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Blood Car

Blood Car

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

spoilers

“I forgot the wheatgrass!”

OMG Anna Chlumsky is back :) And this time it’s not societally reprehensible to fancy the hell out of her lol. Which, it goes without saying, I do. This is one of those movies that, even before I finally saw it, seemed to get better the more I heard about it. The concept – guy accidentally invents a car engine that runs on human blood which, in a future where fuel prices have risen to a prohibitive level, is handy – pauses … I mean, come on, you have to applaud that concept, it’s frankly genius, lol, but wait there’s more. I then found out it features one of my earliest movie crushes who has been pretty much off the map almost a decade (not that I’m complaining – her “farewell”, a straight-to-video movie with Christina Ricci, Gold Diggers, actually felt genuinely like I was dreaming when I found it on tape lol, so much did I fancy them both at the time). Then the movie begins, Chlumsky puts me immediately in mind of Angela Bettis in May – then I realise, the blood thing? It’s totally Little Shop of Horrors stylee!

Chlumsky is a kooky blonde girl in thick-rimmed glasses who works in a little nondescript vegan hut selling wheatgrass to our hero, a kindergarten teacher who’s more anxious than the kids to leave at three in the afternoon to get home and use said wheatgrass in his experimental engine project. Chlumsky’s hut is in a little clearing opposite another hut which, a handpainted sign tells us, sells Meat and is owned by a sexy brunette in black. Somewhere in the vicinity is a grey building that a typing-challenged subtitler tells us is the GOVEMREN- GOVERNMENT. It’s almost a Lars Von Trier/Thomas Vinterberg type world, a la Dogville, Manderlay, Dear Wendy – everything either labelled, or might as well be because there’s only one of each thing.

“Oh. God. I needed a whole person.”

It’s also another in a series of horror movies I’ve watched this past week or so which has that wonderful (for want of a better word) moment where it suddenly stops being funny. The government man’s monologue at the end almost reaches the level of South Park in its insanity – “Killing people for fuel is not racist … us has beaten ‘em. Us. Spell it out. U.S.” Yes, the concept of the movie isn’t just a funny coincidence. And the ending – all heart-stopping 2 minutes of it – is really, really, far from funny. It really took me aback for a second and I didn’t like it, but as the credits rolled, I suddenly realised how insanely good this movie might be.

I’ve had a number of false starts on my marathon this year. I can’t think of a better way of starting a day or night (or both!) of horror movies than this, though. Hilarious, bloody, short, fresh, freaky and finally more serious than you’ll ever see coming – I don’t think there’ll be a blacker comedy outside of Sweeney Todd this year. I honestly didn’t want this to end. My only criticism is there’s nowhere near enough of Anna – and though I won’t deny the effectiveness, I think I really could’ve done without the point blank shooting of the little girls at the end.

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The Strawberry Statement

The Strawberry Statement

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006

Another long overdue review … this is going to get random and gushy ‘cos it’s amazing after countless viewings how this one continues to blow me away.

Everytime I watch this I think it’s going to lose something; but, everytime I watch it, it seems only to become more intense, to move and inspire me more. I need to watch it more often. There are so many more great moments in this movie than I ever come to it expecting. First and foremost the one thing that will satisfy almost anybody, I think, is the soundtrack. I’m constantly wracking my brains over why this movie is so hard to find these days (it’s on TCM here in the UK about twice annually, and you’ll find about as many VHS copies on eBay each year too … well worth grabbing, I promise) and the most logical seems to me that there are a lot of expensive music rights involved (including Lennon / McCartney’s “Give Peace a Chance”) (my other most prominent theory is simply to do with how stunningly relevant the movie remains, the cynic in me believing that no major media corporation with all today’s political pressure would want to make available a movie like this … I swear there’s every chance it would lead to uprising if enough people saw it).

Anyway, it’s one of the great movie soundtracks, the easiest comparison is to Cameron Crowe’s selections for his movies … the movie itself actually kinda resembles Almost Famous to me in a lot of ways – Bruce Davison looks a lot like Patrick Fugit in places, and his position in relation to the main story is similar, a spectator swept along by one of the 60s-70s’ many wild waves.

There’s the love story – the way I react to Linda (beautiful Kim Darby, another aspect of the movie that seems to improve with each viewing) and Simon (Bruce Davison) in this movie definitely leads me to believe it’s purely a personal thing, I can’t put into words how I feel my insides churning when these two look at each other … only to say it’s a similar feeling to that I get when talking to my own true love. There’s some amazing chemistry between these two actors. When they’re on the fairground ride, as she mouths, “do you love me?” to CSNY’s “Our House” – that would be the moment I instantly pinpoint as to why I love this movie so much. Well OK, that and the final line – “PROVE YOURSELF ALIVE!” – set to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “The Circle Game”.

The violence in the end scenes had me shaking on this viewing even more than I did the first time. As with a number of other movies (Soldier Blue and Dawn of the Dead spring to mind), I found myself wondering if I was seeing a different cut altogether. It’s a truly horrifying finale – I finally recognised Bud Cort (Harold in Harold and Maude) this time round, and I think maybe that was a factor in how much the ending got to me – I was a lot more into his character, and watching him in those final scenes is almost too much to bear. It’s the way the movie swishes from the light to the dark – 30 minutes earlier you were laughing at him holding his nose in the presence of a couple of people smoking pot; suddenly his life is on the line for no reason but pure pathetic human stupidity. I think that’s what the movie captures best about James Simon Kunen’s book, the way Simon is a spectator, neither on one side nor the other with any particular level of commitment. Depending on how you view it, the movie arguably highlights the craziness, the lack of direction of the protestors just as much as it does that of the pigs, the politicians, the authorities. Kunen’s book is all about that ambivalent approach to things and as you might have noticed from this site’s URL, I’m all about ambivalence :-P

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Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11

Wednesday, October 20th, 2004

I’m really glad I didn’t review this movie when I first saw it. I knew then that I wasn’t in the position to say what I wanted to say about it, and as time went on, and opinions emerged, I came to think less and less of my initially powerful emotional response. Seeing the movie as slightly hypocritical (using the same fear-mongering techniques Moore claims to be speaking out against), and so one-sided, I started to think I’d really hate it on a second viewing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. This movie is exactly the “bad” things above, but it’s undeniably full of passion. After watching it today, I couldn’t get it out of my head at all for hours. Finally I came up with a good way to describe what I think is its real significance: it’s like someone made Schindler’s List in 1948. Fahrenheit 9/11 speaks volumes about how f**cked up the world is, that’s for damn sure: but the fact that someone can make a movie like this about events like this only 3 years after speaks even more for at least one of the ways our world has improved.

The other thing I noticed on this viewing was something I was clearly trying not to notice before, such is my love for Roger Avary and Bret Easton Ellis: Avary is (hopefully) going to be directing the movie version of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “Glamorama,” one of my favourite novels ever that speaks similarly of how crazy our world has become. Written years before 9/11, it nevertheless bears eerie comparisons to the blur between fact and fiction that date now, for me at least, stands as a symbol of. I’m still convinced that Glamorama the movie will be one of the greatest movies of all time; only now, I have to admit, it has a big rival in Fahrenheit 9/11, because, in a way, with this movie, it’s already been done.

And that brings me to why I will probably forever consider this both one of my all-time personal favourites and among the greatest movies ever made: if we survive this period in time as a race, then the events this movies concern are going to go down as some serious moments in history, and there’s simply never going to be a greater presentation; and personally speaking, and I’m sure a few people will be with me on this, when those planes crashed and those towers collapsed, even though I wasn’t exactly familiar with the towers themselves let alone American politics, it shook my world forever, made me realise that every day after was a gift, that we could have all died that day or in the days that followed, and this movie completely encapsulates and gives me a place to release that momentous feeling. I mean, I feel dumb saying stuff like this because I’m not American and stuff, but the fact is, I do believe that America leads the way. I’m a movie buff, that says it all. The thing is, right now, it’s unfortunate that America leads the way, and that’s a bummer. I’m gonna have to come back to this review when the election results come in ‘cos I don’t know where to go after this sentence and this thing definitely needs closure.

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Bowling for Columbine

Bowling for Columbine

Wednesday, March 17th, 2004

I have conflicted opinions of Michael Moore. On the one hand he’s a major force for good, I’ve always had a ‘yay’ reaction to anyone willing to challenge corporate and political bulls**t spreaders. On the other hand, he can definitely go too far. But on the last point, I get conflicted again… how far is too far when I agree with his goals wholeheartedly? Do I care if he’s unfair if ultimately I’d probably do the same were I in his shoes? Is it okay to stoop (well, almost) to the bad guys’ level, as long as you’re the good guy?

The main place in Bowling for Columbine where all these questions rear their head is in the Charlton Heston sequence. I just don’t like Michael Moore’s tactics there, and it’s sort of clear that he hasn’t quite prepared, as his nerves allow him to go too far: he’s just received the miraculous news of success in stopping K-Mart from selling firearms, and he’s greedy. Yes, Charlton Heston comes across as the idiot he probably really is in this sequence, yes I like seeing him squirm and dodge the issue etc. But the whole moment is obtained under totally false pretenses, and Heston really should’ve been given the opportunity to prepare a response – he gives Moore an appointment at extraordinary short notice, Moore’s been working on and researching this subject for god knows how long, Heston gives himself barely over 12 hours. Serves him right? Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I think he deserves to be seen like this, ‘cos showing up in those towns so soon after the tragedies was an a$$hole thing to do, and somebody must have informed him of the tragedies, he can’t have not known… but like I said, I have a mixed reaction, basically because you can never know the whole truth, even if Michael Moore’s telling it to you.

It’s like when Michael Moore appeared at the Oscars this year in the comedic opening. I couldn’t stand that moment. I loved the whole sequence except him lampooning his own Oscar speech tirade. I liked the idea of getting him in there, I appreciate it’s pretty funny… but the fact that Moore agreed to do it really gets me down. He has such power with words and can get these anti-lunacy messages across better than anybody, and he uses comedy to do that, but sometimes the comedy can take over too much, and people stop taking him seriously. They’d rather hear a Bush joke that simply has him jumble his words in a funny way than laugh at the idiocy of something he really said while at the same time fearing and wondering if maybe they should do something about it. I have mixed feelings.

But back to the documentary… mixed feelings aside, it’s probably the best documentary I’ve ever seen (I can’t really say “best documentary ever” though I’d like to, ‘cos I’ve not seen many documentaries and don’t really intend to). It’s funny, like I said, but also very moving, very insightful, and as you can see above, it raises many questions, for me, anyway. Everybody should definitely see it, ‘cos it really will start discussion, start you looking at things differently – the media and politics – especially if you’re in that increasing minority (whoo!) of people who aren’t cynical about such things yet.

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