November 2009

November 2009

* Holiday (Cukor, 1938)|||||8.5

* A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim, 2003)|||||8

* Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (Raimi, 1987)|||||7

* 3 Women (Altman, 1977)|||||8.5

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (Herzog, 2009)|||||6.5

The film is pretty silly (albeit self-consciously so - that doesn't excuse it, though) and, despite a moment every now and then, is pretty flat by Herzog's standards. Not much consistent transcendence in the filmmaking, and the goofy amphibian trip sequences only distract from that occasional almost-there moment of oddball beauty. It's a clever piece of absurdity, intentionally light as a feather and tonally aimed to shoot some arrows through the criminal world and the police world. Cage is... hammy, but not disastrously so, as a bad lieutenant who accepts his weaknesses with pragmatism and a refreshing lack of principles, rather than with tormentedness or rage, ego or megalomania. The film makes a smart statement on how the "bad" and the "good" can get along, coexist, as long as the need to exploit and victimize is subverted by our realizing the simple advantages of just playing your cards right for the humble, pleasure-seeking comfort of all (and that includes stepping back and watching your own girlfriend prostitute herself when the time calls for it). It is a karmic, non-deluded amorality and principle of the Pleasure Dome (Pleasure is for all, and can be found communally) Herzog promotes as a possible alternative to conventional morality and conventional business, which are vindictive, self-aggrandizing, out-to-destroy, and out to make the more people sad rather than the most people happy - the most people happy being what Herzog's protagonist achieves in the film in his unthinking way, rolling with the punches and accepting of all possible circumstances. Herzog reenvisions a contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah as a place that can be a Good, that can worship the graven idols of money and drugs but still be generous to our fellows - that can in fact be giving as long as it is not built on the pure drive of the Alpha impulse, and instead built on the tearing down of that impulse, which causes such grievances as a family being massacred and an uptight police officer refusing to do our mild-mannered protagonist a solid and excuse some traffic tickets. The protagonist's acceptance of his girlfriend's newfound sobriety (but, rest assured, not his own) is one of the more touching notes of the film. The daunting self-respect of morality and immorality are feasted upon by the hardassed and powered, and no one's content under the grip of hardasses.

* Dumplings (Chan, 2004)|||||8.5

Beautiful, subversive, and eccentric. There is much social/political/socio-economic textures there to sift through, which I'd love to see an extensive analysis of. My one problem, so to speak, with the film is: I feel as if I wanted more of a sense of where the film's opinions lay on certain things, considering how strongly cooked the subject matter is with the whiff of abortion, stem cell usage, and matters of women's rights. At the end, I felt like it was too much about the individual characters and their particular moralities/immoralities, with a heavy hand falling upon the wealthy Mrs. Li without the leniency I wanted. The film takes the leap into punchy moral fable that I did not entirely want as wholeheartedly as the film takes it... but thankfully the film also doesn't lose sight of its oddball social realism: the sight near the end of Auntie Mei (played to the tee by an outrageous tight-capris-clad Bai Ling) disappearing in a sort of time warp - in the streets of mainland China, dressed in anachronistic peasant-wear and carrying water pails - is one of my favorite things in the movie.

Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier, 2000)|||||8

Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)|||||7

An unbelievably blunt and candid film, with complete divestment of all burdensome demons on its mind (no matter how graphically non-genitalia-friendly). It's much like Kurosawa's Pulse, in the sense it's an almost inconsiderately philosophical horror film that takes on vast, infinite matters with the matter-of-fact eye fit to their semi-ironic allegorical approach. But while Pulse is a gentle film made by a gentleman, Antichrist is pretty much the opposite... it is an angry, moody, fatalistic, and emotionally erratic asshole of a film, made by an angry, moody, fatalistic, and emotionally erratic filmmaker (who may or may not be an asshole... he probably is. In any case, this is a compliment to the film.)

Antichrist is a resigned, shit-hitting-the-fan look at how cruel nature wins out over all things, and it paints a relationship between the two character - the film's only characters - such that the actions taken in the notorious final act do not seem so much evidence pointing towards a narrow-minded [I'll say it: misogynistic] fact - "Men are this, women are SPOILERCRAZYSPOILER" - but instead communicate the idea that what we are seeing is roles being fallen into because - seemingly - of a rich, terrible historical tradition (and a belief in the demiurges we have conceived, to account for the poisoned conditions of humanity). In that sense, the film's use of the coined term "gynocide" is very apt, equating gendered persecution as pretty much the same cloth as every other "-cide," evil, or purity-made-grotesque.

The bluntness of the film is what I really admire, much in the same way Kurosawa's bluntness about his very different concerns in his film makes me admire that film. Antichrist should be required finger-wagging formative viewing for all carefree, growing boys AND girls (or just boys, might be the point). The ways and attitudes with which you hold yourself to and use to determine how to treat those around you - e.g. your women - is only a thin line away from becoming the bloody Crusades, genocidal regimes, the sadomasochism of witch-hunting, and the psychosexual domination of psychoanalysis, as is embodied by the Dafoe character, whose treatment of his wife seems as overbearing as age-old treatments of female hysteria.

On the con side, there were too many large chunks of Antichrist where it felt rote and shapeless, such that the film kind of drifts off at intervals into a quagmire of its not always pointed realms of allegorical mysticism and opaque metaphors, all while not being terribly stimulating in terms of craft. Whenever it did get itself into gear, the images were consistently hypnotizing and beautiful, but also kind of flat, instead of communicative and potent, like they are in Von Trier's more vibrant films. Part of it may be how the film pretty much works with two people, talking and walking around a forest, while other Von Trier's other films have a large cast of characters with which to create dynamic interactions and the choreography of blocking actors with camera movement. The latter is more impressive and engaging, while Antichrist comes off more than a bit as if on autopilot.

District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009) ||||| 4

* The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) |||||7.5
"The Black Cat" (Gordon, 2006) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)|||||**1/2

Rouge (Kwan, 1987) |||||6

* Sisters (De Palma, 1973)||||| 7.5