Shloggs Horror Blog

Why I Love Movies: The Chronicles of Riddick Edition

2012-02-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

The internet is both the most dispiriting and the most invigorating invention of all time. I don't need to lecture here about the relative merits and demerits of this most pervasive of all technologies. The point is, as a passionate film fan who frequents movie nerd sites, the fires of my enthusiasm are in a constant state of being fanned one moment and doused the next. I choose to focus primarily on the positives and have sought out and follow the work of a great many online scribes I perceive as like minded in their upbeat appraisal of the state of cinema. Nothing exhausts and irritates me more than the baleful trolls that populate message boards and comments sections spewing preemptive hate and Monday morning quarterbacking every plot point in every movie. That's why the only thing more magical than FILMCRITHULK's recent Why You Love Movies article, is the outpouring of support and similar exhortations that have cropped up in its inspirational wake.

I have been moved to draft my own mission statement on the magic of the movies, but I want to put a personal spin on it. People have been making great lists that span the history of the medium. One of my most favorite things about Cinema and our relationship with it is how it affords us the opportunity to champion pictures others choose to ignore or revile. Movies that we find joy in and are flabbergasted that get run down so relentlessly by the bulk of cinephiles. So, my contribution to this ongoing discussion will be a list focusing exclusively on the reasons why I love one such film in Particular. The Chronicles of Riddick.

Because you keep what you kill.

Because of the bicep vein, latex scar and vocal delivery on Nick Chinlund.

Because Vin Diesel and David Twohy clearly love the Riddick character and genuinely seem to have been compelled to craft this sequel more out of a desire to expand his universe than to expand their pocketbooks.

Because of Karl Urban's breathtaking mullet.

Because of how glorious Diesel's voice is to listen to, no matter how ridiculous the one liners. Scratch that, BECAUSE of the ridiculous one liners.

Because Keith David is always reason enough to love a film.

Because of how fully realized the Necromonger world is. From the clothes to the headdresses to the armor to the weapons to the ships to the turns of phrase and religious mythology, I love everything about it wholly and unreservedly.

Because of Lord Marshall's throne room. They built that shit and it still drops my jaw each and every time I watch it.

Because the entire Crematoria prison planet section reminds me of using my imagination while playing on a playground as a child.

Because of that teacup.

Because it's an animal thing.

Because of that sweet, snow encrusted beard Riddick rocks in the opening.

Because of that awesome thing Colm Feore as Lord Marshall the holy half dead does with his hands while savoring the moment before he thinks he's going to finally dispose of the last Furian.

Because Dame Judi Dench floats around as she phones it in.

Because of Thandie Newton's outrageously melodramatic, yet totally appropriate eyebrow acting. It gives a whole new meaning to arch.

Because of the sound when Riddick breaks the knife off in Lord Marshall's dome.

Because of those radical, greasy Eastern Bloc dudes running the prison.

Because of the smoke rising off Riddick after he saves Kera.

Because I hoped and prayed that a third entry would get greenlit despite Chronicle's box office failure. Now, thanks to Vin Diesel's perseverance, dedication to his fanbase and success with Fast Five, it is currently being shot. I get happy and smile inside every time I remember I am going to be watching a new Riddick film on the big screen before too long.

Because when that moment comes, it will truly be a day of days.

2nd Rondo Nomination!

2012-02-13T17:04:00.000-08:00

I have once again been nominated for a Rondo award in the category of best blog of 2011! It is an honor and I would greatly appreciate it if folks could vote for ShloggsHorrorBlog for #17 and my good friends Profondo Cinema for #22! Thanks again to the Rondo awards and to all my readers!

Chronicle

2012-02-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

When I first caught wind of the set up for Chronicle, my retinas completely detached so as to facilitate some seriously Herculean eye rolling. I am beyond spent of any interest or enthusiasm for the found footage genre. Sure, I've seen some films where the conceit worked for me such as Cloverfield, Quarantine or Cannibal Holocaust, but even these instances turned out to be one time viewings. There's something about the visceral immediacy and feigned realism of the format that doesn't lend itself to repeated viewings. The endings of these films tend to be abrupt, unsatisfying affairs necessitated by the last cameraman standing trope, and that usually culminates with that man falling over. The Paranormal Activity series and its progenitor The Blair Witch Project are, to my eyes and sensibilities, veritable crimes against the art of cinema. Throw non franchise teenager superheros into the mix, and you have a volatile cocktail teeming with my most hated ingredients.

The strange thing is, I ended up loving this film. That's not surprising in and of itself considering how much I enjoy the theatrical experience, but this movie was much more than a fun time at the picture show. It is an overwhelming emotional experience. It feels vastly more epic than its slim 80 minute run time would suggest. I felt exhausted at the end, wrung out and spent. This film takes you to many places, emotionally and intellectually, and with very few exceptions, justifies the trip. This isn't simply a hackneyed set up to utilize the found footage aesthetic to legitimize its low budget effects, this is a dark, involved story with fleshed out, sympathetic characters. Characters who all have complete arcs and whose interactions bear the weight of the films thematic implications.

This story is about what happens when kids grow up without caregivers they can trust and who show them love. It is about how emotional neglect renders people wary of the fidelity of any affection. It is a tragedy that builds and builds from fun loving exploration to a deafening crescendo of explosive violence. The last 10 minute action set piece of Chronicle was to me, infinitely more powerful than any of the Marvel superhero films. I had tears brimming in my eyes, I wanted to talk characters down, save them from harm and stop them from inflicting it. It's potent stuff, and if the characters and story hadn't been built so masterfully, It would have been a jarring departure from the light-hearted moments that preceded it.

The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Dane DeHaan as the tortured Andrew. His evolution from meek whipping boy to caustic Apex Predator is tremendous to behold. He makes you care for him, even as he turns his back on everyone and lets the darkness swallow him whole. He's a stunning character, one that is remarkably resonant for the times we live in. A cautionary reminder to treat people better and learn to listen when they cry for help. Michael Kelly gives some shading to the role of Alexander's drunken lout of a father with a complicated performance. I've liked this dude since The Dawn of the Dead remake and he's been great in everything I've seen him in. The other supporting leads gel excellently, creating a believable group, all the more upsetting when they are fractured.

The effects are passable for this fare. The emphasis is more on discovery and mastery, which perfectly represents these characters growing as individuals and growing apart, becoming who they were always going to be, albeit on a grander, more destructive or more heroic scale. The found footage angle starts off as creepy, develops brilliantly in the middle section with Andrew's powers, then devolves somewhat in the final act, at times even being ignored altogether. That middle segment does contain some beautifully realized, evocative usages of the concept though. It definitely expands the trendy mediums cinematic language a great deal and points the way out of the insulting security camera bullshit quagmire of the Paranormal Activity series. Overall, it's more than a gimmick and less than a total success.

The film isn't without its flaws and occasional wonky mechanics. The camera explanations get a bit tedious toward the end, almost making me wish they hadn't bothered with the conceit at all. There's a couple of "off" scenes that struck me as incongruous and icky (you'll know what I mean when you see it) and momentarily took me out of it, but it would quickly right itself and confidently reestablish its groove. The tacked on coda seemed extremely unnecessary to me and the rare instance where I wish a film like this hewed to the established smash cut ending. In any case, something from a 26 year old, first time film maker has no business being this good and assuredly realized. Josh Trank has a bright future, as does Max Landis (yes, his dad is John Landis), whose airtight screenplay is surely responsible for a large percentage of the films success. It's rare that I'm rewarded this handsomely for stepping out of my comfort zone, perhaps I should make a habit of it.

The Woman In Black

2012-02-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

I saw a trailer for The Woman In Black a couple months back and thought it looked interesting, if a little staid. I forgot all about it until seeing commercials on the net last week trumpeting its release. Since I am a 73 year old man, I caught a solo 9:45 AM Saturday morning show today and am proud to report that with this and the blissfully idiotic Underworld:Awakening under its belt, 2012 is off to a solid start for horror films. The Woman in Black's cut rate elegance and grim ponderousness stands in stark contrast to the explosive insanity of 20 foot tall werewolves throwing cars and eating silver bullets for breakfast. It's a testament to the elasticity of the genre that two such varied approaches can call its heading home. Sure, there are some qualifying sub categories to add to each respective appellation, but we're still talking about werewolves, ghosts and vampires here.

The Woman in Black comically presents us with a startlingly diminutive Daniel Radcliffe as a widower and father to a young son. After a chilling, wordless opening sequence, there is some awkward business establishing Radcliffe as said widower, father and apparently lawyer (?!), being sent by his heartless firm to settle an estate in some mysterious small town in turn of the century England. Once we do away with this faltering handling of exposition, the film settles into a nice groove as Radcliffe travels to this eerie town. A melancholy village crushed by sadness and full of secrets. I don't do plot synopsis, so suffice to say, the tragic back story that is glacially doled out serves its purpose without drawing attention to itself or breaking any ground. Rather, it is how well this film tells its story, with such choking atmosphere I felt like I was slowly being suffocated in my seat. For a film like this, that's a good thing.

The attention to period detail, the costuming and the set design elevate this from brain dead found footage chair jumper fare to lovingly crafted genre exercise. Care was put into this film, it feels part of a rich tradition (it was produced by the legendary Hammer studios) instead of shortsightedly designed to callously cash in on current trends. Effort was involved in the production of this film and it shows. It's nice to be treated like a connoisseur instead of a consumer, even if I'm turning up to the earliest matinee possible to only pay 5$ for my ticket.

I was quite impressed with Radcliffe. He isn't given a great deal to do, but he anchors the film admirably. Considering large swaths of the movie are primarily comprised of him wandering alone around a dark, creepy mansion holding a candle aloft, that he keeps the audience invested is no small feat. He carries the picture on the strength of his delicate features, expressive eyes and abundant, unruly hair. The stubble and sideburns help a little to separate him from the boy wizard we've spent the last decade watching come of age, but a train car sequence opposite Ciaran Hinds early on is a blatant reminder of how minuscule this fellow is.

The scares are well done, if telegraphed and a tad conventional. The tension level doesn't reach heart stopping Insidious levels, but that isn't exactly called for here. It's more about the slow burn, the ever tightening vise grip of ghastly, ghostly vengeance. The inescapable and ever escalating dread leading to an unexpectedly dark denouement. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this film. I doubt it will stick with me past next weekend, but it entertained and involved me. It features several strong performances, spectacular production design and stately imagery (the standout being a winding road leading to the haunted mansion submerged each day by high tide). It's a pleasantly morose tale, well told and well made. What more can you ask for from this sort of film?

Underworld: Awakening

2012-02-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

I guess it would be fair to say I found the first 2 Underworld films detestable. They struck me as joyless, plodding affairs with a suffocatingly monochromatic aesthetic. Mechanical, calculating films more intent on franchise building than entertaining. I caught the third film on home video and recall not being infuriated by it, but if any specific laudable aspect exists, it seems to have escaped me. When I first saw the trailer for what I then referred to as Underworld: Whatevering, I distinctly remember reminding myself not to be fooled by the shiny baubles it promised for the previous three had yielded only gun flint blue lumps of cinematic coal. Today however, I found myself in a crummy mood with free time and the requisite spare 11$, so, big surprise, I took in an IMAX 3-D presentation of the latest Lycan escapade.

Whether by dint of lowered expectations or a strong desire to indulge in mindless escapism is irrelevant, the bottom line is I can't remember the last time I had this much damn fun sitting in a theater by myself in the middle of the afternoon. With a king sized soda and a bag of my favorite candy by my side, I guffawed with moronic glee at the incomprehensible bombast. The plot is a serviceable stew of worn out tropes and exhausted contrivances, but who cares? I sat down looking to be transported out of my grey life into a blue/grey life. With machine guns! And 20 foot tall CGI werewolves! A mincing Charles Dance and a disinterested Stephen Rea! This movie has it all! Not really, but it had exactly everything I needed it to have at the exact moment I saw it.

Most of all though, this movie is LOUD. I mean impossibly loud. So overpoweringly loud, the aural experience teeters on the precipice betwixt excruciating and ecstasy. Oh, the machine guns, the explosions, the roaring CGI werewolves! Cars thrown about like matchsticks and sonically careening about the theater, bludgeoning me into submission and pinning me to the back of my seat. When I see a brain dead pile of bologna like this, I need the sound design to seemingly be attempting to deafen me. When you lack in the story, acting and script departments this profoundly, a good audio visual presentation goes a long way toward compensating for the deficit.

Speaking of the visuals, the 3-D was fully realized without being intrusive as so many current attempts are. I'm assuming this was shot in the format as opposed to the dreaded post conversion, cause this thing looked fantastic and never dark, an astonishing fact when one considers the murky palette this film swims in. I really enjoyed the rustic sets of the coven's hideout and the monolithic, rushing damn that concealed it. There's some nice high definition photography going on here with the cinematography as exceedingly accomplished as the direction is admirably stylish. Pedestrian in regard to story, yet experimental and exacting in approach to look. This is that rare instance of style over substance where the inequality should be not only begrudgingly accepted, but enthusiastically applauded.

I'm certain, like the latest Resident Evil, it won't hold up at home on bluray. Movies like this need to be seen in the biggest theater you can find with sound that literally shakes your seat and occasions onset tinnitus. When you watch this, your eyes glaze and you breathe through your mouth, snorting smug, callous approval at the endless parade of decapitations and guttings. The vapors of this gloriously idiotic experience are already wafting into distant, hazy memory. The impact is not built to last, but was monumentally enjoyable while it was happening to me. I won't be mulling over the thematic implications, but I'll be first in line for the next one.

Shloggs Speaks: Arnold Edition

2012-02-01T06:16:00.001-08:00

This time, I join Axl and briefly JScott to discuss the golden era of my greatest cinematic idol growing up, Arnold Schwarzenegger! This is a man who changed the course of my life and the course of action and sci-fi film, a true legend! As always, it was a joy to record this show with my good friends at Profondo Cinema, the best in the business!

The Grey

2012-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

I can think of few working film makers I am as simultaneously aware of and ambivalent toward as Joe Carnahan. I have never seen Narc, nor do I feel compelled to do so despite the generous kudos it has accumulated in some circles. Smoking Aces was stylish and intermittently entertaining, but primarily crude and pointless. The A-Team was just plain pointless, no qualifiers necessary. So, to be blunt, nothing about the man's oeuvre does much of anything for me. Liam Neeson however, has long been a favorite. Dating back to Krull and the Mission, but Darkman was what cemented his leading man persona for me. Wounded and soulful, yet imposing as hell and charming when he wants to be. Of more dynamic and multi talented leading men, there are few.

So, when I first saw the trailers for The Grey, I dismissed Carnahan's involvement as nothing more than apparent affinity developed between him and Neeson during production of The A-Team. Now I love a good man Vs. nature film, especially the sort that juxtaposes the two as iconic, existential rivals. Hope and eventuality. Faith and stone cold reality. The trailers and promotional materials did a fine job conveying this deadly serious thematic component as well as the striking, artistic element at play. I was prepared for that and avidly awaiting the challenging complexity inherent to the non commercial proposition watching tired, bloodied men mauled by wild animals and succumbing to the elements entails. On that level, the film succeeds wildly.

It is gorgeously shot, breathtaking even. I didn't know Carnahan had that sort of an eye. An eye that could distill every fascinating facet of his timeless story into the indelible, unforgettable image of a single file line of men struggling through a merciless blizzard with infinite whiteness swallowing them on all sides. The plane crash that strands them in this wasteland is as impressive as any I've yet seen conveyed on film, all the more impressive for how viscerally realized it is on such a clearly minuscule budget. Impeccable sound design and photography on all fronts coming together with assured direction and superlative performances to present a technical marvel of a film that manages to explore the weighty issues of faith, life and death. Aside from some minor quibbles with elastic notions of realism, most everything about this meat and potatoes effort worked for me.

There Be Spoilers Here:

Here's the problem. The aforementioned promotional material hinged largely on footage of Neeson strapping broken mini-liquor bottles to his knuckles with electrical tape and charging into the fray against a behemoth alpha male wolf to do bloody, chaotic battle. The way this footage was edited and scored implicitly promises the viewer that they will see the other side of that arresting notion once they plunk down their hard earned cash. The Grey does a beautiful job bringing you to this moment, then smash cuts to black at the exact moment the trailer did. Roll credits. As the scene was building, I began to get a queasy feeling this was going to be the case, but when it actually came to pass, I was shocked at how disappointed and frustrated I was. I (and clearly, vocally the audience I saw it with) felt betrayed and more than a little cheated. The movie the internet sold to me as Liam Neeson: Wolf Puncher gave me a little more of what I hoped was going to be there than I thought it would and absolutely nothing of what I was certain would be there.

I read here and there some people comparing this phenomena to the woman suing Drive for a misleading trailer. I don't buy that. I'm an intelligent film goer who educates himself before buying a ticket. I knew what I was getting into with Drive and felt the trailer effectively portrayed the film as arty, surreal and hyper violent. I've also read people saying that if you wanted to see that fight, then you are an idiot. That it would have been stupid and looked ridiculous. With this, I also disagree. The Grey is a story of a man grappling with his will to live and I desperately wanted to see him put everything he had into that fight once he made the decision to, against all odds and with no reason or faith, not go quietly into that night. If the film makers couldn't have figured a way to present this moment the entire film had been building to without it being laughable, then they just weren't trying hard enough.

While I do disagree with Carnahan's decision to not show that fight, I respect his right to make that choice. He is an artist, this film forcefully confirms that, and this film is indeed an important piece of art. Not necessarily for the story, performances or technical merits, all of which are solid and in some cases well above par, but for the strong reactions and lively discussion it has engendered among film fans. It has been of great interest to me to read the fallout today and see separate camps spring up on either side of the debate. So many nuanced positions being taken and passionately argued. It is irrelevant whether or not any is more right than the other. The meaningful thing is that this film has people talking, thinking and discussing a piece of cinematic art. Not to nitpick how faithful it was to some superhero's convoluted origin story or whether the two leads had an off screen liaison that destroyed one of their marriages. Nothing so trivial. The discussion is about what these characters lives and deaths meant and how it resonated or didn't with each individual. This film has moved people and made them contemplate their mortality, their mettle and what they love most and hold most dear. It is a somber, lofty exploration of weighty issues and should be regarded accordingly.

I appreciate a film that dares to be this bleak and still somehow reaches the multiplex. It was magnificent to see this on a huge screen with pristine projection and eardrum decimating sound. It upset me, it infuriated me, I laughed, I cried, I nodded approvingly at Neeson's bad ass antics. I was moved and felt strongly about it. That it has had this effect on most is undeniable and should be acknowledged. Even if it didn't play out exactly as some of us might have preferred, we should be grateful it has inspired thought and discussion that has engaged both the head and the heart.

Shloggs Speaks: Snyder Edition!

2012-01-18T05:50:00.000-08:00

I joined my good friend Axl over at Profondo Cinema to discuss the filmography of Zach Snyder. I've come around to being quite an enthusiastic supporter of the much maligned film maker and appreciated being afforded the opportunity to rebut his naysayers and sing his praises. As always, check out Profondo's excellent back catalog of shows, they are the best in the business!

The Abyss Stares Back

2012-01-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

After the resounding success of Batman Begins, Nolan made The Prestige. The story of two duelling, driven magicians in turn of the century England is as delightfully poncy as it is distressingly grim and choked with suffocating gravitas. With the possible exceptions of Pesci and DeNiro in Raging Bull, Goodfella's and Casino, The Prestige features the greatest piece of apropos dual lead casting in cinematic history. Hugh Jackman as Angier, the flashy, charming showman prone to leaning on his overwhelming stage presence to cover up his sloppy craft and Christian Bale as Borden, the humorless technique machine whose only interest is being the best, no matter the cost to his personal life or physical safety. To be entirely clear up front, there is absolutely nothing about this film I don't unreservedly adore. The period costuming, the convoluted joint journal reading narration deception device, the stately photography, the rumbling, portentous score. This film has an embarrassing wealth of everything that technically makes a movie great, but it's the universally pitch perfect performances that breathe life into this handsome construct, filling its lungs, causing its chest to rise.

Hugh Jackman is a treat as Wolverine and all, but I'd never considered him a serious actor until seeing this. He's classic Hollywood movie star huge in this with charisma off the charts. When he first performs his Tesla machine assisted Transported Man in front of an audience and the spotlight hits him on the balcony, my breath was literally taken away in the movie theater. He gets to hit some tortured, devious notes though as well, and he pulls them off nicely. Bale is brilliant as usual, only more so somehow. His intensity and sincerity in this film is nearly unmatched. As much as The Machinist, The Fighter and American Psycho draw (deserved) attention with their extremity, I find myself most engrossed with his quiet, complicated work in this. You also have nice turns by Caine, Serkis and Johannsen, but David Bowie really shakes things up as an aloof, bizarre Nikola Tesla.

All these great actors coupled with the Nolan brothers absorbing screenplay and Christopher's peerless directorial chops add up to an intellectually stimulating and heartfelt film. Made for roughly one fourth of the Batman Begins price tag, it still managed to turn a decent profit and gave Nolan the air clearing break he needed to gather his forces to undertake what would become the most important film of his career thus far and one of the most quintessential films of a remarkably turbulent decade.

George Bush took his re-election in 2004 as a message from the American voters to not only "stay the course", but to dramatically escalate his entrenched position of unilateral decision making in regard to how to wage his "war on terror". The years between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight bore shocked witness to a horrifying insurgency, warrantless wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, Muqtada Al Sadr and a million other atrocities ranging from rampant corporate thievery to no bid Government contract swindles to crazed lone gunmen like Cho Seung Hui at home. No matter your political or religious beliefs, it was a tumultuous, terrifying time with death at every corner, torture on every ones mind and Orwellian word crimes constituting the bile at the back of the collective American throat. Christopher Nolan took a 70 year old archetype and two of his most popular villains, dusted them off and crafted an epic crime saga that synthesized our National guilt and outrage.

The Dark Knight is simply put, a staggering work. It is a meticulously composed, cathartic howl. It effectively exorcised and explored the complicated issues surrounding our handling of the Iraq war. It admits the wrongdoings, but does its best to explain the rationale behind these Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield et. al stand ins who imagine themselves trying to "be decent men in an indecent time". It grapples with the notion that a man who dresses up as a bat and enacts vigilante justice is no different than a political leader who makes rash decisions based on fear and motivated by revenge. Ledger's Joker is a marvelous proxy for the inexplicable terrorist mindset. An approach whose motivation is to destabilize and demoralize as opposed to intimidate and profitably integrate. There is a fascinating article here that explains the infinite parallels between The Dark Knight and the global nightmare that inspired it. I highly recommend reading it.

This is all well and good for pedants such as myself, but the film certainly would not have had the unprecedented hold on the popular culture mindset it has if it wasn't also entertainment of the highest order. Nolan mastered the IMAX camera system with this and defined what an event film should be for the foreseeable future. He handles the action scenes more deftly and impressively than ever, the resolution and size of the IMAX screen far surpassing the immersive possibilities of 3-D. Zimmer's score is a monumental masterpiece the likes of which rarely grace big budget superhero fare. The Dark Knight also thankfully continues Nolan's endearing quirk of left field casting, giving the likes of Michael Jai White, Eric Roberts, Anthony Michael Hall and Tony "Tiny Zeus" Lister the chance to rub elbows with the A-listers, much to the audience's benefit.

Aaron "think about the future" Eckhart doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves for why The Dark Knight works so well. His charm and square jawed all American good looks are almost begging to be twisted beyond recognition in the unforgiving Gotham Nolan has fashioned and he plays that fall from grace beautifully. His tragic anger and horrific derangement an uncomfortable mirror held up to post invasion Americas polluted soul. It is a film about how we became monsters in the pursuit of a noble ideal and Aaron Eckhart's harrowing performance wholly embodies that dispiriting transition. It is a dark, deeply strange film with a self loathing, suicidal bent. However, a ray of hope pokes through toward the end, even if the Joker gleefully reminds us that such flights of fancy are short lived and soon shot down. When my grandchildren are studying 9/11 and the Iraq war in middle school social studies and are pointed my way for info on a report they're assigned to do, I will sit them down and show them The Dark Knight. It is the definitive punctuation mark on one of the uglier sentences we as a country have ever gave utterance.

I've written a great deal on Inception already, so I will bring this to a close. The future is bright indeed for Christopher Nolan and those of us who consider him to be a guiding light in big studio film making. He's still quite young and his final chapter in the Batman saga is sure to be the biggest film released this year. My anticipation is holding at a fever pitch and I don't know how I'm going to make it another seven months. All footage and stills released thus far have been astonishing to my eyes, the trick now is to avoid all further spoilerific media. He's helping out on the story and production end for Snyder's Superman and I can think of no more perfect pairing. Whatever comes after all that is up in the air. Nolan's maturation has been principled and his hand has remained steady and true. Unlike in the worlds his films often depict, the future looks bright and promising.

Elegant Perspective Dissonance

2012-01-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite working directors alongside Zach Snyder, David Fincher, Rob Zombie and Shinya Tsukamoto. Of all those, he undoubtedly reaches the largest audience and arguably makes the most important and accomplished films. He's also the youngest of the lot, a preternaturally gifted storyteller possessing a reserved demeanor and quiet, patient intelligence. I first became aware of him in the Spring of 2001 when, after reading many positive reviews, decided to give a little low budget film called Memento a shot.

The end of the 90's were a heady time as far as narrative film was concerned. Perhaps it was simply a nagging case of collective pre-millennial tension, but there was a veritable glut of movies dealing with pulling the covers back on our notions of so called reality. Existenz, Dark City, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor most notably were pushing the concept of toying with the audience's perception of reality to the forefront. Meanwhile, meta forerunners The Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast and of course Scream were more preoccupied with creating a universe in which the audience and the film makers are cognizant of one another with the expectations of the former informing the machinations of the latter. Hellbent on forcing artist, art and audience to acknowledge one another in a referentially reciprocal vanity mirror of congratulatory self awareness.

Memento cuts through all of that baggage, impossibly managing to challenge our cinematic mental acuity despite the surfeit of exercise these muscles had received for the previous five years. Hinging on an outrageously charming and painfully wounded performance from the always fascinating Guy Pearce (how I wish he and Nolan would work together again!), Memento is every bit the revelation 10 years on as it was upon its initial release. So crafty and clever and smartly satisfying, a perfect little puzzle box that transcends its central gimmick to somehow become an emotionally potent commentary on the lies we tell ourselves to justify our existence. The Nolan look is cemented here, that high definition warmness illuminating his confident camera movement and carefully considered angles. His inaugural partnership with cinematographer Wally Pfister hereon enters the pantheon of perfect collaborations alongside Carpenter and Cundey, Coen and Deakins, Hooper and Pearl. But, most importantly, the film is a wealth of story, script and performances. Memento might not have set the box office ablaze, but it served its purpose as the calling card for a major voice, strike that, THE major voice in popular cinema for the next decade and perhaps beyond.

His sophomore effort Insomnia took a while to get its hooks in me. After a structural atom bomb the likes of Memento, I was expecting to be blindsided again by his follow up. Thankfully, he opted to make his career about consistently crafting great films instead of constantly topping his latest magic trick (look how well that worked out for M.Night). Insomnia returns us to the themes of guilt and confused perception clouding our understanding of certain unpleasant realities. Al Pacino turns in work every bit the equal to anything in his pantheon and Robin Williams matches him note for note, only on a different instrument. The fog drenched pursuit of an unidentified suspect is a standout sequence in Nolan's career, the marriage of visual and thematic concerns personifying the dichotomy of the elegant and the dissonant I referred to in this piece's title. It is Nolan's least praised work, but that makes it all the more pleasing when you allow it to sneak up on you again.

Batman Begins introduced Nolan to the masses and to the world of big budget film. An improbably perfect pairing that for once benefited both audience and artist. Nolan's stab at the superhero genre not only legitimized such fare, it elevated it to absolute social relevance. Aside from some shaky handling of CGI (admittedly not his forte and he's largely abandoned it since) and spare silly moments done out of concession to the characters legacy (I'm Batman, anyone?), Batman Begins is a dramatically propulsive resuscitation. A grim, Gothic affair, both believable and more muscular than its numerous predecessors. Nolan found his muse in Christian Bale, who despite his unfortunate Terminator debacle, remains the greatest actor of his generation. This is his first time working with composer Hans Zimmer whose gargantuan brass and melancholy melodies fit Nolan's work like an expensive designer leather glove. The film was a huge success, artistically and commercially. It had the effect of a blank check being written for Nolan and he established a one for me, one for them relationship with the studios.

Coming up next: How that relationship panned out.

Winter Break Movie Meltdown Part Two

2012-01-02T09:55:00.001-08:00

My family always gets me movies for Christmas, so this season I was showered with a wealth of Bluray goodness. While I haven't watched my Copland, Casino or Pandorum discs, I can attest to loving those films and am looking forward to giving them a spin in the near future. I will now dig into the gifts I did watch and the films I was otherwise inspired to revisit.

I've often mentioned my Father's monumental impact on me as an enthusiast of film. There are many motion pictures he (and my Mother) took me to growing up that sowed the seeds of cinematic appreciation, but few effected the evolution of my understanding of the art form like the early Coen Brother's masterpieces Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. I mean seriously, how cool are parents that not only were aware of these films, but would take their budding cinephile son to see them in the theater? So, to receive the Coen Brothers Bluray box from them was a sort of perfect poetic punctuation. I tore into the films, watching Blood Simple first, then Raising Arizona followed by Miller's Crossing. Blood Simple is the Coen film I'm least familiar with and was the most welcome re-watch. It's astonishing how perfect they were right out of the gate, their singular perspective and slightly off sensibility showing through budget limitations to approximate a potently timeless 1980's Texas Neo-Noir. Raising Arizona is always welcome, if a little more on their slapdash, screwball side. The Nicholas Cage dream narration coda sneaks up on me every time, making me misty with its mannered, yet meaningful message of hope.

Miller's Crossing is a film so magnificent I can scarcely comprehend it. The witty banter and period specific turns of phrase that liberally season its superlative screenplay never fail to plaster a smile on my face. Talk about a world you want to get lost in! The clothes, the hairstyle's, the hats, the Tommy-guns, the speakeasy's. Of course everybody is marvelous in it, but I need to single out J.E. Freeman as the Dane. One of the great villainous performances ever and one that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. Its beautifully realized evocation of the roaring 20's gives way gorgeously to the ghostly 1940's Hollywood of Barton Fink, my favorite Coen Brothers film. A thoughtful, melancholy meditation on the correlation between creative types and the common man, not to mention the insoluble dichotomy of art and commerce, Barton Fink is the summation of the Coen's genuine love of the foibles of the Hollywood studio system and their seeming inability to work within it. It's a film of bottomless sadness and boundless hilarity. It's the Coen's stab at a David Lynch style slow burn nightmare in which they've grafted their clever comedic sensibilities onto a truly horrific descent into despair, isolation and madness. The definition of essential.

This Coen festival occasioned me to revisit A Serious Man, their most curiously under rated effort. I don't know what it was, but this viewing floored me and I found myself in stitches far more than any Big Lebowski screening. This might be the damn funniest film in their career. I can think of few moments in their filmography more indicative of the skewed comedic perspective of Joel and Ethan Coen than the gentleman grunting "Jesus Christ" while struggling to hold aloft the gigantic scroll during the films climactic Torah portion sequence. It's the faintest and most fleeting of moments, but one so indelibly intertwined with the Coen's distanced, bemused observation of the human race they are nominally members of.

The Dark Knight Rises prologue whetted my appetite for the apocalyptic elegance of Christopher Nolan's work, so I have been fervently occupied in revisiting Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Inception. Perhaps people were so blindsided by the inventiveness of Memento, they were predisposed to be unimpressed by Insomnia, his follow up effort. The truth is, it is an absolute masterpiece every bit on the level with any other of his works. Its slippery, strung out morals serve as the springboard for one of Pacino's finest performances. Wally Pfister's cinematography impossibly manages to be both frigidly cold and invitingly warm, blindingly bright and oppressively dark. Thesis papers could be written on the fog drenched shootout that kick starts the narrative alone.

Batman Begins is vastly better than I remembered it being. It's impressively propulsive early on in how it artfully, efficiently deals with doling out the expected origin story all the while setting the stage for an intriguingly dark and novel vision of Gotham, its inhabitants and the titans battling for its soul. Nolan may be meticulous, but the Batman films have brought out his playful, pulpy side with unexpected casting choices and quirky, occasionally clunky dialogue. Cillian Murphy is marvelously droll as The Scarecrow and Tom Wilkinson is a hoot as Falcone. I love how Nolan has given nearly every major role in this most American of all series to a Brit. The Dark Knight holds up to the hype and may well end up being one of the defining films of the decade alongside There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It's the final statement on our morally and legally shaky reaction to the terror attacks of 9/11 and the resulting escalation our overzealous efforts gave horrible life to. Ledger's Joker is iconic and of infinite importance with or without the baggage of his death. My guess is that there was an element of fate at play in that unfortunate turn of events, the burden of such staggering relevance is often a costly one.

Inception holds up very well and I am ceaselessly grateful that we have a director as young and talented as Nolan turning out one masterpiece after another, like clockwork every couple of years. Ditto the Coen Brothers. I feel that 2012 will be a high water mark for cinema along the lines of 2007 and I look forward to documenting for posterity and potential future recrimination all that transpires. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

Winter Break Movie Meltdown Part One

2011-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

I am blessed to have working from home as a component of my job. Not only because it has made caring for my son over his Winter break and dealing with general Holiday madness a non-issue, it has afforded me an enormous amount of time to catch up on movies, both theatrically and and at home via my voluminous blu-ray backlog. So, without further ado, let us wrap up the final straggling cinematic strands of 2011.

We're lucky enough here in Minnesota to have one of the 42 true IMAX theaters in North America showing The Dark Knight Rises prologue before Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Thanks to some free passes, I've seen this presentation twice. Hugo showed us that 3-D can be quite enjoyable in the hands of a talented film maker, but 3-D is technically the past. It has been around forever and despite technological advancements, is at its core a gimmick, no matter how judiciously employed. IMAX is the future. It is true immersion into the world a film maker creates. A monolithic screen filled to the point of bursting with stunning detail, remarkable resolution and the most bowel rumbling sound system imaginable. The only drawback is being tipped off that an important sequence is about to begin due to the ever shifting aspect ration. Perhaps as the format becomes more reliably profitable and the technology is improved, it will become less prohibitively expensive to shoot in it.

Unfortunately, what you have heard is true. Bane is nigh indistinguishable in The Dark Knight Rises prologue. That quibble aside, it's a remarkable sequence that showcases Nolan's distaste for CGI, (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!) somehow filming a group of assassins repelling from one plane to another, mid flight, dismantling it and dropping it to the ground like a lifeless bird with broken wings, all the while using minimal if any computer assistance. There is one shot in particular as the plane is dropped and our perspective is from above, the enormous field of vision opening up as the vessel hurtles toward earth below two suspended characters, that frankly, well, let's just say I've never seen anything like it. Even though garbled, Tom Hardy's Bane is a formidably unsettling presence, exuding charisma and engendering terrified awe. This is THE film of 2012 for me. Nothing else even comes close. Well, maybe Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar movie.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (love that deliciously unwieldy title!) is a blast. A real return to efficient, eminently enjoyable action cinema. A handsomely crafted, high-tech, globe-trotting, spy yarn of the highest order. Sure it has neat gadgets and gargantuan set pieces (the 35 minutes spent inside and out of the Burj Khalifa is the most breathlessly constructed excitement of the year), but the real fun is in reveling in Tom Cruise's still luminous star power and watching this lovingly assembled team interact. It's a joy to see Simon Pegg in something like this, Paula Patton is wonderful and Jeremy Renner gets the rare chance to be fun and slightly off kilter. This film is the biggest surprise of the year for me, a late Christmas gift I had no idea I wanted, but enjoyed most of all once I tore off the wrapping.

I've never had any interest in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I tend to abhor literary sensations. You know, the sort of thing where one minute no one has ever heard of it, then suddenly every single person owns the book and is talking about it. The Davinci Code springs to mind. In any case, I had to see this because Fincher directed it and when it wasn't repulsing me, it was boring me to absolute tears. This is clearly an endeavor for the previously converted, because I found its mix of disingenuous fauxminism, fetishised misogyny and bloodless mystery an unpalatable concoction unworthy of the auteur treatment it received. This is aesthetic ground already well trodden by Fincher, sans the thematic weight of his previous triumphs of investigatory serial killer cinema, Se7en and Zodiac. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Given my predisposal to dismiss the work of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman after the self absorbed atrocities that were Juno and Up in the Air, Young Adult was something of a revelation. Poignant without being cloying and understated where their previous efforts were irritatingly insistent, this is a nicely quiet affair that manages to be funny and telling about the generation it documents. Charlize Theron is utterly fantastic in a complicated, inherently unlikable role. She plays off a similarly excellent Patton Oswalt in unexpected ways that illustrates each of their characters disgust and affection, toward themselves and each other. A very interesting film that figures out how to be amusing, uncomfortable, dark, depressing and uplifting all at once.

We Bought a Zoo is schmaltzy and predictable, but entertains and touches on the strength of its performances and in spite of its simplistic storyline. I wish Hollywood could get over the notion that for us mouth breathing audience members to care about a protagonist, we need their spouse or parent to have died. It's the easiest, hackiest way to establish an emotional connection to a character and it's long since devolved into self parody as a narrative trope. Put that shit to bed and find another inroad for crying out loud.

Tintin proves my Beowulf-era assertion that motion capture can open up camera movement and scene transition possibilities hitherto unimaginable to traditional film making. Unlike Beowulf however, it isn't in the service of anything deeper than an uninvolving action set piece generator of a storyline for a character we're never properly introduced to. I'm not familiar with this Tintin, and after seeing the picture devoted to him, don't think I need or want to be. He's a blank slate distinguished only by his shark fin hairdo and adorable dog. Nice to look at, but forgettable despite the involvement of truly talented folks such as Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Nick Frost and Joe Cornish.

Hey, we were all happy to see Robert Downey Jr. back in the game back when Iron Man came out, right? He's responsible for one of my all time favorite performances and characters with Wayne Gale from Natural Born Killers, so good for him that he cleaned up and found a way to bring his smarmy charm to the mainstream heading up Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, both of which I enjoyed. Iron Man 2 and now this, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows is where that goodwill runs out and Downey becomes an ingratiating husk of a performer defined by winks and tics that have become less rapscallion and more lascivious as his age advances. Never mind the fact his efforts are in the service of this dismal, dung heap of a film. Holmes innate detective skills have no bearing on his character, they seemingly exist solely as an excuse for camera tricks and obnoxious editing. Guy Ritchie's been flashing up that pan for far too long now and his all style, no substance approach reaches its execrable nadir here. A crashingly loud, thuddingly dull and painfully incomprehensible excuse for a film.

The Passion And The Hyperbole: 2011 In Review

2011-12-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

With the year winding down, it's time to delve into the obligatory wrap-up of bests and worsts reminiscences. Sure, there are quite a few films left on the docket (most notably the new Fincher joint), but with the release dates so obscenely clustered around the holiday break, I doubt I will be afforded the time to give them the serious consideration and multiple theatrical viewings (the power of my cinematic OCD compels me) I deem necessary to properly pontificate. So, with the understanding that I will likely enjoy, but not have my life changed by Tintin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, MI4: Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: The Return of The Slow Motion Explosion, let us begin analyzing 2011. The year I will best remember for my death, the boiling over of my disgust with Internet hatorade and my rebirth into cinematic ecstasy.

This year started off slower than any in recent memory. I didn't see anything in theaters until the Farrely's utterly forgettable Hall Pass in late February. At the risk of losing intrepid readers right out of the gate, I must admit the first movie to blow me away and my runner up for film of the year was Zach Snyder's audacious paean to auteur excess, Sucker Punch. His first wholly original project, Sucker Punch is a dynamic visual feast that has the audacity to focus on challenging themes that are rarely, if ever, addressed in modern fantasy action fare. Namely misogyny and the male gaze, and the derisive snorts issued forth from the provincial online detractors was as predictable as it was pointless. No one seemingly had a damn thing to say about how thematically bold it was or the truly next level film making going on. It was an inside hit job from the start. A retribution sacrifice carried out by disgruntled pedants and frustrated nerds for some imagined blasphemy committed on Watchmen perhaps? Whatever the reason for the hate it engendered or the box office catastrophe it became, when reactions are that volatile, some sort of magick is happening. Usually the kind that takes a few decades removal from to contemplate and comprehend. It's the H2 or Scott Pilgrim of the last year and like those other initially misunderstood gems, I eagerly await the time when people inevitably come around to its transgressive charms.

The summer doldrums were made all the more dismal by a slew of drooling junk food features aimed at grown men who wished they were still 11 years old. Thor and Fast Five were rousing enough with the latter a masculine, imbecilic blast and the former a histrionic delight. Captain America and Green Lantern were where it all fell apart for me. Paint by numbers drivel and excruciatingly unnecessary to boot. Sarsgaard's deliriously unhinged turn in Lantern was a personal favorite performance of the year for me admittedly, but both pictures were so hastily assembled and callously tossed out, it left a sour taste in my mouth toward superhero cinema. A distaste I hope The Dark Knight Rises will ameliorate this coming July. Transformers was its usual grating garbage. Overlong, ugly and every other negative adjective that's come to be associated with the execrable series. Harry Potter 7.5 was mightily impressive, especially considering how much I've loathed and felt distanced by the entire series. It was a film so well made and so blissfully expensive, I felt invested in the characters finally, primarily due to seeing them in action for 2 straight hours as opposed to droning on about nonsense that means nothing to a geriatric muggle such as myself.

On the Asian tip, I thoroughly enjoyed Miike's orgiastic tribute to feudal masculinity with 13 Assassins and was mesmerized by Jee-Woon Kim's serial killer tone poem I Saw The Devil. For underground fare, I fell head over heels in love with Hobo With A Shotgun and gave Christopher Smiths Black Death the grim appreciation it deserved. Troll Hunter was an absolute blast and along with Apollo 18, was a found footage type film I actually enjoyed for once. Kevin Smith's Red State was the best thing he's ever done by a damn sight and I implore him to keep directing if that's where his material is heading. I loved The Thing prequel and can't wait to pair it with Carpenter's forbear for a somber, icky, snowbound double feature. Immortals was gorgeous stupidity and Rise of the Planet of the Apes a welcome surprise that inspired me to revisit the original series, which happens to be no slouch itself.

The two worst film going experiences I had were the monotonous tedium of Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark and the masturbatory monstrosity Super-8. Both films were colossal let downs considering the pedigree behind them and how great the trailers looked. DBAOTD was simply a total misfire. All good intentions and zero invention. More of the same dark whimsy we've come to expect from DelToro, but entirely lacking in heart or purpose. I seriously considered walking out. Super-8 however, is the more egregious pile of manure betwixt the 2. It starts off well enough, but descends into a senseless, slavish recreation of Spielbergian tropes without bothering to make a lick of narrative sense. Featuring a bunch of kids ranging from unlikable to uninteresting and a monster that appears intermittently to disjointedly do only that which the ever changing whim of whatever particular scene demands of it, Super-8 is everything wrong with the creatively bankrupt, backward looking and nostalgia mythologizing generation of geeks holding the reins of blockbuster Hollywood today. Liking Suburban 80's Spielberg swill isn't enough J.J. You need earned character moments and a definitive thematic arc to cut the treacle and justify your leaden, lens flare laden CGI monument to riding your bike around the neighborhood. Grow up.

Insidious was terrifying. There's just no better way to put it. An anxiety inducing chill machine for the ages. James Wan and Leigh Whannell have my eternal devotion having now crafted 4 films I greatly enjoy, 3 of which I would describe as being touched by brilliance. Easily the best horror film of the year. Attack The Block was a real treat as well and a forceful calling card for its creator, Joe Cornish.

Hugo blindsided me as the original trailers had me expecting a waning master cashing in on 3-D with farcical kiddie garbage. What I got instead was Scorsese the master craftsman, stepping up his game exponentially by pushing past his comfort zone and giving us something new. Everything you've read about this ode to the majesty of the moving image is true. Don't miss it in theaters in 3-D, I guarantee you will regret it.

What more can be said about Drive? It is easily my favorite film of the year. I saw it 4 times theatrically and, despite the pervasive national punchline it became due to all the various spin off art it inspired and outraged reactions it caused, I still maintained my swooning, pubescent adoration of its effortless guile and poetic enchantment. It made me feel like I was 17 years old again and seeing Natural Born Killers, Se7en, The Crow and Pulp Fiction for the first time. Total cinematic intoxication. This film had such a profound effect on me, I chased its sense memory by revisiting Michael Mann films for the rest of the year after Drive left theaters, staying aloft on related fumes while awaiting the bluray. A movie like Drive is why I cherish the art form. A perfect synthesis of setting, sound, performance, writing and shot composition. It effortlessly enthralls and is one of many reasons and reminders I can glean from this year that I'm eternally grateful to still be around, enjoying my life and my passions with loved ones and fellow travellers. Here's looking forward to 2012.

Blue Velvet

2011-12-01T05:31:00.001-08:00

The great thing about the Bluray medium, apart from the often stunning picture resolution and sound, is how catalog releases are beginning to take on the aura of transcendent rediscovery. Certainly we all love Taxi Driver, but seeing it in 1080p with that Bernard Hermann score swelling and enveloping in lossless 5.1 is akin to seeing it for the first time. A cinematic reawakening of sorts. The same goes for a bevy of classic films that instantly spring to mind (Metropolis, West Side Story, The Exorcist, Night of the Hunter, Se7en etc...) with untold more crying out to be spoiled with such loving treatment and sterling presentation.

Apart from the (again, often) uptick in the audio-visual department, these re-releases afford the compulsive cinephile an opportunity for reappraisal with a set of new, more mature eyes. Eyes that have witnessed adulthood and parenthood first hand. Eyes that have grown weary with the surfeit of evil, compromise and disenchantment spilling forth from the nightly news. Eyes that are ceaselessly shocked by the stomach turning depths of sick, publicly trumpeted self obsession spat out of the maw of the social networking revolution. Eyes that have read more and studied more films, whose interest and patience with the subjective nature of art has only grown with the passing years. It is with these eyes that I sat down last night to contemplate the MGM release of David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece, Blue Velvet.

I found the film to be terrifying frankly. It's a fairy tale nightmare world for adults where the psychologically damaged and the pathologically dangerous drown naive innocence in their putrid, prodigious wake. Compound soul sickness and salacious mental illness born of necessity, born of boredom, born of flat out meanness. Corrupted, barbarous lust poisoning and taking and retching boundless hatred upon weak willed misery receptacles. It's not a pleasant film, but Lynch's gauzy mise en scene makes the pill palatable, even soothing to swallow.

Billowing blue velvet curtains open up on a Norman Rockwell small town with worms burrowing just beneath the surface. Seedy, late night transactions set to the rhythm of a fey Dean Stockwell performing dreamy, trouble light karaoke. Trapped in the back seat of an out of control joyride that couldn't be any more joyless. Sandwiched between two leering, giggling goons, waiting for the beating you know is coming and are powerless to stop. Illicit debasement and an omnipresent threat to life, limb and reputation. Dark, disgusting secrets bubbling and boiling over, compulsively drawn back to the scalding, sickening pot of festering unease.

It's easily Lynch's most straightforward film and without having seen Inland Empire, I would say his best. There is a purity of purpose and intent at play here, a directness that empowers the film where his convoluted asides and baffling digressions weaken his later work. The art house auteur approach works best when the man behind the wheel remembers to keep it simple stupid. Trust us, the audience, to fill in the shadowy margins with our own sickly preoccupations. When a tone is this vividly established, it's awfully hard to not ruminate and mentally wander. Blanks tend to get filled in and uncomfortable connections are made. Blue Velvet is the cinematic equivalent and perfected personification of a Lynch motif. It is slowly walking down an ominous, ever darkening hallway, yet still opening the door at the end, regardless of the unfathomable blackness waiting on the other side.

Shloggs Speaks: Waingro Edition

2011-11-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

I'm back on Profondo Cinema this week talking some latter career DeNiro. Heat and Ronin, Bobby D's last two good films are discussed at length.

In other news, I saw Immortals and enjoyed the hell out of it. It's paper thin when it comes to story and characterization, but overflowing with sumptuous art direction, breathtaking costume design and liberally fruity doses of masculinity. Cavill acquits himself well in the fight scenes and has a solid physical presence, but it's Rourke's show all the way. In a film replete with fashion models sashaying their washboard abs from one side of the screen to the other, old Mickey makes the biggest impression by proudly thrusting his middle aged gut and tree trunk arms about like the wizened and exhausted old warrior he plays and truly is. His voice in surround sound is a major selling point for me to get out to the theater and it's in fine form here. Sonorous, yet strangely brittle. Hoarse and full, imbuing palpable menace to every nut crushing soliloquy he delivers. The man is a joy in roles like this and I encourage all to check Immortals out. It does nothing to reinvent the wheel (hell, in some ways it removes integral spokes), but it sure doesn't skimp on ornamenting it.

I've also been frequently spinning my newly acquired Island of Lost Souls Bluray from Criterion. This is a brilliant pre-Hays code adaptation of Wells Island of Dr. Moreau with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi turning in great work against a surprisingly sordid and deliciously well shot backdrop. Laughton is amazing in the film, oozing out a performance at least 50 years ahead of its time in terms of subtlety, control and nuance. No one else acted this naturally in a film as transgressive and vulgar as this back then and it is truly a revelation to behold. Lugosi is pure animalistic pathos and his recitation of "the law" is as iconic as it gets, his intonation and energy dancing dangerously close to unaware self parody without ever toppling over into it. Erle C. Kenton directs forcefully and assuredly with a keen eye for shadow and mist that gives way to assaultive, confrontational horror in the rousing third act. Greg Mank provides a masterful commentary track full of fascinating insight and information. The new crown jewel of my collection.

Other than that, I've been revisiting the Karloff/Lugosi team-ups and following along with the aforementioned Greg Mank's fantastic book concerning the duo's "haunting collaboration" throughout the golden age of horror in the 30's and 40's. I have such respect, admiration and fascination for those two gentlemen actors of a bygone era. My love of the genre, and perhaps indeed film itself, begins with Dracula and Frankenstein. Flickering, black and white images seemingly piped in from another dimension. Slow, languid dream state memories of half forgotten childhood bedtime stories. My first memories to be precise. Well, that and Lou Ferrigno scaring the shinola out of me as The Hulk. To paraphrase Burroughs, "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts".

Hope those that are interested give the podcast a listen and forgive me my hyperbolic, overeager exaltation of Heat. The film is so inextricably linked to an era when I could spend days with nothing to worry about save for crafting ever more amusing in jokes with my chums about Jon Voight's mullet and mustache combo, or the symphonic perfection of the name Waingro. VHS giving way to DVD giving way to bluray. The enhanced clarity and definition in corollary contradiction to the size of the group watching it. Time marches on and childish pastimes become ever more a solitary endeavor, to be rehashed and reminisced upon in perpetual podcast purgatory.

Shloggs Speaks: Matrix Trilogy Edition

2011-11-09T17:32:00.000-08:00

Hello there loyal readers! I had the honor of recording a very special Profondo Cinema with Axl in which we discuss the Matrix trilogy at length! I'm very proud of this discussion and I hope you all enjoy!

It Stinks! Alien, Aliens and Alien 3

2011-11-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

This one is going to get me into trouble. Not necessarily with the bulk of film fandom (who, judging by my blogspot stats, are decidedly not reading this), but with genre fans in general and good friends who believe vociferously the opposite in particular. A fellow horror enthusiast I pal around with loaned me the Aliens bluray box to peruse at my own leisure. He will no doubt be disappointed with my estimation of the first three films, but I did loan him the Miramax classic Venom, so, you know, we're even. I'm more concerned with how these ensuing opinions will enrage my great friend and internet horror writer colleague SteakKnife Surprise. He doesn't write often, but when he does, pay attention cause he makes it count. In any case, the Aliens films are sacred gospel in his estimation, none more so than the first 3 I am about to argue are execrable wastes of time outside of Goldsmith's score and Giger's design work. With all due respect and with apologies proffered in advance, let us begin.

Now, the Alien films have been with me my whole life. I have vivid memories of witnessing them at a criminally early age and was regrettably psychologically damaged by seeing the Fincher entry in the theater with a friend and my mother who chaperoned us. Outside of the sex education scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and Kevin Kline's enthusiastic, transatlantic lovemaking session with Jaimie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda, I can recall no other more excruciatingly embarrassing cinematic experience with my mother. My point is, it's not like these films are a blind spot in my film appreciation history. They were front and center for many years and I will readily admit my first viewing of Cameron's propulsive sequel was undeniably exhilarating. I've always adored the Giger design work and was gifted a book of his art by a friend of mine in the mid-90's that I still peruse to this day.

I love the look of these films. I love the design of the Alien, Alien Queen and Facehuggers. I love the underlying jabs at insidious corporate forces and the unblinking light cast on the unavoidable end result of the future of the military industrial complex. These are films whose aesthetic approach is to me every bit as stunning as its thematic approach is laudable. So what gives? Well, first off, Ridley Scott is a hack. Perhaps the most over rated, uninspiring dish soap commercial director to ever have a career so wildly praised by critics and worshipped by fanboys. Alien and Blade Runner, while featuring admittedly sumptuous production design, happen to be two of the most lifeless and boring films ever to be catapulted into the realm of the iconic. Scott has often been given fascinating themes to explore in the films he chooses, but he never manages to make the events feel real or immediate, the characters fleshed out or likable. People can make excuses up and down for why I don't connect to his narrative or his characters, but the bottom line is, nothing Ridley Scott does as an artist resonates with me. The Alien looks beautiful, but that is a product of Giger's Brilliance and Rambaldi's (and other artists as the series progressed) technique. The ship looks great, but I never feel like I'm on it, I never care about the people in it. That disconnect is directly attributable to the Director, not the artisans who simply produced what he requested.

As I said earlier, my first viewing of Aliens, alone at home, was terrifying to the point of giving me palpitations. It was a thrill ride par excellance. It was also 1987 on VHS. The sort of Horror/Sci-Fi/Action template it birthed has been endlessly eclipsed, no more obviously than by Cameron himself with T2. So, stripped of that innovation, what are you left with? Clunky dialog, convenient plot mechanics and a ceaselessly shrieking 10 year old girl. I suppose Paxton is a hoot as Hudson and Henricksen is reliably perfect as Bishop. Hell, I'll even give Paul Reiser credit for so expertly essaying the slippery douchebaggery inherent to the corporate stooge. But Ripley? Hicks? Newt? I could care less about any of these people and with the Alien menace reduced to a flailing melange of rubbery appendages easily blasted to bits, the tension has evaporated completely. What was once so exciting as a child is now a repetitive assemblage of surpassed action scenes and tepid catchphrases. Game over indeed.

I'm not even going to bother getting in depth on Alien 3. Of course I will concede that Fincher has blossomed into America's finest director in the intervening two decades. That doesn't change the fact that Alien 3 is one of the ugliest and most miserable pieces of entertainment to come out of the 90's. It's Christian prisoner subtext is not only poorly realized and half heartedly executed, it's didactic and pointless. Martyrdom...sure...got it. What's your point and why should we care? Stuck for 2 hours in what appears to be a dilapidated asylum with the patients feces smeared on the walls with only an indecipherable gaggle of bald headed, constantly cursing convicts to identify with is zero fun. The atrocious, then nascent CGI employed to realize the lone Alien doesn't help matters. Not only guilty of wasting your time, this film has the temerity to waste Charles Dance. Avoid at all costs.

Strangely, the two best films in the series to my eyes are the ones most maligned by fans of the franchise, Resurrection and AVP. Resurrection finally makes Ripley interesting and Weaver gives a fascinating, complex performance full of physicality, intelligence and heart. The effects are goopy and great, the action scenes inventive and plentiful. Plus, you get playful turns from Dan Hedaya, Michael Wincott and Ron Perlman. It's a fun flick with unique direction and a smart, forward thinking script from Joss Whedon. AVP is just a damn solid monster movie with a ridiculous premise played straight and implausibly silly action. These are the 2 films that work for me, the ones I can tolerate, hell, even enjoy returning to. I realize the pointlessness of trying to defend them to ardent Aliens fans, so I will simply conclude with my unabashed and enthusiastic support of them. Even if it flies in the face of all previously established movie nerd logic. I sense I'm going to be embroiled in an epic cell phone debate with my estimable opponent SteakKnife very soon.

The Thing (2011) About The Internet

2011-10-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

I love John Carpenter's The Thing. Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. I've loved it since the first time I saw it in 5th grade over twenty years ago and have continued loving it ever since. I would wager I've seen it at least 30 times and have never grown tired of it. It truly is a perfect film. Great performances. Stunning atmosphere and production design. Ground breaking special effects. Masterful score. Yeah, yeah yeah, we know all that. What has it done for us lately? Well, it has served as the springboard for a new film set in its universe. An extremely entertaining motion picture that hits all the familiar beats we'd be outraged if weren't alluded to, all the while managing to have a trick or two up its sleeve to keep us guessing. That's right everyone, the long dreaded, pre-emptively maligned Thing prequel was released this weekend, and it was pretty goddamn great.

No, the characters aren't as awesome as they were in the original, but we've had thirty years to fall so deeply in love with them haven't we? No, the practical effects work Woodruff and Gillis contributed (yes, there is practical effects work in this) doesn't hold a candle to the ingenuity of Bottin's artistry in the original, but it is solid and the computer graphics work is marvelously compelling and repulsive. No, the score is not as instantly iconic as the Morricone one, but after a second viewing, Beltrami's work is starting to grow on me. The point is, I go see films in the theater because I love movies and want to be entertained by them, temporarily (and safely) transported out of my world into something more fantastical. On those accounts, The Thing prequel did a wonderful job and I honestly couldn't be more pleasantly pleased with how it turned out.

My problem is with narrow minded fans of the original who have opted to trash the picture sight unseen, out of some twisted obligation to the sanctity of the Carpenter film, itself a remake. I don't know why I allow myself to get sucked into these pointless message board squabbles time and again. Breathlessly exhorting my myriad points in a misguided, wrong headed and meaningless attempt to get people I've never met and never will to appreciate film in the same manner as I do. I have a very active and exceedingly energetic relationship with film. I LOVE seeing movies in the theater. It's my religion and the theater is my church. If a film particularly speaks to me, I will soak in the sermon several times on the big screen before buying the bluray to worship in the comfort of my own home. I love way more movies than I hate, and have even been known to give a film I hated a second chance while still in theaters. That is the way I choose to enjoy film and it is becoming increasingly at odds with how people on the net do. I've taken a week or so off of arguing about movies with people on message boards and it has been heaven.

I need to detach. I need to not care about opinions I don't even respect. I need to enjoy a resurgent interest in Michael Mann films without feeling obligated to blog about it or create a thread about it where ignorant nimrods spew garbage and break off into crude tangents. I'll write in here when and if I feel like it and enthusiastically participate on podcasts with like minded friends, but I'm done arguing. I love movies and I don't need to justify myself to anyone. I'm not making any money from this and I have no interest in doing so. I'm just going to enjoy being a film aficionado who comments in a one sided capacity when the muse moves him. So, see you all at the movies! Save me an aisle seat....asshole.

You Know What's Great? Manhunter

2011-10-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

I saw Manhunter for the first time in 1987, a banner year for me film wise. I was treated to a 10th birthday screening of Robocop and caught Predator with my old man on Father's Day. We also had a subscription to HBO, off which my father and I compiled 3 film VHS dubs using our top loader VCR. It was glorious to be able to endlessly watch films such as Road Warrior, Rocky 4 and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 unhindered by network editing or commercial interruptions. I discovered Manhunter on one of these tapes and instantly fell in love with its "Miami Vice but grittier" vibe. I loved Miami Vice, the pastel fashions, the Jan hammer music, you name it. Everything about that show defined my 10 year old interpretation of what cool is. Don Johnson's rolled up sleeves sports jacket (a look I shamefully tried to rock myself) wearing, chain smoking, hard ass, high strung Sonny Crockett was in my eyes the epitome of total bad assery, so imagine how floored I was when introduced to William Petersen's Will Graham.

Something about the aloof way Petersen played this damaged detective captured my imagination. An anti-hero if ever there was one, Will Graham seems detached to the point of robotic disinterest in human connection, even when it comes to his own wife and son. An abundant, unruly salt and pepper mane crowning his perma stubble'd face with big, sad, deep set eyes disturbed by what he's seen, shielding others from the thoughts he's had. Just plain cool as hell is what I'm getting at here, even in the pink short shorts he rocks during family beach time. He reluctantly agrees to assist in the investigation of the tooth fairy murders, but once that darkness creeps back in, he's drowning in grim determination. A sick cypher of the criminal mind unable to alter his collision course destiny.

Will Graham makes Sonny Crockett look like the coked up pansy he is. Will Graham doesn't have time for sports cars and speed boat ownership. He doesn't have a pet crocodile and he isn't surrounded by babes in neon pink thongs. He spends his time alone in a Marriot suite, talking to VHS tapes of murdered families in the voice of the killer he's hunting. He sits quietly in evidence lockers absentmindedly fondling the slip of the Jacoby woman, the one with the bloom on her. Will Graham grapples with the cavernous abyss of the human soul at its most degraded, dangerous and evil. He never smiles, he never laughs and he never lets down his guard, whether talking to incarcerated cannibals or his 10 year old son.

Brian Cox is solid, if underused as Lecktor. A few more scenes with Petersen wouldn't have been that garish an addition, especially considering the delightfully frosty chemistry they have in their back and forth. Dennis Farina makes an interesting Jack Crawford, but seems miscast with his beat cop mustache from which no light can escape. Stephen Lang is textbook perfect as the snivelling reporter Lounds, but the real casting gold is to be found in Petersen's nemesis, the Tooth fairy killer, played with delicate menace by hulking, 6 foot, 7 inch Tom Noonan. This was my introduction to Noonan, one of the great off kilter presences in film. His Francis Dollarhyde is pitiable, terrifying and bizarre beyond belief.

This is a film where little in the way of action occurs. It's all about atmosphere, psychology and the nuts and bolts of police work. A moody procedural piece drenched in synth tones and bathed in ethereal light. White light emanating from fantasised eyes and back lit secret kisses born of imagined trysts. It is a wealth of fetishised voyeurism from the nether regions of a diseased mind, served up with a dollop of elegant art direction and scored with hypnotic, casual nonchalance. As much as I love Heat and as many gaps as I have in his filmography, Manhunter will always be my favorite Michael Mann film. It affected me so profoundly at such an early age and I have revisited it so many times over the last 24 years that it is permanently encoded in my DNA. I have a deep, abiding personal connection to it.

That long standing connection is why I choose not to recognize the Bret Ratner directed Red Dragon. Sure, Fiennes is great as Dollarhyde, but his performance wilts when stacked up next to Noonan's. Edward Norton can't deign to carry a 1986 William Petersen's jock when it comes to dishing out the wounded charisma. The Lecktor scenes feel forced, shoehorned in to capitalize on Hopkin's popular success in the role as opposed to the organic manner the character fits into Manhunter's narrative. It's redundant and predictable in its choices, right up to a cliched, fake out house explosion ending. No, you needn't watch Red Dragon when something as authentically unnerving as Manhunter exists.

Shloggs Speaks: Back from the Dead Edition!

2011-10-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

I joined the Profondo Cinema boys yet again for a lengthy discussion concerning the films and intermittent career of D.I.Y icon Jim VanBebber. This is yet another long episode, but I was generously allowed to be a part of the whole thing, from the viewer mail section to tangents about Day of the Dead, Hellbound Hellraiser 2 and the Matrix sequels! There's a little something for every film fan in here, hope you all enjoy it! Thanks again to Axl and JScott from Profondo Cinema, still the best in the business!

Reappraisal Corner: Ang Lee's Hulk

2011-09-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

A strange thing happened to me this last July while watching Captain America in the theater. Now, for the record, as much as I love dour, arty pieces of misanthropic pretension, I also can appreciate the ecstatic high achieved while sniffing the fleeting fumes of a throwaway Hollywood Blockbuster. I look forward to the summer movie season and try to see as many of these glittering baubles on the best possible digital screens with the most eardrum damaging sound systems available. I can grin like a contented idiot while the earth burns as well as the next American, but after the earnest, workmanlike origin of Steve Rogers was taken care of, I found myself beginning to become irritated and impatient.

What followed from the midway point was nothing more than a bunch of formless action montages with no discernible purpose other than to get our hero frozen in ice, effectively setting up next summers The Avengers. Marvel has done a hell of a job establishing their palatable universe of dashing cads and genetically deformed do gooders, but after, what is it now? 346 films in the last 4 years? I finally realized that my brain was shrivelling up inside my skull and retreating back down my neo-cortex in an effort to permanently lodge itself in my rectum. All these wannabe blockbusters and force fed franchises amount to so much shiny dross that is exactly good enough and definitively no better. All that star power and opening weekend calculation castrating our inability to critically assess how unnecessary it is for these stories to be told. Walking out of the theater after the obligatory Marvel post credit sequence that concluded Captain America, I felt drained of all interest or enthusiasm for superhero flicks specifically, but on a larger scale, for the summer movie season in its entirety and all that entails.

Back in June of 2003, America's Hulk fever was positively boiling over. Well, that's how I remember it in any case. Our nations collective movie malady cooled off quickly upon its release as most were bewildered and bored by Ang Lee's atypical approach to the burgeoning genre. His psychological art house take on the subject matter went over like the proverbial fart in church as even a cinema snob as open minded as myself couldn't wait for it to be over so I could rip it apart on the car ride home. But, like all interesting films, something about it stuck in the back of my mind and it begged to be revisited, an impulse I kept at bay until recently acquiring the bargain price bluray.

While far from a misunderstood classic and chock full of narrative flaws, there is considerable merit to be found in its obtuse insistence on being taken more seriously than some silly superhero movie. First, the Hulk isn't really a superhero, certainly not in this film at least. He's treated as the personification of bottled up, unchecked emotion resulting in the amplification of explosive rage. A post traumatic stress disorder case throwing a gargantuan tantrum that not only can't be controlled, but will horrifically escalate if you have the temerity to attempt to. While I can understand the thematic appeal a man with such a bifurcated emotional life would hold to a film maker as delicate as Ang Lee, it doesn't necessarily guarantee a compelling film story. The problem lies in the presentation and the format. On a comic page, you can visually accept a 6 foot man violently transforming into a 15 foot green behemoth. There is a consistency to the image. It's a drawing, none of it is real, therefore, in its own universe, it is all real. When Eric Bana becomes the Hulk in the film, it is painfully evident it's a special effect. Subsequently, we cease to believe a man and his complex oedipal issues are lurking inside this pixilated creation bounding from one side of the screen to the other.

Also... Note to Hollywood: Nobody cares about the Betty love story in a Hulk movie. The Hulk is more than enough visually and thematically for an audience to deal with. There is no need to tack on a paper thin romance that will never find resolution. If you're going to keep putting the Hulk in movies, please stop shoehorning this worthless character in there and forcing whatever brunette actress is enjoying a streak of employability at the time of its filming to stare wistfully at a tennis ball held aloft by a stage hand. Connely isn't nearly as bad as Tyler was, but she's pretty damn dull and Bana, who was so astounding in Chopper, is sadly milquetoast in this as well.

So what does work? The transitions are amazingly inventive. For the first half hour, the film is a hallucinatory blur with one scene cleverly melting into the next. It feels propulsive and exciting, so when Lee starts to lose steam, applying the technique less and less as it progresses, the movie suffers and begins to drag. Really beautiful stuff for a while though and his nature photography in the desert is stately, restrained and wonderfully cinematic. While I think the effects detract from ones ability to take any aspect of the story seriously, I do like the cartoonish look to them and feel the Hulk comes across as fully realized, just not believably integrated with his flesh and blood counterpart. The dogs look good as well with an interesting mutation design and Nolte's powers mix it up with a varied take on the dangerous allure of science run amok.

Speaking of Nolte, he's far and away the best thing about this picture. He gamely tackles this unglamorous role and imbues it with a mountain of palpable world weariness. It's the flip side to his role in Affliction, in this case he's the purveyor of the paternal abuse and positively swirling with conflicting emotions and motivations. It's actually a fascinatingly drawn character and Nolte colors it with a great deal of nuance, humor and humanity. I'd also like to single out Josh Lucas, who seems to be the only other person in the film who knew how to approach their role. He's deliciously smarmy and aggressive. A fun villain who has a great exit, but leaves too soon.

The ending though, is truly something to behold. Most Marvel films botch the conclusion, leaving you shrugging in disinterested dissatisfaction. Hulk however, wraps things up with an audacious, experimental exercise in conveying conflict resolution by the expulsion and transference of emotional pain. An interesting choice to be sure and one that decidedly disappointed action fans. I find it more and more interesting every time I watch it. It begins like a play, boldly focusing on Nolte and Bana in an enormous hangar with only two spotlights illuminating them. There's a stark intimacy to the scene and playing off Nolte, Bana finally comes alive in the role. After Nolte commences with some memorable speechifying, the scene electrically switches settings with the stunning motif of these two titans travelling through the clouds in fresco flashes of painted images. Easily my favorite visual idea in the film and it culminates in a billowing cloud of repressed rage and sadness being annihilated by the military. I flat out love everything about this bizarre and overtly psychological denouement.

So yes, it still has problems, but it dares to be unique and challenging. In this era where the studio system has the assembly line production of superhero films down to a fine point, I miss a film like Hulk. I miss not knowing what I was going to get going in, even if I was less than impressed by the results. I'd rather someone swing for the fences with their own vision than simply point and shoot, part of a committee approach resulting in one homogenized and carefully practiced product. Even if it's a "silly superhero movie", I want art out of it, not soap.

It Stinks! Dario Argento

2011-09-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

I usually try to write only about that which I love in this blog because I feel the Internet is filled with enough negativity as it is. After reading through some old posts however, I couldn't help but notice my hyperbole is growing stale and my adjective choices (being of the positive leanings) have grown quite repetitive. So, in the interests of mixing it up, breaking out of my rut and plain old exorcising nasty demons, I present the inaugural "It Stinks!" entry. Let's begin by deflating that sallow, greasy bag of Italian hot air, Dario Argento.

To these jaded eyes, Dario is far and away the most over rated genre film maker to ever come down the pike. I understand that his influence on vastly better film makers has been monumental and his films are stylish and gleefully violent at times. This doesn't excuse how pointless they are, not to mention thinly written and atrociously cast. In fact, I don't recall a single line from any of his films off the top of my head. I don't need Aaron Sorkin pounding the keys for my misogynistic murder movies or anything, but good god man! He let Adam Gierasch and his wife script the final entry in his three mothers trilogy for the love of Jeff! But, "it's not the script that matters!", protest his ardent devotee's, "it's all about the lyrical style." Now, I consider myself a huge fan of style over substance. I've even written at length in these pages about my interest in a break from slavish adherence to predictable narrative machinations. So the fact that Argento's angles, colors and lighting leave me cold is most troubling.

I have put a lot of effort into enjoying Argento, hell, I'd settle for tolerating him at this point. Problem being, I have yet to find his films the least bit compelling. I find the protagonists as one dimensional as the victims and the victims as perfunctory and unimpressive as the killers. Take Deep Red for example. To me, this is the most embarrassingly over rated genre film perhaps of all time. I know of very few people who don't consider it an out and out masterpiece, usually the same people who bemoan art house pretension and movies without effective plotting. I hate to break it to everyone, but Deep Red is a crushing bore. Like all Argento's Giallo films I've had the displeasure to slog through, it begins with some uncharismatic asshole stumbling onto a murder I have no interest in seeing solved. Then follows some painful attempts at humor and romance, glacially paced and violently boring exposition, a half decent murder every 38 minutes and it's all capped off with a reveal of the killer that makes you shrug and say "Whatever man, anything to wrap this shit up." There isn't enough style in the world to make these boiler plate, sub-CSI mysteries the least bit interesting to me.

I won't outright assert the man has had no positive effect on cinema though. He did produce Dawn of the Dead (though butchered it with his tone deaf cut), Phenomena admittedly has a fun, ghastly charm to it and Inferno has that one great scene in the alchemists basement, but other than that, the dude is pretty much a total wash for me. Perhaps it's because I didn't see Suspiria (my first foray into his films) until a scant three years ago and my expectations were too astronomical. Whatever the reason, after immersing myself in his career and forcing myself to choke down his back catalog out of some misplaced sense of obligation to the horror genre, I can finally admit to myself that I find the films of Dario Argento to be tedious swill.

No longer will I groan my way through the Golgothan march of Opera, surely the ugliest movie ever made in such a beautiful setting. Never again will I endure the repugnant, pointless unpleasantness of Tenebre. I will not abide the blistering banality of Deep Red solely to groove on the funky Goblin track during the credits. I would sit through a thousand Katherine Heigel rom-com's before again subjecting myself to his animal trilogy, a troika of cinematic sleeping pills that verily challenge you to complete them. To put it as kindly as I care to, Dario Argento is an energetic hack left unchecked in his shallow end of the sandbox for far too long. When I see genre enthusiasts saying terrible things about Romero and demanding he hang it up while giving this buffoon a pass, I weep for the dispensation of the modern horror fan.

But, to each his own and all that. I'm not singling anyone out in particular with this inflammatory screed. This invective toward the "Edgar Allen Poe of Italy" (Jesus, that reminds me how belligerently awful his Black cat with Keitel was) has been building up in me a long time. Given my ever swaying opinion though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if I was all about the dude in another three or four years. Well, only time will tell.

Valhalla Rising

2011-09-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

Valhalla Rising is like Michael Keaton's life in Tim Burton's Batman. It's.....complex. I saw it several months before Drive came out, and without that more initially palatable aesthetic touchstone, I was somewhat lost. I knew it's poetic barbarism appealed to me on an elemental level, but felt at arms length from this Danish auteur's peculiar stylistic approach. Frankly it struck me as underwhelming and more than a little boring. After seeing Drive three times in the theater and drooling all over Refn's shot compositions, I felt that I was beginning to grasp what this preternaturally gifted film maker was going for. Perhaps it took witnessing his virtuosic milieu grafted on to a more recognizable genre to acclimate me to the manner in which he presents a story, especially in the case of one as compelling, distant and esoteric as Valhalla Rising.

This week, I purchased the film and began re watching it in manageable chunks each night before sleep. Some nights I would watch half of it or more. In all, I'd say I've seen the film 3 times now and have developed a need to view at least some of it before succumbing to slumber. No longer simply to utilize its leisurely pace as a cure for insomnia, but to solemnly study, to contemplate and to savor. I suffered from sudden cardiac death in early august of this year and was technically dead for several minutes before being revived. Since rejoining the land of the living and beginning my long road to recovery, I've been preoccupied with my own mortality, the meaning of life and the potential for a level of existence beyond the corporeal. Needless to say, Valhalla Rising is a much more striking proposition to me now for reasons beyond a heightened understanding of how its director works. If you're at all curious, I saw no light at the end of no tunnel during my ordeal. Take from that what you will.

In any case, the film concerns a mute, one eyed warrior held captive by a tribal chieftain in an unnamed Scandinavian setting. He is forced to fight other men to the death until he breaks free of his bonds, slays his captors and takes a young boy under his protection. The pair come across a group of "holy men" looking to travel to New Jerusalem and reclaim it for the Christian God. They join up with them and the quest becomes a convoluted, meaningless descent into the hell of the new world at the ends of the earth. I detest synopsizing and clearly have no skill at it, but it bears spelling out to effectively highlight the strange, meandering path this hallucinatory tone poem takes. The characters motivations are unclear, the exact time and place are open to interpretation and its overall meaning is as much a mystery as whether or not a meaning even exists. So, the film is a lot like life.

Mads Mikkelsen (the best name this side of Dieter Laser) is so visually arresting as One Eye, you can be forgiven for not understanding how remarkable his performance is the first few times around. He somehow can imbue every look with a million possible meanings, all the while retaining an air of unknowable, alien indifference. Like Gosling in Drive, the films efficacy hinges entirely on his presence, yet unlike Driver, Mikkelsen's One Eye has no lines whatsoever and is so unearthly it's difficult to relate or sympathise with him at all. Yet, like the misguided men who claim righteousness as their guide, you would gladly follow him into hell. A large part of my fascination with this film is wrapped up in attempting to interpret what exactly this character symbolizes. Like so many elements in the Refn oeuvre, it is not blatantly explained and you are allowed to use it as a mirror to reflect your own preconceived notions and beliefs.

The film is a litmus test in some ways for what you expect out of cinema. It's a colossal undertaking in the same way that reading Nietzsche or Moby Dick is. People can bellow about its pretension all they want, but you get out of it what you put into it. I really don't mean to come across with that lamentable "You don't like it cause you didn't understand it" attitude. Valhalla Rising is not necessarily a smart movie. It's primal, barbaric and structurally simplistic. You can choose to engage with it or not. The same option is presented to us whether we watch 2001 or The Chronicles of Riddick, and as Vin admonishes a group of Crematoria slam inmates before attempting escape in the latter, "Don't step up if you can't keep up". You have to want it with Valhalla, and considering how I've been drawn back to it time and again, I apparently want it a great deal.

There is a scene toward the end that is perhaps one of the most beautifully haunting I've ever had the privilege to see. One of the party following One Eye who has been bleeding out after suffering an unexpected incision is seated atop a hill overlooking a stunning tableau of mountains and valleys. The camera hold on the mans face in profile for what seems an eternity as his life force ever so slowly ebbs and eventually dissipates. Then.... cut to a shot of the seated man from behind with the grandeur of nature spread out before his empty vessel. It's a transition and an image so breathtaking it hurts the eyes with its forceful, nearly vulgar purity. In a film chock full of caustic moments that make life seem a hellish struggle for survival, it is this instance of aquiescence to nature that stays with you longest.

Changeling

2011-09-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

It was sometime after seeing Mystic River and Letters from Iwo Jima in the theater that I wrote off seeing any more Clint Eastwood films. Those cinematic exercises in relentless misery were well constructed and all, but watching them made me feel like drowning myself in the bathtub would be a whimsical endeavor in comparison. I don't know where it was exactly that Eastwood essentially became Gaspar Noe with a more melancholic bent, but a little of that goes an awful long way. In my estimation, Eastwood's finest moment will always be Unforgiven, that perfect marriage of gentle poetry and ass whupping that deservedly netted Clint best picture and Director. Other than sharing a comedy bit with my friends in which we imitated Clint's hilariously over exaggerated grimacing done in Absolute Power while watching Gene Hackman's POTUS murdering a woman, nothing the man has done in the last 2 decades has appealed to me much. Apparently my wife was unaware of this opinion and took Netflix's suggestion of Changeling to heart. So, it was chagrined and with a wary, distrustful attitude that I sat down last evening to begrudgingly give this Hollywood legends work a fresh appraisal.

I had no idea Eastwood had finally decided to make an out and out horror film, but that's exactly what Changeling is. Sure, it has sumptuous period detail, top notch acting and sturdy, patient direction, but at heart this is a skin crawling genre film. A deeply unsettling dissertation on death, evil and loss. The film is a dizzying descent into the depths of this woman's hell. One atrocity and indignity after another is uncovered and suffered as the layers of sadness threaten to suffocate both protagonist and viewer alike.

I've never been sold on the merits of Angelina Jolie, but she is quite good in this. Her hallowed, skeletal beauty suits her characters martyrdom nicely and her exasperated rage is impressive in certain scenes, if a tad overdone and one note in others. Jeffrey Donovan is a hoot playing the despicable cop railroading Jolie out of corrupted laziness and plain old misogynist spite. His Irish policeman trying to be smooth in L.A. schtick is pure gold and perhaps the only area in which the film allows itself to have any fun. He's a magnetic presence and I look forward to seeing more of him. Michael Kelly brings an assuring, welcome stoicism to his decent (but not that nice) cop role. Amy Adams character however seems an afterthought not entirely fleshed out and whose pragmatic narrative purpose is jarringly at odds with the rest of the films more lucid tone.

But she's just the beginning of the problems with this film. A harbinger of tonal recriminations that begin to pile up and threaten to torpedo the uneasy, unknowable queasiness the film impressively exudes for the first ninety minutes. It begins to degenerate into maudlin, predictable set pieces that ground the film back in a safe reality its previous invention had so deftly avoided. For the first hour and a half of this two hour and fifteen minute film, it felt like a waking, Lynchian nightmare. A bottomless emotional hole designed to collapse your soul and prolapse your sense of right and wrong. So you can imagine why shoehorning in trite, A Few Good Men courtroom histrionics and sub par R. P. McMurphy sticking it to the man moments would ruin the momentum. The tacked on and totally unnecessary message of hope at the very end is particularly out of place and nearly unforgivable in the way it seems to suggest all is well when it clearly is not.

Still, that first hour an a half admittedly shattered something within me and I have not been able to get the more murderous moments of the film out of my head. I've decided against detailing the unsavory elements of this film because I don't have much of an idea how many have seen it and would prefer not to be the one that spoils it if you choose to. Needless to say, I went into this film not knowing much about how the story would play out and frankly, it does so in an unexpected, devastating fashion. It's a damn shame that through loss of directorial nerve and structural compromises made in the script, what could have been something truly great became something only frustratingly good. You can't go as far as this movie does, then try to take it back.

Drive

2011-09-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Seeing Drive brought me back to the overwhelming, breathless awe I felt while first witnessing films like Goodfella's, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Heat and The Crow on the big screen. Not because it necessarily shares any narrative, thematic or aesthetic attributes with those classics, but because it reawakened my sense memory to a time when cinema could seem dangerous and beautiful to behold all at once. In the early to mid 9o's, I was coming of age and had the good fortune of sharing my new found freedom through gaining my drivers license with the release of an onslaught of seminal, game changing movies. As fun as 80's films were and as much as they were instrumental in cementing my adoration of the cinematic art form, it was discovering the complex nuance of something like The Usual Suspects or the Gothic nihilism of Se7en that made me realize my childhood interest could blossom into a life spanning and full blown adult obsession.

Drive is in every single aspect a perfect film. People will say it's a hollow, pretentious exercise in style and a narrative black hole with oversimplified connections between thinly drawn characters. They won't be wrong, but they're missing the bigger picture. The greatest movies don't need to mean or be about anything. They don't need to tell important stories or preach universal truths. They need to be powerful examples of an art form, which people tend to forget film inherently is. Sure, it can raise consciousness or unite an audience behind a hero in the interests of spawning a franchise, but I feel no more transcendence than when a film sucks me out of my life and into the world it has created, leaving me desperately wanting to return to it the instant the end credits begin to roll. Drive is such a film.

From the opening sequence, it's clear that you're in the hands of a master visual stylist. A true auteur working with supreme confidence to achieve a singular vision. No notions of audience concession or studio interference are allowed to touch this film. Refn seems to be wielding some sort of Kubrickian control over this project and his results under these circumstances speak volumes about the need for a return to 70's era directorial reverence and the preferential treatment afforded such gifted craftsmen. Drive is a liquid dream, gliding and floating with effortless control through the lives of bad men and the unfortunate women drawn to them. It presents Los Angeles as a hazy world without rules or structure where waitresses, gangsters, auto mechanics and film industry professionals all occupy the same space, bumping into each other to tragic, detrimental effect. It's a world of allure, danger and ghostly silence. Otherworldly and dreamlike in a classic 1980's Michael Mann capacity.

The story and characters aren't important here, its the raw elements that are. The colorful criminal menace, the bruised but beautiful moll, the sad sack father figure, the doe eyed dame with the cute kid and most importantly, the hypnotic, magnetic force of the enigmatic Driver unifying them all. Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman are pure gold in only the way 2 such brilliant character actors can be, but it's in the inspired pairing of them that we are given something altogether hilarious, dangerous and strangely realistic. Cranston wholly inhabits his chain smoking, limping nefarious manager role with a warm, preternatural paternity, grounding the film with his recognizable humanity. Hendricks is pitch perfect despite the brevity of her appearance, displaying the terror and exhaustion of her character without requiring unnecessary back story or dialog. Oscar Isaac continues his ascension in my estimation through potently and memorably rendering a stock character, elevating the whole film in the process.

But truthfully, the film is a make or break proposition resting on Goslings shoulders to bring across the nearly silent and certainly off putting lead role of the Driver. To say he pulls off this fearless high wire act of acting with aplomb is a gross understatement. With a character so hard to read who has no history spelled out for the viewer and rarely speaks, Gosling takes this golden opportunity to turn in a performance so fascinating, I dare you to take your eyes off him. He makes every affectation of his posture its own universe of endlessly fascinating intricacy. The pointing of his finger, clenching of his gloved hands or his sly, dispassionate grin all serve to draw you in, yet keep you at a frustrated distance. The controlled nervousness of his fingers fluttering across the steering wheel during a heist speak volumes more about the inner workings of this sociopath than ten pages of dialog could have, and good lord is this character ever a sociopath.

The Driver isn't just familiar with or adept at committing violence. He embodies violence. It follows him and flows from him as naturally as water distributing itself into a tributary. There is a scene where after exploding in jaw dropping rage, he turns and faces his ostensible love interest and tries to compose himself , the effect comes across like someone attempting to suppress a werewolf transformation. It's but one of a thousand such haunting and unforgettable images in the film. I won't spoil the particulars, but there's a scene with Perlman and Gosling on a beach toward the end that is so powerful and laden with iconic magnificence, even if the rest of the film surrounding it was total garbage, it would still be the best film of the year, just off the strength of that one scene.

I've enjoyed a lot of the films I've seen this year and would even go so far as to say found a few to be quite impressive, but none have had the instantaneous and revelatory effect of Drive. I've been hearing the hype and expecting something good, maybe even great. In no way was I prepared for the masterpiece it truly is. It is without doubt a film that will be talked about, analyzed and worshipped for generations to come.

Attack The Block

2011-09-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

Attack the Block is a perfect example of what happens when everything comes together just right on a film. There's a reason this is one of the most fawned over and relentlessly hyped movies of the year. A film so hyped up by the internet cinema dorks that I almost didn't want to see it out of spite for their incessantly slobbering, slavish worshipping. Well, I noticed it was playing at my local AMC, so with the caveat that I would at least be able to see it screened in a decent theater with good sound and comfortable seating, I ventured out, ready to scrutinize and shoot down this behemoth of internet adulation. Suffice to say, this movie had an uphill battle to win me over. On top of my irritation with the aforementioned lemming like praise it's engendered, I detest hip hop fashion, music and attitude, not to mention English slang, all of which this film traffics heavily in. Plus, its central characters are teen gangster dickheads, and after an ongoing spate of similarly misguided youth killing each other in the city I live in, I was less than receptive to get behind them as protagonists. But, like all great movies, this one is more than the sum of its parts and vastly more than meets the eye upon first glance.

Attack the Block is an alien invasion movie that has nothing to do with an alien invasion. Attack the Block is about responsibility to your fellow humans, it's about forging friendship through empathetic understanding and most importantly, it's about acknowledging that your actions have consequences. Unlike another recent low budget alien invasion film I watched today entitled Monsters (also much hyped), the message and subtext didn't overwhelm the film, crushing all the fun and life out of it. No, Attack the Block is a breezy and exhilarating ride during which I fell in love with the characters, no small feat considering how much I hated them after their introduction mugging a young woman. Moses, the lead character played by John Boyega is instantly one of the most compelling heroes in modern cinema. Mark my words, Boyega is going to have a huge career if he plays his cards right. This kids screen presence and charisma is off the charts. The emotional dexterity he instills in this complex character is both fascinating and heartbreaking to watch, especially considering how few lines of dialogue he has.

The aliens are a marvel of artistic restraint. So many low budget films botch the usage of CGI. Attack the Block gets it just right. The aliens are galloping pitch black entities with glowing teeth and ear shredding screams. The creature design is perfect in that it is unique, allows for the maximum suspension of disbelief and subtly serves as a visual allegory for the darkness surrounding this economically distressed housing block in general and the demon of hopeless criminal recidivism and escalation bearing down on Moses in particular.

I won't get further into this because I want everyone to give this film a watch free of spoilers and I know it isn't widely released or available as of yet. I'll just say that I went into this with a scowl on my face and left the theater emotionally drained, hopeful for humanity and happy as hell. If that isn't the point of art, I don't know what is.

Don't be Afraid of the Dark

2011-08-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've long been a Guillermo DelToro booster. I saw Mimic in theaters and enjoyed it greatly. I followed his career catching up on Cronos and seeing The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth and both the Hellboy films as they were released and generally loving them all. It's been three long years since the spectacular Hellboy 2 and good old Guillermo's been attached to more films than Justin Timberlake women, yet nothing has materialised. Until now. Well, he only wrote the script for Don't Be afraid of the Dark, but his fingerprints are all over this thing from the fairy tale mythos to the nasty critters to the murals on the wall even down to the brocaded headboard on the child's bed! And you know what? This movie stinks. It's absolute junk. It's a wannabe high brow Charles Band feature at best. Just because DelToro has a notebook full of doodles doesn't mean he has to shoehorn them into a lackluster creature feature starring two disinterested adults and one homely little girl.

After a moderately promising prologue, we're introduced to the most milquetoast "movie couple" I've ever seen. The lack of chemistry is simply astonishing. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes literally seem like they just met 2 minutes before filming.... in every scene they share!!! It never comes across as anything than what it is, Pearce slumming for a big paycheck and Holmes taking a token role to remind people she's actually an actress and not just Cruise's indentured wife. The little girl in this film serves as a stark reminder of how much DelToro lucked out finding Ivana baqero for Pan's labyrinth. The camera loved her, she had innate talent and copious screen charisma. I don't mean to bag on a little girl, so let's just say the child actor in Don't be afraid of the Dark is not someone you want to spend an hour and forty minutes following around. So, right off the bat, I can't buy into the lead couple's relationship which emotionally distances me from the film and I dislike the protagonist, making it difficult for me to care when she's imperiled.

And what is she put into peril by? Spoiler alert for those who care........ It's pretty much the tooth fairy creatures from Hellboy 2, but less cartoonish, more ugly and without wings. So now the movie is repetitive as well. These sort of mythical creatures with fairy tale roots have long been a DelToro staple to flavor his films (such as the aforementioned Hellboy 2 sequence, which lasted 10 minutes), here, it's the entire course! I was intrigued by the films advertising, eager to learn what this house's secret was. After discovering it was simply alternate versions of the 8 inch tall turds from Subspecies rendered in better graphics, well, needless to say, I was a little disappointed. Not only is the threat underwhelming and silly, it's revealed far too early in the story, leaving the film makers no option but to "treat" us to a dreary, seemingly endless parade of sequences where characters are in a dark room, then something is really loud, then they fend off CGI beasties by pointing flashlights at them (cause they can't stand the light, natch). Not exactly gripping stuff to this 34 year old man. I felt the same as I did watching Child's Play all those years ago, inwardly screaming, "Why don't you just kick them?!?!?!?".

This being a tiresome exercise in convention, we get treated to all the classics. Flashlights being smacked around by the protagonists, sputtering light during tense situations when they need it so desperately. The child droning on and on about the threat and no one believing her. The stepmother trying to side with her and doing research at the library to uncover the horrible truth. The child making creepy drawings etc... You name it, this movie trots it out, by the numbers and every bit as brain numbing as it sounds. I wanted to leave about an hour in, but realized I had nothing better to do at home, so I stuck it out, hoping against hope there would be some redeeming quality to mitigate DelToro's complicit guilt in penning this drivel, but there was to be none. Please Guillermo, I beg of you to return to the directors chair. Just please do so once you've settled on a project infinitely more ambitious and deserving of your talents than this utter waste.

You Know What's Great? The Mangler!

2011-08-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

Tobe Hooper's The Mangler, released in in the dead center of the most despised decade for horror among genre fans, seems to have become some sort of horror-dork anointed scapegoat for the entire time frame of the 90's. EVERYBODY hates this movie and I can not for the life of me understand why. I sit back and watch horror nerds bestow breathless accolades upon the Friday the 13th series, which I find to be a generally boring and bloodless affair with no style and even less substance, while trashing this quirky Hooper gem and I shake my head in disgusted disbelief. The go-to focal point in tearing The Mangler down is its outlandish premise of a possessed laundry folding machine become unquenchable killer after getting a taste for virgin blood during the dazzling credit sequence. I can scarcely think of a greater reason to recommend a film than it having the temerity to be unique to the point of being difficult, but I'll offer some more.

This film looks like magnificent. The production design is spot on, be it the hellish sweatshop conditions of the laundry factory or the cavernous descent into the underworld represented by the locations of the morgue and the photographers black room/office. The titular murderous machine is mightily impressive in all its limb chomping glory and looks threatening as hell sputtering sparks and smoke while blood spatters from its unholy maw. Hooper shoots the film with unmitigated flair, his camera always moving, always underscoring the thematic momentum of the story. From the manner he films laundry impresario Bill Gartley to emphasise how his damaged physicality embodies his despicable, heartless capitalism to the contrast of inviting Christmas lights and mystical doo dads in the trees of our protagonists brother in laws plot of land. The wooden bridge symbolizing the hardened cop coming over to his way of thinking about the supernatural by the end of the film. It's all deliberate and it all works.

The performances are uniformly excellent and more importantly, off the wall to the point of being psychotic. Ted Levine, a vastly under used character actor best known for his role of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, is let loose in the lead role of Detective John "Johnny" Hunton. He's stressed out, volatile, combative and terrifyingly histrionic. He seems like someone who should not be entrusted with a badge, but that's what makes the character compelling. His embittered pragmatism clashes wonderfully with the hippy dippy spirituality of his neighbor/Brother in law played with likable coolness by Daniel Matmoor. Their relationship becomes quite touching by the end of the film and extremely effective. Englund is hilariously awful (by which I mean great) as the differently abled head of the laundry with a million secrets and a soul so black he makes Dick Cheney seem huggable in contrast. My favorite performance in the film though, is that of Jeremy Crutchley as J.J.J. the towns post mortem photographer, who seems to have walked straight off the set of a 1950's noir film. He icily insinuates himself into these morbid situations and his bemused detachment belies a more poignant side to be revealed spectacularly toward the end. His final scene is a powerhouse of acting and his character one I think of often when considering the notion of facing the unavoidable specter of death.

The gore is top notch and plentiful, also something missing from most films of the era and the 80's in general. Englund's demise is one of the more fitting and bombastic villain death scenes I can recall. I also like how this film handles both practical gore and supernatural pyrotechnics with equal aplomb. This is a kitchen sink movie if ever there was one. It's got something to appeal to every kind of genre fan, except those slavishly devoted to dim witted, moronic, one-note slasher films consisting of tedious P.O.V. shots of vapid teenagers being followed around for what seems like an eternity before being killed off screen. There's none of that garbage in The Mangler, just good old fashioned entertainment consisting of bold characters, a compelling story, plentiful grue and masterful direction. I can't recommend it highly enough to first timers in the search of an evening of enthusiastic entertainment. And to those who have previously seen and dismissed it outright, I beg of you to give it another chance and appreciate what's there instead of bemoaning what isn't.

Thanks loyal Readers!

2011-08-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to print a quick thank you to all my loyal readers and to all who took the time to send me a nice comment following my return from the beyond! It really helps as a pick me up and shows me the internet isn't just full of trolling assholes out to tear everything down for no reason. There's actually some decent people here to talk film! In any case, no matter how hard I try, I can't figure out how to post reply comments on my own blog anymore! It keeps asking me to sign in, which I do, then the verification, then it asks me to sign in again, then the verification.... It's like that painting of a guy painting himself painting a picture into infinity. So take this as my response and thanks again!

Back from the Dead!

2011-08-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

As some of you might have heard, roughly three weeks ago, I suffered what the doctors referred to as sudden cardiac death. My heart stopped and I technically died. Thankfully, I was resuscitated, put on ice to allow my body and brain to recuperate and thanks to my healthy workout and eating regimen, am on my way to a full recovery. I don't want to get into the nuts and bolts of my medical shit as it's morbid and uninteresting to me, so I can only imagine how snooze inducing it would be to my readership. Suffice to say, I had a faulty valve and it was fixed. My being alive is indebted to my spartan lifestyle and the quick thinking of the gentleman who found me, not to mention the expertise of the many Doctor's who cared for me. The upshot is, I've been able to see a multitude of films recently, both theatrical and on home video. There's not much to do during a convalescence besides fade in and out of consciousness and stare blankly at flickering images. So, without further ado, here's what I've been watching lately!

Stakeland was fantastic. Maybe the best horror film of the year next to Insidious (not that there's much competition). It's epic, yet claustrophobic. Lyrical, yet blunt. Draining, yet invigorating. It's the kind of horror film that transcends genre while being indisputably of it. This is the kind of movie to point to when non-genre fans ridicule horror as the breeding ground for mouth breathing stupidity and senseless violence.

Rec2 was visceral as all get out, but ultimately tedious as all films featuring the found footage gambit are. Your Highness was a disappointing, vulgar festival of inconsequence. All high concept and no actual jokes, unless swearing and intimating molestation, sexual assault and rape at every turn count as jokes nowadays.

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes was exceptional and easily the best movie of the summer. It was thrilling, innovative, intelligent, complex and compassionate, a series of adjectives I usually can't associate with modern film. The Final Destination was great fun to me for some reason. I saw it with my father shortly after my own brush with death and found it endlessly amusing. I'm sure a large part of it was introducing my dad to the series and watching him squirm through the protracted and misleading set pieces. It was also just plain great to be out of the hospital, seeing a movie with the man who instilled in me my love of film.

Conan The Barbarian hit the sweet spot for me. It's unrelenting in it's pacing, action and violence. The story and characters are nothing new or that great, but they got the job done in a workmanlike fashion. The movie provided me with a much needed escape. I know every critic seemingly despises it, but I appreciated it's sloping brow mentality and cut rate fantasy film backdrops. It was a treat to sit through a film where no one whipped out a cell phone or gave a moments thought to political correctness. I doubt I will remember it much come years end, but I thought it was a blast when I saw it in the theater and that 's about as much as one can expect from the current crop of cinema.

I saw the Fright Night remake, which didn't fare as well for me. I guess I didn't see the point. Nothing was altered drastically enough to justify a redux and the violence and effects weren't nearly as visceral or creative as they were in the original. I watched the original on DVD the night after and was reminded how exciting, lively and clever it was, which only served to throw into sharper contrast how dull, drab and crude the inessential remake is. The original is so colorful and vibrant, while the remake is seemingly shot with all the lights out in black and white. If it's a stylistic choice, it was a bad one, cause the film verily dares you to watch it.

A great friend of mine sent me the blu's for Zombie Holocaust (or as I prefer to refer to it, Dr. Butcher MD!) and Criterion's Blow Out, so I can't wait to dig into those this coming week. Another good friend has loaned me his complete set of Planet of the Apes blurays, while Axl from Profondo Cinema sent me a care package of DVD goodness I can't wait to dip into! Thanks so much to all the friends and well wishers out there that made returning to the world of the living such a pleasant and touching affair. I'm on the mend and ready to get back at film dissection with a renewed purpose and vigor!

Rediscovering artistic extremity in music through the pursuit of physical perfection

2011-07-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Film has become something I'm less and less interested in lately. I've enjoyed going to the theater on a fairly regular basis and taking in the sights and sounds of the summer blockbuster season, but I doubt I'll be thinking much about Thor or X-Men First Class once the leaves start falling. I find it harder and harder to sit still for my fallback films as time goes on and after selling off half of my once cherished collection, I can definitively state that the days of Shloggs the compulsive collector have come to a close. It's time to come clean about the obsession currently consuming this erstwhile cinephile. Bodybuilding. Yes, you read that right. I grew up in the 80's, worshipping Arnold and Sly and reading Muscle and Fitness magazine, dreaming of one day sporting the lats of Lee Haney, the traps of Rich Gaspari and the bicep peaks of Albert Beckles. I'm certain no one is interested in my encyclopedic knowledge of mid 70's to late 80's body builders, but the point is, after moving into a complex with a well stocked workout room, my love affair with resistance training has been rekindled with a passion.

The endlessly inspirational documentary Pumping Iron makes a clear cut case for body building as an art form. The pursuit of attaining symmetry, strength and size with your own body as the canvas using hard work, discipline and scientific understanding of muscle groups and diet as the instrument. I have found an outlet for my creativity outside the navel gazing of sedentary consumption or self loathing misanthropy and it feels fantastic. Finally, here is something in life that I have complete control over. The results are dependent entirely upon the effort, both physical and mental, I put into it and nothing else. It's liberating to be involved in something which preconceived opinion and differing taste has no bearing. I've always been a big dude and dabbled haphazardly in it, but dedicating myself wholly to the discipline with purpose and clarity has been rewarding and life affirming in a manner bordering on spiritual.

Point being, this endeavor has occasioned me to re-familiarize myself with music as it is my sole companion and trusted motivator while engaged in my morning sessions. Music was my second love after film and I (mis)spent most of my teens and early 20's playing in bands. Heavy metal most appealed to me with its darkness and aggression. I discovered Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth first, but just as my tastes in film clamored for the ever more extreme, I found myself searching out underground publications (in the glorious pre-Internet world where you had to put effort into finding that which spoke to you personally) to help me locate the cutting edge. I moved onto Carcass, Godflesh, Entombed, Prong and a bevy of similarly transgressive acts. Standard music with 4/4 time signatures and intelligible lyrics concerning the pedestrian notions of life and love became unlistenable tedium. I would come across albums that spoke deeply to me and study them for months. I mean literally listening to the one album for MONTHS and nothing else. Albums like Godflesh's Songs of Love and Hate, Carcass' Necrotism: Descanting the Insalubrious, Sepultura's Roots and Dimmu Borgir's Death Cult Armageddon.

I need my music to be like my films. It has to be confrontational and complex to the point that it can't possibly be understood on first listen. I need to put serious effort into comprehending it for it to be worth my while. I want to discover something new during each subsequent listen. To me, bands like AC/DC and The Ramones are the musical equivalent of Paul Blart Mall Cop and Rush Hour 2. Purely predictable pap, formulaic and easily digestible. I've been spinning a lot of jagged vitriol spewed by inhuman musicians while shredding muscle fiber such as The Red Chord, Whitechapel, Converge and Daath, but a certain album has come along and completely blindsided me. That album is the recently released masterpiece from Hate Eternal entitled Phoenix Amongst the Ashes.

Hate Eternal is the brainchild of death metal guitarist and producer extraordinaire Erik Rutan. To the uninitiated, it will at first listen seem a maelstrom of indecipherable nonsense. A blistering cacophony of merciless eardrum punishment conceived by steroidal demons in the bowels of hell with the sole purpose of driving mere mortals to irretrievable madness. There are no choruses here, no reference points, no calm amidst the storm, just pure insanity for 45 straight minutes. If this album were a film it would make the likes of Tetsuo, Irreversible and Cannibal Holocaust cower in fear. This shit makes avant garde Jazz and noise rock sound like the fucking Goo Goo Dolls. But, if you possess the intestinal fortitude to brave its monolithic onslaught more than once, the intricate brilliance of its otherworldly composition will slowly reveal itself. There are a million melodies contained within a single riff, a thousand ideas at play behind every blast beat. This album is artistic creativity moving at a million miles a second.

There is no commercial viability to this piece of art. The motives for its production are without compromise or concession. It is a vision as singular as anything from Kubrick, Fincher, Tsukamoto or Cronenberg. Rutan is the sole composer, the primary musician, hell, he's even the man behind microphone placement and performance selection. Through sheer force of will he has constructed this entire accomplishment, devoid of outside influence or marketplace dictation. This will only appeal to or even be understood by a select few who can tolerate its nearly unbearable intensity. To paraphrase Sherriff Wydell from Devil's Rejects, Rutan is playing on a level that few will ever see and to me, that is a feat as breathtaking as it is beautiful.

Shloggs Speaks Squared!

2011-06-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

I have had the distinct pleasure and humbling honor of being a guest on two of my favorite Podcasts, Cinephobia and Profondo Cinema. I've been on with Axl and Jscott at Profondo before, but this was my first on-air banter with FEEDBACK and it's a doozy! We argue about the validity of Scott Pilgrim, the merits of Punk Rock and the fallout of 9/11 on the American cinematic landscape! I get down to some serious, in depth Rob Zombie discussion with the Profondo Cinema gents, so expect my usual hyperbolic self to rear his righteous head and bellow loudly with great frequency. These are both great shows and please remember to check out both of their back catalogs, it's all gold!

Jim Van Bebber

2011-06-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

"Fuck your noise!"

This line, spat out by Van Bebber as the character Goose early on in his debut feature Deadbeat at Dawn, colorfully and succinctly sums up his attitude toward film making convention and notions of societal propriety. Jim Van Bebber is a throwback to the uncontrollable, visionary and fiercely independent film artists of the past. Imagine Peckinpah, Michael Reeves and early Raimi thrown in a blender, seasoned with copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, then hit puree and watch the concoction react violently, spilling over the top and generally making a mess of things. Van Bebber is an actor, writer, make up effects artist, Director, stuntman, editor, fundraiser and everything else you would conceivably need to get a film made. The fact that he is often involved in all these aspects is surely one of the main reasons he has so few features to his credit. But as Reeves famously said to Vincent Price on the set of Witchfinder General when the elder statesman questioned his methods by pointing out he'd been in hundreds of films and sneeringly questioned how many Reeves had done, "I've made three GOOD ones.

There are literally thousands of film makers out there putting out one indiscernible lump of predictable pap after another, but there is only one Jim Van Bebber. He is a class unto himself, his own genre, and as far as individuality goes, virtually untouchable. Deadbeat at Dawn, his first full length after a series of shorts made starting in middle school, is a kaleidoscopic, primal howl of a revenge picture. It's startlingly simplistic in structure, but undeniably effective and charmingly linear. It's the textbook example of rough around the edges, with sound dropping out left and right, out of focus shots and amateurish performances (outweighing the few admittedly strong ones). It's also ceaselessly entertaining and chock full of exciting camera moves and stunt work and fight choreography (primarily from Van Bebber) both enthusiastic and eye poppingly reckless. As Van Bebber has noted in interviews, it probably wasn't the best idea to be chased by a car driven by a drunk 20 year old or jump off a 40 foot embankment into a river or rappel down a 4 story parking garage without a net, but it had to get done somehow! Deadbeat at Dawn is the true "Grindhouse aesthetic" film that so many have tried and failed to produce in the last decade. It's the real deal, full of heart, danger and nascent talent. His short films are definitely worth watching as well, with My Sweet Satan being a clear standout.

His next film, The Manson Family, is legendary for the trials and tribulations it took Van Bebber to drag it kicking and screaming through sheer force of will for fifteen years to completion. It's a herculean effort and has been documented extensively elsewhere, certainly nowhere better than in the documentary on the indispensable Dark Sky "Visions of Hell" box set that compiles all his short films along with Deadbeat and The Manson Family, not to mention a multitude of great features. It truly belongs in every serious cinephiles collection. That having been said, I do not wish to elaborate on his struggle or on my thoughts concerning the Charles Manson issue. I wish only to speak about the film, which is surely one of the most passionate, intense, authentic and disturbing I've seen. Van Bebber went from promising neophyte to consummate master in the time spent assembling this monster of a film. The consistency of it's tone and intent would be amazing even if it were completed in the originally intended 2 week shooting schedule let alone 15 years! The editing, shot composition, musical selection, staggeringly graphic and realistic sequences of violence and tremendous performances make this a one of a kind cinematic experience, unlikely to be rivalled or duplicated anytime soon, if ever.

Make no mistake, this is exceedingly rough stuff. Remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan that people often refer to as an unflinchingly unsettling example of filmed violence when the German soldier slowly stabs Adam Goldberg? Picture that multiplied by 50 for 25 straight minutes and you have the last third of this film. This is not a glamorous portrayal of famous killers. This is the ugliest, most matter of fact re-enactment of a crime I've ever bore witness to. It makes you think about the consequences of violence and the terror and pain the victims felt. It's gripping, exploratory cinema made by a true artist who clearly wasn't concerned with marketability or using this as a stepping stone to get a posh studio contract.

Perhaps I so greatly appreciate Van Bebber's work because his thematic concerns would seem to be on an identical wavelength with my interests and hang-ups. Maybe it's because I love to root for an underdog, especially one whose genius is inextricably tied to his own self destructiveness. In all likelihood though, his work resonates deeply with me because he takes film as seriously as an art form as I do. To him, film is life and he's unwilling to phone it in, EVER. I would love to see more from him, but I accept that if it takes him 10 years to get a film made, it's because that's exactly how long it will take him to make it precisely how he wants to. I would rather worship the great shorts and 2 brilliant features he made than watch him sacrifice his ideals to get a shot at directing the Hellraiser remake.

You Know What's Great? The Devil's Rain

2011-06-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

As a lifelong horror and heavy metal fan, it's hard to not be at least tangentially reverential of Anton Lavey and his brilliantly constructed nonsense. I myself have the Goat of Mendes from the cover of The Satanic Bible tattooed on my right forearm and have read the tract multiple times. Every cinephile and genre fan is aware of Rosemary's Baby and the Lavey cameo and influence. I personally have the expected, albeit grudging respect for the film, but outside of the performances by Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, find it to be a dull exercise in Polanski's apartment building malaise bullshit. For me, the real deal as far as the Church of Satan presented on film is The Devil's Rain, a criminally overlooked little gem from 1975 that also features a Lavey cameo and his patented occult technical advisory.

I won't spoil the century spanning satanic melodrama that comprises its plot. I will however apprise those not in the know of its "are you fucking kidding me?" cast. No less than Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Tom Skerritt, Ida Lupino, William Shatner and John Travolta in his heavily made-up and overdubbed feature film debut show up to turn in performances ranging from knowingly over the top to woefully confused, Borgnine masterfully displaying the former and Shatner shamefully contributing the latter.

Seriously folks, Old Uncle Ernie is pure gold in this. That an Oscar winner of his caliber would deign to appear in such a bizarre, unwholesome piece of cinematic evil, let alone lay low the ramparts and turn it up to 11 is indicative of his dedication to craft and general awesomeness as a human being. He exudes such devilish charm and intimidating charisma as cult leader Corbis it makes one wonder how a late career turn as bogeyman and heavy could have benefited '70's and '80's cinema. He even works in some heavy make-up that could be outrageously silly, but through judicious use of his magnetic and expressive eyes becomes a natural extension of his character.

Speaking of the make-up effects, this film keeps the prosthetic stuff hot and cold flowing on tap. From the disconcerting, pasty eyeless devotees of Corbis to Borgnine's aforementioned man-goat state to some jaw droppingly awesome meltdown effects that take center stage for the films stunningly apocalyptic climax, this is exactly the sort of feature that the enemies of CGI clamor for, but mysteriously never reference.

If you're tired of the never ending influx of same old same old from modern Hollywood or have worn out your favorite films and want something new to enter into the rotation alongside the classics, I highly recommend this film and picking up the excellent release Dark Sky gave it. It's 86 minutes of campy, creepy fun that blows by without ever being boring or too full of itself. It's the film you've been looking for for the last decade and didn't know existed. Recognize!

X-Men First Class

2011-06-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

X-Men First Class is an extraordinarily frustrating film. I can think of no other film that so lustily flirts with greatness only to be ultimately undone by the predictably unnecessary tropes inherent to its genre. If you read my reviews, you're no doubt familiar with my aversion to synopsizing and lack of reverence for spoilers, so consider this your warning before proceeding.

First, let me address the considerable magnificence contained in the film. I've been nurturing a man crush on Fassbender since 300, Blood Creek and Inglorious Basterds and he justifies my blushing appreciation by turning in a performance that does the unthinkable. I actually forgot about Ian McKellan's take on Magneto watching this movie. He's that good. He brings to the role a potent physicality, wounded anger and tortured determination so palpable it pins you to the back of your seat, wholly mesmerized every time he's on the screen. Mcavoy is also quite good as Xavier and their chemistry is easily the highlight here. They share a scene where Xavier unlocks a memory for Lenscherr he thought lost that caught me off guard with its beauty and tenderness. It easily ranks as one of the most emotional and well acted scenes in any Comic Book film, perhaps any film period. The relationship between the two characters and their dichotomous worldviews has been exhaustingly explored in previous franchise entries, but these master thespians improbably find a way to make it fresh and exhilarating all over again.

Kevin Bacon brought something to the table as the lead villain I never would have expected from him or his character. It's a reinvention along the lines of his sleaze encrusted role in Sleepers, yet totally original and always interesting to watch. His powers are revealed and visually brought to life in a confident, fascinating manner, making him a terrifyingly awesome nemesis, and films such as this live and die by how well the threat is presented.

Playing almost as huge a part in the films success is the jaw dropping costuming and set design. It evokes a fantasy 1960's that contains everything you want from the era while still making it contemporary and believable. Bacon's submarine lair and nightclub backroom are a sumptuous marvel of production design that will no doubt be ignored come Oscar time, but they are entirely deserved of such accolades. I love a movie that creates a world you wish you could swim in forever and X-Men First Class goes above and beyond as far as this is concerned.

So what torpedoes this film exactly? It's what brings down most comic book adaptations. A surplus of decidedly uninteresting and irritating characters shoehorned in to appease dorks who will no doubt wail about inaccurate back story anyway. This film did not need the "First Class". Just like Schumaker's Batman films and the last Spiderman joint didn't need so many bad guys and extraneous nobodies gumming up the pacing and obfuscating the central themes. Magneto is where it's at. When you have a lead actor knocking it the fuck out of the park as Fassbender does here, you're wasting his precious screen time by delving into the training and application of such silly mutants as screamer dude, lame Havok, dragonfly lady and tornado dip shit. There powers were beyond idiotic and the actors portraying them lifeless non-entities. Three mutants on each side would have sufficed. Azazel was cool and in the film exactly as much as he needed to be, but why they cast a top notch actor like Flemyng for the heavily made up, nearly wordless role is beyond me.

Speaking of casting, you can cram as many chicken cutlets into January Jones padded bra as you want, but it doesn't mean she can deliver her lines credibly or with any charisma. Her performance here is as flat as her chest is over inflated. The dude that played beast irked me so much I couldn't tolerate any moment he was onscreen. I don't know what it was, but I could not stand listening to him speak or even looking at his wormy, unlikable face. If they would have excised the bulk of the youngsters, it would have cut 25 minutes off the film and brought the strongest aspects of the narrative into even sharper relief. Casting someone with an ability to register as something other than a bored supermodel would have made Emma Frost a delicious, Bond Villainess worth remembering. As it stands, these missteps rob the film of its masterpiece potential and render it as a regrettably flawed template for what NOT to do when spinning such cinematic yarns.

Don't get me wrong, I loved it despite these flaws and will see it again in theaters. The great stuff is just so tremendously great. The first hour is better than any other X-Men film frankly. I would have much rather it had been Magneto: Nazi Hunter and left the kids at home.

Priest

2011-05-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever caught yourself watching a film and lamenting the lack of multiple, interminable sequences of characters racing in a straight line through a flat, barren desert on motorcycles? If so, Priest 3-D has arrived to ameliorate that dearth of dynamism. The first time it happened, I'll admit it was a bit striking. The second time, I began to grow tired of it. Around the 38th time, I realized the Director considered these as counting for action scenes. Outside all the wasteland hot-rodding, there are at most 3 set pieces in the film with only the climax lasting more than 3 minutes. The only truly unforgivable sin for a painfully stupid film to commit is that of being boring and sadly, Priest is profoundly guilty of this transgression.

Paul "charisma" Bettany stars in this Golgothan slog and in a curious career move, decides to phone his star vehicle performance in. I've seen roadkill register a more involving presence. He's supported by Cam "ratboy" Gigandet, who should have his screen actors guild revoked, because whatever the hell he was doing in front of the camera, it sure wasn't acting. Rounding out this somnambulistic troika is Karl "Bones in Star Trek was a fluke" Urban, who lets his contact lenses shoulder the dramatic weight of his character. Seriously, this is the most unappealing group of performers imaginable, and to say witnessing their interactive chemistry was like watching paint dry would be malicious and unfair to the subtle nuance of actually watching paint dry. Oh, and also Maggie Q, because, why not?

The sad thing is that there is some nice production design going on here. I liked the world they created quite a bit. It was derivative as hell, shamelessly pilfering from Blade Runner, 1984 and a slew of vastly superior Westerns, but it gelled nicely into a cohesive whole that managed to pop onscreen without needing to be explained. The action, what little there was of it outside the aforementioned motocross meltdown, was well shot, competently edited and constructed with as much flair as the budget would allow. The 3-D post conversion was nicely handled, rendering surprising depth to the bleak, beautiful world the film inhabited. I was enjoying myself just fine for 45 minutes or so. I love movies so damn much that I can give a pass to most anything that presents me with a palette I find aesthetically pleasing, but concept art and technical craftsmanship can only get you so far. Any film, even and especially ones as insultingly, mind bogglingly stupid as Priest, need a heart beating inside them to activate the cinematic circulatory system and give the creation life. That heart is the flesh and blood performances, and in that aspect, Priest comes up empty handed, leaving the audience to stare solemnly at a beautifully preserved corpse.

There is also a special place in hell reserved for films that so monumentally waste the talents of Brad Dourif. For shame.

Goemon

2011-04-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

Truly great films can be a miraculous thing to behold. They can remind you that the world is a magical place and that we are blessed to be born into its complicated splendor. They can remind you how much you love someone. They can take you to a time and place that has never existed, but is as fully realized as your daily existence. They can reawaken your sense of the seemingly antiquated notions of honor, justice and purpose. I have just witnessed such a film and its name is Goemon. I blind bought this Japanese gem based off a recent bluray review I read that lauded its imagery and stunning technical specifications. I could not be more pleased that I did. I honestly feel emotionally spent in a way that no stateside "epic" has been able to approximate in ages.

It tells the simple tale of a hero's journey. There is romance, comic relief and action like all films of this ilk attempt to bring across, but I haven't been this swept away in forever. I cared deeply about these characters. Despite the language barrier, I legitimately felt each and every one of their presences and was invested in where the story took them. The villains were as multi-layered and believable as the good guys, given real motives and understandable desires. By the end of the film, my vengeful blood lust for their comeuppance was tempered with pitied compassion, forcing me to question the act of revenge and its destructive, hollow nature. This film EARNS it messages through patience and sincerity.

Oh, but there is great humor, charm and charisma as well! The lead is outrageously likable from the first moment we encounter him, even though his only visible feature is his dancing eyes. He kicks ass to be certain, but he has true panache. Imagine Downey's Tony Stark, but not as a rich, entitled American prick. Goemon is a man of the people first and foremost, a rogue in the classic sense. His back story is masterfully meted out through gorgeously composed flashbacks, fleshing him out completely and constructing not only a great lead character, but an archetypal example of how to move beyond adversity in life and become a principled human being who genuinely cares for others, doing what is right at the expense of personal gain. Goemon is the sort of character I would want my son to look toward for inspiration and direction.

A word on the heightened reality of the computer assisted world this film swims in: If you're a slavish devotee of the summer blockbuster style of tripe like Battle LA, Transformers et al, don't even bother. Goemon, like Scott Pilgrim and Sucker Punch, uses computer effects the way they should be used. As a painterly tool to create a mystical netherworld where "looking real" has no meaning. Film is art, and computers are another tool in the artist's arsenal to realize their vision. The reality of this film stems from the strength of its story and writing, the efficacy of its performances, not the verisimilitude of its CGI. It's just plain stunning to look at, a veritable visual feast overflowing with color and beauty. The execution of the concept art through computer graphics is anchored by the pitch perfect sets and jaw dropping costume design, which brings to mind the superlative work of Eiko Ishikawa on Bram Stoker's Dracula. In short, the monumentally satisfying wonder of the film is brought to life by the technology employed in its creation as opposed to overshadowed or hamstrung by it.

Goemon has revitalized my love of Japanese cinema and inspired me to seek out not only the previous film from its director, but other entries in what is apparently a burgeoning movement. Like the Clark Nova in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, it has mythic resonance. It will bring to mind the problems that the world is embroiled in, but far from being an oppressive reminder of the insoluble problems with which we are currently faced, it bestows hope for what humanity could be, given time, effort and a unifying purpose. It is cinema of the highest order my friends, and I wish I could be there with you when you discover it for yourself.

Taxi Driver

2011-04-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Taxi Driver has evolved into many different films to me over the 20 years I've been studying it. I first became aware of it from seeing posters of Robert Deniro with that iconic mohawk at used CD stores that doubled as suburban head shops. I was a horror nut from an early age and had a book about the make up legacy of Dick Smith that contained some lurid photos of the work the maestro contributed to Bickle's siege on the whorehouse. I would ask my father about the film and he seemed at a loss as to how to describe its narrative to me, instead choosing to extol the virtues of the remarkably intense Deniro performance. What I've learned in the interim is that there is no way to explain Taxi Driver to a 12 year old and certainly no way a 12 year old could ever understand what the film is saying, yet, my reach has always exceeded my grasp, so in the summer after seventh grade I rented it and decided to see what all the fuss was about.

My first viewing was, unsurprisingly in retrospect, a colossal let down. A crashing bore that seemed to never go anywhere and ended just when it was getting good. The thing about being an American male growing up in the 80's and being addicted to film and television, is that you were taught not only that might makes right, but that the solution to any and every problem is violence. My idols were Schwarzenegger, Stallone, VanDamme and Seagal. These men portrayed simplistic characters with very little shading. They were righteous and just, they were wronged, then they punished those that wronged them. That story structure was an exceedingly palatable through line to an impressionable, ignorant kid entering puberty and I ate it up with my silver spoon. Imagine my consternation and confusion at being presented with a lead character that was scrawny instead of steroidal. A central figure fundamentally incapable of expressing himself verbally instead of a charismatic leader of men who incessantly spouts pithy one-liners. My inability to comprehend the character of Travis Bickle at the time was as indicative of my tender age as it was a judgement made on the general tone of the films I grew up on.

Once I entered my tumultuous teens, I began to understand Bickle's isolation in a more profound, yet still narrow sense. Like Bickle, I also hated the things I saw, the way I saw people treat each other and how they behaved. I was becoming more educated about film and even though Taxi Driver's themes were still beyond me, I was well versed in the Scorsese oeuvre up to that point and could watch the film as a purely cinematic exercise in beautiful art. The shot composition, the blocking, the saturated color scheme and the performances in Taxi Driver are all prime Scorsese, rivalled only by Raging Bull and Goodfellas. So I spent the rest of my teens grooving on Taxi Driver's look and its sounds. I was at least qualified to appreciate the pretty pictures and the grimily seductive Bernard Herrman score. I wore a Taxi Driver shirt, had an over sized wall poster and even sported a Bickle mohawk of my own one summer. I giddily contributed to compounding its cult status despite having nary a clue about its social and psychological significance.

Throughout the first half of my twenties, the film faded into the background as music became my prevailing artistic interest. It was regularly referenced by me and my friends though, mostly through quoting our favorite lines apropos of nothing. A buddy would call and ask what I was up to and I would reply "I don't know nobody named Iris." in Keitel's lilting tone, to which my friend would respond "He called you names! he called you a.... little piece of chicken!" and so on it would go and oh, how we would laugh. But the tail end of the 90's saw a curious cultural shift. And then there is change, to paraphrase Travis Bickle.

The Columbine school shootings seemed to initiate a spate of similar crimes and before long, there was an epidemic of angry, disgruntled men wandering into places both public and domestic, deciding to rectify their considerable qualms with the world through an outburst of automatic weapon assisted assaults on the unsuspecting and the innocent. It seemed this would happen every other month and it had a profound effect on me at the time (still does). This trend coupled with the bizarre DC Sniper case that gripped the Country's imagination with fear and distrust for what seemed like an eternity caused me to recall the plight of one Travis Bickle and occasioned me to begin revisiting the film in earnest. Perhaps through Schrader's prescient characterization, I could begin deciphering some of the root causes of this sickeningly prevalent strain of malignant behavior.

Watching Taxi Driver became a sad, solitary pastime as opposed to the in-joke producing chuckle machine it once was. I started to see how easily one could let loneliness as a defense mechanism dictate the anti-social manner in which they would interact with others, only widening the gulf between them and their fellow man. People have an intense desire for not only companionship, but purpose. I personally believe that the disembodied redundancy of the instantaneous internet age has robbed the comfortable youth of this country of any sense of direction or meaning. Look no further than the crazed mug shot of Jared Lee Loughner or consider the actions of Cho Seung Hui to follow the evolution of God's Lonely Man. Travis Bickle, so cut off from the world he doesn't know what movies its inhabitants go see or what music they listen to or even what positions politicians take on what issues, has evolved into a hyper-aware, overstimulated automaton that is always plugged in and never without something to infuriate them. Any one of the numberless iterations of social media can light any one of a billion fuses at any given time.

Take the scene in which Travis watches an insipid soap opera silently in his apartment while holding his comfort totem, the 44 caliber handgun. He puts his boot on the crate the TV rests atop and begins slowly pushing it away, symbolically pushing away his tenuous connection to the human relationship presented on the screen and indeed the connection to the world that television itself represents. It reaches a tipping point and the tube crashes to the floor, emitting sparks and smoke, utterly destroyed. Travis leans forward in his chair, putting his head in his hands like a soul sickened version of Rodin's The Thinker as Bernard Herrman's score swells and undulates, chillingly approximating Travis' mental collapse. To me, this is the core of the film. It is a man choosing to distance himself from the world and reaching that breaking point where he can't reestablish a connection to it. The same thing is happening today with computer screens, but I doubt anyone out there is capable of severing their connection to it like Bickle did with his pitiful cathode contraption. People filled up past the point of bursting with images, words and ideas they can't handle have their own psychoses amplified by the dissenting views they can't help but seek out. They WANT to be further enraged and closed off from normal human discourse, like Bickle wanted to drive in the worst areas of town and see the venal criminality in action because it justified his world view and the reactionary attitude he chose to take toward it.

I'm sure my understanding of the film will change and mature even more as I grow older and understand people and the world in a larger context. Taxi Driver is a challenging, fascinating film with a brilliant script, directed by one cinema's living legends at the peak of his powers featuring one of the greatest performances an actor has ever contributed to the medium. The recently released bluray is an indispensable addition to the library of any serious student of film and will be teaching us about the darkness inside us all for generations to come.

You Know What's Great? David Lynch's Dune

2011-04-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

My father took me to see David Lynch's Dune in December of 1984 when I was 7 years old. To say that it had a profound impact on me would be both accurate and an understatement. I watched the bluray (which is breathtaking) the other night and I'm frankly astounded I haven't spent the last 27 years suffering recurring nightmares of Kenneth McMillan floating above me and hawking loogie's on my face. There has never been before, nor will there ever be again, a big budget attempt at starting up a tentpole franchise that is as languid, bewildering or stomach churning as Dune. The film starts off with Virginia Madsen dreamily reading cue cards of cobbled together exposition while Lynch inexplicably fades her image in and out against a backdrop of twinkling stars fixed in endless blackness. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking 4 Tylenol PM's after ingesting a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and washing it all down with a sixer of Rolling Rock. He verily dares the audience to stay awake right out of the gate!

Then we're treated to a baffling conversation between Jose Ferrer's Emperor Shaddam the 4th and a laughably lovable Carlo Rambaldi creation called a Third Stage Guild Navigator that is basically a 46 foot long turd with a noxious-gas spewing vagina for a mouth and tiny, adorable T-Rex arms. "I just folded space from Ix" the turd says in a resonant, menacing voice, "many machines on Ix. New Machines. Better than those on Richess." There is a lengthy, pregnant pause before the Emperor responds with a bewildered, "Oh?" And for a couple of seconds there, you begin to imagine that perhaps these two characters have no idea who each other is, why they are talking, or if they are even supposed to be in the same movie. It's a scene so gloriously bizarre and off-putting, it could have only come from David Lynch. As a child though, I was transfixed and my unformed brain gave tacit approval to this ill-explained hooey. To my 7 year old self, this all made perfect sense and I was hanging on the revolting puppet's every word as if he were a trusted family friend. This is what is commonly referred to in the biz as suspension of disbelief and I was far more freely giving of it in my youth.

As the film progresses and we're introduced to character upon character, each with more ridiculous hair and eyebrows than the last, the story begins to take a lumpy, serviceable shape. Something about some sort of royal family made up of an English Mother, a Russian father and a Canadian son taking over mining the all important, yet never adequately explained Spice Melange on a distant planet named Arrakis. There's a bunch of Hare-Krishna-by-way-of-HR Giger looking space nuns searching for the supreme being, also known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who will bring balance, but maybe also destroy everything? The villains of the piece are a disgusting, incestuous family of gingers called The Harkonnen's who are a pre-cog stand-in for the Bush Administration. They are led by an obese, leprous monster who floats around on clearly visible wires screaming and spitting all his dialog and occasionally gifting cats that need to be milked. Did I mention the creepy ass desert people with post production enhanced (but sometimes not) blue eyes who are led by legendary late 20th century creep Everett McGill? They ride around on sand worms the length of a football field and wear stylish suits that turn their crap and urine into food and water? How about the weirding module? It's a weapon that turns, silly, indistinguishable noises into pulse blasts. And Max Von Sydow and Linda Hunt show up for no reason and die 5 minutes later (spoiler alert). You get the idea, it's pretty fucking weird.

Describing the film Dune is like jumping rope with a Honda Civic. It's simply not possible. One must bear witness to it to fully attest to the efficacy of its incomprehensibility. It staggers the mind that with only Eraserhead and The Elephant Man under his belt, Lynch was given the reigns to this sprawling, Sci-Fi epic. The only comparable scenario I can imagine would be if Warner Brothers decided to hand over the Batman Franchise to Lars Von Trier after Nolan completes his troika. You know what, that's not a half bad idea. I'd be acutely interested to see what sort of unexplored thematic and sub textual context could be brought to the surface on the exhausted genre of the summer blockbuster when put in hands that weren't afraid to get dirty. I want Gaspar Noe to direct The Avengers. I want Shinya Tsukamoto given 250 million dollars and put in charge of the third Tron movie. I want Pascal Laugier to helm the next catastrophe-porn or alien invasion movie. I want film makers who can't be trusted to handle the projects usually reserved for bankable craftsmen like Spielberg, Bay and Scott. I'm not the least bit interested in watching no-budget, faux failures from no talent losers like Birdemic and The Room, I want high priced, high minded failures from certifiable madmen. The kind that bankrupt studios and become a warning sign for generations to come. I want movies to be dangerous and interesting again!

Or we can go see Thor in a couple weeks.

Rob Zombie

2011-04-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

Rob Zombie is the most important, groundbreaking and visionary film maker working in the horror genre today. He is also the only one (to paraphrase an old Norman Mailer quote concerning William S. Burroughs) to be possessed by genius. Neil Marshall, Eli Roth, James Wan and Darren Lynn Bousman are all competent craftsmen (in varying degrees) and each have a film or two that is quite good, bordering on great. Zombie though, has birthed 4 of the most outrageous, divisive and challenging films of the last decade. I realize that the small cadre of fellow film enthusiasts who wander over to this screed will no doubt be shocked by what I am about to assert and that their estimation of my credibility will be irrevocably diminished. But this is something I feel strongly about and I refuse to hold my tongue on the subject any longer.

When House of 1,000 Corpses was released in April of 2003, I had essentially lost interest in cinema in general and genre film in particular. I went into the theater with meager expectations, having outgrown Zombie's music years prior and letting the man slip completely off my radar once he left White Zombie to form his solo project. In a word, I was devastated. I was completely unprepared for the anarchic mess blasted onto the screen like someones innards blown out their back by a shotgun. To paraphrase Coppola's egotistical assertion ( I love to paraphrase) that Apocalypse Now wasn't about Vietnam, it WAS Vietnam, House of 1,000 Corpses isn't a horror movie, it's EVERY HORROR MOVIE. It contains trace elements of everything from the Gothic angularity of Bride of Frankenstein and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the raw, confrontational power of Last House on the Left and Cannibal Holocaust. Its cinematography is as sweeping in scope as the gulf between Suspiria's primary elegance and the dusty, deserted carnival of Hooper's Funhouse. To put it simply though, it's a retelling of Texas Chainsaw Massacre filtered through the sensibilities of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and that my friends is as sweet a combination to me as the mystical pairing of peanut butter and chocolate.

House of 1,000 Corpses is the film that re-ignited my love of all things horror. I went to see this in the theater by myself Saturday of its opening weekend and I vividly remember being so enthralled and overwhelmed by its audacity that I ran from friend to friend demanding they see it. This resulted in me seeing the film 5 times theatrically and press ganging no small amount of acquaintances into sitting through something they otherwise never would have. Every single time I saw it, without exception, there were walkouts. Usually after the nonsensical non-sequitir's shot in lurid photo negative, such as the "skunk ape" riff, some disgruntled dude would grab his girlfriends hand, stand them both up and loudly proclaim, "That's it, I've had enough of this shit!" and proceed to stomp disgustedly out the door. I found this heady stew of incongruent cryptozoological references, multitudinous horror imagery and audience provocation intoxicating.

My favorite reaction I was privy to during any of my viewings though, was during the scene when Moseley's Otis shoots Walton Goggins' Officer Nash in the face after an uncomfortably protracted crane shot. Zombie forces the rubberneckers out for a simplistic horror flick to silently stare at the image of an authority figure on his knees about to be executed by the apotheosis in degeneracy for what seems like an eternity. "Just fucking shoot him already!" one man exasperatedly howled before standing up and leaving once he had. And that's the point. The film, especially at the time it was released, shortly after the 2nd invasion of Iraq, felt like a transgression. It seemed as if a silent accord had been struck between America's heathen underground and a cult leader artist who aspired to be nothing short of Manson gone Hollywood, espousing the philosophy of killing at will because, "that's the way".

The Devil's Rejects took this moral fearlessness improbably further, but grounded it all in a stunning, singularity of vision and tone that saw Zombie maturing exponentially as a film maker. It's the one film of his most folks can agree to liking, and while not my favorite, it stirs in me a curious reaction of wistful melancholy every time I watch it. I'm no Grindhouse aficionado and certainly no supporter of Southern Radio Rock from the 70's, but the manner in which Zombie paints the wind burnt poetry of these tragic scumbags co-existing with the blood drenched lunacy they embody is truly something to behold. The "Freebird" ending is a perfect encapsulation of the outlaws dawning realization of inescapable obsolescence coupled with an acceptance both knowing and defiant. The soaring steadi-cam credit sequence of desolate, mountainous highways set to Terry Reid's Seed of Memory feels like a blissful elegy draping the film in a funeral shroud. The Devil's Rejects makes one feel nostalgic for a life they never lived in a time that never existed.

Now, the problematic part. Remaking Halloween was never going to be met with any thing but howls of blasphemy and the sort of hand wringing and endless wailing more suited to incensed religious extremists than horror fans. The original film is undeniably important and canonical. The first time I saw Zombie's Halloween (once I got past the excruciating opening dialog at the breakfast table at least) I was extremely impressed. I thought the young Michael stuff was fascinating and surprisingly heartfelt and I thought Tyler Mane's Shape was intimidating and looked cool as fuck. The more I watched it and the more I fell in with the online horror community, the more I began to share in the consensus revulsion toward it. Tempered by time, I consider it a film as spectacularly bold as it is monumentally flawed. If he could have followed through with his vision instead of grafting a regrettably sub par condensed version of Carpenter's classic on to the end of his film, we might have had something. As it stands, greatness exists within it dilapidated, rotten framework, if you care (or can stand) to look. The riotous Big Joe Grizzly scene. Michael's mask obsession further explored. The young Michael slaughtering his family at home and the bully in the woods. These inspired elements however, do not add up to a cohesive or satisfying whole.

Halloween 2 is the moment when Zombie officially stopped caring what anyone thought and committed to his vision 100%. It is the product of a true auteur at the height of his craft. I won't bother defending the narrative choices made except to say I am of the opinion they require no excuse. I love everything about the direction he took the characters, the psychological mumbo-jumbo he attached to Myers and especially how the tone vacillates wildly from exploitative to dramatic to comedic to outright ridiculous, sometimes within the confines of a single scene. No, my friends, I didn't come here to defend Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, I came to praise it. It is jaw droppingly bizarre, unapologetic with its experimentation and brutal beyond belief. I'm frankly shocked this film made it into theaters, but thank god it did as I revelled in its sanguinary passion no less than three times on a gargantuan screen at the local multiplex.

H2 is otherworldly from the first frame to the last, a disjointed nightmare run amok. The first 20 minutes are so beautifully shot and composed it nearly brings a tear to my eye each time I watch it. The murders are so unrepentantly vicious it's almost embarrassing. They serve as a well needed reminder to the calloused horror fan of how awful and ugly taking a life really is. It's a cinematic opera whose movements are comprised primarily of violence and mental sickness. It's everything I want horror to be. Beauty and ugliness in equal measure melting my synapses with irradiated imagery and cacophonous sound. I believe in time it will come to be well regarded for the miraculous oddity it is. It's a film with huge balls backed up by huge talent, and freakshows like that tend to put people off at first.

Zombie is prepping now to begin shooting Lords of Salem in Massachusetts this May. I'm tremulous with anticipation at the prospect of Zombie back in the Director's chair, fashioning his own film from his own story and mythos. The fact that Oren Pelli's production company, fresh off the resounding success of Insidious, is presenting this is a marvelous omen. I sense a reconciliation with the fanboys on the level of Elvis' 68 Comeback Special in the making. However it shakes out, I guarantee I'll be there front and center for multiple viewings, an acolyte awaiting further instruction in the realms of artistically photographed depravity.

Insidious: A Review

2011-04-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

I've always been a fan of James Wan and Leigh Whannell. I enjoy the Saw franchise a great deal and have a ton of respect for their first installment with the brash manner it ushered in a new age in horror. Their follow up, Dead Silence, is an enormously entertaining and effective chiller made all the more impressive for how divergent a path it took from the established success of Saw. Death Sentence found them stretching their wings even further with a (perhaps ill-advised) foray into the vigilante genre. Insidious feels like a return to form for the duo, a low budget, no-nonsense presentation of an original story scripted by and co-starring Whannell that finds the diminutive Wan behind the camera and seemingly at the height of his directorial powers.

Let me first say that Insidious is exactly the kind of movie the horror genre needs right now. It's not necessarily breaking a lot of new ground and it certainly isn't serving up hidden subtext concerning the dissolution of the American family or the lamentable state of our faltering economy. No, it strives for a goal no more lofty than providing us with a scary movie that is never boring and on those deceptively simple terms, it is wildly, inventively successful. What a novel concept, a horror film that is actually horrifying. We've been so anesthetized by flaccid remakes and winking, self aware wannabe exploitation garbage, we've forgotten what it feels like to sit in a theater gripped by genuine tension for an hour and a half. There was a palpable discomfort in the audience I saw this with that would periodically give way to waves of cathartic exclamations and nervous laughter. In short, Wan played the audience deftly with his well timed scares, but more than expert editing and staccato bursts of sound were involved in crafting such a profoundly chilling film.

We generally care about the afflicted family thanks to likable, solid performances that ground the characters actions and reactions in the vicinity of believability, thus never straining credulity or grating on the nerves. I liked these people and didn't want harm to befall them, so when they would venture down a darkened corridor, I was on the edge of my seat, whereas a similar scenario in a slasher film chock full of walking stereotypes would illicit yawns. It was strange to find myself watching a horror film where I felt something other than irritable tolerance at best and outright contempt at worst toward the people on the screen. Long time genre stalwart Lin Shaye in particular contributes some very special work in this film. She takes a stock character in these sort of films and imbues it with genuine warmth and humanity, providing invaluable assistance in encouraging the audience to follow along the very interesting journey the second half becomes. Some people are saying the wild card nature of the last third revelation sullies the more traditional build up, but I couldn't disagree more. I think it's a bold and interesting choice that mostly pays off, giving the film its own identity and giving the viewer something new to be afraid of when we put our head down on our pillow at night.

The fact that this film reportedly cost only 800,000 to produce is something that absolutely needs to be recognized and applauded, not to mention a practice that must be adopted by others if the horror genre is to continue flourishing in an independent, creative and profitable fashion. I could clearly see where corners were being cut, but a director with talent and ingenuity can always use that to their advantage. It's PG-13 rating didn't hurt it in the least considering it was infinitely scarier than most all recent films with gratuitous language, nudity and gore. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't single out the pants shittingly brilliant work of Joseph Bishara with his terrifying original music.

Perhaps sometimes I look too deeply into movies for meaning and relevance. I won't get all hyperbolic on this one, folks. It's just a great horror film, nothing more and nothing less. Solid entertainment that does our genre proud and deserves to be patronized early and often so as to send a message that we would like some more along these lines, thank you very much.

Where He Was Going

2011-03-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

I've received a fair amount of feedback from friends both corporeal and digital regarding my weak in the knees, swooning reaction to Zach Snyder's magnum opus Sucker Punch. Apparently, the general consensus is that the film is the epitome of style over substance and a clear indication of the lack of purpose or meaning in modern genre film making. I hear a lot of talk about plot holes and the lack of "stakes" for the characters. I see Sucker Punch, along with a handful of other recent films and oddball classics, as being indicative of a revolutionary approach toward film as an art form. I'm stressing the word art in that last proclamation. I'm specifically referring to the capacity of imagery coupled with sound design and music to elicit a subconscious reaction in the viewer.

Let me be clear when I say that I am sick to death of traditional narrative film. I find it predictable and one dimensional. I'm bored to tears by origin stories and historical dramas and romantic comedies and leaden thrillers. I love subtext and meaning in film, but I want to either discover it or create it on my own. I am at this point in my life vastly more interested in style, ambiance, atmosphere and feel than the dubious comforts the conventional approach affords. I walked out of Battle LA because I found the rote, documentary-style template draped across the painfully familiar trappings of its story to be the absolute height of tedium. I knew where it was going and how it would end roughly 5 minutes in, so why should I torture myself with its limited palette and pedestrian presentation? Take Tetsuo: The Iron Man for example. Here is a film with the flimsiest and most non-existent of plot lines, yet it is so majestically propulsive and bewildering as to overwhelm one completely with jagged angles, nightmare shadows and primal screaming. It's a 67 minute howl of crossbred genetics and apocalyptic transmutations making as little sense as that truncated synopsis suggests. Would this be greatly improved by a tertiary character presenting the hero with a necklace to be emblematic of something about their dull, strained relationship?

I have precious little interest left in the intricacies of human relationships. I get it, you know? I no longer need the fine print. For example, consider an execrable piece of garbage like Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. A film about the problems that crop up in the relationship between two crushingly unlikable people playing out as an unlistenable loop of unrealistic dialog screeched by two wholly untalented actors. Now consider Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Same basic premise: a meet cute followed by concerns of fidelity further muddied by the baggage of past relationships. Except in this instance, the struggle is vividly evoked by endlessly inventive visual metaphors. The relationship is made believable and the characters 3 dimensional through their literal ACTIONS in the dazzling fight sequences. I can think of no clearer example of how to properly utilize the narrative freedom of the visual and sonic medium of film. I've had enough awful arguments with exes to know for damn sure that I don't want to listen to that shallow invective turned up to 11 and played back writ large on the silver screen. Scott Pilgrim however, terraforms the same territory into terrain worth traversing again thanks to imagination and creativity, socially acceptable shot composition and blocking be damned!

I also love pastiche and consider it to be an invaluable and underused tool. Natural Born Killers is the finest example of what can be accomplished with this technique when used right. I want my films to be an explosion of images, sounds, words, varying film stock, computer graphics, cell animation, stop motion, hell, whatever you've got! I've seen thousands upon thousands of movies at this point in my life. I've tried to study as many eras and nationalities and genres as possible and while I've learned a great deal about them, I want to be wowed above all else at this point. I want to be dazzled, left with my jaw on the floor and a lump in my throat. If film makers can provide me with the stimulus I need constructed in a masterly fashion, I can provide the subtext and the personal relation to the material. I have had plenty of practice, believe me. I need films to be more like Rob Zombies Halloween 2 (yeah I said it goddammit!), Antichrist, Speed Racer, Irreversible, Vital, Apocalypse Now, Nosferatu, The Beyond, Naked Lunch, The Red Shoes and 2001 and less like Oscar winning headache The Hurt Locker.

Of course, I'm a sucker for anything starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and am super stoked for Fast Five, so what the fuck do I know?

Sucker Punch

2011-03-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Sucker Punch has just walked it's first painful, yet necessary steps toward becoming a bona-fide cult classic and indisputable turning point in the evolution of cinema as an art form. It's come in 2nd at the box office, losing it's opening weekend to a low rent kiddie flick, making a dismal 19 million. It's also taken a brutal drubbing at the hands of the critical establishment and been on the receiving end of some of the nastiest derision the online nerd community has ever dished out. I would hope most sensible people with any understanding of the ebb and flow of film could brush aside the short sighted nay saying of stodgy, unimaginative cinema scribes and ignore ignorant venom spewed by the veritable masters of the vitriolic and vulgar put down. The problem with the internet (oh, so very many problems) as far as online film discussion is concerned, is that there are so many voices, the simplest way to get yours noticed is to be the loudest, angriest and ugliest. While that might get your page a pile of hits and might make for a fleeting, one sided laugh here and there, it does nothing for the intelligent, thoughtful exploration of cinema as a serious art form.

The riddle of Sucker Punch is two-fold. The first layer of debate must address the films complicated content and how it fearlessly challenges its intended audiences ingrained attitude toward women. Men have proven time and again with their words and dollars they explicitly endorse the infantilizing and sexualizing of female characters in film beyond all reason and rationale. Now here comes a movie with something to say about the lascivious male gaze and how it more or less forces women into a literal and figurative corner. Not only in terms of how they fight for their own freedom, power and independence, but also with what tools they have been afforded. Whether through the metaphor of the insane asylum or the burlesque house, this film is about women who have been damaged by abuse, forced into servitude by a leering patriarchy and have to judiciously use their sexuality as a weapon to fight tooth and nail for every inch of their own empowerment. I'm not suggesting that every woman in the world is essentially a stripper or a prostitute, just that every woman is all too keenly aware of being watched, judged and leered at, whether they're dancing on a stage, standing in line at the grocery store or pumping gas. They exist in a culture that demands physical perfection and walk a tight rope of either being ostracized for not conforming to that standard or relentlessly objectified for having the audacity to wear clothes that fit.

Sucker Punch has, in my opinion, raised the considerable ire of fanboys, not for the temerity of its supposed hypocrisy, but for choosing to make a group of likable, intelligent young women actual action heroes. These women are a formidable fighting force that work together to achieve clearly defined goals and do so while being unmistakably feminine. Yes, they wear clothes that accent their form, but no more so than the skimpy, muscle revealing and nowhere near battlefield-appropriate attire male action stars have worn throughout the years. When I was watching the women of Sucker Punch make their way through the trench warfare sequence, I was struck by how much ass they were kicking, not by how good their asses looked. I think a lot of dudes are disgusted by this movie because they wanted to get an eyeful of pouty babes in fetish gear and instead were confronted with a film that treated the women like flesh and blood characters whose plight we were interested and invested in. The fact that they looked fantastic is secondary and a by-product of the dismissive regard their loutish captors hold them in. Not exactly the sort of subtext 19 year old boys who have only had a serious relationship with online pornography want to be faced with while watching an action/fantasy film. I'm not saying this film is the be-all end-all treatise on feminism in the modern age or anything, just that it deserves a great deal more thought put into its appraisal than most are giving it and that it should be commended for tackling such a difficult issue in such an entertaining and absorbing fashion.

The second matter to be addressed when dissecting Sucker Punch is the boldness of how it visually presents its narrative and the truly next level shit going on with how Snyder is putting it up there on the screen. People are calling this film a mess and saying it rips off the dream level motif of Inception. Both of those claims are patently ridiculous. There was no point anywhere in this film that I didn't understand exactly what was going on: who was doing what, why they were doing it, what the stakes were, what items represented and so on and so forth. No small feat considering Snyder doesn't bother to explain how he's going to convey his story, he just does it. That is the mark of a true auteur. He simply puts it on the screen and it's up to you to get on board and keep up with him. I loved Inception when I saw it in the theater and revelled in the layer after layer of hidden meaning and subtext and spirited debate it occasioned, yet after purchasing the bluray and trying to watch it at home, I couldn't get more than 40 minutes in before shutting it off. Inception is a math problem I've already solved. I could give a fuck less about Dom Cobb and his team of dream thieves and his imaginary wife and kids. Sucker Punch however has the potential to be endlessly, imminently re watchable, because it's pure visceral and emotional impact populated by characters I actually like and care about trying to accomplish something I can get behind. You don't have to suffer through pages of plodding exposition to get to the thrills and the heart of Sucker Punch, it pulls you breathlessly into and through its gorgeous, fascinating world from the first frame to the last. I've seen it twice already and am going to it again tonight (3 days in a row) if that gives you any indication of how enjoyable a cinematic experience it is to escape the drudgery of life into.

Now that I've attended to the brussel sprouts of illuminating theme, subtext and narrative structural conceits, I'd like to indulge in the dessert buffet of jaw dropping action scenes. There are 4 set pieces so fully envisioned and forcefully realized, they would each by themselves be the best part of any other action movie, but we're treated to all 4 of them competing for our favor in 1 film! I can foresee this being the sort of thing where on bluray, each viewing will find one sequence standing out over the others, only to be usurped by another with each subsequent watch. Each scene is aesthetically different from each other: shot differently, edited differently, has a different feel and a different rhythm. This is a film that can never get boring due to the boundless creativity and variety on display. I can't wait for people to catch up to this film in a few years and finally figure out what the hell was really going on. Watch the scene with the mechanoids on the train car if you need any more proof that Snyder is not only the best action director of his generation, but possibly of all time. He manages to convey kineticism, emotion and impact without ever sacrificing geography, spatial relations or visual acuity. Sure, he loves speed ramping and high resolution slow motion, but he perfects those techniques further here and finds ways to be endlessly inventive with them all the while adding new tools to his arsenal with each film. If you don't feel a catch in your throat as your breath is taken away by the conclusion of the dragon sequence in Sucker Punch, you have no true love for the movies left in your heart.

Time will be kind to this film. Right now, there are a metric shit ton of angry, powerless, talentless losers sitting in their parents basement who have collectively decided to do everything they can to take down a seemingly genial and pleasant man because he's endeavored to make great action films and elevate the genre to high art. People like to see failure, even if it's a manufactured failure predicated on a bitter lie.

Shloggs Speaks!

2011-02-23T16:39:00.000-08:00

I recently had the distinct pleasure of chatting with Axl and Jscott of my favorite movie podcast Profondo Cinema about life, film and No Country for Old Men on their most recent episode. Please do me a favor and give my ramblings a listen and do yourself a favor by checking out their extensive back catalog. These guys are the best in the business and make every Wednesday one to look forward to.

You Know What's Great?: The Night Flier

2011-02-21T19:36:00.000-08:00

All right Goddammit. Enough is enough. I can not and will not sit idly by and allow this travesty to remain unaddressed. Mark Pavia's 1997 The Night Flier is an undeniable masterpiece and in my opinion the 3rd best horror film of the 90's behind Seven and Candyman. Never has the trashy, propulsive tone and unpretentious, working man dynamic of Stephen King source material been so faithfully translated apart from perhaps Mary Lambert's Pet Semetery (which I also consider a damn near perfect film). It comes across like a really great Tales From The Crypt installment or Creepshow vignette given room to breathe and subsequently blossoming into dark parable programmer perfection. In all honesty, it's a film that I always am in the mood to and would gladly watch. That, my dear friends, puts it in rarefied company with the immortal likes of Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Goodfellas and Fulci's top 3 (The Beyond, City of the Living Dead and Zombie).

What's that you say? You've never bothered to give it a look? You saw it on the video store shelves and thought it looked lame? Shame and woe upon your household fellow home theater traveler, cause The Night Flier has everything good horror requires. It boasts impeccable atmosphere made all the more commendable by it's readily apparent low budget. It swims in some strange production ether betwixt made for cable and direct to DVD, yet triumphantly succeeds thanks to Pavia's clever direction and blocking which subtly serve to amp up the pulpy proceedings. Even the horrendous late 90's fashions defy conventional logic and against all odds bolster the films already ample charm.

It features uniformly solid performances with several stand outs, namely Miguel Ferrer as Rick Dees, the most lovable asshole ever committed to film. He's a tabloid reporter introduced to us storming into his editor's office, throwing down the latest issue and bellowing "Where's my goddamn dead baby?!?!" in reference to an absent front page picture he worked so hard to acquire. I can think of no more forceful and off putting a line with which to introduce our lead character, but all be damned if Ferrer's authoritatively honeyed voice doesn't pull it of with effortless aplomb. Seriously, Miguel Ferrer has one of cinema's greatest voices and it belongs in the pantheon next to other gravelly greats like Lance Henricksen and Michael Wincott. Miguel Ferrer's agitated presence and explosive charisma go a hell of a long way toward elevating The Night Flier from passable Tuesday night time waster to grand melodrama. A Faustian tragedy laced with cutting, incisive commentary on the parasitic nature of the media and the dark heart beating beneath humanity's morbid curiosity concerning suffering and the unknowable. Shit yeah, it's that fucking deep and I'm serious as a heart attack.

Gore, you ask? Hells yes there's gore. It's not gratuitous nonsense inserted for cheap laughs and a Fangoria spread. It eloquently supports the tragic elements of the story and reinforces the dangerous dimensions of the narrative's inherent nastiness. KNB does some truly unsettling work here and every last shred of it is necessary and perfectly photographed to maximize its impact. Brian Keane contributes an elegant, lilting little piano melody for a score and it suits the material perfectly, coloring the tone with mystery and sadness. Every time I watch the film I have it stuck in my head for days. And you know what? It's so damn good that doesn't even bother me.

It might seem like I'm being hyperbolic for the sake of comedy, but I legitimately feel this way about The Night Flier. I can not fathom why it is not frequently feted and righteously revered along with other more well known King adaptations such as The Mist, Pet Semetery, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. Budgetary limitations aside, I consider it to be every bit those films equal and a damn sight better than the middling garbage most horror nerds espouse as greatness. It is, in my humble opinion, THE most under rated horror film of all time and future generations will no doubt erect monuments to its towering brilliance and ethereal grandiloquence.

A World of Unending Horror

2011-02-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror by David J. Skal and was so captivated, I decided to flip back to the beginning and start plowing through it again. Anybody who knows me at least reasonably well knows these 2 things. 1. I love the Universal Monsters in particular and classic era (1921-1941) horror in general to a degree most reasonable people would deem unhealthy and 2. I have no hobby more cherished than sussing out, assigning (I suppose in some cases outright inventing) and endlessly pontificating on the social and political origins, subtext and relevance of the horror genre. Therefore, it's a no brainer that this tome should have so thoroughly enraptured me. In essence, the book lays bare the gnarled roots of the horror genre, tracing them like dessicated veins back to the polluted wellspring of the first World War. The ghastly, ghost like mutilated veterans of that conflagration served as shameful, phantasmagoric reminders while the resultant global economic collapse deepened the still fresh wound and fostered a thick atmosphere of malaise, distrust and hopelessness. These unceasing stressors needed to be addressed, sigilized and therapeutically exorcised. Thus began the first great horror cycle proper and the proletariat's love affair with transforming their unspoken nightmares into dark cinematic iconography so as to safely comprehend, then symbolically dispel them.

Most folks I interact with, be it in the flesh or through technological screen, seem to think I place to much stock in my strained, crackpot theories concerning the monumental relevance of films as dubious and disparate as Tetsuo: the iron man, The Night Flier and (heaven forbid!) Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. I suppose it's no shocking revelation to admit that I walk through life with a heavy heart. Thinking too much, seeing that which might not be there and struggling with staring into the abyss of fathomless, unknowable eternity that awaits my unavoidable expiration. People often tell me to lighten up, but that strikes me as silly considering I've always been drawn to and fascinated by darkness. My first truly potent reaction to a film was James Whale's Frankenstein on Count Dracula Presents, an earnest, low budget horror host show on a local station. My father would haul the household television into my room on Saturday nights so I could cower under the covers and drift off to sleep while Frankenstein lumbered, The Mummy shambled and Colin Clive launched into histrionics. There was no way I could possibly intuit the subtext of these depression era shockers, I simply fell in love with the look and feel of them. The wafting fog and stilted melodrama. The sparse staging and chiaroscuro cadence of their aesthetic presentation captivated me. I wanted to live in ruined castles with gargantuan fireplaces illuminating cobwebbed corridors. I even asked my father if I could sleep in a coffin, a request he gently disparaged and wisely denied.

I strongly urge anyone with even a passing interest in the genesis of horror films to give Mr. Skal's book a shot. It's beautifully and passionately written, containing surprisingly florid and poetic insights concerning this dark carnival of human experience we all gain admittance to at birth. It has rekindled my burning passion for analytical film appreciation and instilled a cultural awareness whose significance extends beyond tabloid celebrities and fleeting teen sensations. Most people (especially film critics) are ignorantly dismissive of the genre and choose to bestow windy kudos on dramas that are dry, leaden and cloying, not to mention entirely forgotten once the Oscar dust settles. It's the monsters that are forever.

Rondo shock!

2011-02-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

Apparently, my misanthropic tendencies and blowhard reverie style has been noticed by the illustrious folks at the Rondo Awards and I have been honored with a nomination for the Best Blog of 2010! It is beyond humbling to have my work recognized by the organization and to be alongside such fantastic writers! I would greatly appreciate any votes, my category is #16 and the instructions to vote and ballot can be located at RondoAward.com. Thanks again to all my readers!

You know what's great?: Hostel

2011-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

You know what's great? Hostel: Eli Roth's 2005 paean to the exploitative impulses inherent in the ignorant and entitled American male mind scape. A lot of 80's obsessed, torture porn hating online scribes and personalities will try to convince you it's a pointless wallow in dim witted frat boy antics devoid of style, purpose or merit. These are the same people who thought Piranha 3-D was a watershed of self aware brilliance and they couldn't be more wrong or more blind to the converse actuality. Hostel is about a great many things: the rise of anti-Americanism in the wake of the 2nd Iraq invasion, the preponderance of online avenues for snuff entertainment and the barbarous nature of the male youth of our country, incapable of empathy or reflection, raised on a steady diet of casual misogyny and pervasive pornography. Above all else though, it's a film about these characters slow realization that despite their delusions of proprietary dominion over all they encounter, they are nothing more than commodified meat to be bought, sold and exploited, precisely as they had done earlier with prostitutes in the red light district.

The construction of the narrative and the manner in which the plot unfolds is nothing short of masterful. We don't neccesarily like our thrill seeking protagonists, but we don't need to. This isn't a romantic comedy or redemptive drama. This is a harsh light being cast on the callous, bougoise dickheads who tag team hookers and spit nasty invective at any woman that doesn't meet their impossibly high double standards of physical perfection and unquestioning willingness to be "railed". When prince Paxton refers to bestiality cause a larger (actually realistic) woman he sees is "a fucking hog", it's not supposed to tickle our funnybone. It's an insight into a character who expects every female he encounters to be a toned, flawless plastic fuck doll. These men stomp off wherever their unquenchable libido leads them and seem to find exactly what they wanted. Assiduously, Roth strips the situation of its glamour. From one triumph to the next, foreboding details slip into sharper relief until the disappearance of two of his comrades forces Paxton to contemplate the severity of his predicament. He pleads his case to a dismissive policeman, who after learning he is an American quietly intones with knowing empathy, "You are so far from home". It's positively chilling.

To me, the greatest moment is when Paxton, alone and beyond frustrated by his fruitless search for his friends tracks down the two gorgeous locals who had attached themselves to his group at the hostel. There is no techno music now, no strobe lights, no dolled up beauties out in their dancing clothes. Just two disinterested working girls, barely recognizable without makeup and accompanied by a sinister brute in a smoky dive bar. The veneer of bar hopping and sport fucking is shorn as if with a razor, leaving bare and exposed the visage of the ultimate morning after. This is the point of Hostel and its penultimate moment, not the fantasia of lust and flesh that precedes it or the horrific dungeon hell it descends into following it. It's that crystalline realization this carefree party boy has that the party is over and he has no more friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love the inner workings of the Hostel and the Slavic behemoths in black jackets that serve as its security force. I love the gore and glimpsed atrocities Paxton witnesses while being dragged to his private hell. But Roth is wise in never showing too much of what goes on in these rooms, the mind fills in the blanks beautifully. His cinematography is impeccable, particularly that long shot of Paxton being led into the abandoned refinery that evokes Frye's introduction to Lugosi in Browning's Dracula. The Nathan Barr score is fascinating in how it teeters between lush strings and bombastic, energetic camp. The performances are uniformly excellent and the KNB gore beyond reproach. Why do people hate it so? I suspect because they hate Roth and begrudge him his success. Or perhaps they are unwilling to gaze too deeply into the unflattering mirror it holds up to the ugly and cynical modern American male we've all more or less devolved into. Whatever the reason, it's a film that will outlive its detractors because it is well made, clever and has a point. It touches on the problems, fears and reprehensible desires of our times with more potency, force and conviction than any of the last decades best picture Oscar winners could ever dream of.

You know what's great? The Passion of the Christ

2011-01-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

You know what's great? The Passion of the Christ. I'm sure people would imagine I'm being ironic with that statement, but I assure all 3 of you reading this that I couldn't be more serious. I mean, I hate organized religion and am an atheist as much as the next sane, rational person is, but goddamn if I don't love me the story of Jesus Christ. I first became aware of my affinity for it when my parents took me, a 15 year old metal head and Slayer devotee, kicking and screaming to a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This wasn't some crap dinner theater go 'round mind you. This was at the historic Orpheum theater in downtown Mpls. with Carl Andersen and Ted Neely reprising their respective roles of Judas and Jesus from the Norman Jewison film adaptation. I enjoyed the outdated hippie/funk score in an slightly cynical fashion, but the Tim Rice lyrics blew me away with their heady mixture of winking, knowing sarcasm and tortured, dark poetry. Ted Neely hitting the high note "whyyyyyyyyyy!!!" during the apex of The Garden of Gethsemane was then, and is still to this day the most overwhelming and profoundly moving live musical moment I've experienced, and I've seen Sunny Day Real Estate, Dimmu Borgir AND Ice-T.

It doesn't bother me that Mel glosses over the teachings and philosophy of Jesus to focus primarily on those last torturous hours of his existence. I know the story of Jesus (better than most Christians I've met I might add), so I have no need for yet another origin story. Most importantly though, The Passion of the Christ is a deeply personal artistic and spiritual statement from Mel Gibson. It is what he feels his religion to be about and watching it the other night on bluray, it struck me just how ballsy the film is and what a catastrophic failure it could have been. This is a film seemingly designed to sicken the non-believing segment of the populace while challenging the sincerity of the supposedly devout. It is a complex assault on the mind, heart, ears and eyes that clearly comes from a film maker as interested in punishing himself for his transgressions as he is in castigating his audience for either their disbelief or (perhaps in his eyes even worse) middling, lukewarm devotion. Before tumbling down a theological rabbit hole that will inevitably lead to confronting the sticky anti-Semitism questions and salacious tabloid shenanigans Heir Direktor has found himself mired in for the last 5 years, I will now detour back to the road I'm most comfortable travelling: appraising the film as a piece of art and its effect on me over the course of multiple viewings spread across several years.

It opens in the garden of Gethsemane on Jesus wrestling with his fear of impending imprisonment, torture and death. He pleads skyward with his silent father to let this unfortunate task pass from him, all the while sweating blood and being coldly questioned and taunted by what is unquestioningly my favorite cinematic interpretation of Satan. This opening is pure Universal horror with moonlit skies and oppressive mist drifting over the proceedings like a funeral shroud. From the first frame, Mel isn't fucking around here. This is going to be dark, scary and decidedly serious. It's filmed like a slow motion nightmare, the characters move as if through glue, inexorably toward their predetermined fate. Of the many brilliant decisions Mel makes, the choice to present it in Aramaic and Latin is perhaps the most fortuitous. It lends credence to the ancient world he's created and bathes the dialog in a mysterious, menacing musicality.

The horrific tone doesn't let up as we witness Judas hounded to suicide by bestial phantoms and demonic, deformed children. The familiar chords are struck as Simon denies him 3 times, Caiaphas takes Jesus to Pilate, Pilate sends him to Herod, then Herod back to Pilate. Jesus' stoic acceptance of his purposeful fate is inspiring and heartbreaking to watch as he's transported back and forth, beaten and shackled to answer meaningless questions from powerless public servants. Pilate, in an attempt to appease the bloodthirsty mob, sentences Jesus to a whipping, that escalates into a scourging that can only be described as the most effective portrayal of mans inhumanity to man ever put to film. As I previously stated, I'm a non-believer, but I openly wept during this sequence in the theater, seated next to a matronly septuagenarian similarly overcome by pity and shocked sadness. As the scene begins, you can feel your stomach drop, as if having reached the precipice of a roller-coaster, about to descend into the bowels of hellish atrocity. Yes, it is pornographic in its depiction of violence, but it serves the story. Hell, it IS the point of the story.

A word on Caviezel here: His portrayal of Christ is definitive. It's a staggering work of control, charisma, athleticism and power. He exudes both otherworldly magnetism and earthy reality. He is someone who, with a look, you would gladly follow into hell. His face fills the frame with beseeching authority, daring you to look and daring you to look away. That he wasn't even nominated shows the Oscars for the shallow, image based scam that they are.

As we move onto the stations of the cross, the film heads to what I believe to be its defining moment and certainly one of the most indelible images ever captured by a camera. Mary, who has thus far been grim and desultory on the periphery of this filial holocaust is now trying to reach her son as he carries his cross to Golgotha. She can not bear to see him this way, but then he falls in slow motion and we cut to a flashback of him falling as a child and her running to his aid. She runs to him and the two time frames are juxtaposed. A mother's love is forever. She's by his side now, her son hideously destroyed by the hatred of his fellow man. He touches her face and reassures her with the line, "See mother, I make all things new.". He embraces his burden and RISES in the most devastating image of Christ I've ever seen in any medium. Every time I see the film, I am flattened by this scene. It absolutely destroys me. The subsequent journey and ultimately, crucifixion, is like falling into oblivion as the torture and indignity of it all finally gives way to his expiration and our release from this arduous, yet rewarding ordeal.

This is a film of great beauty and great horror, usually working in tandem. The camera work is fluid and gorgeous, the actors perfectly cast and impeccably directed to superlative performances. The score, a tonally fluctuating masterwork and the images a display of endlessly inventive creativity and painterly perfection. I mean sure, nobody ever wants to watch it with me, but it isn't the first time I've been alone on my devotional appreciation of a film. Maybe I'm just a closet Christian as my wife suggests or I simply have an abiding love for martyrs and the poetry of brutality. Either way, The Passion of the Christ is a marvelous film that I will be watching, studying and being emotionally exhausted by for the rest of my life.

2010: through the eyes of a child

2011-01-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

I saw a metric shit ton of films in the theater this year. I've always felt a deep reverence for the theater going experience that was no doubt instilled in me by my father. He took me to films like Predator, Robocop, Dune, Legend, Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Clash of the Titans and Gremlins to name but a few. He took me to not just all the Arnold movies, but the Seagal and even the VanDamme ones as well. We walked out of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy together and laughed knowingly at the pure awesomeness of Brad Dourif's performance in Graveyard Shift. The point is, my formative years were filled with wonder for the spectacle of cinema and that blossomed into a full blown obsession with devouring all of it that I could and comprehending the craft that went into producing it.

My son turned 9 this year and I completed the cinematic circle of life by taking him to everything he was interested in (and some that he wasn't) and imparting some of my knowledge of film in our car ride home discussions. I rediscovered a large part of my wonder and naivete for the magic of film this last year by seeing so many movies through my sons eyes. I think a lot of Internet film nerds who write 4 page dissertations on why Tron:Legacy is such a piece of insulting shit should perhaps attempt to procreate so as to gain a window into what magnetically drew them to movies in the first place. I became painfully aware of what's wrong and what's right with the Internet in regards to the "online film community" this year. There's not much right really. It's great that you can order any film you want at the drop of a hat and there are some intelligent writers out there, but there were intelligent writers before the Internet (arguably a great deal more) and there's something to be said about putting in the effort to track down the film makers you're interested in through painstaking research as opposed to simply perusing online lists and clicking provided links.

I had a hell of a lot of fun at flicks like Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, Tangled, Megamind, Prince of Persia and Shrek Forever After. Admittedly the "through the eyes of a child" whimsy couldn't be called upon to salvage abominations like Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver's Travels, whimsy can only take you so far, folks. I think my favorite film going experience this year was actually Devil. I took my son to see it because I'm trying to find a way to get him interested in horror and this PG-13 flick piqued his curiosity somewhat through televised trailers he'd seen. The short story is it wholly terrified him. He had a remarkably visceral reaction that infected me to the point where the film began to really work on me. I wasn't holding my hands in front of my eyes during the tense parts, but the fact that my son was next to me made the horror much more palpable. The weekday screening we attended was sparsely populated and for the hour and a half it lasted, it felt like we were dislocated from our daily lives and set adrift in outer space with an omniscient vantage point into the events of another world. THAT is what I love about seeing films in the theater. That's why I enjoy seeing films by myself so much. It's far easier to leave thoughts of your dull and crushingly average existence at the door when alone in a darkened auditorium.

That was the highlight of my cinematic year. I saw a lot of great films though. Inception was brilliant of course, but I'm having a hell of a time sitting through it at home on bluray for some reason. I suppose the intellectual exercise of it having been completed robs it of most of its impact. Toy Story 3 was to my mind, the most well made and executed film with the most powerful emotional moments. Scott Pilgrim was kinetic perfection, solidifying Wright's position as a master of the sublimely entertaining and imminently watchable popcorn flick. The Social Network was eerily perfect film making and a prescient snapshot of the disconnected coldness that gave birth to this modern world of disingenuous online relationships and meaningless, unrelenting status updates. To round out the year, Black Swan was a familiar tale well told and True Grit gave us our yearly dose of rascally Coen Brothers goodness.

The Expendables and Piranha 3-D exemplified everything wrong with film and its relationship to online film culture. These films seemed not so much created by artists as brought into existence by an unholy confluence of cynical executives and crass, mouth breathing nerds who are fine with films being merely feature length trailers. Reading the litany of literally and figuratively masturbatory reviews for these lazy highlight reels masquerading as movies made me feel old. It was like in Idiocracy when Luke Wilson longed for a time when "we knew whose ass it was and why it was farting!". Hey kids, flip through your Maxim magazines, wish you grew up in the 80's a little more and take a cold shower. I want no part in this regressive, celebratory dance of self aware irrelevance. I'll hold my films to the standard of containing style, content and story thank you very much.

As for horror, we are entering into another 90's. The fear of external terror, revulsion at torture and paranoia toward the rest of the world that 9/11 and its resultant conflagrations engendered is largely wearing off in the American psyche and the lack of potent meaning and subtext in genre film is lamentably evident. Sure, there were a lot of remakes in the 2000's, but they bore the irrefutable stamp of the time from whence they came. If future generations want to know where the dark, unspoken part of our brains were at, they need but watch 28 Weeks Later, The Hills Have Eyes remake and The Mist. Daybreakers was fun I guess, but I'm not interested in revisiting it. The Crazies was solid, but excruciatingly generic. The Wolfman was beautiful, but flaccid. The Elm Street remake was about as boring, lifeless and pointless as it gets and that's all that needs to be said or written about that film ever again. Predators was a pleasant surprise and Machete flat out fucking ruled with its righteous anger, likable characters and inventive action (all of which Piranha lacked), so thanks for delivering the goods this year Rodriguez. The Last Exorcism could be lauded for its singular approach were it not for the camcorder conceit which I've loathed since Blair Witch. I wouldn't even deign to see Paranormal Activity 2 for this fact and how much I despised the first one. Resident Evil Afterlife was most impressive in Imax 3-D, but at home looks like a polished turd. My beloved Saw series ended with a grimly satisfying but ultimately lackluster entry and Let Me In? No thanks. So yeah, a dull year for horror at best and it doesn't look to be improving in the near future. Even the foreign stuff is drying up.

Oh well, it's all meaningless in any case I suppose. Here we are at the precipice of another year of celebrity deaths, shocking sex crimes, political bickering, ironic Internet memes, reality TV and economic instability. Until all our petrochemical resources run out and we begin a harrowing Mad Max existence, I'll keep on pointlessly expressing my "opinions" and "feelings" toward film and pop culture in this here blog. Happy New Year all!

Black Swan

2010-12-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

It was immensely beneficial for me to have watched The Wrestler for the first time a couple weeks ago before going into this. They're flip sides to the cinema of personal holocaust gender coin with The Wrestler wallowing in a lunkheaded "can't teach an old dog new tricks" masculinity and Black Swan pulverizing the audience with its visceral feminine emotional instability rooted in crippling body image and self worth issues. Aronofsky is clearly coming into his own as an individualistic auteur with these films, but I don't know if I find them as emotionally devastating or technically fascinating as PI or Requiem for a Dream. The less said about The Fountain, the better. What I'm getting at, is that judging by the critical acclaim and box office his last 2 films have garnered, Aronofsky is moving beyond the precocious, blistering genius of his early work into a stately, masterful confidence. He's attaining a most impressive level of consistency and clarity of vision. Whereas that makes his work more palatable, in my estimation, it also makes it more predictable, and therefore, less interesting.

Don't get me wrong, Black Swan is a masterpiece and certainly one of the best films of the year (definitely the best horror film of the year... more on that later). The pitch perfect casting pays off earth shaking dividends with uniformly excellent performances, especially from surefire Oscar winner Portman. The music, cinematography and costume design are all beyond reproach. It's just..... well, I guess I was expecting something more. It says a great deal how spoiled we as cinema enthusiasts are with the likes of Aronofsky, Edgar Wright, Fincher and the Coen Brothers all putting out a film every year or so that I could conceivably be let down by such a well made piece of art. Perhaps it was due to the proximity of my viewing of The Wrestler which gave it a sense of well fashioned redundancy. Perhaps it was because I recently watched my Criterion collection bluray of The Red Shoes and could see where the narrative framework was laid 62 years ago. During Black Swan, I kept flashing back to The Red Shoes and wondering why it is that film makers of a bygone era would tell an eerily similar story with a comparably sinister tone, yet imbue it with so much magic and wonder, while its modern counterpart would be mired in such oppressive mental illness. I also kept flashing to the Craig Scheffer starring Hellraiser Inferno with its constant lapsing into waking nightmare imagery and familiar "is THIS reality?" territory, and that, my friends, is no film to be brought to mind during a screening of an awards season darling.

In any case, I will gladly state that Black Swan is the single greatest horror film of 2010. It reaches a ferocious fever pitch of spine chilling malevolence for the last third that refuses to release you from its death grip. You feel positively violated and worn out by the end and that is surely the signifier of a great film. A great film, but not necessarily an interesting one. After having my eyeballs and intellect raped by Gulliver's Travels two nights prior, it was a welcome respite from slapdash storytelling and shitty, murky 3-D. I was pleased to see this in a mainstream theater with crisp, stunning projection and a harrowing sound system punishing me for the duration. I can no longer abide art house theaters with their sub-par accommodations and over priced tickets. Judging from how well Black Swan, The Fighter and True Grit are performing in the face of Focker failure and Jack Black's box office belly flop, this appears to be a refreshing trend we can look forward to further capitalizing on. Who knows, maybe in a couple of months I'll be sitting down to an IMAX screening of Tetsuo: Bulletman. Probably not, but a misanthrope can dream can't he?

Antichrist

2010-12-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the Criterion Collection Bluray of Lars VonTrier's Antichrist. I read the Ian Christie essay and watched most of the supplementary features contained within the sterling set to round out my understanding and appreciation of this work of art. For over a year now, I've been hearing tall tales of what an endurance test the film was and how unrelenting its concerted effort to shock and punish whatever audience was brave or self-flagellating enough to watch it. I've heard a great deal about its misogyny and misdirected hatefulness. Let me say, as someone with a strong stomach and consistently well fed appetite for disturbing cinema, all these hushed warnings and hyperbolic accusations are nothing more than reactionary balderdash.

Antichrist is a complicated film that challenges everyone who views it in a fashion unique to that particular individual based on their gender, relationship history, religious beliefs and ability to confront their own prejudices and pre-conceived notions. This is PRECISELY the function of art and the fact that VonTrier exorcised his own demons of anxiety and depression while crafting such an exquisitely beautiful and fascinating film makes his achievement all the more impressive and worthy. That it's reduced in reviews to "the movie with the genital mutilation scene" is indicative of the prurient streak in highbrow film criticism and the salacious nonsense of online blowhards (of whose ranks I suppose I must admit membership).

I detest plot recapping and infer those bothering to read this have seen it, so I'll just get to it. I find it hilarious that anyone can call a film this thoughtful misogynous with the glut of regressive romantic comedies and teen male wish fulfillment crowding screens both big and small. Women in America are ceaselessly objectified, degraded and dismissed on sitcoms, commercials, music videos and print ads without given the benefit of having a voice. Antichrist explores the roots of such ingrained disgust and conflicted lust. It shows how such a pervasive atmosphere of animosity can infect a woman's mind and reprogram it to hate and destroy.

The film turns the generally accepted parable of mother as the anthropomorphic representation of natures bounty into an inverse Edenic holocaust with Satan as the lord of the earth and progenitor of feminine fury. It's a terrifying and discomforting proposition to the men of the audience and Gainsbourg does indeed become an unstoppable villain by the end of the film. Her assault on his power totem with a wood block and subsequent proxy rape and binding of his leg are deep seated male fears, fully realized in a fashion both urgently potent and deceptively subtle. She strips him of his power in a bloody sexual assault and shackles him to prevent escape, something most men attempt when threatened by the ferocity of a woman's emotion. I, as I'm sure most men watching, felt genuine fear for the unpredictability of Dafoe's predicament and sensed a very real, very palpable threat from his jilted, mercurial counterpart.

This is testing the men in the audience to confront their castration fears, which are at the root of all male fear. It's the fear of loss of potency, the fear of imprisonment, the fear of imposed stagnation: it's the fear of death, plain and simple. It also forces us to confront our belief that women are overly emotional and preternaturally sensitive beings that we can somehow control and "put into a place". Dafoe's confident psychologist thinks he has all the answers and will set his injured birds wing so that she may fly again. But the damage is beyond his ken, as its roots are in the millenia of mistreatment and misdiagnosis at the hands of men such as him.

The women who see this film will no doubt have an entirely different take on it than I, so I won't even pretend to interpret it from their perspective. Perhaps I can encourage my wife to give it a viewing and glean from her her thoughts and impressions. There's so many possibilities and permutations, I feel this film will be dissected for years to come and my thoughts will grow and evolve with the passage of time and repeated viewings. One thing will never change though: This film is beauty of the highest order. There are sequences of unsettling violence to be sure, but there is also painterly use of slow motion photography so stunning and arresting I will never get the images out of my head. In time, I will have more to say, but for now, this brief missive must suffice. I needed to get the initial thoughts out of my head in an effort to begin processing the film and making room for more interpretations. So yeah, don't believe the hype, but in a good way.

Tron:Legacy

2010-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell if you read my last post, I've been hotly anticipating the release of Tron:Legacy in IMAX 3-D. I'm a sucker for monstrously expensive popcorn entertainment, especially the variety that envelops you in a fantastical world and manages to be emotionally satisfying (well, at least in a moderate sense) while also being visually thrilling. At this jaded stage in my life, it's of the utmost importance that when I spend 30$ for my son and myself to see a 4PM showing, I feel something. I want my breath to be taken away once or twice. I want to genuinely laugh. I want to grow to truly like characters and become invested in the success of their (admittedly ill defined) endeavors. I want tears to well up in my eyes at the overpowering sound and fury of the climax. I want to leave the theater feeling wrung out, yet wanting more. Tron:Legacy delivered on all these criteria.

I mean, I'll go sit through a Transformers movie, or any of these middling superhero properties Marvel is throwing at the back of the theater wall to see which will stick. I just probably won't like them due to the callous manner in which they ingratiate with blustery origin stories, crass, regressive humor and predictable iconography. I enjoy being entertained as much as I enjoy subtext hunting and navel gazing. Hell, I loved Prince of Persia and found Clash of the Titans to be a rollicking, shiny good time. I just need films like this to maintain a sense of wonder and relish in being transported to a time when I was young and wanted to be swept away in such fanciful stories. I'm a father now and the main joy of film for me is imparting the appreciation of it to my son as my father did with me. I'll never forget sitting next to my dad as the likes of Dune, T2, Predator, Robocop and a million others unspooled before my wide eyes. Seeing Tron with my son brought back those memories and fulfilled the next chapter in my cinematic circle of life.

I won't make this a review that endlessly, self-righteously complains about the incoherency of the script or hypothesizes about where the rewrites and re shoots came into play. I will say that I bought the Daft Punk soundtrack a week before the film came out and my son and I listened to it over and over, talking about our favorite tracks and guessing where they would feature in the movie. It was a great primer for the sleek, digital world of the film and it was an invaluable tool to open up the world of cinema to my son so he could understand that movies were a multi layered art form that brought to bear the talents of many artists, all working toward a shared goal utilizing their specific talents. The soundtrack is brilliant. On the IMAX it rumbled and pulsated and glided through my synapses and nervous system. It is the cold, detached funky heartbeat that gives the film life. I suppose I could be either congratulated or condemned that my 9 year old leaned over and whispered to me his recognition of the Daft Punk cameo and quietly enthused how cool that was to him! This is the foundation of film geek building. He's seeing beyond the instantaneous gratification of the finished product to the intricate world behind its creation. One day, he can cultivate a successful marriage of those two fascinations, as I feel I have. Considering my ability to read spoiler and invective filled reviews of Tron:Legacy, yet still react to it with the excitement of a child, I think I'm capable of weathering the storm of Internet conjecture and fanboy entitlement and coming out on the other side relatively unscathed.

It's not hard with a film as flat out cool and fun as Tron:Legacy. The action is breathtaking, the 3-D works to create a fully realized world as opposed to post conversion money grab gimmick and the visual palette is clearly realized without becoming stale and repetitive. Simply put, this was a world I wanted to live in, and like Lynch's Arrakis before it, I look forward to revisiting and getting lost in it again in the future. The performances were all great. I thoroughly enjoyed Hedlund as the lead, he was charismatic and easy to root for. Olivia Wilde is as energetic and likable as she is unnaturally beautiful and Jeff Bridges is as he always is. Pure gold. He plays Flynn as we want him to play him. He's the dude, but when an emotional moment is required, he steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park. His last minute onscreen is mesmerizing. Through sheer force of his talent and craft, he is able to find the core of the films father and sons life lesson and wordlessly overpower millions of dollars of effects work to make this fantastical story relatably human. I was, in a word, devastated.

So yeah, don't listen to 24 year old misanthropes in their moms basement telling you how the studio system works. Some very talented artists were given a ton of money to produce some mind blowing art. Go give it a chance and allow yourself to be caught up in your youthful naivete and childish exuberance for the possibilities of film.

Happy Chrimbus!

2010-12-10T18:39:00.000-08:00

Am I an idiot for being a 33 year old man who is so excited about Tron: Legacy he can barely contain himself? I have so thoroughly bought into the hype surrounding this film that I've actually purchased the Daft Punk soundtrack. I've never given a shit about this band before in my life. But as I listen to it on my Ipod while typing this admission of regressive enthusiasm, my already considerable anticipation is growing exponentially. It sounds huge and sweeping, cold and detached, imperial and fascistic. It brings to mind the work Toto did on Dune and Vangelis did on Blade Runner. I've taken the entire week of the 20th off work to hang with my son during his Christmas break and plan on seeing the film in Imax 3-D with him more than once.

I've taken a bit of a blogging break due to increased responsibilities at work and home. I think I've been putting far too much effort into this stuff and it kind of burned me out. I'll just post when I feel the inclination and am in possession of the time. The theaters have been a barren wasteland since Scott Pilgrim's ignominious run. The Zach Snyder owl movie looked nice, Mega Mind and Tangled were fun and Skyline gave my and my wife's eyeballs a good rolling workout.

I've been primarily hunkering down with the classics on bluray. Good lord do I love my TV, 5.1 surround and bluray player! I completely understand the money argument. But if you're a self professed film fanatic who has the means and refuses to upgrade to bluray, you are full of shit. I've mostly been watching old films. Apocalypse Now, City of the Living Dead, Maniac, The Untouchables, Halloween, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few. I suppose I have dark taste in film. Not that I'm some deep dude or anything, I just prefer more serious films with a mature tone and subdued aesthetic. I can not for the life of me understand how people can waste their time on schlocky Roger Corman garbage, brain dead slashers or that atrocious Syfy channel afterbirth. I'm a pompous ass I guess, but give me Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Tetsuo: the iron man and Hardware over piranha 3-D any day of the fucking week. I'm a grown ass man and I can no longer be entertained by juvenile ephemera. Except for Tron: Legacy.

And can we talk about how awful The Walking Dead is please? Jesus Harold Christ on a pair of rubber crutches is that some predictable garbage. Boring too. Boiler plate social commentary with CGI gore, clunky scripts and wildly inconsistent acting. How's this for an idea, have Michael Rooker show up for one episode, set the screen ablaze, then disappear him for the rest of the season?!?!?!?!?!? And that Halloween opener? Snooze fest. I expected better from Darabont and AMC.

In closing, everyone give Profondo Cinema a listen. It's the best podcast going today! I'm hoping to give Antichrist a viewing coming up soon here. That should yield some interesting thoughts. Black Swan is out, True Grit and Tron coming up, things are looking up. All that and I have the Criterion blu of Night of the Hunter on my Christmas wish list! Happy Chrimbus everyone!

Universal Monsters

2010-09-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'd like to preface this by extending thanks to those who requested films for me to view and write about. I appreciate your readership and involvement! So, without further ado:

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Apparently (according to this marvelous book about Universal horror), this was to have been filmed by James Whale from a script by R. C. Sherriff which was a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's short story, Dracula's Guest. It would have been something of a prequel, beginning in the middle ages, with the count ravaging the land and abducting women, one of whom would become his adoptive daughter. The story would then flash forward to shortly after the events of the first film, focusing on said daughter. It seems this take was rejected outright for having such "horrific and sexual implications". I personally would have preferred that to the resulting effort, especially if Bela Lugosi would have reprised his role as the Count.

What we have in its stead is a bizarre, leaden affair with some admittedly decent atmosphere, but an unfortunate preponderance of vaudeville and Keystone cops styled humor. It picks up in the crypt of Carfax Abbey with Edward VanSloan's Van Helsing confessing his murder of Dracula to two policeman who promptly arrest him. In custody, he pleads with the chief of Scotland Yard to send for Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), a former student of his whose eminence in the field of Psychiatry is inexplicably supposed to help prove his innocence. Meanwhile, a strange, mannish woman (Gloria Holden playing the Countess Maria Zaleska) absconds with her father's corpse and cremates it in an effort to free her from the curse of vampirism. This rite does not have the desired effect, so Zaleska fixates on Garth and his Psychiatry to either release her from the bonds of eternal hunger, or failing that, to join her in damnation.

The problems with the film are many. The aforementioned humor, never my favorite element in genre fare, is disproportionate and totally at odds with the tone of the film. Kruger is a terrible lead. A chain smoking, ugly bully of a man. A puny gadfly that is never heroic or likable, let alone seemingly capable of offering any help to the Countess, VanHelsing or his kidnapped secretary he rushes off to ostensibly save in the third act. I frankly can't imagine what it is he's supposed to do for anybody here, so his character is pointless. Gloria Holden as Dracula's Daughter fares better. She has a striking look, that of the haunted, haunting kind. But her presence is undermined by the decision to present her ordeal as a psychological malady as opposed to a supernatural curse. This esoteric approach was done deftly in the Val Lewton RKO thrillers of the 40's, however here it's a total misfire, robbing the film of any right to refer to itself as horror. Much has been made of the purported Sapphic underpinnings that sailed past the censors at the Breen office, but it's much ado about nothing really.

It's not entirely without its charms though. VanSloan is always a welcome presence and the androgynous brute Sandor (Irving Pichel) who serves as the Countess' right hand man is a marvelously off putting heavy with a wonderfully sonorous speaking voice I could have stood to hear a great deal more of. It is an interesting film, if not a successful one.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The last significant monstrous creation from the studio, coming more than a decade past the horror heyday of the 30's and early 40's, The Creature is something of an anomaly. Science fiction/Adventure film at heart, the film eschews the blue print of a Gothic, old world European setting for the Amazonian jungle in then modern day. A group of scientists funded by a wealthy, assholish entrepreneur journey down the Amazon in search of the fabled Black Lagoon and the unspoiled wonders they expect to discover contained therein. They of course encounter the Creature, an aquatic missing link who seems intent on carrying off the fetching Kay (Julia Adams), the paramour of the expeditions lead scientist (Richard Carlson). They clash with the Creature several times after he makes some unwanted amorous advances on our understandably recalcitrant heroine, inexorably leading to a violent confrontation between man and fish-man.

I've never been a big fan of this film, but hats off to Voodoo Doll from the Deadpit boards who recommended it to me, cause this viewing really did the trick. It's fascinating how forward thinking and compassionate toward that which we do not understand this film is. Sure, it's action packed and contains the prerequisite monster attacks and human reprisals, but a great deal of lip service is payed to the plight of the natural world and how a commerce based society tends to ruthlessly infringe upon the environment in the interests of financial gain and personal glory. Richard Carlson is remarkable as the lead. The total antithesis of Otto Kruger in Dracula's Daughter, he's thoughtful, compassionate and heroic in a way that makes him a joy to root for and the sort of action film lead we could do with a bit more of these days. Once he's ensured the safety of his woman and crew, he calls off the attack on the Creature, allowing it to slink back into the swamp. A refreshing change of pace to the mass murdering lunkheads who've populated the silver screen this last summer.

The Creature himself is an astonishing example of make-up FX that was surely considered the apotheosis of the craft in its day. The stunt swimming by Riccou Browning adds a believable physicality and credible menace to the monster. The underwater sequences are clearly filmed in a set dressed tank, but, far from detracting from the film, benefits it by lending an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere. In fact, all the film making is beyond reproach. The action scenes are masterfully edited and the underwater photography is crystal clear. All the while choreographed in such a manner that it's clear where people are in relation to the Creature at all times, a much appreciated detail, oft overlooked by today's film makers. All in all, this is an excellent example of film making and open minded, respectful science fiction and I recommend it highly.

The Invisible Man (1933)

Fresh off the monumental success of Frankenstein (1931), individualistic auteur James Whale brought this wicked tale of science, horror and madness to cackling life. The story is simple: A lone man (in possibly the most gloriously atmospheric opening in all of Universal horror) trudges into town through a blizzard, pelted by snow and howling, maniacal winds. He enters the local tavern/inn, cutting a peculiar figure, his face completely bandaged, wearing black goggles and a fake nose. He demands a room, to which he retires and begins performing clandestine scientific experiments with unknown chemicals. After some time dealing with his cursing and general orneriness, the innkeeper attempts to eject him, at which point he reveals that he is completely invisible. He discards all his clothing and runs rampant through the town, mischievously tormenting the villagers on his way out. This creates a panic throughout the countryside and as he forcibly enlists the assistance of a former colleague, law enforcement officials alert the public to this unseen deviant in their midst. A cat and mouse game ensues, with the Invisible Man losing touch with his sanity and humanity, and what was pranksterish tomfoolery rapidly escalates to murder and mass scale terrorism.

Good lord what a wildly entertaining film! James Whale's penchant for dark cynicism, morbid humor and dry wit is given free reign here and the results are brutally hilarious. It's actually kind of shocking to see what a nasty, unrepentant son of a bitch the Invisible Man becomes with the many stranglings, beatings and bludgeonings he inflicts upon the terrified and unwitting. Whale's endlessly inventive use of peculiar camera angles are matched note for note by John P. Fulton's groundbreaking optical effects in this campy symphony of horrors. Special mention must also be made of the performance of Claude Rains as the titular menace. His harsh baritone barks orders and threats as if he were born to do so and he convincingly portrays the characters bitter frustration and eventual descent into an outright megalomaniac.

I can appreciate the humor in a Whale horror film much more than his contemporaries. There's a winking intelligence behind it and one can't help but picture the erudite English gentleman behind the camera giggling with delight at the mayhem he's orchestrating. One caveat though: I know Whale had a profound affinity for Una O'connor and her shrieking histrionics, and I can tolerate her in small doses in Bride of Frankenstein, but he could have reined her in a bit on this one. Her over the top caterwauling threatens to make some of the first 20 minutes a tad tortuous. That minor complaint aside, this is a playful, clever and pitch black film. Shockingly violent and malevolent for the time, it's every bit as entertaining today as it no doubt was when first released.

Thanks again to all for the recommendations. This has been so much fun I'm going to follow it up with a slate of films featuring the inimitable Bela Lugosi. See you all for Part 2!

My 5 favorite films: Videodrome

2010-09-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I made an entry in the favorite films series (having a hell of a time finishing off those last 2!). In honor of the impending bluray release from Criterion December 7th, I give you this brief meditative piece on the horrifyingly prophetic nature of Videodrome.

"America's getting soft Patron, and the rest of the worlds getting tough. Very tough."

Even though I found my initial viewing of David Cronenberg's masterpiece Videodrome to be a frustrating affair, I could intrinsically sense the foreboding prescience in that menacing line. The intervening 15 years since I first tried to wrap my brain around the film have seen not only the meteoric rise of computer technology, but also the advent of social networking and the realization of the disembodied Internet persona. A persona whose lineage can be traced back through the character of media prophet Prof. Brian O'blivion to his basis, the Canadian communication theorist and educator Marshall Mcluhan. In the wake of 9/11, we've also witnessed an ever darkening global situation in which facets of the American intelligence, political and business communities have come to be perceived by some here and abroad as a shadowy cabal endeavoring to achieve world domination. It should be noted that Videodrome tells its sordid tale free from moral judgements and devoid of political allegiances. It is a complex and vague depiction of a world populated by unscrupulous media pornographers and conspiratorial power brokers, both intent on exploiting cutting edge technology in the interests of manipulating the masses to gain ever more power and control. If that's not the world you see staring back at you from your computer and television screen, I don't know what is.

At the time of its release, Videodrome creator Cronenberg was touted as the Baron of blood and credited with the creation of his own sub-genre, referred to as body or venereal horror. Videodrome had plenty of transformative imagery concerning the flesh, but what arguably has left a stronger impression than its literal hand guns or stomach vagina's, is its revolutionary notion that in the future, the body would become an outdated relic. A cumbersome corporeal representation of self to be shrugged off. Free to travel coaxial cables as a pre-recorded ghost, endlessly droning personal philosophy into a labyrinthine echo chamber. O'blivion's monologues detailing a life conveyed through playback of thousands of recordings once seemed like the ramblings of a senile crackpot. Now we have Youtube, where people use accounts under an assumed name to disseminate their most intimate thoughts and deeply held beliefs. There are plenty of these people whose videos we watch that may well have passed on and unbeknownst to us, fulfilled the socio-technological prophecies of O'blivion. In fact, there are very few of us (and certainly less and less each year) who don't use some "special" name to go to and fro in the cyber-universe, electronically walking up and down in it.

The specter of Barry Convex looms large over the second half of the film and represents everything from glad handing politicians to world swallowing corporate behemoths to the almighty military industrial complex at the core of American foreign policy. At one point, he pointedly asks James Woods cable access impresario Max Wren why anyone would watch a scum show like Videodrome. Woods drolly responds that his reasons are "professional". But Convex knows that isn't the whole story. He inherently understands that which titillates the average consumer is also that which makes the most profound impression, and thereby that which can best be utilized to implant product preference and enforce the party line. The medium is the message indeed. When I first saw the film, I found the idea that even a small station would broadcast video of political prisoners being tortured outlandish and distasteful. Imagine my shock when less than a decade later I heard the Daniel Pearl beheading audio played on the local morning zoo during my commute. Suddenly, streaming video of this horrendous act began popping up all over the web, and that was only the beginning. It's not hard to see the through line from Videodrome's electrified, clay walls and stripped, strangulated victims to Abu Ghraib's naked dog piles and hooded prisoners, trussed up with wires in a Jesus Christ pose.

These lamentable incidents seem to have mostly faded from public consciousness, supplanted by the latest reality show meltdown or internet meme, but the psychological scar remains. Extreme, challenging cinema is capable of exerting a similar effect on our psyche and Videodrome exemplifies and personifies that fact. It forcefully questions the very nature of reality and the manner in which we interact and ultimately exist within it. Horror and Science Fiction are the two genres most capable of holding an unflinching mirror up to the society that spawned them. Videodrome is the perfect melding of their respective aesthetics and preoccupations and an eye opening education on who we are and what we're becoming.

What hath Rosenthal wrought?

2010-09-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

Good god, do I hate summer. Don't mistake me for some misanthropic goth kid decked out in zippered black parachute pants or anything, but I genuinely detest humid days that go on forever and the endless flood of garbage movies that lap at our nations collective door. This summer's offerings in particular have been most tiresome. The big deal blockbuster of the season, Iron Man 2 was sort of enjoyable at first, but upon reflection was a grating, jingoistic screed that wasted Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke while hinging on a predictable Downey Jr. performance that made me wish he'd have a cocaine relapse and do something interesting again. Toy Story 3 was well done and had the most powerful single sequence I've yet witnessed in a film aimed at children, but even that couldn't hide the fact that it was essentially part 2 all over. To think, I was under the impression that Pixar was above such laziness. Oh well, bring on Cars 2 I suppose.

Most of the summer was overstuffed with hi-fiving men on a mission type movies that wore on my frayed nerves like a talkative drunk at a sports bar. Self congratulatory and poorly edited train wrecks that forgot the importance of character development and cohesively staged action. Then of course came the juvenile, degrading experience of Piranha and the less said about that, the better. I will however reassert my belief that all the supporters of that film are going to have an ugly morning after when they try to sit through it again on home video.There were standouts though. Inception, Scott Pilgrim and Machete varied from dumb fun done right to hallucinatory art film made touching comic gold to downright goddamn modern masterpiece. So I shouldn't be so hasty in cursing these last few months. Oh wait, I forgot about Get Him to the Greek. Yeah, fuck last summer.

The point is, through some curious, blessed meteorological mystery, my beloved home state of Minnesota underwent a one-day transformation into Fall. The hateful yellow orb lost its potency seemingly overnight and cool, clean, fresh Fall air started blowing through town. The days instantly felt shorter and the descending gray chill signaled something deep in my reptile brain that Halloween was upon us. Nothing (aside from this scene from my favorite show EVER) encapsulates the feeling and meaning of nostalgia for me like Halloween. It was a fateful sleepover on that most wondrous of all Holiday's in 1985 that cemented my genre fandom forever. After a particularly successful bout of trick or treating, my friend and I retired to his safe, suburban home to gorge on candy and watch festive films edited for television. In succession I took in Halloween 2 and Night of the Living Dead and was irrevocably altered. It had something to do with how Rosenthal slyly inserted the opening graveyard scene from Romero's classic into his slasher sequel and my nascent, burgeoning understanding of the connective tissue and tropes of the genre. I was hooked.

Even before that epochal evening, I had been for some time spending my Saturday nights watching Universal Monster classics on our local Fox affiliates horror host show, Count Dracula presents, which featured a hammy local actor playing the titular bloodsucker with aplomb on dry ice shrouded sets amidst cardboard coffins and papier mache tombstones. I would drift off to dreamland, enthralled by the fog covered moors that made up Talbot's stomping grounds and the impossibly arcane laboratory in which Colin Clive plied his ghoulish trade. I was for some reason especially fascinated by the Lon Chaney Mummy films. No doubt something to do with the blunt, angry physicality he brought to the role.

In any case, time willing and entirely dependent on my inspiration not waning, I plan on having an old school Universal throwdown this coming weekend and should like to relate the affair in no small detail on the hallowed, rarely visited cyber-pages of this here blog. If you'd like me to watch and write up a certain film, respond below and I'll try to work it in providing I have it in my collection and I end up completing this self appointed task in the first place!

Machete and the return of action done right

2010-09-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

It's about goddamn time. This summer has been full of preening, snarky assholes pretending they knew how to get the job done and bloated, steroid ridden has-been's phoning it in. I have been shocked this last month to see all my fellow internet movie geeks fawning like brain dead 12 year-olds over The Expendables and Piranha, the two worst movies I've seen all year. It's as if everyone suddenly forgot about the necessity for sound narrative mechanics, even in lowbrow entertainment. Sure, I enjoy grade-A bull plop like VanDamme in Lionheart or Seagal in Hard To Kill and Out for Justice. Not just cause I actually saw that shiznit in the theater and have fond, nostalgic memories of broken arms and gratuitous splits, but because as simplistic and elemental as those films were, they told stories a 10 year old could understand and were populated with larger than life heroes and hissable villains. It isn't difficult to make bone headed morality tales drenched in brutal violence entertaining, but I'll be damned if Sylvester Stallone didn't find himself a way with The Expendables.

For the record, Stallone was a god to me growing up. I'm not exaggerating that assertion even one bit. He was more important to me than God, Jesus or Ronald Reagan. The only person as mythic and all consuming a presence in my warped, adolescent imagination as Sly was of course Arnold, but that is another (no doubt coming soon) post. Rambo: First Blood Part Two was the first VHS tape I purchased with my own money and I probably watched it 75 times over the course of the summer of 1987. I could, upon request, act out the entire film as a one man play, replete with sound effects, musical cues and accurate character impersonations. So, before I move on, let me make sure no one is requesting that, cause I'll do it. No takers? Ok, forget it then. The point is, I should have LOVED The Expendables. I adored Rambo 2008 and am a big time Statham fan, so what gives? I'll tell you what gives. It falls apart before even getting out of the gate with the most excruciatingly unwatchable credit sequence ever filmed. Not even a minute and a half in and I was looking at my watch (I don't wear a watch, but you get the idea).

It only gets worse from there. The hallmark of action films is simplicity and this turd drops us face first into a poorly lit, poorly shot and poorly edited Somalian pirate (topical!) rescue by a group of, oh, I don't know, let's say 38 mercenaries, all of whom have different personalities, hang ups, weapons expertise and interpersonal baggage and then expects us to fend for ourselves while it goes about ham fistedly plowing ahead though their incomprehensible and shockingly dull adventures. Everything from there on doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. Whatever the hell is going on between Eric Roberts and the Hispanic dude from Dexter is NOT the makings of a loathsome, two tiered bad guy structure for the good guys to ass kickingly take revenge on. It doesn't make sense and it doesn't inspire our hatred for anything other than Eric Roberts agent. If your action film doesn't have a bad guy you want to see get his, there is no point in watching it. These films are about righteous vengeance and serve their purpose as wish fulfillment because no such thing exists in the real world.

Also, there is a PAINFUL scene where Mickey Rourke tells this pitiful story to Stallone that's supposed to serve as the powerful emotional push for Sly getting over his reservations about MASS MURDER as a way to save a life. Rourke clearly hadn't done more than peruse the script as he mumbles, doubles back over his lines, drools and generally makes an ass of himself, all of which Stallone frames in extreme closeup on Rourke's ruined face. It was hands down the most miserable five minutes of film I've sat through this year and to read Harry Knowles go on about the deep meaning and significance of it in his predictably moronic review was nearly enough to make me want to stop watching film forever. It's an ugly, pointless, horrible film with jagged action scenes that never manage to exhilarate.

As for Piranha, well, fuck that movie. Fuck its post conversion 3-D hatchet job giving me a splitting headache. Fuck its pandering Comic-Con mentality. Fuck its laziness and obvious distaste for its audience. Fuck its ingratiating, faux for-the-fans hi-fiving. Fuck it being a film made for fanboys without any consideration given to telling a story. It's boring, it has no likable characters and it has no wit. It is a film that is so overtly pornographic in its display of female flesh, it somehow becomes un-sexy. An endless parade of indistinguishable, plastic, blow up doll women grinding robotically to crappy techno so as to pad the run time until the obligatory KNB effects reel. I've seen rubbery limbs and gallons of fake blood done before and done better with the added bonus of actually giving a fuck who was getting torn to pieces.

Of course, people will say I'm just being contrary and prudish and a buzzkill. I will not drink the Kool-aid on this film, folks. You can't just show me boobies and bloodshed and expect me to give a damn. Piranha has no tension, no development, no arc. It's not exciting and since you don't ever once care about anyone surviving, there are no stakes. Alexander Aja went from being the most promising horror stylist of the new millennium to an indistinguishable Hollywood sell-out in less than a decade. There is no indication of any individuality, heart or purpose in Piranha. It's a callous, mean film that treats its audience like date rapists, sadists and perverts. So, if I may iterate again, FUCK THAT MOVIE!

When I stated above that it was about goddamn time, I was referring to Machete showing up with little fanfare and kicking the ever loving shit out of these wanna-be exploitation and action films. Now here is a movie that understands simplicity and structures its story accordingly. You have Machete, a stoic, threatening and bad ass (that Rodriguez need only film Trejo in close up to convey this is astonishingly indicative of his magnetism and star power) ex-federale wronged by Steven Seagal's portly south of the border drug lord. He gets wrapped up in a double cross by some political goons and sets out to settle the score. Throw in a puffy Don Johnson as a shady shitkicker and Michelle Rodriguez as the legendary freedom fighter She, and you've got the makings for a rollicking, rock concert of a movie that moves breathlessly from one action set piece to the next with purpose and style to burn. It also manages to be sexy by having attractive women who aren't vapid whores playing actual characters and not shoving their gyrating torso's in our faces every time the film maker had nothing to offer in the way of character or story development. You see, the titllation is supposed to be a by-product of the films overall aesthetic, not the kleenex box that the wags the dog.

I infinitely respect the film makers for crafting Machete as a response to a real world issue they genuinely feel strongly about. Maybe that's what lowbrow film or just plain genre film in general needs more of these days, a reason to exist outside of arousing its leering core audience with explicit sex and violence, which lets be honest here, can be found in more hardcore and plentiful variety elsewhere. With Machete, Rodriguez has created an entire world of gritty cool that will always be fun to visit. A satisfying diversion from the banality of existence that manages to raise a question or two about the way our country works and posits an entirely new kind of hero through which we can vicariously, murderously vent our frustrations and enact our imaginary revenges. THAT is the point of movie like this and Machete did it a damn sight better than anyone else all year long. Here's hoping we get the trilogy promised before the end credits rolled!

The Last Exorcism

2010-08-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big fan of Exorcism films. Even though I count myself among the ranks of non-believers, I am keenly aware of the profound dramatic power of a good Vs. evil yarn done right. To get comparisons to the Friedkin classic out of the way up front, I would say stacked up next to each other, The Exorcist and The Last Exorcism might resemble a side by side look at a Bengalese Tiger and a common house cat. That is to say, they share some of the same primordial traits, but aren't really the same species.

The Last Exorcism is competent enough and boasts a couple of truly nerve wracking sequences that make good use of the camcorder verite format, but ultimately, it's that manner of presentation that proves its undoing. There is a visceral thrill that can be captured by this trendy approach to storytelling, but as it is employed again and again and ad nauseum applied to every single sub genre of horror, it's becoming clear how short sighted and gimmicky it truly is. I see how the facebook/youtube generation is seemingly fascinated by it and I understand that. You're talking about a demographic that values immediacy of content delivery over purity of craft. These are kids who are willing to watch Avatar on a 2-inch cellphone screen, so what do they care if minor things like shot composition, visual metaphor and sound design are sacrificed in favor of ready made stinger images to punctuate television advertisements? Of course I'm not suggesting that ALL of today's youth has such a narrow view of film and that all "first person" films are devoid of subtext or lasting relevance, I'm just saying 90% of the kids going to see this are going to be on their phone though most of the movie. Make of that what you will.

The thing I like about Demon possession films is the battle over faith and The Last Exorcism admittedly has a novel approach to the antagonists struggle. He's lost his faith in some respects, but is still a good man who wants to help people. He's not some alcoholic sitting in the dark nurturing a grudge against his absent creator. He's an imminently likable fellow who wants to do right by his family and perhaps do some good within the confines of a profession he's naturally gifted at. The film also strums some unique chords concerning the schism between tolerating backwards, fundamental belief systems and when action must be taken to protect the powerless trapped in that situation. So there's some strong performances and some genuinely interesting theological gristle to chew on and the film definitely needs to be commended for that.

The problem is that it lacks the courage of its convictions. It sets up a host of well developed characters and when it comes time to bring the hammer down on them with all the histrionic terror and tragedy duelling with the Devil entails, it blinks. It steps back from the brink of being a powerful, thought provoking exploration of faith (which is the heart of why Exorcism films are so compelling) with a hard left turn into silliness courtesy of a telegraphed plot twist that not only strains credulity and rips off a film as shitty and forgettable as The Reaping, it ultimately derails all point or purpose the preceding 90 minutes had.

Which brings me to the ending and the fatal flaw of films of this ilk. The jagged cut is not an ending make. I can no longer abide a movie ending with the narrator/protagonist being quickly killed in an jostling of activity, then a static shot of the ground. It's become such a predictable joke since it was first done in the execrable Blair Witch Project. It's ironic that the only thing that worked in that putrid student film was the chilling ending, and it hasn't meant anything or been nearly as successful in the subsequent 10 years of imitation. When you end a film like that, it invalidates all that happened before it and disregards the emotional investment of the audience. In the case of the Last Exorcism, that tawdry conclusion, coupled with the jarring tonal shift of the tacked-on third act makes for a one-two K.O. punch.

I don't outright hate this film or anything, it tried real hard to tell its little story and had honorable intentions toward its intended audience. It just was too underwhelming, too flaccid and too of its time to be anything other than a missed opportunity. Better luck next time Daniel Stamm. Get yourself a tripod and try not to wimp out when its time to focus on the horrific aspects of your horror film.

The Blood of cowards

2010-08-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of weeks, I've revisited what I believe to be the 2 most important American films of the new millennium. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and There Will Be Blood. Both films paint a picture of America at the turn of the 20th century and portray its neurotic adolescence as a nation through central characters making soul destroying decisions that irrevocably alter the course of their lives, and by sub textual extent, the destiny of the country that birthed them.

There Will Be Blood (TWBB henceforth) is a towering achievement in individualistic film making. I've never been much of a Paul Thomas Anderson fan frankly. I found Boogie Nights to be exhausting and unnecessarily slimy. An ugly story not worth telling. Punch Drunk Love was well shot and made amusing use of Sandler's volatile man child-persona, but ultimately felt like a minor, floundering work. Never seen Hard Eight and everything I've ever read about Magnolia has made me run in the opposite direction. Point being, all of that was mere prelude to the startlingly assured becoming PTA underwent crafting TWBB. It's a film of undiluted vision, free from committee tampering and popular concession. In the hands of lesser film makers, that's a recipe for flailing indulgence, but TWBB manages to miraculously be about a million things. It understates its case and overstates its rage. Like the North American man's understanding of God and his terrestrial proxy the father figure, it is distant, vengeful, spiteful, self loathing, greedy and entirely full of itself.

Plainview and Eli are two sides of the same coin. Two men who want power and wealth and are willing to put on an act to attain it. The difference between them is Eli, the preacher, the "spiritual" man, wants his fame and wealth to lead to a prominent place among his fellow man, glad handing and accessible to all. Plainview, the unrepentant capitalist, want to use wealth as a means to forever escape his fellow man, who disgusts him so wholly, he only longs to crush them in competition. Plainview is pragmatic and represents progress. He represents strength and the steroidal heart beating in the chiseled chest of manifest destiny. Eli represents duplicity and weakness. He represents the cowardice of clinging to false prophets and is all the more reprehensible for how quickly he would sell out his publicly cherished "beliefs" when push comes to shove. Politicians and religious leaders are nothing more than pop culture figureheads, true power lies in the hallow boardrooms of behemoth corporations and shadowy conglomerates. And you know what? Just like Plainview, those corporations FUCKING HATE US. They are disgusted by us and treat us like cattle who need their minds made up for them. And for the most part, they're right. We are weak and never get anything accomplished outside of gossipping and paying lip service to popular causes.

The final scene, when Eli pleads with Plainview for a handout and gets his head caved in for the effort, is indicative of organized religion's influence over the future of this nations affairs being brutally murdered by the true world power. Wealth. When Plainview says, "I'm finished!", what he's really saying is that the relevance of superstitious, childish belief systems is finished. Us babbling, idiot masses like to think we have a voice and that our traditions are respected by our corporate overlords, but if you've bothered to read anything or watch any of the 489 documentaries detailing corporate malfeasance released in the last couple of years, you know that is folly. You are well aware how much a human life is worth. Plainview and his rise to power, his intractable determinism, IS the industrial revolution and the 21st century it wrought. Poor old Eli with his collapsed cranium, is the antiquated notion of Billy Graham bending the ear of the President. Not only are those days gone, they were a scam to begin with.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is an entirely different animal. Where TWBB tells the story of our masters, TAOJJBTCRF is intimately concerned with us, the average, simple minded shithead that actually populates the space between the coasts. It is about little people with big dreams, warped minds and gigantic holes in their hearts. It's about people who want more than anything to be important, to be noticed, and upon achieving recognition, find it to be as dispiriting and hollow as anonymity was. Casey Affleck turns in what is indisputably the most under rated performance perhaps ever. His Robert Ford is a jittery, lilting media junkie in an age when consumption of media required a great deal more effort and participation than today. He forces himself into the life script he read and endlessly re-read by candle light. You've met people like him, he makes you uncomfortable when he's onscreen and his attempts to ingratiate himself with the cadre of bad men and outlaws he so desperately desires to emulate is wince inducing. You see this needy, despicable behaviour paraded on every reality television show, youtube video and supermarket tabloid cover.

Brad Pitt's Jesse James is the quintessential model of despondent, aloof, paranoid celebrity. His violent mood swings and deteriorating mental state give this constant sense of unravelling. It's the same feeling we get watching flavor of the week pop stars go through the public paces of relationship problems, drug addictions and ultimately hospitalization or death. Pitt couldn't have been a more perfect choice and he plays it beautifully. You sense the natural charisma that sets him apart from his fellow man, but there's something sinister and self destructive constantly threatening to take it all away. His Jesse James is Cobain, Ledger, Hendrix and Lennon.

The film tackles the cult of celebrity and how it mangles common folks ability to manage expectations of their own lives, all the while burning out and callously discarding those we cyclically elevate then consume as a means to sate our unending hunger for self worth.

I find it fascinating that these two films found a way to address the institutionalized sickness of the American existence by going back to the beginning and laying bare the rotten foundations of our collective mental illness. I have little faith that anything can be done at this point to step back from the brink of cultural apocalypse, but I suppose I find solace in seeing the strings in any case.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

2010-08-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for 20 years. Not consecutively or anything, but I first saw it in 1989 and have revisited it probably 25 times since then, up to and including the viewing I've just completed that prefaces and occasions this writing. Something about seeing it tonight unsettled me in a manner more profoundly than any since my first go round.

Serial killers and their attendant phenomena have always fascinated me. I've read a great deal on them and the social, psychological and economic factors that produce them. I've seen countless iterations of their ilk in film and television and followed the media details surrounding actual occurrences that have played out in my own lifetime. With all that exposure and study under my belt, I think I can state with definitive authority that John McNaughton's seminal essay on the subject is the most compelling and authentic account yet produced. Sure, Hannibal Lecter is a great character and Dexter gets boffo ratings and fawning critical accolades: but Dr. Lecter is a Hollywood concoction through and through, albeit an exceedingly entertaining one and the ludicrous exploits of blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan are a fanciful, borderline offensive piece of irresponsible wish fulfillment aimed at housewives and hipsters. Henry is the messy, terrifying actuality whereas Lecter and Dexter are boiler plate fluff, no more complex or close to reality than Darth Vader. They are the much celebrated "bad guy you love to hate". You don't love to hate Henry as portrayed by Michael Rooker. You fear him and recognize him and pity him and lament the all too common abuse that gave rise to his tragically warped worldview and his subsequent acting upon it.

The world of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is so cheap, ugly and garbage strewn you can practically see the decay of the surroundings infest the characters souls as the film plays out like some poverty row, inner city Shakespearean tragedy. The scene where Becky and Henry bond while swapping stories concerning the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of those whose charge it was to nurture them is touching, heartbreaking and despicable all at once. These are characters rich with intricacies and pathos. Even Otis, loathsome, perverted goon that he is, is not entirely without charm or sympathy. Unlike say, Jorg Buttgereit's Schramm, which simply wallows in depravity for depravity's sake, Henry tells an actual story. It's the embellished tale of real life drifter Henry Lee Lucas (whose outrageous claims are in some part believed to be an embellishment in and of themselves) and his partner in crime/lover Ottis Toole. In the film, we see Henry introduce his roommate Otis to murder as recreation and stress relief. Otis, after initial trepidation, takes to it like a parasite to dung. Complicating matters is Otis' sister Becky, come to live with her big brother after escaping an abusive husband and leaving her infant daughter back home with her mother. She instantly takes a shine to Henry, unaware of the nefarious influence he's having on her already unstable and dangerous sibling. Otis becomes more and more insatiable with blood lust, to the point that Henry can't control him, leading inexorably to a shattering conclusion that is surely as morbid, bleak and pitch black as they come.

The first frame contains a succinct summation of exactly how grim the proceedings will be. A slow, Kubrickian pan back from the expressionless face of a woman to reveal her body, naked and lifeless in a field. Jump cut to Henry's hand snuffing out a cigarette in an ashtray, a perfect parable for how he seems to look upon extinguishing a life. For the first half of the film, the focus is on the aftermath of his crimes, which creates an uneasy aura of depravity while allowing the characters to develop unhindered by gross-out set pieces that would certainly detract from the integrity of McNaughton's calculated narrative thrust. There is a refreshing sense of the mundane established in the early stages of the film. There's no masked and bound sociopath's winking at the camera, nor is there any remarkably fit and fashionably attired do-gooder killer hiding blood samples in an air conditioner (so I hate Dexter, so sue me), there is simply impoverished ex-cons living together in relative squalor without a hint of style and less than stellar grooming habits. Even when Becky shows up, she's every bit a woman you see everyday, no more than 5 foot 3 and homely in a very plain way. These are real people you pass on the street and that is what makes this film so effective. They drive shitty cars, drink cheap beer and have dishes piled up in the sink. Matter of fact, when I used to paint houses, I worked with a dude that was the spitting image of Tom Towles Otis, except his jacked grill wasn't an appliance.

If you haven't seen Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, do so, IMMEDIATELY. If you've seen it, WATCH IT AGAIN. I'm not a religious man, but I believe in my heart and soul that people like Henry who walk the earth in real life, are as close to demons as it gets. Born perhaps not of fire, but of abuse and neglect. However brought into existence, demons all the same. I can conjure no more horrific an end to life on this planet than to cross paths with such a monster made living, breathing flesh. Look no further than the videotaped home invasion scene for irrefutable proof that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is every bit as terrifying as Friedkin's Exorcist or Kubrick's The Shining.

Speaking of that home invasion sequence, I find it vastly amusing that John McNaughton succeeded in one scene with conveying what Michael Haneke attempted to, 10, then again 20 years later with an entire film, than a shot for shot remake of that entire film. Henry showed us the implicit voyeurism of murder for entertainment and forced us to question our complicity in the whole sordid affair by simply panning back to Henry and Otis sitting on the couch, watching their own murderous exploits with mouths agape, exactly as we in the audience were. So, I guess you could express that monumentally complex and debate sparking concept through one wordlessly visceral and expertly shot minute of film: OR you could make 2 laborious, irritating and let's all admit it, BORING movies to get the same point across. Nice job Mike, have fun being an artiste!

A Clockwork Orange

2010-07-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

There's a fantastic film podcast entitled http://www.cinephobia-radio.com/ I listen to hosted by the estimable Stuart "FEEDBACK" Andrews of Rue Morgue Radio and magazine fame. FEEDBACK is in my humble opinion one of the more passionate, learned, witty and endearingly curmudgeonly voices in film criticism we have today. The reason I shamelessly plug his marvelous podcast as an introduction to this piece is because listening to it occasioned me revisiting the film in question. Well, that and drawing the parallel between Nolan and Kubrick. You see, FEEDBACK has an unhealthy amount of man love for Malcom McDowell in general and his performance as Alex DeLarge in particular and liberally peppers his show with soundbites from Clockwork's humble narrator. Of course I've long held Kubrick's Burgess adaptation in high regard (as I do all his films), but it had been years since I last watched it and hearing those brilliant quotes over and again forced me to rectify that. As for the Nolan/Kubrick comparison, if you bothered to read my orgiastic gushing over Inception you'd know that I believe that film to be the first perfect one of Nolan's thus far decade long career, whereas Kubrick made them perfectly for over 4 decades. Among other things, when I refer to something as Kubrickian, I also mean as obtaining or possessing elements of perfection.

Kubrick started his career as a photographer and his peerless propensity for shot composition no doubt stems from that. You can point to countless imagery throughout the lexicon of film history as being beautiful, evocative and metaphorical, but the way Kubrick filmed was nothing short of mathematical perfection and certainty. Be it the War Room in Dr. Strangelove or the bathroom in The Shining where Delbert Grady and Jack Torrance have their revelatory conversation (one of my favorite scenes EVER), Kubrick constructed each moment in his pictures so as to be able to stand up to every conceivable notion of geometric scrutiny. From his beloved rule of thirds to the chess master's patience and foresight with which he approached blocking his actors, the man understood the language of cinema in a way no other artist ever has or ever will. This vital component of his mastery is in many ways most readily evident in his creative pinnacle, 1971's A Clockwork Orange.

From the opening tracking shot at the milk bar to the closing, slow motion explosion of jovial coitus, the film is a nuclear blast rendered hypnotic trance through his assured control. In the hands of a lesser film maker, unifying the wildly varied tones and moral issues raised in the piece would undoubtedly lead to disastrous self parody. Kubrick however, holds this volatile hand grenade of a film in his palm as it explodes and doesn't even blink. Its visceral depiction of a generation gone mad with destructive lust and unfocused hate and the despicable measures to control it by duplicitous authority is as unsettling as it is prescient. No small feat for a motion picture nearly 40 years old.

As much as I could go on about the meticulous bliss of the visuals, the thing that struck me most this viewing was indeed the performances. FEEDBACK is dead on with his McDowell/Alex preoccupation. It is damn near without compare the most commanding lead performance ever committed to celluloid. Voice over narration is often seen as a cheat, but the way it's employed and performed here is pure charisma and total necessity. Alex savors his thoughts so deliciously that we can't help but get caught up in his worldview, which is a dangerous spot to put the audience in and in truth the whole point of the film. To compliment his melodious voice, McDowell brings a lithe, playful physicality to the role that demonstrates impish childishness underscoring the viciousness of his more reprehensible actions. The moment when he's dropped off for the Ludovico treatment by the head jailer and does that gloriously exaggerated goosestep and jump stop kills me every time. The prim placement of his hands when he discovers Mr. Deltoid lurking in his parents room is priceless. McDowell stomps through every frame of the film like the acting giant he is with supreme confidence and a knowing wink. Truthfully, the only way to describe his indelible essay on youthful maliciousness is gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh.

I would be remiss if I didn't also point out in passing the contribution made by Patrick Magee as Mr. Alexander, the writer who is mercilessly beaten and whose wife is raped by Alex and his droogs at the beginning of the film only to resurface in a physically and mentally degraded form in the pivotal sequence of the final act. It is the only instance of the film where McDowell is upstaged and Magee is so over the top, yet true to the nature of his character, it is literally hard to watch... but in a very good way. I'm dead serious here, Patrick Magee is absolutely terrifying in this film! To understand what I'm talking about, pay special attention to the shot of him after a beaten Alex is sent off to bathe and he fidgets in his wheelchair. Magee somehow, despite all laws of physics and reason, manages to wordlessly convey roughly 432 conflicting emotions and thoughts in a scant 6 seconds. It's absolutely breathtaking and I'm a little shocked more mention isn't made of his deliriously off kilter presence in the film.

Which brings me back to Kubrick. Much is made of his perceived cold, clinical, detached style. I've read and heard numerous assertions that he makes films for the mind and not the heart. I gently advise all who hold that belief to re-watch A Clockwork Orange. The performances are full of more heart and humor than any other film I can imagine. This is clearly Kubrick's influence at work. Yes, the performers are top notch, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection between the meta-absurdity of Dr. Strangelove and the appalling self reflexivity of the show stopping Singing in the Rain home invasion that defines Clockwork's intent.

A Clockwork Orange stands as the ultimate filmic treatise on the human animals proclivity for violent destruction and how our neurotic self awareness colors the way we deal with, condemn and ultimately ignore it. It is the cinematic forbear of similarly incendiary works such as Fight Club and Natural Born Killers. It is a film that transcends its time while steadfastly being of it.

The real success of Inception

2010-07-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

Christopher Nolan's latest film Inception, was a success. I'm not speaking artistically or financially, even though it is undoubtedly both. I am instead referring to the films hidden agenda cleverly disguised by the subterfuge of its narrative. I believe that the aim of the film and its preternaturally gifted film maker was to plant not just ideas in the viewers mind, but a renewed penchant for thinking and coming to our own conclusions regarding our chosen entertainments meaning and subtext.

It goes without saying that this has been a relatively bleak summer. Even Toy Story 3, with its stunning, maw of hell incinerator sequence, was essentially a tiresome retread of its previous installment. Blockbusters have come into theaters, made some quick dough, then exited the financial stratosphere as quickly as our collective conscience. Nothing has stuck. Sure, I enjoyed Predators, Splice and even Prince of Persia to a certain degree, but nothing has really blown me away or made me reassess the nature of film as an artistic medium. I've been vastly more interested in reading tallies on BoxOfficeMojo.com than I have been in studying reviews or critical essays. I've been pinning my hopes on Inception, and now, after seeing it twice, both times on an IMAX screen, I can say without reservation that my expectations have been met, turned on their heads and summarily surpassed.

I'll stop here and give the customary spoiler warning. I'm going to assume if you're reading this, you've seen the film. I will be discussing personal interpretations of the films story and events, not to mention hearsay and conjecture regarding the Director's impetus and intent behind creating it. Let me clearly state that this will be based on conclusions I have made, not necessarily on actual facts or truths. To paraphrase Ricky from Trailer Park Boys, I'm not a journalist, I'm a conversationalist. So, as the Joker from another Nolan masterpiece said, "Here... we... go..."

Inception is and is about more things than any film in recent memory. On the surface, it is about how we perceive our reality and it's about guilt and catharsis. But, like the multiple, ever deeper layers of consciousness the characters go through during the stunning final sequence, it is about a myriad many other things as well. The second sub textual layer concerns itself with the gambit between artist and audience. It is about the unspoken agreement between an entertainer and those who wish to be entertained. It is about our willingness (or unwillingness) to turn over the reins of our own imagination to an outside consult (substitute Nolan as the Director here, or, as portrayed in the film, Dicaprio as Cillian Murphy's subconscious security chief). The third sub textual layer represents how we choose to fill the construct provided us. What sort of denouement will we come to? In the film, Cillian Murphy had a deep psychological scar stemming from his unresolved issues with his father, so when thrown into a highly entertaining snowmobile siege on a Bond villain secret lair, he finds his old man in the vault and proceeds to pour his daddy problems and yearning for love and respect into the scenario. This is the heart of why we go to films, we put ourselves in the protagonists (or sometimes antagonists) shoes so as to experience the power, love or resolution that so often evades us in waking life.

The more I thought about the film in the day after I first saw it, I started to question if the whole thing might not be a dream, which would render whether or not the spinning top toppled at the end a moot point. I believe not only is that not a cheat, it's a brilliant approach to telling the story. The point of the film isn't if it's a dream or not. It might be a dream, it might not be. My personal interpretation is that Dicaprio's character of Cobb is actually an elderly man who has recently lost his wife and the film that plays out is nothing more than a rambling dream he has in order to deal with that loss on a subconscious level. It's all spelled out by Saito and Cobb repeatedly intoning the phrase about being an old man full of regret, waiting to die alone. It's clear as day when, near the end, Moll reminds Cobb that he dreamed they'd grow old together and he replies that they already did, and we see flashbacks of an elderly couple walking through a brightly lit city. But, as I previously stated, it doesn't matter if my interpretation is correct, because all interpretations are correct. Nolan led me into an engaging dream world, and I took out of it that Moll and Cobb lived a long happy life together, most likely because I am married and would like the same thing for myself and my wife. Others will deposit their own psyche into the dream safe and take from it what they will and they will not be any more or less correct than me.

I think Inception is THAT film for Christopher Nolan. The one where he brought it all together that will be looked back upon as the moment he went from being the dude who could make smarter than average superhero movies to the preeminent artist in his field. Film is the most important art form in the history of human civilization. It encompasses all variegated forms of art into one narrative medium and reaches the most people of every age, gender, political affiliation, ethnicity, geographical location and religious belief. It is the apotheosis of what mankind can do to express his or her understanding of the predicament, joy and peril of consciousness and Christopher Nolan happens to be THE best person in the world at it right now. He makes movies that attain both critical and popular acclaim in a way previously unheard of. Thank god he's only 39!

You could pick out any one element to focus on and be blown away by it for the films two and half hour run time. You could spend the whole movie simply studying the cinematography of Wally Pfister, or the sumptuous production design and architecture, or the gorgeous costume design, or the positively unreal Hans Zimmer score, or the superlative stunt work, or the innovative and jaw dropping computer effects work, or the pitch perfect cast, or the mind bending, yet always understandable script and Direction. The point is, there isn't in my estimation even one weak spot in this whole film. Some people point to the coldness of Nolan's approach, the clinical detachment he imbues his films with as his weakness. I disagree. I think that Nolan is a Director who overpowers you with craft to be sure, but he gives you the option to be affected emotionally by the film. He doesn't tell you what to react to and how by manipulative, time tested techniques and editing parlor tricks. That's for Spielberg and Zemeckis and the like. He gives you the thought without you knowing it. He's a film maker who not only believes in the subtle beauty of Inception, but expertly practices it with every film he creates. He allows us to do the thinking and deciding and is such an elegant gentleman about it, he sees fit to make sure our surroundings are lush and agreeable. Then he stands out of the way and lets it happen as opposed to forcing every laugh, sigh, chuckle and tear out of us as with a crowbar. He is a new generation of auteur, and for those of us who place a premium on the art forms importance and meaning, a beacon to light the way.

Twilight

2010-07-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've known for a while that it was coming. I've winced with nervous dread many a time as my wife scanned through the DVR, looking for something to watch in the interest of making room for yet another Real Housewives of wherever. It has stared back at me from it's spot near the bottom of the alphabetized queue... solemn, unmovable and implacable. TWILIGHT. Being as that my better half has been subjected to sitting through countless Fulci chunkblowers, not to mention the innumerable brain dead slashers and morally questionable Italian cannibal epics, I feel it only fair for me to occasionally tread more conventional waters. But this whole Twilight thing has always irked me. Not for some supposed stake of horror superiority or being able to espouse that "vampires don't sparkle, man!". I simply have long been of the belief that it's something not aimed at me, so why would I bother complaining about or endlessly, breathlessly railing against it. I am neither the gender or age targeted by the brutal media campaign being waged on today's teen girls with the precision and force of Rommel leading the 7th Panzer division into France by skirting the Maginot line.

My point is, I was sort of just hoping they would release all 18 films (or however many they pad this out to) and the Twilight phenomena could run its course without me having to get my eyeballs dirty. No such luck though, not for this pop culture glutton and admitted media savant. So, with much recalcitrance, I braced myself as my wife hit play and the "saga" began to unfold.

I won't make any bones about it, the first Twilight film is utterly horrible. It's cloying, forced teen drama is absolutely embarrassing to behold. It's less a film than a collection of overheated, desirous glances between two of the most vapid leads imaginable. Even if, like me, you'd read enough in the media to know what to expect, it's still somewhat shocking to experience firsthand how heavy handed the nature in which the ham fisted narrative is presented. When Robert Pattinson's "vampire" character Edward Cullen shows his true, sparkling form to Kirsten Stewart's Bella and says something to the effect of "See, I'm a monster!" my wife and I broke into gales of incredulous laughter. But, as the film laboriously plows through such moments of ass clenching exposition, a strange thing begins to happen. One becomes inured to the inanity of it all due to the brazenly dumb earnestness of its presentation. I respect that this film set out to hit an extraordinarily large target and managed to verily obliterate said target through sheer simple mindedness. Despite an admittedly vast tonal gulf between Twilight and the best of my favorite horror films, they manage to do the most important thing that films of their varied ilk can do. They succeed in giving their intended audience exactly what they went to the theater to see.

So, imagine my surprise when I heard the words, "Well, let's rent the next one On demand and see if it gets any better. I guess I kind of want to see the werewolf stuff." escape my lips! Turns out, the second film, New Moon, is vastly superior. The romance becomes a love triangle when one of Bella's friends hits puberty and, with the help of an ancient family curse (and no small amount of steroids), becomes a potential suitor. For you see, he can offer Bella protection without having to turn her into an undead, soulless vampire. This is the Team Edward/Team Jacob stuff you've heard so much about. That's all there is to it friends. Twilight is nothing more than a tale of a young girl coming of age, torn between two men and the decision of choosing what's best for her or choosing what she wants most. Not exactly Videodrome, but it's serviceable and in all honesty exactly the amount of subtext this sort of story needs. New Moon also sees the leads and supporting characters taking on more dimension and the inclusion of some well shot and thrilling (albeit quite tame) action set pieces doesn't hurt either.

Then, as if driven by some completest compulsion, I went with the little lady to the new chapter Eclipse today. The third, and best, of the Twilight films is Directed by David Slade of 30 Days of Night and Hard Candy fame and his signature visual intensity and assured hand with heightened drama between 2 characters in extreme closeup fits the series like a glove. The dynamic between Jacob and Edward as they vie for Bella is dealt with a refreshing amount of humor, heart and intelligence. There is one scene in particular where the 2 monster Romeo's have a measured, thoughtful debate while Bella sleeps that had me hanging on every word and weighing the merits of each of their assertions. It's a quiet, well played scene that engages the viewer and actually lends weight and meaning to the proceedings. The final fight of this film that plays out in a wide open field between giant Wolves and lithe Vampires is exciting beyond belief and void of the insipid editing that robs most current action films of their intensity. As the film concluded, I found myself honestly, earnestly and dumbly looking forward to the next installment. A feat most modern film series cannot lay claim to.

Much, too much has been made of the throwback chivalry and wait until you're married message. I've never read the Stephanie Myers source material, nor do I intend to, so I can't vouch for the validity of the Mormon brainwashing claims laid at its feet. What I do know, is that in an era where young girls are shown sex tape vixens as role models for success and fame and encouraged to "go wild" in the interests of providing lascivious grown men with a tangible porno mag for a partner, Bella is a revelation as a lead female character. She doesn't dress like a Suicide Girl or down shots of Patron trying to win the heart of washed up glam rockers. She's trying to develop a real, lasting relationship with a man whose only wish is to protect and cherish her. I've heard a lot of hullabaloo about a recent film entitled Deadgirl, in which 2 outcast teen boys find a zombie girl chained to the wall of an abandoned factory and take turns raping her for the films duration. So, please excuse me if I find something touching and dare I say important about a film that millions of teen aged boys are going to see that models and glorifies the apparently antiquated and passe notion of treating women with respect and defending their honor at all costs. Edward and Jacob are 2 dudes any father would happily entrust their daughter's well being with, and the fact that they're presented as such powerful figures is a commendable and refreshing choice.

Horror fans of my age need not hate this series of films. They do nothing disrespectful to denigrate the mystique of the Werewolf or Vampire archetype. So they sparkle, so what? We still have Reggie Nalder's Barlow, Oldman's Vlad and Schreck's Nosferatu to keep us up at night. There's no need to spit venom at a group of teen girls enjoying being caught up in a world that appeals to them. I left behind the playground tactics 20 some years ago and to continually harp on these silly, fanciful flicks without even bothering to sit through them smacks of unwarranted bullying. I'll gladly go on the record as saying the Twilight films are infinitely better than the Underworld ones and a billion times better than those interminable Harry Potter atrocities with their suffocating production design and the bludgeoning torpor they induce in the viewer. So yeah, lighten up a bit fellas. I'd even go so far as to say, sparkle a bit.

You hear that Vitus? Even the phone is dead.

2010-07-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so horror is in the dumper right now. It feels as if even the most ardent of fans have shuffled on to greener pastures. Message boards are tumbleweed strewn ghost towns, fan created audio shows are either taking breaks or struggling to put together content and theaters are a barren wasteland as far as straight genre cinema is concerned. So what is Shloggs up to and watching you might (probably not) ask.

Well, I've been thoroughly enjoying my bluray player for one. I picked up Kill Bill 1 and 2, Apocalypto, AVP, Commando, Predator ultimate hunter edition and the Pirates of the Caribbean box set all on the superior format that is bluray. The Kill Bill films look and sound phenomenal and should be in the collection of any film enthusiast. Volume 1 is pure cinematic heaven. It's probably my favorite QT joint for the simple fact that it boasts his finest shot composition and easily is the best paced of all his work. The 2nd Volume gets bogged down by painfully repetitive dialog and unnecessary sidetracks, most notably that fucking godawful Larry Bishop scene that threatens to go on for an eternity and derail whatever languid momentum he had going. I did appreciate it more this viewing on blu though.

What really blew my mind though was The Pirates box set. Sure, these films are ridiculously involved and perhaps a bit too cutesy for their own good from time to time, but for my money, they feature hands down the most impressive special effects, costumes and set design ever put to film. They should have called the films Production Value 1, 2 and 3. Davy Jones and his crew are so grotesque and monstrous it must be seen in hi-def to be believed. Bill Nighy should have got some sort of a special mo-cap Oscar for what he brought to that character. The films require a great deal of attention due to their convoluted plot lines and the ever shifting allegiances of the many, many characters and this approach to storytelling lends itself quite well to home viewing. I can see myself revisiting this series at least once a year for the rest of my life, much like Jackson's impeccable LOTR trilogy. If you've either never seen the Pirates films or saw them once and weren't impressed, I implore you to give them another look, especially on blu.

I checked out Predators last night and am pleased to give it the Shloggsy seal of approval. It felt like it was 1987 all over again sitting in that theater last night. So, not all is bleak. Don't worry my lascivious brethren, Autumn isn't that far away and before you know it, we'll all be deluged with bluray releases of classic films, theatrical joints of varying quality and all night movie marathons with our buddies. Sometimes a break is good to cleanse the palette, but this is getting rigoddamndiculous!

Remember Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot?

2010-06-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

My good friend Brian, AKA Apparition (who writes a damn good blog himself as part of the horror bloggers coalition, check it out!) inspired me with his recent post to revisit Tobe Hooper's seminal television adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Unlike Brian, I was only 2 when this aired in 1979 and was unable to watch it when it was first rolled out. I'm almost glad I missed it cause I guarantee you I would have filled my Wranglers if I had.

I've never been that much of a vampire enthusiast. I appreciate Browning's Dracula primarily for the magnetic performance of the great Bela Lugosi, but without that inimitable Hungarian thespians histrionics, it would be a rather dull and stagy affair. I didn't appreciate Langella's late 70's take on the count much beyond the hysterical giggling fit his coiffure gave my friend and I during one late night viewing that led us to refer to the film as Conair Dracula, a practice we continue to this day. I especially dislike the notion of a tragically sexy and romanticised bloodsucker, so soccer mom shower nozzle masturbation fodder such as Interview with a Vampire, True Blood and Twilight do nothing for me. I do love Murnau's Nosferatu though. Sure, it's slow and outdated, but the atmosphere is like a lead funeral shroud and Max Schreck's take on the Count is in my top 3 portrayals along with Gary Oldman and Salem Lot's Reggie Nalder. I love Coppola's Dracula more as an audacious, experimental art film with psychotic, wildly varied performances than as a Vampire film per se. I have decided after this most recent appraisal that Salem's Lot is without a doubt my favorite Vampire film of all time.

Credit must be given to King's source material. Above anything else, King has always been remarkably adept at populating his tales with an array of relatable characters who interweave to create a small town mosaic we can all find truth in. Tobe Hooper takes this great foundation and builds a veritable mansion of a film atop it. He makes us believe in this town, its people and their struggles. As the film develops at it's own languid pace, we have the opportunity to get to know these characters, come to care about them and to fully understand the complex relationships they all have with each other.

This has a lot to do with how well cast the film is, but even more in how Hooper takes this large assemblage of actors from disparate backgrounds (English stage training, 70's cop show, Eastwood westerns and Z-grade exploitation) with huge age gaps (8 to 80!) and pieces together a cohesive tapestry of performances. For me, this deft handling of his cast is no more apparent than in the cat and mouse exchange between Kenneth Macmillan's constable and James Mason's Straker at the antique store concerning a dark suit. The subtle, tension filled battle of wills playing out underneath the surface of their seemingly quiet conversation is some of the best acting I've seen in any movie, let alone a horror flick made for television! This is but one example in a 3 hour film filled to the brim with such well played interaction. David Soul brings a tough intelligence to his role and Geoff Lewis is a particular standout with his sad, wounded, lost loser just trying to get by as a nobody in a small town.

But I'll be damned if the whole thing doesn't eventually come down to Reggie Nalder's Barlow for me. THIS is how a vampire is supposed to be! Unearthly, disquieting, terrifying, revolting, plague ridden, ratlike and just generally monstrous beyond human comprehension. There's a scene toward the end when Barlow springs from his coffin so utterly horrific that I, at 32 years of age, jumped back from the TV and pulled my hands toward my chest cause I didn't want him to get me! Hooper's presentation of this piece of visual dynamite is the model of restraint and film making skill. We see Barlow only when we need to for exactly as long as we need to. He's barely in the film, but his Satanic presence permeates every frame as he wordlessly looms over the towns decay and eventual destruction. The archetype of a bloodsucking creature who manipulates the living, feeds off of them, infects them and lays waste to their ideals and innocence is perhaps the most deeply rooted fear we as humans have and Barlow in Salem's Lot is the penultimate expression of such an atavistic oppressor. The way I see it, Vampires don't date, they don't save you, they don't pine for lost love while playing the harpsichord and they sure as shit don't sparkle. They ingratiate themselves, they corrupt, they feed, they destroy, then they move on to the next town. Like the plague rats that laid waste to Bremen!

Other than pontificating on my opinions concerning Vampire cinema, I wanted to write this because I feel Tobe Hooper is a monumentally underrated director. His signature style is all over Salem's Lot. The crane shots, the ensemble cast, the way he develops and executes his scares, it's all here in spades. Please revisit this bona fide Vampire classic if you've grown tired of the shaved chest, pouty lipped, bodice wrinkler aesthetic bloodsucking cinema has adopted in the last decade. You won't be disappointed and you might just be reminded that Hooper is about a hell of a lot more than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The man truly is a master of horror in my book and no matter what the bulk of folks in the genre circles I run say, The Mangler is entertaining and fun as hell!

Splice: One man's critical appraisal

2010-06-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

There are a great deal many reasons why Splice is such a breath of fresh air to theatrical horror. It's devoid of insipid, superficial teenagers and their immature antics. It features remarkably strong actors in all the lead roles whose dedication and integrity to their craft produces performances of such a caliber rarely seen in the genre. It boasts wildly imaginative creature design work from the preeminent practitioner's of practical effects, the illustrious KNB. The Director has deft skill behind the camera and took the time to compose beautiful shots and create a unifying visual atmosphere throughout disparate locations. Whether or not you appreciate the manner in which the film's story plays out is nearly irrelevant in the face of so many inarguable pluses. The reviews I've read have picked up on the obvious science run amok theme, which, despite being both patently fascinating and scarily prescient, is certainly nothing new to the genre. The film is reverent of its forbear Frankenstein, in not only thematic construction, but in the sly naming of its two leads after actors from Bride of Frankenstein. Still more reviewers have picked up on how potent its parental metaphor is. As a father myself, I was keenly impacted by the painful truth concerning the difficulties couples face raising a child which shines through the outrageous nature of the surrogate scenario. What I don't hear many people discussing is the startlingly feminine nature of the film. Sarah Polley's performance is absolutely brilliant in this, but the most stunning thing about it is that she portrays the lead character. Not the lead character in the sense that Jaime Lee Curtis played the lead in Halloween, as an empty, pure vessel who events and action happen TO and AROUND. No, that's the standard lead female role in a horror film. Sarah Polley's Elsa is a lead character whose decisions and actions DRIVE the narrative and propel the story. Adrien Brody as her more timid mate, is constantly playing catch-up and reacting to the consequences of her decisions, effectively placing him in the traditional female role. This is hugely important to take note of. Elsa is a fully realized, 3-dimensional character with her own psychological baggage, wants and needs. If you think a while on it, you'll realize there are few such female characters in the history of the horror film. Perhaps it is this narrative decision that makes the film so unique, for it steers the tone into unfamiliar waters that may seem murky and frightening to the bulk of the male viewers. Adrien Brody's Clive becomes a nagging naysayer and sulking buzzkill. The focus becomes Elsa's exhilaration with the discovery of her maternal instinct on her own terms and without the input, either emotionally or genetically, of Clive. So, a third of the way into the film, we have the story of a driven, intelligent career woman whose ambition and vision supersedes that of her husband deciding (against Clive's withering wishes) to further their research, push scientific and ethical boundaries and to expand their family unit. In the interest of fair warning, there be spoilers and unchecked theoretical postulations ahead. The Spliced hybrid child is named Dren by Elsa and quickly becomes the other focal point of the story. The tale has now become one of mother and daughter struggling to find a middle ground between protection and imprisonment, nurturing and belittlement, discipline and tortuous abuse. Women are vastly more complex creatures than men so it stands to reason the dynamic between two with a filial connection would be a veritable powder keg of contrasting, powerful emotions. Elsa wishes to educate Dren, to make her pretty, to see her flower and take flight. But when Dren becomes increasingly, uncontrollably powerful and threatens to figuratively and literally take flight, the dark side of Elsa's lioness protective instinct kicks in and it is devastatingly unsettling to behold. In an earlier scene in which she applied make-up to Dren, Elsa proffered a tellingly traumatic anecdote concerning her own adolescence with her own unstable mother. "My mother wouldn't allow me to wear make-up. She said it debases women. But who doesn't want to be debased every now and again?" This line of dialog no doubt seems confusing and conflicting to most men. As well it should. As men, we never have to consider the tipping point where our own desire for attention becomes unwitting, potentially harmful self-exploitation. This is an issue and a stage in women's lives that has tremendous and lasting impact and the nature in which their guiding female figure (or lack thereof) comes into play is of paramount importance. So Dren, tired of her imposed sequestering, exerts her budding power and attempts an escape. She is knocked unconscious by the only mother she's ever known, strapped to a table and maimed, shorn of her gender identifying clothing and callously scrubbed free of the make-up that was earlier so lovingly administered. Elsa has gone from gentle gal pal to stern, psychoses-inducing matriarch in a manner that while admittedly brutally fantastical, is grounded in a sadly highly identifiable (to women) truth. So not only does the film deign to allow characters to behave in complex, sometimes detestable ways without crossing into outright villainy, it has the temerity to boldly confront the epic, generation spanning struggle that is entering into and dealing with womanhood. Then of course there is the much ballyhooed and oft derided sequence of inter species sex between Clive and Dren. Sure, it occasions some childish giggling and uncomfortable scoffing, but this moment is about a lot more than gross out titillation and implied incest. It's about a young woman, confused and coming into her own, being held back and dismissed, then seeking attention in a naive manner from someone who readily gives it. It's about someone in a position of power being weak and exploiting her need to be noticed. This may be the moment everybody laughed or said "Ewwwww!", but those reactions were no doubt brought about by an uneasy acknowledgement that this sort of thing, sans the genetic hybrid element, happens all too often. This is a complicated, challenging film that has a lot more for women to relate to than men. It's had my head working overtime since seeing it and I will no doubt continue to unearth its mysteries for years to come. I'm not asking my male compatriots to go into the film with a Women's Study mentality, just to consider that a film about issues foreign to us might be a beneficial watch and perhaps, just perhaps, more horror films with TRUE female lead characters and themes pertaining to the feminine experience might not be such a bad thing.

My 5 favorite films: Film 3: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2010-05-31T07:12:00.000-07:00

Along with late Saturday night horror host presentations of classic Universal monster films, my love of the genre took root in the early days of the non-franchise, mom & pop video stores. There were several of those shops my father and I would visit. One was located in the same strip mall I got my hair cut at and that was where I first saw IT. The poster for Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was 5 or 6 at the time and I recall my mind being thrown into a maelstrom of unpleasant prognostication. What one earth could possibly happen in this movie?!?!? I was simultaneously too terrified to find out and too intrigued to stop thinking about it, which I believe is the precise mathematical equation that explains the allure of horror on an impressionable mind. I didn't dare ask my father to rent it for me for I knew, even at that young age, that request would be summarily shot down.

Fast forward 4 or 5 years, now at 10 or 11 years of age, I still hadn't forgotten about seeing the film, but it had slipped to the back of my to-do list. Then, one sunny summer afternoon, I look through the TV guide (the one that came as a supplement to the Sunday paper back in the day) and see that it is playing on broadcast TV in the middle of the day! Seeing that it was already running, I switched immediately to the station airing it right as it came back from commercial break with a card and voice over explaining that the film was being aired uncut and that viewer discretion was advised. The scene opened up on Sally pushing Franklin in the dark and I was taken aback by how dark, grainy and awful the image looked, like a bad dream being transmitted from a nightmare dimension. I became instantly quite nervous and felt dangerously unsafe even though it was the middle of a beautiful summer day and the sun was shining cheerily through the blinds behind me. Sally and Franklin's hopeless bickering led to a crescendo, then out popped Leatherface into the flashlight's glare and I bolted from my cross legged position in font of the cathode ray, frantically turned the television off and ran outside to play and to forget about such things... for a time.

In the interim, I became well versed with far more graphic films. Dead Alive, Bad Taste, Evil Dead 2 and so on and so forth. But, due to some unutterable and ingrained trepidation, never undertook seeing TCM in its entirety. Jump cut to age 19. I was well into the "sleeping on friends and girlfriends couches while being a jobless bum" phase of my life. I was spending the night at the apartment of my good friend Mr. Salty (nickname) when he and his old lady retired to the boudoir, leaving my insomniac self with his tiny tube TV, creaky VCR and collection of horror cassettes. Among the Full Moon features and other detritus, there was a copy of TCM that even in the year 1996 when I came across it was already certifiably ancient. I don't know what quaint distribution company of forgotten lore released it, but there, alone in the dark, inches away from the sickly glow of a minuscule, hand me down, off brand TV, I decided to at long last watch this much ballyhooed and habitually avoided film.

In retrospect, there was no other way to experience the film for the first time. The diminutive screen and need to keep the volume down due to the late hour compelled me to sit closely and strain to hear, which served only to suck me into the films degenerative web all the more. It felt dream like and mysterious, yet also visceral and punishing. The last 40 minutes was the closest I'd ever seen a film capture a descent into hell up to that point. It didn't feel like a titillating, voyeuristic viewing of a produced piece of entertainment so much as a transgressive intrusion on someones ultimate physical suffering and attendant mental collapse. As soon as it finished, I rewound it and instantly watched it again. Over the next several months, I probably watched the film 30 times myself and another 15 where I forced others to actually sit down and focus on it, cause if there was ever a film that the average person thinks they've seen, but in point of fact hasn't and can't begin to comprehend how horribly powerful and terrifically upsetting it is, it's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I still revisit it at least twice a year and its Herculean strength has diminished little over the decades.

I won't go into the subtext, cinematography and sundry reasons why the film is so majestic. I've expounded a great deal on that in written reviews elsewhere on the web. I would however like to make one final point. I am of the opinion that if you are one of those horror fans that drones on and on about how much you hate torture porn, you have no right being a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper's TCM is the prototypical torture porn film in the same manner that Halloween and Psycho are the forbears of the slasher film. It is a story of a group of youth's out of their element and captured by a sadistic, inhuman force that gleefully goes about psychologically and physically breaking them down until they eventually kill them. It is the bloody chamber archetype and is perhaps the most primal example of a horror story. The themes and base fears exploited by the core scenario are found everywhere throughout culture from The Passion of Jesus Christ to Hansel and Gretel to Hostel. For the love of god, the last 35 minutes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are Sally Hardesty strapped to a chair, screaming in revulsion, terror and agony as a group of slimy, sweat drenched inbreds paw, poke and prod her. If that doesn't qualify as torture porn, I have no idea what the hell does.

It is one of the most influential horror films ever made and the prime example of a movie being oft imitated yet never duplicated. It is lightning in a bottle. It is a window into hell. It is the diseased heart beating beneath the American dream. It is the one and only, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.