeems the film a great deal for me. Early on, he shackles a snivelling, skinny, ugly but emphatically intelligent man and leads him around on a chain leash. This image of the brutish leading the clever is not a nice one, but we are meant to understand that Max is not exactly a wholesome character. His moral ambiguity is meant to assuage our own discomfort with our own dubious choices. We imagine ourselves making the necessary tough choices needed to survive in the apocalyptic desert and then are able to recontextualize our own cruelty as a necessary tough choice. This is ultimately a feel-good movie.
Anyway, the film is a merry little romp, delighting mainly in car chases and fanciful road-fights. The gangsters leap from car to car like pirates on the high seas. There's Star Wars-inspired worn and dirty sets that seem real and there's 70's-era stoicism. The kindness of the villagers is meant to seem like sweet naivety, but that's the price we pay I guess.
Although the film is set in the future, the story is very fable-like, very clear-cut good vs evil. The characters are even color-coded: the noble, kind-hearted villagers are clad in white robes and plastic football shoulder-pads while the evil gas-guzzling gang dresses in fetish-y black leather straps, their leader entirely nude but for some leather thongs, and the main antagonist evidently being a homosexual biker. The gay thing is meant to make us uncomfortable and in this it succeeds with me, but not for the reasons the film intended. Anyway, this bit of regressiveness aside, the color-coding clues us in to the nature of the titular Road Warrior. He's the hero but is wearing black.
This fact redeems the film a great deal for me. Early on, he shackles a snivelling, skinny, ugly but emphatically intelligent man and leads him around on a chain leash. This image of the brutish leading the clever is not a nice one, but we are meant to understand that Max is not exactly a wholesome character. His moral ambiguity is meant to assuage our own discomfort with our own dubious choices. We imagine ourselves making the necessary tough choices needed to survive in the apocalyptic desert and then are able to recontextualize our own cruelty as a necessary tough choice. This is ultimately a feel-good movie.
Anyway, the film is a merry little romp, delighting mainly in car chases and fanciful road-fights. The gangsters leap from car to car like pirates on the high seas. There's Star Wars-inspired worn and dirty sets that seem real and there's 70's-era stoicism. The kindness of the villagers is meant to seem like sweet naivety, but that's the price we pay I guess.
Mar 6, 2015
The White Bus
Saw The White Bus (thanks, Anon!) It was an odd, calm, little art film. It follows a woman who wanders about the city of London and gets on a bus full of potentates and officials going on some kind of tour of the city. The woman every so often imagines herself in a chorus of schoolgirls who she is watching, or hanging, dead. These moments alert us that not all is as it seems and frees us to wonder expansively about what the film might "really" be about. I happen to have a theory myself.
I suspect that the bus is purely imaginary. She's merely wandering about. The potentates are simultaneously external stimuli and externalized versions of her thoughts on that stimuli. For example: she runs into a black guy in an art museum. Apropos of nothing he begins lecturing her on African tribal social structure. She is thinking it, I believe, but he is giving it voice. Neat.
The film is sleepy and drifts from thing to thing in what is either an arbitrary or a too-subtle-for-me sort of way. The film often reminded me strongly of the work of Jacques Tati, particularly Playtime, with its strident but genial attitude. Vaguely dismissive but sort of fondly affectionate, almost paternally amused by fussy and stupid old officials. There's a cross-pollinated whiff of Buñuel as well, I suppose.
I think the film is really a sort of playful snapshot of an intelligent woman walking about and thinking thoughts. The film is idle, browsing, interesting but not particularly gripping. A sort of dry little film.
I suspect that the bus is purely imaginary. She's merely wandering about. The potentates are simultaneously external stimuli and externalized versions of her thoughts on that stimuli. For example: she runs into a black guy in an art museum. Apropos of nothing he begins lecturing her on African tribal social structure. She is thinking it, I believe, but he is giving it voice. Neat.
The film is sleepy and drifts from thing to thing in what is either an arbitrary or a too-subtle-for-me sort of way. The film often reminded me strongly of the work of Jacques Tati, particularly Playtime, with its strident but genial attitude. Vaguely dismissive but sort of fondly affectionate, almost paternally amused by fussy and stupid old officials. There's a cross-pollinated whiff of Buñuel as well, I suppose.
I think the film is really a sort of playful snapshot of an intelligent woman walking about and thinking thoughts. The film is idle, browsing, interesting but not particularly gripping. A sort of dry little film.
Mar 5, 2015
Project Nim
Saw Project Nim, a documentary about the life of nim, a chimpanzee who was taken from his mother at the age of two weeks to be raised as a human. This was part of a scientific experiment about the linguistic powers of a primate. As with the experiment, the film is interested in the intersection of the intellectual and the animal. The head researcher, for example, is made out to be a fame-hungry hot-shot, eager to make a name for himself (this is no knock, by the way. Plenty of great work has been done in the name of tenure.) More sketchily, his assistants are a revolving cast of pretty eighteen-year-old research assistants. His ego, the ego of his assistants, his work, and Nim himself all intersect in interesting ways. If you see this film, please be aware: you will see a chimp smoke a joint.
The first woman he stays with is a very loving and free-spirited woman who talks fondly of Nim destroying her husband's books in an effort to supplant him as perceived alpha male. I suspect she may be a pathological narcissist. She is supplanted by another woman who speaks in a (very appropriate) horrified manner about his first "mother" giving him alcohol and pot (the first mother compares her parting with Nim as being "just like" his parting with his original chimp mother. "Yes, but you weren't shot with a tranq dart, now were you?" I shouted at the screen. Narcissist.) Anyway, this new woman tries to teach Nim more sign-language but has the misfortune of having to take care of him during his puberty. If she turned her back on him too quickly, she tells us, he would leap on her and bite until the blood ran. The hot-shot scientist anemically tells us that he was not particularly alarmed by this reported behavior.
Clearly the scientist's animal excitement about the results of his research and his emotional reaction to the media storm it was kicking up overwhelmed his perceived need for personal involvement. His basal desire for status and approval overwhelmed and harmed his own intellectual pursuit. But this pursuit, of course, was directly concerned with attempting to defeat the primitive nature of the chimp by virtue of grand human intellect, as personified by the diaphanous muses he recruits (and fucks. Two of them are quite frank about this.) This intellectual/bestial interplay interested me immensely throughout the film.
It is however not exactly the focus of the film. The theme of man vs beast runs through the film but is increasingly overwhelmed by the cruel treatment of Nim by well-meaning scientific labs and animal sanctuaries who have no idea what to do with him. He only wants to be around people, but will casually crush the skull of a yapping dog. This animal-rights theme becomes the focus and the film ends on a predictable, disinteresting note. Perhaps the filmmaker is suggesting the angelic intellect has won this round, but I'm much more interested in the interplay and the duality. If the gentle yin completely defeats the raging yang, then who does she have sex with?
An interesting film, not least for it's lurid, fascinating central story. I feel it attempts to integrate this story into a larger context and thereby gain some meaning from it, but it ultimately lets the story overwhelm itself. By implying that the intellect wins out, the filmmakers have let the primitive desire for closure rule. And thus I can end this post, serene in the knowledge that the thematic dualism is preserved and thereby succumbing to my own animal confirmation bias. Everyone wins. (Even the chimp.)
The first woman he stays with is a very loving and free-spirited woman who talks fondly of Nim destroying her husband's books in an effort to supplant him as perceived alpha male. I suspect she may be a pathological narcissist. She is supplanted by another woman who speaks in a (very appropriate) horrified manner about his first "mother" giving him alcohol and pot (the first mother compares her parting with Nim as being "just like" his parting with his original chimp mother. "Yes, but you weren't shot with a tranq dart, now were you?" I shouted at the screen. Narcissist.) Anyway, this new woman tries to teach Nim more sign-language but has the misfortune of having to take care of him during his puberty. If she turned her back on him too quickly, she tells us, he would leap on her and bite until the blood ran. The hot-shot scientist anemically tells us that he was not particularly alarmed by this reported behavior.
Clearly the scientist's animal excitement about the results of his research and his emotional reaction to the media storm it was kicking up overwhelmed his perceived need for personal involvement. His basal desire for status and approval overwhelmed and harmed his own intellectual pursuit. But this pursuit, of course, was directly concerned with attempting to defeat the primitive nature of the chimp by virtue of grand human intellect, as personified by the diaphanous muses he recruits (and fucks. Two of them are quite frank about this.) This intellectual/bestial interplay interested me immensely throughout the film.
It is however not exactly the focus of the film. The theme of man vs beast runs through the film but is increasingly overwhelmed by the cruel treatment of Nim by well-meaning scientific labs and animal sanctuaries who have no idea what to do with him. He only wants to be around people, but will casually crush the skull of a yapping dog. This animal-rights theme becomes the focus and the film ends on a predictable, disinteresting note. Perhaps the filmmaker is suggesting the angelic intellect has won this round, but I'm much more interested in the interplay and the duality. If the gentle yin completely defeats the raging yang, then who does she have sex with?
An interesting film, not least for it's lurid, fascinating central story. I feel it attempts to integrate this story into a larger context and thereby gain some meaning from it, but it ultimately lets the story overwhelm itself. By implying that the intellect wins out, the filmmakers have let the primitive desire for closure rule. And thus I can end this post, serene in the knowledge that the thematic dualism is preserved and thereby succumbing to my own animal confirmation bias. Everyone wins. (Even the chimp.)
Mar 3, 2015
Rec 2
Saw Rec 2, the sequel to the Spanish found-footage zombie horror. This one picks up immediately where the first one left off: an apartment building with more entrances and exits than a rabbit's warren is surrounded by swat teams, containing the zombie-outbreak going on inside. We follow a swat team which enters the building, cameras whirring. They are being lead by a weapons-grade priest who very quickly establishes the punchline of the first film: these zombies are actually demonic possessions.
This allows for all kinds of wall-crawling and pyrotechnics. The zombies talk in little-girl voices and vomit blood and all kinds of fun. The religious angle is not really explored, it just provides a convenient excuse for all the fun and provides for some nice crazy-person set-decoration. This film is not really interested in exploring anything apart from wicked-awesome zombies/demons.
The film is fairly entertaining. Most of it is spent watching people rush about the building, it's true. There's less slow building and more arbitrary attacks, clearly broadcasted by a sudden slowdown in pace. I don't know if it's any better than the original because I don't remember the original very well. re-reading my review of it, I was taken by the ending. Indeed this film's ending has its own gif-ready horror which is completely gross and amazing. Good stuff. Not very clever or hard-hitting, but fun and relatively jolly and not so bad.
This allows for all kinds of wall-crawling and pyrotechnics. The zombies talk in little-girl voices and vomit blood and all kinds of fun. The religious angle is not really explored, it just provides a convenient excuse for all the fun and provides for some nice crazy-person set-decoration. This film is not really interested in exploring anything apart from wicked-awesome zombies/demons.
The film is fairly entertaining. Most of it is spent watching people rush about the building, it's true. There's less slow building and more arbitrary attacks, clearly broadcasted by a sudden slowdown in pace. I don't know if it's any better than the original because I don't remember the original very well. re-reading my review of it, I was taken by the ending. Indeed this film's ending has its own gif-ready horror which is completely gross and amazing. Good stuff. Not very clever or hard-hitting, but fun and relatively jolly and not so bad.
Mar 2, 2015
Germany Year Zero
Saw Germany Year Zero, a not-very-cheery film about the dehumanizing effects of poverty. The film was made in 1948 and is cleverly set in post-war Germany. This allows the audience to slowly feel sympathy for the starving, rationed, over-worked Germans. We are wheedled and coaxed into rooting for them and then the dehumanization comes about and everyone becomes the feral animals that lurk just under the surface. The film revolves around a young boy who lives with his sister, older brother, and bed-ridden father. The older brother is was in the army and now hides for fear of being put in a POW camp. His bed-ridden father cannot work, so it's up to his sister (who earns money in an off-screen but obvious way that involves makeup and bars) and the boy to keep the house together.
The boy meets a deeply creepy, Fagin-style man who introduces him to a rough but amiable troupe of boys. They run little scams and steal potatoes and pass around a teenage moll who has no parents. The boy is earning money but he's sinking into a seedy criminal underworld. The Fagin-dude was seriously touchy-feely with the boy. This is clearly not a good situation. To me however, his life of crime seemed to be not only his best choice, but his only choice. In an early scene police officers shoo away enterprising looters from the corpse of a horse. Life is hard everywhere.
Eventually, things reach a breaking point. The sister starts in on the older brother, nagging him for not working but eating plenty. He attacks her over her profession. The father begins loudly wishing he were dead and condemns everyone for allowing his youngest son to fall into a life of crime. The boy sits in the center of the maelstrom, feeling personally responsible. The ending is tragic as of course it must be.
The film is intelligent and clever. It sometimes smacks of exploitation, but the sympathy double-cross reversals lift the film out of misery-porn and into something deeper. The settings of the film are always crumbling buildings or rooms with open holes in the walls. Everyone is desperate to not be the crab at the bottom of the pot and cruelly sneer at each other on almost any pretext. During the climax, these tensions reach even into the heart of the little family who are our heroes and the results are disastrous. Definitely a downer of a film. It was very similar to The Bicycle Thief, not only in plot and setting (ie: ruins,) but also in its harsh, unromantic style.
The boy meets a deeply creepy, Fagin-style man who introduces him to a rough but amiable troupe of boys. They run little scams and steal potatoes and pass around a teenage moll who has no parents. The boy is earning money but he's sinking into a seedy criminal underworld. The Fagin-dude was seriously touchy-feely with the boy. This is clearly not a good situation. To me however, his life of crime seemed to be not only his best choice, but his only choice. In an early scene police officers shoo away enterprising looters from the corpse of a horse. Life is hard everywhere.
Eventually, things reach a breaking point. The sister starts in on the older brother, nagging him for not working but eating plenty. He attacks her over her profession. The father begins loudly wishing he were dead and condemns everyone for allowing his youngest son to fall into a life of crime. The boy sits in the center of the maelstrom, feeling personally responsible. The ending is tragic as of course it must be.
The film is intelligent and clever. It sometimes smacks of exploitation, but the sympathy double-cross reversals lift the film out of misery-porn and into something deeper. The settings of the film are always crumbling buildings or rooms with open holes in the walls. Everyone is desperate to not be the crab at the bottom of the pot and cruelly sneer at each other on almost any pretext. During the climax, these tensions reach even into the heart of the little family who are our heroes and the results are disastrous. Definitely a downer of a film. It was very similar to The Bicycle Thief, not only in plot and setting (ie: ruins,) but also in its harsh, unromantic style.
Mar 1, 2015
In Time
Saw In Time, a high-concept sci-fi. The idea is that in the future we've solved death and live so long as a clock on our forearms is kept from reaching 0. This is an obvious exaggeration of capitalism. Instead of money being a proxy for our quality of life, it is a proxy for our lives. Of course there's the super-wealthy who have millions of years saved up and also the poor folk who literally live day-to-day. The inescapable message is underscored by homeless people asking "for just a moment of your time," and other little clevernesses. The rich, for example, walk more slowly than the poor. Economic inequality is clearly on the film's mind.
After establishing this metaphor and making sure it's very clear, the film morphs into a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde or Robin-hood-style film, where the protagonists rob banks and distribute money to the poor. For some poor people, this is obviously a bad idea (the protagonist's friend dies after drinking his windfall) but the poor are universally attractive, well-dressed people, and receive the money smiling and weeping.
I suspect this was once a book or a comic book. There's a lot of details that the film is obviously restraining itself from filling in: there's an arm-wrestling type of contest that individuals can play to steal time from each other. The time-system is explained via genetic modification. Does this explain why everyone is fairly attractive? What bureaucracy is place to enforce this? We see babies with forearm displays. There's oblique reference to a time-market so volatile that the price of coffee changes daily. What's going on?
The film is really mostly concerned with the economic inequality thing. At one point there's a showdown with one of the shadowy puppet-masters of the time-banking system. He smugly says "for some to be immortal, many must die." The stalwart protagonist counters "no one should be immortal if even one must die." A stirring sentiment, but don't forget we're not actually talking life and death here. Fundamentally, I think I agree with the films overall message (which is basically that life is not as fair as it could be) but it undercuts itself slightly by couching everything in this metaphor. It's fairly intelligent in its arguments (it does not, for example, make the mistake of thinking that the puppet-master actually has control over the system he benefits from) I just wish maybe it were yet more biting. I don't know.
Largely I enjoyed the film. The future-style is a spare, featureless one, full of matte textures and mono-coloured dresses. Everyone is very pretty and wears clothing that I like, so the film was easy to watch and easy to pay attention to. The fight of Bonnie-&-Clyde vs The Sheriff of Nottingham keeps the film rushing along, often turning on pointless reveals that don't really advance the plot but do keep us riveted. The social message about wealth redistribution and capitalism-crashing is seductive and well-laid-out but it's not executed in a very realistic or believable way. This is likely to rub some people wrong and wind up preaching to the choir which is too bad, but oh well. An entertaining film.
After establishing this metaphor and making sure it's very clear, the film morphs into a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde or Robin-hood-style film, where the protagonists rob banks and distribute money to the poor. For some poor people, this is obviously a bad idea (the protagonist's friend dies after drinking his windfall) but the poor are universally attractive, well-dressed people, and receive the money smiling and weeping.
I suspect this was once a book or a comic book. There's a lot of details that the film is obviously restraining itself from filling in: there's an arm-wrestling type of contest that individuals can play to steal time from each other. The time-system is explained via genetic modification. Does this explain why everyone is fairly attractive? What bureaucracy is place to enforce this? We see babies with forearm displays. There's oblique reference to a time-market so volatile that the price of coffee changes daily. What's going on?
The film is really mostly concerned with the economic inequality thing. At one point there's a showdown with one of the shadowy puppet-masters of the time-banking system. He smugly says "for some to be immortal, many must die." The stalwart protagonist counters "no one should be immortal if even one must die." A stirring sentiment, but don't forget we're not actually talking life and death here. Fundamentally, I think I agree with the films overall message (which is basically that life is not as fair as it could be) but it undercuts itself slightly by couching everything in this metaphor. It's fairly intelligent in its arguments (it does not, for example, make the mistake of thinking that the puppet-master actually has control over the system he benefits from) I just wish maybe it were yet more biting. I don't know.
Largely I enjoyed the film. The future-style is a spare, featureless one, full of matte textures and mono-coloured dresses. Everyone is very pretty and wears clothing that I like, so the film was easy to watch and easy to pay attention to. The fight of Bonnie-&-Clyde vs The Sheriff of Nottingham keeps the film rushing along, often turning on pointless reveals that don't really advance the plot but do keep us riveted. The social message about wealth redistribution and capitalism-crashing is seductive and well-laid-out but it's not executed in a very realistic or believable way. This is likely to rub some people wrong and wind up preaching to the choir which is too bad, but oh well. An entertaining film.
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