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October Faction (2020)
GRIM meets TWITCHES ...
I really hated the first episode of this series and wrote the following review to reflect my initial impressions:
"Dialogue in this underwhelming series is trite and clumsy. As it falls from its less-than-capable actor's lips I couldn't help rolling my eyes. The acting especially lacks credibility and naturalism so that it really feels like amateur drama. 3 Stars"
I've come back to edit my initial review having now watched the rest of the series. Unbelievably, after that awful pilot episode with some of the most trite writing I've heard from a while I decided to watch episode two and started to get intrigued.
By the time it finished I found it pretty satisfying, which is a long way from assessment. It's not amazing, but neither is it the train wreck I thought it was going to be. Things get interesting when it takes on an element of GRIM, but I already feel like I'm saying too much. If you liked GRIM you'll probably like this.
Great for a rainy day.
Penny Dreadful (2013)
Well crafted short comedy
Shane Atkinson's PENNY DREADFUL is a generally well crafted short comedy that somehow won the audience prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France in 2013. The film combines tropes of the kidnapping gone wrong with the conventions of the monster child film, reminding me of the 2007 supernatural thriller WHISPER directed by Stewart Handler, about a soul-eating demon child kidnapped by a gang of outlaws desperate for his ransom. One might also notice that Atkinson's film contains overtones of HOME ALONE.
PENNY DREADFUL is competently shot. It's framing is generally pleasing even if it is a little by the numbers while the performances from most of the cast are adequate. The one understandable exception is child actor Oona Lawrence, who puts in an excellent performance mastering a variety of facial expressions from broodingly unhinged to sweet-as-pie but, as with many child actors, struggles to make her dialogue not sound like she is reciting lines from a screenplay.
It is in fact the screenplay that is the weakest link in this film. Where the story overall is strong, the dialogue is clunky and becomes overly repetitive (after the first two times David H. Stevens asks "What is wrong with you?" the line loses its intended humour). Stevens reminds me a little of Steve Zahn and carries the film on his slender shoulders, but has trouble selling his novice kidnapper mainly because the character is so insufferably stupid.
The film relies upon repetition of dialogue and situations for most its humour but even at 17 minutes, the repetition quickly becomes a bit too much.
Lake Mungo (2008)
Moebius madness
Like all good ghost stories, Lake Mungo, lingers in the mind long after the closing credits, its tendrils creepily entwining themselves in the mind, haunting the viewer with its ideas of a person who is haunted by their own ghost. In this way, Lake Mungo combines a naturalistic non-actorly made-for-TV documentary style that is convincing in its quotidian banality, with a clever self-reflexive narrative device used in such films as Polanski's surreal nightmare, The Tenant, and Lynch's under-appreciated classic, Lost Highway. Like this other films, Lake Mungo folds in on itself in a way that can only be described as clever, uncanny and truly chilling.
The Haunting of Hewie Dowker (1976)
Reviewing from memory ...
I saw The Haunting of Hewie Dowker during its first and only screening on Australian television back in 1976. I was just seven years old at the time and it scared the crap out of me. As with a lot of made for television productions, because these films lack the budget of theatrical releases the filmmakers must find alternative ways to represent images and it is the imaginative indirectness of TV movies (before the coming of CG which spoiled everything) that has made them so effective and engaging. It is specifically the dream sequences in Hewie Dowker that stand out in my memory with the haunting whisper of the ghost calling out to Hewie like Kathy's voice traveling on the wind calling out to Heathcliff. I also remember sequences that took place in a storm drain but much of this was watched through my eight-year-old fingers so I cannot be more helpful. I doubt this film will ever again see the light of day and should it do so it will have not aged well. For my part, it remains a moment of my childhood that contributed to my abiding fear of ghosts and ghost stories - I love 'em!
House Husbands (2012)
Lacklustre Comedy Drama ...
Channel Nine is not renowned for making the best television drama in Australia. That title goes to ABC and SBS, the two non-commercial stations (battling to stay commercial against pressure from the current Federal government that wants to see the stations commercialised, so that EVERYTHING will be the same). However, House Husbands brings together a terrific cast who together explore a range of contemporary family structures and the challenges they face, both universal and specific.
One of my reasons for writing this review is to counter the review by IMDb user "fitnessspm" who accuses House Husbands of "destroying families".
If only we could accuse the media of being that powerful! This one thing television can certainly be accused of is stealing people's time and keeping them from doing far more creative and fulfilling things with it. In any case. this reviewer has not taken into account that House Husbands has not been rating well despite its quality. Nevertheless it does not stop him from spouting the "magic bullet" theory from the 1930s that asserts that screen images enter the mind of the viewer unfiltered. Apparently images just go in and that's that. And yet this guy disproves the theory himself by demonstrating that he has watched the series with his own set of interpretive biases firmly in place.
Obviously fitnessspm is a male reviewer, for if you look at his other reviews (and I encourage you to) there is a consistently aggressive misogynistic message that blames women for all that is wrong with Western culture - suggesting this guy has either gone through a bad breakup or doesn't cope around strong women, or both.
So this guy blames television dramas that don't portray traditional family values for high divorce rates and wants to see a return to "normal" and "traditional" family structures - something he says has existed for 1000s of years, despite the nuclear family being a modern invention that superseded extended families during the latter half of the 1800s among bourgeois families and spread to working class families in the first part of the twentieth century. As for his claims about the influence of television and the need to portray a narrow set of traditional values ... were he to look at the sociological impact of a show like The Brady Bunch on a generation, in which a large nuclear family exists in harmony with only slight ripples occurring that are ironed out by attentive bounded parents and submissive children, things might start to look a little different. He might see that the very popular family sitcom precipitated a wave of unhappiness in many a home because that's just not how families in reality work. I am certainly part of that generation that wished I was a member of the Brady family and occasionally resented that my own home life paled in comparison, as did many of my friends.
Why do I write this? Firstly this guy's comments have just plain gotten up my nose. Secondly his use of IMDb as a platform for spreading misogynistic hate is just so inappropriate - thus I counter with my own perspective in an effort to balance things out. Thirdly I think that IMDb user comments should really stay on topic.
Thus, in the spirit of staying on topic, I'd like to say that House Husbands is a good idea executed really well. At it's heart this is a soap opera in which a group of married family men must address their own feelings of inadequacy and find meaning and fulfilment in work that is not financially rewarded yet profoundly satisfying. Despite the lack of credibility in the show's premise, it makes the situation work, drawing from headlines that have reported on the rise of husbands becoming primary caregivers and nurturers in families. The great thing about Channel 9's approach is that, despite all the melodrama, there are some really terrific underlying issues that surface and are handled with complex realism - then of course simplified for the sake of good storytelling. In any case, this is a series worth checking out that adds to the discourse on gender and roles in some intelligent ways - a nice change of pace for Channel 9.
Nekromantik (1988)
Politically incendiary filmmaking ...
Buttgereit has proved himself to be first and foremost a filmmaker concerned with Germany's political and social past and present. That past of course includes the unfathomable horror of concentration camps and the deliberate execution of over nine million people who did not conform to the values and aspirations of the Third Reich. How does one represent this particularly dark moment in not only Germany's past, but in human history? What other horrors are humans capable of? Contemporary Germany remains unresolved to this part of its history and filmmakers like Buttgereit have set themselves the task of thrusting it in their faces. Watched literally, his Nekromantik films are buffoonish meaningless projects concerned with exploiting taboo topics and turning even the hardiest of stomachs. Indeed, regardless of how one approaches Buttgereit's film, it is hard to watch, but that is his point. What other describe as the film's "poor" production values and "bad" performances are all conceived to contribute to the overall pessimism and rage that underscores the film. Buttgereit deliberately embraces a trash aesthetic as it fits in with his intentions to disturb, repulse and offend.
Body Melt (1993)
Strikingly original, absurd and wonderfully gory horror comedy ...
As an Australian reviewer it is gratifying seeing reviewers from other countries express their appreciation for Philip Brophy's little 1993 gore-fest. Brophy is something of a Renaissance Man, wearing many hats from composer and musician to film critic, curator and academic (for those interested in Brophy's scholarly work you might want to check out his website: http://www.philipbrophy.com/index.html).
BODY MELT cleverly pokes fun at a variety of popular contemporary Australian television dramas (most notably NEIGHBOURS, the long-running prime-time Aussie soap opera well-known to British viewers and set in the neighbourly cul-de-sac of Ramsay Street) and 1970s Aussie police procedurals. Even most of his cast come from Australian television series, such as BLUE HEALERS regulars Lisa McCune and William McInnes and Brett Climo (who starred in A COUNTRY PRACTISE and THE FLYING DOCTORS) and Gerard Kennedy, the face of Crawford Productions 1970s cop show, DIVISION 4. Perhaps best of all is the casting of NEIGHBOURS veteran Ian Smith, who plays Harold Bishop in that long-running TV Soap. Casting Smith as eccentric Dr. Carrera, Brophy provides the actor with a rare opportunity to play against type and Smith inhabits the role with relish.
I was at the wonderful old Valhalla Cinema in Northcote (now the far less interesting Westgarth Cinema) back in 1993 on the night that Brophy premiered BODY MELT to an appreciative Melbourne audience who belly-laughed at the over-the-top comedy and lurid special effects. His depictions of bodies self-destructing and liquefying in various icky and imaginative ways recalled, for me, Brophy's 1988 experimental film, SALT SALIVA SPERM AND SWEAT, in which he explores corporeality and the idea of bodily fluids as a form of social exchange. At the screening, Brophy explained that he incorporated ideas he'd had for shorter films into BODY MELT as side-stories, admitting that while they do not contribute towards a cohesive narrative, they nevertheless fit within the broader thematic concerns of the film. Indeed, I would argue that these moments of suburban Gothic psychedelia and outback redneck cannibalism add to the outlandish comedy and disorienting effect of the film.
It's nice to see people from other countries getting into this film, which deserves a higher rating than 4.3, even if some of the humour is culturally parochial. Thanks to those who took the time to watch and appreciate this overlooked little gem.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
An uproarious, celebratory, melancholy romp...
Mark Hartley, the man behind the wildly entertaining documentaries about B-grade films and filmmakers, Not Quite Hollywood (2008) and Machete Maidens Unleashed (2010), premiered his latest and, sadly, last documentary - Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films - in the opening weekend of the 2014 Melbourne International Festival (MIFF).
As with Hartley's previous documentaries, the story at the heart of Electric Boogaloo (its name taken from the film, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo", the strange sequel to the hit 1984 rap dancing film, "Breakin'") cleverly unfolds through the skillful editing together of myriad eyewitness talking heads and interspersing these with clips from relevant films along with some wonderfully tongue-in-cheek animations. Essentially, Hartley's latest film explores the story behind Cannon films from its inception to its ultimate demise, following the weird and wild careers of crazy Israeli cinephiles-cum-directors-cum-producers-cum-Hollywood B-grade movie moguls, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Theirs is an extraordinary rags-to-riches- rags story and one well worth seeing for yourself. Hartley has a rare gift for storytelling in his documentaries, bringing together a complex panoply of opinions, rants, scathing criticism and fond remembrances, and weaving these all together into a taut, laugh-out-loud, highly entertaining film, and Electric Boogaloo is no exception, as demonstrated by the very enthusiastic reception the film received from the audience at MIFF.
For film lovers and those who grew up with the Golan/Globus catalog in the 1980s with films like Missing in Action, Lifeforce, Treasure of the Four Crowns, American Ninja, Break Dance, Death Wish 2 and its sequels, Masters of the Universe, The Last American Virgin, Cyborg, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ... the list goes on, and on, and on ... this film is pure joy and something of a nostalgia trip. In this regard the film does have a sad side as it follows how the dreams of Golan and Globus would eventually fizzle up in bankruptcy and acrimony, leaving behind a library of impossibly bizarre creations that are truly weird and wonderful. Electric Boogaloo will no doubt prompt you to want to revisit many of these titles or discover others for the first time. I suspect that, being a true lover of B movies, this is ultimately one of Hartley's aims.
Hemlock Grove (2013)
Monumentally ridiculous ...
There is nothing in Hemlock Grove that hasn't been done to death. Thus it is that this Netflicks produced series relies on all manner of predictable clichés, tedious dialogue and an uninteresting narrative. What's worse is that your average horror aficionado is so familiar with the tropes, which build so painfully slowly, and the "reveals" which are hardly surprising, that it verges on insufferable. There are some moments of interesting special effects that indulge in the goo and gore, and its nice not to be saddled with CGI laden special effects (too bad for those Gen Y viewers who confuse CGI for reality and think that everything not digitised looks fake) I suppose for fans of Twilight this sort of horror - cushioned as it between huge mundane moments of poorly written melodramatic dialogue - is just the ticket. Not for this little black duck.
Shattered Lives (2009)
Tedious, pretentious uninteresting ...
I purchased Shattered Lives because I am in the middle of doctoral research on evil children in film and had no other way of watching it to check out the narrative to determine its appropriateness. After collecting over 300 titles of varying standards, I'm now down to the bottom of the proverbial barrel with this hackneyed shot-on-video student film. There are some really dreadful evil child films out there, such as Robert Voskanian's 1977 Z-grader, The Child, but this film is way more tedious with its overlong scenes and crawling pace, sloppy editing, trite dialogue and uneven soundtrack. A few reviewers have highlighted the poor performances of the actors and most of them do indeed feel very staged and self-conscious, but I'm going to leave these poor souls alone considering the substandard material they had to work with, written by the wannabe director cum producer cum editor Carl Lindberg, who is yet to produce anything of any substance and seems obsessed with emulating Donnie Darko for some inexplicable reason. Finally, a very bloody and contrived multiple murder sequence that opens and closes the film is rendered uninteresting because of its outlandish scenario so that this too devolves into pure tedium. I'm usually quite patient and forgiving with films but I found myself sighing and fast forwarding through meaningless scenes that went for too long, such as an awkward dance performed by two dwarfs dressed as harlequin dolls, endlessly circling each other for about six minutes - sounds intriguing but it's not.
My advice? There are too many really solid shot-on-video horror films flooding the market these days to justify wasting your time fast forwarding through this lifeless morass.
The Walking Dead (2010)
Tedious soap opera ...
I just finished with season 2 of TWD and it was just awful. Special make-up effects aside - which are consistently impressive, but that's not why people watch drama - the series draws from the well-trodden genre of disaster films that relies on stereotypes of different moral and ethical positions to survival, such as the sacrifices people are prepared to make in order to ensure their own survival. I don't intend on watching anymore because it is all just the same situations hashed out over and over again but just in different locations. Were the characters more interesting and less inclined to the ridiculous soap opera of endless back and forth alliances (it's like watching a ten hour version of Darabont's other moribund disaster flick, The Mist), I may reconsider, but as it stands, it's just awful.
The best zombie films, like Romero's Dead Trilogy use the zombie motif to comment on contemporary society. If only TWD with its armada of writers could be that smart. However, aligning itself too closely with the disaster genre, it forgoes all the wealth the zombie genre has to offer. For the life of me I cannot understand why this series is so popular. Maybe The Walking Dead is code for its target demographic.
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The animal inside ...
Animals play a significant role in Bringing Up Baby, adding absurdity to the comic situations and its theme of
crazed infatuation. When we first meet him, palaeontologist David Huxley (Grant) is preparing to marry his co-worker Alice Swallow (Walker). Alice, we learn, is a rational, no-nonsense woman who sees marriage as a convenient and rational transaction rather than as an expression of love. As the film opens, David and Alice are putting the final touches on a brontosaurus skeleton that he has been working on for five years. The skeleton seems to be a symbol of the couple's relationship - dry, brittle, tenuous, old and, most importantly, dead.
Enter Susan Vance (Hepburn), whose wild anarchic nature is just what the doctor ordered. She seems, on the surface, hair-brained - and this may be true - but her ditziness is the result of being absolutely, utterly, ridiculously head-over-heals in love (at first sight, as is the case with most l'amour fou scenarios) with David and doing whatever she can to sabotage his plans to marry Alice. Susan's leopard, named Baby, is the symbol of her love for David, for the moment the leopard lays its eyes on him, it is instantly affectionate and follows him around, just as Susan does. Jittery David is, of course, terrified of the beast and all that it represents.
The leopard becomes an increasingly useful symbol as the film continues. At her aunt's estate in Connecticut, Susan releases another leopard its cage, thinking it is Baby captured by zoo officials when in fact it is a rogue leopard from the circus on its way to be gassed after attacking someone. With two leopards on the loose, the analogy becomes unmistakable - the wild leopard that Susan releases is David's libido, free at last after being repressed for so long in a loveless relationship. Indeed, towards the end of the film, when the wild leopard traps the host of characters in the local jail, it is nervous, terrified David who steps up and boldly saves the day.
This I suppose is just one way of reading and enjoying a film like Bringing Up Baby. i think it's interesting that the film announces its interested in exploring psychoanalysis with the inclusion of a character who is a Freudian therapist (Dr Lehman played by Fritz Feld). Psychoanalysis was, of course, very popular among Hollywood screenwriters between the 30s and 50s who adopted all manner of coded symbols for sex after Joseph Breen's Production Code so tightly reasserted control over what could and couldn't be represented on screen. But the fact that Dr Lehman's diagnoses are so far off tells us that the science of the mind is no match for the power of l'amour fou, which turns men and women into wild, irrational carnal beasts.
Leaving Normal (1992)
Quirky and flawed, but nevertheless touching and truthful ...
I saw Leaving Normal during its original theatrical release and watched it again recently after purchasing the film on DVD. My friends and I really enjoyed this film when we saw it back in 1992, when we were big into early 90s quirk with films like What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Gas Food Lodging, Simple Men and Surviving Desire. Leaving Normal fits quite neatly into this group of films. It also reminds me of one of my all-time favorite and most watched films, which also happens to be a story about an unlikely female friendship, Bagdad Cafe (1987).
It's difficult for me to assess Leaving Normal with any sense of objectivity. When I watched it again recently, I was overcome with a sense of nostalgia for the early 90s when I was in my early 20s and was yet to make some pretty dumb decisions with my life (it all turned out okay though). I don't think the film has aged especially well (I'm thinking about some shoddy matte paintings) and its quirkiness may just annoy some people, but it has enough to offer the casual viewer to be entertaining. If you are fortunate enough to be open to its sincere message about the universe having a place for everyone (if we will just let go and allow ourselves), then you may find that you bond with Marianne and Darly and all the offbeat characters they meet on their journey towards wholeness. You may then find that you make a space for this little film in your heart, like most of the other reviewers on this site.
Home Movie (2008)
A compelling study of a dysfunctional family ...
My response has a few spoilers so if you've not seen this film, here's a warning before you read on.
I quite understand why some viewers did not like Home Movie, however I actually found this film quite disturbing and very intelligently rendered. Of course there will be lots of folks who hate the film because while it is a horror film, it is not scary and refuses to explain itself in broad and excessively obvious ways. It relies more on intimation that explanation. Too many horror films use jumps and starts to compensate for a poorly scripted story and fortunately nowhere in this film is there any such pandering to horror sensationalism and clichés. Instead it relies on a really solid idea - young twin sibling who are being abused off-camera by their father become increasingly sullen and withdrawn as they refuse to participate in their parents' on-camera charade of domestic bliss and pretense of happy families.
These kids fit right into the generic "evil child" mold of super-intelligent children who are always one step ahead of adults that refuse to think the worst of their darling cherubs. Yet unlike some evil child films where the kids are just evil because the kids are just evil, Jack and Emily are given a motive for their actions, which is that their upstanding Lutheran pastor father, David, has been abusing them and getting away with it. David is, of course, so hell-bent on hiding his abuse that he tells his kids that its good to have secrets as he plays happy families on camera and constantly tries to get his kids to participate in the contrivance. Meanwhile their psychiatrist mother lives in ignorance and denial of what is really going on and is more concerned about her professional career and treating other child patients than her own children. In order to get close to her own children, she needs to treat them like patients, and then congratulates herself for "curing" them. This is quite a disturbed family and its impressive how skillfully the film achieves this without being blatantly obvious about it.
The scene where the children refuse to pray before the thanksgiving meal, with their father wearing his pastor's uniform, demonstrates the anger and resentment the children feel towards him and what kind of monster of a man he really is - ignoring their protestations and cries for help and continuing like nothing is happening. He has a compulsion to record himself being a good dad to somehow leave a record of what a nice guy he is, but as the children continue to misbehave, his (self) deception unravels. The exorcism scene is truly disturbing as he would prefer to blame Satan for his children's behavior than look more closely at himself. In the car when the mother says to the kids that they shouldn't keep secrets, Dad pipes up and says, "Secrets can be good". Warning bells! The scene where the father is preparing his sermon demonstrates how contrived his outward persona is - even the words of his sermon seem contrived and hollow. Everything about this guy is pretense and deceit. It is little wonder that the children attack a child named Christian.
The escalating levels of animal torture and mutilation, as they graduate from bugs and goldfish to increasingly larger creatures, of course point to the inevitability of the children eventually attacking their parents - it comes as no surprise, yet the film plays on our knowledge of this, using it to create a sense of dread. This film is not about trying to guess the surprise ending. There are no surprises. But it's not the "what" that makes this film interesting, it's the "why". One rarely finds probing character studies in horror films, but in Home Movie we are given just that.
Working Girl (1988)
Cinderella Inc.
From its opening aerial shot of the Statue of Liberty and the Staten Island ferry on which Tess McGill (Melanie Griffiths) makes a wish for a chance to take a bite out of the Big Apple, to the closing aerial shot of her chatting with her best friend Cyn from her new office digs at Trask, Working Girl is a wonderful example of the Cinderella fairytale retold by a virtuoso filmmaker. Griffiths makes a charming Cinderella, full of wit, wiles and chutzpah, while Harrison Ford makes a dashing Prince Charming and Sigourney Weaver is incredibly good as the Evil Stepmother.
Going back to that impressive opening shot in which a graphic match effortlessly joins an external helicopter shot of the ferry with an internal dolly shot inside the ferry, I just want to state how magical I think this sequence is as it immediately and effortlessly moves us into a film that is essentially a propaganda piece about the American dream. The American dream is a very old idea about America as the land of opportunity and for a long time I suppose that was true for everyone except its indigenous population, its African American population, its Hispanic population ... For centuries people from all over the world have traveled to America in the hope of working hard and accumulating wealth and living a life they could never have had in their own country.
It is not a coincidence that Nichols starts his film with his impressive aerial shot of the Statue of Liberty. When immigrants used to travel from Europe to America by boat, she first thing they would see when they reached America. The camera moves around the statue and as it pulls away we see the Staten Island ferry and the camera moves closer and closer until we are inside the ferry and see the mass of commuters on their way to Manhattan Island. This image recalls the thousands of immigrants arriving in America by boat.
When we are taken inside the ferry, we meet Tess and her best friend Cyn. It's Tess's birthday and as she blows out the candles on a cupcake and Cyn asks Tess if she's made a birthday wish, we see a look of longing and determination on Tess' face, indicating that she has indeed made a wish. We come back to this wish at the end of the film when we see that, through hard work, determination and good business sense it has been granted.
Office towers have a hierarchy that is organised from outside in. The window offices are reserved for managers while the corner window offices with those impressive panoramas go to upper management and partners. Inside the office, away from the windows and closer to the elevator shafts are the secretarial workstations and clerical functions that serve management and carry out their decisions. In the final sequence of the film, Tess arrives at this typical configuration ignorant of the fact that her status has changed. This actually makes her all the more charming and endearing. She is surprised to find that she has moved from inside the secretarial pool and been given a window office, demonstrating that she has at last successfully made that significant first step into management, moving up the corporate ladder.
An important shot/reverse shot in this sequence shows Tess standing up against the window while Alice, her secretary is positioned in a corner with walls around her. The two are discussing manager/secretary protocol and Alice, who is at first defensive, quickly warms to her new unassuming boss. Alice is now where Tess used to be, reminding us where Tess has come from and how she has managed to achieve the American Dream. This is virtuoso use of the shot/reverse shot as Tess, framed against the window, is now in a world that is open to new possibilities - the world is now her oyster while Alice remains enclosed by walls, demonstrating the difference in the two women's status.
Once alone in her new office, Tess calls her best friend Cyn, but unlike the start of the film where they are side-by-side, now they are separated by geography and status. A cut to Tess and a crash zoom outwards shows her still stuck in a cavernous, heavily crowded office, nevertheless elated for her friend and celebrating with us the endless possibilities available to those willing to risk it all to achieve their dreams, with a "head for business and a body for sin."
The Tree of Life (2011)
Profound genius ...
Please, allow me to get this off my chest first.
I have no idea why people who hated this film actually took the time to write reviews about it because all they've ended up doing is televising their impatience for and incapacity to digest narratives that stray from a set classical narrative formula and refuse to provide any sense of certainty. I'm loathe to use the word ignorance here, but if the shoe fits ... It's one thing to not understand a filmic text - there's nothing wrong with that - but its something altogether different when you condemn it as worthless, and worse still to condemn those that appreciate it.
It's astounding to me that some IMDb reviewers actually defend Kubrick's painfully slow and indecipherable 2001: A Space Odyssey even as they condemn (and compare it with) The Tree of Life which is less esoteric and a far breezier film. It seems dishonest and snobbish to defend a film that over time has come to be regarded with classic status (this is not to say I do not like Kubrick's film as I am a huge fan and see it any time it plays on a big screen near me) while panning another films that is as equally ambitious and plays with such big ideas.
For those open to the experience, The Tree of Life is a riveting experience from the first to the last shot. While it is unconcerned with linearity, there is a clear linear process at work within the film. The Tree of Life charts the thought processes of man who has just learned that his brother has been killed, probably in Vietnam. Overwhelmed with grief at the death of his brother, he asks the question, "why?" which becomes the catalyst for a journey that investigates this question from both a macrocosmic perspective while simultaneously analysing its infinitesimal details (I was reminded of Dziga Vertov).
Thus Malick imagines, through the most breathtaking photography and use of ellipses, the big bang and the beginning of time, the slow inexorable evolution of species, the first inklings of sentient beings recognising their power over weaker beings and their capacity to abuse that power, the mindless savagery of nature, and the eventual end of time when the universe collapses on itself. In between these two overwhelming universal bookends, there is the micro level in which we get a look at a revisionist assessment of a childhood that locates those moments in time when the child took into itself the best and worst of those around them. Shots of a beach covered with people like a busy train station makes for a fabulous metaphor for memory (reminding me of the opening sequence of Lola Rent), although it also seemed to allude to the afterlife or some such imagined spiritual plain.
Brad Pitt heads an extraordinary cast of characters that are all believable and affectionately rendered. Pitt's disillusioned Mr O'Brien is a tragic character whose bitterness so overwhelms him that it spills over to infect his family, making their lives such a misery that it essentially builds a wall between himself and the people he loves with all his heart. Pitt's stunning performance evokes such a range of response from sympathy to outrage to condemnation. The cast of young O'Brien boys reminded me of Robert Mulligan's work on To Kill a Mockingbird and The Other, showing how children may seem distracted but are always in the moment and guided by their impulses.
The Tree of Life achieves things with cinema that have never been done before. Amazingly, one reviewer dismissively wrote that this film will be forgotten in no time. I beg to differ and suggest that it will be well remembered and the subject of much future film criticism for a long time to come.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Surely this is a joke?
Watching Fincher's remake was so much like deja vu that I wondered if the director had simply employed CGI artists to superimpose American and English faces over Swedish ones. I also wondered how Hollywood gets away with this level of grotesque artistic plagiarism. Niels Arden Oplov must surely be outraged because this is more his film than Fincher's. This is a remake with absolutely no creative effort put in-except for those appallingly unnecessary and unconvincing faux-Swedish accents. Why even bother? All I can think is Fincher was under contract to make his film identical to Oplov's, but using English language.
The Muppets (2011)
Most entertaining film I've seen at the movies for ages ...
I just got done reading the "hated it" reviews of The Muppets and not one of them really explains why the nay-sayers hated it other than it wasn't true to their childhood memory of growing up with The Muppet Show. My own experience of growing up with the muppets was less than satisfying. Sure I loved them, but they were screened on Sunday night and as soon as the show was over I had to go to bed. So for me the muppets symbolised the end of the weekend and having to go to bed only to wake up to yet another week of getting bullied at school. This movie makes up for a lot of that!!!
From the moment The Muppets started, my friend and I were laughing appreciatively, as was everyone in the session I attended. But when the muppet telethon started, the laughs went into hyperdrive and I found myself barely able to breath from laughing so hard. It was also great to see Jack Black actually being funny again, after a run of tepid, unfunny "comedies." Black plays the perfect fall guy and actually adds to the hysteria. The whole thing is so masterfully executed. Then when Kermit comes out and reprises the song he is most famous for, my eyes welled, especially when he was joined by Miss Piggie and the rest of the cast. I'd forgotten that the muppets do sincerity and poignancy as effortlessly as they do their laughs.
A few criticisms. I noticed there were lots of kids in my session and most of them were pretty wriggly while the adults laughed like mad. I don't think Disney has been able to cater for all tastes with this film. There are too many "talking head" moments to generally keep kids engaged and they are too young to understand what nostalgia is, which is heavily emphasised in the film. I loved all the songs but during dance sequences the actors kept addressing the camera and then vaguely looking off into the middle distance which became rather jarring. I don't mind actors breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the camera, but it needs to be done with conviction and purpose, both of which seemed missing here and it kept pulling me out of the filmic experience (I may be quite alone here). I also didn't like seeing Disney unashamedly plugging Cars 2 in one scene near the end of the film. It was a shameless piece of cross-promotion. Having said this, I really loved the Toy Story short at the start of the film - fast paced and full of ingeniously hilarious toys.
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
Unappreciated stylish classic
What have The Fly, Invaders from Mars, The Thing from Another World, and The Blob all have in common? They are science fiction films from the 1950s that were remade in the 1980s. The 1980s saw a new enthusiasm for everything 1950s as America - for the first time in three decades - felt more like the society and world leader they imagined themselves to be in that earlier post-war decade. Helping this optimistic reinvigoration of nationalist sentiment along were such factors as Reagan's neo-conservative government, the growth of economic rationalism, Russia's withdrawal from Afghanistan, an end to the Iran Hostage Crisis, the meteoric rise of computer technology, and unprecedented increases in wealth accumulation and consumer fetishism. University survey's conducted in the 80s revealed that American values among young adults had returned to a conservative high not seen since the 1950s. With all of these cosmetic similarities between the two decades, its no wonder that fashion, music and movies returned to the halcyon days of McCarthyism, anti-communism, nuclear paranoia and conspicuous consumption. Indeed, in the New Hollywood of the 80s there was a general shift among audiences towards juvenile escapist fantasies rather than cynical social realist dramas of the 70s. So what does all this have to do with Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (PN2)?
The renaissance of everything 1950s in America is a key concern of PN2, and typical of horror films that, in general, capture the zeitgeist fairly accurately. PN2 provides a particularly impressive visual metaphor for the regeneration of the 1950s within a 1980s context when, at the prom, Mary Lou quite literally emerges from Vicki's body. Prior to this "rebirth," Vicky - possessed by the vengeful spirit of Mary Lou - dresses in 50s clothes, uses anachronistic phrases from the 50s ("See you later, alligator"), and listens to 50s music. The film is as much an intelligent and insightful observation of 80s neo-conservatism as it is a camp, clever and visually striking horror romp.
Reviewers that have not enjoyed the film scathingly pointed out the extent to which PN2 borrows from Carrie and The Exorcist. Yet this is all part of the twisted pleasure of the film. Take it too seriously and the acerbically clever joke is on you. For through its derivative nod to Friedkin and De Palma's films, PN2 locates itself very clearly within firstly, a post-Exorcist era when every second horror film in the 70s borrowed something from The Exorcist (the most financially and critically successful horror film in history), and secondly, a post-De Palma era in which it pays homage to a director who pays homage to a director (Hitchcock), resulting in a playful mise-en-abyme.
PN2 is also a really good looking film. It features some solid stylish special effects and well executed set pieces that predate those in the later campier instalments of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. As we know, Mary Lou makes several unsuccessful attempts to possess Vicki. She comes to Vicki when she's alone and vulnerable, invading her personal space. Some of these possession attempts involve some truly creative filmmaking involving good old fashioned in-camera special effects. This of course was an age when a major part of filmmaking was still problem solving - an age when audiences were still asking, "How did they do that?" An age before digital boredom. In one sequence from PN2, the rocking-horse in Vicki's room starts to move by itself and takes on a demonic visage, with its eyes rolling, its brows creasing and its tongue lolling about. In another sequence, Vicki is alone in a classroom when chalk writing mysteriously appears in reverse on the blackboard, seemingly written from inside the board (the words "HELP ME" appear, one of the many nods to The Exorcist). When Vicki approaches the board, it suddenly becomes a liquid state and black hands reach out and pull her into the inky blackness. After struggling to stay afloat as the board becomes a whirlpool, Vicki is eventually pulled under (or inside) as the dark waters swirl around her. After she disappears, the blackboard returns to its solid state and the letters that had been swirling around are now scattered randomly across the board.
I could rabbit on endlessly about this film but i've already said too much. I hope after reading this review you might be inspired to check out this overlooked gem from the decade that produced so many overlooked gems, and with an open mind, hopefully you might see what a group of intelligent and creative young filmmakers with no cash, but solid ideas and loads of cunning are capable of producing.
Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)
Highly recommended ...
I didn't think much of this film when I first saw it but since then I have watched it a number of times and, in the words of Beetlejuice, "it keeps getting funnier every single time!" I work at a busy video store and I'll often put this film on when I'm working Saturday night. It's always popular with customers who enjoy watching it as they browse, comment on how young Jim Carrey looks, and ask "What on earth is this?" as they get to the checkout counter. That's because its such a great looking film. The vibrant color palette with its bright primaries and 80s rehash of 1950s aesthetics is inspired production design. The film really has aged incredibly well and looks better today than when it was first released. Were it released today it could easily take its place beside any of the recent musical comedies that have come out in the last ten years.
Choneungnyeokja (2010)
A dark yin-yan superhero story ...
HAUNTERS is vaguely reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's UNBREAKABLE insofar as we have an unlikely blue-collar superhero fighting a sociopathic arch-nemesis. After that the comparisons begin to break down. But like me, there may be some who will find themselves constantly reminded of UNBREAKABLE as they watch this excellent South Korean film. Cho-in (Dong-won Kang) is a reclusive man born with a powerful telepathy that allows him to control the actions of anyone within his field of vision. Parental rejection and a lonely life of petty theft has left him sociopathic. This is bad news for the one man who can stop him. Following a serious accident, Gyoo-nam (Ko Soo) discovers he has regenerative powers and soon thereafter learns that he is the only person not susceptible to Cho-in's dark telepathy. The game of cat-and-mouse that ensues results in a macabre body count of innocent bystanders possibly unlike any superhero film you've yet seen. South Korean films often contain an inherently maudlin quality (referred to as "han") that Western audiences sometimes find icy and distancing, but it reflects the sensibilities of a country whose national identity is one of constant heart-ache and profound loss. This is certainly true of HAUNTERS as Ko Soo's character, Gyoo-nam finds somewhere within himself the strength and will to get up and keep going after being traumatised and knocked down time and again. Watch this with an open mind and it will stay with you long after the end credits have rolled.
Body Snatchers (1993)
A very worthy remake ...
Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an extraordinary film insomuch as its invasion narrative stands up to multiple interpretations that include anti- communism, McCarthyism (pro and con), miscegenation, anti-fordism, cultural conformity, and so on. Despite its many treasures and iconic status, there is just a bit too much emphasis placed on Siegel's version when it comes to considering the various remakes.
Kauffman's 1978 version is my personal favourite as it turns San Francisco, the flower-power capital of late 60s free love and counter-culture into an Orwellian metropolis where mental health is precarious, individuation is outlawed and an absence of passion is normalised. I'm also a fan of Denny Zeitlin's creepy synth score, Kevin McCarthy's wink-wink cameo (knocked down by taxi driving Siegel, no less), and the introduction of that iconic other-worldly scream when a human is spotted - which was so effective it was incorporated in to the two subsequent remakes.
Abel Ferarra's subversive version came hot on the heals of Operation Desert Storm where we saw invasion and counter-invasion televised pretty much 24/7 as the nation rallied around its troops and televisions. Ferrera's film is perhaps the most incendiary version as it dares to question USA's ubiquitous military culture driven by intense paranoia. No longer do we see the occasional man in uniform on an urban street. Rather, Ferrara reverses things, staging the action on an army base so that now we only see occasional citizens among scores of soldiers - and this creates a creepy us-and-them atmosphere from the outset. This invasion does not come from without, but from within as the line that separates soldier from citizen is erased. This makes Ferrara's film nothing like the "original" but a wholly unique and original work that stands on its own. Ferarra's version provides such a damning critique of a rarely challenged aspect of American culture that it's no wonder so many have dismissed it, picking on superficial elements and dated production values in preference to actually taking it seriously.
Out of Rosenheim (1987)
Brenda ... oh, Brenda!
When I first discovered Bagdad Cafe on VHS back in 1991, it rocketed to the top of my favourite film list and has remained there ever since. I've introduced the film to many people and most of them now share my passion for its quirky, off-beat tone and inexplicable cinematography, its otherworldly sound-scape, its motley crew of disappointed women and defeated men, and its gradual ascent towards a sublime musical climax as the characters realise and embrace their passions. The deepening friendship between Brenda (CCH Pounder) and Jasmine (Marianne Sägebrecht) is achingly tender and rich.
I now own the Australian release DVD but found it to be a disappointment. It contains additional footage not seen in the theatrical release, and for good reason, as it only serves to drag the pace of the film (particularly the climactic magic show musical number, which, as it drags on, grows increasingly tedious). The adage, "less is more" should have been applied here. Ultimately it adds nothing, and spoils an otherwise perfect film. "Brenda. Oh, Brenda."
UHF (1989)
UHF in German - You Gotta Try This!
I recently bought and watched the DVD of UHF, which I had not seen since its initial release, and my partner and I had such a fun time watching the stoopid antics of "Weird Al" and gang. As if that wasn't enough, we switched over to the version dubbed into German and watched the whole thing again. Neither of us speak German, nor did we need to. Jay Levey's direction is so well-executed that even without the dialogue, its clear what is happening. I played the film in German at the video store I work at it got a huge response. Pretty much EVERYONE wanted to borrow a copy. YOU MUST TRY THIS! IT'S HILARIOUS!
The German actors who lend their voices seem to really understand the comic style of the film because their intonation and emphasis is side-splittingly spot on and even funnier than the original English! Yankovic is no actor and it shows, but hearing his voice dubbed by a professional actor really lifts the material. The DVD also contains versions dubbed into French, Italian and Spanish - which are fun, though not as funny - but this perhaps gives audiences a better indication of the broad appeal of this film. Buy it. Watch it. Laugh out loud!
Aussie Park Boyz (2004)
Aussie Porn Boyz
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Aussie Park Boys (hereafter APB) is how the inexperience of writer/director Nunzio La Bianca, and his lack of knowledge about making action films and the finer points of representing gender on screen, has unintentionally manifested a gay porn aesthetic. Homoeroticism and homosexual tension in tough guy action films is a mainstay. Obvious examples include 'Tango & Cash'; 'Bad Boys'; 'Point Break'; and 'Lethal Weapon'. Normally filmmakers introduce such narrative devices as heterosexual romance, active homophobia (mudslinging and homosexual panic), or other devices that attempt to legitimate male intimacy on screen (death scenes are one such device that permit men to be emotionally and physically intimate) while simultaneously disavowing the homoerotic elements of men's bodies on display to one another and to male cinema audiences. The absence of devices of disavowal in APB indicates an underdeveloped awareness on the part of La Bianca about the unwritten, unacknowledged "rules" of action cinema. Consequently, APB displays flagrant homoeroticism that is never disavowed. Between fight sequences, dialogue is scant and the silences between words are occupied by lengthy drawn-out shots of men's bodies: walking, posturing, waiting, climbing stairs, riding trains, working out, gazing at themselves and each other. Indeed, there is so much on screen male- gazing that the film inadvertently implies that these normative homosocial relationships are homosexual.
In addition, the long shots, tight close ups, tilts, shot-reverse-shots of men staring at one another, and tight shots of muscles and eyes creates a porn aesthetic. Lots of bloggers find this film hilarious, and some describe it as gay. I argue that it is because of the film's porn aesthetic, together with its male homosocial relations that audiences find it so humorous. There may not be any erect penises or explicit sexual contact on screen (despite an extreme close-up crotch grab during the opening titles sequence), but there is certainly an abundance of man-on-man physical action, as well as displays of semi-naked men (especially the leather-clad skinheads in their black B&D costumes) and men violently penetrating each other with phallic knives, fists and fingers.
APBs porn aesthetic is further suggested through the use of muted electronic music that underscores most of the film. It is the muted and repetitive quality of APBs music in particular that suggests the porn aesthetic. As a rule, music in porn is generally written and recorded as cheaply as possible. Typically it is muted so that the sounds of sex (slaps, grunts, moans, sighs) are not drowned out by a throbbing score. The monotony of such scores also means that they can be looped and repeated without drawing attention to themselves, or distracting viewers from the action on screen. The music used in APB has much in common with porn. For instance, rather than build character, highlight on screen action or create suspense, the music in APB simply plays over the top of the action as an accompaniment in much the same way as porn. On a different point, some reviewers have suggested that the music used in APB is like that used in gay nightclubs. However, I would like to point out that the music played in nightclubs (gay or otherwise) is usually a rousing combination of pop anthems, infectious musical motifs, throbbing bass and driving beats that shift and overlap in order to create and sustain various states of excitement and arousal. The music in APB is achingly dull in comparison. It appears that those reviewers who claim that the music in APB resembles nightclub music must have noticed the electronic score and conflate this with gay nightclub culture. While this is rather simplistic (and naive), it does however reinforce the point that the homosocial action in APB constitutes homoerotic imagery. How else would this conflation otherwise be made?
Finally (although one could rant endlessly about the porn aesthetics of APB) the narrative of the film - commented on and criticized by a great many bloggers - lacks the linear causality one usually sees in action films. There is a clear absence of causality between scenes in the film. Certainly within scenes themselves, their is hermetic causality, but this is rarely carried from scene to scene. Characters thus wander in and out without clear motivation or explanation for their presence, and what little narrative exists is there to simply connect one sequence of violence to the next. This again resembles an aesthetic particular to porn films. Porn is infamously less concerned with story that it is with jumping from one sex sequence to the next. Likewise, APB makes a number of inexplicable narrative jumps that - like porn - allows it to move from one sequence of fisticuffs to the next.
If ever you get the opportunity to see Aussie Park Boyz again (or if you're an APB virgin), do take the time to look twice and see what happens when a budding action filmmaker gets it really wrong. It's nothing short of mesmerising and, as others have noted, jolly funny. I would go so far as to argue that this film's lack of attention to issues of gender performativity actually increases its significance.