AFTER.LIFE
Dir. Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
2009
Ricci is an unpleasant young woman (but a nice teacher) who has somehow managed to get a boyfriend who wants to marry her. Mistakenly thinking that he’s brought her to an ultra expensive restaurant to dump her, she speeds off into the night and crashes her car, only to wake up in the morgue being reassured by a kind Liam Neeson that she’s dead. Showing her the death certificate to her insistence that he’s a psychopath, Ricci refuses to believe she’s dead and runs around wrecking the morgue and trying to escape to no avail. Her boyfriend believes she’s alive, due to a brief phone call he received while drunk, so he attempts to see her body, despite Neeson’s refusal.
The first half of this movie had me worried. Very worried. I love Christina Ricci, but for the first half of the movie all she seemed to do was squeakshriek variations of ‘I’m not dead!’ and ‘I can’t be dead!’, while Liam Neeson’s character revealed his hang up with bodily functions by going into a few rants of human beings pissing and shitting and wasting their lives. Justin Long wandered around looking drunk and confused and would sometimes say ‘fuck’. And everybody had fucked up badly CGI-ed dreams.
The second half, though, was much better. Ricci accepts that she’s dead and decides to roam around sans clothes, while having heated conversations with Neeson about life and what she wanted out of it and didn’t really get, how she fucked up, etc. She still has the dreams, but this time they worked (for the most part. Her final one was pretty awful). Liam toned it down on the ‘pissing and shitting’ tirades and the film began to get somewhat thought provoking. Justin Long wandered around looking drunk and confused and would sometimes say ‘fuck’, and slapped a small child for variety.
I find it very sad when a movie’s not as good as it could have been. This happens a lot, and it happens here. For the first half of the movie it practically screams ‘art house’, slapping you with close up shots of blood and hair dye-stained water washing down drains, and the constant use of blinding white and deep reds. However, once it gets into semi depth, it starts to lose its visual luster. The colors are still very bright but now they seem garish and a nuisance, instead of the camera lovingly focusing on them as before. A lot of this half takes place in the morgue backlit by surgery lamps, but even in comparison it’s dull and (ha) lifeless. It could be argued this was illustrating Ricci’s descent into darkness, but by now the film feels so rushed it’s hard to decide. I think if they had somehow made the second section last longer and filmed like they had the first, they’d have had a really good movie on their hands. But, they didn’t, so what we ended up with is a slightly above average thriller/horror combo with ambitions of being something ‘more’.
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ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE
Dir. Jonathan Levine
2006
This one was made four years ago, and briefly made the festival rounds. Got amazing praise, too good to be true, then sort of disappeared. In 2008, it was released in the U.K. and the praise continued but was occasionally intercut with things like ‘fucking awful’ and ‘dude, not great’. It still hasn’t been released in the U.S. for unknown reasons, but the semi-cult following its gotten was intriguing, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
A plain high school sophomore wakes up Junior Year as Amber Heard and is promptly invited to a pool party, where her friend urges a drunken jock who wants to get into her pants to jump off the roof to impress her. This situation doesn’t end well, so flash forward nine months later and Mandy’s friends with the cool kids and her old friend is now blonde and not a part of the clique. All of her new male friends have aspirations to ‘get with’ her, and figure inviting her and the rest of their group to a ranch would be the perfect opportunity. Tilting the rearview mirror to avoid witnessing a backseat handjob, politely refusing a joint, slowly sipping her beer and looking on in apathy as her friends snort Ritalin show us Mandy’s wholesome nature. At the farm, her friends indulge in various excesses, make general assholes out of themselves and are eventually killed off in ‘blah’ ways, with the exception of a shotgun blowjob, which was slightly unique and unpleasant.
Movies like this are one of the benefits of labels. Why label a movie, anyway? Sometimes it seems pointless, I know, but in this case it really might have helped. It almost didn’t seem to know what it was. The first hour or so is treated very seriously, almost drama-esque. Then it changes on you and you realize that no, this isn’t about the pain of being an adolescent in this day and age, this is a slasher. That hour or so was character development spent developing unlikeable characters.
The three best things are as follows: a scene in an open grave of rotting diseased cow corpses, the daylight scenes are filmed so they looked like a kind of washed out beautiful that remind you of a burnt summer, and it’s the only movie I’ve seen so far where pubic hair trimming is made out to be a melancholy event. It’s an average slasher that tried to be something more and I think that’s why it’s gotten all the praise, but the problem with this particular subgenre is while tweaks to the formula are always appreciated, you have to remember exactly it is what you’re doing and what the purpose of these films are in the first place. They just needed to lighten up a bit.
I know this all sounds sort of unfavorable, but I did like it. It’s not as great as it wants to be, but it’s not a bad movie, either. It’s got great cinematography, the acting is slightly above average, and there’s a little ambiguity thrown in there. And we get to see a very pretty Luke Grimes portray a white trash jock for a few minutes and that’s worth it, right? I thought so, anyway.
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CRACKS
Dir. Jordan Scott
2009
At an all girl’s Catholic school in the 30’s, Ms. G. (Eva Green) is everybody’s hero. The diving instructor who constantly tells stories of the places she’s traveled and things she’s witnessed, she’s idolized the most by Di (Juno Temple). That all changes whenever the new girl Fiamma (Maria Valverde) arrives. Aside from already being an outcast due to her wealth, she quotes one of Eva Green’s stories word for word before she tells it. This doesn’t arouse suspicion from anybody besides Ms. G, who begins to take an unhealthy interest in Fiamma.
Of course, throughout the movie it becomes clear exactly what Ms. G. is doing and has been for years, but everyone, including Di, refuses to believe it. Disillusion is a great if unhappy topic, so it’s used frequently in various types of media. What makes Cracks unique is not this subject, or really anything else about it, except for the great cinematography and one scene in the woods. And if it hadn’t been for the performances (and that scene), this would be a completely forgettable film.
Juno Temple is believable as Di, the girl with an obsession with Ms. G. She takes joy in discussing banned books with her and is quick to stop any unfavorable words directed towards her beloved teacher. Maria Valverde is even better, alternating between wanting to fit in and just wanting to go home. But Eva Green is the real star here. At first you like her and her quirky teaching methods, taking the girls out to skinny dip at midnight to teach them a variation on ‘carpe diem’. Later, whenever she’s lurking around dark hallways, chain smoking and glaring at walls from underneath her smeared mascara, you pity her. Then finally, she snaps, and the look in her eyes makes you afraid to even go near her. Sadly, that’s also the biggest flaw. Once Eva Green gets the aforementioned ‘look’, it never goes away. Ever. Even whenever she’s supposed to be passing off as sane, those eyes still look like she’s far away, in a place worse than here.
I can’t really discuss the scene in the woods, as it’s a huge plot point, so I’ll just say both the intense close ups and how Eva Green’s nails looked amongst the grass were stunning. But the scene in the woods, with and without Green’s nails, really is suspenseful and tragic and wonderfully done. It’s almost hard to believe it’s in the same movie. I almost wish the entire movie had been like that scene, even if it is more effective when bookended by the rest of. Shock is an overused term but applicable here.
The ending’s a little eye-roll worthy, but other than that, this is a slightly gorgeous and wonderfully acted film.
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EX TERMINATORS
Dir. John Inwood
2010
Okay, first off, ignore that awful font used in the trailer, the kind that generally saved for the atrocious parody movies. And that music. This isn’t nearly as bad as it looks.
After punching a guy and being told Texas doesn’t like it when a woman acts like a man, Alex (Heather Graham) is sent to rage therapy. After witnessing a husband slap his wife at a bar, Alex, Stella (Jennifer Coolidge) and Nikki (Amber Heard, yet again) decide to accidently-not-really run him off the road. A convincing argument is given as their reason for not going to the police (“It was an accident.” “We’re three drunk women with assault records.”) and they move on, until they’re offered money to do it again.
This isn’t one of those laugh out loud comedies. There are a few lines that induce a chuckle, but that’s about it. It’s also an insult to fluff, because that particular noun is too heavy for this film. Cute, maybe. A cute movie that’s probably going to be accused of misandry, if it hasn’t been already.
One of the biggest problems with this is the ‘side business’, a.k.a. the basic plotline. Heather Graham doesn’t really participate in it, and since she’s the main character, most of her scenes are spent wandering around asking her friends why they think it’s okay to set people on fire and doing Jennifer Coolidge’s taxes. One of the two best scenes also isn’t related to the plot at all, just given as evidence to show you how emotionless Amber Heard’s character is (“Anybody here ever fuck a retard for fifty dollars?”), and the other scene has been done many times before and much better, but it’s amusing enough. When all three are together, you believe Amber Heard and Jennifer Coolidge are friends and are trying to let Heather Graham become theirs, even if she’s not really ‘like them’, and those are probably the best moments in the film.
I didn’t expect anything from this and that might be why I liked it. So that’s my advice to you: expect nothing and you’ll receive a decent time waster.
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THE KILLER INSIDE ME
Dir. Michael Winterbottom
2010
I feel it should be mentioned up front that I am a Jim Thompson virgin. After viewing this that particular cherry will be popped, but right now I have no idea how accurate of an adaption this is. So this review is based solely on the movie.
Lou (Casey Affleck) is a Deputy Sheriff in a small town. After being told to vacate Jessica Alba for her chosen profession of prostitution, he instead engages in a sadomasochistic love affair with her. They plan on running away together, using the money that she’s blackmailing a rich client for. Unfortunately, Lou happens to be a bit off and sees this as his golden opportunity to get revenge on the person who may have killed his brother.
A star studded cast in a sun baked Texas noir, this didn’t get released in mainstream theatres and it’s easy to see why. It’s been accused of misogyny especially in regards to Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba’s characters, and I can see where they’re coming from, but I don’t really think that’s the case here. Winterbottom shows everything as it is, and unlike some movies that trivialize death (like many of those reviewed here), his camera doesn’t turn away. Instead of somebody morphing into Rambo at the last minute to take out their attacker, you see the victim as they really are: helpless. It’s not pleasant, but it’s realistic.
Aside from Casey Affleck’s annoying as fuck baby voice, the thing that hurts this most is the distance regarding the characters. It’s understandable/ expected with Lou, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a little depth for everybody else. The scenes drawing the criticism conflict with me: they are powerful and I ‘like’ them, but it also feels like a cheap shot. Almost as if to make up for the lack of connection earlier, we’re supposed to be shocked into attachment. There’s some stuff about Lou that’s tossed out to give you a maybe this is why he is the way he is, but other than that there’s nothing. In this day of backstories given to backstories, this is frustratingly refreshing. Really, everybody did a good job here, except for Simon Baker, who feels like he was thrown in at the last minute.
It occasionally lags, but the ending is great, making this a nice unpleasant little movie.
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THE LOVED ONES
Dir. Sean Bryne
2010
Lola (Robin McLeavy) is Daddy’s Little Princess with an Electra complex who gets what she wants. After deciding she wants Brent (Xavier Samuel), an emotionally distanced cutter who accidently killed his father while out driving six months ago, Daddy (John Brumpton) kidnaps him. They treat him to a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque dinner, which they call a ‘dance’ because a mirror ball’s been installed in the kitchen.
I generally don’t like most horror comedies. And not the parts in horror movies where you laugh because what you’re seeing is so ridiculous or the acting is so terrible, the ones that try to legitimately make you laugh. For me they always seem to be leaning heavily one way or the other and end up not succeeding as either. I didn’t know this one was a horror comedy, and I’m glad, because there’s a good chance that while I might’ve watched it, it would’ve been much later. The filmmakers chose to add elements of dark humor in the scenes with Lola and Brent and her father, and the comedy is actually, genuinely funny. The semi-bad news is they decided that that wasn’t enough and added a completely unrelated subplot about Brent’s friend and his goth girl date getting stoned in the parking lot. At first, it is annoying and wonder why it’s there, until later on when you realize it IS comedic relief. It just felt foreign because it’s the kind that works.
The actors all did good jobs here. John Brumpton is believably desperate and sleazy, even when he’s not ogling his daughter in various stages of undress. Xavier Samuel is great as Brent, and as he’s injected with a serum early into the movie to stop his vocal cords, he does a lot with his eyes and throat scrapes beyond the typical ‘get me the fuck out of here’ look. But the real stand out is Robin McLeavy. It’s easy to chew the scenery whenever you’re playing insanity incarnate, but she finds a fine balance, segueing from pathetic to psychotic seamlessly, occasionally in the same scene. When she snaps, you believe it, just as you believe she connects to repulsive pop song “Not Pretty Enough,” and not just because she listens to it again and again.
The claustrophobic aspect also works here. I’m not sure if it was intentional or just a happy accident due to the low budget, but most of the movie takes place in cars or the living room. The lights from the disco ball add some nice subtle touches, and the sweat everybody drips adds an urgency that makes it feel more real.
Another thing that worried me were ‘them.’ The first time I saw the trailer I thought, “oh, okay. Cool. Oh. Wait. Zombies. Sort of. Dammit.” The way ‘they’ were referred to I immediately assumed they were of some supernatural origin, and since it looks like they were munching on a body I figured zombies. After seeing the movie, I can say with relief that they aren’t supernatural beings at all, and definitely not zombies. Eating road kill as well as flesh, they’re what happens in this movie whenever your brain is boiled, and they’re used just enough that you appreciate them. Lola and her father even keep one around the house (nicknamed Bright Eyes because of her retained eye pigment) to emotionally berate inbetween shoving chicken and milk down her throat.
The final fifteen minutes were an almost perfect blend of horror and comedy, making The Loved Ones the best horror movie I’ve seen all year.
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PIRANHA 3D
Dir. Alexandre Aja
2010
Well. You can tell from the title what this one is about, and what it is and what it isn’t. But I’ll go ahead anyway.
Richard Dreyfuss in complete Jaws attire is torn apart by a swarm of piranhas. Having just been unleashed via an earthquake, these fake looking prehistoric fish are pissed and hungry. Lucky for them, they just happen to live under a lake that boasts a huge Spring Break celebration every year.
Character development in this is basically nonexistent. Elisabeth Shue is a sheriff and also a mother, who attempts to save her kids. Adam Scott sort of flirts with her and then tries to save the day, along with Ving Rhymes. Christopher Lloyd is Christopher Lloyd, and Jerry O’Connell tries to film a variation on Girls Gone Wild. Basically everybody else’s job is to get drunk, find some way to get a girl to show her boobs (ranging from naked parasailing to an unbelievably long underwater lesbian ballet), and die.
Blood, gore, what have you, is also here. Some of this footage was originally intended to be shown at Comic Con, but after being informed the scenes were too graphic, the director took everyone to a theater down the street to show what he had, and people were supposedly shocked. The footage shown was out of order and ten minutes long, mainly of people being slaughtered, and ended up on the internet in a few days. Here, it’s revealed that that footage was only a fragment of a twenty minute massacre that kills off a lot of the college stereotypes populating the lake. Bodies are cut in half, then die a few seconds later; a face is ripped off, and people are devoured as heads are simultaneously crushed. Appendages are eaten to the bone. More faces disappear. It’s sort of amazing that some of this was allowed to be in the rated version, honestly, but on the other hand understandable given the tone.
I didn’t see Avatar in theaters, but from what I’ve heard, the 3D was breathtaking. It took you inside the movie and enhanced what you seeing in almost every way. This movie is not like that. Converted to 3D after the film had been shot, the 3D is below average at best. Hands meant to reach out of the screen merely manage to touch it and remind you that you’re watching a movie. Fish hiss at you from far away as you wonder why, and flying wires skim the surface, literally. But in a way, the shitty 3D almost enhances what you’re watching: a good bad movie. Yes, 3D is a gimmick made for a movie like Piranha, and if it had worked that would’ve been great. But it’s good that it didn’t. There are so many 3D effects that fail miserably that it adds to the campy value of the film.
Lines fall flat on their face. Characters exist for the sole purpose of fulfilling a large body count. The editing isn’t fantastic. It’s also stupid, corny, ridiculous, and predictable. But it’s all done with such a sense of fun that it rubs off on you. This one sort of flopped at the box office, and that sucks, but Piranha 3 DD has already been announced. It doesn’t really make sense, but I’ll be there to see it.
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THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES
Dir. John Erick Dowdle
2007
A serial killer with a balloon fetish is on the loose, kidnapping, torturing, and killing various women. With the world’s shittiest video camera ever made, he tapes his victims as he and occasionally Cheryl, a victim whom he kidnapped and kept alive, is forced to join in, whenever she’s not acting as his table. Inbetween the ‘found footage’ there are a bunch of talking heads, explaining how the killer is incredibly smart in constantly changing his M.O. and giving variations on ‘what you are about to see will shock you,’ complete with a suggestion that the killer is in the audience.
I was sort of looking forward to this one. I remember seeing the trailer in theaters a few years ago and making a mental note. But for some reason it never happened. The movie almost disappeared, until about a year or so ago whenever it began popping up on the internet. It’s still not on DVD yet, but after viewing it, I don’t feel any petitions are going to be signed in its favor.
I didn’t see Avatar in theaters, but from what I’ve heard, the 3D was breathtaking. It took you inside the movie and enhanced what you seeing in almost every way. This movie is not like that. Converted to 3D after the film had been shot, the 3D is below average at best. Hands meant to reach out of the screen merely manage to touch it and remind you that you’re watching a movie. Fish hiss at you from far away as you wonder why, and flying wires skim the surface, literally. But in a way, the shitty 3D almost enhances what you’re watching: a good bad movie. Yes, 3D is a gimmick made for a movie like Piranha, and if it had worked that would’ve been great. But it’s good that it didn’t. There are so many 3D effects that fail miserably that it adds to the campy value of the film.
Lines fall flat on their face. Characters exist for the sole purpose of fulfilling a large body count. The editing isn’t fantastic. It’s also stupid, corny, ridiculous, and predictable. But it’s all done with such a sense of fun that it rubs off on you. This one sort of flopped at the box office, and that sucks, but Piranha 3 DD has already been announced. It doesn’t really make sense, but I’ll be there to see it.
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THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES
Dir. John Erick Dowdle
2007
A serial killer with a balloon fetish is on the loose, kidnapping, torturing, and killing various women. With the world’s shittiest video camera ever made, he tapes his victims as he and occasionally Cheryl, a victim whom he kidnapped and kept alive, is forced to join in, whenever she’s not acting as his table. Inbetween the ‘found footage’ there are a bunch of talking heads, explaining how the killer is incredibly smart in constantly changing his M.O. and giving variations on ‘what you are about to see will shock you,’ complete with a suggestion that the killer is in the audience.
I was sort of looking forward to this one. I remember seeing the trailer in theaters a few years ago and making a mental note. But for some reason it never happened. The movie almost disappeared, until about a year or so ago whenever it began popping up on the internet. It’s still not on DVD yet, but after viewing it, I don’t feel any petitions are going to be signed in its favor.
First off, the acting in this is awful. I feel some slack should be given due to the number of people in the cast (over fifty) but they were only on screen for a few minutes at most, so it’s hard to manage that bit of courtesy. The best acting was delivered by two girl scouts, and that’s a sad thing to say. The footage was unbelievably bad: realism is fine, but that excuse goes out the window whenever you add music. Grain, lines and the worst, the constant swirls that make people look like the clocks from The Persistence of Memory, obscuring any chance of visibility. A hooker bouncing up and down on a balloon while being yelled at to “POP IT!!” is meant to be a serious matter and instead comes off as comedic. That being said, the mask Cheryl was made to wear was fittingly creepy and there’s one suspenseful moment, where the killer is hiding in a victim’s closet as she leans against the door. But those are really the only good things about this movie.
Basically a late night crime show, only with ‘real footage’ in place of reenactments, I actually almost don’t understand it. Quarantine, also directed by Dowdle, was okay. It wasn’t great but it was decent. This is a whole other thing entirely. The Poughkeepsie Tapes seems like an attempt to bring pseudo snuff to the mainstream, and if anything, it’s proof that that particular subgenre should stay as semi-underground as it is.
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A SERBIAN FILM
Dir. Srdjan Spasojevic
2010
My problem with this film is intensely personal. Not that every movie viewing experience isn’t personal for the particular viewer for one reason or another, but this one more so than others. This is one that you have to see for yourself to decide whether or not you like it, and there’s not really going to be a review to sway you one way or the other.
An ex porn star who tries to keep his sex drive down via Jack Daniels is approached by an old co-star, who has now started filming bestiality (regular porn’s boring without him), with an offer to star in a big art house porno. It’ll be unlike anything else, but all Milos, Ex Porn Star Extraordinaire, cares about is the money he’ll get, and how it will help him and his family. After meeting the director who immediately declares Milos an artist of fuck and states his admiration of his ability to stay hard for so long, Milos blindly signs the contract. The shoot begins in an orphanage where Milos starts working, but stops when he notices a little girl sitting in the corner of the room watching. Things gradually get more violent, disturbing and depressing from there, hitting its peak after Milos is injected with a mixture of speed and bull Vicodin and goes on a rampage.
Now, the controversy, and there is quite a bit but most of it’s the same. Many people are telling everybody else DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE, which will only pique your curiosity even more and drive you to it. We all know movies like this just dare you to see them anyway. But the scene in question that’s prompting discussion on whether or not censorship should be allowed in this case is as follows: having stated this is a political allegory and Spasojevic and co. feel they have fucked from birth, they decide to show that. It goes under the name ‘newborn porn’ in the film, and it’s as subtle as something like that could be, I suppose. There’s even the feeling that the filmmakers don’t really want to associate themselves with it, as it’s watched via projector. And yes, it is disturbing, but depending on your perspective what happens later on could be more so, but that scene is probably why the movie’s under criminal investigation in Serbia.
The director has said this is partially a big ‘fuck you’ to censorship. Which is fine, but there are more than a few times when it felt like the director focused too much on that particular aspect, realized what he was doing, and instead of shooting something genuinely more relevant, he would have the actors throw out a line about Serbia to make it seem so. The end result is this feels like a film made just to shock you. Skull fucking, dick biting, necrophilia, etc. are all jammed into a relatively small time slot after much build up, and after a while you get jaded. Shock films stop becoming effective quickly, and this one is no different.
The film itself looks amazing, in a slick kind of way, but at times it started bordering on a show from The CW-ish and that probably wasn’t intended. The acting is solid and you feel bad for Milos and his family, but the violence that keeps piling up somewhat numbs you to their predicament. There’s only so much blood that can be thrown your way before you stop thinking about the actions causing it and start asking, “Really? There’s more?” Which, admittedly, is somewhat the appeal of gore films, but this isn’t passing itself off as that.
The ending works with the rest of the movie, but for me the best part about it was the song used in certain scenes and the trailer. A Serbian Film is definitely going to divide people, as it already has, but I have to stand on the ‘dislike’ side for this one.
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SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
Dir. Chad Ferris
2009
As much as I love ‘grindhouse’ movies, people seem to forget that a lot of those movies really were pretty terrible. The best aspects of the grindhouse films were their apparent lack of shame, and the worst aspects were, well, most everything else. This one’s being advertised as a ‘genre defying grindhouse throw back,’ and it’s an apt description. For all the wrong reasons.
A group of friends who seem to dislike each other gather for their friend’s funeral. Ray The Dead Guy was raped to death, so there’s some witty banter and inquiries into their deceased buddy’s sexual orientation. They are then spit on by the mother and told they’re the cause of his death. It seems Ray The Dead Guy was a good kid until he got mixed up with their crowd and began using drugs and having ‘weird sex’. These kids are all med students so they have the access and the knowledge, and indulge frequently, except for The Good Girl. During interviews with the cops it’s revealed they all broke into a locked file room and took an experimental drug called Taldon, used once in the ’70’s to treat a schizophrenic couple whose specialty happened to be raping people to death. Soon, the couple reappear as crazed sex demons, him with a fifteen inch long, four inches wide penis and her with a (wo)man eating vagina. And this isn’t vagina dentae, like the ‘meh’ film Teeth explored. This vagina eats people.
So really the best thing this one has going for it is the ‘what?’ factor. On the DVD cover it’s called a mind fuck, and I’m not sure it’s quite there, but it has aspirations of being a mind fuck and that’s a good thing. Mostly, though, it’s more of a ‘what the hell’-type thing followed by a laugh at how absurd it is. What the hell, that woman’s head has disappeared into that demon lady’s vag. What the hell, it’s an obese naked man minus a jaw, sporting a foot and half long dick running down a hallway, and so on. Other than that, it’s sort of a failure. The lines are delivered in the flat, drawn out voices of the non acting (for most of the 78 minutes running time), it’s occasionally too dark (except in the woods where somebody conveniently left a stage light), the designs on the demons are lackluster, most of the comedy doesn’t register as such, and the ending hurts it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest I didn’t miss too much with the director’s segment in Troma’s Tales from the Crapper, but this one’s enough of an interesting failure for me to give his previous film, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! , a shot. Maybe.
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Basically a late night crime show, only with ‘real footage’ in place of reenactments, I actually almost don’t understand it. Quarantine, also directed by Dowdle, was okay. It wasn’t great but it was decent. This is a whole other thing entirely. The Poughkeepsie Tapes seems like an attempt to bring pseudo snuff to the mainstream, and if anything, it’s proof that that particular subgenre should stay as semi-underground as it is.
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A SERBIAN FILM
Dir. Srdjan Spasojevic
2010
My problem with this film is intensely personal. Not that every movie viewing experience isn’t personal for the particular viewer for one reason or another, but this one more so than others. This is one that you have to see for yourself to decide whether or not you like it, and there’s not really going to be a review to sway you one way or the other.
An ex porn star who tries to keep his sex drive down via Jack Daniels is approached by an old co-star, who has now started filming bestiality (regular porn’s boring without him), with an offer to star in a big art house porno. It’ll be unlike anything else, but all Milos, Ex Porn Star Extraordinaire, cares about is the money he’ll get, and how it will help him and his family. After meeting the director who immediately declares Milos an artist of fuck and states his admiration of his ability to stay hard for so long, Milos blindly signs the contract. The shoot begins in an orphanage where Milos starts working, but stops when he notices a little girl sitting in the corner of the room watching. Things gradually get more violent, disturbing and depressing from there, hitting its peak after Milos is injected with a mixture of speed and bull Vicodin and goes on a rampage.
Now, the controversy, and there is quite a bit but most of it’s the same. Many people are telling everybody else DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE, which will only pique your curiosity even more and drive you to it. We all know movies like this just dare you to see them anyway. But the scene in question that’s prompting discussion on whether or not censorship should be allowed in this case is as follows: having stated this is a political allegory and Spasojevic and co. feel they have fucked from birth, they decide to show that. It goes under the name ‘newborn porn’ in the film, and it’s as subtle as something like that could be, I suppose. There’s even the feeling that the filmmakers don’t really want to associate themselves with it, as it’s watched via projector. And yes, it is disturbing, but depending on your perspective what happens later on could be more so, but that scene is probably why the movie’s under criminal investigation in Serbia.
The director has said this is partially a big ‘fuck you’ to censorship. Which is fine, but there are more than a few times when it felt like the director focused too much on that particular aspect, realized what he was doing, and instead of shooting something genuinely more relevant, he would have the actors throw out a line about Serbia to make it seem so. The end result is this feels like a film made just to shock you. Skull fucking, dick biting, necrophilia, etc. are all jammed into a relatively small time slot after much build up, and after a while you get jaded. Shock films stop becoming effective quickly, and this one is no different.
The film itself looks amazing, in a slick kind of way, but at times it started bordering on a show from The CW-ish and that probably wasn’t intended. The acting is solid and you feel bad for Milos and his family, but the violence that keeps piling up somewhat numbs you to their predicament. There’s only so much blood that can be thrown your way before you stop thinking about the actions causing it and start asking, “Really? There’s more?” Which, admittedly, is somewhat the appeal of gore films, but this isn’t passing itself off as that.
The ending works with the rest of the movie, but for me the best part about it was the song used in certain scenes and the trailer. A Serbian Film is definitely going to divide people, as it already has, but I have to stand on the ‘dislike’ side for this one.
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SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
Dir. Chad Ferris
2009
As much as I love ‘grindhouse’ movies, people seem to forget that a lot of those movies really were pretty terrible. The best aspects of the grindhouse films were their apparent lack of shame, and the worst aspects were, well, most everything else. This one’s being advertised as a ‘genre defying grindhouse throw back,’ and it’s an apt description. For all the wrong reasons.
A group of friends who seem to dislike each other gather for their friend’s funeral. Ray The Dead Guy was raped to death, so there’s some witty banter and inquiries into their deceased buddy’s sexual orientation. They are then spit on by the mother and told they’re the cause of his death. It seems Ray The Dead Guy was a good kid until he got mixed up with their crowd and began using drugs and having ‘weird sex’. These kids are all med students so they have the access and the knowledge, and indulge frequently, except for The Good Girl. During interviews with the cops it’s revealed they all broke into a locked file room and took an experimental drug called Taldon, used once in the ’70’s to treat a schizophrenic couple whose specialty happened to be raping people to death. Soon, the couple reappear as crazed sex demons, him with a fifteen inch long, four inches wide penis and her with a (wo)man eating vagina. And this isn’t vagina dentae, like the ‘meh’ film Teeth explored. This vagina eats people.
So really the best thing this one has going for it is the ‘what?’ factor. On the DVD cover it’s called a mind fuck, and I’m not sure it’s quite there, but it has aspirations of being a mind fuck and that’s a good thing. Mostly, though, it’s more of a ‘what the hell’-type thing followed by a laugh at how absurd it is. What the hell, that woman’s head has disappeared into that demon lady’s vag. What the hell, it’s an obese naked man minus a jaw, sporting a foot and half long dick running down a hallway, and so on. Other than that, it’s sort of a failure. The lines are delivered in the flat, drawn out voices of the non acting (for most of the 78 minutes running time), it’s occasionally too dark (except in the woods where somebody conveniently left a stage light), the designs on the demons are lackluster, most of the comedy doesn’t register as such, and the ending hurts it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest I didn’t miss too much with the director’s segment in Troma’s Tales from the Crapper, but this one’s enough of an interesting failure for me to give his previous film, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! , a shot. Maybe.
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p.s. Hey. At long last, Inthemostpeculiarway returns to mediate our relationship with some of the more notorious films of the day in his inimitable and brilliant style, and there's your weekend's entertainment in a nutshell. Enjoy the post, add your two cents, and please show your appreciation to the d.l. in charge. Thank you. And a thank you in all caps, italics, and bold face to you, Itmpw. ** Allesfliesst, Thanks. Those wall carpets deserve most of the credit, though. I seem to be nice, yes. In a flakey sort of way. I kind of figured you had one those vaunted wasp waists. I wonder how that term came to be and then swept the international lexicon or whatever? Anyway, I promise to nod at your waist respectfully. Me in Berlin at last? That would be nice. Nicer than me, even. ** Bernard Welt, Brighton Beach ... oh, right, I get it. I should do a photo show of Gorky Park next, a place I've actually been to and is hands down the most depressing amusement park in the world, and I know my amusement parks. ** Tonyoneill, Legal drugs would be worth a try, though. They don't make Amsterdam any duller than it already completely is. I don't like the fucked up, out of time thing with chatting. You know, like, you're typing your reply and then the person sends you a message that makes what you're writing out of date and then you either have to erase it or add some phrase qualifying it and ... I don't know. It's interesting as a literary form, but I don't like it as a real world thing. Oh, that is a good Charlie Watts story. You know there have always been these rumors that he was a shitty drummer who hardly played on the albums, but that can't be true, right? ** David, Hm, I think you're right! ** Dandysweets, Thanks for answering Andrew. Cool about the Knut Odde thing, and don't worry. Some of the best posts are tight. But, speaking from experience, it's weird how once you start looking for stuff with which put a post together, you usually end up with so many possibilities you have to edit back. Well, I ended up seeing Hendrix about six times, and if I'd seen him circa that Monkees concert, I probably would have thought he was just weird. Growing up in LA during the Manson era, there was just so much stuff about him and the crimes all time that I ended up getting really bored by it all. I love all the 'seeing secret messages in the Beatles songs' stuff, and the Beach Boys connection, and so on and so forth, but Manson himself is sort of like the serial killer version of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe to me, i.e. grayed out and boring due to excess coverage. That said, I did the Manson tour once: Spawn Ranch, the desert camp location, the murder scenes, etc. And I was pissed off when Trent Reznor, who owned the Tate/Polanski house for a while, had it torn down so he could build his dream house and then ended up selling the property before he even built the fucking house. That was just rude. My apartment in LA is a short walk from the LoBianco mansion. ** David Ehrenstein, Hm, I don't know why I thought Gus had included the Clarke short on the DVD. Must have been a rumor. That's very, very exciting news about the new Wes Anderson film! Thank you! ** JoeM, Ha ha, meant respectfully, of course. Bleah on your 'Valerie', but that's not news. Shane doesn't have electricity? Yikes. Why? ** Magick Mike, Hey, Mike. Wow, Zambreno on Kavan! That's a coup. Thanks a lot. It's bookmarked and ready for the post if I can suss it. The only real problem is that I can't find any excerpts from her work of any decent length anywhere online. That's all I really need to do the post. You haven't found any decent excerpts out there anywhere, have you? All the best. ** Pilgarlic, Hendrix opening for the Monkees was so weird that it only lasted for three gigs, I think. I don't know Tom Byron. I'm a blank on male hetero porn stars. I found the 'good stuff' pretty early on and hardly ever settled for substitutes. Bi- porn is kind of doable for me sometimes if it's two guys on one woman. I need to read that Legs McNeill book and get some practical knowledge. His "Please Kill Me' is one of the best music books ever. ** Sypha, Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Use your love of that atmosphere and plant it wherever you want. ** Killer Luka, I don't know the Htoo twins. I'll look into them. Good that you took the June slot. Wise decision, I think. Well, I hope that Jaco lad does your opening, obviously. Oh, thanks for the Alex/Jaco link. My internet connection is too horrible this morning to load the pages, so later for me on that. Everyone, the great artist and d.l. Alex Rose tackles the fine looking specimen of a model Jaco Van Den Hoven here and here. You mom knows about Ishmael? Trippy, But, wait, ha ha, no, he never danced with Alvin Ailey. If you know Ish, that's a hilarious idea. Well, if you wanted to send me your copy of the Gelsey Kirkland book, I wouldn't be sorry, I'll just say that. Give your mom a smooch for me. ** Heliotrope, People say St. Petersburg is nice. But Moscow, hell no. Worst city in the world so far. Weather Report at the Pasadena Civic, wow, yes. I forgot that I was ever that into them. Scary about your friend. Yeah, get her to a doctor. That happened to my friend Ishmael last year, and he got rushed to a hospital, but they couldn't figure out why it happened, and, yeah, yikes. Let me know what happens with your friend. I know just enough about her now to feel kind of worried. Love, me. ** MANCY, Hey. Thank you a lot, man. Me too. I mean I love that Russian stuff/ look/ tone. ** Oliver, Hey. Oh, Kinect is just a thing like that? Not interesting. I thought maybe it had some innovation going on and new ideas about intersecting with games and gameplay and stuff. Oh, well, I'll reserve my tiny hopes and inevitable disappointment for the 3D DS then. Thanks for the input, man. ** Alan, Hey. Yury's very interested in the material, yeah, and the items are awaiting his next day off and free time in a pile of fashion magazines, which is both a curious site and very him. Thanks, A. What's new? Any further reports or publishing thoughts or anything on your novel? ** JW Veldhoen, Scary about your dad. I hope he wears a helmet. You haven't found a puppy yet? ** Kier, Hey. I should try to do a non-creepy and non-depressing contemporary Russia post. That would be a challenge. You should see what a disorganized mess my place is. I haven't organized anything since I got into my novel, and that's the first thing I need to do when I'm finished. Wow, I love what those photos say you've been doing. The drawings are amazing. I love that one that has a blue, spidery thing against black and the kind of similar yellowy one to its right. But they all look great. Everyone, click this to see a wall covered with new drawings by the very great artist and d.l. Kier. So, it sure doesn't look like you're sloughing off, man. What I'm most looking forward to doing when I finish the novel? Apart from cleaning our room, ha ha? Nachos and a margarita. Tons of free time to do whatever. (I've been stuck inside the novel and largely working in my room for two years at least). I want to make a pilgrimage to Pierre Clementi's grave. Lots of stuff. I'm two years behind on videogames, so ... the new Donkey Kong game for the Wii, the second Mario Galaxy, the last Resident Evil, the last Zelda DS game, ... gosh, a lot. ** Flit, Hi, Flit, Glad you liked the photos. Nice question to Misa. I'm looking to download that album, but I wanted his expertise first. ** Steven Trull, I figure we probably see dead people around once in a while, but we don't know they're dead. I think I'm into the dying privately thing. But I don't know. It depends on what I look like at the time maybe. To die in front of people when you already look dead might be overkill, you know? ** Nb, Hey. Yeah, it's a good site, and it updates all the time. Got your Skype name. I'll send you mine. I don't know ... later today? I'll email you a possible good time on my end shortly, and you can confirm or suggest another time by email. I'm pretty around this weekend. Cool. ** Steevee, Hey. Well, the photos weren't presented as posed, but who knows? I don't think so. They look real to me, and the child militia problem in Russia is definitely real. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Ah, the man of the hour, Thank you, my friend. I'm chuffed and graced and grateful and so much more. I don't know Insex.com. Hm. But I'll fix my ignorance this afternoon. That documentary sounds grim and fascinating. Poor Sarah Michelle Gellar. She expected so much to happen. Sort of like what's-her-name from 'Clueless'. It's kind of sad. I don't like your friend's friend, no surprise. 'Scott Pilgrim' still hasn't played in France. It's ridiculous. My day was a big nothing. I worked on the novel until my brain was fried. At the moment, the narrator's father is explaining to him why he's such a loser and why his version of the marbled swarm is so irritating and ineffective in a flashback kind of scene. Otherwise, it rained and rained. I called Oscar a couple of times to see if she wanted to meet up and get a coffee, but she wasn't home either time. I went out and bought food and stuff (tortillas, mozzarella cheese, guacamole, shaving cream, two bottles of water) and cigarettes. Oh, Lonely Christopher's 'The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse', the next book in my LHotB series, got a really good review in Publishers Weekly, so that was cool. Gisele's manager called and reminded me that I'm doing a reading in Munich in a little over a week, and that was good because I had forgotten all about it. I worked on a blog post. I watched this TV show about nudist beaches. It wasn't so interesting. And I think I'll leave it there. I'll try to make this weekend fun to talk to you about in some way. In the meantime, how was yours? ** Chris Cochrane, Hey. Oh, yeah, there is that problem here. No one is around to accept/ receive mail on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. On other weekdays, they're in and out. I mean, if a time can be nailed down, I can just go out there and wait at the gate and get the package myself. And I'm pretty much around all the time right now. Otherwise, they can try again and try to avoid the early afternoon when the office closes for lunch. Sorry. ** Creative Massacre, Hey. Oh, very, very cool! New photographs by you! I'm really looking forward to seeing them, and I'll let you know what I think. I can't look at the right now because, as I said to KL, my internet connection barely exists this morning, and I can't seem to load the pages at all. So, I'll try again this afternoon, Everyone, the super-fine d.l. and multi-talent Creative Massacre has been making new photographs after a forced break, and I think you want to see them, and I can assure you that you will if you click this and this. Please do so, and then make it a habit. Awesome, pal! I'll dig in as soon as my computer gives me a chance. ** Misanthrope, Like I said to Flit, I appreciate your input on the new Best of Suede album since I have itchy fingers in its regard. Now that I know it's safe, it'll be mine all mine. You're doing as much stuff as I was doing easily, man. Maybe you should start your tennis phase by partnering up with Little Show. I'm sure you'd get a lot of exercise. I read that Justin Bieber is experiencing first love. When teen idols get girlfriends, it's always the beginning of the end of their careers. Have you noticed that? Me, I think it's disloyal of them. If they continued to think love was stupid and just fucked groupies all their lives, I think everyone would be much happier. That said, I'll be perfectly happy to see the Biebs take a nose dive. Maybe I'm not so nice. Or maybe I don't really mean that. I can't tell. ** Now, it's officially the weekend, and you're officially the responsibility of Itmpw. That's a very good thing, and I'm sure you'll agree. See you on Monday.
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