Film Slum

Shortbus

10.26.06 (3:08 pm)   [edit]
I actually saw this film in Berkeley the weekend before last as part of a disastrous date. Ironically, this is only the second time I've seen a film at this little one screen Berkeley theatre, and the last time was also a disastrous date. I'm sensing a theme.

I have one impression of this film that overwhelms all others. Call me immature, but... Wow, there is a lot of a cock in this film.

I enjoyed the characters and dialogue, don't get me wrong, but there is a lot of cock in this film. It's very, very explicit. I'm usually like, "Sure, show whatever you want in your film!" and I don't have a problem that the film did this, but I found the constant lingering shots of erect members was terribly distracting and felt it slowed down the movie. Just sayin'. It's not porn exactly, but it's pretty close in several places. (I have to say, this is the only film outside of porn where I have seen semen, for example.) There is no doubt that these actors really are in sexual situations, not just sitting on each other with shorts on hidden beneath a stupid sheet. It does feel more honest and real than fakey Hollywood sex.

I'm not sure if the movie was trying to be shocking or honest or what. I did appreciate that for once sex in a film is not treated as this holy, unapproachable topic and that most of the time sex was portrayed with the sense of humor real sex often requires to be good and comfortable, but I still think the film totally overdid it.

While it's still mostly a talky art film, it at least avoids the slow feeling most such films suffer from. But if you hate talky art films about hip city people loving and losing, you won't find much in this movie. Personally, I like talky art films, so I'm cool with it, but yeah, you don't need so much cock in your movie.

One poster on IMDB said, "Yes there is some rather graphic sex, but to anyone after hitting adulthood it works purely to support the film, erotic would be too strong a word for it." I completely disagree with this statement. Let's go to the dictionary.

"e‧rot‧ic
1. arousing or satisfying sexual desire: an erotic dance.
2. of, pertaining to, or treating of sexual love; amatory: an erotic novel."

The entire movie is about sexual desire and sexual love. Yes, there are relationship issues, but most of the relationship issues are sexual in nature. For example, one character is unsatisfied by her husband because he cannot bring her to orgasm. That's a major plot point. I don't think it's necessarily a problem how explicit the film is, I think the problem is the graphic sex scenes are too frequent and they bog down the film's pacing. I do not think the film should be censored, I think that the pacing needs work.

It was also totally unfair that they picked all these handsome beefcake guys for the constant nakedness, but the women were totally homely. I mean, if you're going to pick actors based on their sex appeal, you'd think you could do the same with actresses, but obviously this complaint only applies if you are a heterosexual male. And I'm not talking about boring plastic surgery Hollywood actresses with giant fake breasts either. Just you know, a pretty girl would have been nice. It's a talky art film. I'm sure you could find some pretty little city dwelling hipster actress chick without trouble. But maybe I'm just not who they were aiming for here.

There's a little bit of girls together, but it's nothing that Mulholland Drive doesn't completely trump, and in Shortbus, women have probably 1/10th the naked time of the men.

I also thought the film's title was totally disingenuous. The main characters hang out at this sex club called Shortbus a lot in the movie, but the name of the club only gets a passing mention, and I almost didn't catch it. I didn't know anything about this movie at all (I had planned to see Science of Sleep but it was sold out) and stumbled onto it for something to see, and I was wondering if it was some "uplifting" nonsense about retarded people overcoming their "challenges" or something. Yeah, work on that name.

I thought the soundtrack was good and very appropriate. If you're going to make a movie about city hipsters, of course you need an indie rock band to handle the music. Good move. I also thought it was very clever the way one character carries around a video camera and films himself and what's going on all the time. It makes a nice commentary on how film is inherently voyeuristic and indicts the audience in a manner similar to Hitchcock's Rear Window, and like that film, features a lot of people looking out windows at each other. In that vein, I also found it totally creepy that one character chose to have sex with someone who had been stalking him and filming him through his window, but hey, characters are allowed to have bad judgment. I really thought the film was well written with good dialogue and the acting was all very natural and believable and the character development was well executed and interesting.

Pretty good if you can handle that kind of thing, but viewer beware: this is a talky art film full of explicit sex, gay sex, and lots of penis.

New Rose Hotel

10.19.06 (4:13 pm)   [edit]
I don't have a lot of hope for William Gibson these days. His novel Neuromancer collected a bunch of scattered themes and ideas sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick had been toying with for years, codified them, added a thick layer of grime and invented a new lexicon to describe it all and cyberpunk was born. Much-imitated in the 80's, Gibson's writing is heavy on atmosphere and future slang. But like Douglas Adams, his writing loses a lot outside of a text environment. Gibson's screenwriting efforts are pretty much all disasters (Johnny Mnemonic, a couple of the absolute worst episodes of The X-Files) and I think I've figured out why: his characters are all hipper than thou tough guys spouting made up slang and computer jargon with no real personalities or character development and he cannot structure a plot to save his life. What makes his best works great is the strong atmosphere and world building he does. Then again, his last four books have all been total misfires. Maybe what a Gibson-based film needs is someone else writing the screenplay.

New Rose Hotel is based on the Gibson short story of the same name available in the Burning Chrome collection. Directed and co-written by Abel Ferrera (the other writer is Christ Zois), the film is the story of corporate espionage in a future Tokyo. Obviously low budget, there's no high tech gadgets or CG monsters. Like A Scanner Darkly, the film is not really for sci-fi fans so much as it is people who are into talky art films. Honestly, New Rose Hotel has much more in common with French new wave films by people like Godard and Truffaut than films so commonly associated with cyberpunk or "tech noir" like Blade Runner and The Terminator. If you just look at the film at face value, it's mostly Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken having conversations about philosophy and espionage while Asia Argento looks gorgeous and frequently gets naked and/or has sex with people. The film's greatest strength is the way it humanizes Gibson's cardboard cut out characters.

Do not watch this if you want to see a sci-fi action movie.

While many will probably find New Rose Hotel dull, what it does do incredibly well is generate a compelling sense of atmosphere, though it's not really the same atmosphere you'll find in Gibson's writing. Instead of everything being gritty and dirty, the world is sleek and smooth, sort of cold and sleazy. But it's more of a "businessmen in a strip joints" kind of sleazy, not a "junkie shivering in a trash strew alley smelling of piss" kind of sleazy. The cinematography is sharp and pretty and flatters Argento. Ferrera clearly has talent and a distinct vision. The problem is this vision is not one most people are going to want to explore.

Those that can handle the movie's leisurely pace and almost complete lack of action will find a lot of interesting dialogue delivered with panache by Walken and Dafoe. Walken makes a great mentor character, and it's interesting to see Dafoe subdued and heartfelt, a great contrast to his usual scenery chewing persona. Dafoe is so different from his roles in movies like Wild at Heart, eXistenZ, and Spider-Man that it's refreshing.

Dafoe and Walken are free agents that do espionage jobs for different giant corporations. Walken is obsessed with "the edge". Every score has to be more challenging, more dangerous, and worth more money than the last, or he's not interested.

They hang out at a bar/strip joint/brothel, where attractive women get on stage take to turns singing, stripping, and groping one another. The queen of this scene is Asia Argento. While she's not much of a singer, she's simultaneously winsome and seductive. She doesn't so much sing as whisper and moan her song, and it's not hard to see why Dafoe picks her to spend the night with. This leads to a Walken brainstorm: use her in their latest, greatest job.

They promise her a million dollars to seduce an epoch-making genius Japanese scientist (Hiroshi, played by anime and video game artist Yoshitaka Amano) and convince him to flee one mega corporation for another. Walken handles the business side of thing while Dafoe teaches her everything she needs to know about making a Japanese guy fall in love with her. Unfortunately, despite Walken's warning, Dafoe falls for Argento (and can you blame him?)

He and Argento work out a side deal where once the new corporation has secured the Japanese scientist, she'll run away with him and they'll get married. But the thing he forgot is that she is a whore. Her job is to do and say whatever a man wants so that he will give her money. She doesn't have personal investment, and sure enough, that's the case here.

Someone offered her a better deal. Hiroshi's new company flies in every scientist working for them to learn from his genius, but one engineered super virus later and everyone's dead, Asia Argento is missing, all the money they earned is gone, and hitmen are after Dafoe and Walken. Walken sacrifices himself so Dafoe can make his escape, and Dafoe holes up in a scummy coffin hotel, poor and brokenhearted.

That's a pretty cyberpunk ending, or it would be, if the film didn't spend about 15 minutes with him piecing together how she fucked him over by way of tedious flashbacks. Come on, movie, just end. We don't really need that recap.

New Rose Hotel has some interesting dialogue, a couple of cool characters, a cyberpunk deal gone horribly wrong, some good, believable acting, and one very pretty Italian girl in it, but the plot is pretty thin, the pacing is slow, and there's almost no action, so make sure you know what kind of movie you're in for before checking this one out.

Either way, this is still the best screen adaptation of a William Gibson story yet, but it's an art film at its core.

Total Recall

10.18.06 (12:43 pm)   [edit]

"Get your ass to Mars!"

How can you resist something like Total Recall? Paul Verhoeven, still fresh off of Robocop made this movie at exactly the right time. After a decade of over the top action movies full of oily (and homoerotic?) muscle men and horrible one liners (films like the Rambo series, Commando, the Predator movies, Cobra and countless others), Total Recall was both the ultimate example of this style of film and a subtle deconstruction.

Cleverly starring Schwarzenegger, one of the leading action heroes of the 80's, Total Recall points out every ridiculous convention and then one ups them all. One of the most expensive movies of its day, the art direction and set design are stunning, and the special effects look great to this day and far more believable than the fakey CG monsters that are so commonplace now.

Based on a Philip K. Dick tale (like Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and others), Total Recall is the story of Douglas Quaid, a lowly construction worker who dreams of visiting Mars. It's the future, but a modest one. Instead of jet cars and neural connections to the futuristic equivalent of the Internet, Doug just watches the news on his flat screen TV, which actually looks pretty much like LCD screens you can buy nowadays. The news is fixated on terrorists lead by the mysterious Kuato undermining the Martian authorities.

Doug's wife Lori (Sharon Stone) comforts him. Trying to get his mind off of the red planet, she shoots down his idea for a Mars vacation. Soon it's off to work and at this point it’s hard to miss the societal commentary. He's a construction worker. He lives in a super nice condo with a big TV and super hot wife who wears spandex 80's exercise gear. All the other construction workers are pudgy, ugly little people and he's this huge, ripped pile of man meat and hey, everyone loves that face. Of course something is wrong with this picture. But is Verhoeven giving clues that things are not what they seem in Doug's life, or is he commenting on how poorly action movies reflect reality?

Doug's determined to get his Mars vacation one way or another, and despite his construction worker buddy's urgings, he decides to go to Rekall, the company that can implant artificial memories of fancy vacations you could never afford. Undeterred by the threat of lobotomy, Doug orders the deluxe Mars vacation with an "ego trip" upgrade -- instead of experiencing Mars as Douglas Quaid, he's opted for the temporary identity of a secret agent.

But something goes wrong and Doug experiences a "schizoid embolism" because, according to the technicians, his memory has already been wiped. Rekall senses disaster, destroys his files, and dumps him in a cab. Soon, a bunch of government agents lead by his construction buddy are out to kill our hero. In the average 80's action movie, the bullets fly, the hero is never touched, and the bad guys are all taken out in one bloodless shot. Not so in the hyper violent world of Total Recall, where Doug's enemies erupt in fountains of gore and innocent bystanders die in the bloodbath.

He staggers back home to tell his wife about it but she suddenly turns on him, with multiple kung fu kicks to his crotch. After a brief fight, she tries to charm him, pleading (with a gun to her head), "You wouldn't kill me. Would you, honey? After all we've been through?" Quad considers a moment and replies, "Some of it was fun." And then he punches her in the face, quipping, "Nice knowing you."

Once again Verhoeven is mocking the style while reveling in it. The stupid one-liners are a must for a dumb 80's action movie, but it's usually something like Arnold pinning a guy to a tree with a knife and saying, "Stick around!" But he's not fighting some generic bad guy from a third world nation (another action movie staple.) No, he just punched a woman, his wife, an attractive blonde, right in the face. This is totally against the rules for most Hollywood movies, and definitely against the rules of 80's action movies. But is this trying to take 80's action movies to the next level of indiscriminate violence, or is this glibly mocking them while subverting the style? I think Total Recall is doing both. It's simultaneously rejoicing in the ludicrous excesses of 80's action movies and twisting them for social commentary, as well as commentary on both Hollywood and the film itself.

Total Recall is a lot smarter than it appears on the surface.

With Michael Ironside on his tail, a friend gives him a suitcase full of useful gadgets, including a video of himself explaining the situation. Basically, Quaid used to be Hauser, a secret agent working for the Martian government, but he ended up switching sides and joining the revolutionaries he was fighting against. And then the government caught him and erased his brain. So what's next? "Get your ass to Mars," he helpfully tells himself after teaching him how to rip out the tracking device implanted in his head. Note that this scene is copied in The Matrix.

Once on Mars, Doug hooks up with an "athletic brunette", which is exactly the kind of woman he told the people at Rekall he wanted in his trip to Mars. I think this, too, is commentary on 80's action movie conventions. Almost all the women in 80's movies have terrible 80's hair. Ugly, curly permed messes were the norm. By 1990, this trend was on the way out, and Sharon Stone certainly reflects that with her straight blond hair. But Melina (the homely Rachel Ticotin), a whore/revolutionary and Hauser's lover, still has that horrible 80's permed mess. She's also nowhere near as pretty as Sharon Stone and everyone I've ever watched this with has agreed that it's really weird that Arnold would pick her over Sharon Stone. I think that again Verhoeven is being more clever and more subtle than viewers would expect.

Ticotin is more in line with the 80's woman. Women then were obsessed with exercise and huge curly hair. While Sharon Stone does spend some time exercising in a weird parody of similar scenes in earlier films, it's hard to miss that she's built in a completely different fashion. Ticotin's body is angular and thin and Sharon Stone's is curvy and voluptuous. Is this a comment on how Arnold is stuck in the 80's? Is it a comment on how bizarre 80's fashion is and how dumb 80's action movies are? I think there's something else going on here. Like many Philip K. Dick works, there is the issue of the doppelganger. There are two Arnolds, the Quaid version and the Hauser version. Hauser is a very German-sounding name. Nazi allusions anyone? Then we have his female partner, the revolutionary with curly black hair and then the blonde with straight hair who supports the fascistic government. Hmm. And when you consider the trouble Arnold has been through with people accusing him of Nazi sympathies... You have to wonder if Verhoeven and his writers were criticizing Arnold for a little more than starring in brain dead action movies.

A bit later there is a very interesting scene where a doctor claiming to be from Rekall contacts Quaid and tells him that he's still back in Rekall and dreaming all of this. He tells him to take a symbolic red pill and return to reality before he gets lobotomized (Hey, does that remind you of a similar scene in The Matrix?) Sharon Stone shows up to help convince him, but just when he starts to believe, he notices the Rekall goon sweating and shoots him in the head. Then he has a fight with his wife (including another assault on his manhood), which ends up with her pleading, "You wouldn't hurt me, would you sweetheart? Sweetheart, be reasonable! After all, we're married!" She dives for her gun and he shoots her dead, joking, "Consider this a divorce." One more time, the goofy one liner is used in bizarre fashion and breaks the rules of 80's action movies. He just shot the attractive white woman with blond hair, ostensibly his wife and made a smartass comment about it. Casual misogyny? Taking the action movie to the next level? Commentary on Nazi ideals? All of the above?

Having abandoned reality or seen reality for what it is, he tries to meet the leader of the revolutionaries. Most of these freedom fighters are mutants (the result of shoddy Martian dome building) who have been rounded up into a ghetto. Yes, this, too has heavy World War II undertones, especially when the bad guys turn off the air supply, bringing to mind Nazi gas chambers.

Kuato (a deformed, psychic little monster growing out of Marshell Bell's stomach) tells Quaid to activate this reactor, an alien artifact found in the turbinium mines. These very same mines made Cohaagen, the fascist ruler of Mars, incredibly rich. Also padding his wallet are monthly fees for oxygen. As soon as Kuato's narrative purpose has been completed, a traitor blows him away. (Quaid later gets revenge by killing the traitor with a screw tipped drill while yelling, "Screeeeewwwww yooooouuuuu!")

Cohaagen captures Quaid and Melina and reveals that Hauser did not actually turn and this was all a trick. A video from Hauser confirms that he really was a bad guy. They try to erase Quaid and reestablish Hauser's personality, but Quaid breaks free using raw Arnold power. There's a climactic showdown, exploding eyeballs, and the action movie happy ending where Arnold defeats the bad guys, activates the reactor (thus generating free air on Mars) and gets the girl. Except the movie ends on a note of uncertainty.

Melina: I can't believe it, it's like a dream. What's wrong?
Douglas Quaid: I just had a terrible thought. What if this is a dream?
Melina: Well, then kiss me quick before you wake up.

And then the movie fades to white, instead of black. I love this ending. It effectively translates Philip K. Dick's paranoia and elastic, subjective reality to the screen while questioning whether the gung ho action movie approach is worthwhile at all. Does Total Recall glorify the 80's action movie, vilify it, or both?

Either way, it's a fitting end cap to the cycle. While some may credit the blatantly self-reflexive Pulp Fiction with destroying the 80’s action movie, the truth is that Total Recall did it years before, and with much greater subtlety, and it’s still the only movie that makes Philip K. Dick’s paranoiac milieu fun instead of horrifying.

And while a few big 80's styled action movies followed Total Recall, most of them were giant flops, like Arnold's own Last Action Hero.

R.S.V.P.

10.17.06 (7:43 pm)   [edit]
Everyone has seen Clue, right? Or maybe Noises Off? Those kinds of films are comedies with lots of people running around and fairly complex but very silly relationships between characters. Oh yes, and there's lots of sex. Granted, maybe it's all innuendo or people talking about past encounters, but it's still woven tightly into the fabric. Noises Off goes one further than Clue's constant shots of Colleen Camp's cleavage. It seems like every minute you see someone in their underwear.

What does this have to do with R.S.V.P.? Well, R.S.V.P. is that kind of comedy, except instead of real actors the cast is made up of 80's porn stars and instead of a real director, it has Amero brothers who (surprise!) filmed a bunch of porno "hits" with titles like Blonde Ambition, Every Inch A Lady, and The Lusting Hours.

What on earth possessed these people to make a grab at legitimacy with this R-rated comedy?

While I have no idea why it exists, I'm glad it does, because this movie is entertaining in the way only terrible 80's comedies obsessed with breasts can be. This ranks up there with "classics" like Revenge of the Nerds, Zapped, and Weird Science, only much more poorly made and with hysterical acting.

Let's not beat around the bush here. Haha. This movie is pretty incompetently made. The directing is bland and talentless, but delightfully tacky. No one can act worth a shit, but that's entertaining in its own way. The dialogue is by turns insulting and gloriously politically incorrect. The set design, well, what set design? This is just some guy's house in L.A. with a decent pool! While I wouldn't call the screenplay good (barely serviceable at best, unintentionally hilarious at worst), it somehow manages to be more clever than you would expect.

The movie gets off to an unfortunate start with a painful, boring framing device. Some party got out of hand and now the entire guest list is in front of a patently not funny judge. If you can avoid turning off the movie long enough to get past this painful sequence, a delightfully stupid and goofy movie waits for you.

Dumb, well-meaning, and meaty, Tobey is an aspiring actor in Hollywood, but right now he's a caterer. His job today is to serve food and drink at a party thrown by Bill Edwards, the hot shot producer who just landed the rights to a book that has Hollywood in an uproar. Billed as fiction, this book is actually a thinly veiled expose of Hollywood's leading talents and critics. And they're all coming to this party and so is the author! This is really a pretty good setup, as the guests constantly bicker and jockey for position. Even dopey, beefy Tobey is trying to get on Bill's good side to try for a role. To complicate things, Tobey's hot for Bill's daughter, Bill is cheating on his wife, the governor is cheating on his wife, everyone's cheating on everyone, and someone ends up dead and floating in the pool in true Sunset Boulevard fashion!

Don't get your expectations out of hand, though: this movie is still made by incompetents and funny on accident more often than on purpose. There are fairly attractive girls (and guys) getting naked, some surprisingly goofy and hamfisted sex scenes (how is that people who made sex their careers can be so bad at pretending to have sex?), and some really, really bad jokes.

But I have to be honest. I laughed when the Chinese delivery boy's broken English made Mrs. Edwards think Bill was cheating on her with Tobey. I laughed even more when he came back later as a Mexican food delivery boy and thought the right way to avoid cold beans was to dump gallons of hot sauce into them. It's so stupid that it's charming.

Everyone is so totally lacking in talent that it's almost appalling, but I just can't find the heart to hate this movie. Unlike a million tiresome movies by masters of people standing around saying boring things to each other (every Roger Corman movie, every Coleman Francis movie), this movie just isn't dull. It's always trying and pathetically failing at this or that, but you can tell the cast is having a great time. They seem blissfully unaware of their own total lack of skill, or maybe they just don't care.

Either way, what should be an exercise in pain is actually a fun little diversion, as long as you look at it for what it is: AN R-RATED COMEDY BY 80'S PORN STARS!

By the way, did I mention this movie is full of awful 80's hair and fashion? The least self-conscious movie I have ever seen.

Sad footnote: In 1989 Lem Amero died. Try to guess what from? Come on, come on, you can guess! That's right! AIDS complications!

Wild at Heart

10.16.06 (6:15 pm)   [edit]
I should have known I wasn't going to like this. I mean, I love David Lynch. I even enjoyed Dune. But I loathe Nicolas Cage. I think he's a bad actor. He's never interesting. He drags movies that could have been good to their knees. (See: Adaptation.) Not only is he one note, that note is lumpy and boring. Keanu Reeves' one role of confused stoner is a lot better than Cage's one role of boring douche bag.

But let me be fair. I've enjoyed movies with actors I totally hate. I can't stand Orlando Bloom, but I loved the original Pirates of the Caribbean. I used to hate Jimmy Stewart because of his sappy role in It's a Wonderful Life and today Vertigo is one of my favorite films. I decided to try it anyway. I mean, I love David Lynch and I thought Laura Dern was really endearing in Blue Velvet and grounded Jurassic Park with some much needed humanity. So I took a risk. I spent four dollars on a used VHS copy at Rasputin.

Man. Big mistake.

Even Willem Dafoe couldn't save this movie!

Sailor is a career criminal with a thing for Elvis. He's also played by Nicolas Cage, but I'm trying not to hold that against him. What I can hold against him is his marble-mouthed impersonation of Elvis that lasts the entire film. Soooo annoying. Also, Sailor is a really stupid name.

He's in love with Lula, a broad stereotype of a wild southern gal. Poor Laura Dern. This was almost a career-sinker for her.

Lula's momma doesn't approve none of her relationship with Sailor, partly because he snubbed her super creepy advances, and also because he was the getaway driver when she and her gangster boyfriend set Lula's daddy on fire. He knows too much, he won't sleep with her, and he's in a relationship with her daughter. Time to hire a hitman!

So far so good. Well, I mean, so far, so screwed up, which is pretty normal for Lynch. A botched murder attempt and a few years in jail for manslaughter later, Sailor is a free man again. He and Lula meet up for the first of many sexual encounters that border on unintentional humor. Then they decide the best way to get away from momma is to hop into a convertible and embark on the great American road trip! This is also where the entire movie falls apart.

Their destination is Los Angeles. Why? Uh. Who knows? They drive and they drive and they drive. The stop at some hotels and have some more sex, get a heavy metal band to play an Elvis song and let Sailor sing it, and a bunch of other tiresome crap and constant, totally meaningless references to The Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile, momma hunts them down using her evil gangster contacts and a hapless P.I., though for some reason the gangsters kill him. And then there's some crap about Isabella Rossellini as a terrible peroxide blonde with huge scary black eyebrows that doesn't make any sense or go anywhere interesting and then Sherilyn Fenn (the sexy Audrey from Twin Peaks) bleeds to death following a car crash while Sailor and Lula stand around uselessly. Why? Uh...

Soon enough Sailor and Lula run out of money in some shit town in Texas and Lula announces that she's pregnant. Willem Dafoe shows up with some scary teeth and a cowboy hat. Oh ho, he's the hitman sent by momma! He molests Lula (who doesn't bother to tell Sailor about it) and then convinces Sailor to join him on an ill-advised robbery. Dafoe tries to double cross him, a cop shows up, Dafoe's head explodes, Sailor goes back to jail and I'm so bored I'm thinking about turning the movie off. I've never turned off a David Lynch movie before it was over.

Six years later, Sailor gets out of jail and immediately tries to walk out on Lula and their son Pace (no doubt named after the picante sauce) until a bunch of random thugs kick his ass and he hallucinates about Glenda The Good Witch, who convinces him to go back to Lula. The end.

I was so glad when it was over. I'm trying not to be too hard on this movie, because it's not terrible, it's just kind of pointless. It doesn't have anything to say about anyone or anything, the themes of Elvis and The Wizard of Oz are just random and unconnected, and the only characters that are anything more than the barest of sketches are Sailor and Luna, the generic crazy southern stereotypes.

This movie seems to get okay reviews, but I just don't see it. None of Lynch's typical charm is here, and his usual clever dialogue is replaced by muttered gibberish.

Maybe the problem here is that Lynch should just not be adapting books into movies. Dune veered wildly off course about half way through and I just can't recommend Wild at Heart.

Many people complain that Lynch's work is just weird for weird's sake. I disagree. I think his off kilter, dream-like sensibilities are fascinating. Unfortunately, Wild at Heart isn't like that. It's just a generic road movie starring some southern stereotypes with some random crap stuck in for no apparent reason. What's missing is a lot of charm and the dream logic that usually holds his films together.

This movie is missing any thematic cohesion, and by the fourth time Lula and Sailor have sex you'll be checking your watch.

A Scanner Darkly

10.16.06 (5:42 pm)   [edit]
I saw A Scanner Darkly this weekend at the Red Vic on Haight Street in San Francisco. By this point the movie is pretty much done in its theatrical run, and the Red Vic is essentially an art house theatre. I don't think the movie got a wide distribution in the first place, so it's not astonishing that I missed it.

Directed by Richard Linklater, A Scanner Darkly is one of many films based on the works of my favorite author, Philip K. Dick. Several really enduring and high profile films started with his pen including Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report, as well as some lesser known efforts (Screamers, Impostor, Paycheck). Dick was quite possibly schizophrenic or bipolar and aggravated his mental condition with meth amphetamines. You can read all about this in Future Noir, a book about the making of Blade Runner if you so desire, but the upshot is that his works are known for exploring the decay of identity, subjective perspectives, and a pervasive sense of paranoia.

A Scanner Darkly is no different. In the not too distant future, Keanu Reeves is druggie Bob Arctor, or is he "Fred", a police officer in the narcotics division? All the officers wear "scramble suits", which constantly shift facial features and body parts as well as distorting voices so badly you have no idea who is in the suit. And today "Fred" has just been ordered to investigate himself.

Most of Dick's work can be categorized as science fiction, but the truth is that a lot of it is far closer to Hunter S. Thompson than to Isaac Asimov. There are drug allegories in a lot of his work, but it's pretty blatant in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and of course A Scanner Darkly.

Bob Arctor and his buddies are all doing Substance D. The D stands for Death. They hang around his ratty apartment in Orange County and when they aren't hallucinating about bugs or being completely paranoid about some mysterious force sabotaging their lives, they are screwing around and generally acting like drug addicts. Of course, they really are being watched, as the house is under round the clock surveillance by the all-seeing scanner.

Casting Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, both well-known for their drug problems, pays off very, very well. Some people have criticized it as a publicity stunt, but they act exactly like real drug addicts. They are extremely convincing. This is no satire or parody. Rory Cochrane rounds out the trio, echoing his stoner role in Linklater's earlier film Dazed and Confused.

Reeves may have a limited acting range, but perpetual confusion and paranoia are exactly what's required in this role, so of course he excels. Winona Ryder plays off of him well as Donna, small time dealer and love interest who refuses to let him touch her because she does "a lot of coke".

The cops think Bob Arctor is up to something big, or they want Donna to lead them to her suppliers, or maybe they want something else entirely. Our protagonist is never quite sure what's going on, and his assumed identity and his "real" identity get further and further apart as Substance D slowly convinces the hemispheres of his brain to "compete". Can he arrest himself? Will he keep passing the constant drug tests ordered by his department? (And boy do those tests remind of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner used to determine if you're a human or a replicant.)

Since this is a movie, we also have to talk about the visual element. Despite the drab atmosphere and slummy environment, A Scanner Darkly is positively stunning. The entire film is rotoscoped like Linklater's Waking Life or those old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons. Essentially, you film a live action movie, and then draw over it. In this case, they did it with computers, and it really looks good. The world is somewhat simplified and rendered cartoony, but at the same time appears harsh and stark. I don't think I've ever seen a film that combined bright colors and darkness so well. I really enjoyed the visual approach and I'm glad for the variety. The film noir influence worked just fine in Blade Runner but the hallucinatory future of A Scanner Darkly is well served by its rotoscoped aesthetic.

While I loved the film, it's still not without flaws. Like many art films, it's pretty to look at, but also very talky and large portions of the film are just some drug addicts screwing around. Keanu Reeves spends much of the movie muttering to himself about how confused he is, which almost reminds me of the noir voice over narrative, but doesn't really explain things. I actually like this because it gives you a great accounting of his slow slip into paranoia and multiple personalities, but the average viewer my find this a bit dry.

Science fiction fans will probably appreciate the holographic scanner and scramble suits but little else: this is sci-fi rooted in the mundane. It is realistic and believable, which I really appreciate, but it will not impress anyone looking for laser blasts, giant robots, or spaceships.

Nonetheless, A Scanner Darkly is a thoughtful, interesting film that straddles the line between sci-fi, art film, and the stoner movie. I'd recommend it to people who enjoy surrealism, counterculture/drug movies, and pretty, but wordy art films. Sci-fi action fans need not apply.

Mission Statement

10.16.06 (4:37 pm)   [edit]
Welcome to the Film Slum.

I like movies a lot. I'm a bit of a snob. I went to film school and got a B.A. which I absolutely do not use in my work. Oh well. I still love film and work on indie stuff in my spare time. Those are my qualifications, I suppose, and I have written a few professional film reviews here and there.

But this is a blog, so it's not professional and while sometimes I will be writing in depth reviews, often this will be scattered impressions hastily scratched down. If you accept that, we can work together, dear reader.

I have a taste for high class films like Hitchcock's stunning Vertigo and for schlocky, no budget garbage like Robot Jox. I even like snooty art films from time to time. I'll be sure to mention which kind of movie I'm talking about.

If you disagree with me, well, what can I say? I'll be glad to debate you.