10/31/14 (Part One): Better Late Than Never

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31 Days of Halloween, Asia Argento, auteur theory, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Dead Reckoning, Dennis Hopper, Diary of the Dead, dystopian future, Eugene Clark, Fiddlers' Green, Film auteurs, George Romero, horror films, horror franchises, intelligent zombies, John Leguizamo, KNB Effects, Land of the Dead, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, mercs, Night of the Living Dead, paramilitary groups, rich vs poor, Robert Joy, SImon Baker, social commentary, tanks, The Walking Dead, Tom Savini, writer-director, zombie films

As the wait continued for the follow-up to “Forefather of the Dead” George Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985), longtime fans of his brand of socially-conscious zombie carnage probably weren’t remiss in feeling that this particular ship had already set sail into the sunset. After all, Day of the Dead’s production was notoriously compromised due to financial constraints (Romero’s original plan to continue expanding the world that he created with Dawn of the Dead (1978) was, effectively, shot in the head and downsized to a “handful of survivors in a bunker” storyline after it all proved prohibitively expensive) and Romero appeared to have little success in attracting investors for another entry. For all intents and purposes, it looked like Romero’s zombies had finally stopped kicking, even if his filmmaking career continued to chug along with non-zombie efforts like Monkey Shines (1988), The Dark Half (1993) and Bruiser (2000).

But, to paraphrase another master of the macabre, “over time, even death may die” and Romero’s “Dead” fans finally got their long-delayed wish when Land of the Dead (2005), the official follow-up to Day of the Dead, finally roared into multiplexes. For the first time in 20 years, Romero’s shambling gut-munchers were once again duking it out for box-office dinero, hoping to infect a new generation of horror audiences. Anytime someone waits twenty years for something, however, there’s an inherent danger of irrelevance: after all, there have been twenty years of zombie films between Day and Land. Would Romero still have the goods or would this be another sad example of a master craftsman set adrift, helpless against the ever-changing zeitgeist of our modern era? The answer, as it turns out, would be a hearty “yes,” followed by a quieter, slightly more hesitant “perhaps.”

Radio broadcasts and images of zombie mayhem over the opening credits give us a shorthand version of the events leading up to the “present day,” which appears to reside in a decidedly dystopic near-future: zombies have, effectively, taken over the world, although small bands of survivors still carve out rough existences in the burned-out cities that litter the landscape of what used to be America. The living dead have continued to “evolve,” in a manner of speaking, which we witness first-hand as we see zombies attempting to play instruments, pump gas and carry on rudimentary conversations with each other. One zombie in particular, a large gas station attendant (Eugene Clark), seems to have more intelligence than the average gut-muncher and appears to serve as defacto “leader” to the zombies, organizing them into a more cohesive “army.”

Our plucky protagonist, Riley (Simon Baker), is the leader of a paramilitary group that serves as the last line defense for one of the anonymous, ruined metropoli that jut up from the landscape like scorched bones. Along with the obnoxious, conniving Cholo (John Leguizamo), best friend Charlie (Robert Joy), Mouse (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) and the rest of the hardened former soldiers, Riley answers to the ultra-slimy Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), lord of the self-sustaining, high-rise paradise known as Fiddler’s Green. Fiddler’s Green, home to the city’s most wealthy and powerful, towers above the slums of the city like an unattainable Eden for the unwashed masses. While the poor and downtrodden carve out existences in a futuristic ghetto that makes Blade Runner (1982) look like Pasadena, the rich and powerful live it up in a combination skyscraper/shopping mall/luxury apartment complex that couldn’t be a more obvious metaphor if it wore a sign saying “Future zombie snacks.” The only thing standing between the 1% and the “walkers” are Riley, his troops and one badass tank known as Dead Reckoning.

While Riley hopes for a modest little piece of land somewhere relatively zombie-free, Cholo has much bigger ambitions: he wants to move into the Green and take his place with the hoity toity elements of society. After he’s doublecrossed by the odious Kaufman, however, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning and aims it right at Paradise: if Kaufman doesn’t pay up what he owes, Cholo will happily mulch the rich and famous with their own firepower…irony, thy name art Romero. Realizing that the only one who can stop Cholo is the guy who trained him, Kaufman enlists Riley and Charlie to return the tank to homebase and deliver the “traitor,” dead or alive. With the assistance of Slack (Asia Argento), a wannabe soldier who Riley rescues from one of the city’s zombie vs human cage matches, the trio are closer than ever to realizing their dream of getting the hell out of the city. All that stands between them is a former comrade, an indestructible weapon of war and a zombie army led by an undead “messiah” named Big Daddy. The stakes? Nothing less than the future of the entire human species.

With a budget almost five times that of Day of the Dead (albeit still “modest” by modern tent-pole standards) and a much bigger scope, it’s tempting to view Land of the Dead as the “proper” follow-up to the landmark Dawn of the Dead. While one could certainly make an argument for this (at the very least, Romero’s desire to fully realize his short-changed vision must have been the genesis for the project), it’s also pretty evident that Land of the Dead presents a natural progression from Day of the Dead, especially when one considers the continued “evolution” of the zombies. Bub may have learned to use a Walkman but the zombies in Land of the Dead can communicate with each other, use basic tools and weapons, strategize (on a basic level) and seem to experience basic human emotions, such as anger, sorrow and pride.

This, of course, has always been one of my main issues with Day of the Dead: the “humanization” of the zombies may dovetail nicely with Romero’s overarching themes of societal collapse and rebirth but it also has the (presumably unintended) effect of removing much of the inherent horror from the living dead: once the zombies start acting more and more like “us,” as it were, they cease to be monsters and begin the journey towards sympathetic characters. While this is still handled rather subtly in Land of the Dead (to a point), the scales tip completely by the time of Diary of the Dead (2007) and it’s pretty obvious that the zombies are now the “victims” while the humans are the “monsters.” While Land of the Dead’s finale is certainly thought-provoking, Riley’s ruminations on the possibility of a shared “promised land” for both human and zombie-kind put us on a much different philosophical plane than the apocalyptic climaxes to either Dawn or Day of the Dead.

None of this, by the way, is to argue for “dumber” zombie films: I’ve always felt that the social politics of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead were one of the main reasons why those films will always be such complete and undeniable classics. There’s a delicate balance to be maintained, however, a balance that Romero appears to grow increasingly uninterested in as the franchise continues: perhaps the desire to make his films more than just “zombie films” fuels this although, to be honest, this is probably just the natural progression of his earlier films, albeit taken a bit far, at least for my personal tastes.

My biggest issue with Land of the Dead, ultimately, is that it ends up being a rather mediocre horror film, despite being an above-average action film. Romero has sacrificed most of the inherent chills and shocks of his first three zombie films in favor of rather repetitious “run and gun” scenes involving Riley’s mercs and the undead: we get treated to what seems an inordinate amount of rather cheap-looking action beats rather than horror setpieces like the inquisitive Hari Krishna or the semi-trailer fiasco from Dawn of the Dead. Land of the Dead is also a much different-looking film than either Dawn or Day: the zombie effects are all handled by KNB, rather than Tom Savini, which actually makes Land of the Dead a bit of a dry-run for the smash-hit TV show The Walking Dead. This is a minor quibble, obviously, since KNB’s designs are nothing to sneeze at, although discerning viewers will still notice the difference (KNB’s zombies are much more “technical” but Savini’s zombies always felt more “real” to me, strangely enough).

The one aspect where Land of the Dead vaults head and shoulders above its immediate predecessor, however, is the caliber of the acting. Quite frankly, Day of the Dead is still one of the most unpleasantly “shouty” films I’ve ever watched: every actor in that thing is pitching to the rafters and, at times, it feels more like a wrestling match than an actual film. Land of the Dead, by contrast, features some absolutely fine performances by the likes of Baker, Argento (Dario’s daughter) and Leguizamo, who I normally find to be excruciating yet who wear the role of Cholo like a spike-knuckled glove. I’ll admit that Robert Joy’s “idiot savant” role stretches credibility just a bit (he’s innocent, like a child, but also a crackshot sniper, like a plot device). Top of the class, however, is Hopper, like always, ruling the roost like some sort of megalomaniacal rooster. He’s predictably great, tossing off lines like “Zombies, man…they creep me out” with the joie de vivre that you expect from cinema’s favorite wild man. Even if everyone else in the movie stunk to high heaven, which they don’t, Hopper is still 1000% more charismatic than every actor in Day of the Dead combined.

Ultimately, Land of the Dead is what it is: a sequel that comes just about 20 years too late. While there’s an awful lot to like here and even some stuff to love (the bits involving the zombies’ fascination with fireworks are, to be honest, quite beautiful), this ends up being a pretty big step-down from Dawn of the Dead, despite being a better film, overall, than Day of the Dead (in my opinion, at least). As mentioned before, this is more of an action film than a horror film, for the most part, but it’s never anything less than watchable and, on occasion, has plenty of that old Romero moxie. This may not be Romero firing on all cylinders (by contrast, The Dark Half is a much, much better film) but I’ll take a “pretty-good” Romero zombie film over pretty much any other horror director’s fare any day of the week. Part of me will never stop wondering what might have happened if this had come a mere 5-10 years after Day of the Dead, however, instead of 20.

 

4/21/14: Hit the Lights on Your Way Out

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astronomers, astrophilia, benefits of sleep, cinema, circadian rhythm, city living, darkness, documentaries, documentary, Errol Morris, film reviews, films, Ian Cheney, Jack Newton, light pollution, melatonin, Morgan Spurlock, Movies, observatories, Sky Village, social commentary, technology, The City Dark, the night sky, urban vs rural

This modern world of ours provides us with a lot of necessities, along with plenty of unnecessary (but still nice) stuff. Whereas concepts like “wi-fi,” “streaming video” and “mobile devices” are things that many of us take for granted, it wasn’t too long ago (relatively speaking) that these ideas would have been more synonymous with fanciful science fiction than with real-world applications.  For most, however, any notion of looking backwards, to a less technologically advanced time, is more pointless nostalgia than anything else. The thought process always seems to be that any price we pay to advance to the “next level” (whatever that may be) is worth it: whatever we lose on a personal scale will be more than made up by the fact that we can now watch reruns of Cheers, on our phone, while we wait for the bus. There are more arguments, pro and con, than can realistically ever be examined in a forum like this. There is one thing, however, that should be plainly clear to everyone, regardless of which side of the “technology divide” you happen to fall on: our hyper-modernized, super-aware, technologically advanced society has cost all of us some of our humanity. Whether you find this troublesome, however, is a whole other issue. Documentary filmmaker Ian Cheney does and his thought-provoking documentary about light pollution, The City Dark, should make everyone stop and think about the ultimate price that we all pay to light our way in a frighteningly vast universe.

The documentary begins by introducing us to narrator/creator Cheney, a recent transplant from rural Maine to the bright lights of New York City. While growing up in Maine, Cheney was fascinated with the stars and astronomy, even going so far as to build his own telescope. Upon moving to the big city, however, he realized that he could see far fewer stars and, in some cases, he couldn’t see any at all. What, if any, impact does “losing” the night sky have on humans, he wondered: was this a trade-off that we could happily live with or were we giving up a vital part of our humanity? The City Dark, then, is his attempt to answer this question, as well as figure out his own conflicted views on the subject of mankind vs natural order.

Structurally, the doc is broken up into six sections, each of which deals with a different issue/aspect of light pollution: defining and giving examples of light pollution; fleeing over-lit urban areas for darker rural areas; the effects of light pollution on animals/nature; the effects of light pollution on humans; the reasons why humans use light; and possible solutions to this issue. This structure is very clear and well-defined, making it easy to follow the flow of Cheney’s research. There’s also a decent amount of time spent with each issue, making the film feel well-balanced. If nothing else, Cheney is obviously a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing, which is always a good feeling for an audience member.

There’s a good balance between traditional “talking head” interviews with various astronomers and scientists and Cheney’s own commentary. Unlike other indie documentaries about niche subjects like this, The City Dark is the perfect synthesis of more traditional documentaries and more open-ended, philosophical ruminations. There’s enough expert, scientific information for the doc to feel authoritative, yet there’s enough of Cheney for the doc to feel personal. It helps that Cheney has a very easy-going, pleasant personality: he’s the perfect host for something that requires a little personal reflection along with the historical record. This also helps make the film feel even-handed: although we definitely get the idea that Cheney is anti-light pollution, he goes out of his way to explain the factors that brought our world to this point, which are just as natural as the impulses that will need to get us out of it. There are no easy answers but it helps when the host refuses to take a hectoring tone: more documentarians should take note of this.

As someone who’s always had a twin love of bright, neon lights and the dark, starlit night sky, I found The City Dark to be immensely thought-provoking. The film is filled with some absolutely stunning imagery, including some of the most beautiful, chill-inducing shots of the night sky that I’ve ever seen. Couple this with some equally eye-popping views of the various lightscapes that are evident across the entire globe and The City Dark is never anything less than gorgeous to look at. Cheney is a more than capable filmmaker and I can’t help but feel that he’s the next Errol Morris or, at the very least, a more laid-back version of Morgan Spurlock.

In many ways, The City Dark is all about the continual, endless struggle to be human. Small, fragile, adrift in a vast ocean of night, with only the meager candles that we craft to light our way, humanity peers ever outward. While we light the way to make ourselves feel safer, Cheney makes the valid point that we may just be isolating ourselves more, cutting ourselves off from the natural world around us and relegating ourselves to a beautiful prison made of steel, glass and an infinity of brilliant lights.

 

1/17/14: Big Trouble with Taboo Cheerleaders

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'80s action films, action-adventure, action-comedies, Africa, art films, arthouse film, B-movies, Big Trouble in Little China, But I'm a Cheerleader, cheerleaders, Chinatown, cinema, comedies, conversion therapy, drama, Escape From New York, F.W. Murnau, fantasy, Film auteurs, films, flashbacks, foreign films, gay and lesbian films, high school angst, Jamie Babbit, John Carpenter, John Waters, Kim Cattrall, Kurt Russell, Miguel Gomes, Mink Stole, Movies, Natasha Lyonne, Richard Moll, romance, Rupaul, social commentary, sorcerers, Tabu, They Live

My (seemingly) never-ending quest to catch my blog up with my viewing habits continue. We’re still in the past (last Friday, to be specific) but we’re getting closer all the time. Journey with me now as we get a little goofy, a little arty and a little funny.

Pound for pound, I don’t think that there’s been a more successful writer/director from the glory days of ’70s horror than John Carpenter. He’ll always exist in the minds of horror fans for his iconic Halloween (still one of the best films ever, in my little opinion, horror or not) but the rest of his filmography ain’t too shabby, either: The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13th, Escape From New York, They Live, The Fog and the horribly under-rated In the Mouth of Madness are all classics, any one of which a lesser filmmaker would be proud to stake their careers on. There have also, of course, been a few missteps along the way (Ghosts of Mars is a fascinating failure, a movie so tone-deaf that it almost achieves a kind of transcendence and Vampires and his remake of Village of the Damned are mostly gloss and no filler. Compare this ratio to someone like Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven or Sean Cunningham, however, and it’s pretty clear that Carpenter had the more consistent career.

While Carpenter’s name is synonymous with horror, thanks to the invincible Halloween, his films actually tend more towards pulpy, B-actioners, the kinds of films that feature sarcastic anti-heroes chewing gum and kicking ass. In fact, Assault on Precinct 13, Escape From New York, They Live, Escape From L.A., Vampires and Ghosts of Mars could almost be seen to take place in the same universe, relatively speaking, along with another Carpenter film: Big Trouble in Little China.

Like many people (I’m assuming), I was first drawn to BTILC thanks to the colorful box art. Just take a gander at that smiling, machine-pistol-bedecked Kurt Russell, looming over Chinatown like some kind of jolly ass-kicking giant, all manner of crazy shit going down in the background. That, ladies and gentlemen, was entertainment in the VHS age: hook us with some amazing artwork and see if the movie could keep up. They rarely could but BTILC almost does.

Russell plays a wisecracking (could there be any other kind?) truck-driver who must help his friend rescue his fiancée from the clutches of a wicked Chinatown sorcerer (the always esteemable James Hong). In the process, he’ll fight monsters, gangsters and lightning-wielding sorcerers. He might even get his truck back.

As a film, BTILC doesn’t always work and rarely makes much sense. Exposition (what little there is) is usually delivered in large data dumps that go something like: “Lo Pan? Let me tell you all about who he is, where he comes from and what he wants, in great detail.” The dialogue can be exceedingly clunky, even from Russell, which is kind of surprising. The numerous fight sequences have a tendency to keep piling on silly elements (in one over-the-top scene, a gunfight turns into a karate battle which turns into a fight with lightning-wielding warrior sorcerers that fly through the air like human dragonflies) and sometimes come across as no more than martial arts showcases: please stand there patiently while I demonstrate some moves in close proximity to your face, after which you may feel free to shoot me. Thank you.

But do all of these things make BTILC a bad film? Not in the slightest. This is certainly not a GOOD film, mind you, but it shares a pretty similar aesthetic to They Live, which is a good film. It’s always a pleasure watching Russell ham it up, especially during his golden age in the ’80s. Kim “Sex in the City” Cattrall is absolutely awful but this somehow works to her favor. Hong makes a great villain, even if he does get stuck behind a pound of eye-liner and foot-long fingernails: he even gets a pretty cool transformation scene where his skull glows from the inside-out. There’s a pretty decent shaggy monster-thing that Russell battles and an even decenter floating-eyeball-thingy that reminded me of something from my Dungeons & Dragons days. There’s also lots and lots (and lots) of ’80s lightning effects, which get old pretty quickly but are (briefly) rather charming.

In short, if you’re a fan of the more action-oriented side of Carpenter, Big Trouble in Little China should scratch that itch. It’s no Assault on Precinct 13 but it’s a helluva lot better than Vampire in Brooklyn.

I had originally intended to give Tabu its own separate post, since there’s a whole lot going on in this film. Due to my desire to keep us moving forward, however, I decided to see if we could fit this into the rest of that Friday’s viewings. Would it be possible to get any of this across in a shorter format? Let’s see if I’m up for the challenge.

First off, let’s address the elephant in the room: the title. Yes, that is a reference to F.W. Murnau’s final film, the Pacific-Island adventure Tabu. And yes, there’s actually more of a spiritual connection than just the obvious stylistic/plot connections would suggest. In the most obvious example, Murnau’s Tabu is separated into two chapters: Paradise and Paradise Lost. Miguel Gomes’ Tabu is also separated into two chapters: A Lost Paradise and Paradise. There are other, specific, similarities but I would daresay that the biggest connectors are more spiritual and thematic than anything. Suffice to say that you need not be familiar with the original Tabu, or even F.W. Murnau, for that matter, to enjoy this film.

In a nutshell, Tabu is about several acquaintances/friends and their interactions with each other. Pilar (ostensibly the film’s protagonist and moral center) lives next door to Aurora and her maid/assistant Santa in an apartment complex in Portugal. Aurora is just on the good side of senility, when the film starts, and is a bit of a handful: she routinely accuses poor Santa of witchcraft and sees conspiracies around every corner. She also gambles her money away one night after having a dream about a fortune-telling slot machine: she wakes up from the dream and just has to find out if its real. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

As Aurora’s health begins to decline, she asks Pilar to locate someone for her, a Mr. Ventura. This leads Pilar on a minorly epic journey about the city, as she finally tracks the elusive Mr. Ventura to a nursing home. His appearance in the film prompts a flashback to the past, explaining the lovely but tragic relationship that he shared with a young Aurora while they both lived in Africa. This leads to some of the film’s best moments, as the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography really comes alive on the African plains.

In certain ways, Tabu is the epitome and (perhaps) stereotype of independent art-house cinema. The film is shot in black-and-white, in a style that instantly calls to mind Italian neo-realism or Guy Maddin films. It’s slow and elegiac, although prone to bursts of strange whimsy, similar to a Jeunet film (one nonsensical subplot about a house-guest of Pilar’s that never shows up is a particular head-scratcher). Even the music reminded me of various foreign art films that I watched in college. That being said, there’s a lot of beauty in Tabu (especially in the wonderful, heartbreaking opening, which is almost a micro-short by itself) and I found myself genuinely caring about the characters. I won’t pretend that I understood everything (what the hell was the deal with the absent Polish house-guest?) but I was frequently fascinated and always ready for what might come around the corner.

Besides, how can you not like a black-and-white art film that features a garden-party scene where a rich, crazy old man fires a gun into the air, prompting his normal-looking but batshit crazy son to begin kick-boxing and punching invisible enemies? In any other film, that would be a centerpiece. In Tabu, it’s just another day at the office.

Sometimes, you don’t really appreciate a film when you first see it. This was certainly the case when I first saw But I’m a Cheerleader in the theater. I was (and am) a big Natasha Lyonne fan and was really excited to see what she would do after the previous year’s Slums of Beverly Hills. I remember enjoying But I’m a Cheerleader and laughing quite a bit but, ultimately, I never gave the movie much thought after that point.

Nastasha Lyonne plays Megan, a perfectly normal high school cheerleader who just might be, you know…gay. At least her parents, peers and teachers seem to think so, although poor Megan isn’t quite so sure. In order to “fix her,” Megan is shipped away to a conversion therapy program where she learns that sometimes, you’re just fine the way you are and the rest of the world just needs to learn to deal with it.

After re-watching the film, I find that my original impression still holds: I still enjoyed it and laughed quite a bit. This time around, however, I think I noticed a little more, particularly how sharp and cutting some of the dialogue and ideas are. I also noticed Rupaul, who I absolutely do not remember the first time around. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen so many episodes of Drag Race but I found myself inordinately excited when he appeared, looking as masculine as possible, as a “pray the gay away” type camp counselor.

Stylistically (and thematically), But I’m a Cheerleader is like a less scuzzy, friendlier version of a John Waters film (or a slightly dirtier version of Pretty Baby, depending on your perspective) and even features Waters’ mainstays Bud Cort and Mink Stole in small roles. The production design is extremely bright and vibrant, tending towards lots of pinks, pastels and primary colors. There might be some notion that this is lazy symbolism but writer/director Jamie Babbit has a little more up her sleeve than that.

Looking at Babbit’s filmography, it becomes pretty apparent that she tends to focus on women, whether it be in her films (But I’m a Cheerleader, The Quiet, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Breaking the Girls) or her TV work (Alias, Ugly Betty, Gilmour Girls, Gossip Girl, The L Word, United States of Tara, Girls), although it seems that her resume definitely leans more towards the small screen than the big one. Although there are some stereotypes floating around the film (especially once we get to the conversion therapy camp), there’s also a lot of genuine emotion and some nicely made points. By the time we get to the film’s point, that opening up your mind and accepting/loving everyone is the best way to live, it’s pretty hard to argue with it.  Here’s hoping that Babbit finds the time and/or support to bring something else to a theater near you sometime in the near future.