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Author: Parca Mortem
[Attention: This
is still under construction. The process has just begun.]
E through G
Eraserhead SeeLynch section.
Evil Dead 2
(1987)
Directed by: Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan, The Quick and
the Dead, Darkman)
[full review coming soon!]
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10.
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Eye of the Beholder
(2000)
Directed and Written by: Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of
Priscilla,Queen of the Desert), based on Marc Behm's novel.
Starring: Ewan McGregor (trainspotting, The Phantom
Menace, Shallow Grave, The Pillow Book), Ashley Judd
(Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy, Heat, Norma Jean
& Marilyn, Where the Heart Is), Patrick Bergin (Sleeping
With the Enemy, Patriot Games, the other 1991 version of Robin
Hood, Mountians of the Moon), k.d. lang, Jason Priestly (Beverly
Syphillis 90210), and a badly aged Genevieve Bujold (Anne of a Thousand
Days, Dead
Ringers, Coma), among others.
Okay, okay, I've been postponing a review of this film ever since I saw it at the theatre back in January, so now that its out on video 5 months later, I guess it's time to do something about it. I was really inspired to write a lenghty review when it came out, but other factors short circuited my available time and my interest. By now I don't really care, so I'll keep this brief. Ever see the 1983 French film Deadly Circuit (a.k.a. Deadly Run) by Claude Miller? This is the stranger version of the same tale.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it goes something like this. Ewan McGregor is a spy named The Eye who works some British government agency, dilligently listening and watching the activities of people, while dealing with the ghost of his daughter who was taken away by his estranged wife. He's young yet seems to have lived several lifetimes, and blames himself for his losses. His boss (k.d. lang) gives him a new assignment: keep an eye on the corrupt son of a politician and the woman who may be blackmailing him, his fianceé. However, complications ensue when the snob is killed by the woman (named Joanna). Turns out that Joanna is a serial killer who murders rich men for their money and because she never saw her father again on a tragic Christmas and was raised by a strict feminist teacher with lesbian tendencies at an orphanage. Her dazzling beauty catches the eye of, well, The Eye (although her getting fully naked may have helped that). So he starts to follow her, even though his assignment ended, and even though she's a master of disguise and travels throughout the US. The interest grows when he once believes to see his daughter in a picture that he takes of Joanna. Eventually, he becomes fully obsessed with her, and records every movement she makes, listens in to every conversation, and even helps her out in trouble, without her ever knowing of his existence. Meanwhile, she finds stability in the arms or a rich blind man who truely understands her. Things get out of hand, a tragedy ensues, and Joanna has to run away from it all and abandon her ways - but The Eye follows her all the way till the end of the Earth, and finally attempts to meet her.
To be fair, McGregor, Judd, and the rest of the cast do a very good job (including Priestly, who shows up as a despicable character near the end). Elliot's direction is very atmospheric, and he adds great touches such as zooms into a collection of sno-balls that mark and introduce every place where The Eye tracks Joanna. However, his script isn't as good. The story is interesting, and it starts out well, but he loses it as the movie progresses, as he seems to shoot everything we learn about a character straight to hell and changes the tone every so often. Joanna's character changes too much and too frequently. What really did it in was the slow pace in the last half hour and particularly the ending, which was inconclusive after an unnecessarilly built up and extensive attachment that didn't fit in with the rest of the movie. Not only that, but it is rather ridiculously tragic and pseudo-romantic in pure ancient Hollywood style, when it shouldn't have been. It seemed as if he didn't know how to end it.
Now, it isn't THAT bad either. It got a bad rap because it was marketed as a mainstream thriller when in fact it is more of a French art/drama film (oh, trust me, replace the cast with French actors who act identical to this cast, and the critics would have been raving instead of bombing). It's just an interesting but flawed character study...
Bizarreness level: 6 out of 10
Rating: 5 out of 10
eXistenZ See Cronenberg section
Fear and Desire See Kubrick section
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas See Terry Gilliam section
Fight Club
(1999)
Directed by: David Fincher (Se7en, The Game, Alien3)
Starring: Edward Norton (American History X, The People
vs. Larry Flint, Primal Fear), Brad Pitt (Interview With
the Vampire, Se7en, Twelve Monkeys, Meet Joe Black),
Helena Bonham Carter (Oscar nominee for The Wings of the Dove; also
in A Room With a View, Twelfth Night, Branagh's Frankenstein),
Meat Loaf (yes, the fat singer), Jared Leto (Prefontaine, The
Thin Red Line, Urban Legend, Switchback), among others...
Written by: Jim Uhls, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Black Comedy/Suspense/Action
Duration: 2 hours 19 minutes.
Now here's a fun, cool, twisted film, just in time for the end of the millenium. And it is done by some of the best new talents to have popped up in the 90s. The third major release in the year dealing with subjective alienation in the current American workplace and life, and the resulting eventual rebellion against society. But this one has several twists to that theme: the rebellion is more violent, it attracts more people little by little, and eventually the rebellion just transforms into a new society that is ordered in a similar way... A very ironic film...
Also a completely hilarious film. Fincher for the most part leaves his somber tone, and replaces it with a very energetic and stylish one of great black comedy. The great Edward Norton stars as Jack, a guy who works in an auto company, flying around the country to visit accident sites and figure out if the model should be discontinued or not. He's a lonely, slightly nerdy character, who may be succesful but has gotten wrapped up in consumerism, with the perfect apartment and the perfect furniture and so on. He's also an insomniac. His entire feeling of existence starts to crumble apart while he feels everything to be artificial and deadly. At first he finds a solution by attending support groups. But not insomnia support groups, but support groups of any sort, from alcoholics to men with testicular cancer (watch for Meat Loaf as a guy with breasts). He finds relief in those groups (even though he never says anything), and his insomnia stops. That is, until he encounters another person that is doing the same, a junkie-lookalike suicidal by the name of Marla (Bonham-Carter). Her presence becomes distracting to him, and his insomnia starts all over again. He manages to strike a deal with her, so things look like they will improve. Before they can, however, he returns from a trip to find his apartment blown up. So he goes to have a drink with a soap salesman he had met in the flight, by the name of Tyler Durden (Pitt). After that encounter, two things happen: 1) Tyler and Jack decide to fight outside of the club, just for the heck of it; 2) Jack moves in with the eccentric Tyler.
Now, Tyler is a very interesting character. Brad Pitt is not in his woosy mode, nor in his tough cop mode, but in his total nutcase mode (like in Twelve Monkeys and Kalifornia), with a cool look that involves red sunglasses and a red leather jacket. Tyler works parts of the time as a waiter in an classy restaurant, where he pollutes the food, and another part of the time he works as a film projector in a theatre, where he adds fast clips of porno films into family films. He also makes classy soap (in a disgusting yet hilarious manner), which he sells to classy stores. His house is really an abandoned place between factories, straight out of The Money Pit, where he and Jack find odd comfort.
Here's of course where the title event comes into place. Jack and Tyler keep on fighting outside of the bar, several days a week. That attracts several bystanders, who join in. Eventually they are a large club of men of different ages and professions who officially group and meet in the basement of the bar, under the command of Tyler. It becomes the sort of support group that they all need to escape alienation. However, Tyler takes it a step further and starts handing them homework assignments, all of which involve causing mayhem and chaos, while rebelling against the corporate world. The previously uptight Jack even starts acting in a "I don't give a fuck" attitude in his workplace, and winds up working a deal with his boss similar to the one Kevin Spacey pulls in American Beauty, only that with a more coercive and twisted method to do so. Of course, things start getting out of hand. Wait, let me rephrase that. They start to really get out of hand. First Marla moves in with them, and gets banged by Tyler 24-7 (after which she says screwed up things like "I haven't gotten fucked so hard since grade school"). Then some of the Fight Club members start moving in as well, but only after going through military/frat style introduction and brainwashing. Soon the Fight Club becomes a cult around Tyler, bent on causing destruction around the world. Its members starts talking like robots, while quoting Tyler's teachings. Meanwhile, Tyler develops a master plan to destroy capitalist America, which Jack tries to stop. What starts out as a look into alienation transforms into a satire of Marxist communism and new age cults.
Unfortunately, that's where I have to stop talking about the plot. For you see, bear in mind that this most definitely is a Fincher film. David Fincher, the same former music video director who made the only Alien movie with a different ending. The same guy who did several remarkable twists in Se7en, and who just did one twist after the other after the other after the other after the other in The Game. So naturally, the movie not only transforms into a suspense flick, but also gives a very unexpected twist 3/4 into the film, the most radical in the year (this being a year filled with films with odd twists, from The Thirteenth Floor to The Sixth Sense). Neither Tyler nor Jack are exactly what they seem... But you have to see it for yourself...
Oh, yeah, right, I'm leaving out the style. Sworn to make this a great cinematic experience, there are several bizarre scenes throughout the film, some that make fun of conventional movie narration, others that are injokes, and others that involve Jack's hallucinations (such as an airplane going down or a penguin saluting him). And a lot of aspects of corporate America are attacked, from the cheery inflight emergency instruction manual, to modern art statues that lay outside of the corporate buildings, to their overall lack of concern for human lives if lawsuits are not involved... And the very last shot of the film is a parody of Hollywood romantic endings, similar to the romantic kiss in True Lies where Ahnold and Jamie Lee kiss with an H-bomb blowing up in the background.
What else can I say? A multi-layered satire of 90s America and much more, absolutely hilarious, with good performances and a great script (likely to be Oscar nominated)... It will leave you thinking. And yes, there are several scenes of a bunch of guys beating the crap of each other (it is a violent and bloody film)... Go watch this, and expect everything and anything.
Bizarreness level: 6 shots out of 10.
Rating: 9 out of 10.
Freeway
(1996)
[full review coming soon!]
Bizarreness level: 6 shots out of 10.
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Freeway II: Confessions of a
Trickbaby
(1999)
Directed and Written by: Matthew Bright (Freeway)
Starring: Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills, American
Pie; she also associatedly produced this), Maria Celodonio (The
Substitute, Robin Cook's Invasion), Vincent Gallo (Buffallo
'66, Truth or Consequences, N.M., The Funeral), David
Alan Grier (Boomerang, Amazon Women on the Moon, Beer,
Jumanji,
McHale's
Navy, recurring host of Later - but who isn't?), John
Landis (as in the director of Trading Places,
Three Amigos,
American
Werewolf in London, etc.), Michael T. Weis (title character in The
Pretender; Days of Our Lives back in the late 80s; also had
an unconnected role in the original Freeway), among others.
Genre: Very black comedy
Duration: 1 hr. 37 mins.
Availability: New on video.
First off: Technically, THIS IS NOT A REAL SEQUEL TO THE FIRST ONE. That is, plot-wise and character-wise. If you expect to see more of Reese Witherspoon or her character or anyone else in the film, go somewhere else. However, this IS a sequel in the sense that it preserves the same idea and style of the first one, and it is done by the same director. Just like the first one completely perverted Little Red Riding Hood and updated it in a bizarre and bloody manner to late 90s US, this one does the same for Hansel and Gretel. Of course, Hansel was not a murderous sexually obsessed lesbian schizophrenic, but who cares? This is fun anyway. If you enjoyed the previous one you'll enjoy this one, unless you are anal rententive...
This time around, Natasha Lyonne plays Crystal (a.k.a. White Girl), a tough as granite older teenager with a bulemia problem. She's also just been convicted for theft, prostitution, and drug dealing, in what was a slightly raw deal. However, because of her eating disorder, she's temporarily sent to a psychiatric institution for teenage female felons, before getting sent to prison. In there she gets as a cellmate a black Hispanic girl named Cyclona (Celodonio), who's also the above described schizo. Crystal has to deal with Cyclona's mad rants and her obvious masturbatory disorders, and Cyclona with Crystal's constant regurgitations (and those of just about every girl in the institution). Eventually both decide to escape, despite the fact that Crystal's pimpish philandering lawyer (a hilarious Grier) is unbeknowest to her getting her out on a technicality. Crystal does not trust the nice but lunatic Cyclona for one second and has to keep her sexual and homicidal advances at bay all the time, while trying to make sure she takes her medications. This does not mean however that Cyclona does not waste a lot of people and masturbate on top of the corpses of a couple of victims... Furthermore, Crystal learns more about Cyclona's past, such as that she was raped by her father several times, that she killed her whole family, that she believes any man is going to rape her, that a nun named Sister Gomez "saved her" during some visions involving UFOs, among other things...
Anyway, their trip to nowhere gets them to an elder couple's house, where they spend the night and steal the car. Then they drive across a highway for a while, until crashing the car in an alcohol/paint fumes induced incident. From there they get to hitch on a train, where they off a rapist bum (an unrecognizable Weiss) who had some crack, and another guy. Here's where the Hansel and Gretel part starts taking shape, as in one moment they get off the train and into the woods for a moment, and mark their way back with the crack crystals. Of course, some bums pick up all the crystals so they don't find their way back. This leads to Cyclona convincing Crystal to cross the border and go to Tijuana, where Sister Gomez lives. Not, of course, without a couple of murders on the way... Upon reaching Tijuana, the eventually run into Sister Gomez (Gallo, wearing a chin larger than the ones of Jay Leno and Bruce Campbell combined), who more than a nun is some sort of alleged psychic and healer, who gets the little kids of several townspeople sent to her for sessions. The odd-looking sister takes them in, and starts curing Crystal's bulemia by having her eat a lot of a large, odd looking meat, while spouting more nonsense than Marlon Brandon in Apocalypse Now. She and Cyclona also convince Crystal to get money (the treatment is not free, of course), which she does by dressing up, going to bars, seducing drunken Mexican losers in a very explicit manner ("I've got a candy that's very red and needs to have something inside it!") and then knocking them unconscious and stealing all their money... Of course, as you have to have guessed by now, Sister Gomez is not what she appears to be. Remember what happened to Hansel and Gretel in the house in the woods? Same happens here, only that it involves a group of sadomasochist cannibalistic pedophiles... It leads to the predicted showdown while the police are about to catch up with the girls, who by now are also lovers... Oh, but don't worry, I have left out a lot of spoilers, and haven't mentioned anything that you wouldn't have predicted while watching the flick...
All in all, a very entertaining flick with the same punk spirit and black humor of the previous. However, it does test your endurance at times, particularly in the vomit scenes (including one straight out of Stand by Me and Problem Child 2). But it is never boring, even if it is not to the same level as the previous flick. The performances are pretty good, particularly that of rising young talent Lyonne, who chose her role well. I'm already looking forward to whatever fairy tale Bright decides to warp the next time. An enjoyable time...
Bizarreness level: 6 shots out of 10
Rating: 7 out of 10
Glen or Glenda?
(1953)
Directed and Written by: Edward D. Wood Jr. (Plan 9 from
Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, The Sinister Urge)
Starring: "Daniel Davis" (actually Ed Wood), Bela Lugosi (Dracula,
Return
of the Vampire, White Zombie, Ninotchka, etc.),
Dolores Fuller (Ed's girl at the time, future songwriter for Elvis), and
a lot of buffalos from stock footage.
My official vote for worst movie ever made. Pull za string!
Puuuulll za stringk!
[full review coming soon!]
Bizarreness level: 9 shots out of 10.
Rating: 1 or 10 out of 10 (so awful it is great!)
God Told Me To
(1977)
Directed and Written by: Larry Cohen (The Stuff, Q,
It's
Alive trilogy, Black Ceasar, The Ambulance)
[full review coming soon!]
Bizarreness level: 7 out of 10.
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Gothic See Ken Russell section.
Greetings
(1968)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jonathan Warden (who? is correct),
Lloyd Clay (Child Play's 2, Demon Seed, TunnelVision,
The
Man With One Red Shoe, One True Thing, Franklin in The Critic),
among others.
De Palma's and De Niro's debut.
[full review coming soon!]
Bizarreness level: 5 shots out of 10.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
Gummo
(1997)
Press poster to get trailer
Directed and Written by: Harmony Korine (writer of Kids;
writer/director of julien donkey-boy)
Starring: Jacob Reynolds (Safe Men, For Love of the
Game), Jacob Sewell, Chloë Sevigny (Kids, Last Days
of Disco, Oscar nominee for Boys Don't Cry), Nick Sutton (Underground)
Max Perlich (House on Haunted Hill, Lansky, Men With Guns,
Maverick,
Cliffhanger, Drugstore Cowboy), Linda Manz (Days of Heaven,
The Wanderers, The Game), and a bunch of unknown kids and
freaks.
Duration: 1 hr. 35 mins... A very slow 1 hr. 35 minutes...
Genre: Drama, or someting along the lines.
Availability: Gets played on the IFC from time to time, but
is otherwise available at most rentals in the US, even mainstream ones.
You can buy it from
Fine Line.
This is the film known for the scene where a black midget beats a fat drunken shirtless redneck at arm wrestling, causing the redneck to break a table and a bunch of chairs in a kitchen. Unless I'm getting it mixed up with The Howling VII: New Moon Rising, or some party I went to... Anyway, let me warn you first that this film has no plot. No, it doesn't have a hard to decypher plot nor a symbolic plot hidden under it all nor anything like that. Trust me: it has no plot. Not only that, but it doesn't have any build up, it doesn't have much sense of continuity, it doesn't have any sort of development, it doesn't have any structure, it has no premise, and it has no climax. This is basically a look at a bunch of white trash kids who are complete freakshows, physically and/or mentally, whom are accompanied by older white trash freaks from time to time. About 7 kids get shown more than the rest, but there isn't a deep look into these characters either. The only thing going on in the film is that the town where all of the freaks live in (Xenia, Ohio) was destroyed by a tornado some time ago, and they never recovered. Most of these kids of parentless, or missing one parent. Poverty rules the area, as does boredom, very low culture, bad hygiene, and nihilism. No one is normal; everyone is loony, moronic, or looks strange. The kids are just kids yet play bizarre games, drink, try to get laid, kill cats to sell their meat to the local butcher, and the 5 year olds cuss as much as drill seargents. A lot of inbreeding seems to have happened. There definitely are cases of incest.
Korine tries to make this interesting through his directorial style. He plays awful songs sung by redneck women and then plays death metal. He switches to pseudo-documentary style from time to time. Sometimes the tone is of black comedy, sometimes it is of horror, sometimes it is drama. Most of the time it is odd. Different types of cameras are employed throughout. Korine on purpose decided to make this a collage of images, with a lot of improvisation. There's some Herzog influence in the mix (actually, Herzog became a fan of Korine after this, and saw a young version of himself in him). However, Gummo doesn't amount to much. Some scenes are slightly memorable, but none of the images are really that worthwhile. The collective of images doesn't produce a big effect either, as many lame scenes sap the energy from the rather good ones. Some images are just plain unbearable, and I don't mean that in a twisted good way.
This is not a bad film, as the mainstream critics claimed it was. It just isn't a terribly interesting one. Actually, I'd like to see more work from director Korine in the future, although personally I think he should have somebody else helping him in the scripting department next time...
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10.
Rating: 4 out of 10
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