Movies watched, week of June 3-10, 2007

Polyester, John Waters, 1981

The first week of June marked my (brief) return to my one-time home of Austin, Texas, where I was fortunate enough to visit the Alamo Drafthouse in its last month of operation at the current downtown location. On June 27, after the final screening (which includes a ratcheted wrench in the price of admission), patrons are encouraged to take their seats home with them—I’m so jealous.

This screening featured the return of Odorama, John Waters’ ingenious homage to Smell-O-Vision, in the form of a scratch and sniff card that audiences are encouraged to scratch at certain points in the movie, to enhance the viewing experience. The scents, in traditional John Waters fashion, are appropriately repulsive—for instance, farts, dirty sneakers, gasoline, and glue. The use of Odorama in Polyester is particularly fitting, as the protagonist, Francine Fishpaw, has an acute sense of smell, and is constantly sniffing about for evidence of her husband’s affairs, the presence of her wild teenage daughter Lulu’s unsavory boyfriend (played by Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys), and so on (this special skill of hers proves both an asset and a burden). Highlights include Francine’s son Dexter (known by the media as “The Baltimore Footstomper”) and Waters veteran Edith Massey as Cuddles Kovinsky, Francine’s best friend and former cleaning lady who has recently inherited a large sum of money. (She’s absolutely precious in her tennis outfit, complaining about all of the lowly commoners.)

The Odorama card was a tad bit disappointing, as most of the odors were pretty similar—I had intended to keep mine as a souvenir, but once all of its scents were released, it proved a little too stinky and ended up in the trash. Still, the evening was quite enjoyable, despite my soaking wet clothes (I had to dash from my car to the theater through a torrential downpour). 1950s heart throb Tab Hunter, one of the stars of Polyester, was in attendance, signing copies of his book and answering audience questions.

I now look forward to my next visit, when I get to visit the new Alamo downtown at the Ritz Theater, which has in the past been a vaudeville theater, a porn theater, a punk venue, and sports bar—despite the unfortunate 6th Street atmosphere (re: loud, obnoxious, drunk people), I’m excited to see the Ritz return to its movie palace roots.

13 Tzameti, Géla Babluani, 2005

Shot in gorgeous black and white, this recent French thriller directed by newcomer Babluani is suspenseful, mysterious, and satisfyingly bleak. A poor immigrant intercepts a message that isn’t meant for him but follows the instructions anyway, understanding nothing of where it will take him or what it means, only that it potentially could bring him a large sum of money. That’s about all I can divulge about the plot without eliminating any element of surprise.

There appears to be a Hollywood remake in the works, with Brad Pitt attached to the project. Sigh.

Movies watched, week of May 27-June 2, 2007

California Split, Robert Altman, 1974

At once funny and bleak, California Split portrays Charlie and Bill, two compulsive gamblers who meet by chance at a poker game and strike up somewhat of a partnership when they’re mugged by the same disgruntled opponent in an alleyway afterwards. Charlie (played by Altman veteran Elliott Gould) is more of a carefree bachelor type; he lives with a pair of would-be hookers who serve him Froot Loops and beer for breakfast. Bill, on the other hand, is a white collar magazine editor, separated from his wife, in debt to his bookie, and willing to sell everything he owns in order to keep placing bets.

Excepting scenes of a high stakes poker game in Reno, this film avoids glamorous, glitzy Vegas-style imagery in favor of the seedier side of second-rate casinos, race tracks, poker parlors, and so on. Most of the betting depicted here seems more desperate than fun—Altman composes a grim landscape of sleep-deprived, zombie-like characters on obsessive, late-night gambling binges.

Capturing the Friedmans, Andrew Jarecki, 2003

It’s been several years since I first saw this documentary, and it’s still just as devastating and difficult to watch as the Friedman family disintegrates before the viewer’s eyes, as captured on home video. The truth (which I doubt anyone really knows anyway) is left ambiguous and open-ended; there’s no black and white in this case, because Arnold Friedman admitted to a variety of sexually deviant activities. And yet, he denies that he ever touched any of the students in his computer class—and I believe him. Perhaps there was some inappropriate behavior, an arm around a child’s shoulder that lingered a little too long, a hand on a knee, but that was probably the extent of it. That many of his former pupils deny any abnormal occurrences, saying they were coerced into admitting something just so the FBI agents would leave them alone, is pretty telling (and appalling, for that matter).

Vernon, Florida, Errol Morris, 1982
Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris, 1980

More on these to come.

The Pornographers, Shohei Imamura, 1966

In this black comedy, Subu, a pornographer who believes he’s doing society a service through his work, moves in with his widowed landlord, Haru, and her teenage children. Both his career and home life, however, prove constant sources of stress—his job involves casting a young mother in the role of a virgin, and arranging a Catholic schoolgirl routine for an elderly client (the girl is a little “slow”), and he’s always having to dodge the local mob. Meanwhile, he grapples with his feelings of lust after Haru’s teenage daughter, Keiko, and Haru, who believes her dead husband’s spirit has returned in the form of a carp that jumps whenever Subu is in its presence, slowly descends into madness. Exploring a more sordid and generally atypical aspect of Japanese culture than is usually represented onscreen, The Pornographers is definitely ahead of its time.

The Three Faces of Eve, Nunnally Johnson, 1957

This drama about a woman plagued with multiple personality disorder did not survive the test of time, offering an extremely dated representation of psychiatric practices, from the ridiculous methods of hypnosis (“When I count to three, you’ll be asleep”—he didn’t even dangle a pocket watch in front of her face!) to the descriptions of psychiatric disorders. Despite the serious subject matter, I found myself laughing more than was probably intended, particularly when the wild sexpot personality, Eve Black, emerges—to alert the viewer, a sexy French horn starts playing every time. The true story upon which this is based is much more complicated and interesting, the plot oversimplified for the sake of a two-hour time frame.

Movies watched, week of May 20-26, 2007

Zazie in the Metro, Louis Malle, 1960

In Louis Malle’s inventive adaptation of the Raymond Queneau novel, a foul-mouthed little girl—she seems a little younger onscreen than in the book—stays with her Parisian “Unkie” (who happens to be a cross-dressing dancer) while her mother spends a torrid weekend with her “loverboy.” Zazie is an unruly child, and soon wanders off to explore the city on her own, with disappointing results—she wants nothing more than to ride the metro, but the workers are on strike.

The film starts out as a slapsticky comedy, feverishly picking up momentum until it reaches a crescendo of insanity, teeming with absurd images, such as repeated encounters with a man wearing a polar bear costume (at the top of the Eiffel Tower, juggling fire in Unkie's performance, eating dinner in a restaurant). The over-abundancy of jump cuts and sped-up film add to the frenzied feeling. In one scene, as Zazie walks across a room to open a door, at one moment she's on one side of the room and in the next instant she pops up at the other end. While at times a little awkward, such gleeful cinematic rule-breaking is characteristic of the French New Wave, with which Malle is closely associated.

The Boss of it All, Lars von Trier, 2006

An office comedy isn’t exactly what one expects from Lars von Trier—while it is indeed a comedy, his latest film is not unlike his previous efforts. Ravn is the president of an IT company who exploits his dedicated staff (one employee’s husband hung himself with a printer cable after Ravn fired him), blaming his unpopular executive decisions on an imaginary "boss of it all" so he won’t look like the bad guy. When phrased as such, the plot doesn’t really sound so cheery—and yet, the film’s comedic delivery and details subtly shift what could be a tragedy into a very funny movie.

The hilarity sets in when an Icelandic company requires the head of the firm to sign off on a contract—which, of course, is problematic, as the head of the firm does not exist. (This spurs a number of jokes about the apparently fierce rivalry between Denmark and Iceland, which proves rather amusing, but many of the references are probably lost on non-Danish and -Icelandic audiences). To resolve this dilemma, Ravn hires a self-important, out-of-work stage actor to portray the fictional CEO and sign the contract—but, of course, it doesn’t work as simply as that, and the situation spins out of control.

Von Trier breaks down the fourth wall a number of times, speaking directly to the viewer to reassure us that what we are about to watch is indeed a comedy, and not to worry, there will be “no preaching,” “just a cozy time.” This seems to deviate from what he's said in the past, that "a film should be like a rock in the shoe"—but as I’ve already hinted at, the rock isn’t completely missing, just a little harder to detect. It’s most noticeable in the film’s visual style and editing, which uses a process called Automavision. Essentially, the director chooses the best possible fixed camera position, then allows a computer to choose at random when to tilt, pan or zoom. The process renders the movie kind of hard to watch, with all the distracting cuts and color changes, but that’s exactly what von Trier intended. It’s a kind of witty attack on digital filmmaking—the advent of computers has made it far too easy to make a movie (von Trier once said in an interview that “all you have to do is buy a computer and you have armies rampaging over mountains”). In this instance, the computer has total control over the outcome, with conventionally adverse results.


Wanda, Barbara Loden, 1971

Barbara Loden’s sole directorial credit—in 1980, liver cancer abruptly silenced any future work (she reportedly died angry, crying out “Shit! Shit! Shit!”)—chronicles the tale of a housewife and mother who walks out on her former life with little explanation. Wanda seems to have no place in the world, aimlessly drifting from one man to the next, until she inadvertently teams up with Mr. Dennis, a criminal who involves her in his plans to rob a bank.

Loden at one point called the film the “anti-Bonnie and Clyde,” as it avoids sensationalizing the story. The action is muted, generating an understated grace enhanced by the grainy 16mm film stock, and beautiful washed-out colors. The use of handheld cameras, natural lighting, and a generally improvisatory approach evoke a cinema verite style.

Mr. Dennis meets up with his father at Holyland USA, a now defunct Christian theme park in Waterbury, CT, of whose ruins are still mostly in place (the catacombs were bulldozed when homeless people were discovered to be sleeping in them). Witnessing it as a functioning park with actual visitors was exciting for me, as I’ve only known it as a deserted ghost town of miniature buildings, populated by wayward youths and metal bands looking for sweet photo ops.

Movies watched, week of May 13-20, 2007

Mysterious Skin, Gregg Araki, 2004

Mysterious Skin depicts how two people can handle the same traumatic childhood incident in radically different ways. The courses of the characters’ lives are shaped by this event, abruptly halted and forked irreparably, yet each heads in opposing directions.

Neil, the mischievous only child of a single mother, longs for attention. The star player of his Little League team, he’s somewhat confused when he’s singled out by his coach as an objection of affection, yet strangely honored, overjoyed that he finally feels loved by someone. His teammate, Brian, is a quiet, owlish boy whose father more or less ignores him—his neglecting to pick up his son from a rained-out baseball game is the impetus that sets Brian’s ill-fated encounter in motion, as the beefy, mustachioed coach, whose name we never learn, offers to drive him home.

Neil eventually becomes a 14-year old hustler whose cool, detached demeanor prevents anyone from getting close to him. When he moves to New York City a few years later he continues this line of work, with, unsurprisingly, more dramatic results than in Kansas—one experience with a customer who has AIDS particularly affects him, though the flicker of emotion on his face is nearly imperceptible.

Brian, on the other hand, has been traumatized by the incident, coping only by repressing the memories, though he’s not without a few side effects: frequent nosebleeds, bedwetting, strange dreams, and mental blackouts. He knows something happened to him as a child, but is convinced he was abducted by aliens. After recognizing one of his former Little League teammates from a recurring dream, he tracks down Neil, hoping to solve the puzzle that has plagued him for as long as he can remember.

The ending is quite strong: Neil and Brian have broken into the coach’s former home, and as Brian breaks down into convulsions, Neil trying to comfort him, Christmas carolers gather outside the door to sing. Throughout the story, Brian has seemed like more of a shell of a person, waiting to become someone; one senses that he’s finally on the way to coming to terms with his abuse and forming a personality of his own.

The Seventh Seal, Ingar Bergman, 1957

In this brutal rendering of the black plague, a knight returns from the Crusades, only to meet Death face to face (he looks more tired than sinister, but then, he’s been pretty busy these days). The knight is able to buy a little time by challenging him to a game of chess, but as he knows, death is inevitable, inescapable.

This is considered one of Ingmar Bergman’s greatest films, and yet, in every scene featuring the weary, cape-clad Death, I couldn’t help but picture De Düva, a 1968 parody of The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries directed by original SNL cast member George Coe. In De Düva (The Dove), an aging professor is on his way to a lecture when dove droppings splatter across the windshield. He takes a detour into his uncle’s old house, his mind wandering to a bygone family picnic, when Death arrived to claim his sister, Inga. Inga challenges Death to a badminton game; while they’re playing, a dove shits on Death’s cape, distracting him enough to miss the birdie, and he loses the game. The entire movie is spoken in faux-Swedish, which is kind of like English with –ska added to the end of every noun. When I watched Wild Strawberries again a few months ago, I wasn’t immediately reminded of shit-splattered windshields, so I imagine it must be something about this image of Death that hasn’t survived the test of time (now that I think about it, his character was parodied to a lesser degree in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, which probably hurt this film’s durability even more than De Düva—I just can’t take this incarnation of Death as seriously as I should).

Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman, 1970

Speaking of bird shit…

This is my favorite Altman movie yet, so zanily absurd that it’s hard to succinctly explain the plot, but I’ll make an attempt. Brewster, played by the inimitable Bud Cort looking like a cross between Harry Potter and Waldo, lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, hard at work building a pair of wings so he can fly. He periodically receives a supply of health food from Daphne, a pig-tailed girl who hysterically masturbates under a blanket while Brewster does chin-ups (he’s trying to bulk up for the big take-off, though from the looks of it, his efforts are somewhat futile). Meanwhile, police are investigating a series of murders in which the victims are found covered in bird shit (scatologists are brought in to inspect the feces).

Throughout the film, we encounter various birdlike characters. An eccentric-looking professor/ornithologist standing in front of a blackboard sporadically interjects with encyclopedic factoids about birds, and gradually begins to squawk and develop feathers. Then there’s Louise, a blonde trench-coated woman who has wing-shaped scars on her back (in one scene we catch her bathing in a fountain, mimicking the scene from MASH where Hot Lips is caught by surprise in the shower), who serves as a kind of protector and guardian for Brewster whenever he emerges from his lair.

Sexual desire is Brewster’s fatal flaw, his life spiraling out of control when he befriends Suzanne, a waiflike tour guide at the Astrodome. Suzanne seems kind of an oddball herself, though we eventually discover that she’s really a conservative wimp who fashions herself as a rebel (maybe Altman had some actual people in mind here). Despite her ultimately leading to Brewster’s undoing, I can’t help but love her character anyway (and besides, she’s played by Shelley Duvall, who’s kind of inimitable herself).

As in many Altman films, it ends on a postmodern note, alerting audiences to the fact that they’re watching a movie (see MASH, The Long Goodbye, The Player, etc). We’re only allowed a brief moment of grief for poor Brewster before the whole thing turns into a colorful circus ring, complete with a ringmaster, lion tamer, and so on.

How to Draw a Bunny, John W. Walter, 2002

This documentary about pop artist Ray Johnson begins as an investigative piece, with a policeman assigned to Johnson’s mysterious drowning. Once it begins to delve into Johnson’s history, it continues as an investigative piece, examining the person Johnson was. However, it seems that no one truly knew him, and at the film’s close, he remains a bit of an enigma. The testimony of various acquaintances (including Christo and Jean Claude, Chuck Close, and Roy Lichtenstein, among others) helps to paint a broader picture, but not a complete one. It’s clear that Johnson was quite eccentric; people imagined him as the type of person who trained himself to survive without food (in truth, he did subsist on very little). He ran with other eccentrics, such as Dorothy Podber, who notoriously shot a series of Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe paintings between the eyes (inadvertently increasing their worth). His various apartments and homes were all similarly austere, starkly decorated with an air mattress and some shelves, but filled to the brim with collages and paintings—it seems as though he existed only to create art, which often crossed over into his everyday life. For instance, he liked to involve those interested in purchasing his art in a kind of performance piece, insisting on a series of complicated correspondences negotiating the price before coming to an agreement (in one instance, someone offered $1500 for a collage, though Johnson had asked for $2000; Ray agreed but gave the buyer a collagewith one quarter cut out, representing $500’s worth). Even his death has been speculated by some as a final performance.

I knew nothing about Ray Johnson before seeing this, which is interesting because I’ve read a number of books on his contemporary, Andy Warhol, and the 60s art scene in general, with no mention of Johnson to speak of. I was instantly enamored with his work (though not so much his later performance pieces, a medium that I overall dislike). His collages are humorous and innovative, and I love the concept of mail art, though it unfortunately didn’t help to get his vast oeuvre into museums, his art showing not in a gallery, but distributed by the U.S. postal system to one viewer at a time—which leads back to the fact that he’s missing from most books pertaining to that era of artists.

Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s something else (i.e. Lost), but not only have I not been motivated to do any writing, I haven’t really been watching many movies to begin with. The sunshine and warm temperatures have been beckoning, their hold stronger than my living room couch, but nonetheless, here’s a recap of April 22-May 12, 2007.

MASH, Robert Altman, 1970

Some critics argue that the practical jokes suggest an Animal House style of juvenile humor. While certain later works (for instance, the Porky’s series) might attempt to emulate MASH’s comedic tones, the Altman film is on a much deeper, more intelligent level—instead of dumb, horny frat house types, substitute doctors plucked from their regular practices and lives and shipped off to war. The hijinks and silliness is their way of dealing with the difficult circumstances. At times the characters can be harsh—but really, Hot Lips deserves it, doesn’t she?

Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2006

This documentary is one of the most frightening movies I’ve seen in a long time. This particular group of evangelical Christians, led by Children’s Minister Becky Fischer, essentially brainwash their preteen congregants, claiming that they’re more apt to “learn” when they're young—in actuality, they’re more susceptible, easily persuaded. Thus, we have 11 year-old rat-tailed preachers, 9 year-olds awkwardly proselytizing unsuspecting bystanders at a bowling alley, young ballerinas worrying that they’re dancing “for the flesh” instead of for the Lord. One gets the impression that they don’t even really understand what they’re saying. “God is great” constantly flows from their mouths, but what does it really mean? No one ever delves any deeper.

The scene depicting young Levi’s home schooling is rather unsettling—his mother asserts that creationism is the only possible answer to “all the questions,” and asks if he got to the part of the reading assignment that explains how science is meaningless. (“Pretty cool, huh?”) Even more disturbing is the statistic that 25% of the U.S. population is evangelical (although I get the impression that not all of them are quite as crazy as this), and their ties to the Republican party, which they deny despite their worshipping of a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush (idolatry, anyone?), not to mention their rigid anti-choice stance, which seems to point towards a clear political aim.

Thankfully, there is a voice of reason, a breath of fresh air amidst the madness, in the form of Mike Papantonio, a Christian radio DJ who completely opposes the methods and viewpoints of Fischer and her cohorts. At one point he speaks to Fischer on the air during a call-in segment, challenging her on some very valid points, and, unfortunately, receiving vague, evasive answers.

There’s a scene in which Fischer comments that after seeing Jesus Camp, “extreme liberals” must be “shaking in their boots,” and I’m pretty sure that that’s the only thing I can agree with her about.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney, 2005

This might not have been the best movie to watch after Jesus Camp, in terms of affecting my already pessimistic view of the world. Instead of fundamentalist Christians who want to train their children for another Crusade, we’re presented with businessmen who are so greedy that they rejoice as California burns, since the state’s “energy crisis” is raking in millions of dollars for the company. To be honest, I still don’t quite understand what Enron did—trading bandwidth? What does that mean? When describing a company’s precise function to the average person becomes complex and hard to explain, that, to me should raise suspicion. That they also couldn’t explain where their money was coming from should have triggered an alarm, a wailing siren, signaling that further investigation was in order. This seems to be the film’s underlying theme: why did no one question them? How was this allowed to happen?

The documentary was released prior to the trial results, and it would be interesting to see an addendum to the story detailing this aspect.

No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese, 2005

This is the story of how Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, chronicling his formative years in Minnesota, his move to Greenwich Village, meeting his hero, Woody Guthrie, and so on, up until the point when he took an eight-year break from touring. The film sheds some sympathy on his reputation as bit of an asshole, detailing how people tried to pigeonhole him as a folk singer when he wanted to branch out. If journalists asked him dumb, cringe-worthy questions, he appropriately gave them smartass answers. (When asked how many protest singers there are, he replies, completely deadpan, that there are exactly 136.)

I’ve always been more of a casual Dylan fan; I hadn’t even realized there was such conflict among fans over his decision to go electric, which is a pretty good indication of the extent of my expertise. And I have to say, while his folk songs are great, I can’t identify with all the folkies who thought acoustic music was pure, and rock n roll a sellout (???)—I prefer my music loud and distorted, thank you. In the final scenes at the Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan says to his band members “Play it fucking loud,” I had goosebumps crawling up my arms. Here he is more or less uttering a big “fuck you” to his audience, to Pete Seeger, one of his idols, who said he would have cut the chords if he could. (Dylan did admit that he was heartbroken over Seeger’s words, but he nonetheless stood firm in his convictions.)

During the recording session of “Like a Rolling Stone,” he says there’s never been a song like that one, and wonders how people will react. While I like the song, I’d never thought of it as particularly groundbreaking or mind-blowing—and yet, in the festival footage, audiences were indeed freaking out, their minds blown. I came away from this film with newfound respect for Bob Dylan, wondering whether I would ever experience such outrage, confusion, or bewilderment over a simple song.

Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961

In this early film from Alain Resnais, a contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague (though not necessarily part of the movement), a man who we only know as X meets a woman named A in a vast, ornate mansion. X tries to convince A that they met a year before and made plans to meet again and run off together—she, however, says that he’s mistaken. What follows is a surreal, impressionistic exploration into the psyches of the two characters (the mansion’s endless mazelike corridors evoke the corridors of the mind), and by the film’s end we’re still left uncertain of the truth.

I didn’t love this film, finishing it more of out of determination than enjoyment. This is what the average person imagines when picturing a pretentious foreign film, replete with annoying organ music.

Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2007

I waited a little too long to see this; due to its labeling as a box office flop, every time I made plans, the theater where I had intended to see it was no longer showing it. Thus, I ended up going to Times Square, a tourist hub that I usually try to avoid at all costs. I had briefly imagined that seeing it there might enhance the atmosphere, as 42nd Street would traditionally have been the setting for a grindhouse double feature thirty years ago, but alas, it’s really not the same without the XXX theaters and homeless people ambushing your windshield with squeegees and buckets of nasty-looking water.

Grindhouse demands to be seen in a theater, as it’s really more about the experience of going to the movies in the 70s than the films themselves. I had the good fortune of being amidst an enthusiastic crowd, who cheered, applauded, groaned, and called out “oh shit!” at all the appropriate moments, significantly heightening the viewing experience. I also enjoyed the artificial flecks of dust, pops, and stutters, though at times it feels a bit overdone—one missing reel would have been clever, but one in each film, both accounting for a particularly sexy scene, seems kind of contrived. The fake trailers, however, were brilliantly over the top and hilarious. Among the highlights are Machete, an action film (mexploitation, if you will) about a Mexican assassin hired by the U.S. government, featuring Cheech Marin as a machine gun-toting priest (“God forgives. I don’t.”), and Thanksgiving, a holiday slasher film about a killer who dresses up as a pilgrim. Thanksgiving almost earned Grindhouse an NC-17 rating due to scenes depicting a cheerleader stripping while bouncing on a trampoline, and a decapitation occurring as the victim’s girlfriend performs fellatio on him.

Robert Rodriguez’s zombie flick Planet Terror, the first of the two features, accurately recalls the typical 80s horror movie, replete with a post apocalyptic feeling of perpetual darkness (these characters never see the sun), a wholly appropriate synthesizered score, and cheesy blood and gore effects. It features a wide array of horror elements, including a Texas barbecue joint (somewhat reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, although the proprietor isn’t the villain), a military base as source of all the mayhem, a rich scientist (okay, the part about him wanting everyone’s balls was a little weird), and a heroine with a machine gun for a leg (she receives this awesome appendage right before a triumphant, climactic battle scene, a la Evil Dead 2).

Tarantino’s Death Proof is a bit of a 180; it’s a (winning) combination of car chase and serial killer flick, recalling the likes of Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, and Gone in 60 Seconds (the one from 1974, hello?). The homage is quite literal, as the characters actually reference these three movies repeatedly, the 1970 Dodge Charger from Vanishing Point playing a key role in the plot. Rarely, I’m sure, did the original grindhouse movies refer to other grindhouse movies; the fanboy aspect is glaringly evident.

One of Grindhouse’s flaws is that both movies are a little too long (the producers are fairly certain that its three hour-plus length is one of the major factors contributing to its flop status—that and people seem to be confused by the concept of a double feature). Death Proof especially has an odd structure. The film is pretty chatty, even for Tarantino, with a lot of extraneous dialogue. Way too much time is spent getting to know the first group, right before abruptly killing them off (albeit in a gruesome, creative, and unexpected manner). And despite the amount of time we’re subjected to the first group's mindless banter, the second band of girls is far more memorable and likeable. There's also a lack of symmetry; when our villain, Stuntman Mike, singles out his next victims, the audience becomes acquainted with them, but unlike the first half of the film, he never interacts with them prior to his attack. The plot would have been more satisfying if there were more of a balance, the variance occurring when the second group comes back for revenge.

Regardless, this was thoroughly entertaining, and completely worth fighting through hordes of gawking tourists and journeying all the way up to the sixth floor of an obscenely gargantuan movie theater.

Movies watched, week of April 15-21, 2007

The Firemen’s Ball, Milos Forman, 1968

In this absurdist, satiric comedy, a group of firemen plan a gala affair for their retired chief (actually, he retired the year before, but now that he has cancer they feel they’d better hurry up and get it over with before he kicks the bucket). Throughout the film the event grows increasingly disorganized and chaotic, from reluctant beauty contest participants fleeing the stage, to disappearing door prizes (right down to the glazed ham), to an actual fire breaking out nearby, which none of the fire department seems to respond to, as they’re all too busy worrying about the ball. Meanwhile, they’ve neglected their venerable chief, who’s been patiently waiting by himself at his table of honor. There’s an air of sadness pervading beneath the hilarity—for the dying old man who just wants to collect his award with dignity, for the man whose home is engulfed in flames (when the party attendees offer him their raffle tickets, in what they perceive as an act of great generosity, all he can muster is a dumbfounded stare), and for the people—and, presumably, society in general is implied here too—that have forgotten what’s really important in life.

Branded To Kill, Seijun Suzuki, 1967

This surrealistic gangster film, shot in striking, high-contrasted black and white, features Hanada, Japan’s Number Three killer, who has a fetish for the smell of boiled rice. He's hired by the death-obsessed, proto-goth Misako—in our first encounter with her, she's driving a convertible in the rain with the top down, a dead bird hanging from her rearview mirror instead of an air freshener—but he botches the hit when a butterfly lands on his gun just as he’s pulling the trigger. Now that he’s killed a civilian, he becomes a target, hunted by the “Phantom Number One,” which culminates in an unforgettable scene in a deserted boxing ring. The basic plot points echo that of a typical thriller, but the bizarre details and disjointed structure transform it into something much weirder, yet beautiful, heavily laden with symbolic imagery and motifs. For instance, Misako’s bed is covered with dead moths and butterflies, with more pinned to the apartment walls; in another scene, Hanada is assaulted by cartoon rain, moths, and birds; and lest we forget that aforementioned butterfly with such impeccable timing. This is the kind of film that takes several viewings to piece together exactly what's happening, though that’s not necessarily a fault.

12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet, 1957

Legendary director Sidney Lumet’s debut film effectively depicts the incompetence of our legal system, how one’s fate is placed in the hands of twelve people who don’t really want to be there in the first place. These jurors aren’t willing to actually think about the case—a boy’s life is at stake and they just keep looking at their watches. When they take an initial vote, some of them are glancing around to see what the others are going to do, shakily raising their hands according to the majority’s opinion: guilty.

Gradually, one person at a time, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) convinces the others of the boy’s innocence (or the possibility of it, at least), dissecting and unraveling the so-called hard evidence of his guilt. While I think Juror #8 does a good job of discrediting the witnesses, some of his arguments are kind of improbable. The defendant owned a knife that was identical to the one that killed his father; he claims it fell out of his pocket earlier in the day. Yes, “it’s possible,” as Juror #8 keeps insisting, that by some bizarre coincidence he’s telling the truth, but it seems extremely unlikely.

Regardless, it’s a pretty incredible feat to maintain such an engaging, gripping momentum for 90 minutes when, essentially, the only action taking place is a dozen men talking and arguing around a table. The confined feeling is particularly effective—as time goes on, the camera closes in on the actors, accentuating the discomfort, the intense heat and sweat, seldom allowing the viewer a breath of air.

The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman, 1973

In this brilliant reimagining of Raymond Chandler’s classic detective, Philip Marlowe, instead of tough, hardboiled, and humorless, our leading man is a smartass, wise-cracking underdog, a kind of radical private eye for the 70s. Elliot Gould’s Marlowe sleeps fully clothed in cheap J.C. Penney attire, a cigarette perpetually dangling from his lips, mumbling humorous witticisms like “He’s got a girl, I got a cat” and his catchphrase, “It’s okay with me.” One could say he’s sort of an amalgamation of Gould and Marlowe; a 1973 New York Times review conjectures that at the ending, when Marlowe is walking away, his back to the audience, that’s the character’s exit. When he starts dancing, it’s entirely Gould.

In addition to Marlowe, the film is brimming with endearing and memorable secondary characters: the security guard who does impressions of classic Hollywood actors, the bumbling hood following Marlowe around (our man gives him directions to the place he’s headed to in case he gets lost in traffic), Marlowe’s hippie neighbors who practice yoga topless from their deck, and, perhaps the real star of the show, Marlowe’s cat, who, in the opening scene, wakes him up at 3:00 in the morning demanding to be fed. (The cat is quite particular about what he eats, sending Marlowe to the 24-hour grocery store in search of Courry brand cat food.)

The palm-treed L.A. backdrop enhances the noir elements—there’s a sordidness beneath the sunny surface, bruises marring the artificial tans. The camerawork is exceptional, particularly in the scene in which Eileen and Roger Wade, Marlowe’s clients, argue inside their house, while Marlowe, seen through the tall glass windows, wanders around the beach, jumping back from a wave crashing onto the sand. Later, that shot is mirrored—albeit much more darkly—when Marlowe and Eileen argue from that same room; this time it’s Roger seen through the window, drunkenly stumbling into the ocean.

Movies watched, April 1-14, 2007

Okay, I've been slacking a little bit, so here's two weeks worth of viewing pleasure (and, in some cases, displeasure).

Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett, 1977

About a dozen people walked out of this screening, all within the first two to ten minutes or so. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I found it was a beautifully shot, poetic portrayal of the lives of the residents of Watts, California in 1977. Stan works at a slaughterhouse (hence the title), dissatisfied with his job and how his life has turned out, which frustrates his wife, whose sexual advances are continuously turned down. There are a number of memorable scenes of the neighborhood children playing—for instance, as Stan and his neighbor walk through an alleyway, one can see the occasional blip of flailing legs above their heads, as children leap from one roof to the other. At times, the plot seems a little disjointed, lacking a conventional narrative. Essentially, it’s more of a patchwork, weaving together loosely linked characters and scenes, which cohere into a moving, heartbreakingly comic film.

David Holzman’s Diary, Jim McBride, 1967

This scripted movie succeeds in its attempt to mimic an off-the-cuff diary entry. The character decides to film himself, thinking that by observing the patterns occurring in his life, he will come to some greater understanding of their meaning—of course, it doesn’t really turn out that way, and he ends up scaring off his girlfriend, Penny, in the process. This is an interesting study on the way people react to being filmed: Penny is upset and disturbed by David’s project, while others don’t seem to mind, playing up for the camera. (One of David’s colleagues delivers a monologue stating that one cannot truly film “real life,” for the moment a camera is detected, people stop acting naturally—I would tend to agree.) It features some particularly innovative technical effects (especially considering the year it was made), such as a sped up montage of images from David’s evening TV viewing, and voiceovers accompanying photobooth pictures.

Factotum, Bent Hamer, 2005

I think this film captures Bukowski’s novels more successfully than Barfly—I always pictured Hank to be more gruff and bitter than Mickey Rourke’s dreamy, romantic interpretation—but it’s still not quite right. For one, Matt Dillon’s not ugly enough—he needs to bulk up a bit, stop washing and styling his hair, and for God’s sakes, get some acne scars. Now that I think about it, the whole movie’s not ugly enough; it’s too attractively shot to capture the necessary squalor and hopelessness.

The Player, Robert Altman, 1992

It seems wholly appropriate that Altman, whom the movie industry made its crowned king in the 70s, then abandoned in the 80s, marked his triumphant return in the 90s with a satire on Hollywood. Well-crafted and brilliantly biting in its comedic subtlety, The Player mocks various aspects of the industry—including the film itself.

The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo, 2003

The magnitude of hatred that the general viewing audience seems to feel for this film really made me want to like it. While I didn’t find it offensive, I wasn’t exactly impressed with it either. Basically, a man drives around for 80 minutes, then gets a blow job. (Actually, he gets an imaginary blow job.) There were a few nice touches, like the bug-splattered windshield glinting in the sun, but otherwise, this was a little too slow-paced, even for me (it was so quiet at times that I got distracted and actually forgot I was watching a movie). Moreover, the “surprise twist” at the end is pretty groan-inducing.

Death and the Maiden, Roman Polanski, 1994

This is, supposedly, the third film in a loosely linked trilogy, starting with Knife in the Water (1962) and Cul-de-sac (1966). But considering it was made 30 years after the other films in the set, it seems like Polanski simply realized that the theme was vaguely similar to two of his earlier films, and there you have it: now part of a trilogy!

That said, Death and the Maiden is a relatively suspenseful film, surprising at times, though I prefer Polanski’s earlier stuff. (Then again, I tend to say that about everything, so what do I know?) Also, much of Sigourney Weaver’s acting feels kind of stiff—when she delivers longer monologues it clearly sounds like Acting with a capital A, which I don’t imagine is the desired effect.

Slums of Beverly Hills, Tamara Jenkins, 1998

A coming-of-age story about a family of self-described nomadic “freaks,” who move in the middle of the night from one shitty apartment complex after the other, all within Beverly Hills (“for the school district!” their father insists). It’s somewhat typical, thematically (awkward teenager experiments with sex, doesn’t like her breasts, is embarrassed of her family, lacks a stable maternal role model, etc.), though the actual details (pot-smoking older brother singing show tunes in his undies, pot-dealing neighbor/devirginizer who seems to have an endless supply of Charles Manson T-shirts, etc.) are more on the atypical side, and make for some entertaining, comedic scenes. The 1970s period detail is spot-on, from the mustard-colored shag carpeting (I swear my grandparents had the same one) to Vivian’s standard outfit of tube socks and cut-offs.

Three Women * Robert Altman * 1977

Continuing with the string of Robert Altman films I’ve been watching lately (and I plan to watch more in the coming weeks—how did I manage to miss out on all of these for so long?) is Three Women, which evokes a distinctly different mood from others I’ve seen. There is a weird, unsettling feeling beneath the surface that reminds me of David Lynch’s later films (more specifically, Mulholland Drive).

The film opens with a dreamy, hazy montage of strange paintings and old people languidly moving their wrinkled legs through a swimming pool, to a soundtrack made up of some kind of primitive wind instrument. The pool turns out to be part of the nursing home where Millie Lamoreaux (Shelley Duvall) works, along with new hire Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek).

From the start, it’s apparent that there’s something odd about Pinky, as if she were an alien who doesn't know how humans are supposed to act. She blows bubbles in her soda and awkwardly wheels herself around in a wheelchair. Upon meeting Millie, she is instantly smitten, and seems to decide right then that she's going to not only model her behavior on her co-worker but, essentially, to become her. (That day she punches out with Millie’s time card.) In the coming days she carefully observes her object of interest, picking up her lingo (“I’m going to the little girls’ room”), her likes and dislikes (“I hate tomatoes! Yuck!”*). Later on, Millie comes home to find Pinky, who has by now become her roommate, wearing her bathrobe and reading her diary—whether Pinky’s studying or playing dress-up isn’t clear.

Millie, meanwhile, is far from the type of person one would want to emulate. She prattles on about tuna casseroles and her file of recipes she sorts by the amount of time it takes to make them, but no one pays attention; in one scene, her co-workers walk away, talking amongst themselves, as she shouts after her disinterested audience about how Macy's is offering hula lessons, and she’s going to try it. When she gets in her car and closes the door, part of her large flowing skirt sticks out of the bottom—apparently this was unintentional, but Altman saw how perfectly it summed up Millie’s character, and insisted that they kept the shot.

Millie's apartment is part of a large complex next-door to a shooting range and a Wild West-themed bar. Willie, the pregnant co-owner of this strange theme park-ish compound, silently moves around the grounds, painting iconic-looking figures in the bottom and sides of the pool. When Pinky tells her she likes her paintings she says nothing and walks away. This is troublesome for Millie ("Why'd you go and do that? That's embarrassing!")—throughout the film she displays strong concern for always projecting "normal" behavior (she later screams at Pinky, “You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t do anything you’re supposed to do!”), although she comes across as odd in her own way.

Millie often strikes me as delusional; she has an idealized picture in her head of what her life is like, and despite some obvious clues that this is an inaccurate picture, she clings to the imagined version. For instance, Tom, one of her neighbors, is clearly brushing her off, but she says she thinks he'd like to go out with her. While she’s out shopping for one of her “famous” dinner parties, her old roommate stops by and tells Pinky she’d been planning on stopping by for drinks “or something” but has decided to go to Dodge City instead—Millie doesn’t believe Pinky and insists that she must have scared them off. It’s downright pathetic how hard she tries to please, yet everyone still hates her. (When she arrives at the community pool, one of her neighbors whispers, "Uh oh. Don't look now, but it's thoroughly modern Millie.")

The turning point of the film occurs when, after Millie has berated her for various undeserved reasons, Pinky heads to the diving board, trancelike, and lands in the pool, where she floats lifelessly until Willie and several other neighbors jump in after her. This part is somewhat vague: has she hit her head? Can she not swim? Or is the cause entirely more complex?

Like Pinky, her parents, whom Millie has flown in to visit their daughter in the hospital, seem rather odd; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is definitely something amiss. For one, they look too old to be her parents (though we do find out that they still have sex, despite their aged appearances), and her father can’t seem to stay awake for more than a minute at a time. Neither of them appears to understand the fact that Pinky is in a coma, the father constantly asking why she doesn’t wake up, while the mother makes comments like, “Oh, we don’t want to wake her.”

When Pinky does finally come out of her coma to see them staring back at her, she acts as though she doesn't know them; when they insist that they're her parents she freaks out, shrieking that she doesn't have parents. This brings up a few questions: has she truly forgotten who she is (perhaps suffering from amnesia from a head trauma), or do the facts of her real identity coming to the surface cause her to throw a fit? (Or maybe they really aren’t her parents, though that theory seems somewhat unlikely given the rest of the story.)

Pinky undergoes a drastic transformation after leaving the hospital, wearing makeup and painting her toenails, drinking, gambling, practicing her aim on the shooting range, and generally acting like a total badass. She actually seems a little more grown up—or at least less childlike, maybe more like a troubled teenager. In one particularly bizarre scene, she starts laughing, but it sounds as though she doesn't know how to laugh and is literally saying “ha ha ha ha ha” over and over again. More and more one wonders whether she honestly believes she is Millie, as she begins to write in her diary, speculating about who her parents were (“maybe Lamoreaux is French”).

Throughout the film, there is an underlying theme of duality, of spiritual connectedness and split personality. When Willie and Millie (separately) peer into a glass window at the hospital, their faces reflect in such a way that it appears as though there are two of them, splitting off like a cell reproducing. (I only wish Altman had decided to do this just once, since it happens to both characters in exactly the same way.)

The twins, Polly and Peggy, who also work at the nursing home, are also mentioned throughout (everyone’s always talking about those twins!), though we never really get to know them—they’re shown from a distance, usually walking by in matching outfits, which enhances the strange, unsettling feeling they suggest. These themes are brought to a head in an abstract dream sequence involving water, twins, and the mirrored reflections of Willie’s and Millie's faces, permeated by a murky, blue haze (similar to the opening of the film).

What I interpreted as one of the most important scenes in the film involves Pinky asking Millie, in reference to the twins, "Do you think they know which one they are?" Millie dismisses this as a stupid question, but it seems rather significant: does Pinky know which one she is?

* In this scene she refers to butter as “that white stuff,” which perpetuates the feeling that she’s from another planet. I mean, who doesn’t know what butter is?

Movies watched, week of March 25-31, 2007

Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette, 2003

The recent “movie about my family” trend of documentary filmmaking theoretically has the capacity to create something really remarkable by exploring universal themes on a personal level, but in my experience the results are usually rather disappointing—Tarnation, however, considerably exceeds my expectations. The story is disturbingly tragic, yet manages to avoid becoming maudlin or self-indulgent. The movie is also quite visually complex for something edited entirely on free computer software, though sometimes the plot is sacrificed in favor of aesthetic stimulation. I would have liked to see slightly more exposition through the images (almost all of the actual storyline is conveyed exclusively through rather lengthy captions).

The Bad Seed, Mervyn Leroy, 1956

I was a bit disappointed with this B-grade horror movie about an evil child who fools everyone with her syrupy sweet outward appearance. The acting is pretty bad, in some cases verging on the bizarre: the weird, creepy groundskeeper, the mother of a dead little boy who has taken up drinking to deal with her sorrows (complete with hiccups and staggers), and so on. The blonde pigtailed protagonist isn’t nearly evil enough either—essentially, she’s just an exceptionally devious spoiled brat who knows how to get what she wants. It definitely does not justify a running time of 2 hours and ten minutes.