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The Madstone Theater in Cary, NC closed last week. I was getting pretty used to the trek to Cary, and that movie house did a lot to ease the transition from life in the big city to life in the not-so-big city. Now it's going to be a much bigger scramble to see specialty films. It was also the one place around here where I didn't feel genuinely weird going to see something on my own.
I should also mention that all of the below reviews are boring. After the last post, I just didn’t have it in me to inject any energy. Turn back now.
I've made some bad decisions in my life, but last Wednesday was up there, as I watched the classic and 2003-remake versions of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' back-to-back. The roller-coaster paranoia of the first really didn't set me up for the sanitized crapness of the second and, by the time I was done, I was feeling rancid.
Chainsaws through history.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) - d. Tobe Hooper
This movie is so supremely, nightmarishly visceral, it would take an act of god to run out of new ways to describe it. But I'm lazy, and if I get started, we'll be here all week, so I will be taking a flyer. First films often define careers, especially in the case of independent-minded upstart-types, but not many filmmakers have been hamstrung by a successful debut quite as thoroughly as Hooper. It doesn't help that he's a well-known maniac, or that he blew all financial credibility with 'Lifeforce' (I've never seen), but if you only had one shot at greatness, it would be hard to top 'Chainsaw.' What a sick fuck.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) - d. Marcus Nispel
An excuse for the Abercrombie crowd to stare at Jessica Biel's rack for an hour and a half.
I don't mind that they jettisoned almost everything from the original - a strategy which basically worked in 'Dawn of the Dead' - but they've dramatically increased the scope of the story, when relentless claustrophobia is what made Hooper's version so terrifying. There's also a by-the-numbers sterility to the whole affair, as if the depravity was test-marketed for maximum 'ick' and minimum psychosis. It's neither scary or shocking, and it's no better than the neutered terror of 'Jeepers Creepers,' another 'horror' film which failed to deliver in almost every department while still drawing plenty of sheep to the box-office.
I have plenty of other complaints, but I'll give up by whining about the production design/costumes/fact-that-they-set-it-in-the-70s. Why the hell didn't they move it to the present? Could've skipped the retarded bracketing device and no one would wonder why everyone's wearing acid-wash Britney jeans and goatees.
I can't say that I expected it to be this bad.
SILVER DREAM RACER (1980) - c. David Wickes
The bulk of this film - a story of a working class English mechanic who decides to enter the big race after inheriting a revolutionary prototype bike following his brother's death - brings to mind the Disney live-action era of the 60s and on. The vibe is a 'Herbie' for teens, with shades of 'Knight Rider' and 'Streethawk'. The PG rating immediately comes into question as it struggles to mix in some very adult ideas, foul language, and a shower scene, but the film's essence is the awkward, hard-to-believe kitsch that marked all pre-Eisner, post-Walt, House of the Mouse features.
After 1:45 of moldy preening, to say that the film's final minutes register as a blind-side doesn't even begin. Hard to remember the last time I was in this much shock after finishing a movie, but I'm thrilled that something this wholeheartedly terrifying actually exists. Better yet that it was peddled to children.
On IMDb, the main user comment starts with 'I've been scarred for life.' Ditto. I'm totally buying this fucking thing - much more sadistic than anything Tobe Hooper's ever come up with.
Oh, you may be wondering why I watched it? Because.
THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) - d. Dan O'Bannon
As stupid horror-comedies go, this is a highlight. Stay far away if you don't like the genre, but 'Return' is one of the few successful movies to come out of the mid-80s horror swarm, and despite its inanity, it's wicked massive fun. O'Bannon wrote 'Dark Star' with John Carpenter and co-created and wrote 'Alien,' so his pedigree is pretty sterling. The plot is gleefully convoluted; what you need to know is that a boo boo occurs which releases a toxic gas that brings the dead back to life. Horror like this operates on the understanding that it doesn't matter what the rationale is as long as you get to the dying quick, and this is the one spot where 'Return' slips up. There's great stuff in the build-up, but there are so many divergent strands at the start that we spend an hour moving from story to story before zombie armageddon finally happens.
With that said, this is good zombie armageddon. I'm not a gore guy. I like it fine in the hands of someone like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi, where it's actually stylish, funny, and serves the plot. Normally, I get the feeling that the filmmakers are preening for 'Fangoria.' That isn't the case with 'Return,' which has tons of icky stuff, but never lingers just to keep you grossed out. The film shows exactly why there's still a place for ooze and limbs and all the sticky stuff.
The effects work is great, but the two real hallmarks of 'Return' are its terrific dialogue ('I like death with sex. How 'bout you Casey, do you like sex with death?' 'Yeah, so fuck off and die.') and the heavy punk rock influence which was already dated by the time the film came out. The latter sounds like a criticism, but it isn't. Over half the cast is 'punk,' and their sheer stupidity makes the film. Without the punk flavor, I don't think 'Return' is nearly as good a time. Oh, right, 'Return' also features just about the best (and most self-aware) cop-out ending around.
MY TERRORIST (2003) - d. Yulie Cohen Gerstel
This is a confusing little film. Yulie Gerstel was a stewardess on an El Al flight taken hostage in London by pro-PLO terrorists in August of 1978. Gerstel was wounded, co-workers were killed, all the bad shit that you expect to happen when a story starts with 'not to long ago, in Israel..'
Gerstel, years later, recovered and now a peace activist, is still deeply effected by the incident. She wants her daughters to grow up in a world different than the one her parents gave to her. Her solution is to seek out one of the terrorists from the London hijacking, Fahad Mihyi, who is still in a prison in England. She wants to meet him, find out who he is, what he's about, 'heal the wound,' etc. Upon meeting him, becomes convinced that she must help to get him paroled.
'My Terrorist' is only 60 or so minutes long, but it's a gut punch even at that length. Gerstel's crisis of conscience is so extreme that watching her healing process is almost too much. I'm not convinced it's actually that 'good' a film, for any number of reasons, but it's an important document, and it takes the concept of diary film in a new direction.
THE LADY EVE (1941) - d. Preston Sturges
I've seen three other Preston Sturges features - 'The Great McGinty,' 'Sullivan's Travels,' and 'The Palm Beach Story' - but none of them really prepared me for 'The Lady Eve.' Everyone and their mother seems to have seen 'Sullivan's,' and a lot of people have seen 'Eve,' but the rest of Sturges' work and career remains a mystery to most. Sturges started his career as successful playwright, and like so many of his era, the next logical step was a move from New York to California. His earliest work for the studios came as a script-doctor, and his impeccable ear for dialogue quickly set him apart. He rose to the top of the screenwriting game, churning out classics like 'The Good Fairy' and 'Remember the Night,' and then became the first writer from the post-silent period to successfully crossover from the writer's desk to the director's chair. His success made it okay to be a writer/director again.
'The Great McGinty' was Sturges' directing job, and once he got rolling, he made some of the best American comedies to come out of the 1940s. Unfortunately, the quality of his work fell off dramatically after 1944 - 'Unfaithfully Yours' (1948) was his last quality feature - and he died of a heart attack while he was prepping a play on Broadway in 1959. The good news is, he was prolific from 1940 - 44, so there's between seven or eight really good Sturges films, depending on whose opinion you seek. The hallmarks of a Sturges picture are his unbelievable comic timing, razor-sharp dialogue, and an edgier, more adult tone than you'll find with most of his contemporaries. He didn't come up during the silent era, so his camera work isn't very stylish, but it's effective. If 'Sullivan's Travels' is the only Sturges film you've seen, you might think I should be using adjectives like 'hokey' instead of 'edgy.' But then, you haven't seen 'The Lady Eve'... or 'Palm Beach Story'... or 'McGinty.'
Just a great, great movie. Everything in it is absolutely perfect, especially Barabara Stanwyck.
TIERRA (1996) - d. Julio Medem
This is another Julio Medem film. This one is about a guy named Angel who's just left a mental hospital and is now helping his uncle spray a Spanish wine region to get rid of woodlice. It chronicles the relationships he develops with a revolving cast of characters who live in the countryside. This includes a farmer, Patricio, his wife, Angela, her wine-growing father, a wild-child temptress, a family of Roma, and, maybe most importantly, Angel's guardian angel, who only he can see.
Woodlice are crustaceans. This one's in amber.
So yeah, that should give everyone a sense of just where Medem is willing to go. Heavy is the coincidence and metafísica aquí.
The strength of the film is that it doesn't go for the jugular. Where Almodóvar, particularly in his early years, lay the kitsch on thick, Medem's strangeness is far more composed and serene. By this point in his career, Medem was already an experienced storyteller, and the web he weaves here is much more confident and convincing than in his earliest work. I think one of the director's great skills is his ability to turn out a satisfying finale, and while some of his more recent films may be greater works, 'Tierra' still has my favorite ending. The fact that it stars both Emma Suárez and Silke, two of the prettiest Spanish actresses of the 90s, ices it for me. Casting hot actresses who can actually act is a hallmark of all Medem movies. Also, Karra Elejalde of 'Accíon Mutante' fame plays Patricio; someone should've brought him to Hollywood.
The DVD that's available in the states features a sub-par transfer, but you can still tell that the original print was beautiful, like a life cast in amber. But again, shit transfer, I'd watched this on a PAL VHS tape before, and it probably looked better.
More on woodlice.
TIMELINE (2003) - d. Richard Donner.
As bad as it looks, it's worse.
HERO (2002) - d. Zhang Yimou
I bought 'Hero' off of Ebay courtesy of some dude in Hong Kong for $14 with shipping. Seemed like a vaguely stupid idea at the time, but I'd heard about a couple of people getting their hands on Asian versions and decided I didn't want to wait any longer.
My friend Kujo had seen this film a while back, through methods as nefarious as you would expect from one so sleazy. What he told me, first and foremost was that there's no point in comparing 'Hero' with 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' since they're just totally different movies. I agree. The simple division is that 'Hero' is an art film while 'Tiger' is a high-quality entertainment (which isn't to say that 'Hero' isn't entertaining'). 'Tiger' is much more rooted in traditional Asian storytelling and is one long reference to the work of King Hu.
'Hero' is something quite different, and while there's all kinds of touchstones in the film - including Hu again - any discussion of this film should start begin its photography. Zhang started his career as a cinematographer, and his brilliant eye has been a big factor in his success. Even his slighter films, like 'Shanghai Triad,' are so great to look at that it almost doesn't matter if the stories get a little thin. Here, the director really takes things to a whole new level; we may never see fight sequences this utterly ravishing again. It's going to blow your mind.
Anyways, the other thing I wanted to say was just that 'Hero' seems to draw as much from a Japanese tradition as it does a Chinese one. The narrative is split into a 'Rashomon' quilt of three variations on the same story, and seems to owe another debt to Mizoguchi, especially, for some reason, the huge studio-shot expanses of movies like 'Sansho the Bailiff.' Other influences are probably a whole lot more apparent to people who actually know a thing or two about Asian cinema.
I hope this thing isn't cut to hell when American audiences get to see it; the film as it stands is insanely great.
UN AIR DE FAMILLE (1996) - d. Cédric Klapisch
This film deserves a better, and more involved write-up than I've got in me - I'm still hungover from last week's mega-opus.
Ok, so, Cédric Klapisch. 'L'Auberge Espagnole' and 'When the Cat's Away' are the two films he's known for in the States, and while both made minor waves, a lot of my movie-geek friends have bad things to say. This has a lot to do with the fact that 'Cat' rode in on a wave of hype that it could never live up to. It's a slight romantic comedy, without enough romantic emphasis, but it has a gentle, quirky tone that I liked, and the vacation sequence is pure cinema genius. 'L'Auberge' is also slight, but it's a much more effective film, and I have friends who didn't like 'Cat' but enjoyed it. I thought it was great.
I'd been meaning to watch some other Klapisch films, mostly on the basis of loving 'L'Auberge,' but also because he's looked at as a pretty major director in his home country, which generally means I've got movies to see. There isn't much on DVD, so I went with 'Un Air De Famille,' which is the only other film of his that's easy to track down. It confirms Klapisch as a serious talent, and is the best of his films that I've seen.
The movie's based on a play - the title translates into 'Family Resemblances' - written by two of the film's leads, Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, and it's about a family get-together at the café run by Henri, who has inherited it from his deceased father. There two other full-grown siblings, Betty and Philippe, a barkeep named Denis, Philippe's wife, and the children's domineering mother. Almost the whole of the film takes place in real time in the café, but you never feel like you're watching a play on film. Instead, the single location enforces the frustration and claustrophobia which comes from being in a tight-knit family.
The movie's really funny, really human, and really impressive. I wish I knew more French, there's a ton of dialogue and the subtitles fly by.
SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING (2003) - d. Ki-duk Kim
There's nothing better than going into a movie theater with low expectations. If the show sucks, you're vindicated, and if it's great, you walk away feeling like you've won the perfecta. Two people told me this movie was good, and I went because I trust the opinions of both. But still, I'd seen the trailer, and I was sure that it would be a heartwarming highbrow cheese-fest in the mode of Zhang Yimou's 'Not One Less' (ugh) or Kaige Chen's 'Together' - elegant Asian films tailor-made for Miramax releases, Best Foreign Film nominations, and the rapturous embrace of Volvo owners who rent at the library. There's a great flood of these ugly beasts invading our shores, and I was steeled for the worst.
Excellent surprise then, when 'Spring, Summer, etc.' turns out to be a terse, beautiful meditation on life, Buddhism, and the Korean hinterland. There's not really much point in explaining the story - wise master and naive student, episodic structure, characters age dramatically over the course of the narrative, etc. - but the film's power is undeniable. It's koanish, even, obvious and mysterious, and, as advertised, wonderful to look at. Neat to note that the director, Ki-duk Kim, was raised Catholic. The end to the theatrical run is nigh, so you'll have to wait for it on video. It will be worth it; the film warrants repeated viewings.
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) - d. Howard Hawks
I don't know a ton about Howard Hawks. I haven't watched a lot of his movies and I don't know much about his life. One thing I do know is that he was an air force pilot for a while, had an obsession with planes, and often got hung up on the macho. This film, then, about running a small air courier service in the Peruvian Andes, was clearly pretty close to his heart. It's pretty good, but, to be honest, the first hour is much better than the second.
Cary Grant is the bad-boy pilot who heads the operation and runs over every woman he meets, and Jean Arthur would be his more than capable foil, except Hawks keeps her off screen for too long periods. After the first twenty minutes, I was thinking 'Man, they just wrote such better parts for women back in the golden days'; the second hour completely ruined that argument. Rita Hayworth is also on hand, in one of her earlier roles, and the one which apparently convinced Columbia that she had what it took to be a showcase star. I know her name well, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her in anything else. She's smoking hot here, though.
I know, I know, I shouldn't be calling an actress smoking hot one second and then bitch about the film being sexist and too-macho the next, but Randy Savage could watch this movie and question its value system.
THE HIT (1984) - d. Stephen Frears
I didn't even know this movie existed. This was the film Frears made right before he directed 'My Beautiful Launderette' and one of his very first features (like almost every other Brit of his generation, Frears got his start in TV). It's non-essential, but it wasn't wasted time. Terrence Stamp is a criminal who rats on his boss, moves to Spain and goes underground. Ten years later, said boss is out of jail, and sends two hitmen, played by John Hurt and Tim Roth (in his first feature), to drag Stamp's ass from Andalucia to Paris, where he's due to be killed. So, road-movie, then, set against the beautifully observed Spanish countryside. The acting is top-class, Frears is on his game, but the script fizzles at the end. Not terribly, but the final 15 minutes do little justice to what's come before.
THE HUNTER (1980) - d. Buzz Kulik
I go in for the whole Steve McQueen thing. He's one of the few unassailably cool movie stars, and he was the first 'old school' actor I copped on to. 'The Hunter' was the last film he made before he died. It is also a steaming pile of shit.
I hate to see him go out like this, but he'd clearly packed it in before the cameras rolled. Had McQueen's cancer not overtaken him, had his career gone on, we might've looked back on 'The Hunter' in the same way that we look back on 'Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot' as the sign that Stallone's career was done. Uncle Steve plays a bounty hunter, and he goes around doing stuff and getting into crazy shit. He's graying at the edges, a little slower (and sicker) than he used to be, a 'reluctant' skip-tracer. He's prone to giving jobs to bail jumpers (LaVar Burton) and his woman, Kathryn Harrold, is a decidedly modern woman - hippyish, even.
There's absolutely no reason to watch this movie outside of a few good action sequences, and even then, they redeem nothing. A cornfield chase ends with one of the best car explosions I've ever seen, but I'd rather wrap my face in plastic than watch this again.
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