6/2/15: Grand Theft Mariachi

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action films, auteur theory, bounty hunters, bounty killers, Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman, Chilean films, cinema, dark comedies, El Mariachi, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, exploitation films, Fernanda Urrejola, Film auteurs, film homages, film reviews, films, foreign films, Francisca Castillo, gangsters, Grand Theft Auto, Guillermo Saavedra, independent films, indie films, Jaime Omeñaca, Javier Cay Saavedra, Jorge Alis, Kill Bill, low-budget films, Matías Oviedo, Mauricio Pesutic, Movies, Nicolás Ibieta, over-the-top, retrosploitation, Robert Rodriguez, Rocco, romances, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Sofía García, stylish films, The ABCs of Death, unlikely hero, video games, writer-director-editor

Homage is a tricky thing: it’s no mean feat getting the perfect balance between exacting reproduction and unique perspectives. The original era of grindhouse and exploitation films weren’t really setting out to create a singular aesthetic: this was more the result of budgetary concerns, current events, audience expectations and the technology of the time. When modern filmmakers attempt to emulate the late ’60s-’70s grindhouse aesthetic, it’s always filtered through a modern sensibility, usually the hyper self-awareness that’s plagued us since the days of Pop-Up Videos. Adding fake film grain and scratches to a modern film doesn’t automatically make it a genuine grindhouse film any more than donning fake fangs makes one a genuine vampire.

That being said, many modern films have managed to emulate the grindhouse/exploitation aesthetic to varying degrees of success. Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie have all mined the drive-in days of old for films that manage, in one way or the other, to add another few brushstrokes to the overall mural. Chilean auteur Ernesto Díaz Espinoza certainly isn’t the first filmmaker to make us check the wall calendar: while his Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman (2012) is far from perfect and quite a ways from obvious influence El Mariachi (1992), it’s not without its charms and possesses a gonzo sense of energy and invention that often helps to smooth over the rough spots. When it’s firing on all cylinders, the film is nearly as lethal as its titular badass.

Like Rodriguez’s debut, BMTHOTMGW is about the path that an unlikely sad-sack takes from meek acceptance to ass-kicking independence. Our hero, in this case, is Santiago (Matías Oviedo), a small-town DJ who still lives at home with his mother (Francisca Castillo), plays way too much Grand Theft Auto and makes money, on the side, from mob boss Che Longana (Jorge Alis). Longana is the kind of bat-shit crime lord who’s surrounded by topless ballroom dancers, thinks nothing of wasting his own henchmen for the slightest infractions and rules by complete and absolute fear.

Poor Santiago runs afoul of his boss after he happens to overhear Longana discussing a hit on his former girlfriend, the legendary bounty-killer Machine Gun Woman (Fernanda Urrejola). MGW is the kind of person who struts around in a barely-there leather lingerie and fur coat ensemble, mercilessly blasting anything that moves before sawing off heads in order to collect the attached bounties: in other words, not the kind of person you normally want to fuck with. In order to save his own skin, Santiago promises to deliver MGW to Longana, come hell or high water.

From this point on, Santiago enters his own version of the beloved Grand Theft Auto, each new step along his path of personal growth designated by such video game friendly titles as “Mission 01: Get a Clue With Shadeline Soto” or “Mission 03: Get a Gun.” Along the way, Santiago must avoid the other bounty killers, each with their own quirks and Warriors-approved outfits (the lethal chinchinero and his mini-me son were personal favorites). When he finally comes face-to-face with the deadliest killer of them all, Santiago faces a feeling altogether different from fear…love. Will the humble DJ face his fears and double-cross the most feared man in Chile or will he crack under the pressure and turn his back on true love? Unlike his video games, Santiago is only going to get one chance to get this right…will it be love or the head of the Machine Gun Woman?

Despite a few glaring issues and the overridingly gimmicky core concept (the Grand Theft Auto angle wears out its welcome quickly), Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman ends up being a breezy, painless watch, not terribly far removed from the films with which it bears allegiance. The retro-visualization works well overall (the credits are spot-on and the musical score, by eponymous Rocco, is great), although the look is let-down quite a bit by the generally flat lighting: at times, BMTHOTMGW very much looks like a modern, low-budget film gussied up with film grain and random scratches.

Acting-wise, the film tends to be broad, which suits the overall vibe to a tee. Oviedo is likable as the hapless Santiago, although the film has a distressing tendency to make him more of a passive observer to the events than an active participant: it isn’t until the climax that he really gets a chance to let loose. Urrejola does a fine job as the almost mythically lethal Machine Gun Woman, although it’s worth noting that her character is just about as one-note as they come: MGW is an asskicking sexpot, nothing more, nothing less. She belongs to the same video game traditions that spawned similar characters like Lara Croft, traditions that dictate female action stars must show as much skin as possible and act lasciviously whenever the plot needs a little jolt. It’s no more (or less) offensive a representation than many others in the past but BMTHOTMGW does a pretty good of fetishizing Urrejola to an almost distressing degree.

The villains are all nice and slimy, which befits a film like this, with Alis having the biggest blast as the scenery-chewing, howlingly-mad mob boss. In many ways, Alis’ Che Longana hearkens back to the glory days of films like Andy Sidaris’ classic Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) and his ludicrously over-the-top death scene is truly one for the ages. There’s also the aforementioned variety with the various bounty killers (let’s hear it, again, for that father-son duo and the really smart riff on Kill Bill (2003)), which not only helps to play up the video game aspect (at times, the film definitely reminded me of Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010), although that was more structure-related than visual) but also injects much-needed originality into the premise.

While too much of the film seems to fall into generic indie-action territory (lots of noisy shootouts and gratuitous slo-mo), Espinoza finds plenty of new ways to riff on old motifs. The garage “oil check” scene is bracingly original, if thoroughly unpleasant, while the scene where Santiago’s iPod (it has 30,000 songs on it) is treated as if it were Marcellus Wallace’s fabled briefcase is patently great. It’s quite clear that Espinoza (who also scripted the film) has a few new wrinkles to add, whenever he steps away from the more well-trod path.

In the end, the well-trod path is what, ultimately, keeps Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman from having the impact it might have had. The film is lots of goofy fun, no two ways about it, but it never approaches the zany abandon of something like classic Troma or even Jason Eisener’s neo-classic Hobo With a Shotgun (2011). This, of course, is exactly what a film like this really needs: when you have a fur-coat-and-bikini-bedecked assassin spraying bullets every which way but loose, restraint should be the last thing you’re thinking about.

When Espinoza’s film works, it provides more than its share of pleasures (guilty and otherwise), although it never hits the consistent highs of El Mariachi. Here’s to hoping that Ernesto Díaz Espinoza continues to sharpen his blade: if he can make match his explotiation-leaning aesthetic to a genuinely subversive edge, I have a feeling that filmmakers might be paying him homage in the not-to-distant future.

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5/21/15: The Tale Lost in the Telling

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Ben Shenkman, Brian Cox, Burgess Jenkins, Carol Kane, cinema, con artists, Coupling, crime thriller, Darren Genet, directorial debut, dramas, film noir, film reviews, films, flashbacks, gangsters, golfing, grifters, Hugo Weaving, husband-wife relationship, independent films, insurance fraud, insurance salesman, Jack Davenport, Josh Noyes, Josh Pais, Judy Greer, Movies, period-piece, Peter Himmelstein, Robert Miller, scam, set in 1970s, split-screen, stylish films, The Key Man, writer-director

For my money, nothing beats a simple tale told well. Sure, there’s plenty of joy and value to be found in complex structures, eye-popping visual feasts and all-or-nothing editing extravaganzas: spectacle and cinema will always go hand-in-hand. There are times when there’s nothing finer than getting lost in the sturm und drang of a good, ol’ special effects bonanza, while, sometimes, you just want to see a film so complex and involving that it makes your forehead throb. There’s nothing wrong with big films but they’re also only half of the coin.

The other half of the coin, of course, are the smaller, subtler films: the quietly provocative indie dramas…the sparse, spare experimental films…the incisive character portraits and razor-sharp crime thrillers that don’t require flashy editing, huge explosions or pounding metal scores to make their points. These are films stripped down to their bare components, left to sink or swim by those old-fashioned standbys: absorbing characters, dramatic tension, smart dialogue and genuine emotional resonance. I may enjoy huge, noisy and stuffed-to-bursting event pictures but my heart will always belong to the same part of town that you’re most likely to find me hanging out: the quiet side.

Writer-director Peter Himmelstein’s The Key Man (2011) is a small, quiet film trapped inside a much flashier, more vapid one, the cinematic equivalent of one of David Byrne’s comically over-sized suits. At its heart, all of the components are in place for an effective, if modest, noirish crime thriller, something akin to a more po-faced Fargo (1996). Thanks to the ridiculously heavy-handed editing and visual flourishes like endless split-screens and out-of-place time-lapse photography, however, Himmelstein’s directorial debut ends up collapsing under the weight, burying the effective core under tons of pretty but useless rubble.

The film’s set-up is almost “Indie Crime Film 101” in its simplicity and familiarity: a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman with a wife and kids to feed gets involved with a pair of grifters and their scam to buy the Red Sox. The insurance salesman, Bobby (Coupling’s Jack Davenport), isn’t a bad guy but he is a desperate one: he’s just lost his oldest client right at the time when his wife, Karen (Judy Greer), is pushing to finally settle down and buy a home. Into his despair strides Vincent (Hugo Weaving) and Irving (Brian Cox), a pair of fast-talking, golf-playing con-men who want to enlist Bobby’s aid in a bit of insurance fraud: namely, they want to take out a “key man policy” on Vincent’s old partner, Charles (Burgess Jenkins), in order to bump him off and use the insurance payout to purchase their sports team.

As often happens, however, nothing goes quite according to plan and Bobby soon finds himself in way over his head. More and more people end up involved in what was supposed to be a fairly low-key event and Vincent and Irving gradually reveal themselves to be both unstable and dangerous, by turn. Will Bobby be able to see everything through to his big pay-day or will his conscience kick in and spoil the party? Most importantly: are Vincent and Irving the kinds of business partners that take “no” for an answer?

Deep down, at its heart, The Key Man is a decent, often quite effective, little noir/heist film, albeit one prone to particularly on-the-nose, expository dialogue. The acting is effective across the board, although Weaving’s flamboyant, sleazy Vincent will, undoubtedly, be the performance that sticks in the mind the longest: Davenport is fine, if rather vanilla, as Bobby, while Cox gets a few over-the-top blow-outs that tend to lessen the final impression of his otherwise impressive Irving. Greer’s Karen is a bit less effective, although that’s never due to the performance: her motivations always seem a bit off, however, making the character play out more as a plot element than actual flesh-and-blood person.

While the particulars of the scam aspect were a bit foggy to this particular viewer (insurance fraud sounds sexier than it really is), everything fell into place with a nice sense of purpose and irony that often felt perilously close to approximating a Hitchcockian vibe. Several scenes, such as the one where Bobby races home only to find Vincent acting the perfect gentleman with his family or the one where Vincent does a bit of impromptu Shakespeare, have nicely realized senses of tension that yield fairly thrilling payoffs.

Indeed, all of the pieces are in place for The Key Man to be a real sleeper, the kind of low-budget micro-masterpiece that coulda/woulda/shoulda been a contender. Practically from the opening credits, however, the film is almost completely hamstrung by one crucial element: the overly busy, fussed-with editing and over-used tricks like split-screens tend to drown out every other aspect of the film.

The biggest offender here is the damnable split-screen, an effect that’s used so much as to approach the level of SNL-type parody. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that uses as many split-screens as The Key Man does: hell, even the above poster art is set up as a kind of split screen…it’s practically wired into the film’s DNA. When used in moderation (or for an actual purpose), there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a split-screen: it’s just another filmmaking tool like any other. When the split-screen begins to call attention to itself outside of the actual film framework, however, this feels a bit like the cart dragging the horse. There’s one instantly memorable moment where multiple split-screens fly around the central frame until to unite into one screen that becomes Vincent’s face: it’s silly, flashy and, ultimately, very pointless, the very definition of style for style’s sake.

While the split-screens are the biggest offenders, they’re not the only ones. There are also numerous instances of needless time-lapses, in-camera focus changes, out-of-focus images, you name it, that tend to pull attention off of what the film is trying to say and puts it squarely on how the film is saying it. There are certain films that can employ an “everything and the kitchen sink” approach – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Wrong (2012) come immediately to mind – and work spectacularly, allowing the medium and the message to come together in complete harmony. The Key Man is not one of those films. Here, the low-key, engaging crime thriller aspect is completely over-shadowed by the flashy editing and the split-screens.

Perhaps the split-screens are by way of helping to sell the era (the film takes place in 1975) but that also becomes a bit of an issue: rather than feeling organic, the time-period in The Key Man always feels forced, as if the filmmakers need to constantly remind us of where we are. Karen reads a copy of Jaws, they watch Johnny Carson on TV, outfits get almost as much screen-time as actors, the score is the kind of jazzy funk that underlined a million ’70s-era cop shows…over time, it feels less like we’re immersed in an actual era than an Ikea showroom dedicated to more “happenin'” times.

There’s no doubt that Himmelstein has some skill behind the camera, both directing and scriptwise. While the dialogue was often too obvious, the actual setup had enough twists and turns to justify the above Hitchcock reference, even if infrequently. There’s something about a good grift/heist film that’s almost irresistible and The Key Man often scratches that itch quite ably. In fact, I daresay that a no-frills, stripped-to-the-bone version of this same film would score quite a bit higher on my personal meter: there’s a lot to like here, despite how infuriating much of the over-stuffing becomes. Ultimately, it’s easy to look at this as a case of “first-time-around-the-block-blues”: as a debut, The Key Man has a lot to recommend it but it also fails in some pretty fundamental ways. Here’s to hoping that, the next time around, Himmelstein and company go a little easier on the frosting and give the actual cake a chance to shine.

4/22/14: Set the Way Back Machine to Groovy, Baby

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'70s films, '70s-era, AIP, American Independent Productions, Bullitt, cinema, crime film, drug smuggling, film reviews, films, gangster films, gangsters, heroin trafficking, Italian cinema, Ivo Garrani, mafia, Maurizio Lucidi, mean streets of San Francisco, Movies, race-car driver, Roger Corman, Roger Moore, San Francisco, Stacy Keach, Street People, The French Connection, Ulysses

When it comes to exploring new films, I like to let my instincts do the walking. Like some sort of mutant bloodhound, my nose is finally attuned to sniff out those cinematic delicacies that will most likely keep me entertained, if not actively jumping from my seat and thrusting devil horns into the flat-screen. Sometimes, the cover art can fire my imagination, leading me to wonder how much was made up by the artist and how much actually exists within the framework of the movie proper. Other times, I can be intrigued by a familiar name in the credits, some favorite actor “slumming” it in a B-grade effort to make some pocket cash. In a perfect storm situation, however, all of these disparate elements will align to make a previously unknown film into an absolute must-see. When I found out that Street People, a 1976 Italian gangster flick set on the mean streets of San Francisco, featured Roger Moore as a Sicilian/British mob lawyer and Stacy Keach as his best friend and champion race-car driver…well, let’s just say that the next move was obvious.

Following in the Italo-film tradition of spaghetti Westerns, Street People features an all-Italian cast, supplemented by Moore and Keach as the token Hollywood names. In many ways, the film is a very stereotypical ’70s Italian gangster film, filmed with gauzy flashbacks, double-crosses, conflict between the church and the mob, car chases, shoot-outs and familial drama. Moore, smack-dab in the middle of his residency as James Bond, plays the Sicilian/British lawyer Ulysses, tasked by his mob-boss uncle Salvatore (Ivo Garrani) with finding a missing shipment of heroin (hidden in a large crucifix, no less). Sal’s brother, Francis, is a cardinal and the theft of the crucifix/heroin, which included the messy murder of its guards, has put a black mark on the church. It’s up to Ulysses and his race-car drivin’ buddy Charlie (Keach) to get to the bottom of the mess and they’ll go from San Francisco to Sicily and back to solve the crime. Along the way, they’ll find out the truth about Sal and Francis’ relationship, the best way to send a message via fish and that every friendship is only as strong as its weakest link.

First of all, Street People is an absolute mess. It’s an awful lot of fun, don’t get me wrong…but it’s a complete mess. The narrative tends to jump all over the place, a problem which is only made worse by the frequent flashbacks. The flashbacks, themselves, tend to be so confusing and loopy (at one point, two characters seem to share a flashback in what must be the strangest attempt at economy I’ve ever seen in a conventional film) that they’re more fever dreams than plot elements. Combine this with the inherently thorny nature of the plot (it is, after all, supposed to be a mystery) and Street People often comes across as frustratingly vague. We always get the general sense of what’s going on (Ulysses and Charlie are looking for the drugs) but who they question, why they question them and where they go afterwards often seems arbitrary, as if we only ever get bits and pieces of any one scene. Chalk this up to the fact that the film was, most likely, re-edited when Roger Corman’s AIP company released it in America but, regardless, it doesn’t make for particularly smooth sailing.

As with other films of this era/ilk, much of Street People is decidedly low-rent, consisting of anonymous people pointing guns at either Moore or Keach, lather, rinse, repeat. The one exception to this, however, would have to be the films numerous and consistently impressive car chases. All of the car chases are thrillingly staged and executed, bringing to mind much more capable films like Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) but a few of them are particularly great. One scene, in which Ulysses and Charlie must maneuver in and around a group of hostile semi-trucks during a high-speed freeway chase is fantastic and recalls a similarly good scene in one of the Bond films (perhaps even one of the Moore bond films, which would be a pretty neat extra layer). While the rest of Street People is neither noticeably better (or worse) than the average Italian gangster pic of the era, with the exception of Moore and Keach, the car chases are always exemplary and certainly worth a look.

Although the rest of the cast is so generic as to become easily interchangeable (including the mob boss), Moore and Keach do just fine in the their respective roles. Moore brings a slightly hard edge to Ulysses, although he keeps enough of the Bond finesse to make him a pretty cool customer. This is a much different tough guy than Bond, however, and it’s to Moore’s credit that he doesn’t play him as a carbon copy of his more famous day job. Keach is a blast and a half, bouncing around the camera frame like a manic wind-up monkey. His dialogue is some of the most outrageously dated in the entire film (the moment where he tries to buy drugs with a plaintive, “C’mon, mama…don’t you jive me now!” is an instant classic, as is his warning to a close-mouthed informant that he’ll “Spread the word that you’re a turkey deluxe”) and Keach manages to steal any and every scene he’s in. Although he plays Charlie as decidedly subservient to Ulysses (an odd choice, considering how take-charge Keach normally is in films), the two have an easy rapport that marks them as genuine friends and makes their scenes together a breezy joy. It also makes the film’s “twist” conclusion a real head-scratcher but it’s certainly not the only narrative lapse in the film.

Overall, Street People is an easy film to sit through but a slightly more difficult one to completely appreciate. While the story is needlessly convoluted and downright nonsensical, Moore and Keach make a constantly delightful duo and there’s no shortage of action scenes to keep things humming along, as well as some genuinely great car chases to offer a little needed eye-candy. If you’re a fan of ’70s-era Italo-crime films, Roger Moore or Stacy Keach, Street People should definitely scratch your itch.

See it now, fool, before I tell everyone that you’re a turkey deluxe.

4/1/14: Lesser Than Zero

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actor-writer, Adam Sandler, Amy Brenneman, bad films, bad movies, bookies, channeling Adam Sandler, cinema, cops, Dayton Callie, Detective Iggy, drama, Elizabeth Perkins, film reviews, films, gangsters, George DiCenzo, J.B. Smoove, Jersey Shore, Jimmy Smits, John Spencer, John Turturro, Lesser Prophets, Michael Badalucco, Movies, Paul Diomede, Robert Miano, Scott Glenn, Steve Harris, stupid films, suicidal brothers, tedious, terrible films, The Practice, William DeVizia

As someone who watches a lot of films, I certainly watch my fair share of flops. As someone who patently refuses to turn off even the worst film, however, I also suffer through a lot of bad films. In most cases, these films end up being merely colossal wastes of time (which, by itself, certainly isn’t a good thing). Sometimes, however, films can be so aggressively terrible, so massively flawed in every conceivable way, that it’s almost as if the universe is issuing me a personal challenge: make it through this…if you dare! In roughly 98% of these instances, I’ve emerged victorious, if hopelessly scarred from the battle. Every great once in a while, however, a film comes along that completely breaks me, wearing me down to the point where continuing would be futile torture and the only sane response would be to throw the damned thing into the nearest trashcan. The Last Rites of Ransom Pride was the closest that a terrible film has come to making me throw in the towel in quite some time. Lesser Prophets, however, ended up being a film so tone-deaf, so wholesale awful, that I almost gave up. Key word, of course, being “almost”: if Last Rites couldn’t reduce me to mindless jelly, there was no way in hell I was going to let this monstrosity beat me. That, after all, is how the bad guys win. And I am not about to let Lesser Prophets win.

There are a lot of ways to make a bad film but one of the surest, most obnoxious ways is to take a simple story and make it needlessly complicated with excess characters, pointless activity and endless red herrings. If you really want to knock one out of the park, throw in a bad script, especially if it features some of the most bone-headed dialogue in recent memory and give us some actors who are in an active competition to see who can emote the hardest. The cherry on top? This one is only for professionals but is guaranteed to make your production nigh impossible to watch: make sure that the tone of the film is constantly at odds with its individual scenes. Need an example? Replace the classic Friday the 13th score with music from My Little Pony but keep everything else the same. Still foggy? How about adding fart noises and a xylophone to a torture scene? Need a better example? Sit through any 10-minute portion of Lesser Prophets and consider yourself enlightened.

Since this is (technically) a review, I suppose that I should at least attempt to summarize the plot. To the best of my limited abilities, here goes: Detective Iggy (Scott Glenn) is trying to bust three bookies, Jerry (George DiCenzo), Charlie (Michael Badalucco) and Eddie (John Spencer). Iggy’s brother, Sal (Robert Miano) owed money to the bookies and killed himself when he couldn’t pay up, leading Iggy on a quest for revenge (kind of/sort of). The bookies “tolerate” local guy Leon (John Turturro), who appears to be just a few cards short of a full deck. Leon keeps an eye on his neighbor (Elizabeth Perkins) and her son, who are being resoundly thrashed by husband/father Bernie (Dayton Callie), a slimy art thief. Mike (Jimmy Smits) is a smug neighborhood asshole who owes lots of money to the bookies but refuses to pay, since he’s decided to move away (ask the Federal government how well that works). He and his racist friend (who appears to be the prototype for most male characters on the Jersey Shore) end up running afoul of a black gang leader, played by The Practice’s Steve Harris, and who gets the single most descriptive name in the entire film: Giant black man who throws brick…I shit you not. Somehow, all of these disparate “characters” (I use the quotes since none are actually fully developed enough to be considered characters, merely lazy symbols) come together in a tsunami of absolute suckage, leading to a finale that is as outrageously cheerful as the rest of the film is cheerfully terrible (Spoiler alert: everybody who’s still alive gets a happy ending, regardless of what awful acts they committed in the film…call it a reward for making it to the finish line, I guess). Cut to credits.

There are, as briefly stated above, about a million reasons to dislike Lesser Prophets. In the interest of space, I’ll list just a few of the nearly limitless group:

— The acting ranges from “just there” to “bizarre” to “dinner theater”

— John Turturro channels the bone-headed-jerk era of Adam Sandler so eerily that it must be on purpose

— Wipe-cut transitions and “zany” music seem a bit goofy when used between suicides and gangster scenes

— There were about seven main characters too many: at times, this seemed to have one of DeMille’s casts of thousands, even though it looked like a Poverty Row direct-to-video release

— Scott Glenn is an amazing actor and seeing him ham it up in this hurts my heart

— The film tries way too hard to be both cool and funny but it is neither

Ultimately, Lesser Prophets is a terrible film, devoid of even the unabashed craptasticality that can save similarly terrible films like Megalodon 3 or The Room. Tellingly, Lesser Prophets’ writer, Paul Diomede, is also one of its “actors”: he makes an appearance as someone named Cheddar Fry. Full disclosure: I don’t remember anyone named Cheddar Fry. Perhaps he was Jimmy Smits’ racist friend…perhaps he was one of Steven Harris’ “tough” gang members. He might have been playing Leon’s bicycle, for all I know. I will tell you one thing, however: I ain’t watching the movie again to find out.

 

3/2/14: Do Not Look Away (Oscar Bait, Part 13)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Adi Zulkrady, Anwar Congo, atrocities, Best Feature Documentary nominee, cinema, death squads, documentaries, documentary, Errol Morris, film reviews, films, gangsters, genocide, Herman Koto, Indonesia, Joshua Oppenheimer, junta, mass killings, military dictatorship, Movies, murder, Oscar nominee, Pancasila Youth, paramilitary groups, snubbed at the Oscars, Syamsul Arifin, The Act of Killing, Top Films of 2013, torture, Werner Herzog

Very rarely, if ever, would I call any film “required” viewing. Humanity is just too fundamentally diverse to ever see eye-to-eye on issues like housing, health care, religion, government, child care and equitable living wages, so asking everyone to agree on entertainment seems like a pretty silly pursuit. I think that Dawn of the Dead is one of the most amazing films ever created: if you don’t like horror movies, the conversation is over. Some people listen to EDM and hear the new noise of a generation: others might hear a modem connecting. There are masses of people who swear that The New Girl is funny, while I agree to respect their opinions. At the end of the day, it really is all just a matter of taste and perspective: like what you want to like, watch you want to watch. In a world where everything is essential, nothing can truly be essential.

The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary about the Indonesian killing fields, is required viewing. I say this with no hyperbole whatsoever and with full acknowledgement that it completely contradicts my earlier statement. Up until now,  for one reason or another, I had never seen a film that I felt needed to be seen by everyone. I’ve seen plenty of films that I felt all film fans or film students or music fans or (insert favorite niche here) fans needed to see but never a film that all humanity needed to see. The Act of Killing, however, is that film. This should be given away to everyone (Alamo Drafthouse, the doc’s distributor, already set up ways for the film to be freely viewed and screened in Indonesia, where it’s also been banned), taught in school curriculum and made a part of international dialogue. Otherwise, there is the very real risk that the atrocities portrayed within the film will be forgotten by the world at large, something which must be prevented at all costs. There is a lesson for the whole world to learn here, a terrible lesson that very few will want to hear.

In the mid-1960’s, the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military, resulting in a brutal junta that ruled by fear, violence and the trumped-up threat of “Communism” sweeping into the area. Using local gangsters and paramilitary units, the military rounded up, tortured and murdered any and all opposition/undesirables, including  union members, farmers, intellectuals and ethnic Chinese. Within a year, these massacres had claimed the lives of over one million Indonesians. To this day, almost 50 years later, the military is still in power and the men responsible for all of the killing are still extolled as national heroes and civic leaders. Imagine a case where Hitler grew old and was allowed to retire to a quaint, rural Polish village, a village where he was routinely celebrated as not only a hero but as a kindly, grandfatherly gentleman. This, in a nutshell, is the situation in Indonesia.

When Oppenheimer and his courageous crew traveled to Indonesia, they had the great fortune to find two of the most notorious – and most celebrated – local gangsters: Anwar Congo and Herman Koto. Not only were Congo and Koto unrepentant regarding their past crimes: they were openly proud and had nothing but fond memories of the murders. Under the guise of allowing Congo and Koto to further their own propagandist notions, the filmmakers offered the two men the opportunity to film their best “activities” using the mannerisms and styles of the American films that they love so much: musicals, gangsters pics, film noir, etc. At first, the two men are overjoyed at this chance to fully portray and laud their “heroic” activities, offering future generations the chance to learn from their initiative. Along the way, however, something quite surprising happens: when presented with the never-ending tidal wave of his past atrocities, crimes which have gone not only unpunished by celebrated, Anwar Congo begins to crack. By the time the film is over, this smirking charlatan, this two-bit street thug turned defacto robber-baron, will lose the only thing that could ever truly matter to him: his own sense of self-worth.

The Act of Killing is, for lack of a better word, crushing. There are few words that can accurately describe just how powerful, how unbearably nihilistic, the film is. In one scene, Koto moves through a slum neighborhood and attempts to enlist the services of the locals to play the part of “Communists” in their staged production. The locals agree (what else could they possibly do?) and even participate somewhat enthusiastically (if rather confused) but they are still participating in the re-enactment of things that happened to them as directed by the men who originally committed the acts. It’s akin to forcing a rape victim to reenact the crime for the sole enjoyment of the perpetrator. At another point, one of Congo’s men fondly recalls how raping young girls was one of his favorite things to do: “I would always say this is going to be hell for you but heaven on earth for me.” Adi Zulkadry, one of Congo’s fellow executioners in the ’60s, happily discusses the “Crush the Chinese” campaign where he, personally, stabbed dozens of Chinese Indonesians in the street, including the father of his own Chinese girlfriend. The list of atrocities is seemingly endless, many of which Congo and his goons gleefully reenact as splashy, Golden-Age-of-Hollywood” vignettes, complete with singing, dancing, costumes and surreal sets.

Far from serving as a glorified snuff film, however, The Act of Killing has a much more subversive intent. Since the people who Oppenheimer and his crew intend to target are still very much in power and “beloved” by their countrymen, shedding light on their heinous actions isn’t quite as easy as sitting down for a traditional interview. As one of the soldiers says, regarding the Geneva Conventions definition of war crimes: “War crimes are defined by the winner and I am the winner.” When the vice-president of the country is speaking at one of your rallies, you have to assume that your group has official government support. In order to “hang” these criminals, Oppenheimer needs to give them enough rope: the result will speak to the whole world.

Since so much of the world seems to either turn a blind eye to the massacres in Indonesia or was actively supporting it (Western governments threw their support behind the cleansing under the guise of “stomping out Commies”), The Act of Killing may serve as the first real glimpse into that past history. Even more importantly, this comes directly from the mouths of those who committed the crimes: an unwitting digital confession, as it were. When Congo takes the filmmakers to the area where they conducted mass executions and describes, proudly, how he made the killing more efficient by switching from beating to a wire/strangulation technique, he’s doing something very important: documenting for the entire world his complicity in the crimes. Perhaps I’m being unduly optimistic, but if Congo and his cronies are ever actually brought to justice, it will probably be from evidence like this. Rather than relying on the eye-witness testimony of survivors, this is straight from the horses’ mouths, as it were: the killers aren’t denying the events, they’re describing them in gory detail.

The whole film is wretchedly, terribly powerful, the kind of movie that becomes instantly unforgettable, for better or worse, the moment you watch it. You will be changed by this: maybe a little, maybe a lot…but you will be changed. There’s something about seeing events this terrible, this real, that brands your soul. We’re used to seeing the face of evil, by this point in humanity’s history, but I don’t know that evil has ever looked this happy, this complacent and at peace with the world. Up until the end, viewing so much grinning depravity, so much hopeless oppression, made me lose hope: this wasn’t a story where the good guys won…where there even were good guys, to be honest. This was the story of terrible, amoral people committing heinous acts to innocent people.

But then, towards the end, something happens. Congo, whether through the constant reminder of his past or through his own portrayal of various murder victims, seems to change. He begins to grow wearier, smiles less. He seems to be troubled, instantly, as if he’s aged 30 years overnight. Could it be that he has finally come to realize the weight of his actions, that he sees the inherent evil of a massacre perpetuated because he and his young friends, in their words, “would do anything for money and wanted new clothes?” He seems to be more thoughtful but Congo is a cagey guy: could this be some sort of attempt to hedge his bets, to straddle both sides of the fence? Congo makes a statement that seems to confirm this: watching the footage has made him feel what the victims felt. He seems genuinely sorry but then the filmmakers land the killing blow: as Oppenheimer gently reminds him from off-camera, what happened to his victims was actually real, not a film. For the first time in the entire film, the light goes out of Anwar Congo’s eyes and the aging gangster/torturer/mass-murderer/statesman/grandfather seems completely speechless. This is not about Congo receiving redemption: he doesn’t deserve it. This is, however, about finally admitting (even if only to himself) that what happened was actually wrong.

The 1965-1966 massacres in Indonesia are a terrible dark stain on humanity’s blood-spattered history and have been largely over-looked and downplayed in the 50 years since. The film begins with a terrible, but true, quote from Voltaire: “All killing is prohibited and punished unless done in large number and to the sound of trumpets.” This is true and only another reason why The Act of Killing should be required viewing: it refuses to let this pass into the gauzy fog of time, obscured from the prying eyes of the world. This was a film that hit me hard, as if someone had punched me right in the gut. I’m willing to wager that it will hit you equally hard, if you give it the chance.

1/9/14: Upstate Vacations and Old Age

Tags

Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, B-movies, bad films, Christopher Walken, cinema, dark comedies, films, Gallowwalkers, gangsters, growing old, gunfighters, horror films, horror westerns, Movies, so-bad-it's-good, Standup Guys, undead, vampires, Wesley Snipes, Westerns, wish-fulfillment, zombies

When I’m watching movies, I usually take notes. It’s a habit I picked up in film school and it’s stuck with me. I find it useful to be able to look back on my original thoughts about a film after a second viewing: it’s also been useful as far as this blog goes.

As I watched the Wesley Snipes horror/Western Gallowwalkers, I found myself making several notes. Not as many as some films, mind you, since I spent a lot of the time staring at the screen in slack-jawed wonder. Gallowwalkers is not what could be considered a good film. It might be a “so-bad-it’s-good” film but even that’s up for debate. Rather than pen an actual review of the film, I thought that I might just post my notes verbatim. Sometimes, it’s just best to let your id do the talking. Here, then, are the various thoughts that passed through my head last Thursday:

— “The problem with the damned is they don’t stay down.” — Stupid. Why? Does the devil keep misplacing them?

— the silly blonde wigs are ridiculous

— why are they in the tunnels fighting vamps? This is a video game.

— “The gateway to Hell is no place to raise a child.” Well, duh.

— confusing narrative jumps around everywhere

— the film makes less sense as it goes along

— mostly anonymous, masked bad guys skinning people’s faces to wear as their own

— “Forgive me Father, for I have skinned.”

— one character wears two skinned lizards on his head, the tails hanging down the back of his head like limp horns…wow

— the little boy saves Snipes’ life and all he says is, “Kids.” As in, “What’re you gonna do with them?” What an ungrateful shit.

— Snipes kills his partner to “prevent him from bleeding to death,” then laughs about it…what an asshole!

— the Resurrection Rock idea is cool, actually

— end credits are very cool: black and red cartoon/shadow images…most entertaining part of film

— I wish Snipes’ skunk-colored goatee would get an end credit

Standup Guys belongs to a very special, usually rather odious little sub-genre: cinematic big-wigs in their twilight years. As a rule, these films present past matinee-idol caliber stars but place them in situations that the filmmakers feel audiences are clamoring for: growing old. Past examples of this would be Space Cowboys (Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner getting old in space), On Golden Pond (Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn grow old together) and Red (Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman getting old fighting spies), while more recent examples include Grudge Match (Robert de Niro and Sly Stallone getting old in the ring) and Last Vegas (De Niro, Freeman, Michael Douglas and Kevin Kline getting old in Vegas).

There’s something inherently sad about watching big stars (especially big action stars) in the twilight of their careers. We all know that Hollywood is like a real-life version of Logan’s Run (although I think that the cutoff age nowadays is probably 25: 30 is practically geriatric in modern films) but it often seems that older actors exist simply to get cut down to size: we want to be reminded that these icons are not only fallible but also due to kick the bucket one day. The worst of these kinds of films traffic in maudlin sentimentality, turning formerly treasured roles into old-age caricatures (look how cute and grumpy Clint is! Aww…I think de Niro needs a nap!), operating on the worst kind of fish-out-of-water gimmicks.

Standup Guys features Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin as former best friends and gangsters growing old. As with most modern-day Pacino films, ol’ Al pretty much just stomps, growls, mugs and jives his way through the film, coming across as a much older, much more obnoxious version of his Frank Slade character from Scent of a Woman. Despite being dialed all the way to “Hey-OH!,” Pacino actually provides some nice moments, including a truly moving graveside eulogy that actually seemed heartfelt, although I still got tired of him pretty quickly. Poor Alan Arkin shows up about halfway through, has some nice scenes and exits stage left before we can really get used to him. As such, it’s pretty much up to Walken to carry the film, a task he’s more than up to.

If Standup Guys has anything to recommend it, that would definitely be Christopher Walken’s awesome performance as Doc. Walken is, easily, the heart and soul of the film. He underplays everything beautifully, allowing for some true emotion to shine through. When he got tough, Walken was terrifying, easily rising to the psychotic heights of his youth. The great thing about the performance, however, was that Walken seldom felt it necessary to there. For the most part, he played Doc as an aging, sweet, moral man who just happened to be a gangster. As strange as it sounds, Walken’s performance in this film may just be in my top 10 performances of his ever: he’s that good.

Ultimately, Standup Guys ends up being a pretty silly, rather inconsequential film. There’s a pretty inordinate amount of wish-fulfillment in the film (old guy has a threesome with two young women and leaves them begging for more; old men become ass-kicking vigilantes; only the good guys can shoot straight; et al), along with plenty of bits that make imperfect sense, at best. Peel back the many layers of this little onion, however, and you end up with one little fact: Walken has seldom been better. His rapport with Pacino feels easy and natural: these seem like lifelong friends. The ending is actually very good and emotionally strong (more wish-fulfillment but it works) and the score/soundtrack is uniformly great, filled with lots of upbeat soul and R & B tracks.

As far as “tough guys get old” films go, you could definitely do worse than Standup Guys. Here’s to hoping Walken gets something else in short order that uses him to as good effect as this did.