Saw Thirst, a Korean vampire movie. A priest volunteers for an immunology experiment which en-vamps him. The film is most interested in his increasingly compromised morals. At first he decides he would rather die than feed on blood, then rationalizes it by only taking, like, a little blood. Soon he is killing people and contemplating taking on a bride because, as ever, there is a dame. The broad outlines of the plot are fairly boilerplate but the details are very interesting.
I definitely get the sense that something is going on but I'm not sure just what. For example, in the beginning of the film, he councils a suicidal nurse to seek god's love in antidepressants (these are his exact words, if the subtitles are to be trusted.) Later, he seems to be pushing a wheel-chair-bound man but it turns out the man's wheelchair is motorized. The priest is unnecessary. Clearly something is being quietly said about faith and science, but I'm not sure if one has supplanted the other or are they working in harmony. Then again, the priest contracts the vampirism from a lab which is essentially a science temple. I don't know.
The film also involves a lot of purposefully messy plot-points and other allusions. There is a cult which worships the priest as a risen-again saint, a weekly mahjong game, a blind priest, and a paralyzed mother. The priest is seen enforcing his vow of chastity by slapping his thighs with a flute (it makes more sense in the film, I assure you) and the dame is revealed to have been abused by her husband who stabs her in her thighs. When they have sex, breaking the priest's vow, it is on Easter Sunday, a Christian celebration of Jesus rising from the dead, but also a pagan fertility festival. Post-coitus, the dame eats an egg. Many times the priest is symbolically linked to Jesus. Perhaps an argument for the antichrist could be made?
I may be reading too hard into the film, but it seems so deliberate sometimes. Perhaps this film is more allusive than evocative. Perhaps the references were added in afterward just to arbitrarily stitch things together, to provide a little maze for symbol-hunters? Anyway, although the film is not terribly original it is well-made, fairly funny in parts, and artistic. It was interesting enough that I spent most of the time looking for coherence in the references, rather than being annoyed.
Jan 31, 2015
Jan 28, 2015
Two or Three Things I Know About Her...
Saw Two or Three Things I Know About Her..., the Godard-iest Godard film I've ever seen. It follows an actress/prostitute named Juliette for a day. The film immediately connects Juliette and the city of Paris (this connection is quickly reinforced by an image of her in bed, her red night-shirt and blue sheets forming the French flag.) This sets up the theme of connections between the very intimate and the very large and impersonal. A child dreams of North and South Korea's reunion, smoke blown on a radio's capacitors is connected with the bombing of distant cities. Extras look directly into the camera and talk recite mundane, personal details. Several times the quiet action of the film is contrasted with the ear-splitting noise of construction, gunfire, or otherwise large and loud things.
The film is oddly prescient with its dual obsession with personal details and with noise. In this information age we are constantly inundated with both. In the film, Godard draws an odd line of contrast between the noisy and the personal. The noisy is always obnoxious, overwhelming. The personal is always quiet but also overwhelming in its furious dissemination of trivia. The film is obsessively narrated, the narrator nervously prattling on about the meaning of words, perception, commercialism, self, etc. The thesis of the film seems to be that everything is connected but the film also concedes that these connections are very small and messy and hard to detect or even define.
There's a genius scene in a coffee shop where the foam in a cup of coffee briefly resembles a spiral galaxy, and then some single-celled organism. Eventually a bubble in the center of the foam pops, leaving the vanishing image of a woman's lips. Amazing. The film ends with night-fall. It focuses in on the tiny tip of a lit cigarette which looks like a vast star dying. Lovely.
The film is very dense and numbing with its information overload. I was only able to grab meaning out of it by chance and I suspect there's a lot of good thought to be extracted on many themes. The film is also very mannered and confusing. There's evocative images where I'm not sure exactly what is being evoked. A tough film.
The film is oddly prescient with its dual obsession with personal details and with noise. In this information age we are constantly inundated with both. In the film, Godard draws an odd line of contrast between the noisy and the personal. The noisy is always obnoxious, overwhelming. The personal is always quiet but also overwhelming in its furious dissemination of trivia. The film is obsessively narrated, the narrator nervously prattling on about the meaning of words, perception, commercialism, self, etc. The thesis of the film seems to be that everything is connected but the film also concedes that these connections are very small and messy and hard to detect or even define.
There's a genius scene in a coffee shop where the foam in a cup of coffee briefly resembles a spiral galaxy, and then some single-celled organism. Eventually a bubble in the center of the foam pops, leaving the vanishing image of a woman's lips. Amazing. The film ends with night-fall. It focuses in on the tiny tip of a lit cigarette which looks like a vast star dying. Lovely.
The film is very dense and numbing with its information overload. I was only able to grab meaning out of it by chance and I suspect there's a lot of good thought to be extracted on many themes. The film is also very mannered and confusing. There's evocative images where I'm not sure exactly what is being evoked. A tough film.
Jan 27, 2015
Gamer
Saw Gamer. It was really dumb. It wasn't playfully dumb, like some other action films. It was insultingly dumb. The plot is that in the future (and for some reason known only to the writers) people have grown tired of playing games starring virtual people and have moved on to playing with real-life humans as their avatars. The human-avatars have been given some kind of implant that controls their motions from afar. Ok? So the protagonist is a jailbird who is an avatar in some FPS-game which is exactly as stupid as shit. One battle takes place in a dirt-bike course, where people are riding bikes around... WHILE ON FIRE!!! His wife, meanwhile, is in some Second Life-style game where (and this is actually fairly accurate and intelligent) mostly people go to have simulated sex. So, this sets up the dual affront on the viewer's mind: either we are watching growling men shoot at each other or we're watching fluorescent-haired skinny people having sex. There's a lot of tits in this film.
The film is clearly a derivative of Death Race. Both have the same distasteful Mountain-Dew-ification of video games coupled with a complete lack of faith in the human race, idiotically assuming that what are essentially WWE events would take the world by storm and somehow become important in some sociopolitical sense. (Also bewildering that so much credit and adulation would be heaped onto the jailbird. Surely he's the avatar, right? I mean, we all love Mario but we give credit the the player for killing Bowser, right? But I digress.) It also has a leader of La Resistance who stutters and gibbers in a style clearly inspired by Max Headroom's obnoxious shenanigans.
La Resistance, by the way, is lead by this Malcolm X sort of Angry Black Man. The film has three black characters with speaking roles and they are all Angry Black Men. There's the la-resistence-leader, who (stutteringly) speaks in a declamatory way to us, his "brothas and sistas," there's an angry, threatening cop (played by the voice-actor for Goliath,) and another player-avatar played by Terry Crews (the Old Spice guy) who seems to be channeling some kind of bear for most of his scenes. I suspect this film is kind of racist. That's not that surprising however. The rest of the film displays an utter disinterest in treating people like human beings and not like tit and explosion delivery systems. Everyone is fairly obnoxious. I don't know who we're supposed to root for. Literally everyone in the film is straight-up obnoxious or just devoid of personality.
I don't want to write off the film completely, because I very obviously was not the intended audience for all of this. Then again, I don't really know who the intended audience was meant to be. 12-year-old boys perhaps? Unhappy men? I think it's safe to say that if you enjoy professional wrestling, then you might like this film. If you can ignore or enjoy the creepy, cartoon masculinity on display then maybe you'd dig it. I just hated it.
The film is clearly a derivative of Death Race. Both have the same distasteful Mountain-Dew-ification of video games coupled with a complete lack of faith in the human race, idiotically assuming that what are essentially WWE events would take the world by storm and somehow become important in some sociopolitical sense. (Also bewildering that so much credit and adulation would be heaped onto the jailbird. Surely he's the avatar, right? I mean, we all love Mario but we give credit the the player for killing Bowser, right? But I digress.) It also has a leader of La Resistance who stutters and gibbers in a style clearly inspired by Max Headroom's obnoxious shenanigans.
La Resistance, by the way, is lead by this Malcolm X sort of Angry Black Man. The film has three black characters with speaking roles and they are all Angry Black Men. There's the la-resistence-leader, who (stutteringly) speaks in a declamatory way to us, his "brothas and sistas," there's an angry, threatening cop (played by the voice-actor for Goliath,) and another player-avatar played by Terry Crews (the Old Spice guy) who seems to be channeling some kind of bear for most of his scenes. I suspect this film is kind of racist. That's not that surprising however. The rest of the film displays an utter disinterest in treating people like human beings and not like tit and explosion delivery systems. Everyone is fairly obnoxious. I don't know who we're supposed to root for. Literally everyone in the film is straight-up obnoxious or just devoid of personality.
I don't want to write off the film completely, because I very obviously was not the intended audience for all of this. Then again, I don't really know who the intended audience was meant to be. 12-year-old boys perhaps? Unhappy men? I think it's safe to say that if you enjoy professional wrestling, then you might like this film. If you can ignore or enjoy the creepy, cartoon masculinity on display then maybe you'd dig it. I just hated it.
Jan 26, 2015
Ocean's Eleven
Saw Ocean's Eleven (thanks, Paul!) (That's the modern one, by the way. According to imdb, the 60s version is spelled "Ocean's 11") It was very fun. A heist movie, it does not transcend its genre. Rather, it wallows in it. Every touchstone is hit. The double-fake-out, the cute patter, the mixed-bag team of specialists, the dame, the rival, etc etc. There's a colossal crowd of people involved in this heist (well 11, anyway) but the film never feels confusing or overstuffed. It keeps itself rushing about at a good clip, never stopping long for any reason at all. It was fun.
So, this was a silly movie. I mean, obviously. It wasn't particularly believable and the people communicate almost exclusively through quips, one-liners, and strutting walks (which makes me believe them to be high-functioning sociopaths.) But of course the entire point of the film is to give us something glitzy to look at, something clever to imagine we'd said or done. There's no meat, but sometimes popcorn is good too. An indulgent and disposable film, I doubt it would hold up to repeat-viewings but, as I keep repeating, it's pretty fun and very good at what it does, so how can you fault it for being a really good version of what it is?
So, this was a silly movie. I mean, obviously. It wasn't particularly believable and the people communicate almost exclusively through quips, one-liners, and strutting walks (which makes me believe them to be high-functioning sociopaths.) But of course the entire point of the film is to give us something glitzy to look at, something clever to imagine we'd said or done. There's no meat, but sometimes popcorn is good too. An indulgent and disposable film, I doubt it would hold up to repeat-viewings but, as I keep repeating, it's pretty fun and very good at what it does, so how can you fault it for being a really good version of what it is?
Jan 25, 2015
Higher Ground
Saw Higher Ground, a religious film about a woman undergoing a crisis of faith. I don't know what denomination she is exactly, but there's immersion baptism and talk of elders, so maybe this tells you something. Anyway, religion is very rarely treated honestly and seriously by films. Mostly religious films are preaching to the choir about problems whose solution is always more sacrifice and faith. Every so often you get a film which lazily uses religion as a scape-goat for the world's problems, portraying religious folks as deluded at best and dangerously evil at worst. This film, then, is immensely refreshing.
It portrays a woman in a community which is deeply religious. It's not a cheerleader for this community but neither does it portray the members as cultists or lunatics. They are people who are goofy and friendly, judgmental but supremely sincere. There's talk of a literal hell but also of endless compassion. The central woman begins to feel talked-down to and repressed by her church. She begins to regard the parables and metaphors as overly simplistic and manipulative. At one point a pastor (or elder or something) asks her if she wants to go to heaven with her husband and kids, or if she wants to be left out in the cold with the dogs. She (very appropriately) rolls her eyes at this.
The film is ultimately a drama about a woman who is unsure if she can stay in the family that she's built around herself. It's essentially A Doll's House all over again, but through the lens of faith this time. It's very focused on characters and emotions and although I believe it's trying to walk the tightrope of appealing to both secular and religious audiences, I don't think it succeeds very well. The central woman is sometimes selfish and sometimes stupid. There are unflattering names for stupid, selfish woman which an uncharitable viewer might be eager to apply to her (but of course we are all stupid sometimes. We are all selfish.) This film valiantly attempts to be honest in an area where there is much deception (and most of it self-deception, I believe.) I found the film very touching, very honest, and completely impossible to recommend to anyone.
It portrays a woman in a community which is deeply religious. It's not a cheerleader for this community but neither does it portray the members as cultists or lunatics. They are people who are goofy and friendly, judgmental but supremely sincere. There's talk of a literal hell but also of endless compassion. The central woman begins to feel talked-down to and repressed by her church. She begins to regard the parables and metaphors as overly simplistic and manipulative. At one point a pastor (or elder or something) asks her if she wants to go to heaven with her husband and kids, or if she wants to be left out in the cold with the dogs. She (very appropriately) rolls her eyes at this.
The film is ultimately a drama about a woman who is unsure if she can stay in the family that she's built around herself. It's essentially A Doll's House all over again, but through the lens of faith this time. It's very focused on characters and emotions and although I believe it's trying to walk the tightrope of appealing to both secular and religious audiences, I don't think it succeeds very well. The central woman is sometimes selfish and sometimes stupid. There are unflattering names for stupid, selfish woman which an uncharitable viewer might be eager to apply to her (but of course we are all stupid sometimes. We are all selfish.) This film valiantly attempts to be honest in an area where there is much deception (and most of it self-deception, I believe.) I found the film very touching, very honest, and completely impossible to recommend to anyone.
Jan 24, 2015
Threads
Saw Threads, a film from the 80s about what might happen if an atomic bomb attack were to hit Great Britain. The film is essentially anti-nuclear-war propaganda (a point which you'd think scarcely needs to be made anymore, although...) As such, its primary focus is on horrifying us. During the immediate fallout of the bomb, the film is truly horrifying. It was difficult to watch in a way that Philosophy of a Knife wishes it was. After the fallout, the film morphs into speculative fiction about what life and society would be like without gasoline or electricity, and with 90% of the population dead. It's interesting if a bit odd at parts. Ultimately however, the film is most interested in sounding the alarm-bell, warning us that if a nuclear war breaks out, that there can be no future.
Again and again we are shown the image of a woman holding a dead baby, an obvious symbol of a dead future. To begin with, society is directed by a team of officials in a bunker under city hall. Although they are in charge, they are also buried under three floors of rubble, and will probably die. The film's morbidity makes it a bit monotonous. We are hammered with the nukes = death message so often and so heavily that that's all the film becomes. It is harrowing and a very emotional roller-coaster, but don't look for deep characters or plot here, and don't expect subtlety at all. I mean, the film has both expository text-crawls and a narrator, so a smooth plot was not on the agenda. Also, by its nature, it kind of a downer (to put it lightly.)
The film is interesting. It sometimes serves up ghastly, train-wreck-like images, but it always held my attention. It's very grim and very good at being grim (for example: the film shows us a post-bomb montage of dead people, but also of dying pets. This is a low blow, I feel.) whether you're ever going to be in the mood for such a grim film, I don't know. I supposed this film could best be sold to the general public as a sort of what-if sci-fi. Really though, I'd stay away from this unless you're a masochist or insane.
Again and again we are shown the image of a woman holding a dead baby, an obvious symbol of a dead future. To begin with, society is directed by a team of officials in a bunker under city hall. Although they are in charge, they are also buried under three floors of rubble, and will probably die. The film's morbidity makes it a bit monotonous. We are hammered with the nukes = death message so often and so heavily that that's all the film becomes. It is harrowing and a very emotional roller-coaster, but don't look for deep characters or plot here, and don't expect subtlety at all. I mean, the film has both expository text-crawls and a narrator, so a smooth plot was not on the agenda. Also, by its nature, it kind of a downer (to put it lightly.)
The film is interesting. It sometimes serves up ghastly, train-wreck-like images, but it always held my attention. It's very grim and very good at being grim (for example: the film shows us a post-bomb montage of dead people, but also of dying pets. This is a low blow, I feel.) whether you're ever going to be in the mood for such a grim film, I don't know. I supposed this film could best be sold to the general public as a sort of what-if sci-fi. Really though, I'd stay away from this unless you're a masochist or insane.
Jan 23, 2015
The Bride of Frankenstein
Saw The Bride of Frankenstein. It was a lot of pulpy fun. In this one James Whale was apparently much more free to do as he wished and wished to make things much more morbid. The first film was overwhelmingly ominous and oppressive. This one is more fun, with a screaming old baggage of a hand-maid and the monster enjoying the smooth filtered flavor of a Winston. There's a lot more screaming, running around, and camera tricks. A new character is introduced who expresses a fondness for the devil. The Faustian overtones remain strong.
I've read before about this film being an allegory for homosexual life in the 30s. The monstrous creation being some demonic act of procreation between the two evil scientists. It's easy to see this interpretation if you're looking for it. Several times the monster stumbles into a group of wholesome families or children and everyone instantly runs away, screaming in horror. The monster is obviously the other who, because we spend so much time with him, we see as being not that bad. If this is intentional, then the film is completely subliminal about it (of course) so it could be argued either way. An interesting perspective anyway. With a monster demanding that a scientist construct him a wife, unnatural sex is definitely on the film's mind at any rate.
The film is really a lot of fun. It's far less dour than the first film. This time there's a lot more grisly gleeful stuff going on and a climax which is amazing.
I've read before about this film being an allegory for homosexual life in the 30s. The monstrous creation being some demonic act of procreation between the two evil scientists. It's easy to see this interpretation if you're looking for it. Several times the monster stumbles into a group of wholesome families or children and everyone instantly runs away, screaming in horror. The monster is obviously the other who, because we spend so much time with him, we see as being not that bad. If this is intentional, then the film is completely subliminal about it (of course) so it could be argued either way. An interesting perspective anyway. With a monster demanding that a scientist construct him a wife, unnatural sex is definitely on the film's mind at any rate.
The film is really a lot of fun. It's far less dour than the first film. This time there's a lot more grisly gleeful stuff going on and a climax which is amazing.
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