Three films a day

#208, 11/30 – Land of the Dead (2005) (dvd)

Yessir, I love zombie movies. Love ‘em. But I am not a zombie movie purist. If I had to name my three favorite zombie films none of them would be things directed by George Romero. That’s insane. It’s kind of like saying none of your favorite Bond movies involve Connery. Fortunately, one of the two Bond movies I love stars ol’ Sean—though my absolute favorite is the one with Lazenby—so I’m not a two-time philistine.

So what’s my deal? Romero’s gore tends to turn me off a little. I guess I love the terror induced by zombies but I’m not really wanting to see eyeballs getting torn out of sockets. You get me. Romero’s zombies may be cooler than what you’ll find in the newer films—since, as someone I know once put it, they shamble instead of run— but they’re just too damned disgusting for me. Finger-chewing, head-tearing, belly-button-ring-snatching. Ick. Ick.

Anyway, Land of the Dead gives us John Leguizamo. In a zombie movie. Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with this combination. Nothing at all. Plus, Joanne Boland is Canadian and therefore I seem to be law bound to have some weird affinity for her.

It’s not really very special, but it’s a zombie movie and I liked it. You have to work hard to make me not like one.

#207, 11/29 – The Cave (2005) (gitn)

So as I’m sitting here to write about the second-to-last movie of my November, my iTunes just shuffle-jumped from Jonathan Fire*Eater’s glorious “When Prince was a Kid” to Josie & the Pussycats’s “Stop Look and Listen” (and then followed that up with Bud Powell’s “Cleopatra’s Dream”). My god.

Oh, right. I’m supposed to be talking about a bad movie.

Is The Cave bad? Yeah, I guess it’s pretty bad. In fact, it’s probably bordering on horrible. But I didn’t hate it. It kept me entertained. Somehow. Well, I know how and I’ll explain in a moment. Were I writing a professional review I’d warn everyone stay away. But I’m not. So I don’t care what you do. I wasted 90-some minutes of my life and I had my odd share of brainless fun. Which isn’t to say the movie is actually fun. I don’t think it is. In other words, OK, yeah. Stay away.

But you see, sometimes, the bad movies are better for me than the good ones. And I cannot watch a movie featuring Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut, and Lena Headey without getting entertainment out of it. I have a strange loyalty to/fixation with actors well below the A-list who occasionally pop up in stuff I’ve really liked. And those three are all members of that happy set. My Cole Hauser thing started when he played David Keith’s partner on a shortlived mid-90s ABC television show about cops. And come to think of it, my loyalty to Morris Chestnut started when he starred in a shortlived mid-90s ABC television show... about… cops. Oh, but Lena Headey first got me when she played the angry daughter of Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Charlotte Rampling in Aberdeen; no cops take center stage in that one.

Oh. Plus, The Cave has Piper Perabo and Daniel Dae Kim. I like them, too. (Yes, I’ve forgiven you for Coyote Ugly, Piper. Barely.)

So, yeah. Bad, but I didn’t mind. At least it was watchable, which is more than I can say for a couple of the movies I’ve subjected myself to this year. I’ve only got 31 days to run across something I find more dreadful than When Will I Be Loved. I don’t think I’m gonna.

(The draft for this one was also eaten, but fortunately for me it was much easier to recover/recreate.)

#206, 11/27 – Burden of Dreams (1982) (dvd)

Back when I saw The Duellists, the thing which struck me hardest was the Ridley Scott comment I transcribed for my writeup: “There are 900,000 reasons for not making the movie. [The director has] to be the person who is the reason to make the movie.” You don’t have to dig very deep to see the ego in that statement. It’s quite a simple theory, really: Everything and everyone is trying to beat the director. Despite the fact that a film is a collaborative effort, getting one done is often a titanic struggle between what’s inside the director and everthing else. Including nature. No. Especially nature.

Documentary filmmakers have delved into this thesis of director against the world with such work as Lost in La Mancha and Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocolypse. All you have to do is read those titles to know that you’re about to watch an epic, difficult soul-sucking battle. And, yeah, nature’s gonna swing by at some point and really fuck things up.

Burden of Dreams is no different. It’s about how Werner Herzog pitted his ego (among other things) against the Peruvian jungle when making Fitzcarraldo. It’s perhaps not fair for me to say this, since I haven’t seen Fitzcarraldo (or any of Herzog’s films except the bleak Scream of Stone), but based on the narrative of this documentary I think we can call the battle between Herzog and the jungle a tie. (I’m not sure yet about the battle between Herzog and Klaus Kinski, but that’s the subject of another film, of course.)

I had initially interspersed the following transcribed monologue of Herzog’s with my own comments, but I think it’s best left on its own. It’s clearly the moment of the film and I think anyone who sees it immediately senses as much. OK, I can’t help emphasizing one phrase.

Of course we are challenging nature itself. And it hits back. It just hits back, that’s all. And that’s grandiose about it and we have to accept that it is much stronger than we are.

Kinski always says it is full of erotic elements. I don’t see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It’s just, nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away.

Of course there is a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery. And the birds are in misery; I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain.

It’s an unfinished country. It’s still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is the dinosaurs here. It’s like a curse weighing on the entire landscape. And whoever goes too deep into this has his share of that curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It’s a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. It’s the only land where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication and overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But, when I say this I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But, I love it against my better judgement.

[emphasis mine]

Look out, Haskell! It’s real!

#205, 11/26 – The Searchers (1956) (dvd)

I had written more about this, a lot more. About how John Ford’s supposed meditation on racism was flawed and bothersome. And how I disagree with Ebert’s much more forgiving read because he steers clear of the idea that the movie treats the Comanches it depicts as “childish savages” and brutal, underhanded sexual predators. And how I wasn’t going to take very kindly to the “but it was 1956” argument.

And then, for some reason, the draft got eaten and I spent quite a bit of time trying to recreate it in my head. But it was a lot of words. A lot of words. And I just don’t have the energy to conjure them all up. So instead I give you the succinct version of my writeup:

I didn’t like it.

#204, 11/25 – The Island (2005) (gitn)

It’s a Michael Bay movie. You know what that means. The man’s a master of the current Hollywood aesthetic. I expected to be bored, but truth be told it kept me interested throughout with one really crucial question. While comparisons to certain 70s science fiction movies ran through my head, while various pieces of property (most especially cars) met with their untimely end, while the Bruckheimerish wacky black guy blurted out “Jesus must love you! That’s the craziest mess I ever seen!”, I pondered one thing. Was that really Pete from Benson playing Jones Three Echo?

And dig this, it was.

Cool, huh?

(Yes, I was careful to call the “Jesus Must Love You” guy Bruckheimerish, because Papa Jerry does not have a producing credit on this film. It’s the first film Bay has done without Jerry. But this is one of those things. You know, with the apple and tree and the falling.)

#203, 11/24 – The Good Thief (2002) (tivo)

My double double feature Thursday closed with the second go at Bob le flambeur, Neil Jordan’s clever remake. Jordan did a favor to those of us who’d seen the original just a few hours before (heh) by not giving us a slavish remake. His changes are good ones, and they’re all in service of the inevitability. This Bob—played by Nick Nolte in his classic “too tired to do much of anything” style— understands that something will go wrong. He does. And he tries to allow for it. Alas, something else must go wrong, right? Well, maybe. I’m not telling. But it was a treat to see right after the original, actually.

According to my TiVo I recorded this on Friday November 12th, 2004 at 9pm EST, from HBO2 West. It’s about time I got around to it, huh?

#202, 11/24 – Bob le flambeur (1958) (dvd)

My grip on French isn’t what it should be so I had to check to see what flambeur meant. I was a bit disappointed, because I sincerely hoped it meant “flamer”, or at least “flamboyant”. No such luck. While I invite you to translate the word properly, I am always going to think of this movie as Bob the Flamer. While that name has connotations with which we’re all familiar, I should let you know that he’s called “Bob the Flamer” primarily because he occasionally sets his hand on fire after covering it with a flammable liquid. He even carries a little pin which says “Set me on fire, I’m Bob.” (No, none of this is actually in the text of the film.)

Besides wearing such a cute pin, Flaming Bob gambles. A lot. He really should see someone about it, too, because he doesn’t know when to quit. Here’s more about Bob. He’s got a young friend who idolizes him, an old chum in the police force (an odd friendship when you consider that Bob has had a history of breaking the law), and a buddy who can crack the hell out of safes. Plus, he’s generous with his money when he’s on top of the world and I think he may have developed a crush on a very young lady he meets in the film.

Anyway, when you’ve gambled all your money away and the opportunity for a big score has presented itself and you’re living in a French gangster movie, what do you do? Don’t think too hard.

This is my second French heist movie in as many weeks, and yes, the inevitable again happens. A job is planned. Something goes wrong. (Try to contain your disappointment at my spoiling that for you.) And we’re just left to watch it all come together (or fall apart). The gambling and heist combination is a fun one, which is part of the reason why I enjoyed Mike Hodges’ Croupier—a movie which I think owes a little debt to Bob the Flamer.

What happens to Bob? Does he succeed? Does he get away? Does he die? Does he end up in the pokey? Does he set himself on fire? Does he hang on to the loot? I’m not going to say. But Bob is just all right with me.

Flame on, Monsieur Bob.

#201, 11/24 – Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003) (gitn)

A movie where the members of a high school class get kidnapped, sent to an island, and ordered to slaughter each other is not my sort of thing, so I’m still shocked about how much I liked Battle Royale. When I saw it last December I expected gory, slasher-style teensploitation. And sure, that element was there. But it was much richer and more satisfying than a strict exploitation film would be. So, yes. Shocked. Crazier still, I was so impressed with how the movie blends genres and styles and moods I knew I’d eventually watch it again. This morning I watched it as the first half of a double feature with its sequel. I’d actually been avoiding the second movie largely because I feared it would be as cheap as I expected the first film to be. But as the second half of a doubleheader… why not?

The first Battle Royale had aged in my head pretty well but when I watched it again I still found myself surprised. Shocked again, even. Yes, re-shocked. This is a fine film. Little things I merely liked the first time leapt out at me this time through (like the moment above between students Chigusa Takako and Sugimura Hiroki). What the movie lacks in subtlety (or, you know, depth), it gladly makes up for in execution (hmm, that’s an unintended pun). Part dark satire. Part allegory. Part thriller. Part teen melodrama. Part Horror. Part Takeshi Kitano (I’ve only seen a few movies he’s acted in, yet I already consider Kitano a genre onto himself). Part kitchen sink. I really love Battle Royale.

In fact, it’s one of my favorite speculative fiction movies ever. Up there with Seconds and Logan’s Run. None of those three films are perfect, but there’s a strange charm to each of them. Yes, even Battle Royale. I know that’s probably a weird thing to say about a movie which gleefully kills 40 teenagers (like it’s any less weird to say it about a movie that kills everyone over 30), but I point to “a pot lid and binoculars”—an answer to the question “what weapons do you have?”—for all the proof I need.

When the first movie was done and the second movie started I had one thought in my mind: If ever a movie didn’t need a sequel it’s Battle Royale. What on earth could be done in a second movie? There was nothing to follow up. Nothing to improve. Remember, it killed 95% of its characters. There was nothing to work with. Nothing at all. Yet here I was watching this thing. After all, Battle Royale surprised me. Maybe the sequel could surprise me too. You never know. Right?

Right. Battle Royale 2 is not the same kind of movie as its predecessor. At all. It’s not a nimble, biting piece of social commentary. And that’s a problem. Instead we have a very gravely focused piece of social commentary, filled with anguish and remorse. The tagline says it all: “This time it’s war.” They aren’t kidding. There is no dancing through genres here. This is a straight up war picture. It’s also much more soberly political. A lot had obviously gone on between 2000 (when Battle Royale was made) and 2003. The sequel very openly and plaintively criticizes American foreign policy and the concept of pre-emptive war. Perhaps a bit clumsily, but still somewhat effectively.

As I was watching this movie unfold I was… unhappy. It was so grim, so joyless. About a half hour in I wondered if I really wanted to sit through another 90 minutes of “ugh”. I kept going, though, and a little after the hour mark it caught me.

One scene did it. The film took a beat from the grim action sequences and explosions and political criticism to show a flashback sequence which started with one of the girls finding a piano. And it was that pause which made the urgency that courses through the whole film more palatable. The urgency makes a lot of sense—it was just hard to take. Kinji Fukasaku, the director of the first film, started making this one as he was dying of prostate cancer. He did not live to see the production through, but his son Kenta—a guy exactly one year younger than me—finished the film. And though I think the film is sometimes hampered by its urgency, there are points in the second half of it where the anguish and remorse become really beautiful things to see.

And then the coda comes, and it’s quiet and it’s lovely, and I was almost sad to see the movie end. It’s not a great film. In fact, it’s fairly flawed and it’s much too heavy. But where the first movie had a strange charm to it, this one had a strange beauty. So yes, this one surprised me too, after all. Go figure.

#200, 11/23 – An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) (dvd)

So last week I was talking with my remote movie buddy about a mutual afflication of ours (asthma), and she made a reference to a scene in this film. “Ace of Spades. Ace of Spades”, she said. I fessed up that I’d actually never seen it, not even a minute of it, and she recommended I do so. I’m in one of my rare suggestion-taking phases and since I was about to watch my 200th film for the year I decided to commemorate it with a milestone movie. And what’s so special about this one? Well, An Officer and a Gentleman holds the record for the film I’ve conciously avoided the longest. 23 years.

It has to do with that song. You know the one. I couldn’t stand it (and my parents loved it) and I didn’t want to risk hearing it. Plus, well, in 1982 I wanted no part of mushy romance stuff. I got over the second part pretty darn soon—especially when you consider that I watched Taylor Hackford’s very next film, 1984’s Rachel Ward/Jeff Bridges/James Woods triumph, Against All Odds, as soon as it came out on cable—but I never really got past the song. I still hate that fucking song.

There’s something about 80s Hollywood. There are styles and techniques and choices (both visual and narrative) certain directors made which seem markedly different from what’s common today. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I mean yet, but I feel it—and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. It seems like parallel filmmaking paths developed in the 80s. Hollywood chose the louder chomp-your-popcorn-and-enjoy-this-music-video approach of things like Top Gun, but the decade is littered with quiet classics. Much to my surprise (seriously, I was prepared to gently put this one down), An Officer and a Gentleman is one of them.

I’m not saying that the quieter films of the 80s don’t have their little faults. And there is one big howler moment in this film to be sure. One of my favorite comedy shows of all time was Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I remember hearing Tom Servo yell out “Don’t you do it!” during an episode (Pod People, it turns out). I didn’t know where they got it from. Some cheesy science fiction epic, I thought. Ha! Way off. As soon as I heard it in the movie I lost it. For about two minutes. But still, unintentionally funny script choices aside, this is a fine story about growing up, and growing together. Not only that, we get Debra Winger at her best plus wonderful contributions from David Keith, a very young David Caruso, and Grace Zabriskie. And just as importantly my man Robert Loggia shows up at the beginning. Robert. Loggia.

(Semi-spoiler ahead)

You know what my favorite scene in the movie was? When Mayo forsook the obstacle course record to help Seeger walk that wall. I’m getting sappier as I get older, aren’t I? First the rose competition scene in Mrs. Miniver, and now this? See but that’s the craft of storytelling. The scene was necessary and it was predictable, but it felt right. It was satisfying and rewarding because it wasn’t forced. And maybe that’s what I like so much about this strain of Hollywood filmmaking. Discretionary use of force.

#199, 11/22 – Starship Troopers (1997) (gitn)

Not that my life felt any less whole for it, but yes, I’d gone eight years having seen only five fairly late on minutes of Verhoeven’s “adaptation” of the revered Heinlein novel. I’m no purist, I just wasn’t that interested in the thing despite the presence of at least four notable 90210 and Melrose Place guest stars, which would make it fun for me at the very least.

I’d heard that Verhoeven was aiming for satire, and I think that’s certainly what he gave us. It’s a big budget B-movie-style send-up of the classic war film (and war society), complete with all the archetypal characters and scenes, and some goofy Movietone-style propaganda footage, too. Satire has to be its primary aim, even, because the whole film is so backwards-looking, one would have to swallow a whole lot of bullshit to think human beings in the 23rd Century somehow couldn’t think beyond 1945.

Some of it even takes on a very interesting sheen now in Bush’s America. But I won’t delve into that.

It’s fun. It’s silly. It’s a little long.

#198, 11/21 – Walkabout (1971) (dvd)

I’ve spent 24 hours trying to think of a way to relay my thoughts and feelings about this one. No luck. So, maybe more later. But I watched it.

#197, 11/19 – Passing By (2003) (gitn)

I’ve only seen two Brazilian films in the last few years, but they both deal with children coming of age in staggering poverty. Much smaller in scale than 2002’s Rio-based City of God, Passing By shows three Sao Paolo boys, all named after U.S. presidents, on two important days in their lives. As the movie starts, the boys are grown and Washington has reportedly been slain on the other side of the city. Jeferson and Kennedy, who haven’t kept in touch since Jeferson went off to military school years before, trek across the city to identify and claim the body. The movie intercuts the grim trip of Jeferson and Kennedy with flashbacks of the three boys taking another journey across the city just before Jeferson was to leave for military school.

It’s an effective film where several little scenes, or moments within them, rang true. Alas, only the three boys central to this story are drawn with any depth, so it’s only when they’re dealing with each other that things feel right. I especially loved watching the occasionally strained conversation between Jeferson and Kennedy as they traveled by bus and train to the morgue.

#196, 11/19 – Medium Cool (1969) (dvd)

“Look out, Haskell! It’s real!”

Occasionally a moment will make me sit bolt upright and go “wait, did that just happen?”. They’re rare, but they’re fascinating.

When I expect some yelling or crosstalk in an English language movie (or if it’s something from Mike Leigh), I put the subtitles on as a backup. There’s quite a lot of noise near the end of this ficticious film as a female character files through a crowd on the South Side of Chicago looking for her son, just as an honest-to-goodness riot is about to start. Yes, an honest-to-goodness Democratic National Convention of 1968 riot. “The whole world is watching”. And indeed they were, as cameras catch the mayhem starting. And then a teargas cannister lands right at our feet. And you can hear someone coughing.

I think I saw “Look out, Haskell! It’s real!”—a shouted warning from somewhere off camera—more than I actually heard it (even though it’s very clear). But it caught me straight away. See, Haskell is the given name of the film’s director (thank goodness I was paying attention during the opening credits) and, well, this wasn’t a documentary, so it was an unexpected thing to hear. The scene immediately ends and we get Mayor Daley at the podium. But I was still in the moment that just happened. What went on? I had to know.

When the movie ended I turned on the commentary and found out that the director was most certainly gassed. A cannister landed at his feet, and he happily shot it. “Look out, Haskell! It’s Real!” was actually dubbed in after the fact. Perhaps a hindsight-is-twenty-twenty warning to the guy who was sitting there holding a camera while a chemical weapon was discharging itself at his feet (not that he necessarily had anywhere to go). Still, even though it’s not the spontaneous breakdown it seems, it remains a compelling moment in a very, very interesting film. (Come to think of it, I might prefer the fact that it’s been dubbed in. The whole film is about that odd blurring between cinema verite and fiction, anyway.)

#195, 11/18 – A Day Without a Mexican (2004) (dvd)

At the beginning of the year I half-joked with someone that when it comes to this country’s social issues, only the shitty movies will ever get lauded. It’s no surprise that a cynic like me would say such a thing, I guess, but three months later I saw Paul Haggis’s Crash and my fellow citizens proved my point, again. People have fallen over themselves to praise that terrible fraud of a thing and I’m sure it’s due some awards, too. While I’ve never hidden my dislike for it, I took it somewhat easy on Crash the first few times I’ve written about it here. No longer. It is not just tragically flawed, it’s stupid. Were it not for Bewitched, I’d probably call it the stupidest movie I’ve seen this year. But it’s got this illusory heft. Oh boy, does it ever. And that must be what people respond to. Because, to quote Michael Sicinski’s excellent Cineaste review, “[Crash] has an air of truth without ever saying anything truthful.” (But it seems so damned weighty.)

I suppose there’s a chance that A Day Without A Mexican, which certainly doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously (and thank god for that!), isn’t well-considered because it doesn’t have that feeling of weight. In fact, sometimes to its own detriment, the movie goes a little too silly. Or maybe it’s not well-liked because it’s got more honesty in half a scene than I found in all of Crash. Or maybe the fact that it fits so very well with my points of view about the topics addressed in the film has something to do with my positive reaction. Maybe maybe maybe. Regardless, I respect this movie far more than Crash. It’s a comedy and a well-meaning social commentary at the same time, and it’s a difficult combination to pull off for a movie like this. Thing is, I find it largely successful in its earnestness and often endearing in its silliness.

Of course, I’ve said pretty much the same about Love Actually— another movie in which no Mexicans were hurt during filming—and people get on my case.

#194, 11/17 – The Jacket (2005) (gitn)

So I’d initially written an elaborate and goofy entry for this one just as my way of avoidance. I didn’t want to just come out and say “Jeez, what a pile of rubbish”. Perhaps because that’s not exactly how I felt. I mean, I found a number of small positives in it. It cribs from La Jetée, for instance. And to me such a thing is a certain virtue. Plus, it has Keira Knightley and Adrien Brody—two more bona fide virtues in my book. And some of it actually worked for me, even. Hell, I am pretty sure I would have said a bunch of fairly nice things about it, but I found the end so completely unsatisfactory it ruined the whole experience for me. Oh well.

Still, I’ve seen a lot of Keira’s face in the last six days. You are required by law to envy me.