A Jar of Fat

2004-03-31 - 22:48:00
Current music: 3Ds - "Evil Kid"

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I haven't seen that much lately. In fact, I only saw one movie over the course of a nine day period. Having to work has a lot to do with it. I'm still forgetting something, and I need to write about 'Eternal Sunshine,' but that may take some time.

If I don't get another post up (I have a feeling I will), may I just say how happy I am that both UConn's men and women are in the Final Four and how badly I want to take it to Duke in every way on Saturday. There are few people on this earth who deserve to be loathed as much as Dukies. Most of them run small African nations, oil companies, or are members of the Saudi royal family. Any combination of the above would also do.

Anyway, it's already been a fun season. Anything at this point would be icing.




WINDTALKERS (2002) - d. John Woo
Oy, what a kick in the nuts. Is there a specific moment we can point to when 'A John Woo Film' became synonomuous with 'Hazardous Waste'? I'd like to say 'Broken Arrow,' but I love huge chunks of 'Face/Off,' one of the only decent Nic Cage movies not called 'Vampire's Kiss.' I can't wait for him and Mark Stephen Johnson to completely ruin 'Ghost Rider,' a comic that sucks. Regardless, Nic Cage sucks, John Woo now sucks. Chow Yun-Fat is coming back for the next one, but it's a weepy/epic thing about Chinamen building railroads and Nic Cage is going to be in it, so I'm just going to clock out now.

Adam Beach is good in this. Adam Beach is the only thing good about this. I watched it pan & scan, so I don't know if I really have that much right to speak, but I'll go ahead and say that this has some of the worst action sequences you'll ever hope to see. Forget how bad everything else in between is.

May I someday be old and senile enough to forget about the Navajo pipe and Christian Slater-on-harmonica duets. I kept waiting for some kind of smoke signal informing me that it was all a joke. This is honestly one of the worst movies ever made. Even people who liked 'City of Angels,' and its theme song - or Meg Ryan's new lips - will agree with me.


THIS SPORTING LIFE (1963) - d. Lindsay Anderson
Also a kick in the nuts, but in a good way. If I see two movies this good over the course of a year, it's been a good year. I'm worried that if I talk it up too much people will actually go out and rent it and find out that it's in B & W and that it's really slow and dark and decide that I have zero taste, but fuck it. I think it's amazing.

I really really love British cinema from the sixties. Everyone there was sitting around watching the French New Wave and the whole Italian scene, and instead of picking up cameras and doing the same exact thing, they applied an awkward and uniquely British slant to the proceedings. The resulting movies are a lot less graceful than anything by, say, De Sica, but they're better for it.

'This Sporting Life,' is the story of a professional rugby player, Frank Machin, played by Richard Harris, and it's an insane performance. This is poor, industrialized Northern England, the same barren landscape Ken Loach loves so well. Machin boards with a young widow and her two children. He loves her, but he's far too fucked in the head to make it work. Instead, he treats her like shit and suffocates everything in his path, including the audience. It's a horrible relationship, and it's one of those 'God, I hate being a man' movies like a 'Lilya 4-Ever' or something. It has the same kind of power that 'Darling' had, except this time around it's a man leading a soulless life in then-Modern Britain.

Some films are so powerful they just shift your head into a different gear. This did that for me. It's really very slow. Though the rugby sequences are dynamic and have a really authentic feel, there's just no arguing that most people will like this film. They won't.

Lindsay Anderson never made that much of an impact on the world of cinema, or even the world of British cinema, but after seeing this, I'm dying to watch 'If...,' the boarding-school-in-revolt film, that he made with Malcolm McDowell. I have a feeling it's a mindfuck.


DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004) - d. Zack Snyder
This is a lot to chew.


I liked it. I also didn't like it. Overall, I felt like it was money well spent, so I'm going to start off with the good.

No, wait, this was the first time I've been to a mall movie theater in North Carolina, and I'm going to start by whining about it. The biggest problem was the theater itself. We waited like twenty minutes to buy two sodas because this nine year old girl was trying to decide which candy she wanted while her mom - who was taking a nine year old to see a movie at ten o'f'in'clock - did nothing to hurry the process. When we got into the show, the only place with three seats was the front row. There seem to be two types of stadium theaters, and I'm not a fan of either. There are stadium theaters where you're in the front row and there's some space between you and the screen and the screen is really low - lesser of two evils - and then there's the type of theater where we ended up, where there's probably three inches between you and the screen, a screen which starts twenty feet above you. It was like Imax, except even Imax isn't this punishing. So that sucked. The other thing about seeing a movie like this in North Carolina is - just like in NYC - people aren't afraid to talk at the screen. I'm the last person to discourage that, most of the time it makes bad movies better. But, as my friends who were with me - and are locals - will attest, people who yell shit at the screen in North Carolina don't even try to be funny. Nothing clever to say and the worst comic timing this side of Mad TV. This is a problem. Between the screen and the other patrons - especially the kid sitting three seats away from us who kept standing up every time something disagreeable happened and shouting thing which made him sound like Shelden Williams - these were not ideal movie viewing circumstances, and we all had screaming headaches by the time the previews were over.

Here's what I liked:
It was a good idea to throw out much of the story from the original 'Dawn of the Dead.' What's in it's place isn't better than the original, but at least I wasn't sitting there holding it up to any kind of standard. It's got zombies and people hiding out in a mall. There are smaller similarities, but very little that made me say 'I liked this in the original better.' This is much more of a video game zombie movie, and, as far as my expectations are concerned, it surpassed them.

I'm not really a fan of Troma's films but I do like Lloyd Kaufman, because he doesn't pretend to be someone he's not: he makes unbelievably cheap films and people talk about them, and - even though he's screwing people over left and right - there's still others willing to work with him. I always admire low-budget fiefdoms, whether you're talking about working on a Ken Loach film or a Corman film (I guess John Sayles would be the real benchmark), and Kaufman's is one of the most effective. When I was a kid, my friend Zac and I got away with renting whatever we wanted, regardless of rating, and 'Toxic Avenger' and 'Class of Nuke 'Em High' were in almost constant rotation (I was ten or eleven the first time I saw both of those, so I guess I shouldn't be bitching about the candy girl). Anyhow, I just feel relatively let down by Troma since what I consider their late-80s heyday. Aside from a brilliant character idea in Sgt. Kabuki-Man (who's never been put to proper use in a movie) and 1996's masterpiece, 'Tromeo and Juliet,' they've left me more bored than anything over the last ten years or so.

My little Troma sidebar was really just an excuse to brag about seeing 'Toxic Avenger' at such a young age, but Elvis Mitchell brought up Troma in his review, so I feel entitled to my fair shot. Also, my Troma reference is better than his.

The reason Elvis brought up Troma was to bitch about what crappy movies they make, but also to point out that James Gunn, the writer of 'Dawn,' was the writer/co-director of 'Tromeo and Juliet,' and he has a small group of fans all his own. Gunn also wrote the 'Scooby-doo' movies, the first of which was more horribly directed than horribly written (a better director probably would've done a lot more with the same script - ah, for the Mike Meyers version of that film, with him playing everyone...), I don't know anything about the second one, so I'll just leave it alone. Anyhow, E.M. made the link in order to disparage both Troma and the movie, and I really can't say that I agree. I mean, Troma and Kaufman openly court criticism - it's what feeds sales - but I sort of feel like I sat through a different movie than my usually-favorite critic did (felt the same way about his 'Eternal Sunshine' review). 'Dawn of the Dead' may be about the apocalypse, but it's not a sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

Anyhow, more good: The start. Very good. Actually scary. Gunn knows how to move a camera around. Sarah Polley - I don't know what she's doing here, but I'm glad she decided to slum for once - I think I saw more of her feet than I needed to (Gunn and Tarantino should throw a foot-fetish party), but again, I'm really glad she's here. Other than that, the fact that it's actually gory really stands out. I loved how graphic it was. And it was graphic without being puerile-gory. The only two dudes who can really get away with puerile-gory are Raimi and Peter Jackson.

The BAD (and there's more, but I've forgotten it) :
Ving Rhames. Thanks for coming, Ving, please pick up your paycheck at the door. Everything after the extra people showed up in the mall. The whole "Andy" subplot. All the pretense of romance. The end sort of worked, but then what was that shit with the credits? Other than CRAP?


MYSTERY DATE (1991) - d. Jonathan Wacks
There's not much worth saying about this movie. Ethan Hawke is in it. He's very young. This and 'White Fang' were probably his first two starring roles. Teen comedy isn't good to him. The movie isn't that good, either. It's a hangover from the 80s, with bad shirts, teens behaving exactly like adults, adults behaving like teens, and a failed attempt at the same kind of darker humor that was all the rage once Hollywood unleashed 'The Breakfast Club.' Really, you can get a pretty good bead on this movie just looking at the director's last name.

The genre is ostensibly screwball, except the dame isn't trouble; trouble is trying to go out on a date with the perfect girl. It's about as funny as my 'Dawn of the Dead' audience was. In that sense, I guess, it's not a comedy at all. There's a shocking amount of blood and death, and a terrible job is done of explaining what's going on. None of the plot points ring true and nobody's actions ring true, either.

Still, you can't help admiring it for the simple fact that it couldn't be made today. In spite of a high body count and some relatively naughty language and behavior, it's PG-13, and I would be shocked if a studio would even let someone on the lot to pitch the story. So I have to give it some credit for that.


By the way, when 'The Swan' premieres on Fox, look for me in my bunker in Montana.
 

They Gotta Stop Making These Weird Movies

2004-03-17 22:50:00
Current music: The Jesus Lizard - "Mouth Breather"

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No one asked, but -
1 - Lilya 4-Ever - (d. Lukas Moodysson)



2 - Bus 174 - (d. Jose Padilha)
3 - LOTR: The Return of the King - (d. Peter Jackson)
4 - Fog of War - (d. Errol Morris)
5 - The Son - (d. Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardennes)
6 - Raising Victor Vargas - (d. Peter Sollett)
7 - In This World - (d. Michael Winterbottom)
8 - Bubba Ho-Tep - (d. Don Coscarelli)
9 - City of God - (d. Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund)
10 - El Bonaerense - (d. Pablo Trapero)

Honorable Mentions -
Power Trip - (d. Paul Devlin)
[first 60 min. of] Elephant - (d. Gus Van Sant)

I Wish I'd Seen -
Japón - (d. Carlos Reygadas)
In My Skin - (d. Marina de Van)
Bad Santa - (d. Terry Zwigoff)

Best Re-releases -
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 - (1974, d. Joseph Sargent)
Eyes Without a Face - (1960, d. Georges Franju)

It was still a shitty year for movies.




THE DARIEN GAP (1996) - d. Brad Anderson
I don't like this movie.

It was on IFC the other afternoon, and I figured that since it's not on video or DVD that I should go for it. Perfect example of a first-time filmmaker not in control of the medium.

I go back and forth about Brad Anderson, but most of the time I root for him just because he's from Connecticut. He's got some talent, but he's never hit one out of the park, and you have to start wondering if he will. 'The Darien Gap' is his first feature, which sort of surprised me since 'Next Stop Wonderland' - a much better movie - still feels so much like a 'first movie.'

Since no one else is ever going to see it, the story's about a guy named Lyn Vaus (played by a guy named Lyn Vaus) who lives in Boston and is homeless and a deadbeat and has a video camera. He's using it to make a film where he interviews his friends about being disaffected and in their twenties. There's a lot of talk about hitchhiking to Patagonia and an unbelievably retarded double-red herring involving giant sloths and swampland. It's all very Gen-X Slacker zeitgeist. He meets a girl who designs really ugly hats and they fall in love. He's such a self-defeating loser, though, that he can't keep it together and his girl falls out of love with him again and again. But the real pickle in the cheeseburger is that he can't seem to get over the divorce of his parents and his messed up feelings about his dad. Feelings which the director pokes at constantly and then never bothers to resolve.

The zooms suck, the navel-gazing sucks, the self-reflective documentary aesthetic in a film about a documentarian sucks, the framing device sucks. But, out of all the suckage, that which sucks most is the voiceover, which, on more than one occasion actually made me think that the only part of the Gen-X slacker zeitgeist that I wanted in on was that whole suicide thing.

I can say two nice things about the movie: The best thing that happens is he steals a white stretch limo. That was fun. Like, the first moment when he steals it. Then it gets boring again. The second best thing is that Lynn Vaus (the actor) is a total shlub. I can't think of too many films where the leading man is so completely average-looking. Then again, Vaus also has a screenplay credit, so he's partly to blame for what's happened here.

Ultimately, the film doesn't capture the aforementioned Gen-X slacker zeitgeist that it wants to deny and embrace at the same time (how very fucking Gen-X slacker zeitgeist) and manages to confirm that the guy who made it is still too self-indulgent to be making a movie.

There's a reason it's not on video.
 

Hong Kong Rallies On

2004-03-15 - 23:46:00
Current music: California Dreamin'

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THE VAMPIRE EFFECT (2003) - d. Dante Lam
aka 'The Twins Effect'

Mind-blowing. Who would've thought that a teeny-bopper Hong Kong action/vampire flick could serve as both a poignant examination of the power of love and a devastating portrait of disease? In the case of 'The Vampire Effect,' vampirism is a proxy for Bird Flu or AIDS or chicken pox, and though the characters use Kung Fu to do battle on the physical plane, the war is for their souls and love lives beyond the grave.

The premise is dense, complex, rich and nuanced, and takes some careful explanation to be truly understood. Actually, it's wildly convoluted, overstuffed and ridiculous, but it's also fun, even if it makes zero sense. I'm not great at abstracting plot elements and there's way too much going on here in the first place, but here's the gist of it:

PREAMBLE
I know almost nothing about Hong Kong/Chinese pop culture. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. That's cultural snobbery, sure, but we've got enough crap culture of our own that I don't feel my time is best spent rooting around looking for a rare HK gem. If there's a prize in the box, hopefully someone will tell me about it. I sleep especially easy when it comes to pop music from the reunified PRC. A big group in Hong Kong right now is the duo Twins, who aren't actually twins, but starlets Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung. 'The Vampire Effect' is primarily another vehicle for the two of them, a la the Olsen twins' 'Passport to Paris' or 'Switching Goals,' and is part of a growing canon of Twins tie-in movies, albeit with a bigger budget than their earlier efforts.

THE FILM
There are vampires all over the world, though European vampires are still the predominant threat. Vamps come in all kinds of temperaments, as well. Some are craven, blood-starved monsters who will stop at nothing to see humanity buckling under the thumb of the undead, others are more soulful, kind-hearted creatures who drink bottled blood and are experts in the long-forgotten art of installing killer sound systems in their coffins so that they can bump shitty C-pop bass during the daylight hours. Long story not much shorter, there's some prophecy about five princes (or six?) who, if anyone can kill them, the killer becomes all-powerful. I think, I wasn't really paying attention. It's a bit like 'The One' with Jet Li, except it actually makes more sense here, which says something about 'The One,' because this'un don't make much sense.

To no one's surprise, the prophecy leads to a pretty big royal bloodbath. That someone doing all the bloodletting is a European vampire with long hair, day-old stubble, red eyes, and a detachable metal hand; which, if nothing else, makes him the most clearly threatening creature since Rosie O'Donnell quit her show and got that NKOTB hair cut. He's also quite successful, as he's managed to kill all but one of them. The last of the royal bloodline is young Prince Kazaf, he of the bottled blood, Crutchfield catalogs, and lackey named Prada. The two of them live in a church, and there's a slightly homoerotic vibe to their particular blood pact.

On the other side of the equation, there is - I think I got this right - a group/cult/sect/whatever of vampire hunters. A group of people more or less sworn to protect the rest of us from the ultimate evil. They've got a pretty nifty trick up their sleeves, too, because they've extracted vampire blood, which means that they can temporarily turn into Vamps themselves, just so long as they make sure to drink the banana potion which turns them back into humans. The HK representative of this group is Reeve, played by Ekin Cheng, one of the more appealing of the current crop of Hong Kong leading men. He puts in for an assistant, and who should turn up but Gypsy (Gillian Chung), who I will discuss in further detail in a moment. Reeve's sister, Helen, is the other Twin, Charlene Choi, and she ends up romancing Prince K while displaying the kind of acting chops which make elementary school productions of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' look like Lee Strasberg's been at the wheel.

So, yeah, Gypsy and Reeve fall in love, everyone understands what Helen sees in Kazaf, and the bad guy's dispatched with much fanfare, though not without 'great' personal cost. The real winner, though, is Gillian Chung, who is damned cute and can actually kind of act. I haven't had it his bad for an HK actress since Faye Wong did the OCDance in 'Chungking Express.' Ms. Chung's going to be around, at least in Hong Kong, for a while.

  
  Cute like button.

On a macro scale, I'm really bummed out by the way the bottom completely dropped out on the Hong Kong film biz. Global audiences really only started to appreciate it (in the early 90s) as it was beginning the current swoon, and, honestly, what happened there with VCDs does boost the MPAA's file-sharing argument. While there isn't a whole lot out there which suggests any kind of near-future turnaround, production has increased lately, and this is the occasional release which reminds us what makes Hong Kong films so much fun in the first place.

I'm not going to try to tell anyone that this movie is actually good, but it's definitely a good time, and a lot less soul-deadening than, say, 'From Justin to Kelly,' or, for that matter, 'Charlie's Angel's: Full Throttle.' There's a sequel on the way, which, if you're familiar with HK, you already know will suck.

Wait, I just wrote that whole thing without mentioning the fact that Jackie Chan has a 'guest-starring' type role here, which pretty accurately explains how I feel about Jackie and how much he adds to the proceedings.
 

2004-03-15 21:53:00
Current music: Lemming of the BDA

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CITY OF DREAMS (2000) - d. Belinda Mason
Maybe when I make some more friends here in Chapel Hill, I'll watch less TV. It's only a week in, and I'm not watching much rot, so there's still hope. Anyhow, Sundance promotes this 'DocDay' thing all the time, which just means that they show documentaries all day on Mondays. It never occurred to me that they would be good docs, or ones I wouldn't be able to see otherwise, but here we are, and I just watched two good docs that I won't be seeing anywhere else anytime soon.

 

'City of Dreams' is a stylistically dull film in the mode of Ken Burns' oeuvre and other public TV excite-a-thons, but is, like much of Burnsy's work, watchable primarily because it has an interesting story at its center. Also, it's Australian. I have a sweet tooth for stuff about architecture, and an even sweeter tooth for stuff about people who crossed swords with Frank Lloyd Wright, a man I like to think of as the Ronald Reagan of architecture (outsized egos, undersized achievements). Anyhow, 'City of Dreams' is about Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin, two architects who started out working for Wright and then ended up in Australia after creating the winning design for the city of Canberra (the new nation's capitol). Mahony was the first woman ever to become a licensed architect and was a draftsperson of exceptional talent. Griffin was one of the brightest lights in Wright's Chicago practice and created landscape architecture.

Anyhow, the story is the tale of the foundations of modern Australia, the modernization and globalization of architecture, and the growing place of women in 20th century society. I really enjoyed it and think that the relationship between Mahony and Griffin is pretty damned fascinating. My big complaint is that the film tries to be too even-handed in its treatment of its subjects, and pulls punches when it could be doing more to tell us about Mahony, whose place in feminist and women's history - after seeing this film - is clearly undervalued. There's a fascinating and somewhat unsettling question over true authorship in the couple's work, one which gets at the very heart of the feminist debate. I'd like to see a movie with Mahony at the center; one which really opens up these questions, rather than relying on the coy hints 'City' resorts to in its conclusion. Still, a good watch.


GRANDMOTHER, HITLER, AND I (2001) - d. Carl Johan De Geer
This was really short, like 17 minutes, and, while it's not going to change anyone's life, I liked it. Carl Johan De Geer is a Swedish artist/designer/product-of-the-60s whose grandparents were Nazis during the 1930s, and whose grandmother remained a staunch supporter of the party and Hitler until her death in the 70s(?). De Geer, on the other hand, was a hippy, a socialist, and married into a Jewish family. There's nothing gut-wrenching about the way he examines his past, but the nearly off-hand approach to his subject actually adds to the film's depth. And though he's clearly opposed to this Nazi past, the woman was also his grandmother, and there are fond anecdotes as well as darker ones which may make you cringe. The visual style is clever and kinetic, thanks to De Geer's background in design, setting it apart from similar works on similar subjects. Most 'my dark family secret' films get their point across via a hammering dullness. This one doesn't, and stands out for it.


BLACK SUNDAY (1977) - d. John Frankenheimer
I'd like to be able to say that I'm a big Bruce Dern fan. I mean, I've seen him in a bunch of Corman stuff and he's great in 'Coming Home,' but I don't really know anything else he's done. After seeing 'Black Sunday,' I wish I did. His acting here is sort of early-Method, which means it's a little bit too stagey and a little bit too broad, but he burns through the screen, and he more than holds his own in a film with an equally great performance by Robert Shaw.

Shaw's in fine form here. His character, Major Kabakov, is one bad dude. He's an Israeli operative and he's the opposite of a soft touch. Better still, he's the good guy. The only movie I like him better in is 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.' I'm in the minority who think he kind of overdid it in 'Jaws.'


 Weapon of Choice

Still, there's something about this film that doesn't quite work, and I'm not sure what it is. Frankenheimer is up for it and was clearly the right director for the material. The cast is great, the storyline's intriguing and, with the weight of current history, has more power than it probably did in '77. My guess is it's the story itself, with a pinch of studio meddling thrown in. When 'Silence of the Lambs' came out, I went back and read Thomas Harris' other two books, Red Dragon and Black Sunday and I liked them both. As cool as Silence and Dragon were, there was something comic book in the stories, while Black Sunday felt like the real deal. Now, it's like the tables are turned. The Hannibal Lecter films, with the exception of 'Hannibal' and the begrudging inclusion of 'Red Dragon', have managed to sparkle with a sense of the 'real.' 'Black Sunday,' on the other hand, loses something in translation from the page to the screen, and feels too much of a piece with the disaster films of the seventies, like 'Airport' and 'The Towering Inferno.' There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to wonder if there wasn't a push from the studio/producers to make the film's story more accessible than it is in the book. I remember being totally fucking creeped out reading the book - the same kind of chills you experience in reading Dragon or Silence - and, here, the experience is more of an adrenalized rush than a heeby-jeebies shiver.

Overall, though, this is a keeper, not quite as much fun as the Harry Palmer films or 'The Odessa File', and not nearly as razor sharp as 'The Day of the Jackal,' but it's in the same ballpark, and not many movies are. Too bad this genre so totally sucks since the 70s.
 

Surrender Dorothy

2004-03-14 - 22:15:00
Current Music: "The Redeadening" Soundtrack

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It's an open-ended ticket, for world travel. You leave for Greece on Monday, after that, it's all up to you.

Okay, finally posting today. I need to play catchup badly, and while the move - and all the housecleaning required at my new address - is a great excuse for not posting in so long, I'm kind of embarrassed. Fortunately, I haven't seen that many movies since then.

UConn won the Big East Tournament last night. Duke lost the ACC Tourney today. Life is good.


 Awwwwwwww, kid, why the long face?

I saw an ad for Fox's 'The Swan.' Run for the hills.


AFTER HOURS (1985) - d. Martin Scorsese
I love this movie. Weird that it ended up on HBO 37 this weekend when I just dissed the Grif-meister. It's sad that Scorsese completely lost his sense of humor and humility. If only he'd gone down this path instead of the one which lead to 'Kundun.'

'What could have come over me?'



'Lack of discipline.'

Why isn't this on DVD?


NIGHT OF THE CREEPS - d. Fred Dekker
Someday, there'll be a full-time horror channel. There's probably already one toiling away in obscurity, not yet touched by the gods at Time Warner or Comcast, but I think it's safe to assume that it sucks. Word on the street is that there's a major one in the works. In a perfect world, it would be a movie channel, rather than something like Sci-Fi (which, honestly, I'm glad sucks), and they would have a series on SFX. In a perfect world, it wouldn't be a total lame-ass gothfest and/or cater solely to guys who can't get laid. Until that point, horror is kind of hit or miss on cable, but when it rains, it pours.

I've wanted to see this movie forever. Fred Dekker is the 'Savage' Steve Holland of light horror. He wrote 'House,' he directed 'Monster Squad' (and 'Robocop 3') and made one of my favorite 'Tales from the Crypt' episodes (aka a 'Tales from the Crypt' episode I actually remember). This was his first directing gig, and was something of an El Dorado for me, because you can't find it on video or DVD. Watching it, I realized I'd seen it before, probably on video when I was a kid. All I remembered were the space leeches, but the rest of the movie doesn't disappoint.

The plot doesn't exist, there might be two genuine scares, but the movie's fun, the effects are good, the humor's there, and it features, among other things, Rusty from 'European Vacation,' a super-young David Paymer, space leeches, and a kid on crutches as one of the leads. The girl in the movie, her last name's Cronenberg, and while I'm not sure I caught it right, I think they all attend Corman University.

Now that's what I'm talking about.


THE BELIEVERS (1987) - d. John Schlesinger
It's a good night on cable when you get 'Return of the Living Dead' and 'The Believers' in a back-to-back on Flix. That was last night. I didn't catch 'Return' because I was busy watching the Huskies, but this one, which I've probably seen four times now, I had to watch.

Nothing stands between me and my voodoo; it's one of my favorite horror subgenres - mostly because of the multi-cultural element it injects into long-exhausted tropes. 'Serpent and the Rainbow' may be deeply flawed, but it's still way cool and, for my money, 'I Walked With a Zombie' is a better Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton talkie than 'Cat People.' I really liked this movie when I was younger, probably because it tries to explore a clash of cultures and at least tries to be a 'smart' horror film.

We all do stupid things when we're young. Thinking that this movie was good is up there.

For about 16 years, John Schlesinger was one of the greatest - and, to this day, most underrated - filmmakers on earth. In the 60s, he stood at the vanguard of the New British cinema, surpassing his peers - Lester, Loach, Losey and others whose names start with L - with an unbelievable command over complex characters and the storytelling craft. His early period English films - 'Far From The Madding Crowd,' 'Darling,' and 'Billy Liar' - were great and he then went to Hollywood and made some wildly successful studio features. He wasn't the world's most prolific director, but 'Midnight Cowboy' might be the best film of the counter-culture epoch, and 'Marathon Man' and 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' - two films wildly divergent in style - are also among the best the 70s cinema had to offer. After 'Marathon Man,' he wasn't quite done, but 'Cold Comfort Farm' and the slight-but-fun 'Pacific Heights' are the best he could muster. For the most part, everything after 'Marathon Man' was a train wreck, and he really hit the beach with his teeth on his final film, Madonna's 'The Next Best Thing,' which I haven't seen but am utterly convinced sucks beyond belief. Then he died.

The 80s for Schlesinger were a lot like the 80s for Hal Ashby. I have no idea if there were drugs involved, but you could be forgiven for thinking that he was spending too much time on the point earning money for rock. He had one near-miss, 'The Falcon and the Snowman,' which is somehow less than the sum of its parts, but basically he just kept going from failure to failure. Now that I've seen it again, there are some strong spots, but 'The Believers' belongs in the same gutter with the majority of his post-'Marathon' work.

The shittiest thing about this movie is how easy it is to see the good stuff in it. It does a damn good job of being more than a genre movie for the first hour or so. It treats Santaria beliefs with more respect and curiosity then you'd ever expect from a studio film. It casts Latino actors who aren't Edward James Olmos or Raul Julia - I'm thinking of Raúl Dávila, Jimmy Smits (right after 'LA Law' started) and Carla Pinza - even though it's a socially conscious Latino-centric film from the 1980s. The Voodoo priest guy is really scary. The Voodoo priest guy has a really nice suit. A lot of the scares are genuine, and they're earned because the characters and their plight are rooted in believable emotions. By the way, is Martin Sheen ever not-good? Is talent something which skips a generation in the Estevez family?

A side note - New York is, most of the time, the dullest possible 'exciting' location for a movie. That's not the case here. New York feels more like a living, breathing city in this one than 99% of other New York-centric studio movies. Unless you've lived there, it may be hard to understand how important that is, but it matters. It matters a lot. I'm of the opinion that NYC really hit its peak in the 1980s - when it actually was the center of the universe - and it's too bad there isn't a broader/deeper/high quality celluloid record of the era.

On the downside, the movie takes forever to get going. Even though it starts with the most fantastic spilled-milk-meets-coffee-maker-on-the-fritz scene in cinema history, there's almost nothing going on for the first hour or so (the downside of trying to be more than a genre movie), just ugly yuppie angst and romance. Then Harris Yulin shows up and starts sacrificing children and you start wondering if you wouldn't rather just opt for lethal injection. A note to all directors out there: No one wants to see movies about secret cults of rich people. Great filmmakers have gone down this pat ('Eyes Wide Shut'), as have not-so-great ones - see Rob Cohen's masterpiece, 'The Skulls' - but that shit never works. Never.

Anyhow, you take the good, you take the bad, and you got a movie that sucks. Boring and sucky. We miss you, John, we just don't miss your misfires.


WISHCRAFT (2002) - d. Danny Graves
I wish I hadn't seen this. The main character is seriously named Brett Bumpers. I'm ashamed of myself, but I am proud of Meatloaf. So proud.

I need more art in my life.
 

Oh, Griffin

LISA PICARD IS FAMOUS (2000) - d. Griffin Dunne
For what? Sucking?

In The Mood

2004-03-04 - 01:44:00
Current mood: moody
Current music: Whatever gets me in the mood

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TOGETHER/TILLSAMMANS (2000) - d. Lukas Moodysson


 Pompous Modals

I've got it bad for Lukas Moodysson. Each film has been better than the one before it, and he's on the kind of winning streak that can only be cured with an addiction to uncut Bolivian and toothless STD-factories. Considering the subject of his most recent film, I wouldn't hold out for any kind of 'imminent decline.'

Among the four or five non-Swedes who've seen all three of his features, 'Together' seems to be his most contentious. Which is weird, really, because both 'Fucking Åmal' and 'Lilya 4-Ever' are about much more taboo subjects. 'Together,' about life in a suburban Stockholm commune circa-1975, isn't really designed to offend. In fact, it's almost Karo-sweet. Sure, characters fight, things fall apart, characters fight more, but there's a light touch and you can't help feeling like everything will work out more or less okay - once Signe and Sigvard leave, at least.

What seems to bug everyone about 'Together' is the fact that the characters aren't always likable. They act like children, hold petty grudges, and make no apologies for their behavior. Worst of all, Moodysson isn't apologizing for his characters. If there's anything moralists love, it's flawed people getting theirs, and LM isn't playing that game.

Empires rose and fell between the film's theatrical run and video release (two f#@&ing years), a delay which, on seeing the film again, feels too damned long. Hopefully the wait for 'Lilya 4-Ever' won't be comparable.

*On a side note, I just looked up the year of Franco's death - as the movie starts with the announcement. In the process, I started reading an interestingly-translated bio of the big baddy himself and came across the following, which I thought was nice: His father left the house and his mother was in charge of his education in an environment of pity and pompous modals. He was a boy with a meticulous aspect, obstipated, prudent and smart.

I'm glad that's finally clear.
 

2004-03-01 - 02:32:00
Current music: .... the Beatles?

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A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964) - d. Richard Lester
I hadn't seen this since I was a little kid. I barely remembered it, but remembered enough to know I'd like it. I love Richard Lester - 'The Knack' in particular - and this was more of the same.

So, The Beatles - other than George - can't really act but that's a huge part of the charm. Lester basically laid the foundation for 99% of music videos here and the photography and editing in the music sequences are terrific. Ringo's horrible, but a blast to watch. Who knew that he'd end up the coolest of them all? Even here, he looks like the only one who really understands that he's just won the lottery.

Fun. The DVD is packaged pretty nicely, too; I'm going to buy it.


DIVA (1981) - d. Jean-Jacques Beineix
This was a surprise. I'm not a fan of Beineix's other famous film, 'Betty Blue,' so it was a nice shock to find out that this film's as good as it is. It all starts with the cinematography by Philippe Rousselot, which is amazing. Just fucking great. If the film came out now, people would still be talking about the photography. Too bad the DVD transfer's such a disappointment.

Anyhow, this is one cool film for 1981. It feels like one of the last vestiges of the New Wave, but acknowledges the punk and post-punk movements as well. Dead cool.