Movies watched, March 23-April 12, 2008

Snow Angels, David Gordon Green, 2008

Snow Angels’ journey from book to film is rather interesting. David Gordon Green had initially written the script in 2003 for another director; the project was scrapped, then revisited several years later, this time with Green directing as well. The book, though I haven’t read it, is narrated by the teenage protagonist Arthur Parkinson, but as a grown man looking back on a rather painful time in his life—as his parents were divorcing, which also coincided with an incident involving his former babysitter. It’s one of those novels where the first-person narrator is omniscient, commenting on scenes and conversations he couldn’t have been privy to. In order to translate the story to the screen, the structure is altered so that it occurs in the present, from the perspectives of both Arthur and the aforementioned babysitter, Annie. Arthur and Annie are brought together in their current lives by working together at a Chinese restaurant, which might seem somewhat arbitrary as a plot device, but it doesn’t feel that way, especially considering that they eventually become linked in another, more unfortunate sense as well. (For more on the adaptation process, see Bookforum’s article, available here.

The film is framed by a rather uncoordinated marching band practice on a snowy field. The coach’s corny reprimanding speech is interrupted by the sounds of two gunshots in the distance—we are then presented with the series of events that culminated in said gunshots. In addition to the marching band, it also starts with several brief scenes depicting wintry small town life—picking up the newspaper, pumping gas, and so on. These scenes are echoed later in the film, and while they’re the same, shot-for-shot, they somehow feel different. They don’t have that same innocence, or neutrality, but are marked with what has happened, possessing a kind of weariness, an impression of trudging along through one’s routine even in the midst of tragedy.

Annie has recently separated from her emotionally unstable husband, Glenn. A recovering alcoholic who thinks he’s found God, Glenn is extremely attached to Annie, seemingly unable to function without her (they’ve been together since high school). He tried to kill himself when she left him, and though he claims he’s better now, his behavior is nonetheless erratic. Annie, on the other hand, seems much more together, at least on the surface—one can’t imagine why she’s still in this crappy little town—but her flaws are gradually revealed.

Annie and Glenn have joint custody of their four-year-old daughter, Tara, which forces them together on a weekly basis. Towards the beginning of the film, Glenn forgets to bring the stuffed rabbit he’d bought for Tara; he mutters “you forgot the rabbit” at various points throughout the film, this seemingly innocuous string of words transforming into a symbol for all of his failures and shortcomings. Every time he utters the phrase, it generates an almost tangible feeling of anguish; one can’t help cringing.

While we do get a bit of emotional relief in the scenes depicting Arthur’s and Lila’s burgeoning romance, the film mainly fluctuates between merely everyday depressing to soul-numbingly bleak, its conclusion rendering the viewer more or less speechless. It’s devastating to watch, its effects on my frame of mind lingering for hours after the credits rolled. This movie ruined a beautiful, sunny afternoon, although I don’t regret seeing it at all—I might recommend, however, that one watch it at night, so as not to carry its feelings of despair with them for too long before sleeping it off.

Snow Angels bears the same level of emotional intensity as David Gordon Green’s previous films—so it’ll be interesting to see his next movie, Pineapple Express, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg of Superbad fame. I’m definitely curious to find out how the stoner comedy hit of the summer will look when filtered through Green’s directorial lens.

Halloween, Rob Zombie, 2007

The problem with most remakes of already great films is that they bring nothing new to the plate, serving no purpose other than to make money, and perhaps to introduce a new generation to an unknown classic. Thus, I had actually been looking forward to this movie as, working from John Carpenter’s advice to Rob Zombie that he “make it his own”, it contains original material delving deeper into Michael Myers’ past and psychology, exploring the root of his psychopathy, what drives him to kill—not so much a remake as a reimagining.

Unfortunately, what Zombie comes up with is boring and unoriginal. In this new scenario, the whole Myers household is screwed up. Michael’s mother is a stripper, his sister Judith is a slutty dresser (perhaps a stripper in the making), and his mother’s boyfriend is just kind of gross—he makes a pass at Judith at the breakfast table, and otherwise seems to be a worthless sponge on the Myers’ already meager funds. In addition to his stereotypically bad home life, Michael is picked on by school bullies—thus he snaps and kills the bullies, and his family, and anyone else who does or says anything mean to him.

That Michael’s upbringing was troubled seems the clichéd way of thinking, as if he were a Columbine case taken to the extreme. The film would have been much creepier if his family was seemingly normal and wholesome, that his violent tendencies were unexplainable, at least in a clearcut manner. Also, I’m pretty sure that not everyone whose mom is a stripper becomes a violent psychopath.

Zombie also attempts to develop the origin behind Michael’s face mask. Here, Michael becomes generally obsessed with masks while in the mental hospital, fashioning hundreds of them out of papier mache and newspaper, kind of like a bizarre version of a therapeutic arts and crafts project. He says he doesn’t want to show his face because it’s ugly—which, like the bad home life, seems like a clichéd, oversimplified explanation. I wish there weren’t so much analysis behind his wearing of masks—he finds one, he puts it on. End of story. Debra Hill, co-writer and producer of the original film, explains that the “idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless—this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not.” The idea stemmed not from an attempt at character-development but at creating a creepy, unsettling visual element, of which there is a paucity here. The way to make a film truly terrifying lies in the craft of filmmaking itself—use of sound, setting, visuals, and camera angles and movements. Then there’s the fact that making Michael seem more human ruins the mystery behind the character—part of the horror is that we don’t understand him, or how he came to be this way, and perhaps we shouldn’t. Basically, this was a very misguided, though possibly well-meaning, effort.

Coffy, Jack Hill, 1973
Foxy Brown, Jack Hill, 1974

Coffy is a sexy black nurse who seeks vengeance when her younger sister becomes involved with drugs and is sold contaminated heroin. Foxy Brown is a sexy black woman who seeks vengeance when her government agent boyfriend is shot down by gangsters.

There’s a good reason why the plots of these two films are so similar: Foxy Brown was initially intended as a sequel to Coffy (titled Burn, Coffy, Burn!), but at the last minute the studio decided that they didn’t want it to be a sequel after all. The character’s name was changed, and the script no longer revealed where she worked, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same character, if not the same movie—at the very least, the same basic premise.

Both Coffy and Foxy find themselves immersed in the seedy criminal underworld, taking out drug dealers and pimps, mobsters and crooked cops. It seems that in the realms of these films, there’s no such thing as an honest politician (except for Foxy’s dead boyfriend)—everyone is making deals with the mob, taking bribes, and turning a blind eye to drug trafficking and prostitution.

Coffy/Foxy is a resourceful and quick-witted lady, willing to use her body to lure criminals in and trick them into letting their guard down. In Coffy, she pretends to come onto one of the cops who are holding her hostage. Just as they’re about to do the deed, she grabs a bobby pin hidden in her afro—in a previous scene, she’d found it on the ground in the shack she was locked inside, sharpening it on a piece of stone—and stabs the cop in the neck in order to escape. And in Foxy Brown, she goes undercover as a high-class call girl in order to get to those responsible for her boyfriend’s death.

Despite her violent tendencies (and hey, she’s driven to these actions by the brutality of the world around her), she’s an appealing character, sticking up for the little guy, and sticking it to the crooks and thugs who plague our society. As Foxy says, vigilante justice is “as American as apple pie.”

While for the most part serving as pure entertainment, the films also touch on themes of racial and social injustice. For instance, Link’s lament over the plight of the black man: “I don’t know how to sing, and I don’t know how to dance, and I don’t know how to preach to no congregation. I’m too small to be a football hero, and too ugly to be elected mayor...I just get so full of ambition. Now you tell me what I’m supposed to do with all this ambition.” His character isn’t really all that sympathetic though, as in addition to directing his ambition toward dealing coke, he turns in his own sister, who just happens to be our heroine, Foxy Brown. Luckily, Foxy is not a force to be reckoned with—as Link says, “that’s my sister, baby, and she’s a whole lotta woman.”

Charley Varrick, Don Siegel, 1973

Charley Varrick opens with a bank robbery committed by masked men, some of whom don’t make it out alive. When the robbers, led by Charley Varrick—played by Walter Matthau, who on the surface seems an odd choice for the role, but it works beautifully—check out their loot, they find that they’ve made off with a lot more money than they’d expected to, a good sign that they’ve inadvertently knocked off a mafia-run bank. And if you have something of theirs, the mob doesn’t stop looking for you until you’re dead.

The remainder of the film addresses the process of dealing with this debacle. Varrick wants to play it safe and wait a few years before they even touch the money; his rather unwise partner, the weaselly Harman Sullivan, is itching to spend it, and insists that he’s not afraid of a bunch of gangsters. Throughout the film, up until the climax—which involves a memorable chase scene between a car and a cropduster plane—we’re convinced that Charley’s made a terrible mistake, that he’s been too trusting and fallen prey to some dishonest people—even more dishonest than he is—but in the end, his casual gum-chewing demeanor prevails. And one begins to wonder, to question whether the information we’ve been given can be believed—did Charley survive by the skin of his teeth, or was it all carefully planned to happen exactly as it did?

Movies watched, March 9-22, 2008

Story of a Junkie, Lech Kowalski, 1987

Documentary filmmaker Lech Kowalski (of such punk movies as D.O.A. and Hey Is Dee Dee Home) chronicles the day-to-day activities of John Spaceley, a.k.a. Gringo, an eye patch-wearing junkie living on the Lower East Side in the early 80s. Cloaked in perpetual darkness, teeming with graffiti, and populated by junkies, thieves, and freaks, the film accentuates the real Mad Max qualities that New York once possessed (particularly in the scene in which our eye patched hero is skateboarding down a dark, gloom-laden street with a motorcycle gang in tow). In this way, much of it feels less like a documentary than a B-grade Escape from New York.

The film does include straight documentary footage, but much of it falls into murkier territory. One could call it a quasi-documentary, as all of the people portrayed are real “street characters,” as Kowalski describes them in the DVD commentary, filmed in real locations and circumstances—basically, Kowalski would bring these people together, put them in situations that they would often find themselves in anyway, and let the camera roll. It’s authentic, yet not quite—essentially set-up only in that the participants were aware of the camera’s presence. A few scenes were, admittedly, outright stagings—the murder scene, for instance—based on real events that Kowalski witnessed and recreated for the film. Spaceley was never in on this though, so as to capture his true reactions to his surroundings—in the aforementioned murder scene, as soon as the shot is fired Spaceley takes off down the street, genuinely terrified.

As one might imagine considering the subject matter, the film is often disturbingly graphic. One witnesses people shooting up, suffering through withdrawal (with the inevitable profuse vomiting), and flagrantly sharing needles at shooting galleries, a particularly uncomfortable moment knowing that many of these people will later die of AIDS as a result of these activities.

The film is shot in a pre-gentrified Lower East Side and Soho, when they were vastly different from the chic locales they’ve become today. Yet they’re still vaguely recognizable—the funny thing about Manhattan is that despite all the development, how much these neighborhoods have changed in the past 20 years, there are still elements of the past preserved “like a seasoning” (as Luc Sante writes in his essay “My Lost City”), so that if you were to squint you could almost imagine Spaceley hustling on the corner, crouched over a comic book, or uncertainly making his way down the street in his snazzy white boots.

Not a Photograph, Jeffrey Iwanicki, 2006

“What happens when the most influential band you never heard reunites after 19 years?” This documentary about Boston’s legendary Mission of Burma attempts to answer that question, but unfortunately I’m far less interested in what they’re doing now than in what they were doing then. Not that I haven’t appreciated the newfound chance to see one of my favorite bands play—and for a bunch of 40 year olds, they monumentally surpass most of their contemporary competition. (I especially enjoyed their rendition of the Dicks’ “Hate the Police” onstage in Austin. Granted, I’d just seen the newly reunited Dicks play it too, but it was nonetheless cool.) And perhaps that’s the issue: I was there for the reuniting. I wanted the film to show me what I wasn’t there for: the history, the context, the early live footage, and so on. Not a Photograph does allocate a brief chronicling of the band’s beginnings and significant musical legacy, but not in enough detail for me.

Veronika Voss, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982

An aging German film star meets a sports writer, who, after a brief affair with the unstable actress, becomes suspicious of her doctor and self-proclaimed “best friend,” believing her to be keeping Voss pumped full of
morphine in order to slowly deplete her assets. The film uncannily captures the look and feel of an old film, despite its being released in 1982, evoking a kind of German Sunset Boulevard.

Minority Report, Steven Spielberg, 2002

While this movie is enjoyable as a suspenseful, futuristic thriller, there’s too much of Steven Spielberg in there to transcend beyond pure entertainment. It’s too slick, and maudlin at times, failing to capture the paranoid, druggy atmosphere of a Philip K. Dick story.

The Elephant Man, David Lynch, 1980

While The Elephant Man is one of David Lynch’s more conventionally plotted films, there are elements of his distinctive style present, such as a slow, nightmarish montage of marching elephants superimposed over women’s faces. This sequence seems to depict the explanation of how the Elephant Man came to be, according to Bytes, the sideshow man: “Consider the fate of this creature's poor mother, struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant.”

The film is more or less faithful to the story of the Elephant Man, though the events of his life are represented somewhat out of order, with perhaps a few embellishments. John Merrick (whose name, apparently, was actually Joseph) suffered not from any elephant attacks, as Bytes would have one believe, but from Proteus syndrome, a disorder that causes skin overgrowth and atypical bone development, often accompanied by massive tumors. In short, he was severely disfigured, the growths on his head so enormous that he could not sleep lying down for fear of breaking his neck (more on this in a moment). Despite his ailment’s being of a physical nature, many presumed him to be mentally deficient as well, perhaps simply because they did not want to imagine the horror of a normal, intelligent man trapped inside such a grotesquely malformed body. (“Pray to God he’s an idiot,” as Dr. Treves says, following Merrick’s first exposure to the medical community.)

Unfortunately, he is far from an idiot. As the film’s quintessential anguished line goes, “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” Beneath the misshapen façade, Merrick is a sensitive, refined, and loving son, with a love of poetry and theater, and a talent for drawing (he builds a cathedral made of cards based on the spire he sees from his window, using his imagination to supply the rest—the card cathedral can be see on display at the Royal London Hospital Museum).

Merrick died at 27 in his sleep when his neck was dislocated, due to the weight of his massive head. Merrick was well aware of the risk he was taking by sleeping on his back, but he did it anyway, his desire to be normal was so intense. (According to Wikipedia, Merrick had expressed the desire to visit a hospital for the blind so he could find a woman who could not see him, who could love him for who he was.) And thus was the plight of the Elephant Man—people tried to abuse him and exploit him, while others wanted to gape at the spectacle of his hideousness, but few truly cared for him.

Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck, 2007

I really can’t figure out what people saw in this “critically acclaimed” movie. I found it to be a rather predictable thriller, plagued by unlistenable Bahston accents, and implementing every silly plot effect (for instance, blocking out sound and then letting it back in for maximum effect) that you’ve seen countless times before. Boring.

Movies watched, March 1-8, 2008

Funny Games, Michael Haneke, 1997

In this Austrian horror film, two preppy-looking young men take a family hostage inside their own vacation home and torture them throughout the course of the night. Far from a conventional thriller of this ilk, Haneke takes a self-examining approach, employing various techniques that force the viewer to contemplate their responses to the film’s violence. For instance, one of the killers dislikes the outcome of a particular scene, so he “rewinds” the film so he can redo it. This interruption in the plot not only draws attention to the fact that we’re watching a movie, but sparks the viewer to stop and reflect on it a little longer than they might otherwise have done. At least that’s the intention—I found the rewinding to be kind of annoying.

The killers often address the audience directly, shifting responsibility for their actions upon the viewer. It implies that by watching a violent film, the viewer is somehow complicit, allowing the violence to happen—as if we can protest. I suppose one could challenge our reasons for finding such films entertaining (this is often attributed to an inherent desire for emotional stimulation), but to suggest culpability for the fictional characters’ crimes is a bit farfetched. Maybe I’m oversimplifying a complex idea, but regardless, I think I’d rather just watch a film and analyze it as I see fit. I don’t need the director forcing me into philosophical reflection.

Sicko, Michael Moore, 2007

Michael Moore’s most recent documentary addresses the many flaws of the American healthcare system, in which insurance company staff are rewarded for denying coverage to their customers. In addition to interviewing various victims and employees of this profit-driven system, Moore visits several countries that practice universal healthcare.

In a British hospital, the only cashier he can find actually exists to give out, rather than collect, money; if patients can provide a receipt for taking public transportation to the hospital, they will be reimbursed for their expenses. This is rather bewildering for someone who is used to patients being charged for ambulance rides—in one scene, a woman describes how her insurance company denied coverage for her ride from an accident scene to the hospital because she hadn’t pre-approved it, despite the fact that she was unconscious for the trip.

Residents of countries with a universal healthcare system generally seem not only healthier but also happier, the result of a vastly different mindset and approach to life. Europeans, for instance, work less—they have a 35-hour work week and often enjoy upwards of four weeks vacation a year—as opposed to the doggedly work-minded Americans who often spend upwards of 60 hours a week in the office (and two weeks or less on vacation). There’s a clip included in the film in which George W. Bush meets a woman who works three jobs in order to make ends meet. While to me there is something horribly wrong with this picture—to put it simply, the cost of living grossly exceeds the average wage—Bush praises the woman for her steadfast work ethic, proudly beaming as if hers is an admirable situation we can all aspire to: “Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic.” Uniquely American, indeed.

As in any Moore documentary there are a few gimmicks employed, and while I’m not a particularly big fan of this practice, they’re nonetheless effective. For instance, Moore transports a group of ailing 9/11 volunteers to Cuba, where they receive better healthcare than they did in the United States, one woman finding that her $240 a month inhaler costs five cents in a Cuban pharmacy. Never mind that Moore rather sneakily draws on our sympathies with dramatic stories of these American heroes turned out in the cold—the five cent inhaler drives the point home pretty clearly.

And so, as this film illustrates, it is possible to efficiently and effectively provide universal healthcare to the masses, yet America severely falls behind in its practices—we’re perversely more concerned with profits than with our own citizens’ wellbeing.

Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972

A weathered-looking, middle-aged man named Paul (Marlon Brando) and a beautiful young woman named Jeanne are brought together by fate in an empty Paris apartment. Paul’s wife has just committed suicide, and Jeanne is about to be married to an obnoxious filmmaker (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose performance is somewhat derivative of that of his previous characters—a little more about this below). They don’t know this about one another though—they don’t even know each other’s names, which is the driving force of their affair. Their relationship exists solely within the walls of this large and barren apartment; it could not subsist in the real world.

The film is best known for its graphic depictions of sex, which in this case is not nearly as romantic as it is brutal—instead of passion one witnesses two lonely souls desperate for human contact. It’s difficult to mention this aspect without referring to the infamous “butter scene,” in which Paul and Jeanne have anal sex, using butter as a lubricant. The actress playing Jeanne later revealed that despite the simulation she truly felt violated by this act, that her tears of humiliation are real.

Brando’s anguished performance is intense, most notably a powerful, grief-stricken monologue over the body of his dead wife, in which he cycles from berating her, calling her a “cheap, goddamn, fucking, godforsaken whore,” to mournfully removing her makeup (“you never wore this fucking shit”), and sobbing uncontrollably (“I don’t know why you did it!”) His character is much more complex and multi-faceted than that of Jeanne—whether this is because of the script or their performances, I can’t say, but Brando definitely makes the character his own.

As I said before, their relationship could not exist outside the apartment—and when they eventually meet up again, and Paul reveals his name and tells her about his life, the change in dynamic is palpable. It’s also a case of “too little too late”—he wants to pursue a normal relationship (“We left the apartment and now we begin and love all the rest of it”) but at this point she is desperate to put it behind her, to forget he ever existed.

The Mother and the Whore, Jean Eustache, 1973

Released a few years after the French New Wave and the protests of May 1968, this film looks back at these heady times with romantic nostalgia, referencing them on various occasions: “After crises one must forget everything quickly. Erase everything. Like France after the occupation, like France after May ‘68. You recover like France after May ‘68.” It emulates the films of the Nouvelle Vague in style and technique, with its black and white cinematography, natural lighting, lengthy exchanges of intellectual banter, and the casting of classic New Wave actors Jean-Pierre Léaud and Marie Lafont (who starred in Truffaut’s first short, Les Mistons). It’s difficult to separate Léaud from the performance he’s most associated with—Antoine Doinel, a character (and to a certain extent an alter-ego of Truffaut himself) whose development is portrayed over the course of five films spanning 20 years. He conveys a frenzied, romantic aura in his distinct movements, gestures, and manner of speaking—perhaps a bit pretentious, yet charmingly so.

The film spans a few days in the life of a 20-something French intellectual named Alexandre, who lives with—and is supported by—his lover, Marie. Alexandre spends his days idly chatting at the famed Deux Magots café, where at the start of the film he scores the phone number of a young woman at a nearby table. Marie is fully aware of his romantic pursuit after Veronika (the “whore” to Marie’s “mother”); as one might guess, their relationship is rather complicated, not to mention one-sided. Alexandre is up front about his interest in other women, which Marie initially seems not to mind, but she gradually begins to voice her frustrations, which seem to go unheard. At one point, the three of them actually share the same bed, which is carried out rather awkwardly, with Marie unsuccessfully attempting suicide immediately afterward.

The film is an effort to recreate events from Eustache’s life, down to specific conversations. Most remarkably, perhaps, Francoise Lebrun was actually reprising her role as “Veronika,” as she had been Eustache’s real-life lover as well—I can only imagine that this must have been an uncomfortable role to play.

It's debatable as to whether or not these attempts at mirroring reality are the cause, but the film achieves an improvised, documentary feel, despite a definite prepared script, calling to mind the early work of John Cassavetes. There's also the fact that The Mother and the Whore is one of just two narrative films in Eustache's oeuvre, the rest of them comprised of documentaries and shorts. Regardless, I found myself engrossed by the film, despite its length (3 and a half hours) and extreme talkiness, and am saddened to find that Eustache's work is not only difficult to come across but fairly small (in number, that is) due to his suicide in 1981.

Movies watched, February 24-29, 2008

Fast Cheap and Out of Control, Errol Morris, 1997

This documentary explores the inspirations and ideas of four specialists whose expertise fall on unusual and idiosyncratic subjects: a topiary gardener, a lion tamer, a robot scientist, and an expert on the social behavior of the naked mole rat. Like all of Morris’ films, this one feels particularly his own, showcasing his unique knack for mixing science and philosophy with a touch of poetry. These interviews with four people who on the surface seem to have nothing in common with one another are weaved together in such a way that Morris expertly conveys his own ideas, the audience beginning to draw connections, to grasp the sheer genius of Morris’ visionary mind.

Auto Focus, Paul Schrader, 2002

I’ve never seen Hogan’s Heroes—though I’m now certain that somewhere, perhaps in an episode of The Simpsons, I’ve seen the show parodied—nor had I ever heard of Bob Crane prior to viewing this film, a biopic of the star of the aforementioned Nazi prison camp sitcom. Crane’s life took a fairly sordid turn after the show left the air in 1971—his career bombed, he was reduced to touring the dinner theater circuit, and was eventually found murdered in an Arizona motel room under mysterious circumstances that to this day have not been determined. At the heart of the story is Crane’s obsession with being filmed—not on the set, but with burgeoning home video technology he was introduced to and supplied with over the years. In particular, he liked to film himself having kinky, orgiastic sex.

At the start of the film, Crane, a Los Angeles DJ, seems to be kind of a square family man who married his high school sweetheart and was never with anyone else (this may or may not be true, of course). His life is transformed when he meets John, a video equipment salesman who not only grants him access to state of the art (at the time, at least) recording devices, but also introduces him to a sleazier side of life—except for a brief, token “but I’m married,” Crane happily takes the plunge into this new uncharted territory.

John is rather creepy, and seems almost unreal. One could imagine him, in another kind of film, as a weird imaginary friend character who convinces Crane to indulge his secret fantasies. The two have an oddly codependent relationship, feeding off one another, and not just for video equipment and celebrity friend status—there’s a deeper, darker basis to their friendship that provides much of the film’s unsettling quality.

It’s interesting to see the evolution of video technology as portrayed in the film—only the beginning of a narcissism-fueled technological movement that’s evolved into phenomena like MySpace and YouTube. People love seeing themselves on camera, even if it provides incriminating evidence for them later.

Cruising, William Friedkin, 1980

A cop goes undercover to investigate a series of murders targeting New York’s gay community by posing as a homosexual and probing into (no pun intended) the world of leather bars. This cop, played by Al Pacino (who I more and more find myself disliking as an actor), immerses himself in this lifestyle, growing increasingly absorbed by and attracted to it, causing him to question his own sexual identity in the process.

As a thriller, the film is pretty mediocre. The man who is caught at the end is clearly not the person we’ve seen committing the murders—but don’t jump to any conclusions about how complex the film must be. I suppose it could be argued that this indicates that the crimes were not all committed by the same person, but then our culprit is depicted remembering the previous murders, not to mention that his fingerprints are found on a coin machine which, in a previous scene, we see the killer handling.

Cruising’s only real point of interest is in its portrayal of gay bars in the late 70s, serving as a time capsule, a snapshot of uninhibited, openly sexual behavior that very nearly vanished in the aftermath of the AIDS virus. The film sparked protest within the gay community, who felt that it cast a negative image of them for the public at large, particularly in its portrayal of a gay serial killer, not to mention the aforementioned Dionysian behavior. While I wasn’t there, and can’t vouch for the degree of accuracy this film possesses, I also can’t say I found anything particularly offensive about it, unless you count the sloppy narrative.

The French Connection, William Friedkin, 1971

The French Connection is a bit of a step up for Friedkin (actually, I guess chronologically, Cruising is a step down from this one). One could consider it a pioneer in the genre of gritty cop movies, though with the countless imitators emerging on both the large and small screen in the years since, it’s hard to imagine a time when audiences were more accustomed to seeing the bland Dragnet-esque style of police work on camera. The film is best known for its legendary chase scene involving a car weaving through city traffic in order to keep up with an elevated subway train—and to be honest, that’s all I can remember about it weeks later.

So I'm a little behind here. I won't even try to remember which days I watched these movies, but it was some time in mid to late February.

A Taste of Honey, Tony Richardson, 1961

Here’s another one of those “kitchen sink” dramas I was talking about the other week, though this one differs slightly in that the focus is on an angry young woman. In this “Victorian melodrama” (as one of the characters refers to it), a teenage girl named Jo is impregnated by a black sailor she’s particularly smitten with. She befriends a gay man who looks after her—she’s pretty incompetent, it seems—after her sailor has left port and her mother has kicked her out so that she and her brand new husband can have the place to themselves. Jo argues constantly with her mother, who calls her a whore—her husband, might I add, is a loser with a glass eye who laughs like Beavis and makes comments like “look who’s got a bun in the oven!” I suppose the viewer should be sympathizing with Jo, but she’s just so obnoxious and shrill, to the point where I really can’t say I like her at all, even beneath her flaws.

While the film’s tone is fairly serious, the ill-fitting soundtrack seems like something repurposed from a wacky comedy of the same period. In unrelated trivia, I managed to catch a line of dialogue (“the dream is gone but the baby is real”) that was used in a Smiths song 20 years later, which is probably knowledge of which I shouldn’t be admitting possession.

Chicken Hawk, Adi Sideman, 1994

This documentary about NAMBLA (the North American Man Boy Love Association, for those unfamiliar) is most notable in its nonjudgmental, objective approach towards an extremely sensitive and taboo subject. This conveyed impartiality is most likely the reason why those interviewed were willing to discuss this controversial issue so openly on camera.

The film explores possible reasons as to why these men are partial to young boys. Many of them profess to have become sexually active as children, experimenting with their male peers, which is where this activity seems to originate. They remember how much fun these early experiences were, their sexual preferences never maturing past that point.

One man seems deluded about the motivations of young boys he comes across—he imagines that they’re flirting with him, that they appreciate that he supposedly understands them. But judging from interviews with the boys, that doesn’t seem to be the case, leading to some uncomfortable scenes in a convenience store parking lot.

Regardless, NAMBLA members assert that they’re not doing any harm (one of them proclaims, “I’m not a child molester, I’m a child lover!”). This statement remains debatable, though the film certainly falls into gray area, with no concrete conclusion achieved. Certainly, these men aren’t merely interested in sex; they become romantically attached, falling in love with little boys, as well as the memories of youth and playfulness and innocence they evoke.

East Side Story, Dana Ranga, 1997

As the film’s narrator states, “This is the odyssey of a filmmaker searching for music, fun and colors in the world of ambiguity and suspicion”—in other words, a documentary about the Iron Curtain musicals popularized in Communist countries in the mid-20th century. These movies mimicked the Hollywood musicals of the day, effecting bizarre scenes depicting comrades driving tractors, harvesting crops, and toiling away in factories, while cheerfully singing the joys of socialism to choreographed dance moves.

I say bizarre, yet I suppose there was nothing bizarre about them to the audiences who loved them. They provided a mode of escape from the grim reality people living in Communist countries faced every day—hope through hit musical numbers. Outsiders like myself, though, were often astounded by these strangely familiar yet utterly foreign films, while central committees condemned them as “the most flagrant offspring of the capitalist pleasure industry.” Stalin, however, was a fan, developing a taste for wacky musical comedies—quite a contrast from his historical legacy. As the film’s often witty narrator says, “Even Jean-Luc Godard once said that the history of film was the history of boys photographing girls. But Stalin had another fantasy: boys photographing tractors.”

Not to over-quote the film, but there’s another great line that sums up its clever, lively tone, both commemorative and analytical: “Who knows how things might have turned out if Socialism could have just been more fun?”

Performance, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970

Chas, a gangster on the run from the mob after fouling up a job, seeks refuge in a vacant room in the home of a reclusive rock star (played by Mick Jagger). His plan is to hide out there until he can get a passport and fly to New York, dyeing his hair with red paint and adopting the ludicrous story that, like Jagger, he’s also a performer: a professional juggler. But Chas is soon sucked into the hedonistic lifestyle of excess that this household observes, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms, and losing his sense of personal identity in the process.

For the most part I found the movie kind of unwatchable—it’s attempting to achieve something profound, but falls short. Or maybe it’s just really dated.

Gimme Shelter, Albert and David Maysles, 1970

Sympathy for the Devil, Jean-Luc Godard, 1968

The Rolling Stones have provided the subject of nearly a dozen films—some legendary and some falling into obscurity—still captivating filmmakers to this day: in April Martin Scorsese will release Shine a Light, a career-spanning documentary that focuses on their recent Bigger Bang Tour. There’s just something about them that draws people in (even now, in their geriatric stages): their charisma, their sexual energy, some intangible, as-yet-indefinable quality.

Gimme Shelter grew out of the Maysles brothers’ desire to cover the Rolling Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour, but ended up focusing on that tour’s culmination: the Altamont Free Festival, a concert outside of San Francisco that the band organized, and which has since gone down in infamy as the symbolic end of an era. The documentary is structured as a framed story, moving back and forth in time between footage of the notorious concert and the band’s reactions to witnessing said footage. Also included are the preparations made in setting up the show, such as the difficulty in securing a location, especially one with ample parking—the film contains a scene shot from a helicopter that pans over the miles-long stretch of cars leading up to the raceway.

I’d never realized that Altamont happened in December, which strikes me as an odd time of year to hold an outdoor concert—despite the Bay Area’s slightly milder weather conditions, people can be seen draped in blankets. Perhaps the wintry conditions contributed in part to the hostile atmosphere, although it certainly was not the only factor, not even the most significant.

Organizing a free concert attended by hundreds of thousands of people seems difficult in itself; it becomes even more complicated when you consider that the attendees will for the most part behave...eccentrically. The throngs of concertgoers are fairly representative of the stereotypical picture of “dirty hippies”: they’re drugged out, rolling around in the grass, dancing hypnotically, many of them in various stages of undress. Unofficially hiring the Hell’s Angels to perform security duties was a vastly misguided move, resulting in a series of poorly handled debacles spiraling out of the promoters’ control. In the commentary, Albert Maysles mentions that the London branch of the Hell’s Angels had served as “honor guards” at an outdoor Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park with no incidents, implying that the Stones were unaware that the California Angels were markedly different from their British counterparts. But there must have been someone in California who could have alerted them to this ill-advised decision.

The hostility between the concertgoers and the Angels is palpable at the outset—someone dances a little too close to the stage during the Jefferson Airplane’s set, so the Angels start beating him with sticks. This bears a particularly ominous portent, yet little action is taken to prevent it from escalating, other than Grace Slick’s lukewarmly asking them to stop, predictably to no effect.

The tension, of course, does escalate—in one scene, the crowd parts to make way for a procession of Hells Angels aggressively riding through on motorcycles. By the time the Rolling Stones, the last band of the night, take the stage the energy is frenzied and anxious. The audience stares at the band in disbelief, one girl with tears streaming down her face—Mick Jagger seems to notice this but begins strutting around like a chicken as if nothing is happening. They interrupt their set at several points, bewilderedly asking “who’s fighting and what for?”, but at this point, it’s beyond them—they’re powerless to stop it. When an audience member is fatally stabbed near the front row by a Hell’s Angel, the band inexplicably keeps playing, finishing their set before immediately being whisked off to safety by helicopter. (They claimed later to have not realized the stabbing was fatal, and felt that if they hadn’t finished their set, a riot would have ensued.)

This film illustrates the degree of prescience a great documentary filmmaker possesses—how did the Maysles have the insight to not only film the Altamont Free Festival, but to actually capture the stabbing? It’s as if they were so in tune with this generation—despite the fact that they were not really of it—that they could better predict the significance of this occasion than those involved. I suppose it simply could have been luck that they were there with their cameras, but I’d like to think it was intentional. Regardless, Gimme Shelter transcends the simple rock documentary, marking the downfall of the 60s, the failure of brotherly love—people believed they could peacefully coexist outside conventional laws, but they ended up fighting one another like something out of Lord of the Flies. The footage of concertgoers leaving the field resembles zombies stumbling along in the eerie light of the Stones’ getaway helicopter—strangely symbolic in and of itself.

Sympathy for the Devil*, another namesake of a classic Rolling Stones track, isn’t so much a documentary but a genre-defying exploration of the 60s with the Rolling Stones playing a character, just one component of the story—I would have expected little else from Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave. The Stones footage is shot in a recording studio amidst colorful squares placed throughout like sculpture, lending the scene an abstract quality. Throughout the film they seem to be more or less writing “Sympathy for the Devil,” picking it apart, breaking it down to its essence and then building it back up until they have the brilliant track we know today. The repetition has kind of a numbingly hypnotic effect—I’m also pretty sure that I had the words memorized by the end of the movie. The awkwardness of recording vocals is illustrated by periodically letting certain tracks drop out of the soundtrack—one of my favorite moments is watching the band stand around in a circle “whoo-whooing” the backing vocals.

These scenes are politically charged in the subtlest of ways, most notably in the deliberate change in lyrics from “who killed Kennedy” to “who killed the Kennedys”—a chilling reference to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which had just occurred that same month. It’s extremely fortunate that Godard showed up in the studio when he did, as the title track’s lyrics possess weightier and more provocative content than some of their other songs. As Mick Jagger recalls in a 2003 interview in Rolling Stone, “[it was] very fortuitous...We just happened to be recording that song. We could have been recording ‘My Obsession.’ But it was ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and it became the track that we used.”

These scenes with the Stones are broken up with scripted, more conceptual threads depicting divisive issues of that era. Black revolutionaries at a riverside junkyard toss rifles to one another, reciting passages from Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, as the camera pans over ruined cars stacked up in majestic, hulking towers. A character named Eve Democracy wanders the city, stealthily spraypainting provocatively combined words, such as “freudemocracy,” “cinemarxism,” and “sovietcong.” Many of these scenes contain a voiceover that dryly reads from a dirty paperback, perhaps a kind of neutralization of its content.

Watching these two films back to back articulates the pronounced differences between them. Each of these directors has a strong, identifiable cinematic voice (there’s no question as to whose is whose), and each tackles more or less the same basic issues in his own distinct way. Godard takes the intellectual, more didactic approach to communicating his ideas, whereas the Maysles choose to allow the events therein speak for themselves. They never address the issues directly but they’re inherently present, acutely felt.

*The film was originally titled One Plus One, with Sympathy for the Devil being the version that the producers changed in an attempt to create more commercial value. The soundtrack was altered to include the final version of the title track at the end, the title changed as well to incorporate a more obvious reference to the band. Godard was furious at these changes, and actually punched the producer responsible, stating in an interview with The Guardian that “they want to make one plus one equal two. I don’t.”

Movies watched, February 9-22, 2008

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 1996
This haunting documentary chronicles the trial of the West Memphis Three: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Miskelly, three teenagers who were convicted of brutally murdering three 8 year old boys, despite a lack of physical proof. The film suggests that the police hastily pointed the finger at the Three because they were under intense pressure to find the killer(s) and needed suspects. These outcast teenagers listened to Metallica, dressed in black, and one of them expressed interests in Wicca; sensationalized accounts of satanic rituals quickly spread, painting them as depraved devil-worshipping degenerates.

No actual concrete or DNA evidence implicating the Three is ever presented, with the only incriminating information being hearsay from various teenage girls, and a confession from Jessie that Damien and Jason had murdered the boys, while he had merely observed, providing occasional assistance—except that this confession is riddled with errors and inaccuracies. Jessie changes the time of the murders on multiple occasions, gradually shifting towards the time that the police suggest is correct. He says he saw Damien and Jason rape the boys, but medical examinations of their bodies suggest otherwise. And he says they were tied with brown rope, when in fact they were tied up with their own shoelaces. It’s hard to believe that someone would confess to a horrific crime that he didn’t commit—which in the end is the nail in his coffin that he just can’t pull out—but considering his low IQ (which is hearkened back to rather excessively) and high level of susceptibility, his lawyers argued that he may have been coerced into giving a false confession just to get the police off his back, assuming everything could be straightened out later.

As for the hearsay, several teenage girls claimed that they’d overheard Damien say he had killed the children and that he would kill two more whom he’d already picked out. But none could recall the circumstances, or who they were with, or how close within earshot they were standing to Damien, which all sounds a bit fishy to me. Moreover, Damien strikes me as fairly smart, so I find it highly unlikely that he would admit this in public, so loudly that others around him could hear him.

Troublingly, the Three don’t do a very adept job of conveying their innocence in the courtroom, in their fairly cold, detached mannerisms, the way they carry themselves so nonchalantly. Jason seems pretty timid and quiet; he is the one we hear from least in the film. Damien, on the other hand, comes across as intelligent but rather immature and naive (but then, he was still a teenager at the time), and makes various ill-advised comments—such as how he’s to become a kind of West Memphis bogeyman, the stuff of ghost stories and urban legend for years to come—of which most people don’t really grasp the humor. I can understand the inclination towards making these smartass remarks—he feels contempt for these people who blindly typecast him, so he in turn feeds their fears, messing with their heads. But unfortunately this stuff gets taken pretty seriously; his notebooks scribbled with pentagrams and Metallica lyrics, as well as quotes from Shakespeare, are simply the product of an angsty teen, standard fare for any high school outcast—and yet said notebook is produced in court as evidence of his guilt.

As with any documentary, it’s possible that the film is biased, although there is a lot of interview footage of the victims’ families, as well as with the law enforcement officials involved (but one can always conjecture that the filmmakers left things out, or that it was edited a certain way). And yet, I just can’t see any evidence that the West Memphis Three are guilty. The only strike against them is Jessie’s confession, which is full of holes and contradictions. After that, all the plaintiffs have are their prejudices, their hatred, their extreme desire to capture someone, to finally have a person to direct this anger toward. Early on in the film, one of the victim’s mothers is asked if she thinks they’re guilty, to which she replies something along the lines of, “Of course they did it—just look at them!” With remarks such as these, it seems like they never even had a chance.

Paradise Lost II: Revelations, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 2000
While I found the original Paradise Lost documentary to be chilling and thought-provoking, I’m not really sure why this sequel exists. Most of the content is fairly pointless, focusing on John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the victims, as he plays up for the camera (as Jason says, “play acting”), ranting and raving about how the West Memphis Three are going to hell, even burning makeshift effigies in the ravine where the children’s bodies were found. Byers is actually implicated in the crime at one point but fiercely denies it, almost to the point of suspicion, so passionate are his proclamations of innocence. He’s undoubtedly a strange character, but I’m not sure I needed to see him raging incoherently for several hours.

What I did find interesting were the examinations of the crime scene photos by a forensic expert contacted by members of Free the WM3, and wish the film’s focus would have fallen more along these lines. It does have its harrowing moments, mainly in interviews with Damien, who’s still on Death Row to this day. Every time I remember this fact, my stomach turns—he’s running out of time, which is pretty depressing.


Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990
In late 80s and early 90s New York City, there existed (hell, maybe it still exists, I don’t know) a subculture of poor, gay, black people who organized fashion shows (or “balls,” as they like to call them), wherein they could become whoever they wanted, masquerading in relation to themes running the gamut from military to high fashion to business executive to Dynasty. The appeal is simple: in real life you’re nobody, but for one night you can be a star. The styles and music depicted onscreen are fairly dated, but it’s still a fascinating portrait of a bygone time and place, both joyful and sad. The sadness stems from many of the participants’ actual fates: poverty, drugs, prostitution, and in one cited case, murder. And yet, the joy overpowers the melancholy, exuding an ecstatic and vibrant energy.

Bright Leaves, Ross McElwee, 2003
Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee discovers that there’s a 1950 Hollywood movie, Bright Leaf, that may be based on his great-grandfather, once a leading figure in the tobacco industry who lost the family fortune to the Dukes. Thereon McElwee explores the implications of this discovery, that his family may be responsible for years of suffering and addiction at the hands of tobacco—and they aren’t even enjoying any of the benefits (a strange preoccupation, admittedly). The Dukes, for instance, have a huge estate and a university named after them, while his family lives in a modest home in the shadow of the Duke mansion—there is the small, almost nonexistent McElwee Park, which “even has a few benches!”, yet otherwise the McElwees’ legacy goes largely unnoticed in this city.

McElwee becomes obsessed with Bright Leaf’s being about his great-grandfather, and contacts film critic Vlada Petric in hopes of discussing it with him. This results in one of the film’s most memorable scenes—Petric turns out to be quite the eccentric (to say the least), and insists on conducting the interview while wheeling McElwee around in a wheelchair, to create the effect of movement. But Petric proves himself a wise sage when, after McElwee explains the reason for his curiosity about Bright Leaf, he replies, “Who cares?” Seriously—who cares? Even if it truly were based on the story of his great-grandfather, this hokey Hollywood film would not play the role of a surreal home movie, or artifact of his family story, as McElwee asserts. Regardless, Bright Leaves is a humorous exploration of family legacy, the tobacco industry, and what it is to be Southern, not to mention a few other things thrown into the mix. It defies neat categorization—a kind of meandering diary, whose entries circle around a particular preoccupation.

The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988
Here’s another film that illustrates the faults of our legal system, in which we can convict a man of a crime even though all the facts point toward someone else. Unlike Paradise Lost, however, this film resulted in the innocent party’s exoneration, an amazing achievement that transcends its role of a mere film. Morris is a tireless seeker of truth, and will go to the ends of the earth (most recently, Croatia) to find it. He managed to secure a tape of what is, ostensibly, the real killer’s roundabout confession: “[The police] didn’t blame him. I did. A scared sixteen year old kid who would sure like to get out of it if he can...they didn’t have nothing else until I gave them something, so I guess they get something, they run with it.” Maybe it’s unfair to insinuate that if Morris had directed Paradise Lost, the West Memphis Three would have been acquitted—but who else could have accomplished such a feat by making a film?

Vernon Florida, Errol Morris, 1982
I wrote about Vernon, Florida (aka Nub City) last year. While perhaps not my favorite of Morris' films, it's still a great one.

Movies watched, February 9 to 15, 2008

There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007

I just finished reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and while it’s obviously a different story from this one (not to mention that the film is only loosely based upon Sinclair’s novel Oil!), There Will Be Blood does bear similarity in tone, style, and scope, in that it is a kind of saga that spans many years, chronicling the characters’ various ups and downs, as tragedy continues to befall them, and set against the backdrop of a volatile period in American history.

The film’s first 11 minutes contain not a single word of dialogue, only the soundtrack’s strange, almost avant-garde string instrumentations, amidst the sounds of a pickax hitting stone, of oil bubbling to the surface. This first image of oil is intoxicating—it’s beautiful yet dark, hypnotically drawing one into its slippery blackness. Perhaps this is what lured Daniel Plainview in—more likely, though, was the prospect of money.

Daniel purports to have a heart of stone. He sleeps on a hard floor, not out of necessity, but by choice, as if he can’t allow himself any luxury or comfort, so as to keep his hatred burning. And yet one can detect some instances of empathy behind this veil of misanthropy—he says that he abhors most people, yet seems to have some feelings for his adopted son H.W. But to acknowledge this would be an admission of weakness, so he repeatedly abandons the child, eventually claiming that the only reason he even raised him was because he needed a sweet face to sell his product. (This may in fact have been the case initially, but I’m certain that the boy eventually grew on him.)

With echoes of Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood is a film of epic proportions, depicting the rise of an oil tycoon who has forsaken his family, past, and anything that ties him to humanity—perhaps not as perfectly or innovatively executed as Welles’ masterpiece, but an admirably strong attempt.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Karl Reisz, 1960

It would seem that in the decades after World War II, England’s young men had little to look forward to besides slaving away in a factory, drinking, and, ultimately, death. In this British drama, Albert Finney (later on of Big Fish, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, etc.) plays Arthur Seaton, a cynical factory worker whose defiant attitude sets him apart as a kind of working class antihero. His antics won’t change the way things are—no protest rallies for this one—but he does manage to disrupt the day-to-day activities of his workplace (though perhaps more to amuse himself than anything else). He lives for the weekend, which he spends drinking and womanizing: “I’m out for a good time. All the rest is propaganda.”

This routine is disrupted when the married woman he’s been having an affair with tells him she’s pregnant, and that the child is his. At this time in history, it’s not so easy to resolve this predicament, so they desperately pursue quick cures, like drinking a pint of gin while soaking in a hot bath, eventually resorting to the quintessential back alley abortion.

Finney’s character is strangely charismatic—he’s a bit of a bastard yet extremely likable. Perhaps we’re drawn to his fighting spirit, though it’s debatable as to whether this will aid him in escaping the dreary monotony of his current lifestyle. More likely, he’s been doomed to live out his days in this manner—working, drinking, and slowly dying.

Look Back in Anger, Tony Richardson, 1958

Another example of the “kitchen sink realism” (as this genre is often characterized) of 1960s British cinema. But unlike Arthur Seaton, there’s nothing to like about the savagely hateful Jimmy Porter, an amateur musician and scholar who’s settled for the bleak existence of a flea market vendor selling candy. Angry at this sorry fate, and perhaps even angrier about his father’s death (which occurred when Jimmy was just a boy), he seems to take it out on the world, psychologically torturing his wife, Alison. Alison has turned her back on the upper middle class world in which she grew up, but it’s clear that Jimmy not only resents her upbringing, but is envious and fearful of her as well.

The film is based on a play, which seems fairly obvious from the unnatural sounding dialogue. The performance is a bit over the top, and distracts from the dismal reality the film is supposed to be portraying.


The Party’s Over, Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch, 2001

Philip Seymour Hoffman acts as a journalist in this documentary, covering the 2000 presidential election via interviews with politicians, voters, protesters, fellow Hollywood actors, and so on. Hoffman says he’s doing the film because he feels uninformed, and wants to learn more about the issues, as well as the election process itself, which are both explored here.

It’s strange to watch this now, simply because of how much has happened since then. The people involved have no idea how significant this election really is. It serves as a fairly depressing reminder of how close we came to electing another candidate, leaving one to wonder how different the last eight years could have been (and then again, how they might have turned out disturbingly similar).

Movies watched, January 27 to February 8, 2008

Death Race 2000, Paul Bartel, 1975
I first became aware of this movie through the video game that it (loosely) provided the basis for, which is available for play at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—I strongly recommend the trip. One of the first arcade games that inspired a great deal of controversy and parental outcry for its violent content, it was eventually banned, and few units were ever made. The violent content, by the way, is really more in theory, as the graphics are pretty simple—no blood or guts, just stick figures you have to run down, with little gravestones popping up in their places.

Death Race 2000 the movie is a black comedy from Paul Bartel (see Eating Raoul and Rock and Roll High School, in which he co-stars with Warhol actress Mary Woronov, who also appears in this one as driver Calamity Jane) about a transcontinental road race wherein the more pedestrians the drivers mow down, the more points they score. The extremely cheerful announcer (apparently modeled after Howard Cosell), explains that “women are still worth ten points more than men in all age brackets, but teenagers now rack up 40 points, and toddlers under twelve now rate a big 70 points. The big score: anyone, any sex, over 75 years old has been upped to 100 points.” When the first points of the race are scored, he laments, “too bad the guy was only 38; just two years older, and he’d have been worth three times the points!”

While the nation seems to embrace this tradition (safely from their homes, that is), there is a resistance movement forming that is morally opposed to this rampant disregard for human life. Their techniques for sabotaging the race include blowing up the drivers, resembling a Death Race Carrie Nation.

Produced by the legendary Roger Corman, the original treatment was reportedly much more serious in tone, and, as Corman put it, “kind of vile”—which I can certainly imagine. He decided the story would be more appropriate as a comedy, and called for a rewrite—and I’m glad he did, because this is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen recently.


Helvetica, Gary Hustwit, 2007
This documentary opened my eyes to the ubiquitousness of Helvetica, pointing out all the places it appears, from street signs and subway stations, to advertisements, to legal documents. It shows up nearly everywhere, quietly communicating, and one never really notices it—which means it’s doing its job successfully. The other day I drove through a town where the street signs featured an oddly decorative typeface, which, while readable, was immediately noticeable—an issue that was still fresh in my mind after recently viewing this documentary.

I’d always wondered how one creates a new typeface, and so I enjoyed seeing a few of the initial steps one takes in order to do so—starting with certain letters that are representative of the rest of the alphabet’s characters, determining whether or not to use serifs, and so on. It made me want to do a few experiments of my own in this regard.

The film also explores different schools of design—some people embrace Helvetica, viewing it as clean and refreshing (one commentator particularly loves it, gushingly comparing it to an oasis in the desert), while others see it as institutional, inhuman, and boring, rebelling against it by developing unconventional, handwritten typefaces. (Though perhaps impractical in the long run, I love that one of the commentators laid out a magazine article in Zapf Dingbats because he didn’t like the article and felt it wasn’t worth reading.) While Helvetica can certainly serve its purpose, I think it’s nice to experiment with other, more interesting types of lettering—it just depends on the purpose of the text. In all, for a movie about a font, Helvetica is actually pretty fascinating and thought-provoking.


Confessions of a Superhero, Matthew Ogens, 2007

This documentary follows the lives of four superhero impersonators who make their living by hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard and trying to get people to pose for a picture with them for tips. There’s an unwritten code of etiquette for these people that some follow, while some don’t. (Actually, it’s not all that “unwritten,” as the police are watching them to ensure that they follow the rules.) Basically, they can’t harass people—they’re not allowed to solicit photos, nor can they force anyone to pay them if they don’t want to (but boy does “Marilyn Monroe” get upset when people don’t tip.)

This motley cast of characters claims to all be aspiring actors, but the likelihood of their finding real acting work seems unlikely. They come from varied backgrounds, but they’re all pretty desperate—lost souls futilely striving for fame that never comes. Wonder Woman is an impulsive and unrealistic teenage girl who moved to Hollywood on a whim—she decided to move to California and was on a plane the next day, with no work prospects, no contacts, and nowhere to live. In a similarly rash and not-too-well-thought-out decision, she married a guy several weeks after meeting him; when they stop getting along she seems surprised.

The Hulk was homeless for a long time and his teeth are kind of fucked up (this may or may not be a result of his homelessness though), but in the end he does actually get a call to be in a movie (which is indeed listed as a credit in IMDB). Not exactly an Oscar-winning role, but nonetheless not a bad start.

Batman mirrors the character of Batman in that he’s kind of a psychopath. Dark and violent, this Batman has some deep-seated anger issues as well. He claims to have been involved with the mob and to have killed a man, but this seems rather doubtful—I’d peg him as more of a compulsive liar with a temper than a hitman.

Superman is by far the strangest one of the four. A kind of sheriff for the impersonators, he prides himself on following a strong moral code, policing others when they stray from his righteous path. He claims his mother was the actress Sandy Dennis (see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), but Dennis’ relatives say she didn’t have a son. And if it were true, couldn’t he simply reach out to some of his mother’s more prominent friends for a helpful contact in the business? Even more suspiciously, he says that when his mother was alive she wanted him to get into acting but he wasn’t interested at the time because he wanted to do professional lawncare (a little bizarre, if you ask me). Not to mention that, unlike the other superheroes, he’s obsessed with his super-identity. He wears the costume when he’s not working, and his apartment is filled with collectibles—he eerily even resembles Christopher Reeve a little bit.

This is ultimately a pretty sad story—none of these people are very likely to score any acting gigs beyond the one they’re already doing. And yet hundreds—maybe thousands, I don’t really know the actual statistics—of people like them flock to Hollywood every year to pursue their acting careers. I guess I just don’t understand their self-assurance and optimism, because the prospects look pretty grim to me. But it makes for a good story, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with following your dreams (ugh that sounds so sappy) despite how impractical they are.

Oddly enough, there’s another documentary on Hollywood Boulevard impersonators in the works from Dave Markey, director of 1991: The Year Punk Broke, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, and various other gems. Maybe he should have conferred a bit with Ogen—hopefully it won’t be too repetitive, focusing on its own unique content.


The Last Detail, Hal Ashby, 1973
Two surly, self-proclaimed “badass” navy men are assigned the “shit detail” of escorting an 18 year old former Seaman named Larry Meadows from their naval base to a prison in Portsmouth. His crime: stealing $40 from his commanding officer’s wife’s favorite charity box, for which he is sentenced to eight years in jail. At the beginning, Larry (played by a young Randy Quaid in a serious role—I almost can’t stop picturing cousin Eddie from the National Lampoon movies, which I imagine has severely pigeonholed him) is oddly bland and pathetic, almost as though he refuses to allow himself any feelings or opinions. Though he says he’s angered by “injustice,” he doesn’t seem to feel that he has been wronged in this situation (they were just doing their job!). Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) takes pity on him and vows to show him a good time, the last one he’ll have for a long while. Throughout the course of the movie, they begin to teach him how to live, which may do more harm than good, as now he knows what’s at stake. He’s finally tasted the exhilarating freedom of what life can bring, but it’s about to be taken away from him. The pain in his eyes as he stares longingly at the first naked female body he’s ever seen—yes, it’s a prostitute—is intensely palpable. The poor bastard has squandered his youth, and now he actually knows it—pretty heartbreaking stuff.

Persepolis, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007
This film adaptation of the two Persepolis graphic novels looks remarkably like the comic, which I think is much stronger and more visually compelling than a live-action version would have been. I don’t really have too much more to say about this one—it was entertaining but as is so often the case, the books are better.


First Person, Errol Morris, 2000
Technically not a movie, but a criminally short-lived television series from acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris, which basically consists of 18 mini-documentaries in which he interviews a person via a TV monitor with his head on the screen. This is a great format for Morris, an opportunity for him to explore all the subjects he finds fascinating yet nonetheless might not warrant a feature-length film.

These shorts contain all the components of Morris’ films: his distinctive use of music, slow motion reenactments, and clips of old movies, as well as similar themes and subject matter, from crime scenes, to people with strange fixations, to, quite simply, strange and intriguing stories. We meet the guy who fired Thomas McIlvane, the infamous postal worker who returned to murder his co-workers after being let go, the woman who falls in love with serial killers (wittily titled “The Killer Inside Me”), a lawyer for the mob, a former game show contestant who continues to write to the show claiming that his losing question was flawed (this same man is also obsessed with high school and impersonated a high school senior at various schools around the country until he was 27 years old), a bartender who believes he may be the smartest man in the world, and so on. I only wish there were more than 18 episodes.