Cinema Cess Pool Selection:
NA
The Banal, The Blah, The Banausic:
1. Spring Breakdown (2009) Dir. Ryan Shiraki - US
2. The Strange Door (1951) Dir. Joseph Pevney - US
3. The Gay Deceivers (1969) Dir. Bruce Kessler - US
4. It! (1966) Dir. Herbert J. Leder - UK
5. Horseman (2009) Dir. Jonas Akerlund - US
Astounding Cinema:
1. Beloved (1998) Dir. Jonathan Demme - US
Theatrical Releases:
1. Humpday (2009) Dir. Lynn Shelton - US 9/10
2. The Hurt Locker (2009) Dir. Kathryn Bigelow - US 9/10
It was a strange week of cinema, not a whole lot of good films and nothing fantastically awful, but a whole lot in-between.
I had been curious to see Ryan Shiraki's Spring Breakdown for some time now, a self described "gay acid trip," though I'm not certain how the director found his film to be a gay acid trip unless he was on one himself during filming. The real reason I wanted to see (and own) the film was for my gal Parker Posey. Not to mention the combined talents of Posey, Amy Poehler, Jane Lynch, and Missi Pyle --- some of the funniest women in comedy films. The plot of Breakdown centers around a group of awkward young college girls who became awkward young women (Posey, Poehler and Rachel Dratch) and who decide to go on a spring break vacation well into their thirties, the type they always missed out on when it was an appropriate time for vacation. However, as Posey works for a senator about to be picked as a vice presidential running mate (Lynch), Posey is forced to tail it to Mexico to look after Lynch's daughter during spring break. Posey's friends tag along and multiple scenarios occur, most of them entertaining or funny. Poehler gets the brightest comic moments while the strange looking Dratch gets to horse it up with her extremely annoying fiance, a very gay closeted man that likes to shorten all of his words. Sadly, Posey is the straight man and doesn't get too many opportunities to do much of anything in Spring Breakdown, a film that doesn't seem to utilize any of these actresses' talent, but whose presence elevates this film into more than it should be. I'm not surprised this film went straight to DVD, but I'd love to see these funny ladies together in something actually funny. I'm most bummed because Parker Posey had two of the best roles in two of my top 2007 releases, Fay Grim and Broken English. 2008 saw her in five seconds of the awful Jessica Alba remake The Eye, a failed television series (Parker Posey is too good for TV, by the friggin way) and then of course the straight to DVD release of this film. Posey fans will have to rejoice at her next release, Happy Tears (2010), where she will be starring as Demi Moore's sister. Overall, Spring Breakdown is worth the price of a rental, but it's a crime to not be a better film with this much talent involved. It's a gay acid nightmare. All my favorite actresses appearing in a mediocre film.
Oh, I wanted to like The Strange Door more than I did, as well. Charles Laughton stars in all his sallow, sweaty glory in hack director Joseph Pevney's adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson story, along with Boris Karloff in a minor, minor role as, ahem, Voltan, the butler who knows a secret. Well, there isn't much of one. Laughton loved this woman (well, in a fag-hag sort of sense, you see---oh, that's reality creeping in, sorry, check) who screwed him over and married his brother, who she managed to propagate the species with, ya know what I mean? It's unclear what happened to her, but after giving birth, she died and Laughton locked up his brother in a dungeon cell and raised his niece to the age of twenty with the devious intentions of forcing her to marry a man known to have a disreputable reputation as a scallywag criminal. Yes. That is actually his plot of revenge. I haven't read the Stevenson story, so I can't tell if this, ummm, slight and quite unbelievable revenge plot wasn't a bit psychosexually neutered by our lovely censorship code at the time. Keep in mind, this is also set in France. Richard Wyler stars as said scallywag, who becomes imprisoned after fleeing a bar brawl into the woods, stumbling upon the titular door and placing himself in the spider's web. The plot slowly unravels, the entertaining Laughton shaking his sweaty jowls this way and that. His niece, Blanche, believes her father is dead, though he's locked up beneath her feet. The film further aligns itself with all things dull and ridiculous when, after being introduced and apparently bonding over escape attempts, Blanche and her arranged suitor fall in love. I don't know why--he's dirty and sweaty while she looks pale and bored, but if it smells like a horse and it sounds like a horse, you know....Oh yeah, Karloff is in charge of watering Laughton's brother in the basement, and he is the only one that knows the brother isn't crazy and only pretends to be so Laughton won't kill him. Righto.
Now, I know I am not the only queer theorist that would like to recuperate some of the lambasted films from the first wave of queer theorism (e.g. Good vs. Bad queer images), but Vito Russo was correct in his derision of the 1969 film, The Gay Deceivers. I think I was confusing this film with the British film The Naked Civil Servant (1975), so when I sat down to watch it I was a bit confused and then dismayed at the stale, homophobic elements of the film. The film tells the story of Danny and Elliott, two straight dudes that just want to avoid the draft, and so pretend to be homosexuals. However, the ruse becomes two much for them to handle. Of course it would be when you have to keep reinforcing your dislike and hatred for the thing you're trying to pretend to be. The film pretty much reinforces how awful it is even pretending to be gay, much less the ridiculous stereotypical queens the film denigrates throughout. Yes, Michael Greer, one of the first out Hollywood actors stars in the film and much has been said about the fact that he rewrote his character in an attempt to make him less stereotypical and less the butt of all jokes. Well, okay. The film is still homophobic. Sadly, if it were to be remade by a major studio today, many of the attitudes would remain the same. Oh yeah, we had Chuck and Larry recently. Maybe it's time I lampooned that film. If you're looking for a progressive slice of 60's nostalgia, avoid The Gay Deceivers. Yes, it's one of the first movies where the actual gay men aren't self loathing and suicidal. That's not progressive, just happenstance. Who is credited with discovering the Pacific Ocean? Balboa? Because none of woman borne saw it first, right?
Somewhere between Clara Bow and Stephen King we had the 1966 UK horror film It! starring Roddy McDowell. Whereas other "it" films refer directly to something that just doesn't have better moniker, the "it" in Roddy's movie is actually a golem. So I don't know why the film wasn't titled The Golem! I realize there's a silent German classic of the same name, but It! is already dealing narratively with the same subject matter. And why the explanation mark, I will never know. No one shouts the word it, golem, or much of anything else. McDowell stars as an assistant museum curator and things get wonky when the museum's warehouse burns down, leaving the rock solid golem statue. The golem kills the curator and eventually becomes the minion of the nefarious McDowell. Except McDowell is just a closet case mama's boy (he has mother's corpse sitting in his living room, so you know all wasn't right in Roddy land before the appearance of an old Jewish curse-monster) so he has the golem kill new curators and tear down bridges so he can feel big and strong. Yawn yawn yawn. It took me three sittings to get through this one and I wasn't thrilled or excited at all. Oh, Roddy. It! is not a good movie.
Well, if anything came close to being a cess pool cinema contender this week, it was the new Dennis Quaid thriller, Horseman (2009). Prey to the flashy trend of religious/biblical gimmicks and sort of exploit them into trashy, serial killer narratives. Several victims are found suspended in the air by the flesh on their backs (kind of like what Vincent D'onofrio does to relax in The Cell, 2000) and the written words "come and see" all over several crime scenes. Well, it takes Quaid's seven year old to give him the idea to actually look up what the phrase might mean in a book of phrases. I started using google or wikipedia long ago, but maybe I'm a tad younger and less religious than the screenwriter. "Come and see" is from Revelations and it's not long before Quaid explains the very vague four horseman theme that ties this film together like Helen Keller doing French braids. There's actually more than four and they're all children that are essentially punishing their parents for being abusive or neglectful of their needs. Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous, 1999) is daringly cast as a OMG! gay boy shunned by his parents and brother, who meets him in a coffee shop to cantankerously exclaim how embarrassing it is to walk down the street and have everyone know that your own "blood" is a faggot. Is this 1982? Are they living in Saspirilla, Mississippi? No and no. Fugit, reduced to tears, is one of the horseman. Drugging his brother's coffee, he suspends his brother via meathook and forces him to watch him saw out his insides while he's all hopped on on PCP. Needless to say, this doesn't cure the brother from hating gays, though the film results in making me dislike almost everybody. But when the screenwriter is Dave Callahan who previously wrote Doom (2005) and this is the debut of a music video director from Sweden, maybe you can understand how this travesty came into being. Overall, completely forgettable.
This film's top DVD pick goes to Jonathan Demme's adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. A film that certainly deserves more discussion (and some recuperation) due to it's panned release in 1998, cannot be given due credit here. However, there's so much going on within this film's narrative, it's impossible not to like. While I found it much easier to sit through than The Color Purple (1985), Beloved is still a heavy film, dealing with the death of children, the end of slavery (though of course, the beginning of a new era of prejudice and bigotry) and a supernatural presence, it also sports an awesome performance from Oprah Winfrey. The most uncomfortable and daring feature of the film, however, is the eponymous Beloved, played by Thandie Newton. Newton is playing a character that is, in essence, an apparition that emerges from the swamplands, at once organic and supernatural. Behaving like a handicapped child, she not only upsets the downtrodden lives of Sethe and her daughter Denver (Winfrey and an excellent Kimberly Elise) but also the narrative itself. In discussing this with guests that came to see Beloved for a movie night, most people seemed to have a negative reaction to Newton's performance. However, Newton was starring as a character that simply couldn't be scripted as there's no cinematic precedence for a character such as hers. Though she might take one out of the narrative (and more so on screen than in the novel) I believe this has more to do with audiences' discomfort at watching handicapped characterizations. Since Newton is not really playing a handicapped human, I believe her performance is open to all sorts of criticism that other actors in other films are not. I found Newton fascinating, from the moment she appears out of the swamps and positions herself outside of Winfrey's house-- she stumbles around, much like a newborn animal not yet used to a body, her voice is frog-like and gravelly, her understanding of the world is childlike yet responsive. And when you realize what's inside her and how it came to be there, you'll hopefully realize how powerful this film really is. While nothing has a clear or clean explanation, this only adds to the film's powerful sadness. Not really about redemption, not really a ghost story, Beloved is about things that haunt us---things that will never be laid to rest, never be forgotten. And I mean historically as well. Danny Glover is a calming presence, but he is given little to do, especially in comparison to three powerful performances from Winfrey, Newton and Elise. Writing about Beloved makes me want to watch it again---there's a lot going on with sexuality, madness, guilt, etc. I loved it, and especially because it's the kind of film that sparks endless discussion.
NA
The Banal, The Blah, The Banausic:
1. Spring Breakdown (2009) Dir. Ryan Shiraki - US
2. The Strange Door (1951) Dir. Joseph Pevney - US
3. The Gay Deceivers (1969) Dir. Bruce Kessler - US
4. It! (1966) Dir. Herbert J. Leder - UK
5. Horseman (2009) Dir. Jonas Akerlund - US
Astounding Cinema:
1. Beloved (1998) Dir. Jonathan Demme - US
Theatrical Releases:
1. Humpday (2009) Dir. Lynn Shelton - US 9/10
2. The Hurt Locker (2009) Dir. Kathryn Bigelow - US 9/10
It was a strange week of cinema, not a whole lot of good films and nothing fantastically awful, but a whole lot in-between.
I had been curious to see Ryan Shiraki's Spring Breakdown for some time now, a self described "gay acid trip," though I'm not certain how the director found his film to be a gay acid trip unless he was on one himself during filming. The real reason I wanted to see (and own) the film was for my gal Parker Posey. Not to mention the combined talents of Posey, Amy Poehler, Jane Lynch, and Missi Pyle --- some of the funniest women in comedy films. The plot of Breakdown centers around a group of awkward young college girls who became awkward young women (Posey, Poehler and Rachel Dratch) and who decide to go on a spring break vacation well into their thirties, the type they always missed out on when it was an appropriate time for vacation. However, as Posey works for a senator about to be picked as a vice presidential running mate (Lynch), Posey is forced to tail it to Mexico to look after Lynch's daughter during spring break. Posey's friends tag along and multiple scenarios occur, most of them entertaining or funny. Poehler gets the brightest comic moments while the strange looking Dratch gets to horse it up with her extremely annoying fiance, a very gay closeted man that likes to shorten all of his words. Sadly, Posey is the straight man and doesn't get too many opportunities to do much of anything in Spring Breakdown, a film that doesn't seem to utilize any of these actresses' talent, but whose presence elevates this film into more than it should be. I'm not surprised this film went straight to DVD, but I'd love to see these funny ladies together in something actually funny. I'm most bummed because Parker Posey had two of the best roles in two of my top 2007 releases, Fay Grim and Broken English. 2008 saw her in five seconds of the awful Jessica Alba remake The Eye, a failed television series (Parker Posey is too good for TV, by the friggin way) and then of course the straight to DVD release of this film. Posey fans will have to rejoice at her next release, Happy Tears (2010), where she will be starring as Demi Moore's sister. Overall, Spring Breakdown is worth the price of a rental, but it's a crime to not be a better film with this much talent involved. It's a gay acid nightmare. All my favorite actresses appearing in a mediocre film.
Oh, I wanted to like The Strange Door more than I did, as well. Charles Laughton stars in all his sallow, sweaty glory in hack director Joseph Pevney's adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson story, along with Boris Karloff in a minor, minor role as, ahem, Voltan, the butler who knows a secret. Well, there isn't much of one. Laughton loved this woman (well, in a fag-hag sort of sense, you see---oh, that's reality creeping in, sorry, check) who screwed him over and married his brother, who she managed to propagate the species with, ya know what I mean? It's unclear what happened to her, but after giving birth, she died and Laughton locked up his brother in a dungeon cell and raised his niece to the age of twenty with the devious intentions of forcing her to marry a man known to have a disreputable reputation as a scallywag criminal. Yes. That is actually his plot of revenge. I haven't read the Stevenson story, so I can't tell if this, ummm, slight and quite unbelievable revenge plot wasn't a bit psychosexually neutered by our lovely censorship code at the time. Keep in mind, this is also set in France. Richard Wyler stars as said scallywag, who becomes imprisoned after fleeing a bar brawl into the woods, stumbling upon the titular door and placing himself in the spider's web. The plot slowly unravels, the entertaining Laughton shaking his sweaty jowls this way and that. His niece, Blanche, believes her father is dead, though he's locked up beneath her feet. The film further aligns itself with all things dull and ridiculous when, after being introduced and apparently bonding over escape attempts, Blanche and her arranged suitor fall in love. I don't know why--he's dirty and sweaty while she looks pale and bored, but if it smells like a horse and it sounds like a horse, you know....Oh yeah, Karloff is in charge of watering Laughton's brother in the basement, and he is the only one that knows the brother isn't crazy and only pretends to be so Laughton won't kill him. Righto.
Now, I know I am not the only queer theorist that would like to recuperate some of the lambasted films from the first wave of queer theorism (e.g. Good vs. Bad queer images), but Vito Russo was correct in his derision of the 1969 film, The Gay Deceivers. I think I was confusing this film with the British film The Naked Civil Servant (1975), so when I sat down to watch it I was a bit confused and then dismayed at the stale, homophobic elements of the film. The film tells the story of Danny and Elliott, two straight dudes that just want to avoid the draft, and so pretend to be homosexuals. However, the ruse becomes two much for them to handle. Of course it would be when you have to keep reinforcing your dislike and hatred for the thing you're trying to pretend to be. The film pretty much reinforces how awful it is even pretending to be gay, much less the ridiculous stereotypical queens the film denigrates throughout. Yes, Michael Greer, one of the first out Hollywood actors stars in the film and much has been said about the fact that he rewrote his character in an attempt to make him less stereotypical and less the butt of all jokes. Well, okay. The film is still homophobic. Sadly, if it were to be remade by a major studio today, many of the attitudes would remain the same. Oh yeah, we had Chuck and Larry recently. Maybe it's time I lampooned that film. If you're looking for a progressive slice of 60's nostalgia, avoid The Gay Deceivers. Yes, it's one of the first movies where the actual gay men aren't self loathing and suicidal. That's not progressive, just happenstance. Who is credited with discovering the Pacific Ocean? Balboa? Because none of woman borne saw it first, right?
Somewhere between Clara Bow and Stephen King we had the 1966 UK horror film It! starring Roddy McDowell. Whereas other "it" films refer directly to something that just doesn't have better moniker, the "it" in Roddy's movie is actually a golem. So I don't know why the film wasn't titled The Golem! I realize there's a silent German classic of the same name, but It! is already dealing narratively with the same subject matter. And why the explanation mark, I will never know. No one shouts the word it, golem, or much of anything else. McDowell stars as an assistant museum curator and things get wonky when the museum's warehouse burns down, leaving the rock solid golem statue. The golem kills the curator and eventually becomes the minion of the nefarious McDowell. Except McDowell is just a closet case mama's boy (he has mother's corpse sitting in his living room, so you know all wasn't right in Roddy land before the appearance of an old Jewish curse-monster) so he has the golem kill new curators and tear down bridges so he can feel big and strong. Yawn yawn yawn. It took me three sittings to get through this one and I wasn't thrilled or excited at all. Oh, Roddy. It! is not a good movie.
Well, if anything came close to being a cess pool cinema contender this week, it was the new Dennis Quaid thriller, Horseman (2009). Prey to the flashy trend of religious/biblical gimmicks and sort of exploit them into trashy, serial killer narratives. Several victims are found suspended in the air by the flesh on their backs (kind of like what Vincent D'onofrio does to relax in The Cell, 2000) and the written words "come and see" all over several crime scenes. Well, it takes Quaid's seven year old to give him the idea to actually look up what the phrase might mean in a book of phrases. I started using google or wikipedia long ago, but maybe I'm a tad younger and less religious than the screenwriter. "Come and see" is from Revelations and it's not long before Quaid explains the very vague four horseman theme that ties this film together like Helen Keller doing French braids. There's actually more than four and they're all children that are essentially punishing their parents for being abusive or neglectful of their needs. Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous, 1999) is daringly cast as a OMG! gay boy shunned by his parents and brother, who meets him in a coffee shop to cantankerously exclaim how embarrassing it is to walk down the street and have everyone know that your own "blood" is a faggot. Is this 1982? Are they living in Saspirilla, Mississippi? No and no. Fugit, reduced to tears, is one of the horseman. Drugging his brother's coffee, he suspends his brother via meathook and forces him to watch him saw out his insides while he's all hopped on on PCP. Needless to say, this doesn't cure the brother from hating gays, though the film results in making me dislike almost everybody. But when the screenwriter is Dave Callahan who previously wrote Doom (2005) and this is the debut of a music video director from Sweden, maybe you can understand how this travesty came into being. Overall, completely forgettable.
This film's top DVD pick goes to Jonathan Demme's adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. A film that certainly deserves more discussion (and some recuperation) due to it's panned release in 1998, cannot be given due credit here. However, there's so much going on within this film's narrative, it's impossible not to like. While I found it much easier to sit through than The Color Purple (1985), Beloved is still a heavy film, dealing with the death of children, the end of slavery (though of course, the beginning of a new era of prejudice and bigotry) and a supernatural presence, it also sports an awesome performance from Oprah Winfrey. The most uncomfortable and daring feature of the film, however, is the eponymous Beloved, played by Thandie Newton. Newton is playing a character that is, in essence, an apparition that emerges from the swamplands, at once organic and supernatural. Behaving like a handicapped child, she not only upsets the downtrodden lives of Sethe and her daughter Denver (Winfrey and an excellent Kimberly Elise) but also the narrative itself. In discussing this with guests that came to see Beloved for a movie night, most people seemed to have a negative reaction to Newton's performance. However, Newton was starring as a character that simply couldn't be scripted as there's no cinematic precedence for a character such as hers. Though she might take one out of the narrative (and more so on screen than in the novel) I believe this has more to do with audiences' discomfort at watching handicapped characterizations. Since Newton is not really playing a handicapped human, I believe her performance is open to all sorts of criticism that other actors in other films are not. I found Newton fascinating, from the moment she appears out of the swamps and positions herself outside of Winfrey's house-- she stumbles around, much like a newborn animal not yet used to a body, her voice is frog-like and gravelly, her understanding of the world is childlike yet responsive. And when you realize what's inside her and how it came to be there, you'll hopefully realize how powerful this film really is. While nothing has a clear or clean explanation, this only adds to the film's powerful sadness. Not really about redemption, not really a ghost story, Beloved is about things that haunt us---things that will never be laid to rest, never be forgotten. And I mean historically as well. Danny Glover is a calming presence, but he is given little to do, especially in comparison to three powerful performances from Winfrey, Newton and Elise. Writing about Beloved makes me want to watch it again---there's a lot going on with sexuality, madness, guilt, etc. I loved it, and especially because it's the kind of film that sparks endless discussion.
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