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.

Movies watched, January 1, 2008 to January 26, 2008

Sins of the Fleshapoids, Mike Kuchar, 1965
The Secret of Wendel Samson, Mike Kuchar, 1966
The Craven Sluck, Mike Kuchar, 1967

Mike Kuchar and his twin brother, George, are often credited as pioneers of underground, low-fi cinema, having created dozens of campy, experimental films from age 12 and on (George seems to have continued making films into the present, whereas Mike’s credits end with 1971’s Tales of the Bronx). Sins of the Fleshapoids is a campy sci-fi film, set a million years into the future, where androids significantly outnumber people, and yet they are employed as slaves to the few humans left on the planet. Like The Tenth Victim (perhaps it was even influenced a little by it, as the two films were released in the same year—scroll down a little for a write-up on that one), the costumes and set design depict a swanky 60s version of the future, here with ancient Greco-Roman overtones, in which the last remaining people on Earth wear ridiculous leaf and flower costumes and sprawl out on leopard print sheets while decadently sucking down grapes from the vine—it’s like a freaky, psychedelic bacchanal.

At the opening of the film, unbeknownst to these hubristic humans, the android slaves have developed senses and emotions—and surprise, surprise, they don’t want to be slaves anymore. Xar (who wears a helmet with chin strap and a leotard) has fallen in love with Melenka, and together they stage an uprising against their cruel masters. One of my favorite lines of the film is uttered by Melenka, in perhaps one of the most bizarre sex scenes portrayed on film: “We are robots…and yet we are in love”—they then have sex by waving their fingers at each other and generating an electrical current (a particularly potent current, I guess, because the final scene depicts Melenka writhing around the floor until a tiny robot toddles out from between her legs).

Sins of the Fleshapoids features crayon drawings (in this case, of demonlike figures) in the opening credits, somewhat reminiscent of something you’d find in a bored, geeky high school student’s notebook (and maybe that’s not so far off the mark, as the Kuchars were in their early 20s when they made this one). The crayon typeface recurs throughout the film in the form of word bubbles popping out of the characters’ mouths. There’s no spoken dialogue otherwise—besides a voiceover that’s kind of hard to listen to—and I love that they resolved this technical dilemma in a manner that was both functional and stylistically interesting.

My favorite of the three films is The Craven Sluck (also the shortest of the three), in which Adele, a bored and unhappy housewife, stages an unsuccessful suicide attempt, then meets a man named Morton (played by George Kuchar) while out walking her dog. (In a brilliant cut that I can only imagine was unplanned, in one moment Adele and Morton are embracing, and the next we see the dog taking a shit on the beach.) Adele plans a secret rendezvous with Morton, but then he meets someone else who’s hotter than her and calls it off. She’s furious but doesn’t have time to tell him off because Earth is suddenly invaded by flying saucers and she’s instantly vaporized (this last part is so sudden and unexpected that it’s totally hilarious). The Craven Sluck employs creative opening credits using a voiceover narrator, which adds in humorous little witticisms like “Marilyn Marmoset, spelled like the South American tree monkey.”

In contrast, my least favorite of the three films is The Secret of Wendel Samson. I’m pretty sure that Wendel’s secret is that he’s gay, hence the large fake spider web they frequently show him stuck to (to illustrate how he’s caught in a “web” of lies, maybe?—either way it’s pretty silly). The soundtrack to this one features some strange robotic noises similar to that of Sins of the Fleshapoids, except this isn’t a sci fi movie, so they seem incongruously placed (although in a way it's oddly appropriate). The film has its comedic moments though, such as when Wendel is picked up by a random stranger off the street, who robotically offers him a cup of coffee—seconds later we see Wendell and the stranger lying in bed with their shirts off, with Wendell, cup in hand, ardently proclaiming “this coffee is great!”

These films remind me a bit of the early work of John Waters (who is said to have been influenced by the Kuchars), particularly in the trashy aesthetic, low budget production style, and recurring cast of actors (who, like Waters’ Dreamlanders, seem like they were probably all friends who hung out in the same circle). They’re ultimately different styles, with the Kuchars leaning towards the science fiction camp, but I like to think they share a kindred spirit, fundamentally of the same nature.

The Tenth Victim, Elio Petri, 1965
This odd, futuristic film reads like a satire of reality television, but clairvoyantly so, as it was released in the 60s. In this world, people can sign up for “The Big Hunt,” in which they are assigned a human target to hunt down and kill. Their prey is notified that they are now a “victim,” but not given the identity of their hunter. Whoever survives ten hunts is awarded a highly coveted prize (only fifteen people in the world have survived all ten). The rarely achieved tenth hunt receives corporate sponsorship, turned into a huge, vulgar spectacle with dancers and round the clock interviews, all televised for the viewers at home. The hunt is also dragged out for the sake of these TV viewers—in this case, the huntress, Caroline (Ursula Andress), could easily have shot her victim (played by Italian film star Marcello Mastroianni, whose previous credits include La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, The Organizer, and so on) on her first attempt, as she finds him carelessly out in the open. But instead, she toys with him, pretending to seduce him, perhaps a little careless herself.

The theory behind “The Big Hunt” seems to be that if people are assigned legalized victims, the crime rate will drop. Moreover, only people who have willingly registered may be killed, with no innocent bystanders allowed—if one kills the wrong person, they will receive a 30-year prison sentence, so participants must be absolutely certain they have correctly identified their hunter. One rather humorous scene occurs in front of a police station, in which a woman is shot to death while walking up the steps. The police officers don’t bat an eye, as it is an authorized killing—however, they do rush to give someone a parking ticket.

Other dystopian, 1984-esque plotlines are thrown in, such as the characters’ having to hide their aging parents because they are supposed to turn them over to the state once they reach a certain age. The film generally has a space-age 60s pop feel to it, with a modern jazz score—kind of bizarre, but entertainingly so.

Who Killed the Electric Car?, Chris Paine, 2006
The answer to the question posed by the title seems obvious before you even see the movie: oil companies (electric cars=no need for their product). Car companies and consumers are also to blame, according to this documentary, although I’d say the car companies are a little more in the wrong, as the electric car, or EV1, was barely promoted (I’d certainly never heard of it). In fact, it almost seems as though the car companies were doing everything within their power to keep people from purchasing these products at all. The film portrays the bizarre manner in which GM refused to allow willing customers to buy this merchandise (who ever heard of such a practice?), and then instead of renewing the leases, they confiscated the cars and crushed every last one of them, so that they disappeared without a trace, as if they’d never existed. Granted, people are also extremely resistant to change, as evidenced by the fact that some still don’t believe in global warming (somehow, scientific research is not valid to them). And thus, many people killed the electric car, whether heads of companies, government officials, or reluctant consumers. The film doesn’t so much mourn the loss of a car, but our refusal to initiate positive change.

The Jerk, Carl Reiner, 1979
I was inspired to re-watch The Jerk after reading Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up. The book isn’t the most compelling read—to me, the most interesting parts occurred when Martin discussed his comedic theories, but this comprised only a few pages—but it did trigger some fond memories of one of my favorite comedic films. All of the jokes have an innocence about them, perhaps stemming from the protagonist’s lack of worldliness. Navin Johnson strikes one as kind of a naïf: trusting, optimistic, and maybe a little stupid, but ultimately endearing.

The best scene by far occurs when a sniper randomly selects Navin’s name out of the phone book (“Navin R. Johnson—sounds like a typical bastard.”) and perches on a hilltop across from the gas station where Navin works, shooting at him but hitting cans of motor oil instead. Navin misinterprets these actions at first: “He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!” Just hearing these lines in my head puts a smile on my face.

The first time I saw this movie was at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin; admission included free pizza in a cup, with Twinkies and Tab as the specials on the menu. Man, that was a great night.

A History of Violence, David Cronenberg, 2005
I find it interesting that the opening scene is somewhat of a red herring. We’re made to believe that the film is about the two characters we encounter here, but while they are indeed the impetus for the story, the catalyst, we never see them again after the first ten minutes or so. We don’t even know anything about them (and neither did the writer, it seems—the actors actually made up their own back stories for their characters). Yet they are nonetheless vital to the film.

The film sparks some intriguing questions about dual identity: can a person live two different lives, with two different personalities, and nonetheless be both of those people?

Sick, Kirby Dick, 1997
Performance artist and self-proclaimed “supermasochist” Bob Flanagan lived far longer than most people diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. As the film suggests, his penchant for bondage may have assisted him in coping with the pain of his disease—not only did S&M allow him to disassociate himself from his illness, but it strengthened him as well, arming him with the resilience to fight it for 43 years (well, okay, he didn’t exactly participate in S&M for all 43 of those years).
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Much of the film is difficult to watch—the nail being driven through Bob’s penis still turns my stomach a little whenever I think of it, and I don’t even have one of those!

Movies watched, December 2007

Control, Anton Corbijn, 2007

There are many myths surrounding the story of Joy Division, particularly in the manner in which their singer, Ian Curtis, killed himself. I’ve heard various stories over the years—that he stood on a block of ice and waited for it to melt, that he carved a smiley face over his own with a pen knife, and so on—but it seems that he simply listened to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, wrote a long, rambling note to his wife, and hung himself from a clothes rack in the kitchen. It would have been interesting to explore these untruths in the film, but I like that Control ignores them entirely, achieving as close to realism as you can get in a film such as this one. (Well, I guess they did include the apparently false legend of Tony Wilson signing their record contract in blood—it does make for a pretty amusing scene though.) Based mainly on Curtis’ ex-wife’s memoir, the film’s perspective might be slightly skewed, but Corbijn also spoke to Curtis’ Belgian girlfriend, Annik, for her own insights into their relationship, which seems to provide a bit of a balance.

One of the strongest aspects of the film is the music. The soundtrack includes some greats, like Bowie, the Buzzcocks, and the Velvet Underground. But more importantly, it actually features Joy Division—there’s nothing worse than seeing a film about a band that doesn’t even have the band’s music in it. The live Joy Division shows appear rather authentic, the actors mimicking the band’s onstage motions near-perfectly. If I’m not mistaken, they were taught to play their instruments and actually performed the songs live—an interesting technique, and a testament to the extent of the actors’ efforts.

Filming in black and white was a smart choice, as it effectively conveys the dreariness of the industrial British town from which the band hails. In many ways, Control follows in the long tradition of films about dreary British industrial towns and the angry young men who are dying to escape them, a la The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Look Back in Anger, and so on.

Ian feels trapped in a variety of ways, but often in situations he could remedy, in theory at least. He doesn’t want to be in the band anymore (he could quit), he doesn’t want to be in Macclesfield anymore (he could move), and he doesn’t want to be married anymore (he could get a divorce). The last one might be the most complicated, as he seems emotionally conflicted over leaving Deborah, and yet very much in love with his girlfriend. Perhaps he just wants to be frozen in time, before his band got big, when he was still madly in love with his wife, when he was young and hopeful—and before he was stricken with epilepsy. As for the epilepsy, he is, unfortunately, trapped inside his own mind and body. There’s no escaping the seizures, which most likely were the main driving force that led to his suicide—his life seemed fairly miserable anyway, but that pushed him over the edge, especially since he feared the seizures would intensify over time.

The film’s conclusion is a bit melodramatic, with Deborah discovering Ian’s dead body and running into the street screaming. It’s unnecessary to see this, as it doesn’t shed any light on the situation, doesn’t tell the viewer anything they couldn’t have inferred (I mean, how else would you expect her to react?). The ending could have been made stronger by cutting from the sound of the rope to the wisps of black smoke curling from the chimney as Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” plays into the credits—a rather poetic image to close with, I think.

No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007
This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel remains very close to the source material, in some cases taking dialogue word for word from the pages of the book. Sometimes this approach does not work—I have no qualms about filmmakers implementing changes to the plot as they adapt it to film, which is often necessary—but here the result is extremely successful, especially as the book is rather cinematic (as I was reading it I remember wondering if it would be made into a movie).

At the heart of the story is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), as close to evil in human form as one might ever encounter. Chigurh has a slow, deliberate way of speaking, one that instills goosebumps in its listener, particularly in his nerve-wrackingly cryptic practice of bargaining with another man over his life with the toss of a coin. His cruel, cold, humorless mannerisms are accentuated by his odd choice of weapon, the cattle gun, which propels a metal cylinder into an object (often a person’s skull) and then sucks the cylinder back inside, and his bizarre 1970s porn haircut (apparently modeled after a photo of a 1979 brothel patron), adds the right amount of weirdness to his appearance.

Bardem’s performance is so strong that his character’s presence is palpable even when he’s not there—in certain instances the viewer can almost feel that the camera has just missed him by a few minutes. Llewelyn Moss, the man who had the misfortune of discovering Chigurh’s money (though he probably feels it is good fortune at the time) is clearly making a mistake by trying to outrun Chigurh, for even if Moss manages to flee from him once, it’s never long before he catches up with him—the man is like a machine, unstoppable. Each narrow escape is thrilling and suspenseful—even for me, and I already knew the story’s outcome.


Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach, 2007
Baumbach’s follow-up to The Squid and the Whale is even darker and more depressing than his last film, with not even a redeeming moment at the end for its characters, who spend their time spitefully bickering, preying on each other’s vulnerabilities. I guess this is what's contributed to its "box office flop" status, but I thought it was one of the best films released in 2007 (maybe right after No Country for Old Men).

Margot and her precocious son Claude travel to the Hamptons for her sister Pauline’s wedding to Malcolm, who Margot deems unsuitable (he is unemployed, unstable, and has a hideous mustache that he has grown just to be ironic). One wonders, though, why Margot cares: she hasn’t seen her sister in years (it becomes clear that the only reason she has shown up is because her extramarital lover lives nearby). The source of their squabbling seems not to originate from some singular painful event, but simply because the two sisters are too alike. They have been competing with one another their entire lives, and cannot let the other one win. For instance, Pauline obliquely challenges Margot to climb a tree, and inwardly gloats when the fire department arrives to rescue her from it; later on, Pauline confides in Margot a secret she is hiding from her family, which Margot conveys to Claude, who then spreads the rumor even further (although one wonders why Pauline told Margot in the first place, as she must have known what the outcome would be—perhaps this was her way of telling her family in a roundabout way).

Like The Squid and the Whale, the film is extremely visceral—we see the characters masturbating, examining whether their balls hang lower than their dicks, saving their fingernail clippings, and so on. The characters are human, and all of their disgusting habits, both physical and emotional, are displayed rather nakedly for the viewer.


The Savages, Tamara Jenkins, 2007

I was attracted to The Savages by its title, a bit of a double-entendre referencing the characters’ last name, and even more so by its director, Tamara Jenkins, whose previous credit, Slums of Beverly Hills, is a favorite of mine.

The film opens in Sun City, Arizona, a town that appears to be populated entirely by senior citizens. Golf carts drive down the streets, and old leathery women languorously bob up and down in swimming pools, slowly dying in the sun. This essentially artificial environment is characterized by slow, calm sounds, like that of a tinkling music box, as though the town is a fairyland for the elderly. This is where Ben and Wendy Savage must go to pick up their aging father, after his live-in girlfriend of 20 years dies and her children immediately put the house on the market, to bring him back to Buffalo, New York. The contrast between Buffalo and Sun City is profound: upstate New York is freezing and covered in snow, signifying death for the old man in more ways than one.

The film doesn’t shy away from all the embarrassing and painful experiences that accompany caring for aging parents, providing some squirm-inducing scenes, such as when Wendy’s father’s pants fall around his ankles on the plane, and she has to bend down and lift them back up for him. Ben and Wendy also felt like actual people, rather than characters in a script, dimensionalized with subtle details like Wendy’s flowery thermal shirts that she’s always wearing, and Ben’s perpetually wrinkled, untucked attire (he’s a college professor, and yet he’s not wearing a tweed jacket—incredible!). Their father, however, did not seem fleshed out enough. We know he was once a formidable figure but has since been weakened by old age and dementia—a plotline that we’ve seen countless times in film. We need more specific details about the family dynamic, about their past, because his character is too one-dimensional to pique the viewer’s interest, to indelibly affix itself into our memory.

The film’s momentum dwindles a bit towards the end, which I imagine could have been improved by tightening up the script a bit. In all, I prefer Slums of Beverly Hills to this, but it’s not without its own merits.

Juno, Jason Reitman, 2007
A fairly universal criticism of this movie falls on its first 15 minutes or so, in which the dialogue is way too heavy on the teen slang—do people really say things like “for shizz” these days? Thankfully, the lingo tones down pretty quickly (or maybe I just got used to it—scary). The pop culture references are also a tad excessive, and seem kind of awkward when they occur, maybe even a little unnatural. More importantly, how could someone whose band opened for the Melvins in 1993 not listen to the Stooges? And how can I take such a man seriously?

Speaking of which: the characters of Mark and Vanessa—the childless couple that has agreed to adopt Juno’s unborn child—are not explored nearly enough. How did they end up together, when they seem like such opposites? Their situation is undoubtedly more complicated than is let on, and the film could have provided a few more hints that Mark was unhappy in the relationship. In hindsight, I can see some attempts at doing this via Mark’s awkward initial greeting to Juno and her father, in which he stammers about how he’s excited about one day helping the kid with science projects “and stuff.” But these clues aren’t so much subtle as they are barely there at all; the viewer is so far removed from Mark’s head that his confession to Juno is out of left field, and kind of unbelievable. I found the slow dance scene rather stomach-turning, which is a bit of a disappointment, as up until that point I kind of liked Mark. I could see that Juno reminded him that he wasn’t satisfied, that he sold out with his music, and that his wife kept him on a short leash, but come on, is he really that much of a creep that he’d want to run off with a 16 year old girl?

Despite its flaws, the film was cute and made me wish I were young again (well, except for the whole pregnancy thing—that’s not something I’d like to experience). Some great endearing details include Juno’s and Paul’s matching hamburger phones, Juno’s licorice noose, which she facetiously employs upon discovering that she’s pregnant, and Paulie’s favorite orange tic tacs and car bed with personalized license plate.

I guess my main gripe with the film, which funnily enough occurred to me as more of an afterthought, is this: why does this movie exist in the first place? Why have there been so many “hip” movies popping up lately that seem to advocate carrying unplanned pregnancies to term? It almost feels like some kind of weird way of winning the youth vote on the pro-life issue (almost—I’m not some wacky conspiracy theorist, nor am I a rabid baby killer). But where are the Stacy Hamiltons of today’s teen movies? It would make for a less heartwarming story, but, you know, just sayin…

Movies watched, November 11-30, 2007

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Sidney Lumet, 2007
While this is certainly no Dog Day Afternoon or Network—but then, what is?—Sidney Lumet’s 49th feature film (by my count, via IMDB) is somewhat of a return to form for the acclaimed director. The botched robbery is a plotline employed in countless films, yet in this case it feels fresh and complex and innovative. While certainly not a pioneering technique—see Reservoir Dogs—the conveyance of multiple points of view is rather effective here, gradually revealing the many facets of earlier scenes. However, the weird scrambling effect used to indicate the change in viewpoint is not only annoying but unnecessary—the viewer should be smart enough to figure out which character is being focused on by simply watching the scene.

American Gangster, Ridley Scott, 2007
From the New York magazine article “The Return of Superfly”: “A couple of days later, eating at a T.G.I. Friday’s, Lucas scowled through glareproof glass to the suburban strip beyond. ‘Look at this shit,’ he said. A giant Home Depot down the road especially bugged him. Bumpy Johnson himself couldn’t have collected protection from a damn Home Depot, he said with disgust. ‘What would Bumpy do? Go in and ask to see the assistant manager? Place is so big, you get lost past the bathroom sinks. But that’s the way it is now. You can’t find the heart of anything to stick the knife into.’”

This excerpt recalls the opening scene of American Gangster, in which Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson expresses his distaste for a discount electronics store, one aspect of a newly developing variety of shopping experience, the predecessor of the “big box” stores of today. He laments about how these stores buy straight from the manufacturer, cutting out the middle man—an obvious analogy to the operating procedures of drug dealers (the “middle man” who sells directly to the consumer). Frank Lucas, Bumpy’s driver and protégé, is listening, but later ends up doing exactly what Bumpy bemoaned: buying pure uncut heroin straight from the source, deep in the jungle of Vietnam. Frank aspires to be like Bumpy, and while he resembles his mentor in some ways, he differs in many more.

Frank is made out to be an evil man who’s also suave and likable. He talks about entrepreneurship, how he’s starting a business and making profits like any other red-blooded American capitalist. This is supposed to somehow legitimize him for the viewer, but it makes me like him even less. Here’s the archetypal industrialist getting rich off the blood of his people, peddling junk (literally) to susceptible buyers who slowly kill themselves with the product. He rapidly spreads a veritable epidemic, breeding disease and crime and sorrow. I have no sympathy for a man who achieves his wealth from the deaths of others, no matter how ingenious his ways of achieving it might have been. In that sense, the film fails simply because of its protagonist’s nature.

Now that I’m off my soapbox—American Gangster often feels like an episode of the HBO series The Wire, if it were set in 1970s New York. Detective Richie Roberts and The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty are of the same essence: the indefatigable “good cop” who refuses bribes and lives for his job, sacrificing his home life in the process. They’re both divorced and struggling with child support and custody battles (not to mention they’re both fucking their lawyer). The film attempts to blur the lines between good and bad, cop and criminal, but not as successfully as in The Wire. Whereas I often find myself cheering for Omar, I’m far less sympathetic to Lucas and his compatriots. American Gangster is also not nearly as dense and engrossing as The Wire, but it would be pretty difficult to achieve the degree of complexity of an entire TV series in a quarter of the screen time. In the film’s defense, it was highly entertaining—just not masterfully so.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb, 1982-89
In 1982, three 12-year olds from Mississippi fell in love with Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Their passion was so great that they were inspired to make films, to essentially become Steven Spielberg (let’s forgive them, they were only 12)—and what better way to achieve this than to recreate the film that they worshipped? The boys naively assumed this could be completed in one summer—seven years later they were finally finished with the editing. The Adaptation then sat collecting dust for years until it somehow ended up in the hands of Eli Roth, who prompted its second screening ever at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. (I unfortunately would not move to this great city for more than a year after that fateful night, thus missing out on the fun.) This screening furnished the film with a rebirth, reports of its existence slowly filtering into the consciousness of many a film fan via blogs (hey, like this one!) and the like, bestowing upon it a cult classic status—which brings us to a packed house at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan.

Keeping in mind that this was created by a group of kids operating with few resources (they didn’t even have a copy of the movie, as this was in the pre-VHS dark days), the result is impressive—mind-blowing, even. They performed their own stunts, set their basement on fire, threw themselves from moving trucks, and blew up a variety of things. They got permission to film on an actual plane and ship, secured live snakes from a local pet store, and built a giant fiberglass boulder. The film’s quirks—for instance, its lack of continuity, with characters aging and regressing from scene to scene, due to their hitting puberty over the course of the filming—are endearing rather than distracting. Same with the video quality, which at some points appears pretty blown-out. The appeal of this project is the level of ingenuity and dedication that this group of teenagers possessed, and executed—and it’s just so goshdarn cute to see little kids pretending to slug back shots of whiskey and hatch nefarious plots (see the November/December 2007 issue of The Believer for more on the cuteness of small things).

I eagerly await the feature film about how The Adaptation came to be, which is currently in development (Daniel Clowes is reportedly still working on the script, so I guess I’ll be waiting awhile). It will be interesting to learn the impetus for the project, as well as how they achieved the various effects, which, as crude as they might appear, are pretty remarkable considering what they had to work with.

Being There, Hal Ashby, 1979

While vacationing in San Francisco for a week, I had the good fortune of visiting the historic Castro theater during a series of Hal Ashby films. One of the few 1920s movie palaces still in operation, the theater is gorgeously and ornately decorated, with a huge Wurlitzer organ rising out of the stage before the first feature for a 15-minute pre-movie concert (which certainly beats the advertisements and boring Hollywood trivia they like to show at mainstream theaters while you’re waiting for the movie to start).

Based on the Jerzy Kosinsky novel of the same name, Being There is about a mentally retarded gardener whose employer dies, displacing him from the only home he’s ever known. His name, Chance, is quite appropriate, as not long after his first excursion into the real world, he is, for all intents and purposes, rescued by Shirley MacLaine and whisked off to live in another beautiful mansion, simply because of the misguided assumption that he is a well-to-do businessman. His simpleminded aphorisms about gardening (“In the garden, growth has its seasons”) are perceived to be insightful metaphors regarding the U.S. economy, and he ends up becoming one of the President’s closest confidantes. The film operates on a single gag, gradually escalating—and while perhaps it grows a little farfetched at times, it manages to work, at least on a satirical level.

This is, essentially, a film about a man raised by television. He was mentally slow before television came about, so it didn’t necessarily corrupt his mind, but it is interesting to imagine how TV might have shaped his understanding of the world. He can practice mimicking all the things people do—shaking hands, aerobicizing, whirling the woman you’re madly in love with around the room, and so on—but he has no concept of what they mean. In a particularly revealing scene, Chance points his remote control at some street urchins he encounters, in an attempt to “change the channel.”

The other pervading theme is uttered by Louise, formerly Chance’s employer’s maid, upon seeing Chance on television: “Yes sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want.” I might amend this statement a bit by adding “and rich” after “white.” If Chance had been dressed in rags, as opposed to the impeccably tailored suits left to him by his dead boss, he would certainly not have been invited back to the Rand mansion to recuperate. But he exuded the appearance of a wealthy Washington, DC politician, and that was all he needed to be successful.


Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby, 1971

The second of the Hal Ashby double feature and one of my favorites in general, Harold and Maude is way ahead of its time, very much a predecessor of the “quirky” Wes Anderson-style films of today (though exponentially better, if you ask me). It’s a movie that any punk rocker would love, an affirmation of life and individualism over death and conformity.

Harold Chasen is a young man from a wealthy, somewhat suffocating family. His favorite pastimes include attending the funerals of strangers and faking suicide attempts—clearly efforts at acting out against his overbearing mother. He’s looking to torment her, or perhaps he simply wants attention, but either way he’s not succeeding in doing either. For instance, after coming upon Harold hanging from a noose (he’s very convincing-looking, I might add), Mrs. Chasen dryly says, in her exaggeratedly bourgeois tone, “I suppose you think that’s very funny, Harold,” adding, “Oh, dinner at eight...and do try and be a little more vivacious.” No one asks him what he wants out of life, or if he’s happy. His entire life has been decided for him—his mother thinks that he needs to find a woman, so she tries to set him up with one through a dating service, a process which seems rather excruciating for Harold, though he makes the most of it, in his own way. In a rather telling scene about the dynamic of their relationship, his mother begins to read from a personality questionnaire but fills in the answers herself instead of waiting to hear Harold’s response. Despite his attempts at acting out via the faux suicides, it is assumed that Harold’s life would have continued in this miserable fashion, if Maude had not come along when she did.

Maude is a 79 year old woman who also attends funerals for fun (which is where they meet) though she does it not because of an obsession with death, but because they, too, are a part of life—and Maude’s favorite pastimes involve embracing life: digging up trees and re-planting them in the forest, “borrowing” cars and taking them for a spin, and so on. She explains, in reference to the latter practice, “If some people get upset because they feel they have a hold on some things, I‘m merely acting as a gentle reminder: here today, gone tomorrow, so don’t get attached to things.”

In a rather poignant scene, Maude asks Harold what kind of flower he’d like to be, and he answers, rather blandly, that he supposes he’d be a daisy. When further queried about his choice, he answers, “because they’re all alike.” Maude wisely explains that, “Oh, but they’re not. Look. See, some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have lost some petals. All kinds of observable differences. You see, Harold, I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are this [she points to a daisy], yet allow themselves be treated as that [she gestures to a field of daisies].” This is followed by a rather poetically brilliant cut to a shot of a field of gravestones in a military cemetery.

There is much speculation about Maude’s life prior to the events of the film. She refers to attending protests in her youth, and her childhood in Austria, but many of the film’s nuances take on new meaning when the viewer catches a brief glimpse of a tattoo of a number on her arm, unmistakably that of a concentration camp survivor. At the time the film was made, the Holocaust had ended just 25 years earlier, so it seems that Maude was in her 50s when she was imprisoned. And so one wonders about her past—who was she as a young woman? Was she always so spirited and life-embracing, or did she change her ways after narrowly escaping death?

This film always manages to bring a tear to my eye—I can’t imagine anyone not identifying with Harold in some way. And when it seems that he has transformed, I can’t help feeling a little triumphant as well.