Evil Dead 2

Saw Evil Dead 2 (thanks, Steven!) It was a lot of fun. Creepy in parts, but so full of fluids and goofy spectacle it didn't really register as a horror. It's completely over-the-top and invites its own loving mockery. Unfortunately, I really don't have much to say about it. I don't want to spoil any of the scenes (the 'groovy' scene is fairly well known, but apart from being stupid and awesome, I don't have anything to add) and anyway they're much more reliant on rubber suits and gallons of colored liquids than on cleverness or visual poetry. There's no tree-rape this time around. The entire thing is kind of campy and spectacular. (I feel like I'm just saying the same things over again.)

Suffice to say it was exactly what I expected and I'm tired right now. Sorry to disappoint.

Stellet Licht

Saw Stellet Licht. My god, what a tedious movie. Every scene is a creeping pan, a crawling zoom, or an arid static shot. Characters spend entire minutes on end stuck in pregnant pauses, regarding each other. Eventually the scene changes. What story there is is as follows: a Mennonite farmer falls in love with a woman who is not his wife. He is tormented by this, but open with his wife about his feelings. His father, a preacher, preaches fortitude. Eventually things come to a head, his wife dies of a literally broken heart (which is a cute touch) and then the only lyrical or at-all-interesting thing in the entire movie happens. Unless you have a strong stomach for endless shots of nature, or a large pot of coffee, it's not worth it.

My viewing of this film had a lot going against it. I was extremely tired and thus not up to these very long takes. At one point, I found myself wondering why the protagonist didn't fire his blast lasers at his mistress thereby breaching her hull because I was falling asleep while watching this. Also, I had no idea until I looked it up that the characters were Mennonites and I have no idea what Mennonites are exactly. So there's that source of drama and symbolism gone. There's many vistas of lush nature and gorgeous skies which were unfortunately jpg-ed into mushy blurs by my copy. Such are the dangers of movie-watching. To be honest, I think I missed the boat on this one. It does itself no favors by being so austere, so I semi-excuse myself.

The long takes, I believe, are intended to force us to regard and consider the characters, getting us to wonder about them and getting us inside their heads a bit. I just felt sleepy. I kept nodding off at the beginning which makes me worry that I missed some of the visual poetry I noticed at the end. I may well have, but I now have an almost hysterical disinterest in seeing this film ever again. I found it very oppressive and very dry.

Edit: a review I read connects this film to Terrence Malick whom I find more accessible and also Carl Dreyer, which comparison I think is dead-on.

Wecome to the Dollhouse

Saw Wecome to the Dollhouse. It was a deeply frustrating movie. It revolves around Dawn, a girl who is the bottom of the social ladder in junior high. She sticks up for others who are victimized like she is but, recognizing her desire for companionship as a weakness, they instantly turn on her, cashing in her friendship for miniscule status-points. She seeks safe-harbor with her family. A family that, when they aren't actively ignoring her, are demanding sacrifices from her (with punishment, of course, if she does not comply.) Her barbie-doll-adorable little sister prances about the house in a ballerina outfit, whimsically highlighting the contrast between her effortlessly easy life and Dawn's life of unending trials and indignities. Her brother is a skinny lump of emotion-free nerd and her mother is a narcissist who probably resents her non-ballerina children for ruining her perfect life. Dawn's every attempt to fight back at the injustices in her life backfires spectacularly. She tells on a kid trying to cheat off of her, she gets in trouble. When she protests the harsh treatment, she's assigned a 100-word essay on dignity. The irony is cruel and what humor there is is pitch black. After about 15 minutes, I was rooting for Dawn to burn the whole fucking school down.

She even tries to buy affection with her body, seeking comfort and attention from an impossibly sleazy high-school boy (who looks about 30) who casually steals from her family and talks about ex-girlfriends who only lasted a few days. Her only other 'friend' is an angry, knife-owning boy who uses her in public as an outlet for his rage and in private as an outlet for his insecurities. Of the entire film, he is the kindest to her and even he sees her as just a resource to be exploited. It is depressing, but little wonder, that by the end of the film she's becoming just as bad as the rest of them, selfish and cruel. The only escape seems to be New York, a dangerous but perhaps better land. She never gets to New York.

I highly recommend this film to anyone who had a good experience in high school/junior high. If you had a shitty time of it, avoid this movie. A painful and frustrating film. Dawn is a pillar of strength in a sea of bullshit and that pillar is sinking.

Red River

Saw Red River. John Wayne plays against type, from under a black hat. He plays a man who is one of three survivors of an Indian raid on a wagon train of settlers (oh, did I mention this is a western? It's a western.) The other two survivors are the comic relief (a Shakespearean wise-cracking servant (here a cook)) and a callow youth with a lot to prove. Wayne slaps everyone and they then merrily steal some land from some Mexicans. Luckily, they have a bull and a cow so... fade-a-few-years-into-the-future... they have a ranch. The callow youth has become the quite attractive Montgomery Clift and Wayne has become a hard man. "The war" has sucked the money out of the south and Wayne is broke. He stakes everything on a desperate trek from Texas to Missouri, where beef is in high demand. He rounds up his cattle, instructing his field-hands to gather up any other cows that might be out there as well. The other ranchers grumble about this but he buffaloes them into agreeing to a small cut. On the trek the situation deteriorates, with cowboys abandoning Wayne, shooting at him, and eventually mutinying.

I was surprised by Wayne actually playing an actual bad guy. He softens somewhat eventually, but he snarls and swears he'll kill anyone who crosses him and is generally beastly. The only people who can handle him at all are the ancient cook and Clift. The deterioration of the relationship between Wayne and Clift is the most interesting aspect of this film. At first fiercely loyal, Clift grows critical of Wayne and finally becomes openly rebellious. I entertained myself by imagining that they were lovers whose relationship was crumbling. The film gave me much fuel for this allegorical reading. Twice the cowboys talk about the trail as being no place for a woman (they are not 'strong' is why) and there's a strange intense relationship Clift develops with another rancher who always seems to be wandering around in this shirt. Later when they come across a troop of gamblers/whores, one lady gambler (not a whore, of course! She's still marriageable) declares that Wayne and Clift love each other too much to hate each other. Of course in this more innocent time they mean as a father loves a son, but the line made me smile.

So, not wild or histrionic enough to fully entertain me (or at least not enough to distract me from mentally pairing up the male actors) but a ripping yarn and not terrible and not ethically bankrupt. Perhaps there's hope for the western genre after all. (I hope so, because I kind of dread an upcoming list of westerns I have to saw through.)

Edit: Ha! Ha ha!!

True Romance

Saw True Romance. It was about a comic-book store employee who falls in love with a delightful and winsome "call-girl." Prompted by the desire to maintain a self-image of bad-assery (as personified by the ghost of Elvis,) he kills her pimp and accidentally steals a lot of cocaine. They then travel to LA to sell to a Hollywood exec, always just out of reach of the mob who he stole from and the cops. At first we're rooting for him, he being a normal nerd with grand ambitions, but later on, though our affection for him stays constant, he himself actually changes. He dispatches mob goons at first by great difficulty and later on with relative ease. The first goon that's killed actually has a monologue about how the first killing is always the hardest but that, by repetition, even murder becomes dull. Indeed, by the end, cops are laughing at what a slick, stone-cold killer this kid is and he's finally become just another gangster. But he's the gangster we're watching and somehow we like him therefore.

Cinematic slight-of-hand is used to keep us liking him. This gradual shift from naif to actual bad ass goes unremarked by the film. Similarly the desire of the protagonist to be as cool as Elvis, despite working in a comic-book shop and having nothing at all, is deeply pathetic but is never portrayed as such by the film. Notice that he delivers a monologue about how awesome Elvis was to a woman in a bar and later, when he's with his girlfriend, we catch the tail-end of the same monologue, probably delivered again, word-for-word, but if this is noticed at all, it more funny than sad. In general, the film does not comment at all on his desire for cool and either wants us to make up our own minds or hopes we forget about it.

Thematically, an obsession with pop-culture and a desire for cool pops up again and again. When the protagonist and girlfriend first meet he asks her about herself but she responds noncommittally to every question until he asks about her favorite band and movie. Then she responds without even thinking. Of course she knows which altar of media she worships at, doesn't everyone? Most tellingly, near the end of the movie, the girlfriend narrates that "three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool." Note: not "I love you." I submit that though this film is called True Romance, these two are not in love with each other, they are in love with their adopted personae.

Dragon (2011)

Saw Dragon (2011) (thanks, Basil!) It was a martial arts movie that borrows the rough outline of A History of Violence. The central character is a man trying to escape his violent past by starting afresh as a paper-maker. A detective uncovers his past and indirectly reconnects the paper-man with his old 'friends.' The detective, in a bizarre addition, self-medicates via acupuncture to kill his own emotions. The detective explicitly thinks of his emotional self as another person who is sometimes seen by us viewers. This is kind of strange but is thematically interesting as both the protagonist and the detective have other "selves" they wish to overcome. One by running and hiding, the other via (a kind of) medication. This struggle to escape one's past takes on an interesting tint when viewed through a Chinese lens. As far as I know (with all of my vast worldly knowledge, gleaned from years of never leaving New England,) the Chinese have much more faith in destiny. There's not as much emphasis on choosing your own life as there is in America. Again, this is only so far as I know, but I feel like there's a paper on comparative culture to be written here.

As usual with Asian cinema, the emotions are completely over-the-top. Everything is so dramatic that the very scenery takes notice. At one point a character shouts "WHAT HAS HAPPENED?" and the entire house around him rattles in shock. Hilarious. The fight scenes are pretty good. There's about four, each one better than the last. I particularly liked the fight between the paper-man and the woman with two short blades. There's also a scene where the detective and paper-man concoct a plan to evade their enemies that for some reason causes a montage of previous and future scenes from the film. Though the choice of montage is strange, the montage itself is awesome and thrilling.

Brother Bear

Saw Brother Bear. It was alright. Everything about it was kind of middling. They were doing something strange with the background art. I think they were showing off some technique of partial matte-paintings made available by digital backgrounds. Neat. The artwork is pretty but unremarkable. It's the pinnacle of the kind of art you'd find on jigsaw puzzles. The characters are animated in the trademark Disney way, all shovel-shaped eyes and comfortingly cute characters with lyre-shaped mouths. The animators have clearly done their homework and when the headstrong protagonist transmogrifies into a bear he indeed sometimes moves like an actual bear and not like a man in a fur suit.

The plot is more interesting: a young man wants to prove himself as a man (thereby, of course, signifying his current immaturity) and decides to take revenge on a bear who indirectly killed his brother (full disclosure, his brother sacrifices himself as a means to save our hero. Not 15 minutes in and there's already a suicide for the greater good.) The "spirits" do not take kindly to this however and turn him into a bear to teach him a lesson. As a bear, he befriends a precocious cub who is in full-on annoyingly cute mode and travels to a mystic mountain to turn himself human again. The film's ending surprised me (though not terribly) and the message of general acceptance is a good one. Especially nice is the slight breaking of the gender roles what with the male bear acting as caregiver/big-bro to the young cub. Also interesting was the removal of any real villain from the film. This meshes nicely with the central thesis of what makes something a "monster."

The songs were tiring and the comic relief was (I think) pitched mostly at the younger crowd. It smacks slightly (the humor does) of Shrek-damaged snark, but it's not quite as cruel. So the whole thing is not exceptional but is competently made and perhaps I was just up too late when I saw it, but I thought several parts were quite moving. Like a sausage, it is undistinguished but good.