Let me get the gripes out of the way. The movie's definitely overlong, with many scenes that could be cut by half. The structure of the film is a bit wonky in that, despite spending a rather lengthy amount of time developing characters on the journey to Skull Island, the romance between Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow is given so little time that it feels even thinner than the romance in the original version. There are some really awful choices scattered throughout the film; Adrien Brody typing out "SKULL ISLAND" in jittery, strobe-effect slow motion is one of the worst, most bullshit things I've ever seen in a movie of this caliber, and there are a few other similarly indulgent, boneheaded moves. And the score, while effective at times, is at turns too sentimental and obvious (they really, really should have trusted Howard Shore to do this, especially since the score often sounds like an imperfect emulation of Shore's fantastic work for The Lord of the Rings [which makes one wonder why he was replaced at all]). And this only makes more apparent the times when the movie itself is, at turns, too sentimental and too obvious.
Okay? Can I gush now? The film really works on a level I hadn't expected from it. They've taken a tale about men trying to tame savagery and bestial instincts in order to save women, and turned it into a film about how the women these men are trying to save need this savagery within themselves. The character of Ann Darrow goes from shrieking scream-box in the original to main character in this film, a vaudeville actress plucked out of New York during the depression by a savage, primal movie producer (a pretty great Jack Black). When they get to Skull Island, they encounter a scary, savage (and when I say savage, I'm speaking of the random killing and decapitating kind of savagery) and, what's more, matriarchal group of natives who eventually abduct Ann and offer her to Kong. Ann is understandably terrified of Kong at first, but, after some harrowing encounters with the local wildlife, she comes to see him as a protector, a necessity for survival in the hostile land. When Kong is brought back to New York, Ann, in a turn of character that is shot similarly to the moments right before her abduction, seeks him out, apparently unable to resist the primal connection they have.
The secret behind Peter Jackson's work as a director has always been the writing. As a director, he's got a flashy style that's hyperkinetic to the extreme and has always tended towards the mawkish and the sappy, even when the heroes of his films are doused with zombie blood. But the written structure of the movies he's made in the past, and the exploration that happens within those structures, has always been interesting, the characters are sketched out nicely, and the plots of his films are often pleasant in the inventive way they harvest seeds of narrative planted at the beginning to find a satisfying ending (I, perhaps unfairly, usually give credit for this to Fran Walsh, who seems from what I've heard in interviews and commentaries, to be the more conscientious writer of the two. But I really don't know.). Generally, the work put into the script results in the sappiness feeling earned.
While the film's script is hampered a bit by the structure of the original Kong and with the notable exception of the Jack/Ann romance, this strength is on display here as well. The world, its characters, and their relationships are pleasingly etched in little gestures that build upon themselves, allowing us to fill in the gaps with our own baggage and, thus, creating an engaging, involving experience. This is no more apparent than in the early scenes between Kong and Ann, scenes in which very little dialogue is spoken and even the non-verbal communication has a distinct species barrier. Yet, Kong seems to have a personality that Ann (and we) can understand, though he's still rather alien in his behavior.
Another thing this film hammers home, something I didn't realize and am now smacking myself on the forehead for not having seen sooner, is the influence on Jackson's style from silent comedy. So often in films, action set pieces are mindless exercises in kinetic movement coupled with kinetic editing. In King Kong, the set pieces are funny, cheeky, and, in their inventiveness and their use of the inevitability of physics, reminded me of The General and some of the cinematic stunts found in Harold Lloyd's work. Thinking back this has been the case since, at least, Meet the Feebles (it's been years since I've seen Bad Taste).
A few words about Kong, the effect: Convincing. Utterly. I forgot he was in a computer, and he's the second fully-fledged, well-wrought CGI character from these people. Some of the effects in the movie are spotty, but Kong is so good, it bears no further discussion as far as I'm concerned.
I wish the makers of this film had reined themselves in more. There's a great 2 hour movie in this, probably even a great 2 and a half hour movie. In between the unfortunate choices and the excess, King Kong is notable in the way it takes its silly premise quite seriously, and finds a reason for its own existence, despite the original's place in the pantheon of cinema. When the natives in Carl Denham's stage show are represented in exactly the same way they're represented in the original film, it's a strange comment, a criticism even, of the naïve and condenscending attitude toward beasts and men found in the original film. This film's Ann Darrow character, meanwhile, is a sharp reproach to the original film's notion that when encountering a scary behemoth of primal rage and instinct, her only correct response is to scream, scream for her life.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Day 76: King Kong (2005)
Eggs 'n toast
Appropos nothing.
I saw Kong and suffice to say I liked it, even loved it, but had some serious reservations. A more formal and probably rather lengthy reaction will be posted in the eve as usual. I've got some serious stuff coming up now, more Godard, Bunel, and Roeg to sift through.
Was thinking this afternoon of a triumphant Mel Gibson a la Dino DeLaurentis via John Belushi when the somewhat overblown Kong fails to overtake the equally overblown Passion of the Christ at the box office: Nobody cry when Kong die! Whe my Jesus die, everybody gonna cry! And when he come back to life, everybody gonna laugh and look atta one another and say, "how he do dat?" and then they gonna aska me, "How he do dat?" And I'm gonna say I dunno either and then they gonna cry some more and beg me to tell them, but I just gonna smile and tell them to cheer up and have some sherbert. You know the sweet sherbert that when they eat it, it's a penetrating feeling and they gonna cry. And the sherbert, it'sa so sweet, it makes the baby jesus weep in pain. And that's why the people gotta cry, because God sent down his only son to eat our sherberts.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Monster moratorium
I'll be seeing the new King Kong tonight and then I think it's time to take a break away from giant monster movies for a while.
...
...
I never thought I could hit capacity on giant monster movies. I thought I was made of different stuff.
Anyone have any ideas as to which famed "pretentious" art-house director would make a notable giant monster movie? And if so, what it would be like? The whole notion tickles me. E-mail me if you're too embarrassed to post. It occurs to me now that Woody Allen actually made something of one of these with his Oedpius Wrecks in New York Stories. Secondly, are there any "artistic" giant monster flicks already that I'm unaware of?
Day 75: Gappa
Not too long ago, geologically speaking, there were sloths as big as elephants and wee little peoples that lived on an island with similarly wee elephants and huge fucking lizards (it seems as if Ray Harryhausen must have been consulted about this). All of that's changed now, but thankfully, the Japanese have refused to let the emotion tied to such overwhelmingly large God-like animals or prehistoric curiosities die. Though Gappa is eminently disposable, a rather weak entry in the giant beastie stomping through civilization because civilization cannot abide nature and must be cruelly punished for this fact genre and (sigh) doing the Kong thing again by having an expedition go to a South Pacific island where the natives worship said beastie, it got me thinking about the Pleistocene, that era when man and beast battled for supremacy. And good lord did we ever win.
There's a shot when two Gappas (which, by the way, are birds that also swim and have heat breath... they're Triphiban, according to the box) fly over some characters and I began thinking about a world in which large, giant eagle-lizard things actually existed and would, on occasion, fly overhead. What societal structures would rise up in reaction to Gappas? Would we have Gappa sirens? Would we build our houses differently so they weren't so easily crushed? Would a universal health care plan suddenly be a necessity since the monster attacks were so frequent, so deadly, so indiscriminate?
It's also amusing to me that these large monsters can be seen in an allegorical way for just about any disaster, natural or otherwise, that befalls us. It's not hard to go from Gappas to huricanes. If there were Gappas, we'd have concerts for Gappa Relief, 2005, criticize various politicians that they weren't doing enough in the wake of a recent Gappa attack, debate as to whether the Gappas should be killed or studied, and whether Gappa was of theological or biological origin. Or maybe we wouldn't because we wouldn't have the fucking time to do any of these things, ducking falling debris as we would constantly be. Gappa wouldn't allow such idleness. Gappa would get angry that we weren't feeding him giant prehistoric seeds or large sloths.
Still, the film is empty calories. I used to love these Japanese monster movies as a kid; I wanted to be the guy in the suit stomping on tanks and shit, breathing fire, etc. And I can't deny I got the same old childish thrill from it at times. There were a couple of zoom-ins to the Gappa-eye that I thought were cool. But there aren't enough Gappattacks and too much eye-rolling, unconvincing humanity going on here. I found myself wishing that Godard or Kurosawa or someone with the clout and the ability to really explore the concept of giant fucking monsters had made one of these things. I mean, wouldn't it be a better world if we had Bergman's take on this genre? I used to think that all upcoming directors who showed talent should have to make a Star Trek movie, just to exercise and refine their filmmaking skills in an established universe, but now I'm starting to think that they should all make cheapo man-in-suit giant monster movies. Which reminds me, I have to put the finishing touches on my latest script: Godzilla vs. Pretensiousaurus
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Day 74: The American Astronaut
About half of a great science fiction rock opera with great black and white photography and some really inventive, even elegant ways of overcoming (I assume) a small budget. The American Astronaut begins and ends extremely well, but somewhere in the middle suffers from an extraordinary, infuriating lag in pacing. The movie's tone borrows liberally from the work of both David Lynch and Ed Wood and adds a dash of the absurdity from Forbidden Zone for good measure. It's not bad, not in the least, but never fully gels into an all-around engaging experience.
One of the problems I had with the film was the way it handled some of its musical numbers. The ones that don't work are stuck into the narrative in ways that, even by the absurd conventions of the musical, feel forced, or (dare I say it) unmotivated. In these cases, they're also the type of songs that do nothing to further the plot or the characters. Instead they bring the movie to a dead halt as the viewer's forced to wait (as are the characters) until the song ends.
Having said this, I'd say about 60% of the songs work and well at that. A number featuring a dance competition in a bar on the asteroid Ceres is so fucking fantastic, I watched it again immediately after the movie was over. The villain of the film is given an appropriately creepy little song, dancing and rolling around in the ashes of people he's just vaporized with a laser gun, and a too-short impromptu vocal jam session on a long space voyage punctuates the end of the slow middle, bringing the film back into the right pace and tone that it started out with.
The aspect of The American Astronaut that impressed me the most, though, was the way it depicted the space travel in the film. Rather than have spaceships zooming around unconvincingly, the film instead cuts to an illustrated still or a series of slightly animated illustrated stills that depict the intended action, while providing the appropriate sound effects and music for the moment. It's beautiful, reminding me of the elegant (though much more expensive) simplicity of Kubrick's effects in 2001, and, more importantly, it works. Somehow I bought this as a representation of space travel more so than the frenetic effects found in the Star Wars prequels.
The photography in the film deserves special note. It's got the feel of the photography from a silent German Expressionist classic with a larger depth of field. Consistently good throughout, even on the cramped and ultimately boring cockpit set (though I liked the fact that there was a bookcase in the spaceship) in which the film spends far too much time, at times it creates different, alien environments through its manipulation of light and shadow alone. And it was a nice choice, indeed, to make the shots of men on an asteroid's surface resemble that of the pictures and film from the Apollo moon landings.
The movie's gifts overwhelm the missteps that detract from the experience. The movie begins with narration that resembles the Criswell narration from Plan 9 from Outer Space, but the movie's cleverer than an ironic spin on ultra-low budget camp. The narrator, it turns out, is the movie's villain, and at times, the character narrates the film onscreen in a way that other people can hear. A stand-up routine by an elderly man in the asteroid bar would be worth the price of admission if you could pay to see this at the theater. And this middle section that I've been talking about? The one that lags? It's not really that long.
Film as a Subversive Art
I've just started reading a book I bought about a month ago entitled Film as a Subversive Art by Amos Vogel or, as I like to refer to it, The Bible by Amos Vogel. I'm a little pissed off that no one has ever mentioned this book to me and I had to find it on a shelf at a bookstore all on my own, but then, I'm pretty excited that I just found it all on my own. This is one of those discoveries you make once every two years or so, where you're sure it's going to have changed your entire life the moment you finish it. That is, unless you're a hopeless curmudgeon, unable to change. It's basically a compendium of movies sectioned out by themes pertaining to modern artistic movements. The only problem is that finding these damned things is a challenge in itself.
But here's a quote from Ionesco that's in the book that makes me pump my fist like a masturbating quarterback after winning the big game:
"I have never been able to understand the difference that is made between the comic and the tragic. As the comic is the intuition of the absurd, it seems to me more conducive to despair than the tragic. The comic offers no way out. I say 'conducive to despair,' but in reality it is beyond despair or hope... Humor makes us conscious with a free lucidity of the tragic or desultory condition of man... Laughter alone does not respect any taboo; the comic alone is capable of giving us the strength to bear the tragedy of existence."
Monday, December 12, 2005
Day 73: Paris, Texas
The confidence this thoughtful movie exudes as it unfolds before you is alluring, irresistible. Its imagery is rich and provocative, like a great meal at a restaurant you just popped into without knowing anything about it, and its script unfolds delicately, placing meaningful details about character into the story in a careful, deliberate manner. I wish I had two more viewings of the film and a year's time to digest it before attempting to write about it. It's powerful in a sneaky, understated way, similar to how Polanski's films work, and it's a joy to watch for every second it's on screen. The runtime of the film is about 2 and a half hours but, as with most great movies that are character-based, I was aching for the film to continue, even while I was happy to see that it ended perfectly. I don't like to let things go.
The movie opens in Texas with a thirsty, sunburned Harry Dean Stanton roaming the open desert without aim or purpose. He finds a town, collapses in a small bar, and is revived by a local doctor who, having found a number in Stanton's wallet, contacts Stanton's brother. The brother, played by Dean Stockwell, comes to Texas from L.A. in order to take Stanton home and reunite him with his son. We learn that Stanton has been missing for four years, as has his wife Jane, and Stockwell and his French wife have been raising the boy as their own for that time. The reintroduction of Stanton to the kid is confusing and troublesome for both of them at first, neither sure of how to treat the other, but eventually they come to find ways to relate. Soon, they're both on the road to find the wife and mother of their family. When he eventually finds Jane, it provides an opportunity for redemption for both of them.
The screenplay by Sam Shepard is meticulously crafted, withholding details about Stanton's character in a tantalizing way while revealing enough about him and those surrounding him to hold interest. A moment when Stanton's son fully remembers his dad as a part of his early life from the screening of Super-8 home movies is particularly inspired. The climactic scene between Stanton and his ex-wife is a perfect moment in cinema, impeccably restrained and beautifully capture by all concerned. The perfection in the scene is all the more searing for the raw emotions at work.
The acting is uniformly superb. The character Stockwell plays could easily be filler, but the actor adds many subtle gestures that inform an entire unrevealed backstory of the character and his relationship to his brother and his family. The kid is fantastic, one of the more believable child performances I've seen. Stanton, in what regrettably little I've seen him in, has never been better or had a role more suited to his skills. And words cannot describe the work that Nastassja Kinski does as Jane; it's a small role but she too fills her character with such informed choices that I felt as if I knew her my whole life.
I watched this within the space of two hours of watching A Real Young Girl and, while I enjoyed that film quite a bit, this was on a wholly separate plane of quality. It's a refreshing dip into the pool of smart, honest cinema, captured with intent and wonder by director Wim Wenders. This is another great one to revisit every once in a while, and gauge how it's changed you.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Day 72: A Real Young Girl
A frank, graphic look at the burgeoning sexuality of a pubescent girl, A Real Young Girl is nauseating, appropriately so, in its treatment of youthful, pubescent eroticism. The titular character, Alice, is home on her family's farm for her summer holiday from boarding school, and she spends a great deal of her time playing with herself, rubbing her naughty bits with household items while concocting elaborate sexual fantasies about those around her. With its dreamy, unfocused, and blown-out photography conflating the textural details of a broken egg in the palm of Alice's hand or dead fly ridden flypaper with her genitalia, it feels like a standard exploitation movie from the 70s somehow got mixed in with the more extreme elements of David Lynch's work. This is the film's greatest success, tingeing Alice's inexpert experimentations with a visceral sense of shame and disgust.
That the film is equally inexpert only adds to the overall sense of pubescent instability. Because it has the same aesthetic as both cheap horror and porn, and it zooms in on details that would be more appropriate in the former, there's a continual sense of unease that mirror's the character's. She's afraid of being caught, of being seen as a sexual being by her parents because it's clear that they'll react by reining her in. And, as she's already bored and disgusted by her passive-aggressive mother and lecherous, philandering father, being held close to them would be a terrible fate.
While the movie is successful at capturing the feeling of adolescence, its plot is somewhat pedestrian and rote. Alice lusts after a sweaty, muscular young man who works for the family. She makes lewd advances, lifting her skirt at him, sitting on the ground without panties and her legs spread when he walks by, watching him pee, but he doesn't seem too interested given her age. When he does notice her, it brings about his downfall, but, of course, he doesn't matter, really, since he's just a background player in Alice's adolescent self-absorption. Were it not for the graphic nature of the film, this would be completely by-the-book, standard awakening of a young girl's sexuality fare. That the movie is able to transcend such material by exploring it fully and realistically is to its credit.
The film darts in and out of Alice's real life and her fantasy life, and the fantasies are shockingly detailed. One dreamscape has her bound by barbed wire, spread-eagled while the young worker places a rather large earthworm on her vagina. This is the most extreme fantasy and one of the highlights of the film, but the other fantasies are no less, um, affecting. And, given what we know about her family life, these sexual daydreams are actually rather unsurprising and logical.
A Real Young Girl is a hard film to shake once it's over. It proceeds at a leisurely, dreamy pace that's quite seductive, while the totality of its emotional power is overwhelming. One of the more interesting film's I've seen about young sexuality, it would make a good, more sophisticated companion piece to Heavenly Creatures. Unfortunately it lacks inventiveness in its plotline; otherwise, it's a great, extreme film.
Day 71: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
If the pulsating synth score and prevalence of toggle switches in the frame isn't enough to clue you into the fact that this movie was made smack-dab in the middle of the 1980s, then the fact that Dan Hedaya and Vincent Schiavelli share screen time (with Christopher Lloyd!) surely will. A pleasing draught of old-fashioned serial adventure clichés, more square jaw than its retro-pastiche predecessors Indiana Jones or Star Wars yet also an uneven lampoon of these same conventions, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai isn't a great movie, but it has an internal consistency and a rock solid foundation that most other post-Lucas sci-fi/adventure movies fail to bring (Lucas's own post-Lucas endeavors included). Additionally, the movie's made with an acute awareness of its roots, in a manner befitting the Commando Cody aesthetic.
Centered on neurosurgeon, rock star, physicist and all-around adventurer Buckaroo Banzai, the movie provides the audience with an opening crawl, setting up the various skills of this new kind of Renaissance man, and then plunges ahead with nary a look back. This is to the movie's credit, since, if it paused to give us too much detail, the whole enterprise would sink under its own improbable weight. I was confused more than once during Buckaroo Banzai, but the events never seemed to defy the logic of the world that was set up from the get-go, so it didn't matter. It's admirable that, in as complex an alternate universe as this is, the movie was able to reveal quite a bit without any lengthy exposition at all, even if this revelation happens mostly in retrospect.
I also really liked the way the film was shot. The action happened most often within the frame, without a great deal of cutting. This gave it a very appropriate and very cool Howard Hawks-esque feel, and if not quite that good, at least the stately feel of an old film when sound was new and the actors had to stand around a random piece of set dressing in which the microphone was hidden. It didn't exactly provide any legitimacy to the film, but it did make me sit up and take notice of the style at play and how that style interacted with the plot.
The plot in question is some ludicrous nonsense about an alien bad guy who's taken over the body of John Lithgow, giving Lithgow the chance to do what he does best: ham the fuck up. He's way over the top, but fun as he speaks in a broad Italian accent, stomps about, and exaggerates his body movements. Peter Weller, as Banzai, also gets to play to his strengths, though in his case it's an icy-cool deadpan heroism, quiet, calm, and rigid. But Jeff Goldblum is certainly the most memorable here as a new recruit to Banzai's team. It's a trademark, bumbling Goldblum performance, and he gets the film's funniest line, "Why is there a watermelon there?"
Though I liked the goony, tounge-in-cheek quality to the film (and the rough-edged special effects), the humor in it is scattershot at best with only a few hits to a bunch of misses. The movie finds a nice, dryly humorous tone when it plays it straight; it's never explicitly trying for laughs and getting them by taking the idiotic premise seriously. So when the movie launches into broader, more parodic kinds of jokes, it's disappointing and not really funny.
I enjoyed The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, but I didn't love it. It had a weighty feel to it that was much welcome, since some movies set in the "real" world have a hard time establishing this kind-of well-observed tone. It's definitely one of the best projects that emerged in the post Star Wars/Indiana Jones boom for both its sincerity and the way it eschews populist, audience pleasing concerns by going forward without waiting for us to catch up with it. Even so, the material's just too slight and the increasingly jokey tone intrudes on whatever elements of dramatic tension there are.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Day 69: Sleuth
Sleuth is a rich, fun little movie about a mystery writer and his wife's lover. Laurence Olivier is the writer, Michael Caine the lover. It's based on a stage play by Anthony Shaffer (incidentally, he also wrote the screenplay for The Wicker Man) and, boy, is it ever a fun romp. It's a twisty, turny movie in which the two men engage in a game of wits, instigated by the jealous, cuckolded Olivier.
Wealthy beyond any practical use, Olivier's character lives in a huge house, surrounded by automatons and board games. He's invited Caine over to plan a scheme in which Caine will steal some valuable jewels from Olivier, enabling both of them to get rich since the jewels are fully insured. But, beholden as he is to the conventions of mystery novels, Olivier insists that the skeptical Caine set about the burglary "right", disguising himself in the right costume, using the right props, and following the proper, clichéd procedures to lift the jewels from a safe.
Inevitably, the plot thickens as it's stirred; both men clearly have more on their minds than the money involved, and the prejudices inspired by the differences in their class and nationality (not to mention the fact that Caine is schtupping Olivier's wife) bring a raw, volatile element into the Producers-like sub-par insurance scam plottings and the camp, reflexive proceedings by which Caine is forced to "rob" Olivier. The script is a treat, as witty and as devious as both of the characters it's depicting. The movie takes several shocking turns, never backing away from the opportunity to push these two men as far as they'd be willing to go under the circumstances. And, by the end, it's come as close to improbable as any movie in memory without, ultimately, betraying itself or us.
A lot of this has to do with the actors. Olivier is chewing the scenery here with marvelous aplomb, playing a man, giddy with the idea that he could live inside fiction and quickly irritated when his partner won't play along. The actor also invests the character with such believable, rancid class prejudices and impish glee at deceit and other dastardly doings, that he's great fun to despise. Caine acquits himself so well in this role that I'll never look at him quite the same way again. He moves from polite anger in a scene with Olivier to earnest, embarrassing child-like joy at the prospect of dressing up like a clown rather well here. When his politeness slips away from him and he lets his anger out fully, it's great, twisted fun. And then… well… I hate to be coy, but I simply must be here. Oh man.
I'm not usually spoiler-sensitive, but part of the joy of Sleuth… scratch-that… most of the joy of Sleuth is watching these two actors duke it out in surprising, delightful ways. As mentioned, it's based on a play and the structure of the film is definitely of the theatre. It's mostly just these two guys walking around a very, very large house, constantly trying to one-up each other and gain an advantage over the other, like a game of chess played with words. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz does all the right things to open the location up, moving the camera all around the space in as giddy a way as the actors stomp through it. There are a few too many cutaways to the automatons (this delivers a cheap and easy creep-out factor) that feel like someone trying to create artificial patches between scenes, but this isn't really an issue so much as a nitpick on a very wonderful film. Sleuth is one of the few films I've seen where the plot seems like it's actually an important element to enjoying the film, probably because it's so focused on the characters and nearly everything it does is an attempt at subverting their own expectations as to how their individual stories play out.
American Drivel Review creates a lack of posts
Lack of posts outside of reviews have been due to a 3-4 pronged attack of busy stuff to do.
One of them has been putting together the newest issue of The American Drivel Review, a small press humor magazine I help run (though it's become more and more Tara's baby as it's grown). This is probably the funniest issue we've been able to put together so far, though this is not to detract from the really funny stuff in the other issues. Here's a sneak preview of something I wrote that you'll find in this Winter 2005 issue.
"When the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, we, like most Americans, were appalled at the barbarism of the attackers, and like most Americans, we supported the current Administration’s attack on Godzilla. Since all evidence pointed to Godzilla’s guilt, it seemed logical and righteous to strike out against the great lizard and his network of monsters. At first, the Administration found great success in this campaign, capturing both Mothra and Ghidra. The current War in Skull Island, however, is misguided and foolhardy at best. King Kong, despite decades-old propaganda, had nothing to do with the World Trade Center attacks and, indeed, is a sworn enemy of Godzilla.
"It is time for this Administration to admit that it misled the American public. Statements by the President such as, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a sudden disappearance of shrill blonde women,” created a state of fear. Despite the Administration’s claims that we must fight King Kong over there before we fight him here, the Giant Ape has never attacked this nation without being provoked by flashbulbs. And, though protecting the American people was the original intent of striking Skull Island, the Administration has now shifted its reasoning to claim that the goal of our campaign is to free the Skull Island people from the oppressive tyranny of Kong."
The new issue will be available for purchase around December 15th.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Day 68: Dark Habits
I'd like to start this one by quoting the Netflix summary of the film. According to the summary "this film [is] about Yolanda, a singer who sells heroin on the side and goes on the lam when a deal goes awry. Now, thugs are after her, and her only sanctuary is a convent where Mother Superior is a junkie, a lesbian and also a fan of Yolanda's. Plus, another nun does LSD, a priest smokes hash, and everything is unexpected."
I've quoted this for two reasons. The first is I find the description hilarious, like it's a description from a terrifying children's book. The second is that, as ribald as it makes the movie sound, it's misleading. Dark Habits is a quiet, sad film that takes the vices of its characters rather seriously, taking time to explore the truths behind these vices, as well as the consequences they bring. On the surface, it may seem outrageous, - a nun does heroin! - but except for the religious component, it's not altogether shocking (or too remarkable, I'm afraid) underneath the gaudy, Catholic surface.
The film's got a nice pastiche of quirky characters that it treats with an admirable respect, but too often it wanders around in search of a point of view. It ends powerfully, with a great jilted lover scene, and there are a few high-water marks like a climactic performance by its main character, Yolanda, but not unlike her character, the movie feels like it's hiding out in a convent, watching things happen, just biding its time until the heat's off. Still, I loved the idea of a nun writing tawdry prose with an assumed name, and I was tickled at the notion of the convent's acid-taking Nun-cook having Jesus-based hallucinations while she prepares the food, and hey, I'm always game to watch a nun feed a rowdy tiger.
The problem in the film lies in the way the Yolanda character is handled. She makes a nice, convincing way of bringing us into this strange, cloistered world, but the movie never embraces her fully, stays away from examining her, and as a result, keeps us, the audience, at arm's length. The film asks a question as to whether or not the world and its inhabitants have changed or are capable of changing, and comes down squarely in the middle with characters on either side. There's nothing wrong with that, and this honesty about difficult questions is part of what makes the movie work as well as it does, but it fails to question the viewer as well as the characters, and that's, I think, what keeps it from taking off.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Day 67: King Kong (1976)
So, I hope I'm not wrong here, but that was the giant snake from Conan, right? I only ask because both movies were Dino De Laurentiis productions and they looked awfully similar. Maybe it's a venerated line of fake snakes, like the Barrymores, or siblings, like Donny & Marie.
The thing is, aside from Kong, there was only one monster on Skull Island in this version of King Kong, and it was a giant snake. It's weird because, though much time is spent on the island, nothing actually seems to be happening. Jessica Lange spends a lot of time in Kong's hand (I got so sick of seeing that thing) gets washed and blown on by him, he pokes her, she shouts at him, and that's about it. At least in the original, Fay Wray and Kong had a sort-of Stockholm Syndrome thing going on as she depended on him for her survival.
Though, I give the movie many points for trying to answer the question of why Kong would want a human lady friend in the first place. That it goes for the most literal of answers (sex, duh) results in my subtracting most of the points. It does lead to a moment in which Charles Grodin, referring to the fifty-foot ape, tells Jessica Lange, "He was going to rape you," but perhaps the reason that Kong wants human females isn't a question that needs to be answered, literally or not. It's certainly a lot more primal when it's unexplained, a lot more interesting, and allows me to have conversations with my girlfriend where we debate as to whether Kong likes these women as pets or flowers. The movie also does well to show difficulties in transporting Kong to America, but what does it matter since we're all waiting for him to stand on a skyscraper anyway?
This is a vulgar movie, a loud and trashy junk film, with too many fun, dumb elements to kick to the curb, but one that far overstays its welcome in its 134 minute running time. The movie is paced like it was made by snails, despite the fact that there's a lot of screaming, yelling, and crashing going on, and, thus, one can only imagine that these were coked up snails, having just done a line off of a hot snail's slime trail. There's definitely a weird Vietnam hippy-counterculture vs. Nixon voter symbolism-thing going on in the script, but the movie is so unwieldy and everything in it is so muddled, any intended Chayefsky-esque satire is lost amidst the roaring.
The worst, most unfortunate part of the film is the way it handles Kong. I don’t give a rat's ass about how "real" effects seem, or that I can see wires or composite lines. None of that really matters to me as long as the effects are placed within the fabric of the movie well. Despite the fact that the face is well articulated and Kong's personality comes through, the full bodied Kong is uninteresting to watch, held down by his technology, sluggish in responding to anything. Kong's lethargy here is a stark contrast to the vitality and joie de vivre that the original Kong exhibited, and, wouldn't you know it, this typifies the difference between the two films.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Day 66: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
A marvelous, understated film about an unlikely love affair between an elderly German woman and a much younger Arab man, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul reminds me of why I like movies. The way it's so matter-of-factly and economically shot and cut, it feels like peering into the lives of these people through some kind-of magic, rectangular window. The movie's efficiency never makes it feel so insular that the characters have no lives outside the frame, indeed, that's one of its strengths, but it certainly lends a feeling that the camera has captured the moments that matter, the most important moments in the story of how these two people came to love one another.
They're both residents of a German town, one that seems sapped of happiness. The movie's opening scene takes place in a bar where people are drinking, but seem to find no enjoyment in it. The elderly woman, Emmi, enters, and is regarded with suspicion and reproach. She clearly doesn't belong there, has only stepped in to get out of the rain, and doesn't know whether she wants a cola or a beer. Everyone, Emmi included, looks drained, worn down by life, photographed in such a way that wrinkles and runny mascara defy any notions of glamour.
Among a group of Arabs in the bar, Ali is encouraged to dance with Emmi in order to make her feel more comfortable. He agrees and the two engage in an awkward dance, talk to each other about their lives, connecting on a level of loneliness and a desperate desire for empathetic human contact. When the dance is over, they continue talking, he goes home with her, and stays the night. Despite the fierce racism of Emmi's associates, friends, and family, they continue seeing one another and eventually get married.
These early scenes are inspiring, charming, and almost overbearingly sweet. It's wonderful to see these two lonely souls find each other and rousing to watch them flaunt social convention in defense of their love. The hangover of Nazi Germany is omnipresent (Emmi was a member of the Nazi party and speaks of Hitler in the same reserved, yet non-denouncing way that some former Nixon supporters do) as is the prejudice against Arab people due to the events at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Everyone who disapproves of the relationship claims, "It won't last," and, yet, the happiness that Emmi and Ali bring to each other and the contrasting misery the other people live in is so well delineated, you can't help but need their relationship to last.
For a while, it seems that the movie may be a simple fairy tale about the way integrated relationships invariably produce more harmony between people of different races, but it's got better, more complex, more interesting things to say. The relationship hits a snag when the two no longer have anything to fight against, and both begin drifting apart from one another, returning to the loneliness that brought them together in the first place. It's difficult and frustrating to watch, seeing these two people who once communicated so openly and simply with one another unable to speak to each other. But, ultimately, when the film brings the two back together in the place where they met, the movie's point is that lasting relationships require their participants to reeducate themselves about who they're paired with. It's a beautiful, touching thing to watch, fantastically captured by all involved.
I loved this movie with every fiber of my being. It may be one of my personal all-time favorites, something further reflection will no doubt illuminate. I'll know in a year.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Day 65: The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man illustrates two things that are becoming increasingly clear to me. The first is that Christopher Lee is really, truly, no foolin' a fine actor, whose typecasting in villainous roles is as inevitable as it is unfortunate. The second is that island cultures are generally depicted, to put it generously, as a bit odd.
When a pious, Christian policeman arrives at a small island off the coast of Scotland investigating the disappearance of a young girl, he's confronted by the insular and Pagan ways of its inhabitants. As he tirelessly seeks out the missing girl, the open sexuality and irrational beliefs of the denizens shocks and offends him. Unmovable in his faith and seemingly unable to understand the notion that there could be different cultures in the United Kingdom of the 20th century, he scolds the locals for taking no interest in Christ. As the mystery unravels, it becomes clear that the locals, led by an effete, charming Christopher Lee, believe human sacrifice is necessary to preserve their way of life, and the noble policeman foolishly believes he can stop it.
Though at first the culturally narrow policeman character, nicely played by Edward Woodward, is as unlikable and unwelcome as a Bush voter at a gay pride parade, by the end of the film, I was surprised to find that I found him much more sympathetic than any of the Pagan islanders. The reason for this is that he's in the minority, as much a victim of religious persecution as a witch in colonial America, maligned solely for being The Other in an insulated society.
Not so much a horror movie as it is an exploration of the necessary consequences of institutionalized religion, the movie begins with the hippie commune feel of Zardoz and, as it progresses, creepily drifts closer to the tone of an Italian cannibal film. There's a great deal of singing and dancing in the film (and a good deal of it done by ladies in the nude), so much so that I thought it was a musical at first. But with the exception of the siren song of the innkeeper's daughter, the singing and dancing are nice expository devices, bringing us into a rich culture. And, boy oh boy, do the musical elements pay off at the end in a strikingly horrific scene. The scene is all the more horrific due to the bright and sunny way it's captured, with very little artifice to hide the brutality.
The movie's a clunky affair overall, with odd, distracting choices in the score and a great deal of awkward staging and editing. There's far too much monologuing at the end, lending it the impression of a bizarro-world Scooby-Doo ending with the villains of the piece explaining their motivations and plans to a solo, outnumbered good guy. But even with these flaws, the movie cleanly explores the clash of two very different and absolutist cultures in a logical, allegorical way and it's got a horrifying gut-punch of a finale that simply must be seen.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Day 64: The Stendhal Syndrome
A mid-level effort by Dario Argento, it has the ignoble distinction of featuring rape scenes involving the director's daughter, Asia Argento. This fact is only mildly distracting, though, since the film renders her point of view so well. The title of the film refers to a (fictional?) mental condition in which a person is disoriented and overcome by works of art, causing them to hallucinate and even pass out. It's an interesting conceit, used in a similar fashion to the way Vertigo hobbled Jimmy Stewart's character with its titular mental affliction, and yields some wonderful sequences in which Asia Argento is inundated with hallucinatory sounds and images emanating from works of art.
I've liked Argento's films in the past for their beauty. The image from Suspira of a young woman impaled by shards of a shattered stained glass window is as artful as bloodletting in film gets. In addition, I've admired the way his films capture a tone that feels like they're told from the emotional perspective of their killers; there's a certain amount of shameful joy in Argento's gore, a way of depicting death as if it is both exciting and excruciatingly painful or disgusting at once.
This film, while it's exceedingly graphic at times and retains the creepy perspective described above, loses much of the beauty of Argento's earlier efforts. There are a few moments when the imagery pops out, like when the sculptures in an art museum seem threatening due to the way the camera captures them or a scene in which Asia, trying to hide the truth from a friend of hers, is lit in a way that her eyes seem to peek out from absolute darkness, but for the most part the film feels bland compared to the director's previous work. This isn't a problem in and of itself, but something that struck me as I watched it. Adding to the visual muddiness are some early CG effects that, while they're used sparingly, tend to be distracting.
Still, Argento manages to wring some fine, creepy moments out of a plot that, in other hands, would have been uninteresting. Asia Argento plays a cop on the trail of a serial rapist. When her titular mental condition puts her in a vulnerable state, she's kidnapped and raped by the man she's tracking. She manages to exact a brutal revenge on the man, but soon finds that her experiences have affected her mental state more than she realized.
The movie concludes brilliantly; a group of fellow cops attempts to help and comfort Asia --at this point she's a danger to herself and others-- and instead of accepting their offer, she screams for her life. The movie cuts to shots of these helpful men who surround her and they appear to be leering and aggressive. This scene effectively encapsulates everything that has come before it, rendering Asia's point of view to the point that we're on her side, despite the fact that she's killed a couple of innocents. I also liked the way Argento's usual excess in gore led to a satisfying, realistic confrontation between Asia and the rapist. Also, Ennio Morricone proves, yet again, that he can write music just as delightfully overbearing and creepy as Goblin.
All this is good, but the movie's just too long, its pace is too dull, and its plotting too standard in order to be too excited about it. The second half of the movie, which contains some interesting exploration of Asia's character, is taken up by unnecessary and overly complicated mystery elements, elements that don't withstand scrutiny even after we learn there's an unreliable narrator in the room. Certain characters slow the threadbare plot every time they're on screen. And some plot devices are introduced, only to be dropped later. All of these problems are present in other Argento movies and, often, they somehow add to the dreamlike mood. This time, they're distracting.
