Videodrome

A resounding yes. For some reason I've never completely trusted Cronenberg, and I don't know if Videodrome has totally convinced me about him... But I kind of can't believe I've never seen this movie before, or even heard very much about it. I had this weird feeling through most of the first half, a feeling that I don't recall every having before, but it was something like regret at never having seen this before. Strong regret. Like I wished I'd watched this on VHS back when I was in high school and used to stay up late watching movies on my little white TV/VCR. Strange...

Here's something solid: unlike most movies that rely on bending the 'reality' of the narrative, there's not any clear real/hallucination divide here. I love that. Also, James Woods sometimes grows a giant vagina in his stomach.

But then, I think why I can't completely trust Cronenberg is that despite all his grossness he still seems very much "high art" to me. Like he thinks he is and is committed to being high art. I can't say exactly why. But I just think that. Maybe it's cuz he's British. Is he British? I think he's British. Oh, never mind, I guess he's Canadian. Still, I bet he's very expensively educated and is proud of that fact and has spent his whole life almost exclusively around other expensively educated people. For some reason, I just don't think I like him, even though his movies are...

Well, this movie is seriously fucking good.

Sleepaway Camp

The most interesting thing about Sleepaway Camp, as I'm sure anyone who's seen it would agree, is the ending. But a lot of how effective the ending is has to do with the rest of the movie, and especially the tone. There's not a lot of sudden violence, even in the most directly presented murder scene--the sexy/snotty counselor getting stabbed in the shower. Instead, the movie mostly opts for a kind of subdued ambient feel, beginning with the slow tracking shots across the empty playgrounds, and most memorably (in my mind) the really excellently well done long shot of all the kids arriving at the camp, the huge pan from left, across the three buses, with the kids streaming across the shot as it pans right and down into the camp, the loud camp-director guy standing in the middle and shouting--but even here obviously not "acting," at least in any competent sense. The "classical" score adds to this part of the tone.

I'm not sure what to make of the bad acting as far as how it serves to help the movie--and maybe it just doesn't. No one has a boring performance, though. There are no flat line readings. But pretty much nobody here is in any sense a "good" actor. Certainly that works for the kids, who are all appropriately aged, and so their inability to actually act always reminds us that these are obviously real teenagers, quite often behaving exactly how "real" teenagers would behave at a camp like this. It's probably less effective, though, with the older "actors," who all seem to be at least trying to "act" in a way that only makes the viewer aware of how bad they are at acting. Sometimes it's quite funny, this way, but I don't think it really adds to the movie the way the non-performances of the kids and most of the counselors does.

And I think it's important that the campers are all real kids because this is a summer camp slasher movie, and it is very obviously a summer camp slasher movie, by which I mean that is not trying to be anything else (which seems important to me), and the viewer is likely (almost certainly) aware of certain expectations for this type of film--which almost certainly include sex being had by the campers, and of course nudity. But here, because the performers are kids, the viewers expectation of this, and more especially the viewers obligatory desire for this, is thwarted--nobody actually wants to (want to) see real naked teenagers. So the movie sets up a little bit of disgust for the viewer to direct toward him/herself, since we're trained to want the voyeuristic thrill of nudity in movies like this, but we're constantly being reminded that this would be a genuinely perverse desire in the case of this film.

So there's already this seed of frustration and disgust throughout the movie--which, I should add, is quite often actually really well done, especially the "good old summer camp" scenes with the boys horsing around, playing baseball, etc, but when it veers back into the set forms of slasher movie the viewer can't help but be a little uncomfortable about it. And then there's the big "shock" at the end, which is genuinely pretty shocking--but I think the most shocking thing about it is that it is suddenly so absolutely tasteless. There's at once this "shock" of the narrative "twist" that's completely dwarfed by the shock of how blatantly tasteless the actual reveal itself is. ... I'm not quite sure exactly how to express this. I think it's extremely interesting that the shock you feel at the end of the movie is really more about feeling disgusted at the movie itself, not actually a shock within the narrative of the movie. And that it's very specifically disgust at the tastelessness of it. But it's somehow not, I think, "anger" or anything like that being felt toward the fimmakers. You don't think they're jerks, or monsters, or something. Maybe crude... But it seems so intentional, and not sophomoric, so it's not even being let down by them. ... I think it's incredibly effective, and I think it's interesting that they're using this provoked reaction of disgust toward the movie itself as a way to slam home the ending... And of course there's also probably something about how the ending is finally nudity, but it's shocking male/ambiguous nudity that you don't get to enjoy at all. ... But it's not emotion the way you normally expect to feel emotion in watching a movie--it's not at all cathartic. It's not an emotional response directed toward or even projected from within the narrative of the movie, which is I think how emotion almost always works in movies. It instead provokes an emotional response in you, the viewer, directed not inside the movie but at the movie itself. ((And I think part of what's been interesting me so much about horror movies lately is that horror movies often are looking to provoke something more like this kind of emotional response, a response of viewer at movie rather than viewer within movie, or a kind of actual physiological response that isn't purely emotional, but I think that even in horror movies it's often still tied to the narrative of the movie, and it's nearly always perfectly cathartic, even at it's most tasteless.))

Pick Up on South Street

The McCarthy-era would've been an especially shitty time to live in this country. This movie had a decent thing going until everyone suddenly freaked out about the Commies, and suddenly fighting the Commies makes everyone (even the sleaze-ball abusive pickpocket the heroine inexplicably falls in love with) into a hero. Thelma Ritter's performance as Moe is pretty outstanding, on kind of a different level from all the other actors in the film. And I suppose Candy's love for Skip McCoy was supposed to be redemptive or something, but it seemed symptomatic of an abused woman who goes from one abuser to another. The movie was extremely well shot, though, with some really tight action. I just didn't buy the rosy, "We got those commies!" ending.

Forbidden Planet

Okay, so Leslie Nielsen looked weird when he was younger. Some people only get better looking with age, and I guess he is one of them. The movie itself was actually better than I thought it'd be, with a lot of really interesting-looking special effects that I assume must have been absolutely top-notch for the time it was made. Much like many modern sci-fi flicks, all the attention to the special effects obviously came at the expense of attention to everything else: script, acting, etc. There was a pretty (accidentally) hilarious attempt at comic relief by way of a subplot involving the ship cook and his love of Kansas City bourbon, but it was somewhat undermined by fact that the actor playing the cook seemed pretty bored by the whole thing, too. I guess they must've been trying to treat the spaceship crew the way they'd treat the crew of a navy boat in old movies or something. All the "romantic" interactions seemed bizarre, largely as a result of their exaggeratedly forced enactment of gender stereotypes of the day. There's also the whole fact that apparently Nielsen's character is supposed to be perceived as heroic and wonderful when he's actually a grade-A dick constantly trying to "subtly" advance himself, performing some pretty blatant cock-blocking by ordering his second-in-command to stay behind while he goes to grab some nookie with Morbius's daughter (which, hilariously, number two gushingly congratulates him for, saying, "She got the right man!"). The only confusing part about it was I couldn't tell if we were supposed to not realize how much a dick he was, or if that was all supposed to be part of why we thought he was heroic, or if the writer's didn't notice/care that he was such a dick...

Best line: "We're all monsters in our subconscious! That's why we have laws and religion!" said by Leslie Nielsen through gritted teeth as he tries to choke Morbius into unconsciousness.

Transsiberian

On my way out of the movie theater, I concocted a highly complex response to this movie, and then I voiced it to my companion, "It was good enough." I stand by that claim. Woody Harrelson is pretty delightful as that relentlessly upbeat brand of meathead, although, like always, he's still Woody Harrelson (which, as far as I'm concerned, is a reason to like him). Actually, the four main characters are all kind of stereotypes, and Harrelson was the only actor who sort of transcended his, although, like I said, I think that's mainly because even when he's shooting really hard at embodying a stereotype, he's still Woody Harrelson.

The only really impressive thing about the movie, though, is they how subtle they are about Kate Mara's character, "Abby." It's just a couple of throwaway lines here and there that didn't even register for me until well after I'd the movie was over, but after piecing a few things together, it's possible that her character is actually the most in control character in the entire movie, aside from that little slip up of being captured and tortured. I'm also not sure, at this point, how much Emily Mortimer's character "Jessie" comes to understand about Abby. There's actually about three different ways you can read their final scene together, and I'm not at all sure which is the most likely. What I like the most about this whole mystery is that it's not at all made the focal point of the climax. So, there's that.

Hellboy II, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

That screenplay isn't so bad that it really ruins anything, but it definitely is the weakest part of the movie. The strongest? The special effects! And I don't mean the way they were awesome in T2 or anything. All the mythical creatures throughout the whole movie were great, even good enough that they pretty much justify the movie. I don't know anything about how they were done, but Del Toro pretty much know what he's doing when it comes to this. I found myself thinking, "This guy should've directed the new Star Wars movies," mainly because he manages a bunch of creatures with as much charm as any I've seen since the original Mos Eisley cantina band, and all of that stuff was mainly what distracted from the thinness of the plots in the original Star Wars films. Also, Ron Perelman is pretty much perfect as Hellboy.

And there was just enough weirdness to the story that it stayed interesting, at least. It was totally baffling how the main baddy kept just appearing in random places, like suddenly on the roof of a building that Hellboy had scaled, but the unabashed lack of concern for plausibility w/r/t the dude's whereabouts almost ended up giving him some kind of vaguely symbolic function that made it forgivable (obviously, the fact that he delivered the most heavy-handed little speech to Hellboy about "they'll never accept you" and whatever helped in this respect). And the way nobody seemed overly concerned with the agents getting pretty brutally killed by the little magic termites at the beginning placed the film in a pretty different moral universe than we're used to seeing in big action/superhero movies.

I've never read the comic book, so I don't know to what extent this is just because of the comic book, but this seemed by far the least comic-book-movie-like of the big summer comic book movies.

The Dark Knight

Not much point in mentioning that this movie was good. I do think it's interesting that the Nola's have managed to make two insanely good comic book adaptations by taking exactly the opposite tactic of everyone else making comic book adaptions--by dialing up the (perceived) realism, even to the point of letting Batman stand in the middle of a brightly lit interrogation room and not framing him to look like anything other than a guy standing there in a bizarre suit. And it's always nice to see a big budget movie that's taken obvious care with the cinematography. It's just all so... stately, and huge, and crisp. The shot from the mayor's office (I think that was it) with the view of Gotham was one of the most beautifully photographed scenes I remember seeing in a contemporary movie.

Oh, and now people who loved the movie are getting mad that people are pointing out how much of the movie mirrors the administrations responses to the war on terror. Um, really, you didn't notice? I thought it was pretty obvious and obviously intentional, and kind of a little heavy-handed. The whole total surveillance part was the dumbest part of the movie, I thought, and seemed like it was only there as some kind of a bid for topical relevance. And I thought it was a little weak the way they let themselves off of the hook by having Morgan Freeman take his big principled stand that really amounted to, "well, okay... just this once," which is ultimately not much of a principled stance. Cuz, of course, Batman does use the total surveillance to catch the Joker, and it's the only way he could've caught him, and we're supposed to believe that just because he has it self-destruct that he's "aware" of the questionable morality of it? Why not just accept the fact that the Batman you've created isn't exactly a hero to be admired? That's kind of why he's so much more interesting as a character than almost all other comic book heroes in adaptation are.

Iron Man

Quite a ways on the other side of the "pure fun" spectrum from the Batman movie. Ultimately, the movie seemed like not too much more than a setup for something else, and it's small ambition served it quite well. It was good to see the amount of work Favreau let get done by his actors, though. They're really what pull the movie along. Downey's charm is through the roof, and he and Paltrow really make the sexual tension sing, which is pretty impressive considering the not-much they had to work with scriptwise. And Jeff Bridges is just fucking scary. Why doesn't he get to do cool stuff like this more often?

The weakest part of the movie is it's own rather clumsy bid for topical relevance. Super heroes only make sense when they're fighting super-villains. When Iron Man decides to try to take on terrorism, it just doesn't make much sense, because ultimately the problem is not one that can be handled with just better and more powerful weapons. The scene when Iron Man lands in the town and there's a brief break in the fighting while all the baddies have their hostages held in front of him, I was actually kind of excited for a second because I thought I saw some kind of realization of exactly that futility coming, but then he happened to have exactly the right super-powerful weapon. Oh, well. It got around to its super-villian eventually, and then it made more sense again.

The Incredible Hulk

Nothing in this movie made any sense. It was terrible. I never understood why people hated Ang Lee's Hulk so much. It was certainly way the fuck better than this piece of garbage. I'm just not even going to bother listing off everything that was wrong with it, but while I was watching, I found myself grumpily thinking things like, "WTF? Why is it suddenly raining?"

Wall-E

Before I went, my dad told me, "It's pretty boring. Nobody talks for like the first half of it." Conversely, most reviews mentioned this exact thing as a positive, as if the movie was very experimental for doing so and successful in its experimentalism. Then later while I was driving through Wyoming this guy on NPR was talking about how they made us connect to the robot by giving him toddler-like features, with big eyes and head, short stubby arms and legs, fat torso. I thought that was all old news, like who doesn't know about those tricks? Anyway, the movie, like all Pixar movies I've seen, was thoroughly enjoyable. I especially liked the no talking parts, which felt, far from being experimental, like a throwback to Charlie Chaplin, where the humor and delight is all in the movements alone, and the fact that they were able to accomplish this in animation seems worth celebrating to me. The robots all seemed more likeable and quirky and ultimately human than the actual humans, but of course that was on purpose. My favorite robot was the little scrubber robot, and his burst of excitement, like a giant blocky exclamation point, when he jumped off the path of the little line laid out for him. Utterly delightful.