The Lobster

Saw The Lobster, a film from the guy who directed Dogtooth, a similarly straight-faced absurdist take on contemporary life. In this film, we're in some extremely formal alternate universe where single people are so despised that they're sent to a hotel to pair up and hunt run-away singles with tranq darts. If the good, hotel-dwelling singles cannot find a mate, they are turned into an animal of their choosing. The hotel is an extremely unpleasant place, full of desperate people and hilariously awful and ham-fisted propaganda extolling the virtues of couple-hood. At a shooting range a waiter leans in to tell the protagonist "It's no coincidence that the targets are shaped like single people, and not couples."

The film's characters have the overly-formal that Wes Anderson's characters do. They say incomprehensible things with completely straight faces. Unlike Wes Anderson however, this is less tightly-shot and far less twee. I loved the iciness of it. The film also has something on its mind about modern romance. The singles constantly refer to some unimportant quirk of theirs such as shortsightedness or a limp and only look for others with the same quirk. I was reminded of the questions on OkCupid or something , determining your selection of future mates from essentially unimportant questions about books and music. On the flip-side are the run-away singles who are just as rigorously controlled. They may never flirt or get romantically involved. The whole thing is so fascinatingly clinical.

Like Dogtooth, I really liked this film. Also like Dogtooth, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. It's very strange. Fascinating, but unrewarding in a conventional sense. The ending, which is essentially just a giant question mark, I think will especially annoy people. However I also think most people would find it funnier than I did. The film is funny in a way that you don't know how serious it expects you to take it. A compelling and interesting film anyway. As an aside, I really wish they'd shown the hotel for gay people. The opening bit where they inform the protagonist that "bisexual" is not an option at this time is a perfect encapsulation of the film. Funny, heartbreaking, arbitrary, but with an echo of reality.

Shivers

Saw Shivers, an early Cronenberg film. It was a fairly icky film about a worm-like parasite that makes the host organism sexually rapacious. The parasite spreads by leaping from the host's mouth but even so the lust-zombies created by the parasite seem to go for the boobs and junk a lot. It's filmed in the 70s and set in a High-Rise-ish luxury apartment complex. The 70s decor reminds me of sleazy films I've seen (I can't for the life of me remember which ones though. I've seen a documentary on porn in the 70s. Maybe that's what I'm picking up? I've also seen Salo.)

The opening of the film, I feel, lays out the whole thesis. A man and a woman are being shown an apartment by an oily salesman and meanwhile, presumably upstairs, an old man strangles a woman in a school-girl outfit, cuts her clothing off, and pours acid into her abdomen. She is one of the firs sex-zombies we discover, but I think the heart of this film is in the contrast of the glass-and-steel luxury suites vs the ugly sexualized violence going on within. There's a lot of women being attacked and the old horror trope of women being objects of murderous interest is here as well. I had a hard time looking past all of that.

This is a Cronenberg film however, and body horror abounds. The parasites (which resemble flaccid penises) move lumily around in people's abdomens and one central character (played by Cronenberg himself!) tries to make friends with the disease, to become its servant. This is another Cronenberg obsession: the normalizing of the pathological. The parasites were created, we learn, by a mad scientist trying to usher in a new age, where humanity will become beautiful animals, and the earth a never-ending orgy. This is an unpleasant idea but who can say but that it might not get a following?

The ideas are interesting but there's a lot of rape and near-rape and it's all fairly gross. It's unpleasant to watch and it's not clear what statement it's making (if any.) Apparently some contemporary critic decried it as sexist trash and while I don't think it's entirely sexist trash, I can see where they were coming from. An interesting film when viewed through a Cronenberg-ian lens, but might be best to avoid otherwise (unless sex-crazed zombies are your thing in which case go for it!)

Gallipoli

Saw Gallipoli, another WW1 film, this time about an obscure battle between the Turks and the Australians. I can't help but compare this film to yesterday's All Quiet on the Western Front. This one is more modern and shot in beautiful color but is much worse from my point of view. Whereas All Quiet does not focus on one particular battle, this one does. The definiteness and concreteness makes this film much more about a mismanagement of this specific battle. The truth is of course that people dying is precisely what war is designed to accomplish. The accident should not be that our team is dying when they should be killing, but that people in general are being killed full stop!

Anyway, this film was produced by Australian media-goblin Rupert Murdoch and stars Mel Gibson, so I was kind of going in with a grudge. The two central characters are Mel, a drifting laborer who enlists seemingly for lack of anything better to do, and a younger, blond son of a rancher who enlists I think wanting earnestly to fight evil. It was interesting that Mel's character often looks to this kid for guidance. The kid is stalwart and true, but relies on Mel to hunt and gather. I wonder if there were some gay subtext.

The kid is the more idealistic, brave, and cheerful of the two, inspiring a kind of hero worship. Again, war in this film is a sort of grand adventure. As the duo approaches the front line, they see Christmas lights on strings, burning bonfires, a merry scene. A mortar explodes and they grin and whoop with delight. Do they know they are going to die? Moments before the final battle scene in the film, the kid writes a letter home about how everyone on the front is excited and happy. They feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. This does not ring true to me. I believe the horseplay and boredom of the front, the casual attitude towards danger (if not towards death) but to dwell on these things is to make it seem like summer camp.

I've never even held a gun. I don't know what war is like but I doubt that it's like this, with dramatic music cues and gleeful, apple-cheeked camaraderie. I doubt it would be that way for me anyway. I think I would just be killed.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Saw All Quiet on the Western Front, a war story about German soldiers made pre-WW2 in 1930. It's a film about the pointless horrors of war and the blithe manner in which civilians will demand more sacrifices of their boys at the front. There are many powerful sequences. Most of the battles are horrifying and intense, even for such an old film. Unfortunately, this film was made shortly after talkies were developed so many times the protagonist will be delivering some bitter line about what hell life on the front is, but he'll deliver it in a loud, declarative manner, proudly proclaiming where he really should be bitterly mumbling.

This awkwardness aside it really is a good film when no one is talking. Even when they are talking, the substance (if not the delivery) is great. At one point the soldier protagonist returns to his hometown on leave. He's asked to speak before a crowd of students, all in the process of being whipped up into a patriotic frenzy by their teacher. He tells them about how war sucks, how they eat rats and have to murder people with shovel-blades. The students call him coward and shout him down. How can he fight against this mindset? I kept thinking of Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. These students are being told to embrace death, to celebrate only the honor of the battlefield. How can one soldier convince them that their mind will break under the horrors of war?

Another great scene is the very last scene which superimposes a field of white crosses with an early scene of the soldiers going off to war, their faces turning fearfully back, unsure that their enlistments were wise. This film enraged the Nazis of pre-WW2 Germany, was called overly pro-German by the Polish critics of the time. This film has aged a bit badly but I think it was exactly the right film for the time. Alas, due to studio meddling, it received cuts to make it more palatable to Nazi audiences and indeed some of that declarative delivery makes the characters seem very brave and indeed healthy given that they were apparently starving to death. I could see it easily re-cut to make the war look like a fun little romp, like an important and necessary event which would soon be repeated.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno, another film from Kevin Smith's "Askewniverse." Since it's Kevin Smith, you know this film is gonna be a bro-y, congenial film, kind of skeazy but fundamentally good-natured. It's the sort of film that might pass out on your couch but would probably also help you move. As you might gather from the title, the film is sexually provocative but, like Shortbus before it, it's very traditional deep down. It missteps with the sexual politics here and there in my opinion, but I'll talk about that later.

So this is a sweet little movie about two people realizing that they love each other, set in the winter hell-land of Pennsylvania. The winter of their smallish town is lushly and gloriously portrayed. The slush and the ice and the whining car engines, ice caked on door-handles and windshields, the hot coffee in thin, cardboard cups that you hope will warm you up but that get cold the instant you step back outside again, the salt stains on everyone's shoes and on the hardwood of every shop. Oh yes, it's all there!!

I really liked the winter and it works well as a metaphor for single life: cold, lonely, and hostile. Of course Zack and Miri get together. Why wouldn't they? Well, for starters because she's way out of his league. He's Seth Rogan, so he's this big sweet teddy bear, but this is the magical pixie dream girl, I think, making all of your wishes come true. Like the porno they make, this is also just wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Also, while I'm being mean, I really really didn't like the gay couple at the beginning. Both are very attractive but (if wikipedia is to be trusted) neither of them is actually gay (maybe there just weren't any gay actors available at the time???) One makes this big deal out of how important it is to indulge Zack's giggling school-boy curiosity and non-questions such as "so, you suck each other's cocks huh?" Later, Zack just quietly marvels to himself "they fight just like real people!" During the credits, the character return to deliver a gross-out monologue about one of their buttholes. Is this supposed to be funny and inclusive or something? Speaking only for myself here but I don't feel very included. I feel a bunch of straight guys put on silly voices and limp wrists and made fun of me and my friends for a while before patting themselves on the back for being broadminded. For being such an otherwise sweet little film, it's a really sour note. Also there's two black characters who have problems of their own but I am on less familiar ground there so I'll leave it to someone else to critique.

So like I said, this a bro-y movie. Part of it's charm is that it's kind of offensive and any oh-so-outraged blog posts are part of that package and that appeal. Under all of the sex jokes and boobies beats a warm and traditional heart, just wanting to see the guy and the girl get together. I enjoyed this movie. I just worry that someone out there will think this is an honest-to-god portrayal of how life works. So long as you're aware that this is just fantasy, there's no harm in it. A sweet, cozy little film.

Nightcrawler

Saw Nightcrawler (thanks, John!) It was a very timely film about a complete sociopath who chases down car accidents and robberies to sell footage to news programs. He starts out the film as a copper thief, stripping copper cabling from rail yards and selling it to construction sites. Right near the beginning of the film, a rent-a-cop stops him and the protagonist attacks him and kills him, stealing his watch as he does so. That watch is focused on here and there throughout the rest of the film, a symbol of the swirling madness sublimed just under the surface of the protagonist's creepy smile and rapid-fire jargon of business management and self-help lingo. He's monumentally creepy.

In fact, I think he's too creepy. In their haste to make it obvious to the audience what a freak this guy is, they make him into such a howling horror-show that I don't understand how anyone could stand him for more than a few minutes before running in the opposite direction. Then again, I think I've met people like this, who believe that the secret to wealth and happiness is knowing which arms to twist. I regard them with a deep pity that I think would offend them, but I guess I haven't exactly run away from them.

Anyway, this film is quite timely, combining an update of the American Psycho with a heavy dose of cynicism for mainstream media (although, to be frank, the local operation in the film is supposed to be quite rinky-dink.) I've seen the film referenced many times in the more paranoid reaches of Reddit (although increasingly that's becoming the entirety of Reddit, alas.) I was also impressed with the film's sinister use of the internet and information. At one point the protagonist blackmails a woman into sleeping with him based on information readily available online about her. Chilling and important to remember from time to time: you're being watched.

A very nervy little film. Like American Psycho it's almost a dark comedy. Although I never had the stomach to laugh, the protagonist's business-talk is hilarious and freaky. At one point he forms a company composed only of himself and from then on refers to himself as "we" as in "I've noticed your increased work ethic recently and we think that you have great potential for advancement." It would be hilarious if it weren't so gross.

This is a good film. It's unsettling, darkly funny, ugly, and sleek. It does what it needs to do and left me feeling icky afterwards (although I do feel like the film's bullet missed me because I neither create news nor do I watch it so I'm completely outside of this struggle.) But this is no simple, pat little flick, it wants to hit people and scare them, like a cut-rate news team leading with a story of a double-homicide.

The Faculty

Saw The Faculty, a very 90s sort of update of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It has a lot more big names than I remember. Elijah Wood is there with his giant blue eyes, and Josh Hartnett plays counterpoint, with his little cat-like eyes. A lot of eye-related attractiveness going on. Anyway, the film is fairly goofy fun. The plot is ludicrous of course, with the 20-something-year-old "teenagers" getting high on caffeine and also caffeine is somehow more dehydrating than salt? Bad science aside, there's a fun sense of the teenagers getting together, falling prey to paranoia and never knowing quite who the enemy is. Good sci fi stuff.

It is fundamentally a dumb and harmless movie, but it's got a lot of (possibly unintentional) creepiness in how the heroes behave. There's something sinister in the eagerness of Josh Hartnett's attractive genius stoner character to go homicidal on his teachers. The songs "School's Out" and "Another Brick in the Wall" feature heavily on the soundtrack. I think the film cynically believes that there's a part of kids that really do want to murder their teachers (one teacher even hamfistedly says "I'm the authority figure here!" before Hartnett mincingly sneers her back into submission.) The parasitic alien makes everyone serene and calm. It's a false calm of course, and the violence of the main characters gives the film some grey shades, but why is it that calm is a sign of external and alien control? I wish I had been told a more comforting lie.

The movie is dumb (and for me nostalgic) fun. It's clearly not a movie with a ton on its mind, which exists only to give kids of the 90s what is cynically assumes they want (teacher-murder) Is that what kids want? It isn't what I wanted. Eh. A miss.

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

Saw Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!(!!!?!), a documentary about the early days of filmmaking in Australia. Apparently there was a big push for native Australian film on the federal level, resulting in big tax breaks for filmmakers and therefore in a huge number of people making any kind of schlocky film because now it was profitable. Thank heaven because we get some truly crazy, insane, anarchic and fun films as a result.

It turns out I've seen a few of the films they talk about in this documentary. They bring up Turkey Shoot, Mad Max, and The Man from Hong Kong all of which I've seen and didn't particularly like. Don't get me wrong, I do like the fact that these films exist, I'm just not the target audience. Quentin Tarantino is which is why he appears throughout this documentary ("Fan" is listed under his name.) He claims the film are great lurid excesses that make you doubt what you're seeing. Maybe for him but for me I'm not much wowed by the brilliant cruelty toward women or the car-fetishism which so impresses him. I have my own weaknesses of course, just not for blood.

Anyway, the documentary is great fun. It plays rock music at you and covers the screen with Lichtenstein-esque blow-ups of posters and film frames, gobbing the image with GCI blood and collages as aging actors and directors burble excitedly about their films. It's infectious and makes me want to see more of their horrible art. And like I say, I would rather see an ambitious muddle than an expertly crafted remake, so I feel we are not totally opposed, the schlockmeisters and I.

White Heat

Saw White Heat, a James Cagney gangster film. If I had to explain to some foreign person what a gangster film was, I would point to this film. Cagney does the gangster thing, the cops pursue him, a mole in his organization sweats and connives. Cagney's gangster gets intense, debilitating migraines and has this weird fixation on his mother, an old, unsmiling battleaxe of a woman.

I assumed Cagney was supposed to be some grotesque monster, that this would be an intense battle of the noble cops vs a grandiose monster, but there really isn't that much tension and horror in the film. Rather, it's very orderly. The gangsters do one reasonable thing, the cops do another. I never got the sense that the gangster was tantalizingly out of reach, or that he was terribly, untouchably omnipotent. The plot is kind of dry fo a film where so many people die.

It's a solid gangster picture, not the greatest I've seen but not the worst either. Free of tension but also fairly free of hysterics, so maybe it's just not catering to my weaknesses. A very 1950s film. Orderly and composed.

World's Greatest Dad

Saw World's Greatest Dad, a dark comedy starring Robin Williams. The story follows a frustrated writer (Robin Williams) with a horrible son who only thinks about sex and sneeringly hates everything and every one. Robin's character's life is one of endless, cartoonish humiliation and frustration. He works at a private school where he must always answer for his son's perverted shenanigans. He's "dating" the faculty flirt who adopts a sickening cute-little-girl persona every time she's being mean. "You're not maaaaad are you?" she whines as she breaks another date with Robin. It's Todd Solondz-level grimness.

Anyway, one day Robin finds his son dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation and, to save his face one last time, hoists his pants up and composes a fake suicide note about how no one understood him and how he was so sensitive inside. The note catches the school by storm and the idiot, horn-dog, jerk kid becomes the ideal dream friend of every student in the school. They beg Robin for more of his son's inner-life and, Robin being a frustrated writer, is happy to supply more ghost-written material.

The film is comic but very dark. I didn't know if I could take much more of the human smiley-face Robin Williams being abused mocked and belittled by his son and by life in general. Robin's character has a pathetic, grimy quality to him. There's another teacher who is smarter, hotter, and a better teacher than he is. That teacher's frustration later in the film, as Robin's star rises, is sweet succor to Robin. The satire is acid and well-drawn. I loved hating the vacuous girlfriend and being pettily jealous of the better teacher. When Robin is starting to get praise and recognition, that too is vapid and silly. "Father/Hero" reads the text under his face on an Oprah-like talk-show.

I was sort of worried that we'd start to get a bit Randian. Was the small, pathetic teacher supposed to be the villain (or anti-hero) for cheating his way to the top? This other teacher is clearly better in every way than Robin is and the only way Robin gets the better of him is via an outrageous lie. I felt that either Robin would come clean, triggering an outrage every bit as vacuous as the praise he was receiving, or he would continue this lie forever, falling into phoniness and villainy. I felt the ending of the film let him off very lightly. The film wants to redeem him but doesn't want him to suffer. But he's selfishly tricked the whole (admittedly stupid) town, so why should he get off Scot-free?

I felt the ending was off, but the rest of it is great. Wry and well-observed, full of little hilarious details like Robin snidely observing that The New Yorker is a fine publication he guesses but it isn't a national magazine. A sometimes painful but fun and silly movie. It has some vague motions at moralizing that I don't think really stick, but the rest of the film is good enough, I'll give it a pass. A nice little film.

The Transporter

Saw The Transporter (thanks, Basil!) It was a very European sort of mix of Fast and Furious and Rambo. The film is clearly the result of a car enthusiast day-dreaming about driving fancy cars, wearing neato watches, and being a super-cool guy who transports various stuff for the mob or something. He listens to classical music and so smart and cool and oh my god wouldn't that be cool!?

Unsurprisingly, I didn't think much of this film. The plot, such as it is, is that this super-cool trucker has to transport a sexy lady who of course he sees all tied up and just can't help but fall in love with her. The treatment of this woman (who is a hacker I guess but also a damsel in distress) is a bit gross but, full disclosure, I did really enjoy the super homo-erotic fight scene midway through the film (the protagonist gets shirtless, greases himself up, and kisses another dude on the mouth) so I guess it's sleazy, but at least it's equal-opportunity sleaze.

Anyway, the film is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for wishes I do not have. A complete miss for me. Very well-made and not at all amateurish, it nevertheless was too blatantly self-indulgent and masturbatory in a way that did not arouse my interest. Next, please.

Rise of the Guardians

Saw Rise of the Guardians, a very whimsical children's film that constructs some elaborate mythology around childhood mythelogical characters, such as the Easter Bunny and Santa. These are the titular Guardians who defend hope and the magic of childhood and whatnot. The protagonist, Jack Frost, is a young boy with the voice of an adult man who is cool in a horribly children's-movie sort of way and who wears a hoodie and guy-liner. It's pretty weird. He's clearly supposed to be a teen heartthrob or something. Anyway, he and the guardians have a cute little adventure saving the world from Pitch Black (which is apparently the real actual name of The (or A) Boogeyman.)

The film is pure escapism. I knew it would be and relished the escape from reality. This film is a bit limp when it comes to plot, but the art design is amazing. I suspect the concept art would be a lot of fun to look at. Clearly a lot of creativity was spent on this film. There's all these little flourishes of world-building that don't go anywhere. For example, they seem to have some kind of semi-religious relationship with the moon that's never explained. It's sort of crypto-pagan but then many holidays are so it's appropriate. Anyway, a good bit of fluff that unfortunately got a bit cringey for me (remember, the protagonist is Cool.) Kids would probably like it.

Strictly Ballroom

Saw Strictly Ballroom, a film directed by Baz Luhrmann, the guy who directed Moulin Rouge(!) and Romeo + Juliette. This is one was an early film in his career, so he hasn't yet embraced his innate lust for camp in quite the glorious, full-thoated way that Moulin Rouge does. Yet this film is deeply and delightfully campy, focusing on a dancer who is the son of two dancers. He desperately wants to win the big ballroom dance competition but (oh no!) he keeps dancing steps that aren't on the list of official acceptable ballroom dance moves!! His mother screams, his father looks away, ashamed, his dance instructor grows "come one, boy! Show them your ballcraft!" The whole thing is a hoot.

The film is sweet and simple, silly and goofy. It's in no way challenging, just a pure puff-ball of a film. It giddily trips from spectacle to spectacle, doing everything in its power to convince you that ballroom dancing is amazing and exciting. It mostly works because it provides you a snarky out by poking fun at itself often. It doesn't seem to take itself seriously and, for me at least, this gave me permission to just lay back and enjoy myself. It's simplistic and silly in parts, but it knows it. It's also grand and melodramatic at other times, and is just a lot of campy fun.

In a Lonely Place

Saw In a Lonely Place, a Bogart picture where Humph plays an embittered screenwriter. He establishes himself as a hero by sticking up for down-and-out actors and by slugging the smug money men. He has a girl around for a few innocent drinks and then, after leaving his apartment, the girl winds up dead. Yes, it's shaping up to be a bog-standard mystery picture. Fortunately, we're saved from the rather rote emergence of the villains and the drug connection and the whatnot of conventional mysteries by the film changing focus to Bogart's romantic relationship and the film pivots and becomes a rather harrowing story of domestic abuse.

The writer is implicated in the crime and even though we viewers know he didn't do it, it starts to seem like the kind of thing he would do. He has explosive tantrums, lavishing her with gifts the next day. I've never experienced domestic abuse (thank heaven) but this rage/guilt/sweetness cycle is textbook as far as I know. By the end, we get into some true 50 super-melodrama, but it's left me fairly rattled.

Bogart's most famous films have him as the hero or anti-hero at worst, but before the Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, he was type-cast as a gangster. It's shocking for me to see him be menacing but boy does he deliver with the tantrums and the rage. At one point he's cradling his girlfriend's head and it looks exactly like he's strangling her. The film cleverly subverts the fist-fight that opens the film. Initially, it establishes him as a hero, but in retrospect is clearly the actions of a man with a short fuse and little self-control. The film strips away the tropes of action and romance films, revealing their hackneyed short-hands to be creepy and ominous. By the end, his small circle of out-of-work friends seem less like a band of true artists and more like the losers table, huddling together for company and turning a blind eye to each other's gaping flaws. A tragic and creepy film.

Dazed and Confused

Saw Dazed and Confused, a Linklater film which eventually settles into a boozy, weedy, drifting sort of film about teenagers trying to stave off boredom in a small town. Unfortunately it starts out in some ghastly and depressing parallel universe where children are publicly beaten by Ben Affleck. The social stratification of high school is reinforced and celebrated with Jocks taunting Nerds as smiling, approving teachers look on. A little old man asks the handsome, paddle-wielding quarterback if he's gonna throw some good ones next season. Kids openly deal pot as 40-year old dudes leer at freshmen girls. It made me want to kill myself.

For some reason films celebrating the halcyon days of youth really depress me. They never reflect anything remotely resembling my experiences. They're a wish fulfillment fantasy for the recently graduated, making the suck of adulthood all the worse by focusing on a glorious near-past that never was. It would be depressing enough to be so wallowingly stuck in the past, so backwards-looking, but to be stuck in a past that never even actually occurred, that makes all of your good times look like shit in comparison? Misery.

Reading about this it seems that Linklater was trying to make an anti-John Hughes film. This film is indeed much less delicate and careful, its high schoolers much more laconic and sarcastic, less earnest and plastic. It is however a lot like American Graffiti, the George Lucas infantilism-fest. Anyway, being a Linklater film, we get some kooky conspiracy theories, some philosophical noodling. After the beating and gleeful humiliation of children ends, we settle into a Heavy Metal Parking Lot style meander which is much nicer. It winds down at last, and ends with the teenagers driving off into the sunset and to an Aerosmith concert, highfiving and laughing, just kids after all. I guess I shouldn't be so wound up in these fictional kids' lives, but the attitude of the universe they inhabit is just so damn depressing.

Also totally random but the main character looks exactly like Winona Ryder.

Night of the Iguana

Saw Night of the Iguana (thanks, Anne!) It was a film based on a Tennessee Williams play, hitting on the favorite Williams themes of love and acceptance being of central, almost holy significance. The protagonist is a disgraced priest, reduced to hosting package tours of Mexico. After a series of misfortunes involving an under-age (ie 20 year old) girl turns the tour group against him, he strands them in a hotel owned by a lady-friend of his, to try and win them back. I was expecting to watch a straightforward, perhaps slightly ham-fisted take on the noble Man vs intolerant and judgemental Society, but the film is little more nuanced than that. The protagonist is associated with the titular iguana; an ugly, repulsive lizard who is in danger of being eaten by the natives, but is still one of God's creatures, as deserving of respect and dignity as anyone.

I thought the protagonist came off a little too blustery. He didn't have the bitter calm of the protagonist in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and seemed to splutter. His problems always stem from women with the arch-rival being revealed to be a lesbian. The message is sound but the devices used are inelegant. There's also some cabana boys who are always shirtless, dancing, and playing maracas, even when engaged in a fistfight. It felt campy and strange in a goofy, self-aware way, not at all the self-serious melodrama I anticipated. I dunno.

I also found the "underage" 20-year-old girl so annoying. She's supposed to be one of the tools of evil, intolerant society, so she's supposed to be annoying but I guess I got too frustrated. It's kind of a corny old picture, full of pleas for acceptance but also being kind of shitty to the women involved. I'm being a bit harsh but I guess I just sort of missed out on this one.

The Act of Killing

Saw The Act of Killing, an extremely uncomfortable documentary on some of the killers in the Indonesian mass killings of "communists" (AKA ethnic Chinese and political undesirables) in the 60s. The filmmaker somehow inveigled these killers into shooting a bat-shit re-enactment of their crimes. The central killer, Anwar, the one we spend most time with, used to work at a cinema as a young man. He talks about leaving the cinema after a really good film, an Elvis film, of going across the street, still carried in the mood of the film, dancing and singing, of offering a detainee a cigarette, and then carrying him off to kill him. "We were like happily killing, joyfully." Horrifying, ugly, weird stuff.

The film revels in the grotesque absurdity of its premise. One of the killers a disgusting fat man (there's a scene of him brushing his teeth, shirtless, his rolls shaking as toothpaste foam drips down his chin) who is inexplicably always dressed as a woman in the film-within-the-film. At one point Anwar recreates his butchery of a baby, cutting up a teddy bear, mocking the fat man who is playing the baby's father, crawling and mewling nearby. As the film progresses, and as more and more scenes are reenacted, we become sickly aware that Anwar is scarred and haunted by his violent past. He is unable to continue filming at one point, overcome. "Is this what my victims felt like? This fear?" "No," the director says, uncharacteristically breaking silence "they felt much much worse because for them it was real."

It's like The Office meets Shoah. A very strange film which cannot avoid being very self-referential. It's about the filming of an internal film, centering on a man who grew up with movies, who was inspired by the cruelty and barbarism of American gangster films. Many times we catch glimpses of Anwar's soul behind the makeup and fake blood. In a few of the scenes I wondered if he was achieving some sort of cleansing through this. Were we watching him kill and torture himself? The film is haunting and strange, eerie and frightening in a very real way. The pretense is always just a hair's breadth from the truth. Such an unsettling film.

Mary and Max

Saw Mary and Max, a claymation film from Adam Elliot whom you may know from the short Harvie Krumpet. His films are all set in a comically miserable universe, where pets ceaselessly die, everyone has a chronic medical condition, everyone dies unpredictably and tragically and often humorously. At one point we see the Statue of Liberty who in this universe looks like a dumpy, frowning, lunchlady. We are invited to laugh at the grotesqueries of suffering and then we are made to feel the human emotions behind it. The whole opus is summed up in this film as "You are not perfect. You are imperfect. And so am I. All humans are imperfect." Behind the lantern jaws and grey clay, there's a secret beautiful heart beating.

The film is a delight. Funny and absurd for a while, becoming more and more touching as we get to know the people behind the quirks and tics. At one point, a man retires to a life of metal-detecting on the beach. He never finds anything and is swept out to sea by a tidal wave. His metal detector lays on the ground, its red light indicating that there's something metal beneath it. It's pathetic and darkly comic and sort of sweet. He did find something in the end, even at the cost of his life. There's a weird, neat almost-optical-illusion of cruel mockery that is somehow also gentle acceptance, like an old woman who becomes a young lady. It also finishes with an emotional lunge at the jugular that's all but guaranteed to make you cry. A wonderful, touching movie.

Oktyabr

Saw Oktyabr, a propaganda film from the USSR directed by that king of Soviet agitprop, Eisenstein. A few reviews ago I said Eisenstein was more of a choreographer than a director but this doesn't capture the brilliance of his montages which is on display in this film. There's a scene where a peaceful Bolshevik protest is broken up by proletariat counter-protesters and the army. As the guns fire and protesters are trampled underfoot by ugly fat counter-protesters, the film works itself up into a fever-pitch of insanity. It's Eisenstein at the top of his game. He also frequently uses allusions to art in this film. The evil (and kind of weaselly-looking) Russian Emperor will fold his arms and we smash-cut to a statue of Napoleon. An official is shouting at the troops and we cut to the consternated face of a marble baby.

This is, of course, blatant propaganda. The good guys are always handsome and/or cute. The bad guys are fat and decadent, rolling their eyes and laughing at the struggles of our heroes the Bolsheviks, often bespectacled, often with terrible teeth. They show the hell of the provisional government by showing long breadlines but of course we don't get to the famine of the grain shortage. Anyway, if you can leave politics aside, the film is well made and interesting. It drags near the end, when the Emperor's palace has fallen, but there's some confusingly off-message ugliness at that point. Ugly old ladies fight with an attractive guard over a bottle of booze from the cellars. He smashes all of the booze bottles and I don't know if this a good or bad thing.

Anyway, the film is a masterclass in editing and montage. This is a silent film and at one point a machine-gun fires. The film flickers between images of the gun's muzzle and the soldier's grimacing face to evoke the rat-a-tat-tat of the gunfire. Very clever! I also liked the coloring of people's actions through ham-fisted allusions to other images. This film is definitely telling us how to feel, but it lets us puzzle out its message just a bit, and this can trick us into thinking the connections sprang from our minds. Very good (propaganda)

Bowfinger

Saw Bowfinger, a screwball comedy about a bottom-feeding director who tries to con some Hollywood elite into financing his film by claiming he has a big star attached. He then must film his scifi B-film with his protagonist unaware that he's in this film. The whole thing is fairly goofy and low-stakes. The protagonists of the film are all idiots and schemers, none of them particularly sympathetic (apart from some illegal immigrants who are essentially character-less.) I didn't really care if these jerks succeeded in their film. I had faith that, even if they failed, it would be amusing and entertaining. A lo-stakes little goofball movie.

Secretary

Saw Secretary, a sort of Fifty Shades of Grey-style story about a submissive little woman discovering the joys of BDSM. Unlike Fifty Shades of Grey however, this film is less sexually explicit and less creepily consent-ignoring. There's risky fun games they play, where the boss will push the secretary's boundaries, but you never get the sense that the secretary is anything but enthusiastic. That's my take on it anyway. There's very little BDSM in my life and I don't really know if I'm looking at a good relationship or not. It's very intense anyway.

The film is very delighted with its own taboo-pushing. There are voice-over monologues that serve no purpose beyond confronting the viewer with the whole "yeah, I like it when he spanks me. Problem?" thing. Also of course these monologues serve to reassure the nervous viewer (and I am nothing if not a nervous viewer) that this is all enthusiastic on both sides. Indeed, there's even a sequence in the end where the secretary (the sub) must win back the boss (the dom) in an epic endurance test. He's kind of freaked out about the relationship too, you know. Anyway, its during this sequence that the film unpacks a ton of cultural hangups about pain and the relationship of pain with pleasure. It's great. A stern woman urges the secretary to read up on her feminist literature, as though a woman's right to be treated with respect was in opposition to this woman's desires to be humiliated. A blast of good intellect in the middle of a steamy, silly movie.

The movie is sexy and goofy, the secretary moaning breathily "I'm your... secretary!" as she's being spanked. There's some strange connection drawn between self-harm and BDSM but I think BDSM is portrayed as a healthy way for this woman to handle her self-harming tendencies by putting them in hands of someone else whom she trusts not to actually hurt her. It's possible to read too much into this connection but I think it's realistically specific to this situation. The problem is one of representation. This BDSM relationship wouldn't need to thread so many needles of respectability and consent and feminist-approval and so on if there were only more BDSM relationships portrayed in films/TV shows. Not that I personally care, mind you, I just won't disagree if I see an article condemning this relationship even though I personally found it not objectionable. Bleh. What a paragraph.

Dark Star

Saw Dark Star, a dismal sort of scifi comedy directed by John Carpenter as a film student. The film follows a small crew of astronauts who are blowing up 'rogue' planets with unstable orbits. They've been in space for decades and have become sort of hostile towards each other and utterly bored with their work. Their ship is falling apart beneath them from a compounding lack of repairs. The film has many silly parts (there's a show-stopping sequence where a bomb's AI must be reasoned out of exploding) but the best parts are the parts John Carpenter would later base his career on: the mounting claustrophobic frustration of being trapped, of being about to die.

The film was shot in the 70s and has this chunky, plastic aesthetic, as though the ship were designed by Nintendo or Atari. The crew-members are humorously grumpy with each other. At one point one is going outside of the ship to do repairs. He announces this on the intercom and his crew-mates say "just tell us when something important comes up" and turn off his radio. Their utter disinterest is played abruptly, like a punchline. I didn't find it particularly funny, but it's interesting from both a scifi perspective and from a Carpenter perspective. Clunky but interesting.

Wake in Fright

Saw Wake in Fright, a spacey, anxious sort of Australian film about a prissy little schoolteacher in a backwoods community. He stops off in a slightly larger backwater town and gets stuck there after losing all of his money in a night of drunken debauchery. From there it's a sort of low-key horror as he keeps missing train night after night, stuck in a hung-over haze, waking up on floors of saloons after nights of drinking and shooting stiff in the clothing he passed out in. All of this may sound like a rousing good time, but schoolteacher is a fairly dainty, mincing dude and it's clear that all of this bacchanalia is destroying him in some way.

The film begins his entrapment with the town sheriff buying him drinks in a pub. There's young, shirtless guys hanging about, some in black wife-beaters, and the sheriff leans very close over the schoolteacher, lighting his cigarette. The protagonist is all-but-explicitly gay and it feels very much like the sheriff is hitting on him in this scene. In later scenes he's menaced by angry drunk men. It's never clear if their roughhousing is going to descend into rape or murder or if the townsfolk will just keep him liquored up and watch this dainty man self-destruct.

The film treats the schoolteacher's adventures as a sort of growth experience. Ultimately the schoolteacher relaxes and becoming, perhaps, more of a man. This film was made in the 70s, so I'm not sure that the schoolteachers' supposed to actually be gay. Perhaps he's just kind of effete but straight after all. The character is played by Gary Bond who was gay in real life and like I said there seems to be some homoeroticism in the film. Perhaps I'm just seeing what I want see? Anyway the events of this film looked horrifying to me. It's played loosely and ominously, full of grumbly sounds and sudden jump-cuts, but ultimately with an arid, aimless feel. Scenes go on forever as you watch a man, stuck in place, fall apart. Not as glum as I make it sound, but no chuckle-fest either.

The Kid

Saw The Kid, a Charlie Chaplain film. In this one the Little Tramp finds a baby and, after trying to fob it off to nannies and policemen, raises it as his own. The baby matures into the titular Kid and they have cute little adventures together. This one promises the audience it will be a bit more sad than Chaplain's other films, but I noted no such bonus sadness. The film is very of its era, noodling along cutely and episodically until it abruptly ends happily ever after. There's a scene with angels which I thought was cute however it happens five minutes from the end of the film by which point I was sort of anticipating it being over already.

Not much to say about this one except that it's in the public domain and is very available, however the quality varies wildly. The Amazon prime version which I watched is actually missing the top 10% of the screen yet the version on youtube is missing about 15 minutes of footage, god only knows what. I wish there were a government body that would preserve art that had fallen into the public domain. There must be a best version somewhere. Let's put it on a website, let it stream for free, and let culture benefit from the available art, okay? Whatever. Cute noodley little film.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the John Hughes movie about the kid who just happens to live in John Hughes's childhood house and sleep in John Hughes's childhood bedroom who has an amazing day when he skips school. This movie had been almost entirely spoiled for me before I saw it by think-pieces analyzing the film. It's a feel-good film for teenagers with the giant flashing message of "carpe diem." Its message gets a bit muddied by Ferris taking advantage of nearly everyone he comes into contact with. Like a trickster god, sometimes this is for their own good (as with his sickly friend, Cameron) but often they're worse for tangling with him (see the effete waiter who dares to try to bounce Ferris from a swanky restaurant, or indeed the evil vice-principal who vilely expects kids to go to school.)

Ferris's manipulations of his parents and disrespect for other peoples' wishes frankly annoyed me. Okay, Cameron perhaps comes out of the film better, but even he is put into a catatonic stupor for a bit of the film. Ferris is played by the human puppy-dog Matthew Broderick, so I could never got all that mad at him but he's clearly the Mary Sue, the self-insert of John Hughes, who can do no wrong and whom everyone loves and oh boy does he know it. He is the Golden Child of the family.

I most identified with Ferris's eye-rolling sister, Jeanie, the scapegoat. She's called a "little asshole" by the spacey but lovable school secretary, her parents are quick to rebuke her, quick to praise Ferris. There's also a bunch of scenes of Jeanie's mounting frustration with how beloved Ferris is (which scenes are I guess played for laughs?) But this film has a message, even for Jeanies like me: "You oughta spend a little more time dealing with yourself and a little less time worrying about what your brother does." Which... okay, fair point. There are people like Ferris around in the world, who just keep cheating their way to the top, who smile as they spite you, but as long as I'm happy with myself, I don't need to "fix" those people, just get the hell away from them. This piece of perfectly mollifying advice comes from a drugged-up Charlie Sheen and is unfortunately delivered immediately after a bit of negging that ultimately sends Jeanie head-over-heels for this wonderful stranger. Yuck. The sexism of the 80s rears its ugly head once again.

So, okay. I did not like this film, but it's a perfectly good, perfectly fun movie. I have to admit, the film had essentially been ruined for me beforehand by a bunch of think-pieces about how Ferris' attitude mirrors that of the 80s Baby Boomers, how Jeanie is the spiteful Millennials, forever jilted out of their own bit of fun. This film promulgates a point of view and, like any point of view, it will clash with others who have different perspectives. I hardly came to this film with a fresh mind anyway, so feel free, lovers of this film, to completely disregard my thoughts. In the words of the Charlie-Sheen druggy truth-teller: "... It's just an opinion."

Blue Ruin

Saw Blue Ruin (thanks, Basil!) It was a revenge thriller following a hobo's quest for vengeance against a whole family that was responsible for his (the hobo's) parents' death. The hobo has gentle, enormous eyes and a hesitant demeanor. He is a good man. We can tell. His quest for vengeance is portrayed as the wild-west-style necessary evil that will right the world once more. The film contrasts his grisly deeds and his mounting sense of panic and desperation with the gorgeous wilds of Virginia. Just before charging in guns blazing, he glances at the sky, at the contrail of an airplane through the boughs of the evergreens, traveling straight in one direction.

I really enjoyed the film. It seems to follow an innocent man (well, sort-of innocent. He is complicit in the following mayhem after all) into a shadowy netherworld of backwoods justice and amateur legal and medical knowledge. We focus on the protagonist's incompetence, on his wounds and pain. His enemies are super-competent and painless. We follow his quest although we know it can have no happy ending. The film is lovely. Lyrical and light, yet suspenseful without cheap jump-scares to spoil the mood.

It's not a slam-dunk of a movie. Back-woods folk, for example, are not shown in the most flattering light which is unfortunate since I think there's a lot of overlap between action/thriller fans and gun-owners who would probably begrudge the stereotypes. But none the less, the film moves along with tension and quiet fascination. The best part of the film is just the minutia of the confrontations. He left the car keys just here, he moves to a new hiding spot just so. His silent movement around the streets and around houses is the best part of this film. A great little thriller.

Ink

Saw Ink, a very visual film about a secret war happening between the team that brings you good dreams (the storytellers, a multicultural group of dread-locked, fish-netted crew) and the bunch that brings you bad dreams (identical scientist-looking guys with big glasses and plastic surgical gowns who are for some reason called incubuses despite being not all that sexy.) Anyway, these two teams clash over a girl whose soul is stolen by a third agent, a dude with a huge black cloak and giant nose named Ink. Now the main character in all of this is the girl's father who is a Big Important Business Man who is working on closing the Hindersen Account (yes, the multi-billion-dollar Hindersen account!!)

I really wanted to like this film. It's visually rich, it builds a world that I'm actually interested in, it's definitely brave enough to try something different from the mainstream, but it's just killed by the script and performances. It's such a pity! The Big Important Business Man comes off as less of a titan of industry and more as just a weasel. He's prone to fits of swearing which are (I guess) supposed to show how tightly-wound he is but come of kind of shrill and bitchy. I mean, we're supposed to believe they trusted this guy with the Hindersen account? Also there's a mystic storyteller called "The Pathfinder" who is supposed to be zany and sarcastic in a sort of motor-mouthed way. He's completely atrocious.

This film would have been much better if it had been filmed in France, I think. The French are much more used to whimsy in their films (see for instance Amelie, Mood Indigo, A Town Called Panic) which would have provided more talent and more readily available money. Also, if they were all speaking French, I wouldn't be able to spot the protgaonist's wimpy performance so easily. He would just be talking French and I could gather his meaning from the subtitles. Perfect. As is, the film is a kid's film that the kids will one day be bewildered by. A promising but sadly lumpy mess.

Walkabout

Saw Walkabout, a pastoral film about a teenage girl and her younger brother who get lost in the Australian outback. The film opens with the sounds of didgeridoos and animal cries played over footage of a city. A particular man is focused on: suited, middle-aged, fussy. He is somehow involved in a mining operation. Mining is used here (and later, near the end of the film) as a symbol of modern man's disregard for and destruction of nature. Anyway, the girl and boy are lost in the outback. They shall undergo The Walkabout which is (we are informed in an opening title-card) a spiritual journey undertaken by the Aboriginals to attain adulthood. Yes, these two kids are to be saved.

Specifically, they're to be saved by an Aboriginal dude who comes along to help them out for absolutely no reason. He of course doesn't want them to die, but once they're out of the desert and into some jungly forest, it seems like they might be able to take care of themselves. Anyway it sort of seems cheap that these kids survive The Walkabout solely because they had help every step of the way. Does that count as a true Walkabout? Anyway, the exoticization of the Aboriginal dude continues as he is made into a symbol for the wilds of Australia. He goes into full-blown weeping Indian mode at one point, witnessing the lazy (and therefore useless and invalid) hunting of a bunch of water buffalo. I feel the film's heart is in the right place but, like that 70s ad I liked, it's approach leaves something to be desired.

Anyway, the film is mostly about these two kids surviving and getting in touch with nature which, this being the 70s, means getting naked a lot. This also leads to a lot of footage of the girl swimming about in the nude which is only a symbol of her spiritual freedom and return to nature, man. It has nothing to do with her being hot (oh and also here, check out this panty-shot. Wink wink.) It also means a subdued but romantic relationship with the Aborigine which must have been pretty damn edgy for 1971) Every so often we flash over to civilization for these strange, overly-bright, David Lynch-ish scenes of antiseptic cleanliness and calm unpleasantness. The boy and girl also lug around a radio (another symbol of decadent Modern Man) which at one point describes the incredibly cruel process of preparing an ortolan and later jabberingly recites mathematical formulas. Oh Modern Man! When will you ever learn?

So I didn't think much of this film. It was beautiful and well-shot. It's not lazy or unimaginative, but it's got a one-note message of condemnation for basically anything that's the result of refining. I find this message insulting and naive, especially as its suggestion is for us all to abandon the cities for the trees. This would result in a lot more happiness perhaps, but also in a lot less people, and a lot more dead babies. Oh well? I do agree that the environment is in a bad shape and that we could all do to be more sincere and emotional and less materialistic, but let's have some restraint even in that, okay? The sexism and racism is just the perfect 1970s cherry on top. They are positive stereotypes at least, but it's still sex/racism underneath. Ah well.

Aparajito

Saw Aparajito, an Indian film from the 50s, film number two of the Apu trilogy, based on the autobiography of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. This is the last one I've seen however as I didn't prioritize the integrity of this series. It's too bad though because it's such a rich series. This one follows the protagonist Apu as he becomes a young man. After a childhood in the bustling city of Varanasi, he and his mother move out to the country where he enrolls in a school and turns out to be quite gifted. After an adorable learning-about-the-world montage, he receives a scholarship for college. At college in Calcutta is where the real meat of the film is found. Apu struggles with his rural youth. He clearly resents the small-town atmosphere and loves the sophistication of the city (to say nothing of and the university.) He loves his mother, who still lives out there, but resents her pathetic loneliness, her silent aura of guilt that she holds over him. There's a scene where Apu's mother speaks movingly to him, only to find that he has drifted off to sleep mid-soliloquy. This is a cruel scene to include in an autobiography, and one that must have been invented. The author has let us know that he has not forgiven himself, that he still feels guilt.

It's funny to talk of the author of the book that a film is based on but the film has a very literary tone. The acting and shooting are fairly workaday. There are some excellent shots, but very little visual cleverness. Most of the interesting parts of the film come from evocative scenes, such as when a young Apu feeds monkeys in a temple. They scamper up chains, hung with bells. The bells ring out, seemingly blessing Apu, celebrating him. These early scenes illuminate Apu's struggle with his humble past and by extension with his humble mother. He's trying to escape his past but that's what formed him, the blessing of the monkeys, and long walks along the Ganges listening to priests and hucksters and fitness buffs, each representing a philosophy, a rich collage of ideas.

This is such a rich film. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface and already there's plenty to keep me interested. It's not a crowd-pleaser of course. It's set 8000 miles away from me and 87 years in the past, so it's a tad dry. Like a good book, you have to work a bit for the themes but if that sounds like a good time to you, check it out. A rich, fecund film.

Back to the Future Part III

Saw Back to the Future Part III, the western one. It was a jolly little film, wrapping up the series with little lessons and check-box-ticking. It feels a little pedantic sometimes, as it gets into the details of how exactly they jumped forward and backward in time. Those moments felt less like a story and more like watching someone finish a Sudoku puzzle, but thankfully these moments are brief. The rest of the film is Marty and the Doc running about, creating ice and shooting bad guys. The film is jolly, like I say.

I don't have that much to say here. The film was entertaining. I liked how dirty the wild west was even as it was perhaps sanitized and romanticized. I would have like to see someone suffering from scurvy or diphtheria or something. Also it's a damn lucky thing both Marty & Doc are white males. I wonder what the film would have been like if Doc Brown were black? Anyway, this is clearly not that kind of film. Rather, it's the fluffy entertaining kind and in that endeavor it succeeds admirably. A fun little film.

Blue is the Warmest Color

Saw Blue is the Warmest Color (thanks, Basil!) It was a French romance following a young lesbian becoming aware of her sexuality and finding her first girlfriend at the same time. It was a sweet film, capturing not only the thrill of first romance but also the intricate complexity of longer-term relationships. I recognized and loved the nervousness of the protagonist stepping into a gay bar for the first time. The excitement but also the dread. The stakes are higher and the game is for keeps now. Well-observed, well-acted stuff.

I enjoyed the film's slow deliberate pace and quietly explosive performances. The naturalistic style stops it from being truly operatically melodramatic, but the sudden silences and quiet mumbled words almost speak louder than shouts and thrown dishes. Apparently the director tortured the actresses a bit to get these performances, demanding hundreds of retakes and I think that's really a bit much (they are professional actresses, you know) but you can't argue with the results.

I've read some condemnations of this film, claiming it was essentially soft-core lesbian porn for straight men and I can see where those criticisms are coming from. The protagonist is a makeup-less but very pretty girl and her girlfriend is kind of tomboyish but also quite attractive. The sex scenes are protracted (I mean) and there aint no 200 pound bull-dyke ushering this blossoming young lady into womanhood. In fact I can't recall anyone at all in the film who is physically ugly. Whatever. This isn't as progressive as it might be. It is however extremely touching and sweet, if perhaps straight-washed a tad.

Barbarella

Saw Barbarella, a goofy, stupid, sexy little scifi/fantasy. It was very coy and cutesy in a leering 60s-ish sort of way. Barbarella, as an illustration of what I'm talking about, is gorgeously beautiful and lives in a post-war civilization, where love is the order of the day. Ah but in this future people only have sex by placing their palms together and letting drugs do the rest, so even though Barb is an amiable sex-bomb, she is also a virgin you see. It's a tad gross but it's also cute and stupid, like a fluffy little dog humping your leg. At any rate, it's not really for me.

For me this was a frustrating film. It's very imaginative and campy and glorious fun and I wanted to like it but I kept waiting for the endless exploitation of this one women to finish at last and for the male characters to get their turn! This of course never happens. I have nothing against soft-core porn mind you. I just wish there were more - featuring men. There is this attractive winged dude in Barbarella, which is nice, but he spends most of the film being some halfassed crypto-Christ figure. Not the most erotic of characters. The film mostly focuses on the lovely young Barb who spends most of her time changing costumes, being in mortal danger that invariably results in her clothing being stripped off. It's fun and naughty just not very inclusive. But that's the nature of the beast. I'm not surprised, just frustrated.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Saw Picnic at Hanging Rock. It's one of those films about a mysterious disappearance. This time it's a period piece in which a small group of girls from a nearby boarding school vanish somewhere in Hanging Rock, a volcanic rock formation of twisting passages and towering pillars. The disappearance happens quite early on and is the culmination of a sequence of increasingly strange shots. The girls mumble half-intelligent statements while gazing out into the distance. Synthesizers swell on the soundtrack (a marked departure from the usual pastoral, classical music that forms the rest of the soundtrack.) As with other vanishing person films, the vanishing itself is merely the frame and the backstory to the actual plot which is the fallout of the vanishment.

The film is slow and calm. The girls are symbolically linked with swans, gliding calmly and serenely about, calm and beautiful and untouchable. The film is the same, drifting in either a lulling or maddening way, depending on your temperament. The mystery of the disappearance is all-consuming and all-destroying. One little English lord (he must be about 17) goes hunting for them and nearly dies in the process. His only prize: a scrap of lace. Everyone connected with the mystery ends up suffering.

I'm not sure what to make of this film. It's poetic, dramatic, unsettling, certainly not bad. It's very slow which I think hampered my enjoyment a bit, and it's a bit too in love with the beautiful, beautiful girls. The central struggle of the film really seems to be between the cruel headmistress of the girls' school and a roommate of one of the missing girls, but these seemed too straightforward and simple to me. The old battleaxe vs the sensitive soul? I wonder who wins. I can't really tell what the film was doing which is good, I think, but I also couldn't follow it and became confused and grumpy. Perhaps I'm just getting too old to accept the heavy theme of ambiguity in this film.

Strike

Saw Strike, a communist propaganda film by the ever-effective Sergei Eisenstein. This one follows a strike at a factory of some kind. It's not really clear what the workers are unhappy about until their demands are read out (and roundly guffawed at by a quartet of fat plutocrats) mid-way through the film. It turns out to be eminently reasonable 8-hour days, and a perhaps-less-reasonable 30% increase in wages (not being snide, I just don't know economics.) Anyway, this is ignored by the plutocrats and they counter by wakening their capitalist sleeper-agents, known by colorful code names such as "the king," "the monkey," "the owl" and so forth. These agents are the comic relief. They bumble and grimace at the camera, always completely (prat-)falling for the attractive workers' traps.

Anyway, you can imagine how the film goes. It's aim is to rabble-rouse, so the workers, despite being obviously nobler, smarter, and more attractive than their foes, somehow begin to suffer terribly in the third act, when our sympathies are played on. Eisenstein as usual conducts an awesome crowd scene. He's more of a choreographer than a director, I feel. He relies entirely on crowd scenes and flashing montages. We don't even know the characters well enough to know their names, let alone judge their reactions. That said, the crowd scenes are great. Not as strong as the Odessa Steps scene in Battleship Potemkin, but the strike breaking scenes are quite stirring enough.

An interesting film, a bit too cartoonish for me (especially the business with the sleeper agents. That's just ridiculousness on top of ridiculousness) but entertaining. Also it contains a fair number of attractive Russian guys, which is nice, and a scene where one of the workers is seduced into becoming an agent of the factory-owners that features midgets dancing on a caviar-laden table. I don't think I would have seen that in any other film.

Also, bonus, the whole thing is on youtube, which is how I saw it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiNKaUp0AA

Back to the Future Part 2

Saw Back to the Future Part 2, the one where they go forward in time. Being a Robert Zemeckis film, it makes heavy use of neat camera tricks that allow the same actors to interact with themselves in other roles. It's very neat and, wonder of wonders, doesn't get in the way of the story which is to say it doesn't get in the way of the action. Most of the film is taken up with running breathlessly from place to place, always just one step away from creating a paradox or from letting the future become some Pottersville, crypto-Trump-ruled hell-hole. The result is a ripping film that keeps the fun coming. There's little in the way of trenchant observations on the fraught human condition but what, of course, did you expect?

The most fun part for me was the curiously VHS-tinted future, where we have computers that take our fast-food orders but they jitter and stutter like Max Headroom. We have fake windows that look out on to sunny beaches, until we turn the projector off. It's funny how this stuff is totally possible now but also kind of tacky and off-putting (except for the hover boards which are cool but will never happen. We'll never have hover boards.) You'll notice they have auto-fit clothing, but they also have a lot of leotards.

Anyway, retro-future aside, the film is good fun. As deep as a pancake but they don't all have to be Jeanne Dielman. If nothing else, I'll never get sick of watching Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown scream and react and just sometimes stand there with his jaw held askew. I also notice just what a heavy debt Rick and Morty owes this series. I mean, I knew there were similarities but Rick and Morty is essentially this film but with burping (and also with better and darker jokes. Sorry, Back to the Future franchise, I find robots in the throws of existential crisis way funnier.) Anyway, a solid fun film.

The Beast

Saw The Beast (thanks, Basil!) It was a sort of erotic version of Beauty and The Beast. The plot concerns a dying but prestigious family which has fallen on hard times. Only a father, son, and doddering uncle remain, They hope to save the family/name by marring the son off to some sexy American woman who comes from a rich family. The film opens on a pair of horses breeding. The son of the family is presiding over this but is called away to get ready to meet his new fiancee. He's shaved and pomaded and told (in a sort of scolding tone) that his future wife is a good Christian woman. She, meanwhile, has been arriving with her spinsterish, chaperon aunt. They have gotten lost on the way to the manor house and have wound up at the stables, where the wife-to-be is eagerly snapping Polaroids of the horses in action. Her aunt puts her hand in front of the camera lens, saying "what will your husband think?" This pair of scenes forms the crux of this film. The man and woman are filthy human animals after all, but they are kept in line out of shyness of each other, their polite society a lie barely covering the rude nature within.

This film comes from the 70s, an era rich with films skewering polite bourgeois society. Society, this film argues, is an absurd and damaging lie. The Beast here is nature, Beauty is society, and the Beast more or less has his way with polite society who merely pretends not to be into it. This theme comes up again and again of the naughty lewdness barely sublimated under society's veneer.

So that's the philosophical underpinning of this film. The actual stuff happening on screen however, is fairly filthy. Don't watch this with anyone else in the room. Also, be prepared for the plot to come screeching to a halt for five uninterrupted minutes of a close-up of a lady masturbating. This is the sort of art film people snickeringly allude to when they talk about "art" films. The symbols here are rich and interesting, I just wish it weren't so frank about it. It's purpose (partly anyway,) was clearly to ruffle a few feathers and I'm chicken enough to be ruffled. Be prepared for rubber Beast dong however, if you do see this, but be prepared also for this image from a book by Voltaire.

Rambo III

Saw Rambo III. Whereas the last Rambo film was a horror movie, this one was a travel show. Rambo does the series-mandated song and dance about how he doesn't want to get involved again, oh but he has to? Oh well, I guess if he has to... After this business is done with, we are then treated to Rambo the tourist visiting Afghanistan. He tours the caves on horseback, regaled by his colorful ethnic guide with stories of Afghani history and folk songs. Eventually they arrive at a freedom-fighter camp and Rambo meets all the Mujahideens and makes friends with a child soldier. I thought this was neat and funny but the Russians (oh those crafty Russians!) are up to their usual tricks and must be dealt a one-man lesson by El Rambonito.

So, with forty-five minutes or so left in the film, we finally get to the battle scenes and what was once almost educational becomes grim and violent. Ho hum. Series fans will no doubt like this bit but I am watching this series joylessly, compulsively, and found it to be kind of tedious. The nuclear-tipped arrows from the last episode make another appearance though, which I enjoyed. Kind of a schlocky, dumb movie, but what did you expect? If you go in wanting explosions, vague patriotism, and absolutely no female characters at all, you won't be disappointed.

My Brilliant Career

Saw My Brilliant Career, an Australian romance set in the Edwardian period. It's about Sybylla, a pretentious but self-assured girl vs the world. This being the late 1800s, the issue of marriage looms heavy in the sky, providing a comfortable, unchallenging, acceptable ending. Therefore, it's not exactly a romance but the push and pull of self vs society, self vs another is the heart of this film. Romance is the subject here, not the goal.

It's a very interesting film. It defies easy classification as anything other than a drama. There's little in the way of action and a lot of restrained people gasping at the protagonist's refusal to compromise (especially to compromise a part of herself.) The film also doesn't celebrate the protagonist. She's sometimes foolish and mean. It's as though someone from modern times were born into Edwardian society. Normally I consider that to be a deep fault in a period piece because often when you have some character righteously shouting about slavery or sexism or what have you, they don't suffer for it. In this film, meanwhile, Sybylla is plagued with quiet self-doubt (or if she is not, we the viewer are let to be.) Is she really being selfish? Is she being honest or cruel?

A complex little film, I think I haven't fully got it nailed down yet. At any rate, I think if you love the historical romantic movies based on Jane Austen, you should check this out. It's an interestingly fresh perspective.

The 39 Steps

Saw The 39 Steps, another Hitchcock film. It was one of his early ones I think. It's a bit vague around the edges but there is a man who is innocent and who knows of a terrible plot to smuggle British secrets out to The Enemy. Pursuing him are the forces of English law who believe him to be guilty. It reminds me of the Fugitive a bit (although that TV show post-dates this film by a few decades) or the play Escape (which is closer to the date of this film.) The edges, as I say are vague, but what the film is really about is the lone man eternally running, the armed pursuers eternally pursuing.

I was at first quite happy about how the film treats women. At one point the protagonist hides from the cops in a lady's train carriage. "Just go along with this, I promise I'm innocent" he shouts before smooching her. The cops pop their heads in and, leering, say "seen any strange men come by?" The woman cocks a gimlet eye at the hero and says "I expect this is the man who you're looking for, he just barged in here a moment ago." This is, of course, what any woman or human being would do in this circumstance. Unfortunately, later the hero runs into this woman again in order to show her how very wrong she was to ever doubt his innocence or, of course, the word of a man. Sigh.

The film has the usual Hitchcock cleverness. Social convention, wit, and hastily assembled performances (such as an impromptu make-out session) serve as the tools of the wily protagonist to out-wit his evil enemies. It feels a bit episodic and strains the credulity a bit at times, which is why I say this is probably an early work. It lacks the Swiss-watch-style masterwork of Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. There is a moment, however, when a woman screams only to be inter-cut with the piercing sound of a steam engine whistle and you know, sure enough, this is a Hitchcock.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a film from the Kevin Smith's ever-genial askewniverse. This feels like a very lazy film, involving broad pop-culture references, random titillating scenes, and even a cheeky monkey, but I enjoyed it anyway. It seems winking. It just involves too many pitch-perfect lame comedy references (the monkey, I feel, was intentional.) On top of that, the film is actually clever and sweet and funny. I keep expecting myself to start hating the boorish and foul-mouthed Jay but he's just such a naif. For all his goofy talk about sex, he is most likely a virgin, a holy idiot.

The film has cameos from a lot of comedians: George Carlin, Will Farrell, and (a very young-looking) John Stewart. The plot is that Jay + Silent Bob are trying to stop a film from being made so they steal a monkey from a research center under the direction of a quartet of sexy lady jewel-thieves, drawing the ire of a bumbling federal fish and wildlife officer (etc etc etc.) The film is just dumb as rocks but I frankly liked it anyway. I feel like it knows it's dumb which doesn't make it smart or anything just... a film that embraces its own shortcomings. Smith made it after Dogma and, I guess, just wanted to make a big, dumb, stupid movie that challenged nothing for anyone and that everyone could either laugh at or eye-roll at or, like I guess I'm doing here, do both.

Foreign Correspondent

Saw Foreign Correspondent (thanks, Anne!) It was a glorious old Hitchcock film set just before England is pulled into the second world war. The protagonist must foil a budding German plot to pull England into war but we know of course that his mission is doomed. The film was mostly a taut action/drama, ratcheting up the intrigue and the stakes unto geopolitical levels. Like a good mystery, it uses ingenious solutions and the exploitation of social conventions to foil the villains. The backdrop of just-barely-prewar England is ingenious and well drawn, the characters well acted and the plot knotty and twisting. I loved it.

The film is made in the 40s for American audiences. Hitchcock no doubt wanted America to join the war effort but understood that this was not a popular opinion. Thus, the film is strangely equivocal for a WW2 film. The Brits are the true heroes but the main villain is an aristocratic sort of German and even behaves selflessly and nobly, just at the very end. About that ending too: the whole film has been this elaborate dance in hotel lobbies and train cars, far removed from the actual realities of fighting and war until, fleeing the country in an airplane and still engaging in back-room intrigues, suddenly the war becomes very real and inescapable. What was a clever word-game becomes a bloody reality. Just a wonderful scene. Then, as though we had not been given enough gifts in this film, we get a gloriously over-sincere speech from the protagonist about how the lights have all gone out in England, that the lights in America must be kept burning, so ring them with guns and cover them with a canopy of battleships! And the credits roll as the chorus lauches into a mighty "Oh say does tha-at star spangled banner yet waaaave?" Just glorious.

The film's great. It's Hitchcock. What can I say? Such great 1940s declamations and overwrought, dainty references to sex. The film is kind of campy in parts but this just adds to my enjoyment of it. Such a fun film!

Rambo: First Blood Part II

Saw Rambo: First Blood Part II. It was a perfect film for the Vietnam war. An utterly pointless, ugly, confusing quagmire that no one wanted except a few really war-hungry Americans. It's nominally about Rambo (America) vs the Vietcong but is really another chapter in America's ongoing feud with the Russians (who, it turns out, are the real bad guys all along.) The film opens with Rambo being recruited out of prison to do some really bad-ass running around. He asks the general who's recruiting him "do we get to win this time?" To which the general smiles and says "of course, my darling boy, you get to do whatever you like in the magical land of make-believe."

The film operates as a sort of action-horror with Stallone as the monster, sneaking up on unsuspecting people and suddenly murdering them. Gone is the non-violent protagonist of the first Rambo film. True to its horror-film roots, the sexually active are punished and the monster moves silkily through the shadows. Innocent bystanders are mowed down en mass by thermonuclear-tipped arrows. Utter nonsense.

The film has some message about how shitty it was of the US gov to abandon POW in Vietnam after the war and fine, yes that was shitty, but this message is soon forgotten after Stallone delivers some overwrought monologue about how he wishes America would love its veterans. This is a great point to make, I love it, but why does it have to come out of Stallone's half-paralyzed sneer? Ugh. I didn't like this film.

Breaker Morant

Saw Breaker Morant, an Australian military courtroom drama set during the Boer War. The film follows a trio of Australian soldiers who are fighting on behalf of Britain and who are on trial for the murder of some Boer prisoners. From the beginning, it's clear that the deck is stacked against these soldiers and that this is part of some political theater the Brits are trying to play. The film follows the typical beats of a crooked courtroom drama from there, the soldiers are assigned an inexperienced lawyer who arrives with a messy sheaf of wrinkled papers, asking questions of the soldiers and then miraculously becoming competent in court, cross-examining the first witness to within an inch of his life. You know.

the film is interestingly political. The Boer war was a guerrilla war, fought by locals against colonial invaders. Likewise the drama of the courtroom mirrors the conflict, with one side virtuously playing fair and the other side breaking some rules and making up new ones. Also this is a film told from an Australian perspective. At this point Australia had just recently become an independent nation, eager to make allies and to be taken seriously. The stuffy Brits ruling the courtroom sneer at the soldiers but, later of course, must begrudgingly take them seriously. So, in this way, the courtroom reflects the outside world as well.

The film is interesting and well shot. It's not the most engaging film, preferring still shots of talking heads to dramatic reenactment but it held my attention anyway. It's very dramatic and frustrating, rewarding and then punishing. A film about soldiers caught up in a game they don't understand or that, perhaps, they understand only too well.

Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Saw Steamboat Bill, Jr., a silent film starring the wooden-faced Buster Keaton. It's a delightful piece of buffoonery, Keaton managing not only to trip multiple times but, each time he's tripped, to do magnificent flips and pirouetting pratfalls. Just great. The story is the usual: Keaton is the bumbling son of an angry man who runs a steamboat. This man is locked in a bitter rivalry with another riverboat man, but one who wears a suit, so you know he's rich. This rich man has a daughter who takes a fancy to the bumbling Keaton and, now that this teetering, ridiculous scaffolding of a premise is constructed, the film gleefully watches it all fall over and explode.

There's not much to say here. The film is essentially a series of high-budget vaudeville skits, with Keaton risking his life to bring the funny. It's great fun but of course the characters are paper-thin and the plot is an afterthought. There's apparently some fancy camera-work on display but I'm too ignorant to spot it. In any case, this is a nice, dumb little film.

Beverly Hills Cop

Saw Beverly Hills Cop, an obscenely 80s film which pretends to be a comedy despite only being a kind of lighthearted actions film. The action is light and humorous, but only in a riffing, quippy sort of way. There are no setup/punchline style jokes. Anyway, the film is fairly light and fun. The style of the whole thing is very, very 80s, with big hair, vinyl suits, and the gaudiest art gallery you've ever seen. In addition to being set in an inherently ridiculous era, it features Eddie Murphy quipping and joking and having a grand old time. This must be one of his more serious roles however as he spends most of it being serious and acting and only a tiny part of the time sleepwalking through easy-going jokes. It's a nice little film.

I was kind of annoyed at how Eddie Murphy's character smilingly introduces corruption and cronyism into the police force, but then again as an outsider I would prefer cops behave like the sort of pedantic, humorless, stick-in-the-mud that this film pokes fun at, so fair enough. Much more interesting to me were the moments that were not actually homoerotic but could easily be read that way. Several times men declare that they love each other and when Eddie is getting round the cops who are supposed to be tailing him, the sequence is shot in a seductive soft-focus lens. This is just me snickering at gay jokes I'm telling myself, but it was a source of amusement to me.

A light and amusing film, it's a paragon of an 80s film, not only in terms of the fashions on display, or in terms of the little slobs-vs-snobs theme, but also in that it's a by-the-numbers blockbuster. Winning protagonist, sexy femme, and big shoot-out set piece finale. A perfect time-waster all around.

A Town Called Panic

Saw A Town Called Panic (thanks, John!) It's a freewheeling children's movie about a cowboy and Indian who live with their horse. The horse is a sort of father figure to them, gruffly ordering them around and making sure they don't get into trouble. The cowboy and Indian decide to build the horse a barbecue pit for his birthday, instead of just getting him a hat like they do every year. Accidentally they order 50 million bricks for the barbecue though which is the start of zany adventures. The whole thing is stop-motion with a few 2D animated segments thrown in. It's extremely fun and delightful.

The film is fairly unsubstantial, dealing more with whimsy and fun than profound ideas or pop culture. The film has a timeless, fairy-tale quality. The story of the cowboy and the Indian dealing with millions of bricks, being scooped up by robotic penguins, being chased through the sea by barracudas, is timeless. The film is just pure joy. Very silly, very fun. I loved it and have nothing further to say about it.

Trollhunter

Saw Trollhunter, a Norwegian docu-comedy shot in the hand-held, Blare Witch style. We follow some film students who are trying to track down a man they believe to be a bear poacher but, as we quickly discover, is hunting much larger game. The film is not remotely scary, with the trolls themselves looking rubbery and CGI-generated. Also several of the actors are well-known Norwegian comedians, so this is a sort of straight-faced comedy. The best jokes come from the grizzled hunter confirming fairy tale trivia about Trolls (hey do indeed smell the blood of a Christian mun) and angrily denying others ("Do they live under bridges?" "No. That's just fairy tale stuff.") Also there's the great slow-burn of talking about trolls like they're any other big game, talking of bull and sow trolls, territorial markings, spoor. Good fun!

the film is essentially a big-game ride-along. Most of the time is spent getting to know the grizzled troll-hunter and world-building to explain why the trolls are such a close secret. It's played completely straight. Most of the film is spent in the wilds of Norway and Sweden, admiring the rugged beauty of the frozen mountains and fjords. Every so often they come face to face with a troll but not often. It's very high-concept, cerebral silliness. Interesting but a bit slow for me.

The Year My Voice Broke

Saw The Year My Voice Broke, a coming of age film about the wild girl Freya and her would-be boyfriend Danny. They have a hideout from the world and are both into psychic messaging and ghosts. Danny is in love with Freya but she's only interested in Trevor, the school quarterback, who is fond of practical jokes and giggling. Being a teenage boy and all, Danny pines away and becomes a good friend, although he also steals her panties and continues to kind of awkwardly try to romance her. He's sensitive and writes songs and is beat up at school for writing poetry and is clearly the audience insert.

This being a film for and about Nice Guys, I was all set to point out how selfish Danny is being, skulking around waiting for his moment to capture Freya when she at last turns to him out of boredom or desperation, but in fact he's fairly selfless and kind throughout, even as he's unhappy about Freya's (and even Trevor's) suffering. The small-town villagers come off the worst in this film, spreading innuendo, feigning indignation to cover pure delight at the scandal of a teen having sex.

The ghosts of the past become a major theme, Freya's parentage colouring the town's image of her. The kids imagine themselves to be haunted by spirits, but they are actually haunted by the lives of their parents' generation. The rumours of the town are borne of bitterness directed at people who are now long-dead, who the kids have the misfortune to be related to. Atop all of this, though, is a teen romance and angst-fest which I enjoyed immensely. All of their hyperbolic statements, their poses they strike. It's a really sweet film with interesting themes peaking up just above the surface.

An Affair to Remember

Saw An Affair to Remember, a romance about a man and woman, both engaged to other people, who suddenly fall in love on a cruise ship. The woman is a sort of shut-in, once a cocktail lounge singer, now the kept woman of an industrialist. The man is a playboy who is marrying a rich lady. It's the sort of film that starts off cute and just gets progressively sweeter and sweeter and sweeter, smothering your cynicism and overwhelming you with its adorable sweetness until at last you rebel and start shouting "oh for God's sake!" at the screen, making eye contact with your cat and asking her "Are you seeing this?"

For me, the first ominous rumblings of the treacly sweetness to come was during the visit to the man's grandmother. She's so fucking adorable she brings the woman to tears. She can see that the man and woman have something special together, although she's only met this woman for five minutes. Okay, I can deal with this. But I can't deal with the following tearful piano playing, the tearful farewells, and the tearful run back for just one last hug. Oh! How sweet it all is!

The film comes out of the depths of the Hayes Code era. Every kiss happens off-screen or becomes a hilariously unlikely hug at the last moment. The actors do their best to show physical affection, but of course they can't really do much beyond grip each other's elbows because for heaven's sake this isn't a porno! The film gets yet more mawkish after the granny visit, but I'd have to give some serious spoilers to talk about it. Suffice to say there's a chorus of adorable little white kids (plus exactly one black boy and exactly one black girl) singing a song about following "the little scout" (i.e. your conscience.) Ugh.

I'm being very mean here and I should admit that this is a very well-respected film. It clearly wasn't made for me though but I admit I did enjoy the falling-in-love shenanigans, and some of the twists and turns in the film. The writing and acting are top-notch but it's really way too precious and cute for me in a slightly ugly, repressive 1950s sort of way. This is escapism but I feel it has escaped entirely into some weird and lurid fantasy.

Jackass: Number Two

Saw Jackass: Number Two. I was not amused. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it. I was worried, going in, that the film would be very cruel to innocent people, but most of the violence is meted out to the Jackassians and their parents (who, let's face it, are at least partly to blame.) There's only one scene, where they almost provoke some random guy into a fistfight. That scene I actually thought was the most transgressive and challenging. It makes me wonder what difficult material could have been, if only Harmony Korine (who is involved in this film) could have finished Fight Harm.

Anyway, most of the skits in the film are more shenanigans than pranks. At one point they just skateboard straight into a piece of plexiglass, later they put a fart-helmet on some dude and pretend to fart into it, prompting the guy to fake-vomit. They are funny in a sort of awful teenage way. I didn't like however that about 50% of the film is just people introducing themselves or laughing like idiots. Maybe all of the best stuff was in the first film? I really liked the big-finish ending however.

People have written about the homoeroticism of Jackass and oh lordy that ending. That there is some well-researched faggotry. A show-stopping musical number in the vein of Busby Berkeley, all singing a song from the musical La Cage Aux Foles (remade in the US as The Birdcage. Une comedie tres gay indeed) as the castmembers cycle through the costumes of construction-crew men, firemen, and cowboys (only a few costume changes away from The Village People!) One guy strips to reveal a patriotic thong and bowtie. And then there's Rip Taylor, putting the ribbon on top of this cake of camp at the very end.

Apart from the ending however, it was all in all a regrettable experience. It had some interesting moments, but felt a lot like hanging out with a bunch of teenage boys. It's all laughing at their own jokes and gross-out humor which is, okay, gross but not all that bad. There are a few moments when it transcends itself and becomes this more awesome and intersting and almost sinister thing but not often. I didn't hate it as much I thought I would, and I guess that's an endorsement coming from me.

Valhalla Rising

Saw Valhalla Rising (Thanks, Sneakers!) It was a slow and morbid film set in pre-medieval Britain (I think.) The protagonist is a silent, one-eyed man kept captive and forced to fight to the death in some kind of Viking prize fighting thing. Though silent, he's clearly sullenly plotting for escape. Also there's talk of the white men with crosses who are destroying the land.

The film is slow the way Terrence Malick or Tarkovsky films are, brooding and hypnotic. There's about a page of dialogue in the entire film and there's plenty of slow pans across gloriously rugged landscapes. The protagonist also has visions of the future, shot in a red filter. Also very red is all of the blood in the film. It practically glows.

I don't want to give away too much of the film, but religion becomes a more important part of the film after the Christians show up. They themselves seem to be in it more for the money than for any spiritual reason, but the metaphysics is dealt with in the film via symbolism and allusion. Consider, for example, that the protagonist only has one eye, much like Odin, the Norse god. Also like Odin, he can see bits and pieces of the future. However, he also sacrifices himself in the end of the film so that others may live. Remind you of any other gods?

The film is slow and mesmerizing. It reminds me very much of the style of Tarkovsky in that not much is explained and things are left evocative, allowing for you to provide your own explanation. This may be frustrating for some viewers, but if you can stand living with ambiguity, check it out. A bit morbid, but very interesting.

Dead Snow

Saw Dead Snow, an action horror about a group of sexy Norwegian twenty-somethings who go on a skiing/camping/wilderness adventure of some kind. Anyway, there they are in the cabin in the woods and, yup you guessed it, zombies. Not just zombies, Nazi zombies. That by itself should pretty much tell you if this movie is for you or not. The film is clearly borrowing heavily from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series (it even name-checks it fairly early on) so there's jump scares galore. Everything is an opportunity to make you jump, even just closing a door suddenly gets a soundtrack sting. It's ridiculous but this is everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style horror, so love it or leave it.

Once the protagonists accept that, yes, they are being attacked by zombies and start fighting back, we get some nicely kickass scenes. There's one moment when the heroes use a hammer and sickle to kill one of the Nazi zombies which I thought was one of those moments that's so sly and clever, I wish it had been in a better movie. There's also some scenes which grossed me out a bit. Without going into details, let's just say that all of the protagonists are pre-med and jury-rig some emergency medical procedures. Ick. Also there's one moment (pre-zombie attack) when one character just straight-up starts smothering his girlfriend with a pillow. It's supposed to be a slightly creepy scene, but only slightly. I guess attempted murder is kind of not-so-serious in Norway.

It should surprize no one that I didn't really dig this film. It was too goofy and silly for me. That mixed with jump-scares results in a perfect storm of disinterest from me. That said, if you're kind of a horror junkie, this certainly isn't a bad film. It's basically another Evil Dead film, but with more running around outdoors.

Muriel's Wedding

Saw Muriel's Wedding, a film that is essentially a romance. It stars Muriel, stout and dim-witted, eternally shouted at and called useless by her has-been, never-was politician father, barely tolerated by her attractive and contemptuous "friends" who clearly only ever hang out with her because she's a charity case, who snap at her to think of others for a change whenever Muriel needs the least bit of attention. Her siblings are similarly bovine, smilingly beating up on Muriel to save themselves from being the family loser.

This film reminded me of Welcome to the Dollhouse. It's got the same pitch-black satire feel. It's not misery porn, but some of the situations are fairly painful. Also this is a romance, so the way out of this hell is revealed. The definition of happiness and success in Muriel's mind is a giant, fancy, beautiful wedding which would prove to the world (and to Muriel herself) that she is worthy of love. Muriel is so obsessed with this idea that she sees love as a sort of proof of worth in the world. To her, to be loved is to succeed at life, but the love she seeks, we learn, should be coming primarily from within.

This is a lovely and uplifting film with some really bleak parts in it (Muriel's poor mother thinks very similarly to Muriel and suffers greatly as a result.) Also I found the over-the-top super-villainy of her "friends" too cruel to really enjoy. However there are truly satisfying scenes when Muriel is starting to break out of her shell and there's also lots of 90s-hot guys, which was nice.