Musings of an Undergraduate

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

2010-09-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972, 129 minutes, Starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider.

1972 represents a zenith for Marlon Brando, giving two of his most iconic performances: that of the Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, and as Paul in Bernardo Bertolucci’s notorious Last Tango in Paris. Its more than safe to say that different aspects of Tango would be far less effective without the presence of Brando and Maria Schneider as Jeanne (absolutely gorgeous, by the way), they both brings their characters to life in all their flaws and idiosyncrasies.

Paul is a middle aged American living in the beautiful city of Paris. Having recently lost his wife by means unknown to the audience, Paul takes up a relationship with the (absolutely gorgeous) Jeanne, a young and engaged Parisian, after they meet in a dilapidated apartment. Paul insists their relationship be kept anonymous from themselves, in one of the films most important lines, “You and I are gonna meet here, without knowing anything that goes on outside here. Okay? Because we don’t need names here, don’t you see? We’re gonna forget everything that we knew, all the people, all that we do, wherever we live. We’re gonna forget that, everything.” In this single monologue, Paul not only disconnects their encounters from the events controlling his real life, and he sets his control and dominance over Jeanne.

This is an important detail that through the films use of erotic sex scenes becomes all the more apparent as the running time stretches toward its conclusion, never is Jeanne once in control over her and Paul’s sexual tryst. When they first meet in the apartment (which stands as a barrier between them and the world which Paul attempts to shut out), it is Paul who comes on to Jeanne, not the other way around. Even when Paul has Jeanne stick two of her fingers up his ass, he is in complete control, commanding her to trim her nails, telling her exactly what to do; him raping her with the butter. The entire situation is about him gaining control back over his life, which was turned upside down by his wife’s sudden suicide. Part of how he does this is by keeping his history and his self a secret from Jeanne, by, as Pauline Kael said, mythologizing himself in her eyes.

I noticed this more when I read Kael’s famous review, but Paul really is the realization of the American “tough guy” in all his flaws, both on the surface and buried deep down, completely ingrained into his broken psyche.

When Jeanne initially attempts to leave their anonymous charade, Paul attempts to regain control by giving her all his information, his “life story” and when this doesn’t work, the only way he can regain total control is by releasing himself completely; he lets go of reality and the social constrictions of the real world and looses himself to himself. Paul’s nihilistic turn ends in tragedy, chasing Jeanne through the streets of Paris to her mother’s apartment, where an ingeniously subtle piece of foreshadowing cruelly lends itself to Paul’s demise. Having been shot, Paul places a piece of gum under the railing lining the apartments’ balcony, and collapses, dead. Jeanne silently muttering to herself, “I don’t know who he is, he followed me in the street. He tried to rape me. I don’t know what he’s called. I don’t know who he is.” What is truly tragic about Jeanne’s final lines is that while like the gum under the railing, Paul may have left his impression on her life, but those practiced fabrications of her story to the police, “I don’t know who he is” are completely true.

Last Tango in Paris represented one of the first major uses of eroticism not just in film, but for film. Unlike Oshima’s use of sex as narrative four-years later for In the Realm of the Senses (which, while inventive as an idea, made for a dull film), Bertolucci uses sex to further his narrative as opposed to replace it. Every sex scene represents a stage in the characters personal annihilation, and they deepen our understanding of these characters emotionally. While this was expected to permeate itself into future filmmaking endeavors, not only has it never really caught on (Oshima’s experiment being a notable exception, as well as Guccione’s disastrous attempt to inject explicit sex into the infamous Caligula [1979]), Last Tango in Paris has all but disappeared into many a film goers subconscious.

This is a shame, as Tango still stands as a well made, exceptionally well acted and effective film some thirty-eight years later. The cinematography by Vittorio Storazo, who seven years later who lend to considerable talents to Francis Ford Coppola for Apocalypse Now, is the kind of steamy, atmospheric visual splendor that lends itself perfectly to such an erotically charged picture as this. The score by Gato Barbieri is lush and evocative; and these are also perfect descriptors for the film itself. My only complaints with the film are that it seems to lose its sense of time, feeling like it takes place over a longer period then the three days these characters turbulent affair actually lasted. There are also times when scenes feel like they have little significance to the film, particularly those involving Jeanne’s fiancé (Jean-Pierre Léaud), they fit thematically, but not cinematically; their significance is more deeply buried and takes a deeper, further reading into the film then is normal. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, but for me it pulled me from the otherwise lush experience of the film.

*** ½ out of ****

Movie Review: The Descent: Part 2 (2009)

2010-05-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

Directed by Jon Harris, 2009, 94 minutes, Starring Shauna Macdonald, Douglas Hodge, Krysten Cummings, Gavan O’Herlihy, Joshua Dallas, and Anna Skellern.

Remember a couple years ago when a little British horror film took the critics and audiences by storm, it was called The Descent and what a treasure Neil Marshall’s little genre piece turned out to be, and what an inspired title as well. Well, naturally when such a film is successful, you’re bound to see a sequel: on steps first-timer Jon Harris to try his hand at revisiting the film he edited, and you have The Descent: Part 2, hardly a bad film in its own right, but hardly a good one as well, especially when placed next to its predecessor.

Bet you’ve heard this before: the film starts right where the first left off, original. It’s been two days and by wonderful happenstance a search crew has already been searching for the “six chicks with picks,” due to the fact that one of the first films protagonists, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) happens to be a politician’s daughter. When a driver picks up the previous films survivor (this sequel decidedly avoiding its counterpart’s original ending), she ends up in the hospital covered blood, not only her own, and wouldn’t you know it not remembering a damn thing about the last few days, poor girl. Well, leave it to inept horror film cop to decide, “Let’s take her back down and see if she remembers anything.” Because that is totally what any sensible cop and his deputy (Krysten Cummings) would do, wouldn’t you?

So it doesn’t take nearly as long for this films inconsequential characters to end up down in that lightless abyss that characterized the first film so well. Where The Descent was a damn-near perfect genre exercise that went beyond its inspiration and came out a deeply satisfying and exceedingly well-made film that tapped into the fear that pulsed through such classics as Alien, Deliverance, The Thing and numerous other horror notables, its sequel seems to play more along the lines of, “Scares and style? That’s a little hard, let’s just add a bunch of gore.” They could have at least got the blood color right, but instead it looks eerily similar to Tim Burton’s choice of splurge for Sweeney Todd (2007), but this film is a little too serious for that to work.

I’m not saying The Descent: Part 2 is a bad film, just that it’s simply the direct-to-DVD, bite and claw film that Lionsgate has opted to release it as here in the states, that due to its predecessor’s notoriety received the big screen treatment over in its native Britain. Jon Harris takes the safe route by not trying too hard; headlamps mysteriously light the caves like low-budget fluorescents as opposed to the first films use of red flares, green glow-sticks and torches. Where the first film gave you characters to care about, this one gives you an idiot cop, his deputy who’s only reason to live is a daughter back above, three British rescue crew members, as well as a disturbed protagonist making a comeback from the first film; nothing really but one to two dimensional characters. Where The Descent had style, this has five-year-old nostalgia, not nearly long enough to run a movie off of, but hey, money is money, right?

The Descent: Part 2 works well enough on its level, which is a rather low one to be completely honest, but it must be said. Yeah, it’s disappointing; you wait five years and you expect the sequel to a genre masterpiece to be, well, better then this. You expect the creatures to be back in all their creepy glory, as opposed to looking like they’ve gone through a few centuries of evolution in a matter of days, talk about mad skills. You also expect said creepy creatures to go for the kill, as oppose to simply look menacing when given a chance to scream within a few inches of the prey they know are there. You expect a lot of things really, and that will be the determining factor as to whether you enjoy this film or not: how low you set your expectations.

*** out of ****

The Best Films of the Decade

2010-04-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have been toying with my best of the decade list since I first made it late last December, unable to find a list that truly satisfied me; after viewing more films, reviewing others, I finally feel I have come up with a list that I feel displays my favorite films of the decade, those I believe to be the the best and that reflect on my personal taste.

The Best Films of the Aughts:

01 - The Lord of the Rings (2001 - 2003, Peter Jackson)

02 - In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-Wai)

03 - Lost In Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola)

04 - Babel (2006, Alejandro González Iñárritu)

05 - The Departed (2006, Martin Scorsese)

06 - Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee)

07 - Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)

08 - Pan's Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro)

09 - Man On Wire (2008, James Marsh)

10 - Strange Circus (2005, Sion Sono)

11 - Mysterious Skin (2004, Gregg Araki)

12 - The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)

13 - Where the Wild Things Are (2009, Spike Jonze)

14 - Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch)

15 - The Descent (2005, Neil Marshall)

16 - Kill Bill, Volumes 1 & 2 (2003/2004, Quentin Tarantino)

17 - Lust, Caution (2007, Ang Lee)

18 - No Country for Old Men (2007, Joel & Ethan Coen)

19 - In Bruges (2008, Martin McDonagh)

20 - Caché (2005, Michael Haneke)

21 - Battle Royale (2000, Kinji Fukasaku)

22 - Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson)

Movie Review: Leaves of Grass (2010)

2010-04-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson, 2010, 105 minutes, Starring Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Lynskey, Tim Blake Nelson and Richard Dreyfuss.

I knew little of Tim Blake Nelson’s latest film until I read about it on Roger Ebert’s blog, immediately gaining an interest. I was reminded of the film once more when Ebert posted his review, going out of his way to praise the film as one of the best of 2010, and its only April. Now, Ebert has a tendency to raise up films that might have little standing in the regular film going public, take 1981’s My Dinner With Andre for example; Ebert has done the same thing here for Tim Blake Nelson’s exceedingly well-wrought Leaves of Grass, as good a film I’ve seen released so far this year, and a possible contender for the end of the years top ten, so far its at the top.

Leaves of Grass is a film best appreciated with little to no prior knowledge of the plot, so I’ll try to keep the synopsis as bare-bones as possible. Edward Norton plays twin brothers Bill and Brady Kincaid, Bill having moved from their native Tulsa uprising and become a successful professor, shedding his “hick” accent as well as his past, with Brady fully embracing his southern roots in his journey to grow the best hydroponic pot around; well, its not really a journey so much as a destination he has more then already reached, but more liked settled and developed into an entire province. Due to numerous circumstances, Bill must head back to Tulsa and the family he hasn’t talked to in years.

One of the films numerous pleasures is how it in no way demeans its characters, an attribute that if you ask me is all too rare in modern filmmaking. Brady and his friend Bolger (Tim Blake Nelson) both talk with the drawl and dress like a New York socialites nightmare, yet Brady as it turns out has a higher IQ then his intellectual brother, a fact his mother (Susan Sarandon) points out at one point in the film. Brady has designed and for the most part, along with Bolger, built a large completely natural hydroponic setup for his marijuana, a setup a high school drug counselor would be hard pressed not to find the least bit impressive. Brady is also set to be married to his pregnant girlfriend Colleen (Melanie Lynskey).

Nelson’s script is a wonder, deftly balancing material that a lesser writer would have failed to bring to fruition. He takes chances here, threatening at times to derail the films tone, but never so; he constantly keeps the humor, pathos and philosophy blended into a complete whole without clashing against each other and without betraying his overall vision for the film, it more than shows in the end.

Edward Norton’s work here is extraordinary, playing two characters without betraying either one and without the slightest hint of any trickery. Both characters are fully developed, likable, and couldn’t be any different without being any more real. Norton is known by most for his role as the “narrator” in the 1999 cult classic Fight Club and 1998’s American History X, his work here is every bit as good in those films, if not better. Richard Dreyfuss lends himself to the film, playing as a Jewish drug dealer who is slightly nicer then Dreyfuss’ portrayal of Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone’s unfortunately mundane W. (in fact Dreyfuss was the only real reason to sit through Stone’s 2008 film). Tim Blake Nelson and Kerry Russell both stand out in their roles as Bolger and Janet respectively, Janet filling the role of interest to Bill, but Nelson the writer never lets the two go too far, keeping their said interest legitimate and real as opposed to a cheap ploy.

It is hard to give enough praise to what Tim Blake Nelson has accomplished with Leaves of Grass, a sweet and at times rather zany film, but also incredibly intelligent and wonderfully realized. The film is constantly engaging and thoroughly entertaining, going deeper than might be thought but always successfully. This is a film to enjoyed and savored; it is a delightful and minor treasure, and a real masterstroke for writer/director Tim Blake Nelson.

*** ½ out of ****

Movie Review: Shutter Island (2010)

2010-02-20T20:21:00.000-08:00

Directed by Martin Scorsese, 2010, 138 minutes, Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Ted Levine, Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Hayley.

Shutter Island is the work of a maestro, an energetic, frantic romp through the noir and psychological horror genres by one of the best directors working today. Martin Scorsese took what could have been a good film and turned it into a nearly great one, exercising no restraint in creating a completely engrossing and engaging genre film.

The film begins with the screen veiled in white, as a boat draws closer towards the camera. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a U.S. Marshall, headed along with his partner (Mark Ruffalo) to Shutter Island, where there lies an institution for the criminally insane. As a storm quickly approaches, Teddy and his partner are both asked to relinquish their weapons, and are introduced to the islands medical director (Ben Kingsley). A patient (Emily Mortimer), who had previous killed her three children, has escaped from her room, barefoot, into the night of the islands terrain, Teddy having been called to find her; but things on the island are not as simple as they seem, and neither is Teddy, previous traumas in life having shaped him into one who is not quite as he seems.

Scorsese creates characters out of the films setting, the island and old building Civil War buildings, the weather, entirely bleak and merciless as a hurricane brings itself down upon the island, and the music, forever pounding and pulsating in your ears. His film has a direct effect on the senses; you are uncomfortable yet completely enthralled, to the point where a simple gun shot makes you wince and jump. Few films are able to make something out of a gun shot, it has become gratuitous and simple, when a gun blows off in one of the summer’s action flicks, you could care less, but here when a gun is shot it packs a punch. So few directors and so few films even try to accomplish this feat anymore.

I’ll warn you now on spoilers in the following few sentences, I highly recommend you wait to read this paragraph until you have seen the film. There are times when Teddy’s descent into madness is highly reminiscent of Jack Torrance’s in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Where what is real and not to Teddy becomes intertwined, his world becoming an almost dream like hallucination. The way Scorsese accomplishes this is inspired; if the film had been released last year, he might have had a chance at running for Best Director.

Shutter Island represents further proof of Martin Scorsese’s mastery of his element. It creates a mood and tone, engulfs you in its style and setting, its place and time. Few directors have crafted as diverse a repertoire of films, ranging from gritty crime films to horror to psychological thrillers, like this one. Martin Scorsese is a master filmmaker, and his Shutter Island digs deep down into its main characters mind, crafting a dark psychological thriller that demands your absolute attention, right down to its haunting final image.

*** ½ out of ****

Movie Review: A Serious Man (2009, Joel & Ethan Coen)

2010-02-13T20:44:00.000-08:00

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2009, 104 minutes, Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Amy Landecker.

A Serious Man is a mix of the Coen Brothers masterpiece Fargo (1996) and the magnificent No Country for Old Men, taking the tone and feel for time and setting of Fargo and interlacing it with No Country’s distance from characters and open ended questions about life and the nature of man and his condition. While the film is not quite as good as either of those, A Serious Man is nevertheless a worthy entry into the Coen Brothers already considerable film canon.

Larry Gopnik’s life is taking a turn for the worst of biblical proportions: his wife is leaving him for his best friend, a student has bribed him for a better grade in his physics class while simultaneously threatening to sue for defamation, someone is sending slanderous letters about him to the tenure committee, his kids are an absolute mystery to him, the neighbor on one side terrifies him and to an extent so does his neighbor on the other. Did I mention his socially awkward brother living on his couch?

Talk about a cluster fuck of a week. As Larry Gopnik, Michael Stuhlbarg is excellent, enacting a character similar to William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo, except without the piss-poor choices. Gopnik is not a sad-sack or a loser, simply a man who’s life is collapsing around him and, as in the films source material, the book of Job, the character can do nothing but question why. Maybe it had something to do with the films first scene, in which a couple invite a dybbuk into their home, a dybbuk being an undead man from Jewish folklore, doing so having cursed the family. Maybe God is angry at Larry, maybe he did something wrong. Maybe it has something to do with a message written in Hebrew on the back of a goy’s (gentile, non-Jewish) teeth.

The performances are excellent all around; particularly those of Stuhlbarg and Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman, who controls every scene he inhabits. Nearly every line Melamed speaks are tinged with sympathy, as if theres something to be sympathetic towards. The other notable is Amy Landecker as Larry’s next door neighbor, Mrs. Samsky, completely embodying her character from the first scene, we may not have heard her talk or know anything about her, but we feel like we’ve known her for a long time.

A Serious Man is one of the Coen Brothers most mature films, as well as their most personal. The ending is a work of art, the acting is at times inspired; the film is both intelligent and thoughtful. If it has a fault, it’s that it at times feels misanthropic. The Coen Brothers have never made a movie quite like the last, and this is no different; A Serious Man is at times funny, and others painful, but it is always thought provoking and engrossing.

*** ½ out of ****

2010-02-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

Movie Review: Gamer (2009, Neveldine/Taylor)
Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2009, 95 minutes, Starring Gerard Butler, Michael C Hall, Ludacris, Kyra Sedgwick.

There really is no way around it, but Gamer is quite simply, a bad movie. The film starts off with an interesting, albeit unoriginal, idea, before it tosses it in the dirt, kicks it, shoots it in the face and quickly leaves it for dead. In a subgenre of movies that ranges from the excellent Battle Royale (2000) and the terrible The Condemned (2007), Gamer unfortunately sits closer to The Condemned. It is uninspired and seems bored in its unoriginality, if not its plot, the rest of us are.

Kable (Gerard Butler) is an international sensation in Slayers, a game where the players can play a death row inmate in a series of battles via a chip implanted in the brain; if an inmate survives the course of thirty battles, then said inmate can go free, no strings attached, except for Kable is the only inmate to have ever come close to those thirty games, with three left to go. Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) is the billionaire who started Slayers (along with its “mother game”, Society, where instead of death row inmates and battles a player can control an everyday citizen who signed up for the game), but as it (unfortunately) turns out, Castle has more heinous attentions afoot. After Kable is able to escape from his last game, much mayhem insues.

The first and foremost problem with this film is its plot. The first forty minutes were actually fairly decent, the action was manic, the acting was half-assed but it was entertaining; if only the film had expanded that forty minutes and threw out the rest. Once Kable escapes Slayers, the film quickly descends into stupidity. The films tone suddenly changes from high octane action to boring chase to, well I don’t really know, the films switches around so much that by the end you don’t really care anymore. If you thought the film was rediculous before Kable left the game, you’ve seen nothing yet; you know it’s bad when during a crucial scene between Butler’s Kable and Hall’s Castle you think,

“So what are we going to do today Dexter?”
“The same thing we do everyday Spartan, try to take over the world.”

The acting is universally mundane. It makes no sense to me, Gerard Butler is a decent actor who has a great scene presence, yet here he looks as bored as we are. Nearly everyone in this movie takes the film was too seriously, the two notable exceptions being Segdwick and Hall, with only the latter coming out the better. Sedgwick looks more like she was picking up a decent sized check then trying, and Alison Lohman’s hair speaks more then she does, not in a good way.

Another of the films problems is the varying, clashing styles it presents. From the gritty greys of the Slayers game to the over-the-top, ludicrous, bright color scheme of the Society game to same odd mix of the two for the real world segments. The only one of these that really works is the grey Slayers game, the real world being rather boring and the Society world being grotesque and more then slightly stupid.

The film hits its low point with the ending, the plot finally twisting itself into oblivion and the film utterly collapsing in on itself. There were some laughs to be had, the scene where the morbidly obese gamer tosses a tray of waffles at his dozen or so television screens, classic. Also, is it sad when a straight laced Lionsgate action films best scene involves Michael C. Hall in an interpretive dance number?

* ½ out of ****

Movie Review: Halloween II (Director’s Cut) (2009, Rob Zombie)

2010-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

Directed by Rob Zombie, 2009, 100 minutes (theatrical cut) 120 minutes (director’s cut), Starring Scout Taylor-Thompson, Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Danielle Harris.

I will be the first to admit I initially liked the theatrical cut of this movie. Admittedly I saw it online, but I felt it had a decent pace at its original 100 minutes, it had a neat style and I also failed to notice how bad the acting was. I also failed to notice something else that I found in Zombie’s first take on the Halloween franchise; it is really, really boring, but even more so then before, at least in the director’s cut.

The plot, if you can call it one, is this: two years after the events of the first movie, Laurie Strode is having a lot of post-traumatic stress issues; she wakes up at night screaming and sweating, her shrink is not working, every time she looks at her best friend and housemate Annie Brackett and cannot help but think her scars from the first film are her fault, and she also has inexplicably turned from preppy to white trash all in the course of those (apparently very hard) two years. Meanwhile, Michael, thought dead, is walking around looking like a biker who’s into 80’s metal, just ready to strike again after his two year leave of absence.

It doesn’t take long to realize this film is headed down the rails, slight spoilers ahead by the way. The very first scene involves mother Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie) visiting her son (played this time Chase Wright Vanek, who looks, sounds and acts nothing like the first films horrible Daeg Faerch, but is just as bad), she gives him a white horse, which is referenced in a quote before the film begins, and then we switch to where the first film ended. The scene initially starts off creepy, with Laurie walking down the road holding the gun she used to dispatch Myers at the end of the last film. We then switch to Myers being transported by two of the most foul and inept paramedics you are bound to see on a movie or in real life, who after an entirely pointless conversation on necrophilia, crash into a cow; seriously. After the surviving paramedic repeats the most consecutive use of the word fuck I think I have ever heard (it goes on for nearly a minute, if not more), Myers hops out of the back, silently decrees “off with his head” to the paramedic, walks off to an hallucination of his mother dressed in white standing next to a white horse in the middle of the road.

The sequence that follows this, I will admit, I absolutely love: it involves Laurie waking up in a near empty hospital and subsequently being chased slowly and methodically by Myers through its corridors and outside where she holes up in the security guards shack, where, unfortunately, right before Myers dispatches her, she wakes up from what apparently was a dream. We are twenty minutes into the movie at this point, and the films best scene (also ruined by the director’s cut) has turned out to be a dream. If this scene was just a short film, I’d buy it. In the director’s cut however, a small scene is added here where Strode falls into a pit of bodies at the hospital. I do not think that the hospital would be running with so few staff and a pit where they hide the bodies that they apparently have succumbed to malpractice so as to avoid lawsuits. Just sayin’.

The film then veers off into what I thought was quickly becoming a Sundance drama without the quirk, following Laurie as she faces life nearly two years after the tragedy and the mess she has become, but wait, to make matters worse, she then learns from Dr. Loomis’s (Malcolm McDowell, looking as incredibly bored and pained as we are, probably wishing he was refilming Caligula instead) tell-all recount of the madman who was Michael Myers, that she is in fact the deranged killers sister. Uh-oh! Talk about an excuse to go out and hammered after her early come middle age crisis, on the night that “he comes home”… again. Cut in scenes of some crazed homeless guy walking around the fields of middle America looking for a shave, talking to his mother, early self and a horse inside his head and occasionally murdering whatever white trash redneck comes along his way.

If more time and effort had been put into Myers’ killings and making his victims less cloyingly white trash, these might have made up for how boring the rest of the film is, but instead they merely make it even more boring by the fact that I was waiting for these characters to die from the first second of their miserably short time on screen, and more then a little disappointed that the most interesting way Myers can dispatch a victim is to stomp down his face. I kept wishing for him to grab a shotgun and stab through a girl in her panties and a door like he did in the Halloween 4, but no such luck.

However, if the film had merely been mundane and boring then it might not have been quite as painful as it is, and that’s the way it was in the theatrical, merely mediocre. But in the director’s cut, the ending destroys a mundane movie (is that even possible?) and rapes the Halloween name to within an inch of its life. Major spoilers regarding the films director’s cut coming up. In the theatrical cut, the climax takes place in a shed with Michael, Laurie, Loomis and the voices inside Michael’s head which have also taken control of Laurie, did I fail to mention her and Michael’s psychic connection that explains her decent into madness throughout the film? Sorry. This same climax takes place but ends differently in the director’s cut, where Michael, while holding Loomis, jumps through the wall of a shed, where outside the police are all pointing their guns at the pair and Loomis makes a final plea for Michael to stop. This is where the real indignities begin, consecutively like a series of gun shots. For one, Michael is not wearing his mask, you see his shaggy, angry, hobo face in full helicopter spot light. Then, after Loomis’ final plea, Michael screams “Die!” at the top of his lungs, and stabs Loomis to death. Michael is then shot, if I wasted my time and went back to count, probably more times then at the end of Halloween 4, before he finally falls to the ground as dead as he was at the end of Zombie’s first Halloween remake, which means he probably isn’t so as to give way to another abomination of a sequel. At this point, Laurie walks out of the shed, standing with a knife over Myers’ body, and is also, for some reason, shot repeatedly. Wait for it… visual Jesus reference! The camera descends down to Laurie’s body lying in the grass, possibly dead or not, with her legs perfectly straight, he arms bent at the elbow pointing up, and a sublime look on her face. Switch to a perfectly, impossibly white hall, at the end of which sits Laurie on a hospital bed, as she begins to smile creepily and serenely at the sight of mother and that goddamned white horse walking towards her. Cue the end credits as a beautifully haunting but entirely misused cover of Love Hurts plays over them and the last minute or so of the movie.

I think it would be easier to find where this ending went wrong first as opposed to where it went wrong in general. By removing Michael’s mask and letting him speak, they remove what made him so terrifying in the first place. Michael was always a being of evil, no longer human. He was a vicious beast whose sole purpose living was to do away with the living, particularly his living family. This film takes those most crucial elements of Myers’ character and does away with them, essentially committing character assassination. What next, why did the police shoot Laurie Strode? She was just standing there, and all of a sudden she was being repeatedly shot at. It makes no sense. Then, the Jesus reference that makes no sense, has no place being in this movie and grinds the film to a halt (if nothing else before this had of done the job). There's the scene played in Laurie’s mind as we realized she has replaced Michael in the Myers’ family mad killer legacy. This would be interesting if it has been well done as opposed to the laughably horrible way Zombie attempts to inject these scenes into the movie. Finally, its Nan Vernon’s cover of Love Hurts, which, having listened to out of context of the film, I love, but in the film, it made me laugh. It seriously played out like this: Laurie, standing over “dead” brother, is shot, then, cue music. Shot… “love hurts”. I found it a laughably poor choice of song for the end of the film. Mix this with the lack of the Halloween theme song till the middle of the credits, and you have a truly horrible film.

Halloween II the Director’s Cut is a horrible mix of bad acting, bad screenplay and really bad pacing. Zombie reaches his lowest low since 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses (thank god not quite so low), and proves just how unimaginative and uncreative he truly is. The film has numerous good ideas, particularly the attempt to display Michael and Laurie’s connection and Laurie’s descent into madness, but unfortunately all of these are too poorly done to connect the film into a larger whole, and what we get is the mess on screen. If you do decide to subject yourself to this film, at least have the decency to do so with the theatrical cut (I haven’t even mentioned the character assassination done to poor old Dr. Loomis), which at least leaves the beginning hospital sequence intact; that version of the film gets itself a two, possibly one and a half star rating. This film is just more proof that Rob Zombie is this decade’s true hack.

* out of **** stars

Movie Review: Halloween (2007)

2010-01-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

Directed by Rob Zombie, 2007, 109 minutes (theatrical cut) 130 minutes (director's cut), Starring Scout Taylor-Thompson, Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Daeg Faerch, Sheri Moon Zombie.

Many people have a problem with the fact that Rob Zombie’s translation of Halloween is in so many ways different from Carpenter’s, in style and substance, as well as realization. Some find it simply a mess; others find it an affront to one of the most beloved slasher killers in film history. My main problem with Zombie’s, one among many, is simple, the film is boring.

Halloween starts off by introducing the Michael Myers character as a child, reducing him to the dime-store clichés you are likely to hear on a 60 Minutes expose on one of America’s favorite misunderstood killers, grew up in a bad home, mom was a stripper, step-dad and sister felt –appropriately– creeped out by the kid, he liked to torture animals then take pictures of them, did I mention he had bully problems at school? This causes more problems then not, while Michael’s first killings take on quite the brutal punch, the character who should be pure evil, is given a motive for being the way he is, and that is not the case as well as it removes what made the original character so terrifying.

This sequence of Michael’s past takes around forty to fifty minutes to finish up before we skip forward to the present (or is the grind house seventy’s? You never can tell in this movie). Michael (Tyler Mane) has been stuck in a mental hospital for years, his mom is gone and the only two people who partake in one way conversations with the beast and his kindly, more then slightly loony psychologist Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) and one of the hospitals janitors (Danny Trejo). Well, needless to say, Myers makes his escape and heads homes to Haddonfield on, you guessed it, Halloween, to once again wreck havoc on the one town in America next to Springfield, Ohio and Crystal Lake I would never wish to live in.

One of the films problems is the tone, which switches drastically from when Michael was a kid to when he when he was an adult. Another problem is the characters, which show absolutely none of the flare of humor of those Zombie brought to life in The Devil’s Rejects (2005), instead playing mostly as a large group of hicks and white trash, whose stereotyping becomes quite tiresome very fast, and by fast I mean I wanted them all to die by the middle of the first scene so I didn’t have to listen to them anymore. The characters who aren’t hicks, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Thompson) and her friends (including Danielle Harris, making a welcome comeback to her third entry in the series, or is it forth?) play out as boring stereotypes of today’s teenage girls, yet speak absolutely nothing like them. Another (yes, another) of the films problems, is the pacing, or lack thereof, that goes hand in hand with the repetitiveness of the films third act. How long can you drag out having poorly written characters run through a house, just to be taken out and replaced by nearly identical poorly written characters in the same or another house? I think Zombie set a record on that one.

That isn’t to say Halloween lacks any merit. The film has an intriguing, gritty, grind house look that fits the proceedings appropriately, the history Zombie sets up for the film is brutal and effectively disturbing (bye–bye Juni Cortez, wish it would have happened sooner); but after a while I was simply waiting for the film to do something interesting with the material it was given, followed by the realization that I no longer cared.

*½ out of ****

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

2009-12-02T02:00:00.000-08:00

Directed by Chris Weitz, 2009, 130 minutes, Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner.

Am I the only person who feels that adapting Stephanie Meyer’s not exactly stellar novels to the big screen actually makes them bearable? Not to mention helps you understand exactly what all the fuss is about. When stripped of Meyer’s atrocious writing, one is actually able to, you know, enjoy what is going on behind it all. The plot is worth finding out and you don’t feel constantly attacked by such prose as, “I was in danger of being distracted by his livid, glorious face”, talk about a turn off.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are back as the most depressing and rock faced couple you’ll meet this side of Neo and Trinity, along with Jacob the *spoiler for those living in a cave without a TV* Werewolf who obviously serves one purpose in the movie, bet you can guess what it is. Luckily for those think Pattinson died in Harry Potter and should have stayed there, he leaves about twenty minutes into the proceedings, leaving Bella to pout and mope to her hearts content in the months that follow, also leaving the door open for Jacob to step in and make her day, working as an interesting love interest as well as creating quite the supernatural love triangle that begs one simple question, why go back to sparkles?

I guess it’s a testament to either the actors or the characters or the material they are working with that they are actually able to keep your attention. I’m not sure about the actors since there is not really much acting here as reciting of lines that might be painful to listen if we weren’t paying attention to the plot, which you think would be slower then it actually is, but no. Instead you get a good looking film that actually manages to gather your interest from plot point to plot point, removing bits of what made the first Twilight (2008) so flawed, or at least making them not as glaringly noticeable; remember tree climbing and vampire baseball scenes? Unfortunately the rest of us do too.

Really my main problems with New Moon are more issues that can’t be solved by adapting the novels to the screen and are really just nitpicking's from someone who truly does not understand. Why the hell does Edward sparkle? Vampires don’t sparkle, they fizzle, and by fizzle I mean into flames, dust and ashes. What is this bull where the vampire walks into the sun and all you get is SPARKLE! Oh my god, so great! Another issue, and this could be counted as a spoiler I guess, is why does Bella go back to Edward after getting a chance with Taylor “Screw Me I’m Almost 18” Lautner? I mean look at him! He’s got the tan and the abs and doesn’t look like he lives in a perpetual state of self-loathing. Final question, what is it about neutered vampires that set off so many pre-teen girls?

In the end I cannot hold any of these things against the film however, which is a lot better then it should be, at least more entertaining. The Twilight Saga: New Moon represents a decently paced and involving enough two-hours to justify seeing it, if not with a group of friends or at least with the girl you want who goes absolutely gaga over this shit, then a decent way to pass the time, which is what mainstream, big-budget, Hollywood money grabbers are for. The film represents solid entertainment, have at it.

*** out of ****

Movie Review: Love Exposure (2009)

2009-10-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

Directed by Sion Sono, 2008, 237 minutes. Starring Yu Tsuoda, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando.

If you let the running time fool you, then you may miss out on one of the best movie going experiences in years. Love Exposure is an absolute treasure of a movie, a film so well made and marvelously written you cannot help but be pulled in and fully entranced by the magic it works with the time it is given. Director Sion Sono pulls elements from all his previous work together for what may be his best written, although not quite his best, and most epic film to date.

Sion Sono is best known overseas for his 2002 masterpiece Suicide Circle; he has since released other art-house modern classics such as the prequel/sequel to his 2002 film, the 2005 released Noriko’s Dinner Table, the horror film Exte (2007), Hazard (2005) and Strange Circus (2005). If you are worried about quality due to the number of films he may release in any given year, don’t; if there are any problems one may have with any chosen Sion Sono film, quality is not one of them.

The plot is a long and complicated thing that even Sono himself could not condense (the films original six-hour cut was cut down to two-hours at the besieging of producers, but the cut was supposedly incomprehensible). The film is essentially a character study based around themes of religious guilt, the perception of perversion, mans nature and of course – the one you can never seem to get away from – love, among many, many others. Yu Honda is the son of a windowed Catholic priest, who begins to ask him one of the inescapable questions in the Catholic faith, “what sins have you committed today?” To give answer to his fathers incessant questioning of his souls daily unrest, Yu goes seeking out new sins day to day, eventually finding his talents lie in pedestrian panty shots, this also works to help Yu achieve his ultimate goal: find the girl of the dreams (who will undoubtedly be the only girl to turn him on), or his “Maria” as he refers to her. Wouldn’t you know that one day he finds her, a misandrist who takes far too much pleasure in her job destroying houses and beating the shit out of any unlucky beau who is unfortunate enough to stare at her sideways. Also, who is Aya Koike and what is her connection to the sinister Zero Church?

Still not getting how this is enough to successfully fill over four-hours of film? Well fear not, because Sono’s fantastic editing, pacing and use of music help move the film along with its plot to keep you thoroughly involved until the very end. During the introduction for the film at the Tokyo Filmex, director Sion Sono assured the audience the film would be “over in a flash.” While I was not there to attend that screening, I cannot say I have argued with him once it was finished. The film is one of the most magnificently edited films I have seen since JFK (1991), constantly moving at a bullets pace from scene to scene without ever losing you half a mile before the next scene. In fact, the film reminds me more of Magnolia (1999) in presentation than that of JFK.

Another possible problem the film might have had to get around was the actual content; needless to say most people haven’t seen a film where the main character decides to shoot panty-shots as a precursor to events to come, yet this really is never a problem in the film. The film has a certain take on itself to where none of its content truly offends, and you are never actually disgusted by the any of the characters actions (well, maybe in a few instances, particularly involving the character of Aya Koike, and trust me you’ll know it when you see it) because it all goes fits perfectly into the characters, their flaws and weaknesses. The farther into the film you get, the more involved with the characters you become; there is never a one-dimensional character throughout the proceedings, not one character that is written from the “Cardboard Book of Characters” that Michael Bay seems to adhere to so religiously, these are all people. Like in real life, anyone can seem to be anything until you get to know them, and in this film you get to know the characters quite well.

If the film has a flaw, they are few and far between. At times the film looks like it was shot with a documentary camera, others it looks near perfect. The acting is all quite good; the film has genuine pathos and is also genuinely funny without even seeming to try. The film is fascinating with its running themes, motifs and symbols prevalent throughout, although with the four-hour running length it eventually becomes tiresome to listen to Yu refer to his “hard-on” no matter what it symbolizes. If there is one major flaw in the film, I’d have to say it’s the films focus on plot in the later half of the film, while there is nothing particularly wrong, it seems to detract from the characters, which is really the films focus, but even this is not a very strong negative on the film.

With Love Exposure, Sion Sono has delivered his most light-hearted film, after the pessimistic Suicide Club and Strange Circus, one would never expect one of his films to have a happy ending, but this film does. Sion Sono has crafted a wonderfully made film that is a fantastic experience to watch, all four-hours of it. Seeing the film is quite the same experience as JFK and Magnolia were; these films are a rare breed, made by talented filmmakers using all the best of their abilities to make a piece of art that you will not likely soon forget. Totally original in concept and execution, I can honestly say I loved this movie; it is a film that begs to be watched again and again, and honestly deserves to be. It’s a shame, the film is highly likely not to be released in the United States outside of the festival market, although the film has been picked up in Great Britain, with a DVD release supposedly scheduled for this coming January, here’s hoping a North American distributor picks up its feet and grabs on to this one; it’s a film that truly deserves it.

Rating: **** out of ****

What Were They Thinking?

2009-10-03T20:31:00.001-07:00

Of all the horror films I have seen, one of the few that truly stands out is Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a true masterpiece of a genre where few masterpieces reside. This film alone is proof of director Roman Polanski’s not inconsiderable talent; but does this make him a good man? It is common knowledge of Polanski’s rape of then thirteen-year-old Samantha Gailey, also of how he fled the United States before his final conviction. Now that Polanski has been arrested, the story is headlining the news once more.

So why talk about an issue that has been beaten to death over and over? Because of petitioners who have “demanded the immediate release” of the infamous filmmaker. This petition, signed by over one-hundred filmmakers and actors and the sort, states “His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.” I can see one major problem with the petition right there: since when was rape an issue of “morals”?

This petition has been signed by the likes of Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Alfonso Cuaron, Jonathan Demme, Wong Kar Wai, Michael Mann, Alexander Payne, Tilda Swinton (did she not star in The War Zone (1999)?), Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, a joke in and of itself.

What were these people thinking? Are they merely ignorant of what Polanski really did or are they just so jaded they don’t care? I don’t know any person who considers rape to be a “case of morals” as this petition states but apparently a lot of seemingly sane men and women in Hollywood don’t seem to see it as a problem. Do they simply view Polanski as a brother under fire or are they just not paying attention?

I find it totally offensive that because this man has talent he seems to be above the law in matters of this severity. This is not an issue that can be determined based on morals, this was a forty-four-year-old man drugging and having non-consensual sex with a minor. Whatever way you look at it, you would think this would be viewed as repugnant. If it was anyone but a famous figure would this even be an issue? I do not see Scorsese or Allen running to the defense of other rapists, one time or not; yet for some reason they run to the defense of this man.

Do I respect Polanski’s work? Yes. The man has made some of the greatest films of our time, from Rosemary’s Baby to Chinatown (1974). Do I respect the choices he has made in his life? No. It is as simple as that, and I find it disturbing to find so many people find these choices to be an issue of "morals".

Sincerely,
The Undergraduate.