#11: Predator 2
Once a month, the Denver Film Society at Starz hosts Mile Hi Sci-Fi, a MST3K-like event where local comics riff on bad science fiction films, sell Dale's Pale Ale out of an ice chest, and generally make a nuisance of themselves by talking over the movie and thus disturbing those in the audience who would talk over the movie anyway but now have to compete with professionals. This month's installment was Predator 2 about which nothing really needs to be said.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
God Speed, Speed Us Away!
#10: Streets of Fire
This 1984 self-described "rock and roll fable" takes place in a past/future time and place where early 1950's style melds with an early 1980's version of post-apocalyptic tribalism (think American Graffiti meets Mad Max set in Robocop's Detroit). Streets of Fire is perhaps the paradigmatic late 70's/early 80's youth-in-rebellion movie, full of big hair, big leather and vinyl jackets, urban sleaze, all set off by an overwrought Jim Steinmam new-romanticism soundtrack. Visually this film evokes director Walter Hill's better known The Warriors but here the line between good and evil, personified by Michael Pere (immediately recognizable from his Eddy and the Cruisers fame) and a very young, very creepy, very powdered and rouged Willem Dafoe, is clearly drawn. It completely captures a tiny slice of time, say 1979 to 1983. That moment when Cyndi Lauper seemed like the future and Madonna was a flash in the pan. However it had the misfortune to be released in 1984. Its performance at the box office suggests it missed its zeitgeist.
I can't believe I missed it the first time around.
Given that this film is everything 1982 only more so, it would be easy to dismiss it by pigeonholing it as of the its-so-bad-its-good variety. This would be a mistake. It is true that this film deploys some of the more embarrassing fashion and cinematography of its time. It is also true that the plot is thin and that the dialogue lacks nuance. Hell, sometimes the dialogue seems to be missing verbs. But all of that does not diminish the power of this stupid movie. Its power is in its visuals, its music, and its guileless embrace of unlimited youth. It is not art but it is worth seeing. I suspect this is one of those films that benefits from a theater screening. Part of what makes it work is its ability to displace mundane reality for its own and that might be difficult to achieve if watched between phone calls while surfing the web.
The cast is full of people who will do important work in future movies. At the same time, much cultural shame could have been avoided if the people who decided these things had watch Rick Moranis in this movie more closely.
My only complaint is that the movie doesn't have enough Steinman music; he only provides two songs, both presented as concert performances by Diane Lane's character. Seriously? The whole vibe of the movie is a visual representation of the world his music describes--that excessively hormonal infatuation with speed, drama, sex, satin, and hair.
Black Metal and the Fate of Civility
#9: Until the Light Takes Us
This documentary chronicles the rise and fall of the Norwegian Black Metal movement of the late 1980's and early 1990's; the period when the movement went from an underground collection of outsider musicians with a thing for indigenous culture and against the "Jewish cult" Christianity to a violent public caricature of church-burning satanists. This was a musical and cultural movement centered on a rejection of consumer culture, popular music and, apparently, the influence of American forms and values in Norway. Like the demise of Grunge in the U.S., a number of the stars are dead, apparently the most charismatic of them a Swede (who adopted the name "Dead") and shot himself in the head with his own shotgun. Some are in prison, and others are just confused and angry that their personal movement turned into a commercial enterprise only to be digested, sold and then crapped out into mainstream culture. One difference, which may be telling, is that the photos of Dead's suicide ended up as the cover of his band's next album.
All in all, this is a pretty pedestrian documentary that could be made about nearly any deviant cultural movement that blasted into the popular culture, indulged in the worst of its own excesses, and then flamed out in a orgy of suicide, murder, arrests, and acrimony.
What was remarkable about this film was the experience of watching it. When I got to the theater there was a snaking line of people dressed in black. I was pretty sure they weren't there for the screening of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This was, without a doubt, the most polite line I've ever been in. There were two guys behind me in the line to purchase tickets who had bought their tickets earlier in the day. I told them this was the line for people buying tickets but they stood in line anyway because they didn't want to "cut ahead." Wow.
The theater was sold out. People moved around so that late arriving groups could sit together. When the lights went down the crowd fell silent and for the next hour and 30 minutes no cell phones went off, nobody was texting, nobody was chatting, confused about the plot, or driven to deconstruct the film during the film. The movie was only average but I intend to go to films that attract death-metal heads from now on.
BTW, the maximum sentence for murder in Norway is 21 years and they are spent in what are basically dorms decorated by Ikea? Wow.
This documentary chronicles the rise and fall of the Norwegian Black Metal movement of the late 1980's and early 1990's; the period when the movement went from an underground collection of outsider musicians with a thing for indigenous culture and against the "Jewish cult" Christianity to a violent public caricature of church-burning satanists. This was a musical and cultural movement centered on a rejection of consumer culture, popular music and, apparently, the influence of American forms and values in Norway. Like the demise of Grunge in the U.S., a number of the stars are dead, apparently the most charismatic of them a Swede (who adopted the name "Dead") and shot himself in the head with his own shotgun. Some are in prison, and others are just confused and angry that their personal movement turned into a commercial enterprise only to be digested, sold and then crapped out into mainstream culture. One difference, which may be telling, is that the photos of Dead's suicide ended up as the cover of his band's next album.
All in all, this is a pretty pedestrian documentary that could be made about nearly any deviant cultural movement that blasted into the popular culture, indulged in the worst of its own excesses, and then flamed out in a orgy of suicide, murder, arrests, and acrimony.
What was remarkable about this film was the experience of watching it. When I got to the theater there was a snaking line of people dressed in black. I was pretty sure they weren't there for the screening of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This was, without a doubt, the most polite line I've ever been in. There were two guys behind me in the line to purchase tickets who had bought their tickets earlier in the day. I told them this was the line for people buying tickets but they stood in line anyway because they didn't want to "cut ahead." Wow.
The theater was sold out. People moved around so that late arriving groups could sit together. When the lights went down the crowd fell silent and for the next hour and 30 minutes no cell phones went off, nobody was texting, nobody was chatting, confused about the plot, or driven to deconstruct the film during the film. The movie was only average but I intend to go to films that attract death-metal heads from now on.
BTW, the maximum sentence for murder in Norway is 21 years and they are spent in what are basically dorms decorated by Ikea? Wow.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Can you oppose the Bush foreign policy and still be an unreflective sexist and racist? Seems so!
#8: American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi
If you think you are angry at Barack Obama after his first year, this may be a good time to remember what a truly awful presidency can bring. At the same time, this film is a little demonstration of what happens when you conflate political venom with cultural biases and an object lesson in being very very careful about understanding your anger before you buy the film stock.
This film is comprised of a series of interviews with people who knew Rice when she was growing up in Birmingham, as a college student in Denver, during her time at Stanford and then into her disastrous runs as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for the GW Bush administration. There are two underlying themes here, neither of which put Rice in a complimentary light. First, filmmaker Sebastian Doggart sugggests that Rice has something of a daddy complex (beginning with her own daddy); her life has been a chain of close attachments to older men who bring her prestige and power and whose worldviews she adopts chameleon-like and wholeheartedly. It is not clear if Doggart believes this is a strategic ploy to climb the professional and political ladder or if she is just a woman with very little moral compass but a canny ability to be at the right place at the right time. Either way, he makes it clear that pretty young girls who function as ideological mirrors for old men have and advantage in this world. She, for what its worth, attributes it to God's plan for her.
The second theme is that Rice has consistently found herself promoted above her capacities. In this film she is portrayed as the mechanical concert pianist who lacked emotional content, the
Affirmative Action hire at Stanford who undid much of the good of Affirmative Action as its Provost, and the least-prepared National Security Adviser in the history of the post who came to the job as a Soviet specialist even after that country had ceased to exist and failed to protect the president from his own delusions.
I agree that Rice, and the entire edifice of foreign policy under the Bush administration was one long disaster punctuated by sardonic punch lines. No president has ever failed as spectacularly as that one. And Rice certainly bears blame for it all. Only Rice is accountable for her own mendacity. I hate Condi Rice, everything she is and everything she ever will be. She is an American disaster.
And yet this film leaves me feeling a bit icky, as if by agreeing with its conclusions I am somehow complicit in what are fairly routine rhetorical troupes trotted out to undermine women and minorities. Is it really necessary to gender load the pattern of sycophancy that has marked her rise? It seems to me that being personally ingratiating and reflecting back old men's egos is a pretty reliable path to power for both sexes. Is the fact that she benefited from Affirmative Action really necessary to explain her professional incompetence? If so, I must have missed the era of Affirmative Action that forced JP Morgan to take on Jamie Dimon.
Plus the repeated tape of jilted fiancee (and former Bronco Wide Receiver) Rick Upchurch claiming that Rice picked power over love as he described in excruciating detail their sexless engagement was just creepy and mean. Given the tenor of the rest of the film, I'm surprised that Doggart didn't take the opportunity of all of those swirling rumors that Rice is actually a lesbian to make the case that the Iraq War is what happens with lesbians act out their buried hostility to masculine men.
Finally, I can't figure out the title of this film. There isn't even an allegation here that Rice did what she did for knowledge. Sure, I can find plenty of devils in the sorry story of the Bush administration but little evidence that anybody in the joint was thirsting for truth. Least of all Rice.
If you think you are angry at Barack Obama after his first year, this may be a good time to remember what a truly awful presidency can bring. At the same time, this film is a little demonstration of what happens when you conflate political venom with cultural biases and an object lesson in being very very careful about understanding your anger before you buy the film stock.
This film is comprised of a series of interviews with people who knew Rice when she was growing up in Birmingham, as a college student in Denver, during her time at Stanford and then into her disastrous runs as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for the GW Bush administration. There are two underlying themes here, neither of which put Rice in a complimentary light. First, filmmaker Sebastian Doggart sugggests that Rice has something of a daddy complex (beginning with her own daddy); her life has been a chain of close attachments to older men who bring her prestige and power and whose worldviews she adopts chameleon-like and wholeheartedly. It is not clear if Doggart believes this is a strategic ploy to climb the professional and political ladder or if she is just a woman with very little moral compass but a canny ability to be at the right place at the right time. Either way, he makes it clear that pretty young girls who function as ideological mirrors for old men have and advantage in this world. She, for what its worth, attributes it to God's plan for her.
The second theme is that Rice has consistently found herself promoted above her capacities. In this film she is portrayed as the mechanical concert pianist who lacked emotional content, the
Affirmative Action hire at Stanford who undid much of the good of Affirmative Action as its Provost, and the least-prepared National Security Adviser in the history of the post who came to the job as a Soviet specialist even after that country had ceased to exist and failed to protect the president from his own delusions.
I agree that Rice, and the entire edifice of foreign policy under the Bush administration was one long disaster punctuated by sardonic punch lines. No president has ever failed as spectacularly as that one. And Rice certainly bears blame for it all. Only Rice is accountable for her own mendacity. I hate Condi Rice, everything she is and everything she ever will be. She is an American disaster.
And yet this film leaves me feeling a bit icky, as if by agreeing with its conclusions I am somehow complicit in what are fairly routine rhetorical troupes trotted out to undermine women and minorities. Is it really necessary to gender load the pattern of sycophancy that has marked her rise? It seems to me that being personally ingratiating and reflecting back old men's egos is a pretty reliable path to power for both sexes. Is the fact that she benefited from Affirmative Action really necessary to explain her professional incompetence? If so, I must have missed the era of Affirmative Action that forced JP Morgan to take on Jamie Dimon.
Plus the repeated tape of jilted fiancee (and former Bronco Wide Receiver) Rick Upchurch claiming that Rice picked power over love as he described in excruciating detail their sexless engagement was just creepy and mean. Given the tenor of the rest of the film, I'm surprised that Doggart didn't take the opportunity of all of those swirling rumors that Rice is actually a lesbian to make the case that the Iraq War is what happens with lesbians act out their buried hostility to masculine men.
Finally, I can't figure out the title of this film. There isn't even an allegation here that Rice did what she did for knowledge. Sure, I can find plenty of devils in the sorry story of the Bush administration but little evidence that anybody in the joint was thirsting for truth. Least of all Rice.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Bride is a Bitch
#7: Bitch Slap
If your favorite part of Kill Bill 2 is the fight in the trailer between The Bride and Daryl Hannah then stop reading right now and go rent this movie.
Borrowing key plot points from The Usual Suspects but with a lot more cleavage, this film is exactly what it purports to be: a sexploitation rip off with a cast of pole dancers and the movie that Quentin Tarantino wishes he had made instead of Grindhouse. Hopefully he will take a look before he remakes Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.
The acting is better than you would expect and the story line has absolutely no redeeming qualities. By the way, the psychopathic sadistic murdering lesbian is a feminist. Classic.
If your favorite part of Kill Bill 2 is the fight in the trailer between The Bride and Daryl Hannah then stop reading right now and go rent this movie.
Borrowing key plot points from The Usual Suspects but with a lot more cleavage, this film is exactly what it purports to be: a sexploitation rip off with a cast of pole dancers and the movie that Quentin Tarantino wishes he had made instead of Grindhouse. Hopefully he will take a look before he remakes Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.
The acting is better than you would expect and the story line has absolutely no redeeming qualities. By the way, the psychopathic sadistic murdering lesbian is a feminist. Classic.
Sexy Hot Priests?
#6: Into Temptation
I just like Jeremy Sisto.
Setting that aside, this is a fine film. Sisto plays an inner-city parish priest whose sparsely attended masses and slightly off-center sermons belie the actual man who occupies the role and can't quite tamp down real human emotions behind the doctrinal and institutional walls that separate the priesthood from the laity.
Sisto is great in this role. It would be easy to depict this character as torn, or tortured, or tempted (aren't all movie priests all of the above or, alternatively, gay?). But Sisto's Father John is just a priest. Not gay. Not excessively tortured. Not really contemplating leaving the priesthood. Not solving crime or sleeping with his sister. He's just a guy whose taken on a tedious job tending to a blue collar flock and who takes his duty to save his confessors as seriously as you would hope he would if it were you in the confession booth. Confronted by both real pain and love, Father John just tries to help. That sounds way cheesier than the film actually is.
One unremarkable day, Father John hears a preemptive confession from a woman who intends to kill herself on her birthday and seeks ablution for her sins, both current and future. Unable to just let her go her way, Sisto's character sets off to rescue her. His search leads him into a world of prostitution, strangely engaged librarians, pornography, and urban violence and decay. At the same time, an old girlfriend comes back into his life, newly divorced and still carrying a torch. Here is where you expect him to struggle, to reconsider, to waver. Sisto manages to relay deep and conflicting emotions but none of the ones you might expect.
Once again, Starz is screened this little gem with DVD projection, which is doubly sad given what appears to be a nicely executed cinematographic scheme. Damn you Starz!
This film does slow well. It leads the viewer up to the movie priest clichés but avoids them without resorting to tricks or ill-conceived cinema interventions. If you can get past the sincere depiction of a quietly compelling faith this is a fine film. It doesn't exactly endorse the Church nor does it put its faith in the magic of faith but, in the end, the hero is a slightly pudgy, fairly geeky, sorta hot, priest...
I just like Jeremy Sisto.
Setting that aside, this is a fine film. Sisto plays an inner-city parish priest whose sparsely attended masses and slightly off-center sermons belie the actual man who occupies the role and can't quite tamp down real human emotions behind the doctrinal and institutional walls that separate the priesthood from the laity.
Sisto is great in this role. It would be easy to depict this character as torn, or tortured, or tempted (aren't all movie priests all of the above or, alternatively, gay?). But Sisto's Father John is just a priest. Not gay. Not excessively tortured. Not really contemplating leaving the priesthood. Not solving crime or sleeping with his sister. He's just a guy whose taken on a tedious job tending to a blue collar flock and who takes his duty to save his confessors as seriously as you would hope he would if it were you in the confession booth. Confronted by both real pain and love, Father John just tries to help. That sounds way cheesier than the film actually is.
One unremarkable day, Father John hears a preemptive confession from a woman who intends to kill herself on her birthday and seeks ablution for her sins, both current and future. Unable to just let her go her way, Sisto's character sets off to rescue her. His search leads him into a world of prostitution, strangely engaged librarians, pornography, and urban violence and decay. At the same time, an old girlfriend comes back into his life, newly divorced and still carrying a torch. Here is where you expect him to struggle, to reconsider, to waver. Sisto manages to relay deep and conflicting emotions but none of the ones you might expect.
Once again, Starz is screened this little gem with DVD projection, which is doubly sad given what appears to be a nicely executed cinematographic scheme. Damn you Starz!
This film does slow well. It leads the viewer up to the movie priest clichés but avoids them without resorting to tricks or ill-conceived cinema interventions. If you can get past the sincere depiction of a quietly compelling faith this is a fine film. It doesn't exactly endorse the Church nor does it put its faith in the magic of faith but, in the end, the hero is a slightly pudgy, fairly geeky, sorta hot, priest...
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Missing Noir
#5: The Missing Person
This update of the noir genre is a plodding private detective mystery that puts the self-consciously referential Bogartish leading man on the trail of a mystery man and child. Full of elusive characters with obscure motives and lighted largely from behind venetian blinds, writer/director Noah Buschel deploys a series of noir tropes (cigarettes, booze, floozies, voice-over exposition) in a way that both honors the form and answers the question of how those props would play in contemporary America. Turns out it is much more difficult to be a hard-boiled private dick swaddled in smoke in today's L.A. than you might think.
Unfortunately this film is paced so slowly, and with so many feet of film dedicated showing us that the protagonist drinks and smokes, that I forgot to care about the plot at all. The good news is that the film, and everyone in it, seems to be moving through molasses such that it is difficult to miss anything. And while the film tries to hold its audience with the classic neorealist visuals, the grainy footage and washed-out colors are more annoying than expressionist.
Part of the problem may be that Starz elected to screen the film with DVD digital projection rather than on film. What might have been starkly high contrast scenes on film in this format are just harsh. (I don't know why the Starz Center does this--it is my least favorite thing about the place and I think they should tell us before we get there when they aren't going to screen actual film.)
Finally, something about this picture seems stale, like it has been in the can for a very long time. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival but Amy Ryan looks pretty young here and the technology seems a bit dated. I have no evidence, it is just a hunch.
The film has a terrific jazzy score and is clearly a labor of love but overall it seems to fall between the cracks of a genuine genre film and an ironically detached homage to the genre. It could be that a genuine noir is impossible today; noir may require a more visually innocent audience in order to shock with its gritty realism. As for ironic detachment, does American film really need any more of it?
John Huston might have been able to do something with this material but in its current form it seems to have lost its way.
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