Prisoners of the Casbah (1953)

There are countless Technicolor gems amongst the forgotten Hollywood studio pictures of the '50s. Prisoners of the Casbah is one of them, produced by Sam Katzman during his time with Columbia. Prisoners is one of those gorgeous Arabic epics, full of vibrant colours, sword fights, and pretty harem girls. There's always a scheming vizier (Cesar Romero), of course. One wonders why Sultans and Emirs bothered appointing viziers, since they always turn out to be evil. There's a twist with Prisoners: the lovely Princess Nadja (Gloria Grahame) is a spoiled brat and she's totally infatuated with the vizier Firouz rather than our brazen hero, Ahmed, the Captain of the Guards (Tuhran Bey, a favourite of mine). While the Emir would like Ahmed to marry his daughter and take the throne, the Captain despises the loathsome woman as much as she despises the playboy Captain. These twists on the format are refreshing and open the representation of genders and the various other format stereotypes to scrutiny.

The visuals, whether by the intuition of the director or a conscious creative decision I can't say, affirm Nadja's potency and her initial presumption that she is master of her own destiny. While the Emir and Ahmed try to discuss to whom she will be wed, they remain still in the shot like part of the furniture. Nadja, on the other hand, darts around the frame, slinking around her father, then over to give a barbed aside to the Captain, then back to her father. Her control over the frame is such that once she manages to bring Ahmed into her father's disfavour by rejecting her, the shot closes in on Nadja and her father, leaving Ahmed offscreen, literally 'out of the picture.'

Prisoners could almost be said to be more about the breaking of a headstrong woman's will than about overthrowing a usurping vizier. While there is a climactic sword fight, the movie's real climax is when Ahmed, infuriated by Nadja's continued sympathy for Firouz, despite everything he's done, throws her over his knee and delivers unto her pretty rump a sound spanking. At this moment she falls in love with Ahmed and they begin to kiss. It is a truly startling moment. All along Nadja has had a very distinct view of masculinity: ambitious, bearded, serious, dominant, and, most importantly, potentialy violent. It's made clear early in the movie that Firouz is more just than merciful, a serious man who believes in totalitarian order. Nadja seems oddly drawn to men who will punish her and dominate her.

Whether her vibrant presence within the frame ceases post-spanking, whether Ahmed builds his kinetic force within the frame before he spanks her, and how other characters might relate to these visual motifs, is something I, alas, became too caught up in the enjoyable plotting to discover and I didn't manage to record the movie. It's a subject for future study. Nadja isn't the only 'strong woman' character in the film; indeed, the Queen of Thieves tends to dominate her husband with glances. Her character would also need to be observed. Perhaps the visual information I noted above is a mere fluke or perhaps the intuition of the director for mise-en-scene persisted throughout.

Prisoners is indeed heavily plotted for such a short film (the runtime is 78 minutes). Nadja is to be married to Ahmed, then Ahmed falls into disfavour for refusing and is dismissed. Just then Firouz sends some of his men to hold the princess hostage so he can rescue her and appear the hero, but the plan goes wrong leaving Firouz thinking her killed both the Emir and Nadja. But Nadja is of course alive and with Ahmed. Nadja doesn't want to be with Ahmed and resists him, while he tries to protect her and seeks shelter within the Casbah--a citadel in Algiers within which was a society of criminals that couldn't get out but would also let no-one in. That covers the first thirty minutes. It's rare to see so much narrative packed within a short feature and that movie still maintain an elegant visual style. Generally such a balance is reserved for Val Lewton's productions.

It's curious how in Arabian-themed pictures, thieves are often romanticized. In crime pictures, bank robbers and mobsters tend to be romanticized; in Westerns it's outlaws. Each genre tends to have its criminals to offer as underdogs with an interior code of honour more reliable than the conventional and externally-imposed code within the bounds of the law. In this film, it is only the den of thieves that offers protection from the dangerous government of Firouz. Perhaps it is in the spirit of Jean Genet: crime is liberating, makes one's spirit free. Laws of any kind enslave one to an authority. The thieves are here represented without a hint of cynicism. They're the sort of people you'd like to have a drink with. It's a sign of the sort of innocence in storytelling that seems lost these days, but is wholly present in Prisoners.

I'm a fan of such small but glamourous Technicolor epics as Prisoners of the Casbah. It's a shame so many of them remain undistributed. Were it not for heroic networks like Turner Classic Movies and, in this case, Drive-in-Classics, these movies wouldn't be seen at all. The Adventures of Hajji Baba is another obscure, Arabian epic that deserves viewing. It was made a year later and is similar in its charms.

The Limits of Control (2009) - 2.5/4

Much to the delight of old Romantics like myself, there have been two strong anti-political cinematic statements in 2009, both by well-established filmmakers. These are Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino) and The Limits of Control (Jarmusch). Tarantino asserts the power of entertainment over politics and his film is so entertaining it triumphs over some of the most hardened hearts, save for Armond White and a few die-hard politicals. Jarmusch, on the other hand, asserts the power of art over the pragmatics of life, of which politics is of course a subset. Jarmusch, however, does not make his film itself a great work of art, and for this reason his message, to which I am entirely sympathetic, fails.

I have oversimplified Jarmusch's mission with The Limits of Control. To do him justice, we shall have to gird our loins and wax philosophical. There is a French philosopher-sociologist by the name of Bruno Latour. Latour had the idea of studying science laboratories the way anthropologists would study a tribal village and see what could be learned by putting scientific practice itself under the sociological microscope. He came to the conclusion, based on the data he collected, that science is more or less made up. For instance, there was no proof of the electron: it was an idea that was postulated to explain some observed phenomena and the scientific community agreed it exists. In this sense, science creates its own reality, according to Latour. Since science has something of a monopoly on truth in the west, this reality is one to which the majority subscribes. But that's not what's important. What's important is that science creates a reality. By the same token, each of the arts can be said to create an individual reality by means of its perception: music, literature, cinema. Is the reality of cinema the same as the reality of literature?

Jarmusch infuses this Gallic theorizing with the Romanticism I noted. A nameless man (Isaach De Bankole), who is either a secret agent or a mobster, travels Europe meeting one agent after another. Each agent delivers the same code phrase, then a monologue on philosophy, or science (chemistry, linguistics), or an art (music, painting, cinema), leaves a matchbox containing information, and departs. (This structure covering each of the arts, incidentally, is not post-modernism but modernism: it was previously employed by Melville in Moby Dick and James Joyce in Ulysses.) One character (Bill Murray), the only 'practical' character in the film, decries the uselessness of the arts and sciences for real life. For this character, what is not useful for practical reality is mere pollution of the mind. In this time when most critics, particularly academic critics, are only interested in a film of it displays politically relevant content, Jarmusch's point is a very pleasant one. It should be clear just by my description that the film is allegorical. Each of the monologues on an art is indeed useless to the nameless agent, whose sole purpose is collecting notes and diamonds, it seems. Tout ce qui est utile est laid, as Theophile Gautier put it. All that is useful is ugly. Each area of human inquiry is a reality of ideas worthwhile for its own sake. This is the position Jarmusch appears to be affirming.

I say 'appears to be' because it is entirely possible I missed some nuance; some ironic subtlety may have evaded my grasp. For instance, the emotionless protagonist never clearly enjoys any of the arts; he never gives any sense of enjoyment at all. On the other hand, Jarmusch gives no indication of sympathizing with this character. Rather, the characters he presents most sympathetically are the various monologue-reciting agents the man encounters, particularly Swinton's character. If I am correct, then the problem with Jarmusch's film is just that it was so very easy for me to figure out: it's too sincere. Art, and cinema is an art, arrives at truth by telling a series of lies. A series of truths that lead to a concluding truth is an argument and an argument is the substance of an essay. Jarmusch is creating an essay in cinema, but an essay that is made up of lies, that is, rhetorical tropes (allegory, metaphor, indeed the whole narrative is a rhetorical technique). While some might complain of Jarmusch being too cerebral, ironically my complaint is that he insults my intelligence. If Jarmusch wanted to write an essay on how French sociology, all influenced by Foucault, points to a new Romanticism, he should have taken his audience seriously by writing an essay with acceptable premises and a logical conclusion. This is taking the intelligence of the audience seriously. Poetry and rhetoric to establish an intellectual point is manipulation. He is trying to trick the audience into seeing the position he's taken. It's an assertion with persuasion rather than an argument. What might have been a good essay, if old news (Latour wrote his best work in the '80s), has become bad art.

Despite my displeasure with the overwhelming sincerity of The Limits of Control, I did enjoy the picture. The character who delivers a monologue on cinema (Tilda Swinton) praises particularly the non-narrative aspects of cinema. She explains that she likes moments in movies when nobody is speaking or performing significant action. I agree with her; I also enjoy quiet, inactive moments in cinema. Like her, who I believe to be a mouthpiece for Jarmusch, I appreciate the sociological and historical data to be found in cinema. As such, The Limits of Control is a delight. It is made up almost exclusively of such moments. Even the film's action has a certain passivity. A strangling occurs as matter-of-factly as a sip of coffee--for both the strangler and the victim, curiously enough.

As is often the case with films that boast an impressive cast, cries of "Over-indulgence!" can be heard from the reviewers. Art is supposed to be indulgent; there's no such thing as 'over-indulgence' in the arts. If anything, Jarmusch didn't indulge himself enough. He brings in his mind, but what about his deeper, inarticulable sentiments? The film's reception suffered the Ishtar-effect anyway. The Limits of Control is not just a "star-studded" film, though it looks that way in a list form. But a list is not the film. Watching the film, the cast does not get in the way. Rather, what one sees is a series of exquisite casting choices. Though they play small roles, Swinton, John Hurt, Bill Murray are maximally effective.

I wish very much I could say more about the visual style of the film, but I feel woefully inadequate to the task. It is a beautiful film. The cinematography and techniques are fascinating, particularly the way some shots are inverse copies of others. But as more philosophy student than film student, it takes me considerably more effort to do a visual analysis and I am clearly of the opinion that The Limits of Control is not worthy of that effort. Perhaps a clue in the visuals would reveal I have been unfair to the philosophical content of the film, but I couldn't see such a clue and, that being so, I don't see such a sincere film rewarding too close an analysis. There are better films out there making similar points to The Limits of Control and not insulting viewer intelligence in the process. I have in mind, of course, Inglourious Basterds. Good entertainment is always preferable to bad art.

Big River Man (2009) - 3/4

Sometimes the only way we can deal with impressive but utterly irrational things humans do is by mythologizing them. We transform these people into heroes. We have to rationalize their actions some way, so we impose significance where there may just be none. I'm not sure how intentional it is, but Big River Man ends up being an investigation of just that phenomenon.

The 'Big River Man' is Martin Strel, a middle-aged, overweight Slovenian man who suddenly decided to dedicate his life, or what's left of it, to endurance swimming. He's also carved out a rather unique niche in endurance swimming: he likes to swim in heavily-polluted rivers. He set a record by swimming the Yangtze, the world's most polluted river. So polluted was it, the narration tells us, he had to have his blood cleaned by machine every day because human kidneys can't handle that level of toxicity. It's not clear why Strel does this. This isn't the fault of the documentarian. Rather, it's the fault of Martin Strel. He doesn't know why he does what he does. Strel just seems to have an irrational urge to suffer and take risks. Strel's son, also his publicist, claims Strel is trying to bring attention to environmental issues. Did I note Strel's son is a publicist? The documentary undermines his claims by showing him making up statements to heroize his father's exploits. Strel, on the other hand, rarely has anything to say about his exploits: he just does them.

Big River Man's focus is on Strel's latest and most extreme swim yet: swimming the Amazon, from Peru to Brazil. It takes 70 days of swimming a several dozen miles every day. Making things even more difficult, Strel doesn't lose any weight in preparation and refuses to quit his heavy drinking. Even while swimming, his water bottles are actually filled with whiskey. It's as if he desires the event to be as agonizing an ordeal as possible. He seems to stack the odds against himself, as if desiring failure. But he's an obsessive man. He has trouble to walk each evening when he emerges from the river, yet he only sleeps for four hours each night and sometimes wants to swim even at night. The film tracks the increasingly alarming conditions of Strel's body and mind. One of the most disturbing moments is when his head is infested with some parasite and he's pretty much lost his mind, he starts hooking his head up to batteries and shocking himself. He also begins taking off swimming without telling his party, putting himself and the expedition at great risk. They ask him why. He says he doesn't know.

His odd behaviour begins to affect some crew members, particularly his navigator, a young Wisconsin fisherman. He begins reflecting on Strel as a Christ figure and explaining that the river is purgatory. Most of his ranting is annoying, but seems genuine. This struck me as one of the most interesting moments in the film, because it illustrates what I say in the first paragraph: the attempt to make sense of the irrational. The navigator believes Strel is a real hero, suffering for mankind, just like Jesus. Really, Strel is a disturbed man and if he had died in that river, his son and the navigator should both have been charged with negligent manslaughter. In fact, Strel nearly does die; at the end of the expedition he is in a nearly catatonic state.

Big River Man thus ends up being more sociologically rather than psychologically interesting. The psychology is absent because Strel has nothing to offer: he is presented as pure action and that's probably how he presents himself quite purposely. Sociologically, the heroizing and the mystic fervor that overtakes both Strel and his navigator are very fascinating. It's even revealing about the religious mind. Many of the Catholic saints, particularly St. Francis of Assisi, seemed to share Strel's madness and they too had their personal hagiographers.

I found myself wondering less, "What makes this man do this?" and more "What makes this man worthy of a documentary?" Well, his exploits are admittedly quite remarkable. But he's no hero. No more than Alain Robert, the man who climbs skycrapers without any climbing aids other than chalk dust. Both of these people risk their lives for totally self-interested achievements. Their activities yield nothing of value for humanity. As for himself, Strel squanders all the money he makes from the exploit on gambling very quickly and I wonder if he even cares about what he achieved. This makes the whole expedition seem strangely nihilistic.

Maringouin certainly gets some good footage, as well as some inane footage, and stumbles onto interesting points. However, the organization reveals a certain confusion regarding just what the film is about. The title would indicate it's about Strel, but his inscrutibility leaves his documentarian out to dry and the audience occasionally very bored. I recall checking the time--sometime I rarely do during movies--and being dismayed to find it was only five minutes since I had last checked the time. Still, while no-one studies weirdos as well as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, Big River Man is a good and fascinating look at a madman heroized by the confused.

3/4

A Currency Model of Genre Classification

A Currency Model of Genre Classification

When inquiring over the classification of species, there are solid criteria and solid facts to produce the answer. Is a whale a mammal or a fish? Like fish, the whale lives in water. However, it gives birth like a mammal. The latter fact has led biologists to study the evolution of the whale. They found that it genetically belongs to the mammal family. That's a hard fact. Film genres can't be classified so easily. Or they can be, but there's no reason for anyone to agree with you; there's no fact of the matter. There are obviously no genetic strands linking films back to common ancestors. While there are chains of influences, each film is sui generis to some extent. So how do we go about classifying genres?

Speaking as generally as possible, there are top-down approaches and bottom-up approaches. Top-down approaches are those that begin from general principles, then apply these to concrete cases. These principles will be broad criteria with which the members of the genre can be easily picked out. It would be possible, for instance, to begin with the criterion that all horror films must be designed to produce the emotion of horror within its audience. On this account, Psycho can only be considered a horror film if Hitchcock intended to horrify the audience. If, rather, Hitchcock intended to provide thrills, then it would be a thriller instead. That works for many movies. But surely propaganda films and other genres try to create the emotion of horror as well. One might reply, "But the sole purpose of a propaganda film is not to horrify." This then excludes all films that have diluted purpose, mainly horror comedies like Young Frankenstein and higher-brow horror films like Dreyer's Vampyr, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Videodrome, or even Dawn of the Dead, what with its overt social commentary. With Cronenberg it's not even clear that the emotion of horror is his intention at all so much as it is a by-product of the ideas he's presenting. These would be the challenges for a top-down approach: to either refine the principles so that they conform to intuition or to refine intuition to conform to the principles, until one arrives at a point where the genre categories would capture just what one desires, no more and no less: the state Rawls called 'reflective equilibrium.'

The bottom-up approach, on the other hand, rather resembles the scientific approach outlined in the first paragraph. One does not begin from general principles. Instead, based on the actual films, one derives certain features, a set of relevant 'family resemblances', with which to identify the groups to which each film belongs. As with the scientific approach there may also be an historical aspect. This would necessarily involve bringing other media into the investigation, since the horror novel predates cinema. For sake of discussion, we'll only take account of cinema. Returning to horror, the bottom-up approach would look for relevant family resemblances that unite horror films. Let us take as our set of family resemblances the following: tendency to inspire fear and revulsion, characters who experience terror, death, and monsters. A set of family resemblances of this sort can then be taken as either sufficient or necessary for counting a film a horror film. Thus one's criteria or principles are derived from the concrete cases. To say these are necessary is to declare that any film not sharing full family resemblance is not properly of the genre; it merely has characteristics similar to this family. To say these features are sufficient to make a film a horror film but not necessary means there could be films that have some of the features and not others. This would deal with films that are only half within the genre, like Young Frankenstein. Of course, one will begin to run into problems then. If Young Frankenstein is partially horror, then why not the recent Monsters vs. Aliens? It has monsters, obviously. The challenge here is to tweak the set of family resemblances so that there are no obvious howlers. It would be silly to end up calling Titanic a horror film because of the death and the suspense experienced as the ship began to sink; the family resemblances would require tweaking for sure.

The approach I favour is, to keep in the same schema, bottom-down (I guess). I don't believe it's necessary to refer to general principles at all. Let's begin with an example outside of cinema: currency. Money is imaginary: it's pure abstraction. The currency we use are just pieces of paper or coins that indicate an amount of money. These pieces of paper have currency because just about everyone accepts them as valuable. You don't have to worry about a shop saying, "I'm sorry, but this is just a piece of paper. I disagree with you that it's worth anything." There are also cases of a currency of ideas. Take the film Ishtar. More people think Ishtar is a bad film than have ever seen Ishtar. Through the tireless efforts of the critics, Ishtar simply gained currency as a bad movie. Currency is gained through repetition and repetition of agreement to the point that there is no fear of having to defend one's position. You need never worry about defending your view that a five-dollar bill is worth something. It's not an opinion of yours, it's a commonly held view. (Granted in the case of currency there's also the authority of the State.) Similarly, you needn't worry about having to defend the position that Ishtar is a bad film. It has currency as a bad film, so if you express the view that it is a bad film most people who have heard of Ishtar will assent. It's a safe commonly-held opinion on which to rely. Comedians use currency all the time. George W. Bush has currency as stupid, Hitler has currency as evil, Ronnie Corbett has currency as short. This makes these people easy references for jokes on stupidity, evil, or shortness. Comedians require this communal assent: the audience must be on the comedian's side.

I think we have a decent notion of what currency is now. What relevance does it have to genre classification? The approach I favour toward genre classification is that whatever films have gained some currency as one genre or another is sufficient. This approach privileges practice over theory. Where the top-down and bottom-up approaches had to rely on principles of some normative character, my approach is purely descriptive. This is like a dictionary. Good dictionaries contain an "ain't" entry because it's a word people use; it doesn't matter if it's a 'proper' word or not, because it's not the place of dictionaries to tell people how to speak, but to tell people how people generally do speak. Similarly, I think of genre classifications not as telling people how to categorize movies, but as telling people just how people do categorize movies. The importance of currency is filtering out idiosyncrasies. Just as with a dictionary, not just any word anybody says gains an entry. It is only words that fall into general use that gain an entry.

One can only discover what is in currency regarding genre classifications through discourse. There is no controversy discussing The Exorcist as a horror film. You can call it such without having to defend this view. It has currency as a horror film. If horror fans and scholars of the genre can talk more or less uncontroversially about Silence of the Lambs, then it clearly has some currency as a horror film. Similarly, if they rarely or never speak of Blue Velvet in any way other than peripheral, then it seems to lack the currency. Mulholland Dr. is a film that, while sometimes spoken of as a horror film, certainly lacks currency in that it is an opinion one will usually have to defend.

This approach puts considerable faith in common intuition. However, was that not always the case? In the top-down approach, I ended by noting the theorist will have to bring intuitions and principles into equilibrium. Because what good is a theory that classifies a lot of films as horror films when nobody else is willing to accept this view, let alone make use of it? Similarly, the bottom-up approach is based on finding resemblances in films we already intuitively consider as horror. So why not circumvent the notion of principles altogether and rely on intuitions? Everyone will have their different reasons for classifying the genres of films and usually they themselves will not be explicitly relying on intuition. My approach allows all of those reasons to contribute to defining the genre. If someone can successfully defend their position that Mulholland Dr. is partially a horror film, each repetition will yield stronger currency. It's up to individual tastes to decide what has sufficient currency in discourse; to decide, that is, when disagreement with the classification proposed becomes more idiosyncratic than the classification itself.

The guiding notion behind this approach is that genre itself exists for the sake of discourse. It is a pragmatic notion for the sake of discussion in all its forms: criticism, advertising, etc.. A theory of genre that yields idiosyncratic results is without value for discussion. Discussion requires some points of agreement. As Wittgenstein rightly pointed out, one cannot have a personal language. Language is for communication and communication implies, even at an etymological level, more than one interlocutor. Genre ideally is one of those common points of agreement. While some discussions on the boundaries of genre and the location of some films within one tradition or another are fruitful indeed and even necessary, it seems to me best to rely on a currency model of genre classification, which ultimately means relying on the intuition and basic understanding of cinematic traditions the full film-discussing community possesses as a group. It's a democratic view in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: most appropriate to a democratic medium like cinema.

Who Is KK Downey? (2008) 2.5/4

The thing about hipster-dom is that any attempt to out-hipster the hipsters still leaves one a hipster. Rebelling against hipster trends is precisely what a hipster would do. Indulging in hipster trends is also precisely what a hipster would do. It's a perverse trap. A trap Who Is KK Downey? both satirizes and is caught in.

Who Is KK Downey? is about two upper-middle class young slackers who are trying to become artists. The drug-using and hard-partying Terry wants to be a punk rock star; Theo Huxtable (no, not that Theo Huxtable; this one is a chubby, blond, white guy) wants to write a brutal, sex-filled, neorealist novel. They combine their talents, creating a hard-lived fictional author of Theo's book, the enigmatic KK Downey. KK is the ultimate hipster, appealing to all the 'scenesters', launching the book to A Million Little Pieces-style fame, except with underground credibility. (Think Harmony Korine with Oprah Book Club support.) The new fame and fortune naturally has adverse affects on our protagonists.

There's a subplot involving Terry's archnemesis, the cultural elite hipster Connor......... Rooney. He's so pretentious he insists on the pause. His profession is rock critic and possibly douchebag, although he's so extreme a douchebag he becomes a sympathetic character: this is a guy who masturbates to pictures of Enlightenment authors. Not only that, but despite being a douchebag, he's the only guy to correctly realize KK Downey is a phony. He may be an envious, narcissistic hipster, but he's right. And if there's anything to be learned from the existence of people like Dale Peck, it's that even tenth-rate human beings can sometimes be right.

The writers, Darren Curtis, Matt Silver, and Pat Kiely, (who incidentally also play Terry, Theo, and Rooney respectively--plus Kiely and Curtis direct) have a few targets for their satire. Hipsters and the publishing industry are the main targets. As a satire of the publishing industry, it's a bit contrived. I think they overestimate the influence and power of the literary world. They get the notion of the author as commodity right, but that's not really new. The commodity is for the hipsters and that's where the satires works best. These young authors clearly know their scenes well, because they have some stingingly clever scenes at hipster expense. These moments of high-brow humour were the most successful in the film and got the most laughs out of me. There are occasional minor targets as well. Downey's appearance is, oddly enough, nearly identical to Karen Black's disguise in Family Plot. This feminine appearance allows the writers to pick on gender theorists too.

Most of the lower-brow humour falls flat. Not because it's low-brow, but rather through a lack of ambition. If you're going to do low-brow, go over-the-top. Sometimes they did and then it was very funny. But for the most part they seemed to think a fellatio reference would be sufficient. It's not.

There are also many scenes where it appears the writer-directors weren't sure whether they wanted serious or humourous. The result is that I couldn't take these scenes seriously, but they didn't make me laugh either. There are even humourous scenes that should be taken seriously to work, but the implausibly artificial characters (Rooney sports a pompadour and speaks like Ian Buchanan) detract from the needed reality. Satire requires an anchor, or it loses conviction; this film needed more anchorage.

There's a moment when the Theo character interrupts an opera to discuss a business deal with his agent and introduces KK Downey. This is really what the film is all about: the commodification of art interrupting the enjoyment of art. On another level, it's about the enjoyment of art interrupting the enjoyment of life, normal, mundane life. A hipster comedy that offers a triumphant affirmation of bourgeois humanism? That's hitting the right Marx. So quit Stallin and go rent Who Is KK Downey? It's far from perfect, but it's a truly independent anglophone picture from Quebec that is witty, stylish, and offers a charmingly human story.

A Film with Me in It (2008) - 3/4

A Film with Me in It is pitched as the story of two men who write themselves into a screenplay in response to a series of unlikely tragic accidents. That's not really correct. A Film with Me in It is rather a slacker's wish fulfillment fantasy. But things have to get worse before they can get better.

A man named Mark (Mark Doherty, who also wrote the screenplay) lives in an apartment in desperate need of repairs. His best friend Pierce (Dylan Moran) lives upstairs. They're both slackers and they're writing a screenplay together. They bet on horses, get drinks, and generally don't get a whole lot done. Now Mark's girlfriend is moving out, his landlord is threatening him with eviction if he doesn't pay his rent, and he's left to take care of his paralyzed brother and dog on his own. Lucky for him the death-trap of an apartment begins dispatching the whole lot of them. It's like Repulsion as an Irish slacker comedy.

The first twenty minutes are familiar to any slacker: the people to whom responsibilities are owed become increasingly dismayed with the slacker's irresponsibility and eventually give up on him. Wouldn't it be great if there were a reset button on life? The Fates basically push that button for Mark as sheer accident intervenes to wipe out every responsibility in his life. The end, which I won't reveal, is perfect: Mark has become the ultimate slacker, and he's finally happy.

A Film with Me in It is certainly a black comedy, albeit a hit and miss one. I found myself laughing at a good many of the places I was supposed to laugh, but not all of them. Some of the humour just doesn't work. That's unfortunate. Dylan Moran is easily one of the ten greatest living standup comedians and a talented actor; there is enough of the Dylan Moran persona in Pierce to keep fans like me happy, but he's not used to his fullest here.

The angle of the screenplay does come up occasionally, but more as a crutch for the brainstorming. The accidents are, of course, preposterous: no-one would believe such a thing! So a cover-up story is necessary. These men just happen to be aspiring filmmakers. That writer Mark Doherty plays a man named Mark who writes a screenplay about a man named Mark adds an amusing layer to the film-in-a-film motif. One wonders if anything like this happened to the real Mark Doherty. I'll be keen on viewing any future Mark Doherty-written films. Hopefully he won't have to resort to murder to get it done.

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997)

Guy Maddin was apparently immersed in French decadent writers during the preparation for Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and writer George Toles was immersed in austere Nordic literature, Knut Hamsun in particular. Ice Nymphs, as such, is a clash of two radically opposed attitudes toward art and existence. Visually, it is morbidly indulgent in the cheerful artifice of decadence, whereas the characters and their impressionistic dialogue reveal the inhabitants of the pleasant world to be remarkably displeased, dreary, in agony. Such a gorgeous world and not a soul to enjoy it.

That is the real tragedy of Ice Nymphs and its major theme: imprisonment. These are self-involved, unfulfilled people in a world that promises boundless fulfillment. Mandragora is a mid-summer night's paradise, but hell is other people. I'm reminded of Alain de Botton's thoughts on travel. He argues that while people travel far from their familiar land in the hope for release and renewal, as if it was their location that prevented them from relaxing and freeing themselves, they can never travel away from themselves. Maddin and Toles' characters are imprisoned within themselves. The motif of imprisonment is repeated often, but it is no external prison that holds these characters: they are free in the lush land of Mandragora, but trapped within themselves.

Ice Nymphs is about a man, Peter, returning to the underground island of Mandragora, where the sun never sets, after a long stay in prison that left scars on his wrists. While on ship he meets a beautiful girl. She disappears, but he can't get her out of his mind. Arriving on Mandragora, he finds his spinster sister Amelia in a bitter conflict with her old servant. He wants to buy her ostrich farm and his patience is wearing thin. Amelia wants to get married first and has her eye set on a Dr. Solti, who is more a magician in the spirit of The Tempest's Prospero than a mad scientist, though there's more than a hint of Bride of Frankenstein's Dr. Pretorius in him. Solti, however, has fallen for the beautiful assistant who nursed him after his statue crushed his leg. And wouldn't you know it, the assistant is the girl from the boat. Complicating the matter is the fisherman's wife Zephyr, with whom Peter has already struck up a sexual relationship. Thus is the complicated love pentangle.

I suppose it was a brave decision for Maddin to leave Toles' very stylized dialogue as it was written. Not only that, but for a Maddin picture, Ice Nymphs is dialogue heavy indeed. Sounding not unlike the elementary English of a children's program with a broader vocabulary (including 'fuck'), it can be distracting, even if the artificiality is right at home with Maddin's decadence. Along with the purple colours, boats, and the style of dialogue, I was reminded immediately of Fassbinder's Querelle, though Maddin claims not to have seen a single Fassbinder picture at that point. Like Querelle, an effort on the part of the audience is required to get into the world at hand and even then the conceptual rather than real emotional lives of these characters tends to be rather boring.

As far as being a work of decadence goes, I think Maddin may have missed his mark. Ice Nymphs looks and feels much more symbolist than decadent. The movements were very closely linked, but not the same. Maddin claims his visual guide was Gustav Moreau (a symbolist) and that the bright colours are a result of printer brightening. While I'm sure Maddin wouldn't lie, the surface articulation that is such a prominent feature in Moreau is mostly lacking in Ice Nymphs, with the exception of Solti's lab, and that can't be explained by printer errors. I was reminded much more of Odilon Redon's late colour pastels. Maddin had just done a short two years prior to Ice Nymphs in the visual style of Redon's early black and white works; Ice Nymphs feels like a visual sequel, as it were.

Maddin said in an interview or commentary somewhere--I forget where--that nothing worked in Ice Nymphs. I think he's being too harsh on himself. It's as visually beautiful a fantasy as one could ask for, due to the aesthetic, yes, but also to the lovely women, Pascale Bussieres, Alice Krige, and Shelley Duvall. Toles, moreover, comes up with some wonderful speeches for his characters, with Solti and Amelia getting the best of them. Nevertheless, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, while certainly worth watching and even worthy of its comparison to what I believe to be the superior Querelle, is far from a complete success. A lesser Guy Maddin picture is like a lesser Rembrandt painting: far better than these eyes deserve. I'm grateful Maddin made Ice Nymphs and you should be, too.

The Disappeared (2008) - 3.5/4

It is difficult to write about The Disappeared without revealing too much. It works hard at keeping a delicate ambiguity, particularly regarding whether protagonist Matthew is insane or whether he sees ghosts or whether there's some other conspiracy at work. It is a psychological mystery-thriller with supernatural overtones.

Matthew (Harry Treadaway) has just returned home from a psychiatric hospital. The relationship between he and his father (Greg Wise) is tense: he won't look his father in the face and his father tries his best to show concern without really feeling it. The reason is that Matthew's little brother disappeared from the playground while Matthew was supposed to be watching him and has never been found. Now Matthew is beginning to hallucinate that his brother is trying to tell him something. He's having dreams of being buried alive. His dad is convinced he's losing his mind again. And his best friend's little sister has now disappeared.

I can't claim The Disappeared makes a lot of sense, because in the final analysis it doesn't. It makes about as much sense as Mullholland Dr. or, to stay in-genre, Suspiria. A film of this sort doesn't have to make a lot of sense. It just has to be effective. And the hermetic arrangement of the film's plot is effective, sometimes creepy, sometimes chilling, and even moving. Some credit for this goes to Harry Treadaway for a subtle interpretation of a character that could have been very annoying in the wrong hands.

While The Disappeared has an awkward and slow beginning, those who stick with it will be rewarded. It is slow for a reason: it takes its time setting up the pieces in just the right spots and developing a disarming mood. What could have been a totally routine picture ends up containing a good many surprises, as well as, admittedly, a few predictable plot twists.

The Disappeared is a very difficult sort of film to make, a sort of film where it must be very tempting to cheat in order to manipulate the audience. Most films of this sort are trite failures. For every Don't Look Now there are dozens of forgotten imitators. The Disappeared is not a masterpiece like Don't Look Now, but it is a skillful and haunting picture that never insults the intelligence of its audience. First-time director Johnny Kevorkian should be proud.

Love the Beast (2009) - 3.5/4

Is Eric Bana's passion for his car strong enough to carry a whole film? Why yes, it is. I don't particularly care about Eric Bana and I have never had any interest in cars or racing. But Love the Beast, Bana's documentary about his relationship with his 1976 Falcon coupe, makes me care by bringing me into that world and developing a sort of narrative between these two characters. There are even subplots.

We begin by learning how Bana came to own the car and how he and his friends devoted so much time into keeping it running all these years. He carefully describes the significance it has had in his relationships with his friends. One might think that the car just has sentimental value for that reason, but as the documentary moves along through interviews with Jay Leno (an avid car collector), Jeremy Clarkson, and Dr. Phil McGraw, Bana makes the point that the machine is like a person, its flaws making it a unique entity with a psychosymbiotic connection to its long-time owner. And with that comes responsibilities.

Love the Beast then follows Bana's attempts to race his car, its damage, and his contemplation of whether it is worth his while to repair it or not. In some ways, it is like seeing a man puzzling over whether a damaged relationship is worth salvaging. Bana's advisors urge him to repair it. Clarkson in particular is adamant. McGraw offers some interesting ideas about Bana's relationship with the car and why it is imperative he repair it, ideas I would go so far as to call insights.

As a Canadian who previously had just about no knowledge of this world of Australian racing, '70s car culture, or Eric Bana for that matter, there is something anthropologically fascinating about Love the Beast. It presents its world sympathetically, to be sure, but despite Bana's involvement, his look at himself and this world is not manipulative at all; his objectivity allows the viewer to watch and form their own opinions. I learned a thing or two watching Love the Beast, not just intellectually, but emotionally. I can now comprehend car-lovers, even if I'll never be one. And that's what good films should do, leave us a little wiser about ourselves. And wisdom is not just understanding one another, it's understanding one another compassionately.

Hush (2009) - 2.5/4

As of 2000 a new horror subgenre has been developing: the terror film. The terror film is not about displaying horrific imagery to the audience. It is not about brutal murders, arterial spray, gore. Such things are the release, the end of terror. The terror film withholds release as long as possible, usually to the end of the film. As such, terror films have a very small number of players. The protagonists will be constantly put in danger, constantly raising the sense of terror in the audience, but will always avoid serious injury until the finale. The Strangers is one of the most prominent and purest examples of a terror film. The recent Funny Games is a terror film. France's High Tension is a terror film. Vacancy, too, is a terror film. And so is Hush a terror film.

Much like The Strangers and Vacancy, Hush begins with a fighting couple. The traditional horror film has tended to tear apart happy families, or at least moderately 'together' couples. The terror film usually targets fighting couples, with the result that they end closer than they began. What sociological significance might this have? Whatever it is, the couple's fighting is a trite attempt at humanizing, providing depth, that isn't terribly effective. People who are defined entirely by their dramatic bickering are a shallow lot indeed. It earns some sympathy for the protagonist, Zakes Abbot, however, as his girlfriend is not only a shrewish nag but also cheating on him.

After being overtaken by a truck, Zakes (William Ash) notices, as the back panel accidentally opens a tad, that there's a woman caged within. He tries his best to get the police on the case to no avail. After his girlfriend disappears at a stop, he suspects she may have ended up in the back of the same truck and takes it upon himself to track the truck down and free his awful girlfriend (Christine Bottomley). Along the way he will naturally have several close calls with the mysterious trucker.

Hush offers little new to anyone who has seen The Strangers and Breakdown; but I have to admit it's a formula that works. The terror film is good at generating terror and Hush is no exception. They have never, however, been very good at making their characters sympathetic, which would help increase the sense of terror. There isn't really enough to Zakes to earn sympathy initially and I was almost pleased his bitchy girlfriend is kidnapped. But Tonderai throws so much at Zakes over the course of the chase that he earns our sympathy through sheer suffering, not unlike Jesus. Also not unlike Jesus, Zakes even ends up crucified and betrayed by a loved one. What could it all mean?

As is often the case with a terror film, Hush seems a little desperate to flesh itself out. The villain has to purposely play cat-and-mouse when the protagonist is in his grasp. The screenplay has to find things for the characters to do, as it were. Compare to Spielberg's Duel, the greatest road-terror movie ever made: Matheson's script keeps the activity flowing naturally, always making perfect sense. One never, in Duel, has the feeling something has been concocted to give the characters busy work.

Tonderai should be applauded, though, for finding a creative way of avoiding the cellphone problem. Most terror films simply have them die out or become broken. Zakes has a working cellphone all along, but the police are simply unhelpful. There is no way to pass the buck of responsibility. In Hush, it's between two men and the road.

The Least of These (2009) - 2/4

The Least of These is unoriginal and highly manipulative, yet still manages to be entertaining. This is without a doubt due to the affection and care put into its characters and a naive innocence writer-director Nathan Scoggins brings to the picture. The enthusiasm with which he crafts the film would make it seem he's unaware it's neither original nor terribly insightful.

Fr. Andre Brown (Isaiah Washington) is a new teacher at a Catholic boys boarding school. Is that setting off alarm bells in your mind? Boys and Catholic priests? Yes, The Least of These is about abuse and the complicity of church bureaucrats. It might have been timely ten years ago. Now it feels predatory. Fr. Brown's ally is the headmaster (Robert Loggia) and his enemy is Fr. Peters (Bob Gunton), who is suspicious of his mysterious past. He works to befriend a loner named Parker (Jordan Garrett) and tries to figure out what happened to his predecessor, a Fr. Collins who disappeared without a trace after a transfer.

The Least of These would have felt much more at home on the Hallmark Channel. Every predictable bit of cinematic manipulation occurs shamelessly and I groaned each time. So obvious is the dialogue that this old trick is used: Fr. Peters says he'll call Fr. Brown 'Andre' until he's earned his respect. Do you suppose there'll be a moment when he finally calls him 'Fr. Brown'? Indeed. During a foodfight, the score immediately switches to that 'this is a whimsical moment' music. I don't want to be too cynical: not everyone is as troubled by overt manipulation and obvious creative choices. I can see some--the sort of people who are easily engrossed and not too reflective--falling under the film's spell. But the cliche moments will repel many as they did me.

There are also some moments of downright incompetence and they occur primarily at the very beginning of the film. Awkward camera movements, a sudden irrational pan to a piece of luggage that's never seen again, and confusing edits make up the first five minutes. Given the rest of the film is competent, I can only charitably speculate that these scenes were shot under time constraint.

The mystery that takes over the second and third acts is mostly successful. Despite some predictable turns of events, there are some reasonable and interesting developments arising from the characters and their situations. One is never convinced of the possibility of things not turning out for the best, however, which detracts somewhat from the effectiveness of these developments.

The characters are the real strength of The Least of These. Fr. Brown is not some upstart who enters the school and wins the children over with his wacky, unconventional teaching methods. He even says so himself. He's just a young priest who is interested in getting to know the youths and in doing his job well. He's authoritative without being aggressive. He's someone anyone could respect, even if he doesn't always make the right decisions. In fact, that he doesn't always make the right decisions adds to the humanity and depth of his characterization. The youths aren't so successfully drawn, if only because, after spending so much time on them in the first act, Scoggins nearly forgets about them midway through the second act. Yet even they have a real interior life that distinguishes them from the mere boys' school stereotypes they might have been. It's too bad these characters have to occupy such a trite film.

Godspeed (2009) - 1.5/4

Godspeed, like a faith healer, asks for your faith then deceives you. Like the faith healer that is its main character, Godspeed is not so much voluntarily deceptive as having also deceived itself. Saitzyk directs the film as if he thinks he has something deep instead of a melodramatic thriller and the result is neither deep nor particularly thrilling.

Godspeed gets off to a good start with an Alaskan faith healer, Charlie Shepard (Joseph McKelheer), drinking, arguing with his wife, then going to a prostitute. His wife and son are murdered while he's out and it goes down hill from there. A faith healer's family is murdered: I wonder why? I'm sure a few people have pondered murdering Peter Popoff's family. The investigation, however, makes no leads, Shepard has become increasingly bitter and moves into the woods with a small camping trailer. Suddenly a young woman (Courtney Halverson) takes an interest in him and wants him to come to her home to heal her father. But, oh dear, her brother Luke (Cory Knauf) is one of the murderers of Shepard's family (we know, Shepard doesn't) and he's a looney preacher too.

It would help if Godspeed knew what it wanted to be. At times it wants to be a thriller, promising intense set pieces that ultimately fall flat. It exposes its mysteries too early and tacks on dramatic tension that quickly burns up. At times it wants to be a drama, and this is where Godspeed has the most success. Particularly when dealing with the aftermath of the murders and the life Shepard now lives, it shows him as an interesting person attempting to reevaluate his life and the ideals to which he has devoted himself. Once the girl shows up, melodrama and the promise of thrills disturbs the waters of real, character-based drama.

At yet other times Godspeed wants to be a James Randi lecture, showing us how awful is and what the repercussions can be of this faith healing nonsense and how a charismatic zealot can do great harm. The film seems convinced it has real insight on this point. Every character in Godspeed gets to make a speech. Even the sheriff's deputy. In fact, the deputy (reliable Ed Lauter) gets the best speech, an odd but effective story about a raven and a wolf. Most of the speeches are entirely in the screenwriter's voice and interrupt the flow of the narrative with contrived moments. Some blame, too, rests with the actors. Knauf in particular isn't up to the insanity of the incestuous zealot, Luke. A young Dennis Hopper in the role might have partially salvaged this film.

Rather than attempting to place the film in the mould of an 'intense thriller,' Godspeed would have profited from a more brooding and mounting intensity that balances the drama and threat of danger. As it stands, Godspeed frequently shifts gears suddenly and jarringly, making an uneven and disappointing experience. Compare Godspeed to any Claude Chabrol thriller. Chabrol begins with his unsettling characters and tantalizes with the possibility of flaring drama, of intense thrills, but holds out as long as possible; the flares and thrills are going on within the characters. If Godspeed's characters had any real interiority, this might be possible, but they don't. These people exist on the surface, in speeches and paraphernalia.

Stag Night (2009) - 2/4

And now for something completely diff--oh wait, it's not different at all! Stag Night is a gleaning, as located in the time of its production as can be, made up of bits and pieces of other action-horror films with the same collection of characters. I've seen it before and maybe you have too. First there was Survive the Night, then Judgment Night, and now Stag Night.

Like Survive the Night and Judgment Night (all unrelated films, I should note), Stag Night is a movie-long chase involving some sinister subterranean (literally, in this case) city dwellers pursuing some normal folks in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mike (Kip Pardue) is enjoying his bachelor party with his brother Tony (Breckin Meyer, minus the CGI cat) and best friend Carl (Scott Adkins). While hitting on two ladies on the subway, they all accidentally get off at the wrong stop, a stop that's been closed up for some time. Stranded, their cell phones not working, they make their way down the subway tunnel to find a way out, but instead find primitive subway dwellers who happen to be cannibals--aren't they always? The chase ensues.

There isn't much wrong with the chase itself. It's what one expects and is suspenseful enough. The villains are threatening and the victims are fragile. The problem is that some of the players in this game aren't really playing along. Writer-director Peter Dowling didn't put enough thought into making his characters in any way intelligent. So they are constantly making SCDs (Stupid Character Decisions). The plague of lazily-written suspense/horror pictures, SCDs rot from the inside out. The symptoms of SCDs are yelling at the screen, sudden facepalming, and uncontrollable streams of profanity pouring from the oral passage. These characters are in a tunnel being pursued by trackers who know the tunnels well--they live there! What's the worst thing you could do in such a situation? Why, it would be making lots of noise, wouldn't it? Yet these characters are forever yelling at each other, arguing about every decision, kicking loud objects (there are cans everywhere!) whenever they're frustrated--any wonder they can't seem to get a break! There is only one moment, toward the end, when a character voices the idea that maybe they should keep quiet!

Dowling might have had an easier time having his characters make intelligent decisions if he had made them real characters rather than interchangeable stock victims. You have the nice guy who's getting married, the brash and loud troublemaker (Meyer, oddly enough), and the handsome ladies' man who will try to have sex somewhere in the film heedless of the danger. Wonder what'll be come of him? The lead female character, Brita (Vinessa Shaw), is the only character who really shows any sort of distinct personality that isn't pure stock, albeit not the most pleasant personality. So one is able to route for her somewhat during the chase, at least.

The marauders of the subway are more fascinating to me than anything else in Stag Night. Their closest cinematic cousins would be the Reevers of Serenity and then perhaps the Morlocks of The Time Machine. Somehow by living in the subway they've regressed into primitive, subhuman predators who live on human flesh. How did that happen? Does it symbolize the horrors that are right beneath our feet in the city, our negligence of the poor that will some day come back to hurt us, or is it just because Dowling thought it made a cool and scary movie? The wisdom of the DVD commentary might answer the question, but I'd prefer to leave it a mystery.

Flick (2008) - 3/4

While the plot is thin and nearly disposable in Flick, what comes across most is heart. Strange for a comic horror picture, Flick has a lot of heart in its love of its characters, its fetishized rockabilly music and its nostalgia for the '50s. This, more than anything, is what makes Flick a truly charming film.

Flick concerns a young man in Wales named Johnny, nicknamed 'Flick' for his switchblade, known as a 'flick knife' in the UK. While trying to get a dance from a crush he's attacked, fights back, and ends up driving over a bridge in his car. Over fifty years later his car is found with him in it and the power of rockabilly music playing over pirate radio brings him back to life, now thirsty for revenge on those who wouldn't let him dance with his lady crush. All of 'those' are now senior citizens, incidentally. Meanwhile, a detective from Scotland Yard (I imagine) gets a new partner all the way from Memphis (Faye Dunaway!), who comes equipped with chainmail and illegal weaponry.

The style is dripping from the frames in Flick. Bridging the live action scenes are pages from a comic book showing parts of the scenes that apparently were either too boring or expensive to act out. I suspect the former. I'm not certain if Flick was a comic first or if they made those pages for the film; either way, while the idea has been used before in Tank Girl (1995), it is put to good use here. Moreover, whenever rockabilly music is heard, red notes can be seen floating out of the radio. Johnny always sees things as they were in the past, in the '50s. Blood is always splashes of ink printed directly to the frame or coloured like Playdough. And, my favourite, most of the transitions are good old fashioned irises. As a whole, the cinematography, gelled lighting, and stylistic tricks give Flick the feel of a comic book. The one major difference is that the camera is quite agile. A bit ostentatious at first, the style grew on me as I watched and I soon came to enjoy it. It gives the film a fluidity while yet giving each scene a hermetic quality, like the squares in a comic book or the shots of an early silent film.

The odd array of characters are very entertaining. The most standout of them all is Faye Dunaway's Lt. McKenzie, who despite being in her sixties with a robotic arm is the most energetic force in the film. She is the perfect contrast to the nearly lifeless Johnny. Moreover, despite Dunaway herself being over sixty-five at the time of shooting, she is amazingly sexy as Lt. McKenzie. Sometimes facelifts do work wonders, ladies and gentlemen: Ms. Dunaway is still a beauty. But I digress. The other really standout character is Johnny's mother, a dotty old lady, who, like Johnny, is stuck in the past. She is so oblivious Johnny is a zombie that she invites the parish priest over to pay her little Johnny a visit. The comedy in this film is based more on these odd characters and the situations their personalities entail rather than any contrived comic situations.

The exception, unfortunately, is the character of Johnny himself, the titular 'Flick'. Johnny is little more than a revenge-obsessed zombie, whose motivation for murder is weak at best. His monomaniacal tendencies can be annoying. But I suppose that's a trait he shares with all zombies. At best, he's an uninteresting character, very much overshadowed by those around him, although his old crush and her daughter are rather bland as well. The filmmaker perhaps sensed this, giving Lt. McKenzie much more screentime than anyone else.

Where Flick fails most is in its weak plotting. The whole story is the height of contrivance and has its fair share of holes. The weak plot makes it difficult for Flick to sustain an effective structure and pace, making the film drag somewhat after the first hour, once Johnny begins pursuing his old crush herself. It picks up in the end for a finale that isn't wholly satisfying.

Flick's greatest success is in capturing the spirit of nostalgia for the age it is fetishizing. Nostalgia is not an easy feeling to capture--Down with Love is one of the few recent films that does it really well--but Flick succeeds. It makes a good case for the love of the old. While I didn't need a zombie to convince me, I'm sold. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to listen to some Ron Haydock & the Boppers while I fantasize about the sexy sexagenarian Faye Dunaway.

Harry Brown (2009) - 3/4

Apparently in Britain's inner cities all youth is irredeemably evil and all the elderly are kind old souls. At least that's what Harry Brown would have a North American like me believe, because it depicts a nightmarish world where gangs of young men coincide on a random target and mete out horrendous violence. Perhaps this monochromatic world was necessary for the social criticism(s) at hand; but perhaps a more subtle social criticism is lost along with this ambiguity.

Harry Brown is about a pensioner (Michael Caine) who lives the most mundane life the writer-director could conceive an old man named 'Harry Brown' leading. His long-comatosed wife has just died, a gang of youth has murdered his best friend and now the sympathetic homicide detective Frampton (Emily Mortimer) tells him it's possible the murderers will only get manslaughter. Harry, a veteran Marine once stationed in Norther Ireland, decides to take justice into his own hands and what ensues is a pretty brutal thriller as Harry hunts down any thuggish sort he spots in the group by the subway tunnel, whether they were involved in his friend's death or not.

Director Daniel Barber certainly encourages the viewer to sympathize entirely with Harry's mission. The first twenty minutes of the film heap upon Harry all the geriatric pathos that could be mustered and then some. Each youth is shown to be so irredeemably heinous that we the audience are implicated in the their murder by approving of Harry's actions. I found myself torn between my moral sense that these are young men, nearly boys, who never had much of a chance in life and the film's encouragement that I be thrilled Harry is taking out the trash--and these people are trash, believe me. Only a single character, Frampton, who perpetually looks like a puppy who just got her paw in the door, voices any moral concern; the film does not come down on her side. It is entirely on the side of the vigilante. There are two parallel scenes that show the ineffectuality of police interrogation compared to Harry's interrogation. That's where Harry Brown the film stands.

The overwhelming message of the film is that these young thugs have no purpose, no cause; they're just bored. All the crimes they do are done for entertainment. They record murders on their phones to watch for amusement. They record rapes. The get kicks out of threatening to shoot a mother pushing her stroller. Harry, as a veteran, represents a time when violence was used for a cause and when that cause is gone, it stops and is compartmentalized. To Barber's credit, however, he doesn't remove all moral ambiguity. The point is raised, but not given much attention, that Harry is killing people who had nothing to do with his friend's death. They are killed simply out of Harry's moral outrage. Of course, one wonders if justice for a seventy-five-year-old man really warrants the deaths of half-a-dozen twenty-year-olds. Could that really be Harry's full motive? I doubt it; this isn't a pure revenge picture. There is also a lingering question that is never explored: Harry never does wait for the police investigation to conclude; he simply turns vigilante. Once he has the evidence on the cell phone, he can prove that it was at least second degree murder. Instead, he keeps on with his vigilantism.

There are two things that makes the film, with its harsh worldview, work: albeit morally questionable it is undeniably entertaining to watch Harry hunting and overpowering these scummy characters. But most importantly, it has Michael Caine. Despite the pathos overload in the first act, which even makes the elementary mistake of showing Harry crying--twice!, Michael Caine's exceptional performance makes it work. Harry is a man burdened with moral anguish and he feels the responsibility to do something about it, despite his tired, old body's reluctance. So he locks himself into his old, wartime mentality. It's not the most subtle character Caine's ever interpreted, to be sure, which makes the subtlety Caine himself brings to the role all the more welcome. When Harry is at his weakest, Caine conveys his inner strength and when Harry is at his most dominant, Caine conveys his fragility.

This is Barber's first feature, but his confident style shows his abundant experience from directing commercials. He's certainly a name to watch out for. Harry Brown is a remarkable debut feature.

New Town Killers (2009) - 2.5/4

Wouldn't it be original to show a rich sociopath mercilessly hunting down the poor for entertainment? Oh, it's been done? Yes, of course, New Town Killers is an old story and not one that thrives on subtlety. It's The Most Dangerous Game and its many incarnations crossed with the image of the wealthy man who believes he can get away with murder. Just because it's an old story, however, doesn't mean it can be told very well and that's just what Richard Jobson does in New Town Killers.

Alistair (Dougray Scott) is a wealthy, powerful banker who occupies himself on weekends with human-hunting. Particularly, he likes to choose impoverished teenage boys. He offers them money to play the game without explaining the stakes. Once they agree, it's too late: it's run or die. This time Alistair has chosen Sean (James Anthony Pearson), a sweet boy who tries his best to support himself and his irresponsible older sister. Now Sean has to use his wits to escape the murderous sociopath in the hour-long chase sequence.

The heart of New Town Killers, as the title indicates, is Alistair Raskolnikov (get the reference?). Dougray Scott gives his all in making a truly frightening villain. Much like Ripley in Ripley's Game (in which Scott played the protagonist, coincidentally), he has a sociopathic philosophy, Nietzschean in flavour, that stipulates the absence of limits. There is really nothing Alistair wouldn't do: morality, loyalty, humanity are all limitations Alistair refuses to allow to encroach on his practical reason. Unlike Ripley, however, Alistair isn't goal-oriented. He's dead inside. Ripley is someone you can love in spite of yourself because he has a rich inner life of some beauty. No-one could love Alistair. He compensates for his lack of an inner life with his violent games and undirected hate.

While I find Alistair fascinating as a monster, Jobson obviously intends him as a representation of the predatory rich. He has a lengthy and rather disturbing rant about the uselessness of the lower classes, their unimportance, the banality of their existence. He seems to equate people knowing you exist with an abundance of existence itself, as if his wealth and power over a few dozen people makes him more real. This is perhaps interesting as a character study, but as social criticism, it's egregiously out of date. It might fit the industrial age, but today, in the information age, the wealthy tend to be socially conscious philanthropists and kind, gentle people. Resent Bill Gates as you will, but he's no heartless monster. Or perhaps it is merely intended to say that the rich prey on the marginalized and have no concern for their well-being. That's not a particularly insightful message.

The social criticism doesn't really matter, however, because what New Town Killers offers is a taut, edgy thriller that works very well. It quickly sets up its characters and their situations, then the chase is on and few frames are wasted, save some pointless jump cuts. Once you realize Alistair could do anything, his mere presence on the screen becomes frightening. Pearson, too, should be applauded for making Sean a truly sympathetic character whose resourcefulness always seems reasonable. The chase dynamics between these two should keep even experienced chase-movie fans on the edge of their seats. Edinburgh proves to be a fantastic concrete jungle for the nightmare to progress.

The Possessed (2009) - 0/4

For the first time since I've been reviewing films, I have left a film before it was over. The Possessed immediately strikes one as a harmless documentary in the style of "Unsolved Mysteries", with reenactments and real interviews intercut. The more one watches, however, the more one is assailed with morally objectionable material until I became too offended to watch on.

The story itself is an interesting one and I had previously read about it on the rather entertaining website www.mysteriouspeople.com. Mary Roff, a disturbed woman subject to seizures and quasi-religious mania dies in her adult years. Lurancy Vennum, an unrelated girl who was two-years-old at the time of Roff's death later begins exhibiting similar behaviour and claims to be Mary Roff. The film debates over whether it is possession or some sort of retroactive reincarnation. The title tells you what side the film falls on.

That the documentary falls on any side at all is the first of its problems. The filmmaker/interviewer is Christopher Saint-Booth, a bizarre-looking hippie who dresses like a cowboy resembling Johnny Legend circa 1985 sans coolness. He buys into all of this crap, unsurprisingly. This might not be a problem for me in a harmless haunting documentary, but this documentary is dealing with troubled people--almost all young ladies--who need help and that help is certainly not the Catholic Church nor a Crystal Healing Bed!

You see, for Saint-Booth to make his points, like a lawyer of sorts, he references related cases as if these precedents are solid proof. He references the case of Anneliese Michel as if it's a proven precedent of possession. Actually, the case of Anneliese Michel went to court and the exorcists were charged with manslaughter![1] And here's the moral crux: Saint-Booth also references the cases of some still-living people who believe they were possessed. They used to cut their arms, were obsessed with their own blood, and sometimes tore their own skin away. The fact that Lurancy Vennum also did this, Saint-Booth concludes, shows that she too was possessed. Actually, it shows they all had the same psychological issues and they were in desperate need of real treatment, not wackjob charlatans. Unfortunately, Saint-Booth encourages their manner of reasoning and that is what makes this documentary thoroughly objectionable.

He began to interview a young man who had been exorcised by his mother, a religious fanatic who clearly had seen The Exorcist way too many times, because the exorcism she videotaped showed her speaking lines from the film verbatim. That's when I turned the documentary off. This is an ignorant, irresponsible, morally bankrupt documentary from which you will learn nothing you can't read online.[2] The parallel cases are somewhat interesting, as they were recent and I'd never heard of them before; but they were sadly mishandled by an agenda-driven believer.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel
2. http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Lurancy_Vennum.htm

The Lodger (2009) - 3/4

The Lodger is one of the most confusing instances of plotting since The Big Sleep. I mean that mostly as a compliment. The film maintains so many possibilities until the final moment that the audience is forced to give up trying to figure out what's really going on and just observe and accept what's shown; no point trying to puzzle out the how once you know the who, because it won't get one anywhere.

Chandler Manning (Alfred Molina) is a detective with the LAPD. He's a rude, unpleasant fellow whose controlling behaviour has put his wife in the hospital with severe depression, but he's good at his job--or so it seemed. He had a man executed for murders and now the same murderer appears to be killing again in the style of Jack the Ripper. Just as the killings begin, a neglected housewife (Hope Davis) takes a lodger (Simon Baker) for extra cash and begins to suspect that either this man or her nearly-always-absent husband (Donal Logue) is responsible for the string of prostitute murders.

There are several things The Lodger does right. For one, it is never predictable. A lot of the scenes one expects to occur never do and a lot of scenes one would never expect happen. Ondaatje, who directed and wrote the screenplay, takes the story in unexpected directions. He also does excellent work on building the relationships amongst the characters. Each one of the major characters in this film is an obsessive; they're all obsessed with something and the obsessions make them who they are as well as destroy their chances at stable relationships. I would go so far as to say The Lodger is about obsession; obsession in the tradition of Visconti rather than Hitchcock.

It's also a film about suspicion. Everyone in this film is suspicious of everyone else. The landlady suspects her husband and the lodger, her husband suspects her of going mad, Manning himself becomes a suspect to the FBI, and so on. There is very little trust amongst any of these people. They're all burdened down with paranoia and the film imparts this paranoia to the audience with one red herring after another. There are so many possibilities that the audience is woven into the paranoia and we begin to suspect all of the characters too. It's like being in the mind of a Jack the Ripper scholar--and we do meet one in the film--to whom at least a dozen people could be responsible for the murders. But when everyone is a suspect, how to narrow the search to the right one?

The depiction of male-female relationships in The Lodger is also worth noting. As one might expect, the neglected and verbally abused housewife falls for the mysterious lodger; but there are dimensions in that relationship that far exceed expectations. The murders are particularly vicious, although the film is too tasteful to do more than describe them: the prostitutes have their sexual organs removed. Manning's dying relationship with his wife and daughter is explored in some detail. Most of the women in the film are on medication. What does it all add up to? I don't know, but I do know men don't come out of it too well.

While The Lodger is a decent film, it has an unfortunate, tacked-on ending. Ondaatje should certainly be applauded for keeping so many balls in the air at once, if not for his unnecessary stylistic noodling. There is a lot going on in The Lodger at all times, yet neither the pacing nor emotional tenor is lost for a moment. As the thriller courses along as a good thriller, it builds a web of irony so clever I readied myself to call The Lodger one of the year's most interesting. Then the final two minutes unravels all the irony. It is still a good thriller, but it could have been a very good thriller.

Hurt (2009) - 2/4

Hurt is a standard American Gothic evil-orphan-girl picture with the ambition to say something, an ambition that's subverted by its chosen exploitational format.

A complicated family situation is made more complicated by the arrival of a foster child. A woman (Melora Walters) has two nearly-adult children and they're all moving in with her childhood foster brother. He's offering her a place to stay at his home/scrap metal yard while she awaits the forthcoming compensation money from her recently-deceased husband who was her other childhood foster brother. Indeed. Before her husband died, it seems he had been trying to adopt a young girl (Sofia Vassilieva) into his family to get her away from her abusive mother. Strange events ensue. Of course the audience knows it's the girl, so it's only a matter of how long until the characters find out and of why the girl is doing it. And you can probably guess the latter already.

Writer-director Barbara Stepansky does have something to communicate about how family members can hurt one another, in ways as obvious as physical abuse and more subtle ways like irresponsible spending, disregard of property and privacy, or neglect. These are Gothic themes. And in good Gothic fashion, with a modern hint of feminist awareness, we see a family torn apart (almost literally) by the hurt(s) beneath the surface. It's difficult to guess at how radical a claim Stepansky is aiming for: the oppression of traditional family forms? the horror of "broken" families? The naturally exploitative mould of a horror film makes it difficult to say, as we the audience are encouraged to be horrified by the little girl when the themes appear to be heroizing her. The form is working against the matter. The most curious thing about the story, coming from a female writer-director is just that the absence of the patriarch is the catalyst for all the horror.

As a horror film Hurt is not terribly successful, nor is it terrible. It is more of the same without much distinction or inventiveness. The weakest member of the family becomes suspicious of the brat, who is busy with increasingly malicious mischief until she can strike. There are no surprises to be had. As is often a problem with these films, the little girl comes off as far too mature. Vassilieva was seventeen at the time and it shows. Her voice and manner, as well as the dialogue written for her, are beyond any pre-pubescent girl. This is particularly true when she begins to explain her motivations: those words sound more like the screenwriter's motivations to me.

The acting is always the last thing to fail in a film and that's no exception with Hurt. All of the actors, especially Vassilieva, despite playing a character far too young, do very well in their roles. Anyone who has dealt with foster children knows they can be quite manipulative; Vassilieva captures that, down to the parted-lipped glares and casual snooping. The more dialogue and absurd activities she's given, however, the more difficult it becomes for acting to save the character from seeming the silly artifact of a screenwriter.

The title of course gives the game away: Hurt isn't about any particular character but about the myriad ways to hurt in a family context. In Hurt, most of those ways involve scrap metal.

2/4

Horror Shorts 2: Lycanthrophobia (1998)

Here's a fact. In Werewolf of London, Universal's first werewolf picture, the term 'lycanthropy' is never used. They instead use the term 'lycanthrophobia.' I'm betting that's where these guys got the word. But they use it for a very good reason: this is a film about homophobia and violence.

A bald man with a goatee talks to himself at the bar about what's under the skin. A timid man with an eyepatch comes in and tries to get a drink, but is accosted by the bald fellow, who decides to confide in eyepatch that he, baldy, is a werewolf. But he's a good werewolf who uses his silver bullets to hunt other werewolves, like the two guys playing darts on the other end of the bar.

This is one of the best horror shorts I've seen. It's witty, clever, incredibly well-shot, concise, and disturbing. I found myself laughing at loud quite a bit at the clever humour and made uneasy by the threat of homophobic violence. The subtext is obviously about violence and homophobia as a result of repressed homosexual desires. A motif is built up out of the notion of what's inside and under the skin (like blood or, heh, werewolf fur) as well as what's kept inside psychologically. There's even an amusing joke about werewolves tearing apart families--this is just what conservatives like to claim allowing homosexual marriages will do. But of course, everyone accused of being a werewolf here is a homophobe. "Make no mistake about it, they are monsters."

4/4

Dir: Harry Victor
Writer: Matt Pelfrey
Runtime: 15 min.

Where to watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otIle9-nJ0g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipyN10--7Q

Horror Shorts 3: Good Day for the Bad Guys (1995)

In North America, we're not really familiar with the 'panto.' It's a particularly low-brow form of theater with some audience interaction. An actor in panto is either at the beginning of his career and desperate, or his career is dying. That might explain why so many of the characters in a Good Day for the Bad Guys are angry and depressed. A Good Day is set in a rather heinous panto based on little red riding hood. John (Peter Mullan) plays the wolf and his day is getting worse and worse: a child spits in his face, his fellow actor keeps whining about being stuck in panto, his boss is sexually harassing pretty little red riding hood during offstage breaks and nobody seems to like him. That's when he starts hallucinating/fantasizing murdering his boss and taking his job.

Good Day is a very economical dark drama that uses its short runtime to build up a powerful sense of despair. Nobody really wants to be in panto, these characters included. They hate it, but they need it. The exception is Jockie. He is the bad guy and he's having a fine day in panto, sexually harassing women, threatening his underlings, and generally being a bastard, but still getting lots of love because he plays a good guy on stage. Although I was with him for such a short time, I really cared about John enough to make this an emotionally brutal experience. His nightmare is being thought of as a bad guy and the panto plays that nightmare out for him every day; his dream is to be thought of as the good guy he believes himself to be, but it doesn't appear to be forthcoming.

Not really recommended for anyone seeking anything overtly horrific; this comes closer to Bug than The Exorcist.

4/4

Dir: Peter Mullan
Writer: Peter Mullan
Runtime: 25 min.

Where to watch it?
The special features section of the DVD for Mullan's Orphans

Horror Shorts 1: El Ciclo (2003)

A totally nude man (Jacob Torres) tosses a body into a basement then proceeds to scrub blood from a florescent-lit, grimy room. He slits his wrist in a bath. Then something strange begins to happen.

El Ciclo (The Cycle) is a short and sweet concept horror. When the implications of the end is realized, one wonders, "What is the point?" And I think that is the point. It is illustrating a certain pointlessness, a futility; perhaps the pessimistic worldview is the most disturbing thing about the film.

While the style of the piece is not particularly original, it is well-shot and well-lit. The special effects are in fact very well done and reminded me of Cronenberg.

3/4

Dir. Victor Garcia
Runtime: 9 min.

Where to see it? -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJoWawUv6fU

The Batman vs. Dracula (2005) - 3/4

Two icons, both creatures of the night, black-cloaked and sharing the bat motif are pitted against one another: The Batman vs. Dracula, a concept so cool it can make a nerd ejaculate on the spot. And the realization of that concept? A work of art.

The film begins with a sort of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly moment: The Penguin and the Joker, both locked up in Arkham Asylum, both become privy to a hoard of cash hidden in Gotham Cemetery. Searching for the stash, in an homage to Black Sunday, Penguin cuts his hand and bleeds directly into Dracula's sepulcher. Dracula is now set loose in Gotham and has plans: he plans to make the ever-gloomy city into a city of the undead with which to take over the world. He also takes a keen interest in Batman, whom he sees as having borrowed his image and thus his child in spirit. As more people begin disappearing, Batman and Alfred rig up some hightech vampire-fighting equipment in preparation for the big showdown. (I say 'fighting' and not 'slaying,' because, like in Near Dark, vampires can be cured in this film.) There's also a subplot about Bruce Wayne's difficulties with maintaining the romance between he and Vicki Vale. Do you suppose she'll end up in Dracula's clutches?

The influence of Dracula's image on Batman is arguable but the similarities are undeniable and Dracula came first. This film is, so to speak, Batman's 'anxiety of influence,' his struggle to surmount the influence of that other great Gothic figure. Dracula is more powerful than Batman, and Dracula also implies that Batman is merely a cheap copy. Of course, Batman is a good guy. But that doesn't stop the confused Gotham S.W.A.T. team from shooting at Batman without any real evidence. All of Gotham seems to go mad during Dracula's reign of terror; even the Joker falls under Dracula's spell. Batman is at risk of losing not just his city, but his identity and his soul to Dracula.

When you watch a film called "The Batman vs. Dracula", you're not really expecting or really desiring the build up of emotional and psychological depth. The motivations of the characters don't even have to be delved into, because these are legends, archetypes: The Batman is the crusader of justice and Dracula is the incarnation of evil. Dracula is an evil bastard and Batman has to stop him: simple as that. What you are expecting are great scenes and visuals; oh boy do you get it. Every frame from this film could be printed out and hung on your living room wall. It is one gorgeous, expressionistic art deco painting after another. Being animation, the universe is much more plastic: the director is free to create stunning and inventive visuals without worrying about his camera getting in the shot or requiring a set or lighting. The blood bank scene in particular stands out for creepy visuals, with the vampire crawling across the high, distant ceiling as Batman looks around. Dracula meeting Bruce Wayne at a party, the fight with Dracula on the moonlit highrises: these scenes are pure art in motion.

The Batman voice and character design are spot on. As a person, though, this Batman is very much a pure do-gooder. He grieves when he believes Joker to be dead. He won't stake a vampire, since he can cure them. The characterization is, as such, a bit bland. Bruce Wayne is more of the same. Although he has a sense of loneliness, I thought, given the subject matter, the film missed an opportunity to draw some comparisons. Both Batman and Dracula are rather lonely figures, for instance. But this film is more dedicated to the action. Dracula's voice is exactly what one would expect and his image is more like the Castlevania image or the Vampire Hunter D image than any of the movie incarnations. The only voice that's a little odd is Joker's; it's just too deep. However, his character design is fascinating. Long hair and hunched like an ape, this Joker is a pretty creepy guy even with Dracula around.

Being animation, the film is probably aimed at a younger audience. As such, it's peppered with one-liners, some of which are humorous in an odd way. Most of them come from Joker and Penguin. My favourite is when Dracula discovers a solar powered machine, he expresses his amazement; but I won't ruin the line. On that tenor, there's even a cameo by Sloth from The Goonies. He's playing bingo in Arkham.

The simple plot and its predictable, action-dedicated plot make it not a very deep film, but a good and very entertaining film that is better than many of the Batman live-action films out there. It could have been more in the right hands, but it's quite good as it is. Moreover, while not particularly scary, it has its moments and enough Gothic visuals to make a dozen Hammer films. Plus, it's Batman battling an army of the undead lead by Dracula!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2617/4149639476_6976fd6fc5_o.jpg - The anxiety of influence?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2755/4148879911_706ee9bd59_o.jpg - Who rules the night?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2723/4148879895_7512a8ebca_o.jpg - Loneliness
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2507/4148879871_8a9f3e8353_o.jpg - Penguin, Penguin, if you watched Bava you'd know better.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2577/4148879853_630ea58bed_o.jpg - ARGH!


3/4

The Skeptic (2009) - 3/4

After the first twenty minutes of The Skeptic, I said to myself, "I know everything that will happen in the film from this point on, so why keep watching?" I kept watching because it's a horror film and there's always the chance it might scare me. Surprisingly, it did and I was wrong about how the film would develop.

Bryan (Tim Daly) is a lawyer who prizes logic above all else. After years of marriage, this has finally started to bother his wife. At the same time, his aunt, who never liked him, dies and he gets her mansion. So he takes a breather from his wife by staying in the house some say is haunted. The plot thickens when his aunt's will reveals the house has been left to an ESP lab and he starts hearing and seeing things.

The skeptic-to-believer story has been done countless times in horror movies, and has been given its supreme treatment in the unjustly neglected Night of the Eagle. It's a difficult sort of story to handle, because the temptation for the writer must be to make the skeptic convert to believer too quickly. This film gets it right and does it with a twist. As a skeptic, Bryan would rather believe himself imbalanced than accept what he thinks he saw and how he behaved. By making Bryan the center of the film (the title is "The Skeptic", not "The Haunting") a certain organic unity is achieved between his psychology and the apparently supernatural events that is built in a slow and clever way. This film is not a retread, not a story you've seen countless times before, or at least not in the way it plays out. It's a clever story that goes its own way with its skeptic.

The most surprising thing about the film for me is that it scared me. I am rarely scared by a horror film, even though I quite like to be. The Skeptic scared me. It uses some of the oldest tricks in the book and they just worked this time. It also has a few tricks of its own. Starting toward the middle of the second act, I started feeling chills. There are no jump scares. It's not that kind of scary. It simply becomes chilling, the sort of chill that seeing a child crossing a dangerous highway would cause, as the mysteries of the house and the psychology of the skeptic begin to collide.

The Skeptic is at once a very surprising and yet a fairly mundane affair. It is, after all, just one of those haunted house pictures where a skeptic stays in the house a few days and is eventually converted and frightened. Maybe it was the goofy presence of Tom Arnold as Bryan's boss that kept me off guard, maybe it was the idiosyncratic paranormal investigator, maybe it was the psychology, maybe it was just that it really frightened me, maybe all of the above: but it manages to be a very good haunted house picture and a little more.

3/4