10/23/14 (Part One): Foodie or Food?

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31 Days of Halloween, Angel Acero, cannibalism, cannibals, Carina Bjorne, cinema, clandestine restaurants, Elisa Matilla, father-son relationships, Fernando Albizu, film reviews, films, food critics, foreign films, fugu, gastronomy, horror, horror movies, journalist, Mario de la Rosa, Marta Flich, Movies, Omnivoros, Oscar Rojo, Paco Manzanedo, Sara Gomez, secret societies, set in Spain, Spanish film, Teresa Soria Ruano, vegetarian vs carnivore, writer-director

Marcos Vela (Mario de la Rosa) isn’t a bad person, per se: he’s just a bored food critic bouncing from one “clandestine” eatery to the next, eating Kobe beef prepared by rich people in their luxurious apartment “restaurant” one night, tempting the fates with fugu the next. Problem is, Maros has seen it all before and there isn’t anything that really lights his fire anymore: after all, it’s just food, right? A chance encounter with a former lover (who also happens to be a gastro-journalist), however, sends Marcos on the hunt for a restaurant rumored to be serving a whole different kind of fare: human meat. In a world jaded to the nth degree, will Marcos trade his basic humanity in order to have the next “big experience” or are there some things that will always be off the menu?

These are the basic questions that Spanish writer-director Oscar Rojo works with in his sophomore feature, Omnivoros (2013), although there’s also quite a bit going on beneath the film’s surface, not least of which is the sneaky idea that this might actually be the ultimate statement about “vegetarian vs carnivore”: would you still eat your meat if it had a face? What if it had a face that looked suspiciously like yours? As with most films that delve into the subject of cannibalism, Omnivoros is quite often a very unpleasant experience: the violence is sudden and severe, often drifting dangerously close to torture-porn territory, but the themes are always interesting and there’s never the idea that Rojo is grinding our faces in the muck just for the hell of it. Despite the quality of the filmmaking on hand here, however, this is definitely a tough sell that will probably appeal only to the hardcore, iron-stomach contingent: all others are advised to proceed with extreme caution.

Structurally, Omnivoros alternates between Marcos investigating the mysterious “cannibal” restaurant and the actual cannibals, father Dimas (Fernando Albizu) and son Matarife (Paco Manzanedo), going about their grisly business. Matarife actually procures the “meat,” snatching terrified victims off the streets in shockingly matter-of-fact ways, while Dimas prepares the “food,” injecting his cooking with all the flair of a five-star Michelin chef: this is no Sawyer family BBQ, mind you, but the most highfalutin’ of highfalutin’ cuisine, the very epitome of gastronomy. These two storylines will eventually collide as Marcos finally tracks down the elusive restaurant and gets a first-person peek into the father and son in action.

As far as rationale or backstory goes, Omnivoros begins with a prologue (“Some years ago…,” we’re told) that shows how young Dimas came to find himself elbow-deep in the cannibal lifestyle (like any of the film’s “eating” scenes, it’s incredibly nasty and visceral), a lifestyle that he’s (obviously) passed on to his strange, animalistic son. While Dimas is the very picture of cool urbanity, looking nothing less than the “celebrity chef” that he appears to be, Matarife is a sweaty, goonish, hairy mess of a creature, the kind of individual who might prompt a biker gang to cross warily to the other side of the street. He’s a creep, in other words, the living embodiment of the “hidden” side of the meat industry: meat-eaters would love to think that they’re only dealing with Dimas but, in reality, Matarife is just as much a part of the equation, as slaughterhouse conditions and animal abuse allegations show us.

The film displays an odd, almost detached sense of morality that, at first, would appear to point towards an exceptionally detached, tuned-out society (which, to be honest, probably isn’t far from the truth). A “twist” in the film’s final quarter swings us back towards a more “accepted” view of the world, however, offering up a conclusion that could probably be seen as either victory or failure, depending on which side of the cleaver you’re on. From my perspective, I found the finale a bit too convenient, almost as if Rojo was worried that an extended trip to the dark side of humanity might be too hard to come back from: the “happy” ending here puts the film more in line with Hollywood-type films, although there’s just enough doubt in the final image to leave audiences wondering (which is also a trait of Hollywood horror films, to be honest).

All in all, Omnivoros is another of those films that’s easy to respect: everything about the filmmaking is top-notch, despite my general dislike of the back-and-forth between the two storylines and the fact that the film could, occasionally, get rather heavy-handed. That being said, I would be stretching the truth a bit if I said that I really liked it: the film was always cold and clinical and the gore scenes had a tendency to be both relentless and astoundingly gruesome (even for a cannibal film).

While Omnivoros isn’t necessarily my cup of tea, I still found myself dutifully impressed by Rojo’s abilities, both as writer and director, and found the film to be an easy, if queasy, watch. Even though I’ve been a meat-eater my whole life, I’m always open to an intelligent, well-made and thought-provoking argument from the other side. There’s a particularly sharp point made late in the film when one of the potential purchasers of Dimas’ “special” meat notes that the prices keep going up but that “it’s better to pay a little more than go on a vegetarian diet.” In one fell swoop, Rojo manages to take a bite out of not only the economics of food but the inherent philosophy behind it, an argument that could easily be expanded out to include “real food” vs “fast food.” Whether Rojo intended his film as a critique of carnivores or not, one thing remains clear: Omnivoros might just make you think twice about that steak you’re about to order.

10/14/15 (Part One): The Sisterhood of the Flying Broom

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31 Days of Halloween, 800 Bullets, Accion Mutante, Alex de la Iglesia, alternate title, armed robbery, auteur theory, battle of the sexes, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang, El dia de la bestia, favorite films, feminism, Film auteurs, foreign films, Gabriel Delgado, Guillermo del Toro, horror movies, horror-comedies, Hugo Silva, Jaime Ordonez, Kiko de la Rica, Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi, love story, Macarena Gomez, Mario Casas, men vs women, misogyny, paganism, Peter Jackson, romance, Santiago Segura, Secun de la Rosa, small town life, Spanish film, special-effects extravaganza, Terele Pavez, The Day of the Beast, The Last Circus, witches, Witching and Bitching, writer-director, Zugarramurdi

Occupying a common ground somewhere between cinema-fantastique auteur Guillermo del Toro and legendary surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky, the films of Spanish writer-director Alex de la Iglesia are, without a doubt, one-of-a-kind treasures, little islands of individuality adrift in a cinematic sea of homogeneity. Since the early ’90s, de la Iglesia has used genre films like feature-length debut Accion mutante (1993) and El dia de la bestia (1995) to address everything from organized religion to societal responsibility, from the vagaries of the child adoption system to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.

Beginning with 2002’s 800 Bullets, de la Iglesia began to move further afield from the scrappy supernatural-themed films that began his career to focus on more “mature” films, albeit ones which still bore very little resemblance to anyone else’s. El crimen perfecto (2004), The Last Circus (2010) and As Luck Would Have It (2011) might have been more grounded in reality than de la Iglesia’s previous films (although The Last Circus is a pretty surreal cake, no matter how you slice it) but were no less quirky and ground-breaking. Since As Luck Would Have It was his most linear, “normal” film yet, I found myself wondering if the wild man of Spanish cinema had decided to walk the straight and narrow, so to speak.

For his most recent film, however, de la Iglesia opted to go a little further back in his career: all the way back to the outrageous El dia de la bestia, as it turns out. Witching and Bitching (or the Witches of Eastwick-referencing original title, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi) (2013) combines action, slapstick, sly black humor and the supernatural in truly invigorating ways, offering up a treatise on the eternal battle of the sexes that manages to lob grenades at both sides while still finding plenty of room for romance, some sneaky asides about Spanish pop culture and some pretty awesome SFX setpieces, including a climatic battle with a massive, ancient goddess that would make Peter Jackson smile. In other words: that magnificent bastard de la Iglesia has done it again.

De la Iglesia has always been masterful with his opening segments and Witching and Bitching continues this trend. After a nicely atmospheric intro featuring some good, old-fashioned witch action (think “bubble bubble toil and trouble/big black cauldron type stuff), we get jumped into a thoroughly dynamic credit sequence that manages to juxtapose images of famous female actors, politicians, historical figures and celebrities with those of witches, pagan symbols, fertility statues, arcane images and serial killers, as if to make the claim that pigeonholing women is just about as stupid and pointless an exercise as possible. De la Iglesia seems to be making the statement that women, like men, are a little bit of every archetype: that old cliché of “the Madonna or the whore” is just as worthless today as it was a hundred years ago.

The film, proper, begins with Jose (Hugo Silva), his young son, Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) and accomplice, Antonio (Mario Casas), fleeing a badly botched jewelry store heist. They make off with a dufflebag filled with gold wedding rings but Tony’s girlfriend has taken off with their getaway car (in her defense, Antonio never bothered to let her know that he would be using her car for an armed robbery, so her reaction is kind of understandable), leaving them stranded as the cops begin to bear down. Springing into action, Jose carjacks a taxi, taking the driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordonez), and his passenger hostage. All that Jose wants to do is get to the French border and he sees Manuel’s taxi as his golden parachute.

Meanwhile, Jose’s highly irate ex-wife, Silvia (Macarena Gomez), has heard about the botched robbery on the news and is rushing over to rescue her poor son and slap Jose upside the head so hard that it jogs his common-sense loose. Along for the ride are bickering cops Calvo (Pepon Nieto) and Pacheco (Secun de la Rosa), who are both convinced that Silvia somehow abetted her low-life ex-husband with the robbery. As luck would have it, all of these disparate characters converge on the titular town of Zugarramurdi, where they will find themselves in the midst of an ancient coven of witches, led by Graciana (Carmen Maura), her elderly mother, Maritxu (Terele Pavez), and daughter, Eva (Carolina Bang). The witches are seeking to resurrect a pagan goddess, in order to replace the reigning patriarchy with a matriarchy and right the countless wrongs that have been inflicted on women since the dawn of time. As love affairs pop up left and right, however, loyalties will be tested: when Eva experiences the first pangs of true love, she must make the impossible decision to either betray her family and her gender or her own heart.

As with all of de la Iglesia’s films, there’s a lot going on in Witching and Bitching: at times, the film seems to move from one complex setpiece to another, with very little room in-between to catch one’s breath. This only ends up being an issue if the film’s setpieces are lacking which, fortunately, is not a problem that de la Iglesia ever seems to be saddled with. From the dynamic, thrilling and hilarious opening robbery (seeing SpongeBob Squarepants get all murdery with a shotgun is, to be frank, a sublime joy that my mind never knew it was missing) to the jaw-dropping special effects showcase that ends the film (I wasn’t lying about Peter Jackson approving: it’s one hell of an awesome sequence), there’s very little about the movie that isn’t captivating, visually stunning or flat-out hilarious.

As a comedy, Witching and Bitching works on a variety of levels, from the silly and slapsticky (Eva serves “finger food” that consists of actual fingers; the various chase scenes remind of Scooby Doo cartoons, at times) to the more subtle and cutting (Eva’s family frequently reminds her that she should be out engaging in “fist-fucking, golden showers and zoophilia,” not falling in love with a wimpy man…they didn’t send her to “the worst schools” just to suffer this indignity!). In addition, there’s plenty of commentary on the “battle of the sexes” from both sides: neither men nor women escape the film’s withering glare unscathed.

As a horror film, de la Iglesia’s movie is, likewise, a home-run – despite the near-constant comedy, he manages to sneak plenty of pure horror beats into the mix, as well. The town of Zugarramurdi is ridiculously atmospheric, coming across as nothing so much as the return of the fog-shrouded hamlets of Hammer Studios’ glory days. There’s a nicely tense bit involving a mysterious person reaching up through a toilet-bowl that’s nearly Hitchcockian in its sustained sense of suspense and the previously mentioned climax, featuring the massive, ancient and blind goddess (brilliantly depicted as a towering combination of the Venus of Willendorf and one of Jackson’s trolls from LOTR) is a real showstopper: they even manage to throw in a nifty mid-air “witches’ battle” to keep things lively.

Despite the nearly constant spectacle, the cast of Witching and Bitching manages to hold their own against the onslaught. Hugo Silva is a charismatic hero and he’s ably paired up with Mario Casas to give the film a pair of sympathetic (to a point) protagonists. Jaime Ordonez is, likewise, pretty great as the kidnapped taxi driver: the scene where he decides to “join” the gang, only to be met with mass confusion by Jose and Antonio (“Does this mean you want a cut or something? How do we know we can trust you?”) is an easy highlight and Ordonez’s nervous, fidgety energy contrasts nicely with Silva’s more traditional heroism and Casas’ kind-of/sort-of nice-guy dumbass.

On the female side of things, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang and Terele Pavez pretty much steal the film from the rest of the cast: the bit where Pavez puts in razor-sharp steel teeth and Maura scuttles across the ceiling, like a fly, are undeniably badass, as is Bang’s ridiculously hot-headed Eva whenever she’s on-screen. More importantly, none of the witches ever come across as overly shrill or needlessly bumbling: unlike many genre films that purport to detail a (literal) battle of the sexes (Jake West’s Doghouse (2009) comes immediately to mind), there’s never the notion that de la Iglesia has unfairly stacked the deck against his female antagonists.

In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way in which the notion of feminism is handled. Early on, we get a pretty much never-ending stream of misogyny from the likes of Jose and Manuel: even nice-guy Tony joins in after he realizes that his girlfriend actually “holds the reins” in their relationship. This is qualified, of course, once we get to Zugarramurdi and get the other half of argument from the female participants. As Graciana makes plainly clear, men are really afraid of women because they realize that God is actually female and are too terrified to admit the truth: by bringing about the return of their goddess, the women hope to usher in a new, enlightened era, one where women are not subjugated, abused and ridiculed. In a way, neither gender makes it out of Witching and Bitching completely intact, although most of de la Iglesia’s sharpest rocks are reserved for the lunk-headed men in the film.

Ultimately, de la Iglesia’s latest film is proof-positive of why I absolutely adore his movies: they’re big, brash, colorful, lively, funny and intelligent…pretty much any and everything that I possibly hope to find at the theater. While del Toro and Jackson might be better known, I’d argue that de la Iglesia is, without a doubt, the more accomplished, interesting filmmaker: he has a way of blending the fantastic and the mundane in some truly invigorating ways. While The Last Circus will probably always be my favorite de la Iglesia film (if there are flaws in that film, I haven’t found them), Witching and Bitching is an instant classic and should be required viewing for genre fans. Start with this one, start with The Last Circus or pick a random title out of a hat: whatever you do, make yourself familiar with the films of Alex de la Iglesia. If you love films as much as I do, I’m willing to guarantee that you might just find yourself with a new favorite director.

7/24/14: Allergic to the World

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agoraphobia, Alex Pastor, Barcelona, Blindness, Children of Men, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, collapsed civilization, David Pastor, dystopian future, epidemics, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, foreign films, Isak Ferriz, Jose Coronado, Leticia Dolera, Marta Etura, Movies, non-linear structure, pandemic, Pere Ventura, Quim Gutierrez, sci-fi, Spanish film, survivor, The Last Days, The Panic, writer-director

Nowadays, it seems that everything under the sun is “antibacterial,” as if the single greatest threat to humanity isn’t climate change or interpersonal conflict but, rather, microbes, viruses and assorted germs. It’s gotten to the point where roughly 90% of the soaps on the market are antibacterial which, of course, has led to the inevitable backlash: perhaps all of the antibacterial stuff is actually weakening our immune systems, leaving us more susceptible to the very bacterium that we’re seeking to defend against. Ah, humanity: providing the universe with a constant source of amusement for millions of years.

What if this obsession with germs is a completely futile exercise, however? What if our bodies aren’t reacting to specific irritants but, rather, are reacting to everything? In other words, what if we’re all becoming progressively more allergic to the outside world? This rather frightening idea forms the crux of co-writers/directors David and Alex Pastor’s quietly powerful new film, The Last Days (2013). While the film isn’t quite as good as its most similar parallel, the neo-classic Children of Men (2006), it’s still a more than worthwhile entry in the “intelligent sci-fi/dystopic future” subgenre and establishes the Pastors as filmmakers to keep an eye on.

The Last Days begins with the kind of monochromatic atmosphere that informs similar films like 12 Monkeys (1995), Children of Men and Blindness (2008): everything is gray, the sky looks like it’s just about to open up and slam down rain and every single person looks as battered and shell-shocked as any survivor of a protracted siege. In this case, however, “shell-shocked survivor” is a pretty apt description: as we find out in short order, the citizens of the world have all developed a sudden and extreme form of agoraphobia. Unlike the “regular” kind, this particular fear of open spaces kills: victims seize up when outdoors, bleed from every orifice and drop dead unless they’re returned to the “safety” of the indoors. This has led to a situation where everyone has been trapped inside whatever building they happen to be in for months: society has broken down, unchecked fires ravage the streets and the people are gradually losing their basic humanity…and their hope.

Enter our protagonist, Marc (Quim Gutierrez), who’s been trapped with his co-workers in an office building for the past three months. As food reserves and supplies gradually disappear, the trapped people have been attempting to tunnel out from their underground garage into the nearby subway system, which would allow them access to the rest of Barcelona without risking travel in the outside world. Via flashbacks (the film employs a non-linear but fairly simple flashback structure wherein the past and present each get their own “timeline,” although the timelines are intermingled throughout the film’s run time), we learn that Marc’s office has been visited by an “efficiency expert, Enrique (Jose Coronado), whose presence leads to firings and increased stress in Marc’s relationship with his girlfriend, Julia (Marta Etura).

In the present, Marc and Enrique end up working together after each man realizes that the other has something he needs: Marc has managed to get a hold of a flashlight, while Enrique has stolen a coveted GPS system from a car in the garage. The two strike up a deal wherein they will first go to Marc’s apartment building, in search of Julia, before heading to pick up Enrique’s ailing father at a hospital. The journey will be difficult and fraught with peril, not least of which involves the fact that they’re unable to step foot outside: they’ll have to make it from one end of Barcelona to the other using only buildings, underground routes and the like for cover.

As if this wasn’t enough, however, Marc and Enrique will need to deal with that most insidious of dystopic concerns: the violent devolution of humanity in the face of an overwhelming, extinction-level event. Anyone familiar with things like Children of Men, Blindness or The Walking Dead will know that the “event” is never the biggest problem: humans will always be more capable of evil than any disease, zombie invasion or outside force. In The Last Days, people have turned the cramped interior spaces of buildings, subway stations and garages into stuffed-to-bursting pseudo-cities: think the ruined vibe of Blade Runner (1982) jammed into the equivalent of a broom closet and you get some idea of the insanity. As is wont to happen whenever the masses of humanity are forced into constricted locations, tempers flare, the rules of society are abandoned and brute force becomes the law of the land. Will Marc and Enrique survive the human menace long enough to reach their respective loved ones? Will humanity ever be able to rebound from what appears to be an evolutionary development designed solely to extinguish people from the face of the Earth? Will we ever be able to go outside again?

If there’s anything really derogatory to say about The Last Days, let it be said that the film isn’t particularly original or unique, even if it is extremely well-made. While the basic plot is different from films like Children of Men and Blindness, the overall themes and tone are nearly identical to any one of a number of dystopic sci-fi films: I hate to say “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” since it’s such a restrictive, negative thing to say but it’s kind of true. That being said, I could follow that up by adding, “If you liked the others, you’ll like this one, too.” Unlike something like a generic slasher or low-budget monster film, The Last Days is anything but a cookie-cutter film, even if it brings to mind other, more well-known movies. While the Pastors’ film doesn’t break any new ground, it’s still an incredibly solid, thrilling and thought-provoking experience: innovation is certainly appreciated but there’s still something to be said for just making an overall good film and The Last Days certainly delivers on that front.

The acting is uniformly solid, with Gutierrez and Coronado making a really effective duo: there’s a genuine progression to their relationship that never feels forced and seems to reflect a pretty realistic grasp on how people would actually react in a similar situation. There are a number of setpieces in the film (collecting the rain, fighting the bear in the abandoned church, the insane fortified department store at the end) that are as good as anything else out there, with the bear fight easily standing as one of the most thrilling, well-staged action pieces I’ve seen in some time. It’s always interesting to see how a film will (or won’t) survive multiple butts in the director’s seat but there doesn’t seem to be any notable flaws in The Last Days craft: if there can truly be any flaws, they come from the unnerving sense of deja vu in the film – even if you haven’t seen these particular episodes before, it might feel like you have. As already mentioned, this is both a blessing and a curse: while the Pastors don’t break any new ground, they also don’t phone it in, either.

Ultimately, The Last Days is an interesting, solemn and mildly thought-provoking film that programs nicely in with the rest of its peers, yet doesn’t really have a complete identity of its own. There are certainly some interesting ideas here (the notion of us all becoming gradually allergic to the outside, as our lives and interests increasingly occur indoors, is a solid, frightening one) but the film, ultimately, takes a different route to wind up at the exact same location: we have seen the enemy and it is us. I may agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment but it doesn’t mean I haven’t heard it before.