So Wrong They’re Right

When I was about 23, I went through a brief 8-track period… it only lasted about a week.  8-track is a godawful format and its only value is of the nostalgic or ironic variety.  It’s the perfect thing for 20-something hipsters looking for a wacky way to distinguish themselves from the herd: it’s kitschy and it’s cheap.  And most of the participants in this documentary are 20-something hipsters.  I would bet that the majority of them grew out of this phase since the time this film came out.  A few of them have amusing anecdotes or a compelling enthusiasm for 8-track tapes, but mostly I found myself annoyed by them and their attempts to show what zany free-thinkers they are.  Rating: 5

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Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I thought it could have gone further with the social satire… often it would go pretty far but then retreat to the easy dick joke.  However, it was screamingly funny throughout most of it.  I’ll be interested to see what kind of stuff ends up on the DVD.  Rating: 8

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Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

Well, the acting is pretty bad, and I never really cared about the characters.  The emotional content didn’t grab me.  Still, it’s a big improvement over Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion in almost every way.  The exploitation angle is toned down (still manages to squeeze in some rape, though), and as a consequence the story moves quicker and is a bit more interesting.  But what really makes this movie shine is the camera language.  Ito goes very broad and very bold, utilizing a pocketful of tricks to keep things sparkling: freeze frames, colored lighting, dutch angles, theatrical staging… even an effect that “tears” the film.  It’s really exciting to behold, and reminds me a bit of Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge in its freedom.  Rating: 8

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Sweetie

Hmm.  Well, it’s not as good as An Angel At My Table, mainly because the leads are so unsympathetic.  Pretty much the only people I liked were the parents.  However, it kind of turns around at the end.  I won’t go into specifics so as not to spoil anything, but it rounds out the character dynamics nicely and brings a sense of wholeness to Kay.  If nothing else, the film looks gorgeous… Campion knows what to do with a camera, and plans her shots with careful deliberation.  I don’t know who I would recommend this to (it has certain Lynchian qualities, but only in a mild sense) but I would say that I mostly liked it, especially in the final act.  Rating: 8

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Also on the DVD were two Campion shorts I hadn’t seen yet: Passionless Moments and A Girl’s Own Story.  Both are film school productions, and it shows.  Each has that cocky “I’m breaking new ground” feel to it.  But, at least Passionless is pretty amusing.  The other one is utterly ho-hum.  Rating: 7 (PM) and 5 (AGOS)

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Well-acted, generally engaging true story of a young German woman sentenced to death for her involvement with an anti-Nazi resistance movement.  She’s an admirable character, and from what I’ve read almost all of this story is true (if not in precise actuality, at least in spirit).  All the scenes on their own are fine, although they don’t seem to add up to much.  Still, it’s good to see this relatively unexplored side of the Nazi situation.  Rating: 8

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Mahanagar (rewatch)

Well, heck.  My copy crapped out in the last 5 minutes.  I’ve seen it twice before, but still… very frustrating.  Satyajit interruptus.  Anyway, I still love this movie.  I think the one criticism I might level at it is that Arati is too saintly: efficient, generous, sympathetic, loyal, gracious, friendly, determined, and accommodating.  She engages in a couple of very slight deceptions and perhaps shouldn’t bribe her son with toys, but otherwise she’s too perfect.  In fact, if you compare all the women in this film to the men, the women are invariably right-minded while the men are all flawed to some degree.  The husband is pouty, controlling, and jealous.  The father-in-law reels in shame at Arati’s having to work, but has no qualms about groveling to his former pupils for money.  The boss is prejudiced.  Even the young son manipulates his mother for more presents.  Does it bother me?  Yeah, a little bit, but I think that it services the message of the film.  It’s nonetheless a lovely, simple, understated work, and probably my favorite by Ray.  Rating: 10

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Slither

Pays homage to a number of films, but I think it’s mostly in the vein of 80′s comedic horror like Evil Dead… a casual blend of gross-out thrills and funny one-liners.  It tends to straddle the line too much, and never really veers into either “creepy” or “hilarious”, but maybe that’s what they were shooting for.  It is a fun, light-hearted way to kill some time: Nathan Fillion is simply an enjoyable presence, and there’s a few genuine gut-busting moments (in both senses of the word).  Rating: 7

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Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

This was… okay.  It’s basically three kinds of movies.  First and foremost, it’s an exploitation flick, which I have little interest in.  There’s plenty of violence (more people getting slapped around than a Three Stooges marathon) and nudity (women’s clothing gets torn off at the drop of a hat) to satisfy those who crave such things, but I think exploitation is mainly for hipster college kids.  There’s also a revenge film here, and here it performs better, although there isn’t really ample justification for Matsu’s single-minded quest for revenge, nor for the prison singling her out for abuse.  Lastly, it’s a Seijun Suzuki-style romp, and here is where it shows the most promise.  Ito doesn’t do it with the same reckless abandon that Suzuki does, but there’s enough creative flourish to keep it interesting.  There’s quite a bit of boring downtime (at least to me) for this kind of movie, but when it pulls out neat tricks like the blood on the sheet forming the Japanese flag, or the nutty shower fight, it’s pretty cool.  The sequel is supposed to be better, so I’ll give it a look.  Again I have to point out that bright red blood is a big pet peeve of mine, but that seems fairly standard for the 70′s.  Rating: 7

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Dr. Mabuse the Gambler

An entertaining cat-and-mouse game with some very nice expressionist flourishes.  I’d have to say that it doesn’t have the epic sweep to justify its 4 1/2 hour running time, but it can safely be viewed at a faster speed without missing any nuances.  Also there’s a kind of Looney Tunes concept of hypnotism here, but willing suspension of disbelief and all that.  The opening scene involves a scheme remarkably similar to the one seen 60 years later in Trading Places.  Rating: 8

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The Falls

One of the most original films I’ve ever seen.  It’s another Greenaway fake documentary, again extremely conceptual.  I’ll do my best to describe it.  An unexplained Violent Unknown Event, or “the VUE”, has claimed 19 million victims.  Victims suffer from fixation with birds and flight, an endless variety of bizarre physical ailments (often birdlike), dreams about water, new genders, unusual languages, and immortality.  Most of the victims had ornithological or aeronautical interests prior to the VUE.  This film presents a case study of 92 of the victims, all of those from the 17th annual “VUE Directory” whose last name starts with “Fall” (in an amusing touch of typically British humor, all of the names are completely ridiculous — Catch-Hanger Fallcaster, for example).  

The film is stuffed to the gills with inventive little bits of business.  Throughout the film there are numerous clever allusions to birds and other themes that pop up again and again: the number 92, driving in circles, particular locations, death by falling, Tulse Luper, the VUE Anthem (a “bird list opera”), et cetera.  There are several references to the “Bird Facilities Investments”, no doubt a not-so-subtle substitute for the British Film Institute.  I don’t want to give too much away, but look for evidence linking the VUE to Hitchcock’s The Birds — Greenaway’s film is said to be a sequel of sorts, or a more satisfying conclusion.  He also slips in a number of references to his own work, and contains character names that would later appear in Drowning by Numbers, one of my favorites.

The biographies are loaded with voluminous detail, particularly with regard to numbers, a common Greenaway obsession.  Dates, times, lists and locations are constantly being thrown at you.  As you begin to recognize the similarities between the subjects, you also begin to become aware of their differences, and in a sense Greenaway is cataloging both the breadth of human experience and its interconnectedness.  If the film has one major drawback, it’s that the narration is EXTREMELY wordy and the biographies often involve convoluted stories and genealogies that are difficult to follow.  Greenaway alleviates the pain by mixing up the storytelling style a bit for each segment, and some of the segments are only a few seconds long (“Acataloope Fallbus. Last minute entry into the VUE directory due to very late developing symptoms. No details of biography as yet available.”).  Still, it can be a trial to sit through 3+ hours of this, and apparently Greenaway himself has said that it can be fast-forwarded or sampled at random.  

It’s definitely not a movie for everyone… it’s tough to get through (I doubt I’d ever attempt it in one sitting), has no “plot” and no emotional content, and the gimmicky-ness of it will certainly put some people off.  But if you’re looking for something fascinating, funny, ingenious, multi-layered, bizarre, and strikingly unique, it hits the spot.  Rating: 10

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