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Section: t through Z
Author: Parca Mortem
[section under construction; wear something to protect your head from damage]
Titus
(1999)
Directed and Adapted by: Julie Taymor
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Angus MacFadyen (Cradle
Will Rock, The Rat Pack, Braveheart), Harry J. Lennix
(Clockers, Get on the Bus, Bob Roberts, Mo' Money),
Matthew Rhys (Elizabeth), Jonathan Rhys-Myers (Velvet
Goldmine,
Ride With the Devil), Colm Feore (Storm of
the Century, The Insider,
Face/Off), Laura Fraser (Cousin
Bette, The Man in the Iron Mask '98), Osheen Jones (Velvet
Goldmine), and Alan Cumming (GoldenEye,
Circle of Friends,
Eyes Wide Shut, Get Carter-2000), among others.
Now, you know a movie is screwed up when the opening scene shows a Macaulay Culkin lookalike playing with several toys in a kitchen, then attacking them violently with his food, only to be interrupted by a wall blowing up, and a fat man with an aviator hat picking him up and placing him in the center of the arena of the Roman circus, in the Roman era, only that they have tanks and motorcycles mixed in with the horses. You know a movie is REALLY screwed up when the above scene is the introduction to a film based on an early play by William Shakespeare. This is what happens when you hand a theatre director the chance to do a Shakespearan film. If you are doing a play nowadays that has been done several times or belongs to a known scribe, then you have to screw it all up, or you are said to have no artistic vision and to be a bad director. Of course, if you are doing a musical, who cares, let's go to Broadway! Huh? Exactly. People involved in the higher circles of theatre are some of the nuttiest beings you can find in any given society.
So... when doing a film version of Shakespeare's relatively unknown Titus Andronicus, director Julie Taymor decided to go through the path of Ian McKellen's Richard III (a great film, by the way) and Brannagh's Hamlet: play with the time periods, and make every character as insane as possible. This means that we are given a fantasy world where anyone can change clothes style at any moment. By moments people are wearing Roman outfits, then they go through punk, fascist, S&M, Russian, 1920s mobster, belle epoque elite, modern businessman, and futurist looks. They have a Roman palace with an arcade inside. A pounding epic soundtrack plays along, only to be interrupted in a few scenes by metal or jazz. Sometimes the weapons are arrows, sometimes they are crossbows, sometimes they are swords, sometimes they are rifles. The Roman theatre has floodlights. This creates a sense of disorientation, as well as a world that allows us to view visual metaphors or comparisons through images associated with a particular time and place, so as to understand from many actions and emotions from a different perspective, one closer to us.
The story? Well, this study of violence and revenge starts with General Titus Andronicus (Hopkins) returning from war with the Queen of the Goths, Tamora (Lange) and her sons. Titus has one of her sons killed as part of the ritual sacrifice, despite Tamora's pleas. Then Titus finds himself in the midst of political turmoil, as the emperor is dead, and the two princes are feuding over it. Titus' brother, Marcus (Faroe), tries to get him crowned, but he refuses. Instead he backs the spoiled egomaniac prince Saturninius (Cumming), so as to avoid a civil war. Saturninius gleefully becomes the new Emperor, but repays the favor to Titus by offering to marry his daughter, Lavinia (Fraser). Titus has mixed feelings about this, as he wants the political union and does not want to start on a bad foot with the new Emperor, yet on the other hand she is already engaged to Saturninius' brother, Bassianus (Frain), whom she loves. However, he agrees to the marriage. This causes Titus' sons to rebel against him, as they find the decision unjust and unlawful, and in a quarrel with one of them he kills a son. Enraged at this rebellion and Lavinia's rejection, Saturninius marries Tamora instead. Eventually Tamora helps to solve the problems between Titus, his family, and the Emperor. However, this is only because she is planning a great revenge. Aided by her loyal agent and secret lover, Aaron (Lennix), and her two cruel arcade-playing sons, Demetrius (Rhys) and Chiron (Rhys-Meyers), she sets up a trap where Bassianus is killed and two of Titus' sons are framed. As well, Demetrius and Chiron kidnap Lavinia and rape, torture, and mutilate her, and leave her for dead. Luckily Marcus finds her before she dies, but she cannot point out who did it, as she is toungless and handless. Titus tries to stop his sons from being executed, and in the process is tricked by Aaron, who claims to be a messenger from the Emperor, who would give back his sons if he cuts off his hand. Titus agrees, only to get back his severed hand along with the heads of his sons. So now Titus, Marcus, and Titus elder son, Lucius (MacFadyen), try to figure out what to do. First they are all resigned to their misery. Then they discover who raped Lavinia, and Lucius starts to set up an army against the emperor, while Titus and Marcus try to figure out a method of revenge. However, Titus is slipping into insanity. Knowing this, Tamora and her two sons try to set up another trap to get rid of Titus, and dress up as spirits and haunt him at midnight. At first this works well, but then Titus regains his sanity and uses the opportunity to set up his own trap. He captures Demetrius and Chiron, and invites the Emperor and Tamora to a banquet where they will unknowingly get to eat... Demetrius and Chiron. The rest is a bloody mess of a conclusion, and a few subplots are connected to the main events.
Now, usually I don't complain about originality, but in too many scenes I feel that Taymor was directly ripping off other films, for no purpose. One early scene seemed straight out of Brazil mixed with Evita. Another seemed straight out of Dune. The intro owes a lot to Time Bandits. A scene of a Roman orgy is straight out of Caligula. There are four nightmare scenes/hallucinations that seem straight out of a Ken Russell flick or a 90s Oliver Stone one. Near the end the film suddenly turns into Silence of the Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins toying with cannibalism and making sounds with his mouth. Then, oddest of all, for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, in the climax we get the 3-D freeze effect that is best associated with The Matrix. Some of it worked to a cool effect, but a lot of it just felt inserted, out of place, just there to impress without a reason of being. Other complaints? Lange gets top billing but dissappears for 40 minutes of the film. And a message to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers: please, we do not need to see your naked ass in every film you are in.
On the upside, the cinematography, the sets, and the costumes are just stunning (no, I am not gay). As well, several of Taymor's artistic shots do work out, and there are some visuals in the film that are worth the price of the admission alone. The gore is fun as well. As for the actors, half of the time I couldn't make out what they were saying, particularly with Hopkins. I could understand perhaps what they were trying to communicate due to their emotions and their physical performance. They may not work so well with the dialogue, but they are still acting very well. Two exceptions worth noting would be Colm Feore and Harry Lennix, who make the dialogue their own, and can be understood perfectly (particularly Feore, although Lennix lights up the screen more).
I say that you try to watch this one, although it is rather hard to stomach at times, and it goes on for very long, as you can tell from the plot summary. You may also feel a sense of emptyness, as if there is a message being given to us, but, other than the study of violence and revenge, you do not know what it is. Then again, what else would you expect from an artistic reworking of one of the lesser plays of Shakespeare?
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10
Rating: 8 out of 10
Directed, Starring, and Written by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Genre: Western (suppossedly)
Duration: 2 hours 5 mins.
Availability: It's on laserdisc at several places. Otherwise,
go to a cult video rental and look for tapes that have been copied off
Japanese prints, or try ordering it off the internet at sites like Revok.
Here's the film that put Jodorowsky on the map as a cult cinema hero. Those of you who have already endured Holy Mountain are probably prepared to face this film done over a period of 5 years. Let's say that it is a Western, only that one can tell it was filmed in South America, due to the shape of the deserts, the type of sand, the vegetation, and some Andeans dressed up like Mexican Bandits. Add to that the Jodorowsky is Chilean. Plus it would be the most bizarre Western ever made. It is hard to describe the story, particularly since Jodorowsky was making this up as he went along (in his usual manner), and is aiming for allegories and visual metaphors that represent social criticisms and religious criticisms. El Topo (The Mole, for non-Spanish speakers) is one of the fastest guns in the, uhm, wherever they are. He's seeking wisdom while traveling through the desert (to add symbolism, we are told at the beginning that the mole is a creature that spends all its life searching for the sun, only to be blinded by it when it finally finds the light). He's carrying his naked son with him, as he teaches him the ways of being a man. On the first expedition that we get to see, El Topo is tracking down some bandits that massacred a village. These aren't any bandits, however. We get to see them dance with some monks and then rape them in the ass. Then when El Topo encounters them one is trying to screw an image made in the sand of a woman. Eventually El Topo defeats them and gets around to kicking the ass of their screwed-up dictator-lookalike boss as well. He proceeds to take the female servant of the boss, and leaves his son with the monks (oh, yeah, GREAT idea for making him into a man: leave him with gay monks!). The woman tells him that to become the supreme gunfighter he must defeat the four masters of the desert. This is the part where the film gets less interesting and more screwed up (partially due to technical problems such as damaged or missing footage) and becomes more in the vein of pretentious garbage. You see, each of the masters represents some sort of religion. So we get the first master, a blind guy who looks a bit too much like Jesus, who lives in a fortress aided by a legless bandit srtapped to an armless bandit (you read that right). The second is a fat prick dressed like a Russian nobleman, whom is aided by the voices of his ghostly father, and takes care of a woman that is either his girlfriend or his mother (or perhaps both), and who is so arrogant that after beating El Topo he gives him another chance. The third is a nice musician who has a bunny ranch in the middle of the desert, who sits down to play music with El Topo before the duel, and whose rabbits are dying off. And the fourth is some crazy seminaked old man squatting in the desert who has traded his gun for a butterfly net - a bulletproof butterfly net, that is - and who challenges El Topo to fight him with fists, only to dodge every single punch El Topo has. Of course, as if this were not strange enough, Jodorowsky plays around with scenes of El Topo wandering through the desert and refusing the sexual advances of the woman. And if THAT were not enough, due to some technical error a scene is shortened and another deleted and suddenly after a scene in a pond there are now two women, the new one which is very much like El Topo and a bisexual. All of this may sound exciting, but actually drags.
The last 40 minutes of the film are more interesting, as Jodo regurgitates every single social criticism possible at the old rich class that live in the coasts of South America. Slavery, racism, prostitution, forced labor, social division, and all the unjustices and falsehoods committed by such class are depicted in Jodorowsky's deranged symbolic style, with a vengeance. You see, the story takes a turn as El Topo is called back from the dead 2 or 3 decades later, to help a group of deformed and/or injured people who live stuck in a mountain, and want to come down. Topo is more peaceful now, and pretty much looks like a tall monk, and is using his strength to build a pathway to the city at the base of the mountain. Of course, Topo explores the city and encounters it to be an ugly place. Old ugly women spend their days buying slaves and satisfying their sexual needs with them, and then denouncing them as rapists, after which they are executed. The men sell slaves (heck, they even BRAND them!), trap/torture/kill the runnaway slaves, buy prostitutes, and spend their time in an underground sex cantina. Meanwhile they all pretend to be decent people at the local forced Mass. Of course, the priests have given a new sort of spin to Christianity, and one of them even plays Russian roullette with random members of the audience and cries "Miracle!" every time no bullets are shot, which makes everyone ecstatic, praising their Lord. A little surprise comes in the form of Topo's son being one of the priests (the only level headed one). Topo spends his days with his midget girlfriend digging the tunnel and putting on clown performances in the town in order to get money. As you can expect, it will all end in tragedy.
As wicked as all the images in the second part are, they are the best attack on the false rich Southamerican society I have ever seen. I'm amazed that Jodorowsky got away with filming all that, in fact. An applause for him for that. However, all the symbolic pseudo-western first half undermines the film for my tastes, and I think that Jodorowsky got the same themes better in the more twisted Holy Mountain. But I seem to be the only one with that opinion.
Bizarreness level: 10 shots out of 10
Rating: 7 out of 10
Tracks
[REVIEW COMING SOON!]
Bizarreness level: 5 out of 10
Rating: 6 out of 10
Tromeo and Juliet
(1996)
Directed and written by:
Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger movies, Class of Nuke 'Em High,
Sgt. Kabukiman, producer of most Troma home-made junk) and
James Gunn (writer of the upcoming new versions of Scooby Doo and
13 Ghosts), based on the play by William Shakespeare.
Starring: Jane Jensen
(The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, Dream House), Will Keenan
(Trick), Stephen Blackehart (son of Marlon Brandon), Patrick Connor (the
guy who plays guard or police in Brazil, Ragtime, Lifeforce, and The Quartermass
and the Pit), narrated by Lemmy of Motörhead.
Ever had this thought? That Shakespeare sounds really cool, but it is quite dull to read? Once upon a time, it used to be quite fun to watch it being performed on stage, but nowadays every theatre director wants to be "different" and "artistic", so they add all sorts of bizarre touches that just detract from the story, to the point that you have no idea what is going on? Well, fear no more! Now you can enjoy Shakespeare in a very palpable manner: Punk troma style!!!!
YES! The people who brought you movies like The Toxic Avenger and picked up flicks like Cannibal! The Musical (not to mention that Oscar-snub that is Surf Nazis Must Die) decided to give Shakespeare that little, uhm, - how do you say it in french? Ah yes - merde pour des cerveaux quality that Troma gives to its films. There's sex (wait till you see Kaufman's interpretation of Romeo admirind Juliet's cheeks), blood, flying heads, squashed heads, incest, violent priests, drugs, and a whole bunch of warring punk losers.
The story goes on like this: Tromeo Que is the white son of a decent black man who got into a long dispute with Capulet, a greedy businessman who had stolen his wife. Thus, the gang of the Ques were at war with the gang of the Capulets. Well, luck has it that Tromeo falls for the daughter of Capulet. So these incestous, brain-dead clans of freaks start fighting each other over it. If you've ever been in high school, you know the rest of the story.
The part that you DON'T know about are the magic potion of ugliness, the glass cage that Juliet is locked in, the sex scenes that Tromeo and Juliet have, the chopped off arm and the chopped off head that lands on the windshield of a family of nerds, the stripper-friendly acolite-enamoured ass-kicking priest, the punk concerts, and other little details that you were supposed to have read between the lines that ol' Billy Shakespeare wrote.
The surprise comes in the form that about 50% of the dialogue is kept, with minor modifications here and there (e.g., Lemmy kicks off with "Two households, different as dried plums and pears in fair Manhattan, where we lay our scene"). The best is that the leads actually can speak in iambic parameter. Shakespear buffs, as long as they are not purists, will get a kick out of this.
Of course, this movie has its flaws, namely, the same flaw that all Troma films have: it's 100% stupid. But, unlike, say, the aforementioned Surf Nazis Must Die, Redneck Zombies, and flicks like Toxic Avenger Part III, in this one the stupidity actually works and makes the flick hilarious.
I say watch it over a couple of beers and a nonsensical
mood...
Bizarrness level: 6 shots out of 10
Rating: 6 out of 10
U-Turn
(1997)
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Starring: Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Billy Bob Thornton, Nick
Nolte, Jon Voight, Claire Danes
[REVIEW COMING SOON!]
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10
Rating: 7 out of 10
Velvet Goldmine
(1998)
Directed and Written by: Todd Haynes (Safe)
Starring: Jonathan Rhys-Myers (Titus, Ride With the
Devil, The Loss of Sexual Innocence), Ewan McGregor (trainspotting,
The
Phantom Menace), Toni Collette (Clockwatchers, The Sixth
Sense, Shaft 2000), Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun, Little
Women - 94, A Midsummer Night's Dream - 99, American Psycho,
Shaft 2000), among others.
Nowadays, the supposedly "cutting edge" world of independent films seems
to only center in the following themes:
1.-Homosexuality
2.-Work: Slackers and problems in the office or an attack towards an
industry.
3.-Drugs
4.-The 70s and early 80s.
5.-Fake bios
6.- Incoherent, bizarre story
7.- Old boring british guys who are losers yet try one last shot at
an "outrageous" stunt so as to feel well.
8.-Mobster wannabes...
9.-How boring and empty life in a small town is...
Hey, what happened to the times when people just went ahead and did an independent flick without becoming pretentious snots who love to tell everyone how "independent" they are, and how that automatically makes them artists? What writer/director Todd Haynes decided to do was all of 1 through 6: a bizarre semi-coherent fake bio of David Bowie and Iggy Pop during the rise of the glam rock scene in the 70s and their gay love affair while getting on drugs and being betrayed by the music industry. Heck, had he followed them into the old age and set them in a boring small town trying to get a comeback by pulling off a heist, you would have had the ultimate 90s independent movie! Instead we get some annoying film where Haynes plays out his gay fantasies while trying to scramble for recognition of brilliance. Apparently, Haynes is convinced that if a film is bizarre and deals with homosexuality, then it is automatically brilliant. Guess what? It's NOT!
Furthering this quest for "look at me, I'm a genius!", Haynes takes a Citizen Kane aproach to part of the confusing narrative structure of the film, and as a vehicle employs a reporter for some magazine to look up the story behind the non-death of David Bo- er, Brian Slade (Rhys-Myers). And gee, what a surprise, the reporter, named Arthur Stuart (Bale), is a closet homosexual who was once the number one fan of Slade. In his investigation he interviews more prominantly Slade's ex-wife, the foxy Mandy (Collette, in a good performance). The rest is a jumbled mess where we follow Slade's rise to stardom, his relationship with Iggy P-, er, Curt Wild (McGregor, who acts like Pop but resembles more Kurt Cobain), his, uhm, "fall" or whatever, and Arthur's own flashbacks. And through all of that, we get Rhys-Myers singing 70s Bowiesque songs (occasionally with his own voice, otherwise dubbed by Radiohead's Thom Yorke) and McGregor singing and performing punk songs in Iggy Pop style. Then we get shots of a lot of gay stuff happening, the high points which are Slade snorting cocaine out of the ass of some young black guy, and a young Stuart having sex with Wild (who pops out of nowhere) on a rooftop while a UFO pours glitter all over them. And throughout all that is, supposedly, a movie about glam rock and the music industry. That is, as told by a very gay man who just consumed a truck load of viagara and is desperate to at least masturbate like a drunken dog.
And that's all that there's to it. Bore yourself...
Bizarreness level: 7 shots out of 10.
Rating: 3 out of 10.
Videodrome: Visit Cronenberg section
The Wicker Man
(1973)
Directed by: Robin Hardy (The Fantasist)
Starring: Edward Woodward (The Equalizer, Mr.
Johnson, and over a dozen TV movies), Christopher Lee (you know who,
particularly if you watched Hammer horror films, or Sherlock Holms films,
or certain Roger Moore-starring James Bond film), Britt Ekland (the famous
Swede bimbo of the original Get Carter, Fraternity Vacation,
Asylum,
The
Night they Raided Minsky's), Ingrid Pitt (the Polish bimbo from
Where
the Eagles Dare, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
Countess Dracula), Diane Cilento (Tom Jones, The Agony
and the Ecstasy,
Hombre)
Written by: Anthony Shaffer (Frenzy, Sleuth, Death
on the Nile, Sommersby), who oddly enough married Diane Cilento
12 years later, whom got divorced from Sean Connery the year this film
was released. You're not saying...
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Musical
The Wicker Man is THE most overrated film to achieve cult status. So how did it achieve cult status? Simply... It's a horror musical with a dark final starring Christopher Lee. Come on, you've all been waiting for Christopher Lee to sing. For you far younger audiences: imagine if Robert Englund went singing around with a remake of Annie were Daddy Warbucks was offered to the devil by testicular strangulation. Or something like that. Who cares, I'm drunk, and I'm an Irish-American-Peruvian. And scottish too! Whatever...
So what the fuck is the film about? Oookay, here it goes: Some cop in England receives a note about a girl who's missing in an island somewhere in Great Britain. For no reason well scripted he suddenly flies the first hydroplane and lands in the island. The problems start when the cop cannot get any answers from the townspeople. Furthermore, this cop is a hard-core fanatic Protestant Christian, of the type that really, really, REALLY, have no fun (such as having drunken sex with hooved animals, to quote Dave Barry). Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the island are all part of a variation of Wicca religion, as written by some guy who once partied with someone who once met a Wicca. So, although this film is FAR less damaging to the wiccans than any other film out there, it still is quite damaging. So, since I have a close buddy who's a pagan (hi, Lance!), I'd thought I'd take the time to defend these bastards. Okay, pagans and wiccans are a bunch of fun-loving fat-people who dance around fires naked on weekends while they summon the spirits of nature. Before you head out to film one of their weekend rituals, seriously, these are people that you do NOT want to see naked (unless you have a thing for really fat people) (sorry, Lance, you're one of the better looking ones, and I'm not gay). But they're very cool people, for the most part. So, back to the film. In this movie, the cop gets tricked by a bunch of people that tell him that he should get out. Meanwhile, he sees how these people treat diseases by, say, putting frogs into their kids' mouths. Then they engage in the May dance...
This is a horror film if you are a Republican or Tipper Gore or another member of the PMRC. Otherwise, it's a movie where Christopher Lee SINGS!!!!!!!!! (cue music from Monty Python and the Holy Grial). No, this is not an episode of The Critic. This movie was actually nominated 5 years after it was released by the Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Films of USA for Best Horror Film against the all-time classic Halloween and INSTEAD of Dawn of the Dead. Of course, I only list it here because it is strange all the way (and yes, I have seen and only seen the uncensored, full original length version, so fuck you!). And besides, Christopher Lee SINGS!!!!!! (cue music from Monty Python and the Holy Grial). Deja vu? No, seriously, have you ever seen Bela Lugosi in a musical? Have you ever seen Max Shreck in a musical? Have you ever seen Gary Oldman in a musical (and Sid & Nancy doesn't count)? No, you haven't, unless you have access to some VERY interesting flick which I demand that you submit to me now! (this from someone who has the bootleg Star Wars casting auditions tapes - no joke; wanna see Kurt Russel trying out for both Luke AND Han? E-mail me).
Okay, so I'm drunk. Quite frankly, that's how you should be if you want to enjoy this picture. Fast forward to the last 15 minutes... Then demand your money back for the rest of the flick.
Bizarreness level: 6 shots of Cuervo out of 10
Rating: 4 out of 10
