by ·Comments Off on Death Race (2008, Paul WS Anderson)

A stupid, jittery, high-energy action remake by Anderson, one of Cinema Scope’s 50 Under 50, highlighting what is for me the biggest problem with auteurism these days. In the 1960’s, movies were made on a factory line, some better than others, mostly credited to studios and producers, until observant critics realized that certain directors put out work of consistently high quality – no huge surprise there – but that they also had thematic and structural consistencies throughout a body of films from varied writers and studios. Heroes were belatedly made of Hawks, Ford and Hitchcock, and their films from critically-unloved genres (comedy, western, thriller) were reassessed. Today the studio system is totally different and every director thinks of himself as an auteur. Since the hardcore auteurists have nothing to discover, instead of enjoying the new world of supposedly personal cinema, they stare at the studio genre movies that still get made, searching for new names they can take credit for discovering. My pick was Hong Kong-turned-Hollywood Ronny Yu (Bride of Chucky, Freddy vs. Jason), but I lost interest after Fearless. Mubi latched onto the late Tony Scott, and Cinema Scope loves Paul W.S. Anderson, responsible for three of the worst video-game adaptations I’ve seen in theaters (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator) and the underrated Event Horizon.

In a dystopian future, racing legend Jason Statham is set up for killing his perfect wife, and sent to a post-reality-TV prison, where he can earn his freedom by winning a few weapon-equipped car races which are, of course, rigged by the authorities (Joan Allen). He takes the place of a masked driver called Frankenstein (role reprised from the original by David Carradine), gets a mechanic (Ian McShane), a saboteur-spy sidekick (Natalie Martinez) and a rival (Tyrese Gibson, in the Sylvester Stallone role). After some ‘splosiony car races, Statham avenges his wife by killing mohawked driver Max Ryan and Pryzbylewski-looking guard Jason Clarke, then secretly teams up with Tyrese, easily breaking out of prison by shooting the walls with their missile-equipped cars, driving away to a Shawshank-esque incognito freedom.

Also, Ian McShane blows up Joan Allen:

Set in the dystopian future world of 2012. Will someone tell me again why future-movies always take place in the extremely near future? Followed by two sequels starring Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo. Produced by the great Roger Corman, in between Supergator and Sharktopus.

C. Huber in Cinema Scope calls him “the elder, least pretentious, and most consistently amusing Anderson of the current director trifecta: its termite artisan.”

by ·Comments Off on Dr. Plonk (2007, Rolf de Heer)

A silent film in the style of 1907 and shot using a hand-crank camera, with lots (oh, lots) of start-stop disappearance effects, not at all like The Artist or the films of Guy Maddin – more of an anarchic keystone homage.

Bald Dr. Plonk has a bearded deaf/dumb assistant Paulus, a “winsome” wife, and a trick-performing dog (appropriately credited with the others in the opening titles).

Tragic calculations! Triple-checked!

Plonk tells the Prime Minister’s advisors (with hilariously fake facial hair) of his discovery, but they don’t believe him – so he invents a time machine (in about five minutes) to travel into our present and find proof of his theory. Meanwhile, Paulus pads the film by taking the dog for walks as a pretense for hitting on married women in the park. Paulus, deaf and not too smart, is put in charge of time machine operation as Plonk mistakenly travels backwards and is set alight by natives.

Paulus is then sent as a test subject and lands a hippie chick, then Plonk continues his experiments, photographing present-day industrial sites, “so this is what the end looks like.” Train gags, era-specific misunderstandings, a slight bit of stop-motion, and an anti-television joke that would make Tashlin proud.

Plonk’s wife keeps an eye on Paulus:

Plonk can’t seem to bring home his evidence that the future is a wasteland, so he brings the game Prime Minister along to 2007, where they find the present-day PM less approachable. It all ends with a madcap chase in a warehouse between plenty of cops and the surprisingly athletic main cast. The former PM gets to sit in a straightjacket entranced by television, while Plonk…

At first glimpse I thought De Heer made this before Ten Canoes, but no, he made it before TWELVE Canoes, the documentary follow-up.

by ·Comments Off on Double Take (2009, Johan Grimonprez)

“Time edits out as much as it records.”

There’s a story in here about the inevitability of fate, but it takes a long time to get started, then crawls in brief segments towards the end of the film – a story about Hitchcock in 1962 getting summoned to a meeting while filming The Birds and confronting himself in 1980, a few weeks before his death.

But woe unto the viewer who reads that story as the movie’s plot summary, and waits for it to finish unfolding, because all the fun is in the constant interruptions: footage of a Hitchcock body double and a separate voice actor recording their parts for the main story and just goofing around at being Alfred, semi-informative sidetracks about Hitchcock’s films (The Birds, especially), plenty of footage of the Great Man himself taken from trailers, cameos and A.H. Presents episode intros, and Craig Baldwinesque recontextualizations of cold-war stock footage and coffee commercials.

Hichcock: “Television is like the American toaster. You push the button and the same thing pops up every time.”

Inspired by a Borges story and dedicated to body double Ron Burrage, who also played Hitchcock in a mid-90’s Robert Lepage movie. Bonus: always nice to find the source material that a favorite song had sampled – the Books song with the guy saying “there it is, there it is – it’s a man’s face” is from the first live TV broadcast across the Atlantic.

Grimonprez is one of Cinema Scope’s 50 Under 50. B. Steinbruegge: “Double Take gleefully plays with the subconscious, which is fooled by impressionistic scenes that mix deep significance with sensationalism and humor.”

At Powell’s Books in Portland I came across a bunch of reasonably-priced copies of Grimonprez’s companion book Looking For Alfred, but left it behind, figuring it too heavy to carry around in luggage, then forgot to grab it when we decided to ship our books home instead.

M. Peranson in Cinema Scope:

[Grimonprez] uses Hitchcock as a mirror, for both himself and for a period of history. For what was the Cold War if not one long, painful MacGuffin? . . . Grimonprez’s enthusiasm keeps trying to break through the frame: Double Take zips and zaps like the most addictive of television shows. The film is anchored by a chronological recap of the US-USSR Cold War relationship, the time when catastrophic culture was at the point of formation.

by ·Comments Off on Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2007, Dave Willis & Matt Maiellaro)

Rented this and Haywire for some mindless comedy and action downtime between complex euro-art films. Haywire brought the action, but Aqua Teen sputtered on the comedy. Should I blame myself for losing my sense of humor, since I always liked the show in the first couple seasons, or did the movie’s need to cram in familiar characters and plot points and locations, concoct an origin/creation story, and yet waste enough time on total nonsense to keep from violating the who-gives-a-shit spirit of the show, what was I talking about?

Jon Benjamin played a cop.

A. Nayman at Cinema Scope compares the summer’s animated films:

“What moron would pay to see something they can see at home for free?” asks Homer early in The Simpsons Movie. Besides reflecting the affectionate disdain (or is it just disdain?) the series’ writers developed for their ever-more-obsessive fanbase, this query is funny because it’s essentially true. “Your money is now our money, and we will spend it on drugs,” shriek the nasty snacks at the beginning of Aqua Teen. Equally true, considerably funnier, and fair enough.

by ·Comments Off on Borders (2001, Mostefa Djadjam)

Story of six Africans trying to emigrate illegally to Europe. They go from Senegal to Mauritania to Algeria to Morocco via boat then trucks (one of them refrigerated) then camels then by foot through the desert, truck again, then they’re stuck in Tangier for a while.

I don’t remember what happens to Arvey the stingy old guy in the end. Someone gets sick along the way and is left to the authorities, his bag stolen by Kadirou (Dioucounda Koma of A Screaming Man). Kadirou goes off with his cousin, Moussa the teacher, making their own way to Tangier.

Second half of the movie mostly follows the others: Joe the dreamer (Ona Lu Yenke of Code Unknown) who says his girl is waiting across the strait, Sipipi the sailor, and Amma the wronged wife (latter two end up together). I thought it’d be one of those endings where Joe doesn’t really have a girlfriend waiting for him in Spain, but she turns out to be real – instead it’s one of those endings where he drowns trying to escape when the police boat grabs them.

Pretty good movie, watched a very poorly-attended screening at GA Tech. The director also acts, was in Munich and Three Crowns of the Sailor. Katy probably has more to say about it since she is talking about teaching it next year, but I’m running behind on the movie blog so didn’t ask her input.

by ·Comments Off on Tideland (2006, Terry Gilliam)

I’d long put off watching this because of reports that it wasn’t any good. But of course it is good . . . it’s just maybe not GREAT. The lead girl (Jodelle Ferland, currently playing the one-armed undead girl in Cabin in the Woods), a playful innocent surrounded by grotesque adults, is captivating and manages to carry the movie. But despite all the darkness and death, the movie manages to feel slight. Maybe you need to see it in theaters – I would’ve liked to, but never got the chance.

Jeliza-Rose (great name) lives in an apartment with her junkie parents. When mom Jennifer Tilly overdoses, dreamer dad Jeff Bridges (the same year he was in some Full Monty-meets-Zach and Miri-sounding movie called The Amateurs), always going on about Jutland (part of Denmark?), takes her to the family’s abandoned, unsafe house in the country.

Tilly, following her second Child’s Play sequel:

J-R and her late father:

Soon he’s dead as well, stinking up the place, but J-R never loses heart, has fun narrating events to her troupe of doll-heads. She befriends an idiot boy named Dickins, and runs into his (mother? sister?) Dell, an amateur taxidermist who stuffs Jeff Bridges. The lunacy increases until Dickins finally manages to blow up the “monster shark” (passing train) and J-R wanders onto the crash site, mistaken for a surviving passenger and presumably taken off to a more normal life.

A nice family dinner. In background: mummy-dad Jeff Bridges

by ·Comments Off on Skin (2008, Anthony Fabian)

An extremely by-the-numbers account of a girl named Sandra born with black skin to white parents and what that means in apartheid-era South Africa. A couple of surreal moments (after a law change, Sandra’s dad Sam Neill proclaims that his daughter is white again) but mostly a straightforward story with oscar-wannabe production (no dice, but won two major awards at the Pan-African festival in L.A.) and no particular interest.

Young Sandra grows into Sophie Okonedo (who had hands-for-feet in Aeon Flux). She and her mom Alice Krige (star of Institute Benjamenta) are the powerhouse actors of the film (that’s not Sam Neill’s fault – he just has to be a bitter ol’ racist, and does a fine job at it). The movie is (of course! apartheid!) full of easy-target racist characters calculated to inflame audience emotion. Surprisingly, Sandra’s older brother becomes one of them late in the film. She gives up on the white life, runs off with a black man (Tony Kgoroge of Invictus) and has two kids, but leaves him after a beating, moves to Jo-burg and gets a factory job. Dad never gets a reconciliation, but mom (with decent old-age makeup) does.

by ·Comments Off on Battle Royale (2000, Kinji Fukasaku)

Watched with Katy because of the Hunger Games connection. Kind of a not-so-great summer teen-action flick, but it’s still fun and interesting enough to justify rewatching. Also it’s got Beat Takeshi. Has the same-ish final line as teen deathmatch story The Long Walk (not counting all the weird special-edition dream sequences that follow the proper story, like a selection of extended/deleted scenes).

The Battle isn’t televised (even the gov’t overseers don’t have cameras, only microphones inside the kids’ explosive necklaces), and its very existence seems to come as a surprise to the kids, who don’t realize its seriousness until they’ve been in the island-arena for a while. Katy points out that this would make the Battle less of a deterrent than the Hunger Games – more of a personal vendetta by Kitano against his former students.

Mild, oft-injured Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) and his sweetie Noriko (Aki Maeda of Gamera 3) are the survivors/escapees who head to the inferior sequel. They’re helped by Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), winner of a previous Battle forced to fight again. Fortunately, all teens in movies circa the year 2000 knew how to hack into government systems, so one group concentrates on taking down the surveillance machines, and Kawada figures how to remove the necklaces. The other “transfer student” is friz-haired Kiriyama (Masanobu Ando, the tough one in Big Bang Love), who signed up for the fun of killing people, finally blinded in an explosion set by the hacker group and killed in a machine-gun battle with Kawada.

Among the others: Chigusa (Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill), evil gal Mitsuko (Ko Shibasaki, star of One Missed Call), and Nanahara’s best friend Kuninobu who gets killed by exploding necklace during Kitano’s introductory speech.

by ·Comments Off on It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. (2007, Crispin Hellion Glover)

Another great performance/film/discussion by Glover (he calls it “Vaudeville Distribution”), who is indeed weird, but also seems smart and dedicated to art in ways that very few commercially-recognized filmmakers are. And he’s not really a commercially-recognized filmmaker but a commercially-recognized actor who makes movies outside the system. Thankfully with his second feature he seems more comfortable with his position. What Is It? and its ensuing discussion focused so hard on breaking free from the commercial system, on purposely causing a disturbance, that sometimes Glover came across as one of those condescending IMDB reviewers commenting on black-and-white movies, “if you’re the type of brainwashed consumer who thinks the Transformers movies are pretty good, then you’ll have no use for this slow-moving masterpiece.”

This time Glover is celebrating his position as outsider artist by adapting a screenplay by Steven C. Stewart, who appeared incidentally in the previous film, and lived (Stewart died before the film’s completion) with severe cerebral palsy. Stewart wrote the screenplay as a dark sexual fantasy for himself to play lead. In a way, the content is worse than some of the commercial crap Glover considers himself above: a thriller in which a guy sleeps with and murders a string of beautiful women, complete with an “it was all a dream” ending. But since Stewart is the lead actor, speaking lines that are completely unintelligible to most audience members but perfectly understood by the women in the film, it brings new levels to the typically misogynistic murder-sex story – because here’s a guy with a lifetime of real frustration (Glover explains that Stewart, an intelligent guy who struggled his whole life to be understood, was locked up in a hospital and treated like an idiot/inmate for years), not just a hack screenwriter getting revenge on a college ex-girlfriend by murdering her repeatedly in his movies.

Stewart’s character is in an institution (filmed, painfully/coincidentally, in the same place where he’d been imprisoned), falls and smacks his head. Later, a lovely woman picks him up, takes him out a few times. Their relationship is evolving, he has stood up (so to speak) to her ex-husband (Bruce Glover) and one night in the car he proposes marriage but she turns him down. So he strangles her to death. Later he has (graphic) sex with her daughter and strangles her too. Moving on, he tries to get a date with a wheelchair-bound woman who doesn’t want to be with anyone like herself. He goes out with a condescending woman whom he drowns in her bathtub, then wanders next door (these scenes were shot in a grand, open set) to visit the girl with leg problems. Even more graphic sex, then he knocks her down and runs over her neck with his chair.

This could go on indefinitely, and Glover says that in the original script it did, for hours. But smack!, sad Stewart wakes up on the hallway floor of that first scene, goes into his room and talks to someone but they can’t understand him.

The color (esp. the reds) seemed gooey and gluey, like the film would have to be scrubbed off the Plaza’s screen the next morning. Crispin seemed pleased to get a question that deviated from his prepared speeches on the films, about the use of music, and answered it more knowledgably and completely than anyone would have expected – and he again alluded to his Czech castle where he hopes to shoot another trilogy (partly involving his father) before making It Is Mine. I hope if he continues with the vaudeville distribution model, he brings them all back here – if not, I’m willing to travel.