Rare Exports (2010)

     A new holiday traditions begins this year.  It is not the feel-good-beyond-belief classicism of Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life or the immortal childhood classics like Home Alone and A Christmas Story.  And it is by no means the brass commercialism of the fat, jolly Santa.  This Finnish export re-imagines the entire fairy tale behind St. Nick in a dark and rebellious tone that is, ironically, more in tune with the absurdity of an old man sneaking into houses during the midnight hours.  Somehow, this always gets overlooked.
     On the Russian side of the Russian/Finnish border stands an imposing mountain.  Only the greedy American businessman, looking very Scrooge-like, knows it to be the giant tomb of a frozen Santa.  He leads the excavation and subsequent robbing of earth’s most important grave.  In the meantime, schoolboys Juuso and Pietari witness the explosive activities.  Soon thereafter the local reindeer population, their fathers’ main source of income, is slaughtered by what Pietari knows to be the escaped Father Christmas.  Juuso and the rest of the town’s children disappear leaving Pietari to fear for his life in the wake of late night study sessions on the truly sinister origins of Santa as sadistic child-boiler.  A short time later, Pietari’s father captures old Kris Kringle in a punji pit designed for wolves and baited with a severed pig’s head.
     The old man is like no other cinematic interpretation of Father Christmas imagined thus far.  His old decrepit body is scrawny and malnourished.  He is bleeding from the stomach having been pierced by a punji stake.  His withered body is adorned with a wispy, dirty beard and the eyes bore deep.  The most animated his body becomes is when his nostrils twitch and Pietari’s smell drifts through his nose.  His hangs from a chain and is wrapped in plastic bags above the cold cement floor.  His captors munch gingerbread and look on in amazement at the evil-eyed old man
     The absurdity in this movie knows no end.  From the epic and moving score to Pietari dangling heroically from a helicopter; there are things not even the veteran cinephile has ever seen.  This genre mixing Xmas horror has an all male cast a la The Thing and a Santa logo suspiciously similar to District 9.  It mixes sweeping vistas with a grizzly slaughterhouse and explosive actions sequences with midnight movie madness.  It can only be presumed that this sure-to-be cult hit will find its place on the Christmas dinner table for years to come.  Highly recommended for its deliciously entertaining escapist fare and critique on the hyper-commercialization of modern Santa.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

    Nicolas Winding Refn strips his world down to the bare essentials; Earth and Death.  In the mist of the Scottish Highlands is caged a mute, one-eyed animal.  The beast is taken out for regular bouts of carnage, both in the vein of jugular tearing and skull-bashing.  The collar and leash that confine his movements are but minor disadvantages with mortal benefits.  One-Eye’s graying beard and neatly contained crop of lengthy hair quickly become matted in the mud of his battleground.  The only reward he receives for his kill count is a ladle of watery soup from the hands of a young, androgynously blond-haired boy.
    This child becomes his mouth; speaking more in a single word than the mute does from start to finish.  One-Eye talks with his eyes and with his body.  His red-saturated hallucinatory premonitions provide his escape.  In a matter of seconds he breaks his collar and slays his captors, making habitual use of a diving leg smash and finishing his opponent whence they have fallen to the earth.  The mute ties his final captor, as if to crucify, to a large rock only to disembowel the living man.  He continues through the thin air being tailed by the child.
    The unlikely, almost affectionately paired duo arrives at the aftermath of crusading Christian Vikings.  The small village’s men are slaughtered, the naked women chained, the huts burned.  One-Eye and the boy join the Vikings as they return to Jerusalem; a journey guided by God through the fog covered waters of the ocean.  Their faith in God will surely return them to the Holy Land.
    The river they abruptly find themselves in, and the land they soon set foot on, is surely more Hell than Heaven.  The first Viking is killed by an obsidian arrowhead of unknown origin; the first sign of primal inhabitants.  The open-air burials on raised scaffolding display withered and decaying bodies.  The forests have no end.  The mud is thick.  Their world is a wicked hallucination.  The Christians continue to delude themselves with visions of grandeur in building their New Jerusalem devoid of women or food.
    Valhalla Rising finds Refn at his most meditative and, despite my unrelenting adoration for Bronson (2009), perhaps his most masterful.  The savage brutality and violent masculinity is echoed yet is stripped of its societal incarnations and individual motivations.  Here, it is survival at its purest.  It is no small fact that One-Eye is both caged and collared and tied to a post like a dog.  He is fed from a bowl without spoon and used only for fighting.  And he doesn't talk. Unlike the violent nature of Bronson, One-Eye’s violence is not spurred on by challenging authority and immortalizing identity but by prolonging the physical life. 
    It is a life born from the earth and never separated from it.  His cage, the only time he is ever inside, is an extension of a massive boulder.  His battleground is but a textured and dirty mess of mud.  The rock cairn he erects on the edge of the water where he commits his final cleansing comes tandem with the bloodstained premonitions of his body beaten to death on a rocky outcrop.  While he bathes his body for the last time, the final Christian leader does the same, only to be penetrated by three arrows that leave his body floating in the dark water.
    It is unclear just what One-Eye has sacrificed in the final chapter.  Nor is it certain that he didn't lead the Christians astray, as he was accused.  It is certain that no New Jerusalem is to be formed in the primordial land. 
    Refn’s Death Trip is written in six chapters that suggest an easy reading but do not provide a concrete solution.  The child is all that remains after One-Eye is beaten by natives covered in dry mud who would undoubtedly admire their victim’s martial talents, enduringness, and affection for dirt.  The Christian faith is darkly portrayed and leaves very little reason to believe in God.  It is not surprising that Refn has exhausted himself with a pair of violent films soaked in masculinity and seeks explorations entirely surrounded my women.  Likewise, it should be noted that the film at hand demands multiple viewings.

Rembrant's J'Accuse...! (2008)

    Peter Greenaway’s most recent feature length documentary finds him opinionated and cynical.  The subjects of his dissatisfaction are the visually illiterate (re: Generation Y anyone?) who have not the skills to navigate complex paintings nor, as he would likely agree, the desire.  His argument centers around Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which should come as no surprise to anyone that has at least seen a still from any of his most well-known features.
    From a little box superimposed over much of the film, Greenaway staunchly explicates his mastery of the painting under discussion.  There is no arguing with his authority on the subject matter nor in his deconstruction of the 34 mysteries embedded within the painting.  His affection for the painting, as well as what it represents, is clear.  Why he finds the need to float atop its beauty as a disembodied talking head is still unclear.  Perhaps from this vantage point we are less liable to disagree with our host.  Regardless of his questionable presence, snobbishly looking down his nose at the audience, his argument is sound and convincing.
    A two-hour discussion about a single frame may seem overkill for any tech savvy rug-rat born this side of the 1970’s.  The mass onslaught of images has long ago oversaturated our visual palette and left us partially desensitized to its power.  This is what the film is really about; yet leave it to Greenaway to support his argument with obsessive deconstruction of a truly complex and multi-faceted work of art.
    The visually decadent style we are used to in Greenaway’s fictional narrative finds its well-known source.  He restages the painting and excavates particular elements both in live action and animated cutouts.  The visual intricacies are managed one by one, slowly but surely revealing a larger story.  As the fourth most famous painting in history, the time spent with it is justified.  Needless to say, the shear intrigue Greenaway reveals justifies itself.  Rembradnt’s lauded use of light, the ambiguous and gender-ambiguous details, the x-rays that reveal edits by the artist, and the use of looks to tell the audience a story all contribute to the complexity of this 1642 masterpiece.
    Despite Greenaway’s unnecessarily scolding demeanor, his thoughts are justified.  The modern looker has lost a degree of skill in reading the painted image while at the same time compensated for it with literacy in other areas, say, motion picture.  And regardless of the director’s unending presence, the film is fascinating, entertaining, and endlessly intriguing in the complexity it reveals.  Highly recommended to those interested.

Justification.

  
“When people think they’ve seen enough of something, but there’s more, no change of shot, then they act in a curiously livid way.  They think there must be some justification for it, but it never occurs to them that the fact that you happen to like whatever is in the shot is sufficient justification.  They imagine that there has to be some other reason…”

                                                                                   -Wim Wenders (1971)

     Thank you, Wim Wenders, for stating my very own opinion, albeit 35 years before it would ever occur to me.  The main difference is of course glaring; Wenders holds significant prestige in the film-making world whereas I hold none.

    It would be naïve to suggest, yet innocent enough, that the documentary film is easier to justify as a social/cultural artifact.  An apparent truth automatically raises its supposed relevance and importance as a creative document.  I often wonder just how Michael Bay sleeps at night knowing his millions of dollars result in a hyperactive mess of explosions.  Does the shear existence of a Michael Bay film exhibit enough cultural relevance that it self-justifies as a document of the current cultural state of things?

    I’ll call it art for art’s sake, yet refrain from any attempt at proving why.  If it itself is visually pleasing is that not enough of a justification for its persistence, as Wenders argues?  Is not, then, Bays love of explosions and their powerfully uncontrollable nature not enough of an excuse to keep blowing things up?

    How will history look back on our still very young art form?  We may hope that each and every piece, even confessional YouTube bullshit, represents a distinct and telling insight into the way our society works and grows.  This likely will not be the case, as how many numbers of endless reincarnations do we need to understand the significance of, say, the Bill of Rights?  And only with certain cases does the individual matter.  History cares not about each and every person but about the collective actions of the species.  It is a very mathematical way to look at something that, at times, appears out of control.

    It is only because of this need to categorize and organize that we separate the documentary from the fiction film.  As a medium ages and evolves so does our way of classifying it.  Now more than a century of films to pull from and recent acceptance of film nerds as skilled filmmakers has meant an increase in cross-pollination betwixt genres, styles, techniques, and expectations.  The spectrums on which we classify films have melted into one another and become wholly indistinguishable.  And for good reason.

    No answers have been given here, only questions.

A Nightmare On Elm Street - Ranked

Here is my personal ranking, from best to worst, of the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" film franchise. Enjoy (oh, and in the words of the immortal Mr. Fred Kreuger: "Welcome to prime time, bitch!")...

1. A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

2. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

3. A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

4. Wes Craven's New Nightmare

5. A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

6. A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

7. A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

8. Freddy Vs. Jason

9. A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

Friday The 13th - Ranked

Here is my own personal ranking, from best to worst, of the "Friday The 13th" film franchise. Enjoy...

1. Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

2. Friday The 13th (1980)

3. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday

4. Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter

5. Friday The 13th Part II

6. Friday The 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

7. Friday The 13th: A New Beginning

8. Friday The 13th (2009)

9. Friday The 13th Part III

10. Jason X

11. Freddy Vs. Jason

12. Friday The 13th VII: The New Blood

It must be said, though, that if the first fifteen minutes or so of the 2009 remake were separated and presented/released as a short film on its own...it would probably be the best entry in the entire series.

Ode to Yesteryear: Exploitation Double Feature

    More and more modern filmmakers are professing their love for films of the past by referencing and recreating them.  This is especially true of the grindhouse and exploitation films that seem to have been popularized by Tarantino and Rodriguez and whose references run wide and deep.  These serve as a quasi-in-joke to those familiar with the particular genres, films, actors, techniques, and clichés.
    Scott Sanders revives the blaxploitation film in full force.  Black Dynamite stars and is co-written by Michael Jai White, ripped beyond belief and fully aware of his surroundings.  Sander’s film pays homage to the low-budget inner-city exploitations by adopting the epitome of ridiculous plot points and technical elements.  Dynamite’s brother is killed sending the titular character on a sex-filled, Kung-Fu revenge rampage.  The story convolutes into Dynamite saving nearly everybody; the most extreme being the heroin addicted orphans.  He confronts friend and foe alike, demanding to be listened to and letting his fists do a majority of the talking.  There is really no limit this film doesn't push content-wise and feels like they packed three hours of story into half that. 
    Stylistically the film is nearly indiscernible from those it emulates, Shaft, Superfly, Sweet Sweetback, etc.  If weren’t for the obvious parody it would fit right in.  Dynamite is distracted by the boom mic as it hovers inches from his forehead.  Most scenes end with him declaring his superiority while brandishing his handgun and nunchaku.  The music feels right out of the seventies; the chase scenes make spatial continuity seem irrelevant.  In all respects, the film makes fun of everything that was blaxploitation and does so in such a jabbing manner that it surpasses its source.  One could not parody the genre more, short of casting white people in black face.
    On the other end of the spectrum is Ti West’s homage to classic splatter films of the 70’s and 80’s.  The House of the Devil is so pitch perfect and content and delivery that it could have easily been made 25 years before and no one would know the difference.  In contrast to Dynamite, West plays it serious.  The slow burn of horror is cautious in delivery, carefully withholding information for characters and audience alike.  We know when the young babysitter takes a job at a giant house owned by a creepy man that she will have a hell of a night.
    Filmed on 16mm and shot mostly at night, West’s film carefully controls the audience’s intake.  Much of the picture relies on methodical introduction of uncertainty; it scares us more with what we don’t see.  At the same time it shocks us abruptly; no scare tactic is off limits.  When it finally climaxes there is but 15 minutes left; 15 minutes that make up for all the blood lacking in the first 75.  We can only hope, given the expectedly unexpected ending, that the sequel is around the corner.

Both films highly recommended. 

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)

    All Dieter Dengler wanted to do since seeing war planes fly over his city was join them in the skies.  The desire led him to America and to the military where the objective was always another hurdle away.  Finally, he found his way into the cockpit only to be shot down and taken prisoner.  This film is a one-man show of Dengler recounting the horrific torture he endured in Vietnam during the war years.  It is one of the purest stories of survival and triumph of the human will.  (Good lord.)  In all actuality, it is an upfront look endurance of the human spirit against the continued onslaught of true horror.
    Even the usually opinionated and loquacious Herzog struggles to get a word in during Dengler’s accounts.  Save for a question or two, the director must insert his voice overtop images of Dengler and his past.  He examines the archaic military training films, similar to ones shown to Dengler, and questions their teachings and accuracy.  But for the most part, Herzog lets the namesake character tell his own story.
    It is almost disarming, the ease with which Dieter Dengler described his story.  The eagerness to share shines through like a child’s, discovering a fascinating story for the first time.  It is with seemingly practiced nonchalance that he recounts the decapitation of his best friend, and sole surviving companion, at hands of machete wielding enemy.  This being after they shared a single tennis-shoe sole to protect a foot, and days of crawling once the damage to their feet had been too much.
    Upon meeting Dengler we are given a tour of his abode; complete with model airplanes, war honors, and an assortment of collections.  Beneath the floor is stored thousands of pounds of food in 5 gallon plastic buckets, a stock he knows he’ll never need but can sleep soundly knowing he has.  This trait becomes justified, rather quickly, as we see pictures of his body starved for months in the jungle.  The film never discusses any post-traumatic stress related issues but we’d be hard-pressed not to find them.  This makes he modern jungle escapades even more alarming.  Hands bound behind his back he is lead through the uneven jungle terrain that he covered years ago while a prisoner.  Some form of therapy or self-flagellation, the most logical explanation seems that Herzog himself convinced Dengler it would be a good idea.  At the hands of gun-toting Vietnamese he is towed quickly across roots, rocks, and memories of torture.  It is no small wonder that he doesn’t break down mentally into a heap of insanity.
    The film mixes in plenty of aged photographs and films.  Yet for the most part the star is present to tell his story; a story he has undoubtedly told many times before.  His endearing personality is the perfect contrast to the savagery of his tale; the delivery of his past emphasizes its content.  The weight of the story cannot be waived off, as proven by Herzog’s re-visitation in the form of Rescue Dawn.  Unfortunately, the latter film fails indubitably in comparison. 

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

    Soderbergh’s films are pretty hit and miss as a whole but migrate towards the positive end of the spectrum.  It is not immediately apparent just where on the scale this film sits.  The 2009 experimental drama received mixed critical reviews and, not surprisingly, didn’t fare too well at the box office.  Upon reflection, though, it becomes quite apparent that this is a far cry from the super independent experiment Soderbergh conducted back in 2005.  Bubble was mostly unwatchable and while it may have achieved something for the filmmaker personally, did nothing for his audience.
    The Girlfriend Experience is much easier to justify from a spectator standpoint.  Shot with the wunderkind of cameras, the RedOne, it juxtaposes a handheld, overexposed subjectivity reminiscent of Ocean’s 12 with a carefully composed, architecturally sound interior world of glass and steel.  These frames are much more interesting, much emptier emotionally.  The inhospitality of these environments, all hard lines with sharply defined edges, may mirror the attachment absent in the main character.  The apartment even, lit smoothly and beautifully with what should be a warm red glow, remains cold in a wide and unceasing master shot.  The closest we ever get to two characters actually connecting in the classic shot/ reverse shot is between the escort and a reporter, secluding themselves to window seats in a restaurant.  Just as the viewer remains physically distant from all characters so do the characters fail to connect themselves.
    Chelsea fashions herself a high-class escort providing paid-for emotional attachment to her clients while at the same time maintaining a relationship with her boyfriend.  We rarely see their connection, rather, we see them living out their independent lives that occasionally cross and eventually disintegrate.  All human interactions in the film, as there is really no other kind here, retain as sense of everyday realism.  Their world is not exceedingly cinematic; Chelsea’s profession is not exploited like most other films would likely handle it.  (The fact that Sasha Grey’s name promotes the movie is another story.)  The conversations, especially if one is expecting more, come off as mundane, yet appropriately so.  The closest we come is a john promising a career-building week in Dubai full of cocaine, rich Indian businessmen, and skyscraping hotels; the type of location most prostitute movies would inhabit.  Naturally, the reviewer turns out an insulting review of her services.
    Soderbergh’s film is a languid exploration approaching urban ennui.  Nearly all of her rich clients report on their crumbling economic status, spending much of their paid for time talking rather than…  Yet we never see anyone do much of anything.  The exception being the gym, where mindless minions perfect their bodies, presumably for sex with whomever.  There exists a bleakness to the world; the sun never seems to shine.  The only sense of energy comes from street musicians who provide a contrastingly upbeat soundtrack for spurts of time only to be cut out abruptly.  Experiment is certainly the right word for the film and its success is debatable.  Yet in its completion it strikes the right chord, at least for me at the time.  So what more can be said about a film that feels like something more must be said?  Just that, that it is easy to consider this film more meaningful than it is.  Or perhaps it is that meaningful, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

    John Landis’s classic 1981 monster movie is by no means first or last in the long list of lycanthropic titles.  What makes it stand out is its mix of semi-campiness and bloody effects.  At the same time it manages to introduce some serious topics despite any attempt to satisfactorily resolve them.
    We meet a rather idiotic pair of Yankees in over their messy-haired heads while backpacking in the Yorkshire moors.  After being dropped from the back of a sheep truck they navigate the indiscernible land with complete disregard to spatial continuity; not the only time the film cheats its locations.  They arrive at the appropriately named Slaughtered Lamb to a cold reception from the accented natives who have neither food nor hospitality.  Upon leaving, they are greeted by a howling werewolf that murders one friend while the other flees in terror.
    And so begins the trials of David Kessler as he is haunted by his decaying best friend who is caught in a state of limbo.  Jack has returned in an attempt to get David to kill himself, a thought not entirely foreign after running from his friend’s side as he was slaughtered by a mysterious creature.  For the sake of a movie more than ten minutes long, David is more interested in his nurse, with whom he soon sparks a relationship that garners him both a place to stay and a convenient plot propellant.  Jack informs David that he must end the werewolf curse by ending his own life, or else he will become the beast during the next full moon…
    Naturally, he takes these apparitions as insanity and soon transforms, rather painfully, into a wolf.  A very ugly wolf.  Numerous others die and are added to the list of lives he must atone for, all the visitors in some stage of decay as he meets them in the back of a porn theater.  By this point he’s probably wishing the wolf had killed him.
    The premier wolf attack is taken almost tongue-in-cheek as a huge prop is thrust from screen-left and statically knocks Jack down.  The fact that David runs for his life is a knee-jerk reaction but remains the point of contention for the film.  David owes Jack his life and as such Jack feels compelled not to blame his friend but ask for his help in relieving him and others from a netherworld.  In a straight drama this dynamic would be played out to sappy music, emotional connection, meaningful dialogue.  Here, the awesome Rick Baker effects overshadow any serious issues and instead make the transformation scenes the serious issue. 
    David’s fingers protrude to an uncomfortable length, his face stretches forward, his shoulders arch into almost anorexic detail while growing scraggily hairs.  His eyes, ears, and mouth all transform, grotesquely, into the werecreature.  No less is spared on Jack’s postmortem presence that becomes puppet like near the end but effective nonetheless.  Naturally, the quantity of blood is sufficient for what one expects at the scene of a werewolf-attributed slaughter.  The Academy of Motion Pictures took note and created an Outstanding Achievement in Make-Up award for Baker's efforts.
    Throughout, the film maintains a sense of self-consciousness in its referral to past wolf lore and continued tone; never does it tread on being taken completely serious nor descend into another completely campy splatterfest.  Landis effectively navigates the line between making it worthwhile and making it fun.  We could certainly use a bit more discussion on the issue of say, stigmas of insanity, suicide, friendship, etc.  But then again, this is a werewolf movie.

    Look for the remake next year.