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Reviews
Charles Manson Superstar (1989)
Interesting documentary from a pathetic filmmaker
The film itself is interesting to see because it's a great example of a documentary that gets across the exact opposite message of what the filmmaker intended (Triumph Of The Will is another). The basic film goes between two types of footage. One is made up of still photos and stock footage (sometimes "enhanced" by lame psychedelic effects) with narration. The narration, read in monotone, sounds about like what you might expect a pseudo-rebel middle school student to post in a Manson chat room - It's Manson's familiar history told with glowing admiration and peppered with phrases like "Manson only reflects the society that imprisoned him" and references to "the conditioned masses" that consider Manson to be the half witted turd that he is. The narration criticizes Manson's victims and his keepers, while praising Manson. The filmmaker, Nikolas Schreck, also managed to score a lengthy prison interview with Manson. The interview delves only slightly into what Manson is infamous for (the pointless, envious, brutal murders of his racist hate cult), and instead centers on Manson's "philosophy". Manson's philosophy, as anyone who has seen him interviewed knows, is basically that everyone is phony and screwed up except him. He really says nothing else in the interview, and whenever he reaches a point in his monologue where he might otherwise say something informative, he instead makes a contorted face and giggles or does some kind of karate dragon dance. He is un-chained and un-handcuffed in the interview and is free to walk around the room. Whenever the filmmaker asks a difficult question (though, not much more difficult then "say something to the camera that you have always wanted to tell people"), Manson masterfully intimidates him off the topic by standing and approaching him or touching him, at one point taking one of his hands and caressing it for several seconds. The entire thing is scored by bootleg recordings of Manson's tortuously bad music.
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
Will be regarded as a classic in a few decades
I'm not quite sure what to say about this. It's being called one of the worst movies of all time. That's what drew me to it - nobody called it boring, they meant something different by "bad", and I was curious as to what. What they mean is that it's completely perplexing: I laughed a few times, but for the most part, the humor seemed like it came from an alien culture. I'm not calling unfunny, just completely foreign to the point of surrealism. People are placing it in the same class as Tomcats, PCU, The Ladies Man, etc., because of its shock value. But what it most reminded me of was Pink Flamingos, and The Andalusian Dog. This movie was significantly re-edited before release, and I hope that there is a director's cut released someday. I also hope that Green keeps making movies like this. I would urge Roger Ebert, who said "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel... This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels", to take another look at it. Absolutely worth seeing - 10/10.
Traffic (2000)
Brilliant propaganda
Everyone knows, deep down, that the war on drugs is a failure, a fraud, a joke, and a cancer, except the people at the top who are perpetrating it. Some of them may be good hearted, and they just don't know any better. There have been lots of movies which tried to be an expose on the futility of the drug war, but what influence will they have on the law? Does anyone think that the drug czar or any senator has actually seen Grass or Bad Lieutenant, for example?
So then this movie comes along and does a brilliant thing, it makes a movie showing the drug war for what it is, and it casts Senators (such as Utah Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch) in cameo roles. I know that Orrin Hatch has seen the film (he gave an interview to the Salt Lake Tribune about it), and I'm fairly certain that many of his colleagues, and not just the ones who appeared in it aside him, also have - because everyone wants to see a movie if their friends are in it. This is such a great ploy on Soderbergh's part. Upon first hearing about this I thought Soderbergh was doing the same thing Bunuel did with Viridiana. Viridiana was a blasphemous film made with the full cooperation of Franco's Catholic Spain - Spanish officials even praised it and accepted the award at Cannes for him, until they saw it, were humiliated, and banned it. Bunuel was delighted. So here's Traffic with a cameo by clueless Orrin Hatch, who is later giving interviews about how he supports the film's "strong anti-drug message", and I thought this was Soderbergh's way of getting a laugh. Then I realized it's the way he's trying to make sure the message gets to the right people.
That's the best thing about the film. As far as just a film, it's worth watching, it's good, I enjoyed it a lot, even though it is a little sappy sometimes.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
I almost left the theater to puke
I almost left the theater to puke, and that is praise, and it's true. I had heard good things about this, but I was not too impressed with Pi, so overall I was expecting it to be "good" at best. But, seeing this movie was an experience unlike "seeing a movie" had ever been before in my life. Seeing this movie is more an experience that rivals losing your virginity, attending a parent's funeral, or getting in a car accident. I almost left the theater to throw up not out of disgust (although there were a few disgusting images), but out of anxiety. I've never walked out of a movie, and almost had to leave my first one not because of how bad it was, but because of how good it was. I was sitting there thinking "please be over.. please be over..", so that I could leave. Now that I've had a day to recover, I am going to go see it again, I should be detached just barely enough to appreciate the technique this time. I really hope that "Batman Year One", his next project, does not turn out to be for him what "Dune" was to David Lynch.
Fight Club (1999)
'Potemkin' of the 90s
This movie is a well crafted, exciting, and ultimately thoughtless piece of propaganda, like "Potemkin", "Triumph of the Will" or "Birth of a Nation". It advances certain ideas (that we are all slaves to "consumerism" and have no choice but to buy products advertised to us, which we must revolt against by beating people up and exploding buildings), and argues them with images rather then words. In historical context, it will be seen alongside the WTO and IMF riots and the rise of the Green Party. Like most propaganda, a closer inspection will reveal how full of hypocrisy it is - notice all the product placements.
Scary Movie (2000)
re-doing something is not parody
This was a very stupid, disapointing movie. It's makers don't seem to understand that in order for a parody to be funny, you have to do something more then just re-film it - in some cases (the "I see dead people" and the "wassup" commercial parody) it's almost line for line. There's nothing else in it - they just repeat it using different characters and you're supposed to laugh. This movie is like the annoying guy at work who thinks he's funny when he repeats the same movie/commercial catch phrase over and over. I think I laughed maybe 5 times in the movie - but each time, the joke went on for so long that it just became annoying. They had the same problem with the "gross out" humor - they'd show something disgusting but forget to make it funny.
Schizopolis (1996)
fan-tastic! (may contain spoilers?)
What a great movie. I put off renting it due to the general plot outline and poster which makes it seem "zany" and "mad-cap". I'm glad I finally did, as it is now one of my favorite movies. Its influence on "Lost Highway" is very clear - the sudden transformation of one character into another, with no explanation. More significantly, it has many elements of "American Beauty" in it, and I'm curious if the makers of "American Beauty" saw it.
I love the masterful control of surrealism throughout the movie, particularly in the fantasy/dream sequences, and I was surprised that the film's author was also the director of "Erin Brockovich". Also pay attention to the non-sense speaking sequences, where characters greet eachother with phrases like "nose army" and continue, usually into a seduction sequence, saying things which make just as much sense. Oddly enough, you begin to understand what certain key phrases in these scenes mean - and then when it switches back to regular-speak, you're much more conscious of the words as constructed and arbitrary dialog. 10/10.
Sweet Movie (1974)
Terrible
I have seen and appreciated movies far more disgusting and shocking then this one, but I think that the director of this film, and anyone participating in the filming of the "strip tease" scene should be rounded up and arrested for child sexual abuse, including their parents who allowed them to be filmed. It was at this point that I turned the movie off (about an hour in), after already fast forwarding through at least 20% of it up to this point, which involved long singing sequences. Does it have anything to offer at all? Yes, a few surprising non-sequitars, and a barely humorous scene where a fat rich man with a Texan accent explains his rationale for marriage. This is why I give it a 2/10 instead of 1/10.
Amargosa (2000)
Great movie about the artistic drive
I saw this movie as part of the Slamdance mini-fest in Salt Lake City tonight. It included only two features, and I was planning on watching the first one, then leaving while this one played - after all, it's a documentary about a ballerina, and I have never even danced. I'm very glad I stayed. The beginning of it is a bit slow, and maybe a 7/10 - it's sort of a TV-style documentary. It's the type of thing you would watch a few minutes of if you were channel surfing, but you'd get bored quick. But then it gets into the discussion of the way the dancer's family relationships effected her work, and it gets into how her obsession with her art eventually ruined her relationship with her husband. There was some pointless stuff tossed into here, and a general lack of direction as they strayed off about ghosts and the history of the town, but overall a great movie, 10/10.
Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
Made me cry, and almost vomit
I made the mistake of cooking up a hamburger to eat while I watched this movie - very bad idea. See it on an empty stomach. When I rented this I was not even aware that the subject of the film was dying (I thought it said the life and *times* of...). I rented it primarily for the shock value. I had heard that it has a scene which "beats the opening shot in The Andalusian Dog". After viewing the movie, I'm not quite sure which scene that is a reference to, because pretty much every scene in the film beats it, on the level of shock and disgust. Anyway, I was very surprised to see that this is actually a very sad and profound movie. Also very saddening was the whole thing about the make-a-wish foundation girl.
God's Army (2000)
Anatomy of a cult
I'll grant that this movie was not as bad as I expected. I greatly admire Dutcher's making a movie on his own terms, because in these PC times, the typical response to movie stereotypes is to complain about them and not do anything. Making your own movie as an answer to them must have taken great guts. But as a rationalist, I have to say this movie is just propaganda. Dutcher also gets credit for bringing up some of the logical criticisms of the book of Mormon, but then he just dismisses them with hand waving and ridiculous justifications ("sometimes I think God gives us a few hundred reasons to believe, and just throws in a couple not to, so that we can choose for ourselves"). Ultimately, the movie decides that the issues that Elder Kinegar brings up don't really matter, as far as rational discussion - all that matters is when you want to believe so bad, go through so much mental anguish about it, until you experience a moment of insanity when you just "know" you're right. The movie also helped me realize how seemingly intelligent people can continue to not only believe in the religion, not only go on a mission, but even PAY the church to go on your mission: when you sacrifice so much.. so much of yourself, so much of your freedom, so much of your dignity, so much of your rational skepticism, then you just HAVE to believe in it to avoid the heart wrenching disappointment that would come when you realized your entire set of beliefs is absurd. Of course, you cannot deny this.. you can pretend to, you can never mention your doubts to other people, you can try to turn your brain off - that's why Utah is the Prozac capital of the world. At the end of the movie, the main character says he never found out what happened to Elder Kinegar. I know what happened to him, the same thing that happened to all my friends who are recovering Mormons - he felt a huge weight lifted from his shoulders when he left the church, then he went on to enjoy life, and wondered how he could ever have deluded himself so much as to waste so many years of his life in the church.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
1 Hitler + thousands of Leuchters = 6 million dead
What struck me most about this movie was how much like a "normal guy" Leuchter seems to be, yet still be able to be a designer of execution equipment and a holocaust revisionist. He's not exactly "normal" I guess, but he seems like someone's grandfather, someone with a dorky sense of humor who is reluctant to even swear (several times in the movie he is about to, then pulls back - like when the state cancelled the lethal injection machine contract with him - "they basically told me I could stick it.. someplace"). He seems to be ultra-prude - notice his ex-wife's mention of the fact that all the time in Poland, they didn't sleep in the same bed once. He doesn't seem to think much about things either. His opinions seem to be formed on the spot for the camera. But there's something dark inside that makes him smile like a kid at a birthday party whenever he's around a new electric chair - that same dark thing compelled him to go to Poland and scrape rock from a room where countless men, women, children, and old people died. What I got from this movie was a feel of how the holocaust could have happened - it didn't depend so much on evil as much as it did on indifference - people like Fred Leuchter Jr., who, in his own words, can sleep fine at night. This is not because he's a sadist and enjoyed designing death equipment, it's because he was able to abstract out what he was really doing, and think of it as an engineering problem. A single Hitler with a few Lackeys couldn't have killed 6 million people on his own, he needed people like Fred to do it. Indifferent people who are "just doing their jobs".
Problems I had with this movie: that flashing in the beginning. Anyone have a seizure during that? Also, it seemed too staged - it was too easy to imagine Morris saying to Fred "ok, now look at the electric chair.. play with the dials a bit..". I also would have liked to have seem Leuchter meet face to face with the chemist who did the analysis of the rock. I am left wondering, is Leuchter just ignorant? Maybe nobody explained the diluting of the cyanide to him. I would like to have seen his reaction to it - would he say "oh - I didn't think of that", or just come up with some ridiculous counter-argument?
Coven (2000)
not as bad as you'd expect
If you've seen American Movie, which details the making of this short, you'd expect it to be awful. But it's really not that bad. Considering all the problems he had, it's pretty good. I noticed very few technical problems or continuity problems. The grainy high contrast reversal film works to the film's advantage. The acting has a few problems either, but there is no big emotional scene where it stands out as particularly bad. This movie is entertaining, and worth buying (you can get it on the American Movie site). It's not exactly the drama he intended it to be, but it's not campy either. It's a good first project.
American Psycho (2000)
Hilarious and dark, sometimes stilted
This movie is great, but I have a taste for mixing the hilarious with the perverse. It's great to see them transposed.. it makes the dark seem darker and the light seem lighter. This movie was generally a good adaption of the book. The book is really revolting, I had to stop reading at parts and go do something else before I could continue (and I consider myself a pretty sick guy). You really couldn't sit through the movie if it portrayed what was shown in the book. The closest movie I've seen to something like that was "Salo: 120 days of Sodom", which didn't even come close to the violence in American Psycho (the novel). The only problem with the movie's adaption is that it left out some very telling things - like the fact that Bateman's mother is in a mental hospital, and the episode where he murders an ex-gf, which further sketches out his hostility towards women.
Après le bal (1897)
This is the first "adult" film
I'm not making this up: This movie, from 1897, was the first ever "adult" film. It is very tame by today's standards. You could show it on tv with no problems. It involved two women, wearing skin colored suits. One of them is in a bath, and the other has a pitcher full of ashes - the ash is supposed to be water, but the water wouldn't show up on the 19th century film. So she pours the ashes over her and washes her. It's about a minute long. Melies advertised this in his film catalogue as ideal for bachelor parties.
L'affaire Dreyfus (1899)
First censored political film
This is the first movie ever censored for political reasons. The title refers to a historical event in France decades earlier in which a Jewish military officer was discharged for bribery, and it was alleged that he was framed due to anti-semitism. The status the event held in France at this time in history was probably about similar to the way Vietnam is viewed in the US today. Anyway, Melies made clear in the film that the officer (Dreyfus) was framed. There were riots at the theaters, and the film was shut down. Also interesting is that this is the first (ever) multi-scene film. Before this, they set up the camera, ran it until the film ran out (about 50 seconds), and showed it exactly as it came out of the camera. "The Dreyfus Affair" was shot on I believe 11 reels (hence 11 different scenes) and shown in sequence.
Schindler's List (1993)
Not nearly as good as it could have been
This movie took a subject which was extremely complicated and difficult, and dumbed it down to the level that everyone except Representative Tom Coburn (OK) could understand it (he complained about the networks "polluting the minds of our children" when it was shown on tv, because it had nudity and violence). Oscar Schindler was an anti-semite, a real anti-semite. Someone once asked him why he had done what he did, and he said something along the lines of "if you see a dog hit by a car dying in the street, you know you're better then the dog, but you still want to help it" (he was equating Jews with dogs, placing them on the same moral level). He was also a womanizer and alcoholic. The golden ring he was given at the end of the film, in real life was later traded for a drink. This was not the same Schindler portrayed in the movie. The film attempted to show some of his "seedy" side, I think that's what the secretary hiring scene was supposed to be, but it didn't really work, and I didn't end up thinking Oscar Schindler was that bad of a guy. This could have been a much richer film if it was about a bad person who did a good thing, which was what the historical event actually was.
The film, I think, was meant to be an educational project. It was meant to teach people about the holocaust when they really didn't know much about it. As that, it succeeds. This is a movie that should be shown to middle school students when the holocaust is being studied. It brings knowledge to the masses which they otherwise would not have known about. but as art, as a movie, it just dressed itself up as a "serious art film", while actually really dumbing down the subject. If you're already familiar with the subject matter, if you already knew genocide was bad, that Nazis were crazy, and that the holocaust was an enraging and sad event, then there's really nothing in the movie to think about. I would put this film in the same class as Man On The Moon - mediocre films that have nothing to offer beyond introducing the audience to events they may be unfamiliar with.
The Flicker (1966)
Amazing film!
The complicated plot of this film may be very difficult to follow, for some viewers, but it pays off at the end. The character development is brilliant. Watch for the ironic ending and the way it all comes together at the end. Believe it or not, this film is based on a true story! I can't wait for the sequel, or the television series which is in the works.
PCU (1994)
Excercise in annoyance
My God this movie is awful! Next to Mr. Holland's Opus, this is the worst movie I have ever seen. There is just not a funny line in the entire movie - but they try so hard, and that just makes it annoying. You can imagine a bunch of frat boys sitting around watching this and thinking it's entertainment. The only thing that could have made this movie more annoying is to put Bob Saget, Pauley Shore, and Adam Sandler in it, and give it a country music sound track.