Love & Anarchy Advent Calendar

 

So, we had a Love & Anarchy Film Festival this year as well. I was taking it slow in covering it, but then I realized it was over two months ago. But perhaps by starting an Advent Calendar I can cover 24 movies that were seen at the festival. They had chosen a really good program, and kept the audience as safe as possible in these circumstances. Check back to this post on every day of December to catch up on reviews.

1. First Cow (USA, 2019)
Director: Kelly Reichardt

Kelly Reichardt is known for making slow, quiet and ponderous movies, so it's kind of a jump when the new one is basically a buddy comedy of two grifters in the Old West. It's the kind of western that follows on the footsteps of McCabe & Mrs Miller and the like, everything is grey, brown, dirty, flimsily built and wooden. There's no glory or romanticism involved, even if the framing story tells of a modern woman finding out about the history involved.

The movie is a good, multilayered depiction of the friendship between two underdogs, played by John Magaro and Orion Lee. It also has some critique of the American Dream and drive towards entrepreneurship, which proves impossible for even the skilled ones if enough odds are against them right from the start. That's why they have to resort to cheating, stealing milk from the prize cow to improve their cakes and thus bake sales. The film has a cold, unflinching look at nature, which is at the same time utterly ruthless and oddly comforting. we are all parts of the woods in the end.

★★★★

2. Wendy (USA, 2019)
Dir. Benh Zeitlin

 

The impressionistic director Benh Zeitlin with his crew has prepared his follow-up to Beasts of a Southern Wild for seven years. While that one saw wonder and childlike amazement in poor and devastated Southeast terriories, this one takes a jump toward even more fantastic storytelling. It's a reworking of the story of Peter Pan.

The film is again visually stunning, and the locations in the Pacific Islands with an active volcano are nothing short of breathtaking. This time around, Zeitling guides a larger cast of child actors, none of which are as strong to carry a movie as Quvenzhané Wallis was. It also seems that the long production period and kids growing up so fast has made it necessary to tell the story fragmented and disjointed. It may be argued that its due to the logic following children's playtimes, but it makes for a tedious thing to follow. There are some kind of cool reworkings of the Pan story set to a more modern backdrop, but some are basically terrible. Mostly anything to do with Captain Hook and his pirates. Beasts of a Southern Wild was not without its problems, but it had a more clear purpose, now it seems it's a bit too childish and dumbed down for adults and not exciting enough for kids, satisfying no one.

★★

3. Lost Boys (Finland/Thailand 2020)
Dirs. Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Cetinkaya

 

The documentary film Reindeerspotting made waves a decade ago, and also became a big hit in Finland. The movie depicted a group of drug addicts from Lapland in their daily lives, fighting against their urges, boredom, and the system. From the profits of the film, the real-life buddy group got enough money to fly to Thailand for the winter. After a few months of pure hedonism, sex, drugs and all other vices, only the film's director Joonas Neuvonen returned home. Soon after, one of the group was missing and the first film's main character Jani was found dead in shady circumstances.

The sequel film is of Neuvonen's attempts to recollect, what went wrong and to try to find out what exactly happened to his friends. The material he had for this film were fragmented, some in pooor quality. The reason the film took a decade was that it needed multiple screenwriters, editors and even co-directors to make sense of all this. Considering this, the resulting film is a wonder, a docufiction that is both a horrifying psychedelic nightmare in the vein of Gaspar Noé and Nicolas Winding Refn. On the other hand, it is also a sad look at the dead end facing the first film's characters. They might get some fleeting moments of happiness late in their lives, but it's all a illusion and the ground is approaching fast. This time around, Neuvonen puts himself more to under the magnifying glass, emphasizes his own bad feelings about the case and maybe his own fractured psyche.

★★★★

4. Radioactive (UK, Hungary, China, France, USA 2019)
Dir. Marjane Satrapi

 

The author of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, hasn't had the most successful career as a film director. His previous film, Voices, flopped in the Stateside, so she has had to resort to having an easy-to-sell biography project made with funding from around the world as her next project. The film tells the life story of chemist Marie Curie, discoverer of Radioactive elements. As it is, Radioactive has many moments of visual intrigue and good acting, but it can't avoid all the major pratfalls of the biography genre.

Rosamund Pike carries the film as headstrong Curie. As Satrapi tends to do with her comics work, she also intercuts the story with asides that show consequences of the discoveries, both good (radiation treatments) and bad (the Chernobyl accident). Those asides however reveal the film's limited budget, even if it's stretched admirably to fit these parts. The major problem is, however, that like most scientists, the life story by itself isn't really that captivating, and showing of all the various awards and stuff seems like reading from a Wikipedia page. The center is the relationship between Marie and Pierre (Sam Riley), but it lacks tension since Pierre is doing his best to share credits and help Marie as much as he can. The adventures in World War I with her daughter, shrugged off in the film's last 20 minutes, would have been more interesting to follow than focusing on the early parts.

★★

5. Nomadland (USA, Germany 2020)
Dir. Chloé Zhao

Director Zhao once again finds a way to make a western that's relevant to the themes for today. And she does it with a docufiction style, having plenty of people with the nomad lifestyle essentially play themselves. It's a touching film about the inability to find one's place in the world, but for once, not through the eyes of a teen or a young adult, but an actual adult, magnificently portrayed by Frances McDormand.

McDormand's Fern is tossed out after the closure of a major factory and an entire town's livelyhood. She does meaningless part-time work for Amazon and lives in her trailer, traveling the Great Plains of USA.  On her way, she tries developing relationships, but everything seems fleeting and avoid her grasp. The film has an anti-capitalist sting, but I feel the film could have had more brutally honest things to say about Amazon's worker practices, which were only alluded to here. It may be due to the realities of releasing such a melancholic film for adults, one can't rule out Amazon by biting the hand that may feed you. It's a shame Zhao herself seems to accept the odd job here and there, since she's moving on to the MCU. I think certain rising talents could produce incredible movies elsewhere, whereas with Marvel they'll probably do something reasonably entertaining but forgettable. But that's late-stage capitalism for you. It maximises profits, not art.

★★★★ 1/2

6. Dogs Don't Wear Pants (Koirat eivät käytä housuja, Finland, Latvia 2019)
Dir. J-P Valkeapää

 

I had actually seen this last year in festival screenings, but since then this movie has become a bit notorious abroad, so it warrants a mention. It's a sort of dark comedy of a man (Pekka Streng) struggling with grief finding a new lease in life with kinky sex and especially with a blossoming relationship with a dominatrix (Krista Kosonen).

Valkeapää is perhaps the most gifted visualist of the new generation of Finnish filmmakers. Here he has some shades of neon noir or the films of the likes of Noé and Friedkin, but manages to do something unique and undoubtedly his. It's a considerable step up of his previous work that had clearer pastiches. It's not as rough and kinky as one might expect, but it's also no surprise that some things get taken a bit far. The key of the movie is in its central triangle drama of sorts with a father being drawn into a sexy underworld, but his daughter also needing him in her struggles.

★★★★

7. My Octopus Teacher (South Africa 2020)
Dirs. Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed

Filmmaker Craig Forster recalls an unusual encounter with an octopus in an underwater kelp forest. Octopi are as intelligent as house cats, so the fil m goes out its way to show how they too can act as personally, gracefully and smartly as any pet, with footage to support it. I'm usually wary of films that make of animal behaviour to be to human-like, and there are some interpretations here that near the line. As it is however, is a reminder that we have incredible species around the world that have their own emotions, and we just can't go on destroying the landscapes in which they live in.  

★★★

Three laughs: Double Team

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #44:
Double Team (USA/Hong Kong, 1997)
Director: Tsui Hark

It's been known to come out of my mouth to say that Jean-Claude Van Damme has a surprisingly good filmography. Well, y'know, not good-good, but there's plenty of really over-the-top and silly actioners that are a lot more fun to watch than many of his peers. He also managed to star in both John Woo and Tsui Hark's Hollywood movies.

The hongkong cinema legends became rivals over dispute of the A Better Tomorrow series, directed by Woo and produced by Hark. Initially Hark made the third part without Woo, who became an international superstar in hos own right. It's quite clear which one of them was more talented, but Hark never gave up trying to upstage Woo's style. Case in point was 1997 when they both ran in the competition of who would make the more ridiculous Hollywood action movie. Woo made Face/Off, Hark made this.

The reason this film is called Double Team is first to cash in on Van Damme's previous Double Impact, but it also serves to remind that it's basically two very tangentially related movies in one. One, a gritty circle of revenge between a terrorist played by Mickey Rourke and Van Damme's counter-terrorist agent. The second, a weird ripoff of The Prisoner, where Van Damme is taken to a secluded scifi island retreat for ex-agents and plans for his escape.

And where does Dennis Rodman's arms dealer fit into all this? Basically nowhere, it seems they had a hunch Rodman would be a bigger star than he was, so his short role had to be expanded to be another of a buddy cop duo, with outrageous fashion items, bright hair colors and basketballl-related one-liners. The plot is a mess, the film tries very 90's-like to be cool with off-putting camera angles, endless explosions and cool-for-cools sake sets, locations, effects and visual elements that serve little purpose and eventually don't go nowhere. It all makes for a very entertaining, trashy movie that gets dumber and dumber as it goes along. 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. When Van Damme finds himself on Conter-terrorist Island, he is immideately in a hurry to get out. His lover thinks he's dead and Rourke is out to get vengeance on him, since he accidentally killed his child (it's a weird position for a film's hero to basically be a child-killer). Thus, he begins a hilarious training routine in his motel room that gives fans of Muscles from Brussels what they bought their ticket for. He does the Splits climbing a door frame, punches a bucket full of gravel and lifts a bath tub all the while making pained expressions. He's also doing some MacGyver-like experiments with a Coke can that somehow will help him escape the daily routine later on.

2. Since Rodman can't act his way out of a paper bag, and Van Damme famously has a limited grasp in English, all the buddy scenes between the two play out quite differently than the film's producers probably had in mind. My favorite scene is when the pair of them have to jump out of an airplane in the middle of nowhere (Rourke's base is in the Colosseum in the middle of Rome). They bicker since there was no parachutes, but luckily, Rodman did became prepared. He somehow turns on a giant basketball over the pair of them that somehow shelters them from the impact. Real xXxTREME SPORTS!

3. The overly conveluted Finale is miraclous in itself, since it involves Rourke having dug landmines in the middle of the Colosseum and let out an angry tiger loose. Van Damme and Rodman are platforming around to find a missing baby. It's almost avant-garde how incoherent this all is, but one can't look away. The final coup the grace is when all the explosives are triggered and the pair saves themselves by shetering behind a number of Coke machines THAT CAME OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE! One gets a sneaking suspicion that this film might have been sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company.

Three laughs: Birdemic - Shock and Terror

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three Laughs Case File #40:
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (USA, 2010)
Director: James Nguyen

If you've noticed, I like to do a little something special every time this column reaches even tens. So, it was about time to get the other movie that gives The Room a run for its money for sheer ineptitude. The fun of Birdemic is that its director James Nguyen obviously had lofty standards. It's the sort of self-serious film that takes a major issue (in this case, global warming) and trying to hammer the audience in the head with it in the guise of an easy to watch thriller movie.

The movie has obvious reference points, the main one being Hitchcock's The Birds, which is given a shout-out several times. Nguyen goes so far as to bill Tippi Hedren third in the end credits for using a clip of her performance in Julie and Jack. It should be obvious, but Birdemic doesn't get anyone to change their minds about global warming, but the way it sets out to achieve this task makes for a bizarre and beffling journey.

Rod (Alan Bagh) is a software salesman, living his daily life albeit ominous news of melting glaciers, heat waves and forest fires. Rod meets his old flame Nathalie (Whitney Moore) and they begin dating. But one day, everything changes and angry eagles start attacking and killing people. It's up to our (pretty useless) heroes to get to the bottom of what's causing the birds to attack, save children and bring balance back to nature.

 Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. After the seemingly endless opening credits where the short main theme loops about three times, we get our first proper scene and it gives us a very good idea on what to expect. The sound mixing is terrible, making every line jump terribly and making it feel like you're watching a skipping record. About everything that's possible to be wrong about a quick scene of a man walking to a restaurant and being seated, is worng. The actors are hokey, the editing giving the scene odd emphasis and everything in general feeling awkward and weird. These kinds of bad movies are very good at revealing how odd our daily interactions may be, and as an entertainment it's something you don't get to see every day.

2. The dating scenes between Rod and Nathalie seem to go on and on, but there are occasional bright parts, like the one where they attend a R&B gig at a bar. The song "Hanging out with my Family" has hilariously bad lyrics, and it's cut to Rod and Nathalie doing the most hilariously awkward, white bread dancing. The next scene is the sex scene, so at least it worked for them.

3. The most famous terrible thing about the movie has got to be the special effects. The first scene of the birds attacking illustrates their hilarious ineptitude best. Shrieking GIF-animated birds fly up and about, with explosion GIFs added over the city (maybe the eagles are carrying TNT and kamikaze striking?). The high-pitched whine the birds keep making is also totally hilarious. Like everything else in the movie, it just keeps going, and going, and going...

Urban Gauntlets

One thing that gets lost amid all this quarantine is that major cities are seething hellholes. That's probably where I'm particularly drawn into the sort of neo noir films, where a hapless protagonist tries their best, but it seems the entire cities (usually NYC) are against them in every way. So, let's take a closer look at three of such examples.

 

Killing of a Chinese Bookie (USA, 1976)
Director: John Cassavetes

In the sweaty seventies, John Cassavetes was making his own minimalist art in between shoots of major big-budget Hollywood epics. He bled his own situation into his films, like here where an owner of a burlesque house (Ben Gazzara) strives to make art out of making middle-aged men horny.

He's also a gambling addict that gets into trouble with the local mob. The only way out is to do a favor, which in turn might suck out the last of humanity out of him. These kinds of films are basically tragedies about the failure of the American dream. The plucky underdogs dream of being big, but always have to face some harsh realities, and in the end, violence as well. Cassavetes didn't really like violence in films, so it's shot very discreetly, but the realities it causes changes the tone of the entire film. 

Unlike the two other films in this list, this one is set in Los Angeles. It can be seen in the greater emphasis on cars, distances, and heat eminating from the entire film. Cassavetes as a director usually had a very limited color palette to his films, this one also looks like the film was overexposed in the sun, even though it's mostly set during the night.

The film is mostly talk and no action. One shouldn't expect it to even have a climax of sort. Cassavetes is interested in the implications of the situation more than anything. The entire thing also works as a metaphor for the corruption of the power of money. How far are you willing to sell your soul?

★★★★

After Hours (USA, 1985)
Dir. Martin Scorsese

 

It used to be thought that the 1980's weren't really that good for the director Martin Scorsese. I beg to differ, I find he did some great work that riffed on ideas and themes he had set up in the previous decade. After Hours is one of his rare more comedic movies. But in fact, it's a thorough New York movie that sees the city, yuppified since the days of Taxi Driver, as dangerous as ever.

A hapless office worker (Griffin Dunne) is a regular young man but takes a few steps out of his comfort zone as he's looking for love. Out in the middle of the night in a weird part of the town alone and with no money seems to attract him to oddballs and authorities that don't mean him well and are out to get him. The neon-lit, cold and smoky New York never looked better but at the same time, more terrifying.

The film is emphatethic towards everyone who's down and out in the Big Apple, even if it casts most of the characters of the city with major mental issues and cynicism. But the key is that circumstantial setbacks can pile up and minor things like losing a $20 bill may cause a chain-reaction that only adds to the plight of the outcasts. It's a film that also gets to the heart of the loneliness felt in cities, even if there are plenty of people around. 

Scorsese has borrowed from Woody Allen a distrust of the city's intellectual and artistic class and mercilessly mocks it. He also manages to sneak in some of his personal obsessions, from late-night diners to talking about film classics to the mix as well, making this one of the movies surely influencing a young Quentin Tarantino. The only major problem with the movie is that it hits so close to truth it's not that funny as a comedy, but hey, you can't always have everything.

★★★★

Uncut Gems  (USA, 2019)
Dirs. Benny & Josh Safdie

The latest one, and the one that particularly inspired this writing comes from the arthouse cinema production house A24 and has Scorsese and Cassavetes in particular as influences. The seediness in the previous ones is now contrasted with more modern sports centers and auction houses. But even if it's not done in the open any more, the threat of violence looms even stronger behind every scene.

Lando Calrissian -styled gems dealer Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is at once a sleazy little rat, and a fast-talking trickster you can't help but to like even if his self-destructive adrenaline addiction is putting not only himself, but his his family and friends on harm's way. Ratner is about to make a huge sell on a particularly beautiful opal, which puts him in a position and mindset to make increasingly dangerous bets on sports. The movie follows as Ratner ups the ante again and again, always surviving by the skin of his neck, until finally the bets become way too big to handle.

For the fast-paced modern audiences, the movie is fast-cut and has plenty of side-plots going on at all times. The effect may be anxiety-inducing for some viewers, but the film also warrants repeat viewings if one is interested in seeing the strings of plotlines getting pulled. Given the chance, Sandler can be a great character actor, so it's a bit sad he didn't get the rcognition he deserved from this which will surely make him go back to making very half-assed comedies with no effort. But such are the joys and victories that the film presents, too. They are fleeting, and something much worse is yet to come soon enough.

 ★★★★ 1/2

Three laughs: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

 It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #34:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (USA, 1986)
Director: Tobe Hooper

It's strange how some horror sequels can get away with a more silly tone, such as Evil Dead 2 or, to lesser extent, Phantasm II (maybe one could also argue Dawn of the Dead). Some that try out similar things are reviled, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. To be fair, Evil Dead 2 sets a gold standard in horror-comedy filmmaking and others that go that route aren't nearly as good or funny. But that's not to say they are bad movies, far from it!

Director Tobe Hooper has insisted that even the first one is a sort of black comedy. There are perhaps some chuckles to be had from the mad exploits of the Hitch-hiker or the dinner scene late in the movie. Nevertheless, the sequel goes a lot further in this aspect.  The film was made as a part of the director's deal with Cannon Group, which has brought up suspicions that it was made in order to secure funding to the more ambitious Lifeforce (1985), or perhaps earn back a little of what it lost.

The sequel sets out to skewer much more of the Americana than the previous did, with digs about the state of consumerism, media, sexual repression, dual moralism and 80's eat-or-get-eaten capitalism in general. It also dives deeper into distorted ideas of family values. Cannibalism and murder is a way of life, but the film's insane characters also revel in and enjoy it.

Basically the film's plot (such as there is one) is very similar to the one in the previous film. The lady DJ Vanita Brock, or "Stretch" (Caroline Williams) gets kidnapped by Leatherface and his family and must fight to survive in their secret lair, now close to Dallas in order to easier capture victims. Meanwhile Sheriff Lt. Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) is out to avenge the disappearance of his son in the previous film. This time, though having a "Chainsaw" massacre is not just empty talk, and power-tools buzz for a lengthy part of the movie. It's also made pretty clear on which body part these long blades are meant to be an extension of.

 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The very first scene makes clear the intentions and approach of the sequel as opposed to the first. A bunch of obnoxious yuppie teens hoot and holler, and blow people's mailboxes as they're driving to a party on their minivan. But when the night falls, they get a taste of their own medicine as a zombie geek jumps on the youngsters' car. In fact it's leatherface doing a bit of a puppet show with a corpse and soon gives them a show in the use of a massive chainsaw as well. Oingo Boingo is playing on the background for this scene.

2. The film's biggest new character, Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) is a truly slimy and obnoxious dude, out to make Stretch as uncomfortable as possible. It's almost a relief when suddenly Leatherface burtsts through the door. But the clumsy oaf can't catch Stretch as she makes good use of a fire distinguisher runs through a safety door.  Instead, he manages to injure Chop-Top's head, revealing the metal plate he got in 'Nam. But he woes more of the destruction of his terrible Sonny Bono wig.

3. Towards the end there's a touching but blackly comedic scene of Lt. Enright finding the remains of his son, which happen to be a gruesome skeleton on a wheelchair. He proceeds to destroy the entire lair with his own chainsaw. He comes to Stretch's rescue later on and declares himself "The Lord of the Harvest". But Leatherface isn't going to let the guy threaten his family, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime duel with chainsaws. This was this franchise's high point. It was all downhill from there on.

Three laughs: A Talking Cat?!

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.   

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #33:  
A Talking Cat?! (USA 2013)
Director: David DeCoteau 

A very cheap family movie about a magic cat helping out a family with their problems might sound innocent enough. But when you have a director like David DeCoteau make it, known from his trashy films, you might be onto something odd. Adding to the comedy is main star Eric Roberts, a veteran on hundreds of movies, most of them bad, cashing in a check with a vocal performance that sounds like it was recorded in his car while driving to get some coffee and donuts. Or maybe the trunk of the car. 

The film has some penny-squeezing qualities (many of which we come to in a minute), some of which is that the main house used in the movie looks suspiciously like a set from a porn movie. And in fact the film's set WAS used in a little film called Ass Worship 13. 

As you might know, cats aren't exactly known for being easy actors in movies, and the tabby Duffy with the physical side of the main part does look like he would have none of the bullshit the film keeps feeding us. He is replaced in the film's poster by a younger, cuter kitten. Other stars are made to be some wood-faced models, except the film's dad, played by Johnny Whitaker, who has some very unusual features for a leading man, which makes him of course all the more interesting to watch. One could only wish one of the cinematic Garfield movies was made with a similar who-the-fuck-cares attitude.

Three laughs (SPOILERS): 

1. The movie has two main houses where the action is set in, but it leaves even The Room behind in its obsessive use of establishing shots. Hilariously, also many of these don't seem to fit together. Is the film supposed to be set on a beach, or a forest, or maybe the desert? Is it some tropical country or California? Well, at least the movie crept just above the required 85 minute length.

2. Eric Roberts' lazy-ass dialogue is heard throughout the movie but in fact the titular cat can only talk to people once each. During the first 15 minutes it might be hard to recognize when people are hearing the cat, but once he really talks, you can't help but notice. The reason being that the cat's mouth has been animated by the cheapest possible MS Paint images put into a GIF animation possible.

3.Getting back to the gay porn qualities of the movie, although the film has the most white bread and milquetoast romantic comedy plot possible, we do have an extensive scene where Justin Cone and Daniel Dannas have a conversation by the pool. The film lingers very long on the wet, shirtless and fit young dudes' bodies. The question remains if there's a problem the cat didn't help the boys with or if this is just an obsession of director DeCoteau he couldn't shake even when making a kids' movie.

Three laughs: American Kickboxer 2

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three laughs case file #31:  
American Kickboxer 2 (USA, Philippines, 1993)
Director: Jenö Hodi

Let's kick two flies with one stone. Since we've been very interested both in bargain-bin VHS action movies and foreign movies from around the world, here we have a cheapo actioner that's been done in the lovely Philippines. American Kickboxer 2 has nothing to do with the first film in the franchise, as the case with sequels always should be.

It's a dumb-as-rocks -kind of film that also has its tongue firmly in cheek. Nevertheless, it has a borderline soap opera kind of plot. The film concerns a rich family's small daughter getting kidnapped by a SWAT team in a helicopter. As the parents can't go to the cops, Lillian (Kathy Shower) makes a shocking revealation to her husband Howard (Police Academy's Tackleberry, David Graf): he's not the father of the girl, it could either be his violent ex-husband David (Evan Lurie) or the girl be a result of a casual fling with a local playboy Mike Clark (Dale Cook). Luckily, both of them are cops, martial artists and men of action. Not so luckily, they despise each other and the situation they are put in.

The film's actors are hilarious to watch as Cook can barely act and just stumbles around stupidly, and Lurie is so off-puttingly aggressive it's impossible to feel any sympathy for either of them. But then, they get into bar fights, shootouts, prison riots and even an underground fighting ring around every corner. As a travel commercial for the Philippines, it really doesn't work. But as far as B-grade action movies go, this one is a keeper.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. As we're somewhat copying the buddy cop -format from movies like Lethal Weapon, one thing the film needs is a Joe Pesci -like comic relief. Or rather, not. When the main characters first meet they immediately hate each other, and start to fight at a McDonald's parking lot. Maxin Ross, a local club owner, plays a weaselly guy that has an objection since the beat-down is happening on the hood of his car. He runs his mouth a bit, but is mercifully kicked in the head soon enough.

2. The main characters bickering to the point of fisticuffs is a running gag throughout the film. My favorite scene comes when, just as another of their fights is about to start, they suddenly duck out from a drive-by shooting. As Lurie thanks Cook for saving of his life, Cook smugly retorts there's no debt since they saved each other. But Lurie just takes this as a realization nothing is stopping him from sucker-punching his partner to the face. As Cook falls, he also hits his head to a steel door behing him. But then we immediately cut to the next scene where he's walking around as if nothing happened. This is basically a Tom & Jerry cartoon with real actors.

3. It turns out that our dynamic duo has a secret ally infitrated in the criminal leagues, a guy who's a dead ringer to the director Peter Jackson in a beret. He makes his infiltration in a memorable way. As everyone is distracted by watching the captured heroes fight each other to the death, he goes to put two cockroaches from a jar to a guard's leg. As the roaches run up his trouser leg, the guerd is distracted for a moment and then klonked in the head. Smooth.

Three laughs: Ninja III The Domination

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #30: Ninja III: The Domination
(USA, 1984)
Director: Sam Firstenberg

It's kind of odd that I've not yet featured any Cannon Group films in this column. Perhaps I've gone on even cheaper thrills than the relatively cheap but still Hollywood productions of the company started by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The main idea of Cannon was to populistically grab onto any trend that might attract customers of the 1980's film landscape. Enter the Ninja.

As the world started to open up in the 80s, ninjas were some of the exotic thrills provided by foreign countries that managed to work wonders within the action movies. They made for good enemies for any action hero, but there was a sense of mysticism and magic in them that they could also carry entire movies as protagonists. Shô Kosugi was one of these crossover stars that first started as a villain yet grew into a surprisingly popular leading man.

As Cannon's Ninja trilogy goes, I've covered the Franco Nero -starring first part here before. While I might prefer the second one, Revenge of the Ninja, it is a close call and there's a lot more cult movie vibe in the third one, titled The Domination. For as Golan and Globus wanted to capture trends, it is not just a ninja picture, but rips off other popular films of the time, such as Poltergeist and Flashdance.

Yes, the story is of a female aerobics instructor that gets possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ninja, and must strike to kill at nights. She needs the help of Kosugi's wise old ninja master in order to defeat the evil. The film could have been a star-making turn for Lucinda Dickey, and the idea of a female lead in a ninja action movie is kind of progressive. It's too bad she can't be a fighter by her own right but has to be possessed in order to be able to take men on. The way to go about it is nothing short of crazy, so we might gawp and gather the highlights into a text such as this.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The movie has one of my favorite opening action scenes of any action movie ever. It's the best action scene of the movie, so it's a bit of a letdown that the rest of the movie can't hold up to that one. After a short intro of a man visiting an ominous ancient temple, a black ninja (David Chung) appears on a golf course to an entourage of polo-shirted white guys. He enrages them by squeezing golf balls into powder. He proceeds to hack and slash them to death which starts out a non-stop 10 minutes of pure action I won't go beat-by-beat here. Suffice to say the ninja lifts a running golf cart and stops such a hard hit from a golf club with his hand, the bar bends around it.

2. Soon after rich guys are offed, the action moves to cops pursuing the ninja. He lifts a ride from a helicopter and kills the cops within it, making the helicopter explode. Just as you think the scene is over as the ninja is hiding in a pond, breathing through a reed, he gets discovered and blows some poison darts to a cop through the reed and starts killing cops once again. Talk about making bacon on a beach.

3. I have to talk about the other side of the film, which sees Dickey's character be escorted by a cop (Jordan Bennett) since she is eyewitness of the Black Ninja's crimes. She ends up seducing him in an amazingly 80's apartement with arcade cabinets, neon lights and Duran Duran albums. Like a scene from The Naked Gun, she takes a can of tomato juice out of somewhere and pours some on her neck. Is this bizarre idea supposed to be sensual?

Blow Up, Blow Out

 Did you just accidentally capture a murder on film, or a sound of evidence for one? Can the truth be found on details or does it just send its seeker to the path of obsession? There's a trio of films much studied and appreciated that riff on a very similar subject. I think it appeals to film directors, as the job often includes getting easily distracted on the moments they weren't set out to capture. That's why this idea lingers on, and what's more it epitomize the styles and ides of each of their respective auteurs. Each could also not have been done in a different time, they are the image of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.

So, let's talk about Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981).

Blow-Up (UK, Italy 1966)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

One of the essential depictions of the image of 1960's Swinging London, Antonioni's most famous film sees David Hemmings as a wealthy, self-centered and womanizing photographer. Much of the film we also see odd and off-putting public performances of Flower People through his eyes. Like in many of Antonioni's films, much of the mood and ideas are put between the lines. Even as Hemmings' Thomas tries his best to be a hip mod, it is obvious that he does not feel comfortable or let his guard down.

But his boredom and uneasiness also allow him to push boundaries and operate on a morally gray area. As he's secretly photographing a mysterious woman in the park, it seems that his camera captures something odd. The woman confronts him later on and demands the roll. The instance haunts Thomas and as he's studying his secret negatives he starts seeing things by blowing up smaller and smaller elements to bigger pictures. But we as an audience also never get any closure or reinsurance of the fact throughout the film.

The obsessions related to the sexual nature of how Thomas uses the camera makes the film basically about the male gaze and voyeurism. Antonioni had a knack of combining his themes to the plot. Empty hedonism and sex where his every whim is filled still doesn't satisfy, and by pushing morals, the main character is left a giant void. These days, one could also see how his masculinity turns more and more toxic, as he treats women disposable and has the entire world revolving around his wants and needs. The film is a fascinating look at details and visually wondrous, but the strictly male navel-gazing it provides is a bit out of time by today's standards.

★★★★

The Conversation (USA 1974)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

As Antonioni was exploring life in the 1960's, then Coppola took the idea to the paranoid 1970's and brought a more political aspect to the proceedings. It is probably still the best movie ever made about surveillance and the endless hole of compromizing ideals it leads to.

It's not to say Coppola is stealing the idea from Blow-Up, rather he's using it as a key influence. A most notable difference is that as Antonioni's film was about a wealthy and cool young artist, Coppola centers around a sweaty and mousey middle-aged man that considers himself a public servant. Actually Gene Hackman's Harry Caul is a surveillance expert, and with his company, follows around those his clients point out to him with very little regard on the moral aspects of his work.

By contrast to his job description, Caul himself is very much an introvert, careful of his own privacy and keeping his private life private (I wonder what he would make of the modern day when American and Chinese apps follow your every move and sell them to the highest bidder in a bat of an eyelash). But as he is very much a loner, there's a perverted aspect of him following young couples around and listening their conversations. One particular conversation might contain some damning information, but it is not clear and could be interpreted multiple ways. Nevertheless, Caul is horrified to learn that the couple he is listening in might be stalked by a murderer.

Coppola's film has an amoral man grow a conscience but as one would expect, he is not rewarded from it but rather, having his whole life come crumbling down and things going from bad to worse quick. He blows his few relationships, work and most of all, his safety, which means all his posturing around privacy concerns was basically for naught as his enemys could still get to him. Coppola is also careful not to make his film into your basic thriller, but having the tensions come from very slow development of the plot, and as Antonioni, reading moods and implications from between the sparse lines of dialogue.

It's a jazzy and alienating, often frustrating and deliberately off-putting film. The use of sound is brilliant and I think would warrant a seeing seemingly such a small-scale character drama in theatres. This is one of those films you get to appreciate properly only second or third viewing. It is very multi-layered, but I think well worth the effort.

★★★★ 1/2

Blow Out (USA 1981)
Dir. Brian De Palma

Easily the most garish of the trio, De Palma was never afraid of "borrowing" stuff from even well-known cinema, so his answer to the same theme takes more out of the previous movies, as well as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. Visually, though it looks more like it's director. As the ideas stretch far beyond just plucking them from previous work, it is among the director's finest works with particularly a climactic image lingering on long after the curtains have closed.

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a character that is something like an amalgam of Hemmings' and Hackman's characters. On surface he may seem like a brash and cool film sound engineer, but below he's tormented and traumatized, as well as feeling empty and lonely. He is recording ambient sound at a park one evening as a car crashes into a pond. He manages to pull out a woman, Sally (Nancy Allen) and helps her to a hospital. But it turns out she was dealing with an important political figure and thus someone might be out to get her. Terry finds evidence on the sound he recorded that the car crash was not an accident.

The film makes fun of the misogynism of murder movies and by-the-numbers stalk-view that De Palma and many of his copycats have used. The movie opens with a film-within a film that seems like a cheap Halloween knock-off and a sub-plot of the film concerns on trying to find the right kind of scream to be used on the film. De Palma presents himself to be more detail-oriented. The actual film has a murderer stalking women too, played by thorough iciness by John Lithgow. But the movie goes out of its way to show how pathetic and disgusting this messy killing actually is, not just stalking girls in a house with a bread knife. De Palma uses plenty of underutilized tricks to emphasize the suspense, such as exciting camera shots and suspending expectations. He is a true follower of Hitchcock in that, carefully limiting on what the audience knows and what he shows.

But in its core, it is a tragic love story of a man who has lost his wife being unable to protect another woman he has developed feelings for. It has similar qualities also to Vertigo in this regard, with the love being really as much about obsession. The final punch of the film also depicts a more cynical end to the character arc than the more open-ended predecessors allowed. In a way all of these are about a man being destroyed by thier obsession in multiple ways. The film also draws parallels to the political decay of the loss for truth and the withering of cinematic artistry in a way I'm not really enclined to agree with, but find fantastically entwined within the plot. De Palma is just as angry as Coppola was, but comes to different conclusions on the same issues.

The cycle of inspiration carried on, as the film itself proved very influental to Quentin Tarantino (particularly Death Proof, which features the same love theme) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio.

★★★★

Three laughs: Don't Go Near The Park

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #28:
Don't Go Near The Park (USA, 1979)
Director: Lawrence D. Foldes

We should all try to avoid public places there days, so to remind you, here's Don't Go Near The Park. And why shouldn't you go near? Well, since there are serial-murdering magic cavepeople in there, of course. The film has the gall to state that it's based on actual occurences throughout history.

In actuality, it is a cheap grindhouse flick that cashes in on similar 70's dreck such as The Hills Have Eyes. There is enough gore that it gained some notoriety when in the UK it was put on the Video Nasties list, but they shouldn't have. It's a childish movie that perhaps only open-minded kids could properly appreciate. The cavepeople seen in the movie are Gar (Robert Gribbin, as Crackers Phinn) and his sister Tra (Barbara Bain) some ancient native americans that were cursed by a witch to live forever near their home cave and only gain their youth by consuming human flesh.

But there is also confusingly an important, magical date of two stars coming to in line approaching when they should sacrifice a virgin in order to gain eternal youth. And for this, Gar concieved a baby girl with a woman and grew her to be 16 years old (played by Tammy Taylor). She also has a magic amulet from her caveman wizard daddy that kills would-be rapists and such scum that would do her harm before his dad and aunt can.

The film's inner mythology doesn't make much sense and the wooden actors won't even try to sell it. Most of the movie is spent on following airheaded but peppy kids straight outta 60's Disney movies that are drawn to the cave-vampire Some familiar B-movie stars such as drunken Aldo Ray and fresh-faced Linnea Quigley are top-billed, but in actuality, have only small roles.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The opening scene where a Halloween-masked witch puts a curse on the diabolic duo is pretty funny, because Bain chews the scenery incredibly hard. It also seems like she's cracking up listening to the bullshit. Why were they cursed? There's an incestual tone here, but it's probably due to them being cannibals even in ye olden days.

2. The first poper gore scene is one of many cases of Tra doing the Kali Ma and ripping live organs from people's stomachs with her bare hands. The effect is laughable, but even more laughable is her taking off her withered old crone face like a rubber mask. Underneath, she had an eye patch for some reason, perhaps to make her look similar to Christina Lindberg?

3. The climax is something to behold, as Gar and Tra suddensly start shooting white lasers from their eyes and kill much of the supporting cast, start a major fire and then bring the dead back to life in positively Turkish-grade -looking zombies that turn against them. Way to save the sugar to the bottom, movie.

Three laughs: Parole Violators

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #27:
Parole Violators, USA 1994
Director: Patrick G. Donahue

You might know that I tend to love action movies more when the cars in chases are rusted-up old lemons and the actors seem to be picked from a local gym or bus stop. And as dumb as they come. In this case Parole Violators is a home run for me.

"We're ALL potential Video Cops!"

The film concerns a vigilante going around with a video camera to beat some sense to store robbers and the likes. But he also seems to know their names and criminal histories. In actuality, it is the mulleted ex-cop Miles Long (Phil Donahue) who also hosts a local TV crime show.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Cops, an irredeemable piece of propaganda that for years colored the public eye for police brutality and treatment of the poorer classes. Fictional world at least gives us a canvas through which we can better handle the ideas being fed to us. In this case, of course, they are being given as dumb and ineptly as possible which makes the movie such a laugh riot. This film is not really even a narrative per se, more a showcase of various stunts like getting hit by a car or falling from any height. The final showdown in particular is a shooting range that constantly keeps upping the ante with more and more inventive kills.

Anyway, Miles himself soon gets to see that there are cases he can't solve with his camera as a guy he helped put away comes after him and his family. He and his girlfriend must survive a gauntlet after they are kidnapped by a small army of thugs.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first laugh comes from the opening scene that shows the masked Video Cop stop a convinience store robbery. It shows everything you need to know about the movie, with a lot of roundhouse kicks thrown, cardboardy sets destroyed and wilhelmy cartoon screams added on the soundtrack. My favorite move is Video Cop hitting the robber on the head with his own camera. I gotta wonder how that footage will look on Miles's show.

2. One of my favorite scenes is a woman-on-woman fist fight that ends with the bad girl's head getting impaled to a nail sticking out of a wall. The female lead (Pamela Bosley) quips "Hope you got you tetanus shot, bitch."

3. It gets increasingly crazy on just what the main characters are able to survive as the movie goes on. A particularly insane climatic scene sees Miles getting shot twice while on a roof, but as he's sliding down, he chances the clip on his handgun and shoots baddies as he falls down, landing on his back on a crappy car. It's an image of the entire movie, none of the Lethal Weapons ever did anything so excoiting.

Re:Make - Maniac

In this new blogging series, I am contrasting a classic movie and its remake. This is to showcase that a remake is not always a bad thing. Very rarely do movie remakes attempt to do anything fresh with their concept, but usually just blandly redo every major scene. But sometimes this is not the case. A new director might find some new angles on the established IP and possibly given a totally new twist rather than same-old-same-old. Some great cinematic feats would not have been possible if there wasn't a rogue filmmaker ready to give a shot in redoing something beloved.

Maniac (1980)
Director: William Lustig

vs.

Maniac (2012)

Dir. Franck Khalfoun

The original Maniac was born out of the cheap grindhouse thrills of the late 70's, early 80's. It is a New York movie through and through, and so seedy you feel like you need a shower afterwards. This aesthetic is very particular, but it gives Maniac some edge its flawed realization might otherwise miss.

We are taken to a journey to a mind of an overweight, bug-eyed, bad-skinned and greasy haired loner who also happens to be a mentally ill serial killer (Joe Spinell). The character is clearly suffering from his conditions, having hallucinations and manic bursts, as well as the uncontrollable urge to date women with his knife. It would be easy to hate this pathetic creature, but there is some unwilling sympathy to found in him. As evil as he seems, at worst he is just lost in his delusions, as helpless to pull himself together as the audience is to stop his gruesome murders.

That's not to say there are misogynistic roots in this rotten apple. He is a total predator, unreleting and unforgiving when he gets his killer instincts on. The stalking scenes, culminating in gory effects by Tom Savini himself, are some very effective use of horror filmmaking. The film is sad and nihilistic, seeing the murders as unstoppable and the killer not even particularly wanted or searched. Just another sad story in a city full of them.

Though by the end the film breaks the main character's insanity twirling out of control into the storytelling as well, the grounded viewpoint was a clear pathfinder. In the film we are stuck to the killer's mind, whether we like it, or rather, not. More grounded serial killer fare followed this, like Angst and Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer, which overemphasized the mundaness and banality of people like this.

After the Giuliani cleansing of New York, it stands to reason another Maniac could not have been updated to the same setting. Instead, screenwriter Alexandre Aja and director Franck Khalfoun decided to set the new version to Los Angeles, a city who gives even less of a fuck of the mentally ill and the unsuccessful sad souls. The viewpoint was then stuck even more inside the killer's head, to the point of shooting the entire thing in POV. These decisions work to show how the entire world in each of the citizens of LA revolves only around themselves.

Elijah Wood's Frank seems at points to be even too nice a soul to belong in the city where everything is sheer surface and real thoughts are kept tightly inside, to the point of bursting. The city of fake people can't help a soul just trying to find a connection. His work as a mannequin creator is an important metaphor to this as well.

But Frank is just as much a madman as his predecessor. When he can't relate to women, he resorts to stalking, killing and scalping them. Though his extreme misophobic deeds are horrifying and disgusting, this lost soul might be even more symphatetic this time around. The film wisely keeps Wood's face and doe eyes out of screen for the most part, telling the story more by just his voice. He doesn't do what he does out of evil, but because he has lost his sanity and is as terrified, unable to help himself and as lost as the audience.

In the end, the seedy and gory Grindhouse shocker was updated into a more clean but genuinely unnerving POV film. It allows perhaps a bit more insight into the mind of a titular maniac. Rather than going through motions, this one dares to surprise and take the story into unexpected territories.

Maniac (1980) ★★★ 1/2

Maniac (2012) ★★★★