Cronos (Guillermo del Toro, 1993)

It was very refreshing to see a “vampire movie” (emphasis on the ” “) that didn’t have fangs, or neck-biting, or seductive and beautiful ever-young people, and was largely devoid of cliché of the vampire variety of otherwise, which by now I’ve come to expect from the largely unique and cliché-free Guillermo del Toro (shame he dropped out of “The Hobbit.” That would’ve been cool  ). Not since “Nosferatu” perhaps has a vampire film really, really focused on what a curse, not a blessing, it would be to be granted immortality by unnatural means. As the kindly old antique shopkeeper Jesus Gris becomes more and more immortal after being ‘bitten’ by the Cronos device, his thirst for blood at a most inopportune time during a black-tie New Years’ party and being chased by a dying, despicable industrialist and his bumbling nephew/henchman (Ron Perlman is one ugly motherfucker…) are the least of his worries. As his skin rots and falls off, his wife and everyone else in the world except his mute and adoring granddaughter believe him to be dead, and sunlight becomes poison, it becomes obvious to both Jesus and us just what a curse this is. He never asked for this fate when he found that metal scarab inside the statue in his shop, and yet here he is. That he, a good and previously unassuming man, must suffer everlasting youth in mind but certainly not in body, and not the greedy industrialist and now Jesus’s mortal enemy who certainly deserves such a fate, brings out the tragic aspects of that kind of immortality that much more, in that our sympathy is added on to the gruesome bodily decay. That del Toro pits old man against old man (hardly an expected protagonist-antagonist pairing in this day and age of fantasy/horror), uses a scene of a flamboyant mortician proudly dolling up a mangled body in stark detail for comic relief, and doesn’t exactly depict Jesus as the most innocent of victims, as he in fact revels in using the violent Cronos device for a time, certainly make this one more unique than you might think. When you consider the idea of the body wanting to die and the brain just not cooperating with that desire, there may be a fate worse than death after all.

8/10

Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970)

Bunch of little people being destructive for 90 minutes.

5.5/10

Three Colors: White (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

The plot – namely Karol’s rise from the gutter to prominence seemingly at the snap of a finger and his revenge (a nice and refreshing surprise of a plot twist, I must admit) going down without a hitch – is completely and utterly implausible and ridiculous, but somehow Kieslowski makes it work by doing what I guess you could call deadpan directing. Even though Karol gets shit on by a bird, is sexually humiliated on the phone by his ex-wife, is smuggled into Poland in a suitcase and gets kidnapped by mobsters while still in said suitcase, and wears a suit and slicks his hair back Pat Riley style to try to act all suave and sophisticated when he comes into money, Kieslowski never plays it up for straight-up laughs. I wouldn’t even call it a dark comedy per se, but just a series of unfortunate events for an impotent, suddenly-homeless hairdresser whose completely implausible adventures are presented about as realistically as you could hope for, with even a hint of moving pathos when it comes to his relationship with a well-dressed, well-spoken, suicidal man who takes him under his wing (there was just something truly special about Janusz Gajos’s performance as Karol’s benefactor Milolaj that I can’t quite put my finger on – probably has something to do with how his noble, almost fatherly deadpan style fits with Karol’s (Zbigniew Zamachowski) almost effeminate, but endearing and sympathetic patheticness, like a glove). Morbidly funny, deeply ironic and cynical, and admittedly unpredictable, “White” was a nice change of pace from the unbearably heavy likes of “Blue” and “The Double Life of Veronique” (both of which were very good films in their own right, and probably ‘better’ than this film, but even with the same director at the helm, it’s like comparing apples and oranges that came from the same fruit basket) – refreshingly light fare, this was, or at least as close to ‘light’ as you can get when it comes to Kieslowski.

8/10

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970)

To call this one of “the best bad films I’ve seen” would probably be grossly inappropriate on my part, and grossly unfair to Russ Meyer, who three films into his filmography by now I realize was certainly shlocky and exploitative, but that’s certainly not enough evidence to call his films “bad”, but rather merely far, far separated from accepted convention. Obviously I don’t claim to be an expert on the late 60s/early 70s underground Hollywood scene, and thus my claim that the “lack of realism” of the increasingly bizarre situations that these girls find themselves in, and the dialogue in general, particularly from the Shakespeare/hipster-spewing Z-Man, is little more than a leap of faith on my part. That it all came from the mind of Roger Ebert, who I can’t help but look at as that nerdy film critic from Illinois, tempts me to believe that this compilation of depravity and a sex-starved/obsessed culture was penned by a clear outsider, someone whose knowledge of the seediness of Hollywood is confined to pulpy fiction rather than actual experiences and based his screenplay on such, for which reason the “lack of realism” comes shining through from the opening moments. But hey, the whole thing is about the outsider status of Kelly, Casey, and Petronella, and how these innocent girls are caught in the whirlpool of sex, drugs, and REALLY clever, pulpy, and downright poetic conversations – a bizarre place and time from the point of view of uninitiated outsiders becoming inured to and corrupted by that bizarre place and time, so perhaps seeing that bizarre place and time from the point of view of a seemingly uninitiated nerdy film critic from Illinois is appropriate.

Or it’s just an incredibly clever satire.

8.5/10

The Host (Joon-ho Bong, 2006)

When you put aside “The Host”‘s not-so-subtle…okay, insultingly blatant…pro-environment, anti-American, anti-Formaldehyde message and the overall campiness and exploitativeness, you’ve got a surprisingly deep and fun and interestingly-constructed little monster movie in this, Korea’s all-time highest grossing movie.  So all the Americans are either evil, cross-eyed, or both, the monster looks about as convincing as the Rancor in “Return of the Jedi” from 27 years ago, and just about everyone outside of the family of protagonists are little more than Victims #’s 1-8000, but it’s a gross monster movie trying and failing to make a grand political message (it’s kinda cute how hard it tries to be something special…), so shut up and watch and have fun.  But, there is something interesting afoot when you get past the schlockiness, because call me crazy, but the family dynamic was done very, very well.  Naturally just about every monster movie deals with the whole dysfunctional family being forced to come together in the face of adversity, but in terms of dysfunctional-family-being-forced-to-come-together-in-the-face-of-adversity movies, even ones where that adversity isn’t in the form of an amphibious man-eating squid, this one pretty much nailed it.  The acting and the characters themselves are silly, no doubt, but it’s an interesting family dynamic regardless, with the shopkeeper father and his three grown-up, dysfunctional, completely different children coming together to save the ne’er-do-well son’s precocious young daughter from the vile clutches of the beast.  Together, they’re the consummate fuck-ups, and they outwardly can’t stand each other as the college graduate son and bronze medal-winning archer daughter look down on their brother and ol’ dad has to come to his boy’s defense, but to see them not just have to, but want to put aside their differences to save that little girl is pretty damn endearing, and a surprisingly deep and unique family structure for what’s otherwise a man-eating monster movie.  The parallel story structure is a major factor in keeping your attention, as the story shifts between the family’s inept but sincere attempt to rescue Gang-Du’s daughter while evading both the authorities and the title character, and the little girl surviving Bear Grylls-style in the monster’s lair.  ”The Host” isn’t exactly the pinnacle of great storytelling (after a rather thrilling climax, the very end is, well, .  Also, I wasn’t aware that that was a typical result of a frontal lobotomy…), especially when those filthy, heartless Americans rear their ugly heads, but it still has that nice story of a family coming to terms with each other and their flaws, to go along with all the cool and gross death scenes.  Also helps that the tone of the story is literally all over the place.  One minute it’s a straight-up monster-jumps-out-of-the-corner horror movie (one of the stalest of all genres, but a few of the scares here were impressive), the next a family drama, the next a slapstick comedy.  It’s a mess, sometimes to its detriment but more often just making the proceedings more interesting – one minute this movie would take itself way too seriously with the drama and the messages and what-not, and the next it’d just take the plunge into good, chintzy fun.  Sometimes the humor works, and sometimes it’s really awkward (case and point the weird-ass…what do I call it…brawl? amongst the family members at a public memorial for the monster’s victims that was like a poor man’s Three Stooges).  So often “The Host” is right on track as a surprisingly human drama amidst the backdrop of a monster haunting the Han River, other times it doesn’t know which way is left.  What does that get you?  Damn good television (because I watched it on a television…).

8/10

Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh, 1996)

Apple microwave, blanket picture frame.  Refrigerator thimble.  Pillow microwave, duplicitous mirror, Staten Island Ferry pap smear.  Space heater hard drive, coke, Alabama Citibank.  Cocker spaniel nerve gas, Blu-ray borscht, entertaining jambalaya, diarrhea-laden music box!

Goat?

Santa Claus file cabinet.

Subterranean glaucoma, antidisestablishmenttarianism.  Tone-deaf tassel, promiscuous sphincter, dinner plate phlegm.  Chardonnay hamburger, fender-bender menopause.  Eggo waffles sodomy.  Calculator porcupine, afterbirth stopwatch, Flava Flav synogogue.  Envelope Antietam, Mittelschmerz poo poo platter.  Aorta teletubbies.

Mozambique corned beef sandwiches.  Sterling silver scrotum, Ophelia.  Propeller plane haz-mat suit, surreptitious revolver.  Vanilla cardboard, paper shredder bicycle, Captain Condoleezza Rice’s Mandolin.  Encyclopedia Satanica water heater, respirator pogo stick.  Rockclimbing titmouse, transgendered craps table.  Rhombus.

Pepperoni pizza toilet paper (Hattie McDaniel…).   Lovelorn tapeworm, cross-dressing Duplo blocks, cholesterol foul pole.  8-track Beelzebub, dirty sanchez terrorist, cunnilingus speedboat, descended testicle bedspread.  Stock market apple core, Orville Redenbacher trench warfare.  Slalom, Punky Brewster?  Perilous coroner ink cartridge vestibule Happy Days rat salesman Rashomon flabby chest tender saltmine feral…Zuul.

Tepid yet slightly hesitant praise.

7.5/10

The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006)

Nicolas Cage

Aaron Eckhart

Kate Beahan

Diane Delano

Leelee Sobieski

Larry King

Academy Award-winner Ellen Burstyn

Cage

Bees

Andrei Tarkovsky

My brain’s telling me to give this a .0001/10, while I want to give it a 10,000/10 for how much fun I had watching it, so naturally, I’m averaging them out.

1/10

La ronde (Max Ophüls, 1950)

I wish I could have Anton Walbrook narrate my life and fuck with people so that my tryst with a beautiful woman could go as smoothly as possible

I had little use for the stories themselves – their interconnectedness made them SO convoluted after a while that I just stopped caring and didn’t bother to keep track of who everyone was and what was going on (although the one involving Simone Simon’s (  ) maid and the man she works for was charming and sultry enough…). All that mattered was Walbrook, acting like a Rod Serling with benefits in not just overseeing the stories and being something of a Greek chorus, but being a jokester-like participant in them as well. I mean, that first uncut tracking shot as Walbrook changes wardrobe to reflect the time period, and the sun appears instantaneously and dissipates the fog, is absolutely remarkable (the cinematography as a whole was outstanding, with all those smooth, effortless tracking shots, although there were a few too many Dutch angles here and there – always a major pet peeve of mine), as was the way he’d, as I said, fuck with people with all his disguises and what-not so that the stories go the way they’re supposed to, and even guide some characters from one story into the next. Such a great and innovative breaking of the fourth wall, and such an endearing and charming and goofy and entertaining God-like narrator he made, he turned what I’d otherwise call a worthless bore of a film into something really, really worth watching.

 

Pull the string!  Pull the string!

 

7.5/10

Six Films by Buster Keaton from 1920

The Garage (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, 1920)

Funny, but too much of just slipping and falling on oil and water and other wet stuff.

7.5/10

One Week (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920)

That house is probably the most developed and fully-realized character I’ve seen in any silent film. Hell, in any film.

9.5/10

The Saphead (Herbert Blaché, Winchell Smith, 1920)

Buster was essentially the greatest stuntman who ever lived, not only because of his remarkable physical prowess but because he could actually hold his own as an actor. But when he’s charged with pretty much just acting and leaving behind his biggest talent, it’s like making a color commentator do play-by-play: he’s still in the sportscaster’s booth where he’s always been in his element, but simply by sliding into the next seat he’s doing something he just normally hasn’t been paid to do, and it shows. And it shows here. Buster could certainly hold his own as an actor, but eh, not that well, especially when it’s all he does in a given film. There’s a good stunt or two here, but otherwise this was just a bore, with stuffy old men worrying about their stocks, an odd villain who turns from sympathetic loser into Snidely Whiplash at the snap of a finger, and Buster acting like a clueless retard in love who saves the day by accident. Too much backroom stock dealings and maneuverings (to the point that it’s almost more of a drama than a comedy for a moment or two…), not enough Buster, so he’s just a buffoonish clown who’s pushed to the side much of the time instead of a protagonist you can root for. This isn’t a disaster, but his first feature-length film leaves plenty to be desired.

6.5/10

Convict 13 (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920)

Who does he think he is, a Jedi?

8.5/10

The Scarecrow (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920)

Charlie Chaplin found his ideal athletic/agile counterpart in The Kid with young Jackie Coogan. Buster Keaton found his in The Scarecrow with that dog. And I’m patenting all that mechanical string-powered shit in his house

9/10

Neighbors (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920)

Beats U-Haul.

7.5/10

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

This bored the hell out of me as I was watching it…there’s really nothing worse in 2009 than stuff that was meant to be funny, or dare I say stretched the societally-acceptable limits, of what could be implied as being funny, in 1932.  Stuff like romance and horror are genetically imprinted in every human from every era, so the sensation of fear or love will never change, whether it’s 1932 or 2009, but I’m sorry, to me at least, comedy just doesn’t fare nearly as well.  What’s funny then and what’s funny now just changes (then again, I thought 1934’s “The Thin Man”…and Chaplin, and Keaton, and Lloyd, were hysterical, so everything I’ve just written is pretty much bogus, but I’m too lazy to erase it all and come up with a more legit introduction.  Consider this an opportunity to completely discredit me and stop reading  ), so what can I say, elegant, romantic parlor humor in the vein of Ernst Lubitsch just doesn’t tickle my funny bone.  But you know what, I said that things like romance and lust are eternal while societal humor might not be, which is why I did find something universally endearing about “Trouble in Paradise.”  I had no use for nonsense like a bunch of well-dressed non-English-speaking men saying ‘tonsils’ over and over again, and by all rights I should’ve been irritated to all hell by these formal people with wit up the wazoo, but in any case, I was still able to identify, to an extent, with the anything-but-original premise of a couple of con artists/lovers ingratiating themselves with a rich widow to rip her off, and then the man unexpectedly falling for the widow.   Yes, I was bored, but after sleeping on it, I don’t think I gave this movie its due because of how it portrays romance and sexual tension.  Of course it’s completely tame by today’s standards, but then you consider how this movie was practically banned for years because of the Hayes Code, and then you consider some of the clearly risqué one-liners and the physical expressions of passion, and then you put yourself in 1932 America, and man, this must’ve been some heavy stuff!  Herbert Marshall, as the impossibly charming thief Gaston Monescu, is kinda like a poor man’s William Powell – not quite as quick or clever with the one-liners as Powell’s Nick Charles, but just as charming and endearing – when he needs to be.  You can see why Kay Francis’s Madame Colet swoons for him, and boy, some of their back-and-forths are pretty racy – their impact went completely over my head as I watched, but then thinking about it afterwards, all the double-meanings of their words, and the subtleties of their body language as they slowly move within orbit of each other in tantalizing anticipation of a kiss that might or might not happen, would’ve driven audiences wild in ’32 – I just took my more sexually liberal 2009 standards for granted and plain missed it.  Their unlikely courtship is certainly predictable, as is the less than enthusiastic response from Gaston Monescu’s partner in crime Lily, played by the absolutely lovely, albeit somewhat shrill, Miriam Hopkins (her wearing glasses when she plays secretary for Madame Colet made me swoon the way Madame Colet swoons for Gaston Monescu  ).  Nevertheless, I invested myself in these characters, felt the passion oozing out of the screen thanks to some wonderful chemistry between all three characters (an early scene in which Lily and Gaston learn of each other’s dubious ‘professions’ is close to being wonderful), even if the jokes and the comedy didn’t do it for me.  And yeah, I suppose I can see why Lubitsch is the director everyone goes ga-ga over, what with the subtly elegant and unobtrusive yet intimate camera during conversations and those sweeping pans of the outside of buildings, or at least scale models of buildings (which I didn’t like…surface style, blech), but as far as I’m concerned, this was all about one of the more convincing and realistic birth and blossom of a romance that I’ve seen in the otherwise unreal world of comedy, thanks to some great chemistry, which in turn allows for a pretty great triangle of love and deceit.  When all is said and done, this might be the best comedy I’ve ever seen that never, ever made me laugh, whatever THAT’s worth  .

7.5/10