by ·Comments Off on Red State (2011, Kevin Smith)

Watched this alongside The Ward, a double-feature of horror movies by formerly-favorite filmmakers which I expected to thoroughly disappoint. But The Ward surprised by being bland but not terrible (I heard it was terrible), and Red State surprised by being fully terrific. Starts out as a grim, bloody horror movie, three kids suckered by an internet ad promising group sex, kidnapped by a Christian cult to be executed for their immorality. Turns into a cops-vs.-crazies hostage-standoff thriller. But really the whole thing is a black comedy, gaining shock value from its willingness to kill major characters at unexpected times. It steals the tone and final scene directly from the Coens’ Burn After Reading, arguably improving it.

Kevin Smith’s best filmmaking has great comic timing but little else to recommend it, and I was worried when this started as an anonymous-looking movie about teens in peril. But then along came Stephen Root as a closeted small-town sheriff up against a house full of well-armed ragingly homophobic religious nuts, and things got immediately better. Happier still, Root calls John Goodman, who leads an FBI assault against the place with sidekick Kevin Pollack (killed almost immediately). Meanwhile inside the compound, one girl (Kerry Bishe) is slightly more enlightened than her mother (Melissa Leo) and their nutjob leader (Tarantino regular Michael Parks), tries to help the survivor of the initial three boys (Ronnie Connell, star of Signals) escape to the safety (heh) of the police. I wasn’t sure if Smith was serious about ending the movie by interrupting the standoff with blasts from heavenly trumpets signaling the coming of the apocalypse – turns out he wasn’t, but it would’ve worked fine for me either way. Distracting bonus appearance by the guy from the Mulholland Dr. diner.

by ·Comments Off on The Ward (2010, John Carpenter)

In 1966 Oregon, Kristen (Amber Heard of Drive Angry 3-D) burns down a house, is arrested, sent to The Ward at a psychiatric hospital, given mean looks from the nurse and orderly, but patience from the doctor (Jared Harris, the guy who isn’t Iggy Pop or Billy Bob Thornton in my favorite scene of Dead Man). She gradually gets to know her fellow patients, none of whom are real because the movie has a massive Tyler Durden ending. The ghost story (“Alice is killing us one by one”) and murder mystery (“who killed Alice?”) are all Kristen/Alice coming to terms with her identity, after some traumatic shit went down in that farmhouse from earlier.

Here’s Meryl Streep’s daughter again (as Emily, the one who also wants to escape) with much more to do than in Larry Crowne. We’ve also got Danielle Panabaker (of Friday the 13th Remake) as Sara the sexy one, Laura-Leigh as Zoey the girly pigtails one, and Lyndsy Fonseca (of the Femme Nikita TV show) as Iris the smart one. Some traumatic electroshock therapy and murder by medical instruments, the most easily-escapable psych ward ever, and the non-MST3K version of Bert I. Gordon’s Tormented on a television set.

It’s all pretty boring, an average 2010-era teen shock-horror flick, sub-Drag Me To Hell, except for one cool bit at the end with editing to the beat of the doctor’s metronome.

by ·Comments Off on The Beast (1975, Walerian Borowczyk)

How come whenever a speaking actor’s back is turned, the filmmaker thinks they can add a dubbed line and we won’t notice?

One of those DVDs I used to excitedly pick up at Tower Records and walk around with for an hour before deciding that it might not be worth $27 after all. Another was La Belle Noiseuse, which turned out to be decidedly worth $27. This one wasn’t even worth the time spent watching it.

As a former animator turned live-action director, Walerian joins (and sullies) the proud ranks of Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Jan Svankmajer, Frank Tashlin, the Bros. Quay, Emily Hubley and possibly Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton. I noticed all the snails in this movie and remembered his snail-porn animated short Escargot de Venus from the same year.

The movie opens with close-ups of horse sex, so I knew it wasn’t going to be elegant, despite its fancy trappings. A rich girl and her aunt head for the French countryside to see about marrying the girl to the French family’s son. But the story is just an excuse for the massive rape scene between “the beast” and some lucky girl.

I don’t know or care which characters were which, but two of the actresses were Sirpa Lane (of unrelated film The Beast In Space) and Elisabeth Kaza (of Castle Freak).

Can’t say it was the worst movie in the world because I kinda liked the harpsichord music.

by ·Comments Off on Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990, Pedro Almodovar)

Almodovar back in his comedy period, and his fourth movie in a row starring pre-Hollywood Antonio Banderas, this time as a released mental patient who methodically stalks then kidnaps actress Victoria Abril (also of Kika and High Heels), basically ties her up until she falls in love with him. It’s possibly the great women’s director Almodovar’s least feminist film in that respect.

Before the kidnapping, Abril is starring in the final film of director Francisco Rabal (Nazarin himself). He wants reshoots so people are looking for her, plus Antonio has the actress’s sister to deal with, as well as a drug dealer (Rossy de Palma) he ripped off. Happy ending, but Katy still didn’t love it because kidnapping isn’t funny.

by ·Comments Off on Tabloid (2010, Errol Morris)

What a thrill – Morris’s most energetic movie yet. The story of a certain litigious woman (let’s call her J) and her exploits – in her own words, and from the perspective of a couple insiders (a pilot she hired, a dog-cloning scientist) and outsiders (two tabloid journalists and an ex-mormon radio host). The result is what Morris calls a “Looney Tunes Rashomon,” in which you can never quite be sure of the true events because each side is enthusiastically, entertainingly promoting their own version.

The events in question: in 1977 J’s boyfriend/crush went away on a mission (or was kidnapped by the Mormon church). She assembled a militant team to rescue/kidnap and deprogram/rape him, depending whose story you buy. When the story came out, the tabloids hit her hard, finding and publishing supposed evidence that she’d been a sex worker. Towards the end of the movie as we’re running out of details and stories regarding the 70’s incidents, J lives alone with her dog, still pining after her now-married Mormon boy, when the dog dies – so she has him cloned in South Korea, and now lives with five perfect replicas of her former dog. The events in J’s life would be notable in themselves, but the genius of the movie is all in the telling. The editing is a little jittery and jumpcutty for my liking, but the welcome absence of the Mr. Death-style re-enactments and the wealth of valuable stock photos and the cool tabloid-headline graphics make up for that.

Morris:

I like this new film because it’s a return to a kind of absurdist version of what I do. I love the oddities of how people express themselves. Take [tabloid journalist] Peter Tory’s affection for the phrase “spread-eagled.” Every time he says “spread-eagled,” and he says it again and again and again, I ask myself, “Is he making this up? Is this tabloid journalism in its essence?” At one point, he’s talking about the “sex in chains” headline, and he says, “I think it was ropes, but chains sounds better.” Tabloid’s a story about narrative, about how stories are constructed as they’re being told. I wanted to achieve that effect in a movie, and I hope it’s there.

by ·Comments Off on Paul (2011, Greg Mottola)

Surprise – a comedy that I liked. Guess it’s not that much of a surprise, since it’s written by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. The movie is one long chase, with them trying to help an alien return home. Biggest surprise is that the more action-packed second half is better than the first – the comedy doesn’t let up when the car chases and shootouts ramp up.

Agent Jason Bateman’s secret is that he’s Paul’s friend, was trying to get to him in order to help, which is why he’s a dick to agents Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. The movie’s secret is that Sigourney Weaver plays the big boss, but she talks on the radio often enough that I figured it out from her voice. A defiantly anti-Christian movie, announcing its pro-evolution message early on (and repeatedly) then expanding that to a straight-up “god doesn’t exist” message. References most of Spielberg’s early movies. Maybe it’s because I watched on my little TV, but Paul may be the first CG creation that I accepted as a character instead of always thinking of it as an effect.

by ·Comments Off on My Six Loves (1963, Gower Champion)

The most anti-feminist crap imaginable – could’ve been hilarious camp if it wasn’t so boring and traditional. Each character seems close to expressing some kind of definition or interest before the movie yanks them back into its safe, bland, kiddy-pool world.

Debbie Reynolds (Susan Slept Here) is a successful New York actress, takes time off at her vacation house in Connecticut with her associate Eileen Heckart (Burnt Offerings, The Bad Seed). But they find six children with step-parents even more cartoonishly terrible than the ones in Million Dollar Baby. Debbie, naturally, throws her career away to live in the country and care for them – but first, whom to marry? Her slick New York agent who’s had a crush on her for years, David Janssen of Marooned? Or hunky local-hero minister Cliff Robertson, star of Underworld USA? It’s a no-brainer!

From the director of the great Mystery Science Theater short Once Upon a Honeymoon, the one where the woman sings about wanting a telephone in every room.

by ·Comments Off on Bound (1996, Wachowskis)

A fully excellent “neo-noir” with Panic Room levels of tension, slick and confident, and such a perfect cast. I only know the lead actors from one decade-old movie and physical characteristic each: Gina Gershon (Demonlover/big lips), Jennifer Tilly (Bride of Chucky/high voice), Joe Pantoliano (Memento/also high voice) but it seems they deserve more. And considering what great performances the Wachowskis got out of them, it’s surprising that their follow-up films were mainly known for great visuals and cardboard acting. I guess they are genre chameleons – a noir needs complex humans and sci-fi/comic films need flat Phantom Menace acting to not distract from the computer graphics.

Gangster moll Jenny Tilly falls for handyman lesbian-next-door ex-con Gina G. and they plot to steal two million from Jen’s man Joe. But will they pull it off, and will Jenny really stick with Gina and vice versa, when betrayal would be so easy? Yes, a happy ending. Every male character in the entire movie gets killed, and the two actually end up together. Some noir.

Among the dead: Richard Sarafian (director of Vanishing Point) as the big boss, Chris “Law & Order” Meloni as his trigger-happy son and John P. Ryan (its father in It’s Alive) as the secondary mob guy who comes looking for the others. Couldn’t find any good articles on the movie, only ones that are interested in how gay the movie is (answer: not gay enough for the people writing the articles).

by ·Comments Off on Dishonored (1931, Josef von Sternberg)

“What a charming evening we might have had if you hadn’t been a spy, and I a traitor.”
“Then we might never have met.”

Another Sternberg/Dietrich movie, and this one just kills The Blue Angel, which I thought was overbaked and had too little Dietrich. Here not only is she perfectly lit and doing a better acting job throughout, but the story is a wartime (1915 Austria) spy vs. spy drama, all romance and excitement, more alive and relevant than the period self-punishment of Emil Jannings. Sternberg seems fully comfortable in his sound world now, maybe not pulling as beautiful images as in the silents, when it was all image, but making a movie that fully works. Some good expressive lighting (backlit against windows when she lets Victor escape) and long-held cross-fades.

Marlene with Austrian secret service man Gustav von Seyffertitz (Hymn Book Harry, who performs the wedding in Docks of New York):

The opening titles prepare us for tragedy and sexism, telling us that codename X-27 “might have become the greatest spy in history… if X-27 had not been a woman.” This is referring to the ending, when she lets the enemy spy she loves escape before his execution, which leads to her own. But of course the reason she’s a great spy in the first place is that she’s a woman, able to seduce and sleep with (whoa, pre-code) enemy officers in order to steal information, the Black Book of its time.

At the start, war widow Marlene is out streetwalking to pay the rent (whoa, pre-code!) when she picks up a gentleman with a droopy ‘stache who tests her patriotism, pretending to try recruiting her for anti-Austrian work, and when she has him arrested he reveals that he’s the head of Austrian secret service and actually wants to hire her for pro-Austrian work, argh.

Warner “Charlie Chan” Oland as the spy who shoots himself:

Some veils, feathers and masks later, she’s at a party with more confetti and streamers than I’ve ever seen in one place. She acts interested in Russian Mustache Spy and retires back to his place, where she discovers his secret spy stash, all the while acting super-fucking-cool while he creeps away and kills himself.

The colonel is Victor McLaglen, Lon’s strongman sidekick in The Unholy Three who’d win best actor for The Informer a few years later:

With a distinctive smile like Victor’s, what use is a mask?

Off to unveil the secret identity of the dead spy’s undercover colonel friend from the costume party, which is simple since he has the most excellently recognizable sinister smile. And a cute little mustache – every man has a mustache.

The colonel is onto her spying ways – she’s got him, then lets him escape. She goes to Russia and acts as a timid housekeeper at enemy headquarters, then back home where she sees the grinning colonel again and lets him escapes. Sentenced to death, she asks only for a piano and “any dress I wore when I served my countrymen instead of my country,” so gets killed by rifle squad in her feathers and veil.

Pre-execution, at her piano: