Luis Buñuel, I feel comfortable saying now, is one of my favorite filmmakers. The Phantom of Liberty is the third Buñuel film I've seen and watching it, I felt as if it was taking place inside my brain, transforming half-formed ideas from my feeble mind into fully fledged cinematic reality. The movie had me, quite literally, screaming with laughter as the multitude of random, bizarre plotlines played out before me and, in addition, touched my thinking bone as well. It's a brilliant film.
A constant lesson in dramaticus interruptus, a phrase I've just coined, the movie follows a plotline or a character until things get interesting and then shifts to focus on a different character or plotline. It plays out like a particularly warped (and deadpan) episode of Monty Python or Mr. Show, with inspired, hilarious vignettes or sketches of an altered reality. The moments of transition from one vignette to the next are linked by an emotional stream-of-consciousness that never once lets the viewer down, unless, that is, the viewer happens to desire any degree of dramatic closure for these fundamentally banal storylines. And the movie plays everything absolutely straight, positing as reality alternative worlds where, for instance, a couple denounces photographs of landmarks around the world as obscene while being turned on by them at the same time.
What's more, all of these satirical worlds have a thesis to them that makes sense, if only in the subconscious. The Phantom of Liberty is the perfect antidote to Godard's strident, didactic voice. Utilizing an eloquent, purposeful (and masterful) sense of absurdity, it says everything about the society watching the film and the society that made the film that Weekend said, only with more wit and guile than Godard used. Perfection in every way.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Day 79: The Phantom of Liberty
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Day 78: Weekend
This is the movie equivalent of Cain, that preacher from the last two Poltergeist movies. On the surface, it's relatively unthreatening, though the creaky old voice is a bit alarming, but when it grabs you, it stares at you with burning, ghoulish eyes and sings "God is in his holy temple," over and over and over, refusing to let go until JoBeth Williams comes to save you. Weekend has one upped the demonic preacher in that it posits there aren't any JoBeth Williamses to save you, and as it turns out, it's right. The question becomes, how many times will the preacher sing the same tune over and over? The answer: A lot.
While that's the feeling I take away from Godard's Weekend (I described the experience of watching Alphaville as feeling like I was being poked with a stick… I think creepy ghost preacher is a step up), I cannot deny that the movie's laden with fantastic stuff, sequences that will live on in my memory for ages to come. As such, I'm glad I've seen it and I'd like to see it again in twenty years. Rather than clutter up the internet with random attempts to pin down Godard or the people who unabashedly love him, I thought I'd just ramble about what I liked. (Because I just finished watching the thing and I'm very tired.)
The traffic jam in the movie is superb and, so I hear, famous. It features a camera tracking down an interminable stretch of traffic and an ever-increasing cacophony of blaring car horns. The length of the sequence and the pace of the camera movement, in addition to the aural displeasure of so many car horns honking, creates a disgusting, amusing suspense. Every time a break appears between cars, a sense of hope that this brilliant sequence might soon be over pops into one's head. And then it continues to its hilarious conclusion: bodies strewn everywhere from a nasty wreck. The characters (and we) are so glad to be out of the traffic, we don't care at all about the dead.
I don't really care to get into the plot as I'm still not sure what was going on in many parts of the film. Suffice to say: The movie follows an unhappy and somewhat wealthy couple as they attempt to go somewhere. As they travel, the decaying bodies of dead or dying are cars scattered everywhere, smashed-up, flaming wrecks covered in the blood of their drivers. The imagery is creepy and apocalyptic; it's also a dynamic way of foreshadowing the end of civilization, a subject the movie eventually reaches.
I enjoyed the bourgeoisie couple and the pointed attacks against them, and, I enjoyed the literary digressions Godard makes here and the characters referencing the movie they're in (what an awful movie, the man complains, all we meet are crazy people), and there's a poetic statement at the end of the film set to drums that had me both tapping my feet and wanting to shake my fist in triumph when it ended. I also liked the way the movie seemed to subtly shift from being about the awfulness of the bourgeoisie to the awfulness of revolutionaries.
I'm not sure I'll ever fully enjoy a Godard film, but, then, after seeing this, I’m pretty sure they're not made to be enjoyed or even talked about. I think they're made to be experienced as the deadening, soul-crushing, acerbic and funny little things that they are. And I think they're supposed to make me as mad and ashamed as I feel now that I can cross another one off the list. But time and technology have played a joke on Godard: I purposefully ate fast food while watching this movie.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Day 77: Jabberwocky
Terry Gilliam's first solo work as a director is untidy as hell, pitched as a farce, but only sporadically funny. Most of the jokes fall flat and, since the movie's so giddy, it comes off as loud, obnoxious, and overlong. The movie's not entirely unwelcome though. As a whole, it doesn't come through, but it's clever in fits and starts and, though the hit or miss ratio is weighted heavily to the misses, the hits are sharp.
The basis for the film is to pit romantic notions of the Dark Ages with the very unromantic reality of the time. As such, the movie spends a lot of time wallowing in the filth of the age, exploring the festering, crumbling, and bloodstained world. Though this exploration is sometimes delightful (I enjoyed the inclusion of the ways characters went to the bathroom), it's often didactic in tone. The whole purpose of the film is to point out how rotten everything was, exposing the lie found in the myths and legends about the age, which is cute at first but quickly becomes tiresome as it hits this same note over and over again with very little variation.
The Lewis Carroll poem is included in the film, but its purpose never seems clear. It's shoved into moments when it's fitting and dropped for the rest of the film. I'm aware that it's a short poem, but its use here is awkward at best. Also awkward are the anachronistic jokes, like a character beaming with pride after mentioning that he'd traveled two miles. Again, this is cute but hardly noteworthy and, frankly, pretty easy.
Jabberwocky plays like a more cohesive, coherent version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's less jokey than its predecessor and treats the story of its main character with a certain amount of seriousness. However, it also attempts to tap into the same anarchic spirit of the Python film and is unsuccessful at this for the most part. The feverish pacing remains, but the stabs at absurdity fall flat. Performances that seem as if they were modeled on the Pythons absent from the film don't help, either.
Nevertheless, Python Michael Palin acquits himself rather well as a silly leading man and Max Wall puts in a funny performance as King Bruno the Questionable, delighted at bloodshed, blustering at the small problems in his kingdom, and overlooking the important issues. The film also has a great forced marriage scene and an incompetent knight out to slay a monster who, when faced with a band of rogues, can only ask, "Monster? Where monster?" These are highlights, but they're shoved into an overwrought film that's too silly and pleased with itself for its own good. And, worse, the timing is all off. Each joke is paced just a hair too slowly, telegraphing the punchline in a most unfunny way.
AWWWWWWWWWWW
I know it was you chipmunk. You broke my heart with your cuteness.
http://www.cuteoverload.com/
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Day 76: King Kong (2005)
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.
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.
