Author: reynolds

The Ringer

Mostly dead. I so wanted this to be a sly, subversively funny dismantling of disability tropes which employs–and then implodes–cultural stereotypes. Instead, it was not so sly, rarely funny, even if still nicely subversive of said tropes.

For those interested, it’s about a loser-wimp type (the ingratiating Johnny Knoxville) who tries to make some needed money by playing “disabled” so that he and a scurrilous uncle (the game Brian Cox) can rig bets on the Special Olympics. What’s kind of neat is that the film’s producers (the Farrelly Brothers, who have I think an *excellent* track record in upsetting disability tropes) engaged with the Olympics and it was filmed on site, with in-jokes and inside humor (sidestepping the frequent criticism of “laughing at”) and with performers with variously different abilities. One of the good jokes is that the other athletes recognize how bad Knoxville’s mimicry is, while the “norms” all get suckered. What’s less good is that the filmmakers employ a mix of actors, some of whom are playing disabled, and doing so generously but not persuasively (i.e., the movie’s central gimmick is itself replicated by the movie, inartfully).

I wanted it to be funnier, or even just funny. Nope. I recommend instead the under-appreciated Stuck on You and the brilliant documentary How’s Your News?.

Summer Club

Okay–a proposal. We are (obviously) already starting conversations, suggesting films, following up on others’ suggestions and entering into discussion…. but for the summer months, I’m proposing that every week or two, someone suggest a movie that we all (or many) try to see, and jump into conversation on. I might suggest picking something less familiar, or an old favorite not recently seen, or insert-motif-here. But what the hell: let’s say anything goes. I’m not even going to suggest a timeline or anything. I’m just going to offer up the open-ended proposal.

If you’re interested, post on a flick–Summer Club: “X”–and those of us who are interested will track down said flick and watch it, too. I will wait a couple of days and do one of my own.

Obviously, I am trying to take my mind off tonight’s Sopranos closer, which I will see in a few days, thanks to Jeff.

Violence

I have had a couple days at home alone, after taking Kris and Max to Omaha. I’d scurry about during the day to do all this end-of-year crap I need to get done, then come home and see stuff I normally wouldn’t have the time or space to see–maybe things a bit more violent than Kris would ever want to watch (and by “bit more” I of course mean “excessively, ridiculously, extravagantly more”). I can turn up the volume, go nuts.

What follows are a couple of strong recommendations and others just to be recorded. There’s a loose running issue in my responses about the ways they depict violence. But mostly it’s just a quick set of recs: Continue reading Violence

Crimen Ferpecto…

…or Ferpect Crime is a low-rent blast, starting out as a sleek sort-of-obvious satire about a department-store Lothario but slowly creeping toward Grand Guignol black comedy and finally ending in a garish burst of surrealist comedy. This ain’t for everybody. But it looks grand (director Alex de la Iglesia got an initial boost from Almodovar, and they share an eye and taste for the cartoonish taken seriously–or vice versa). Its meanness is slowly sapped away by an obvious love for those “freaks” and “uglies” it mocks.

I’m having trouble nailing it down, but it was fun. Imagine if Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny got caught up in a bleak noirish erotic thriller, and then had it out for one another. I’m rushing to my queue to line up some more of his stuff.

Dario

So, this is a hole in an ostensible horror fan’s c.v., but: I’d never seen a Dario Argento film, at least not all the way through, ’til last night. I watched Suspiria, a gothic potboiler Argento calls a “fairy tale for adults.” I had fun imagining my own silly taglines: Imagine if Vincente Minnelli and Henry James had a kid, and he directed films.

This was absolutely silly, if taken as plot, and only when you could make any sense of it at all. In other words, close to incoherent in terms of narrative. There are a few things that catch us viewers up–oh yes, the dour sinister headmistress! the strange help at the boarding school!–but mostly I stopped caring or paying any attention to the occasional moments when Argento stopped to try and explain things.

Instead, revel in–relish–the absurdly lush compositions and colors. The film’s brighter, its colors deeper, its production design more baroquely detailed and intricate than almost any film I’ve ever seen. You could pause any shot and just sink in. And the compositions and editing are equally beautiful. Take the film as a kind of rich, strange dream–and it’s dazzling. Even the “brutal” deaths are depicted in such florid composed fashions, it’s more like the gory Renaissance paintings of saints than a typical slasher flick.

I’m going to see more of this guy’s stuff. Note to the interested: It stars Jessica Harper, whose weird little-girl head and huge eyes seemed to intrigue many a strange director. Udo Kier pops up, looking way younger and not quite as inhuman.

I almost posted this under Gio’s post on The Leopard… simply to get some conversation going about Italian film. G named a number of big name filmmakers–in the context of a very interesting reading of Italy’s impact on film. I’m curious where Argento’s movies, or any of the gialli, fit into the cultural context….

Eggleston

Michael Almereyda’s wonderful documentary William Eggleston in the Real World spends a lot of time noodling around about subjects Eggleston himself, in the closing conversation, professes to neither understand nor much fret about: what do [his] photographs do? How do they affect us? How do we watch them?

Luckily for us, the film doesn’t care to really answer, nor does it care only about that question. Instead, the film without any of that arty detachment follows Eggleston around as he takes pictures, content (mostly) to watch him work, or in the off hours to drink and draw and play music. He’s never terribly well-defined–and that’s actually to my liking, and the film’s effect. Rather than answering, it enacts the issues of art and image; the cinematography echoes and even at times captures the lush colors and compositions of the photographer’s work, and while never telling us exactly what to think it provokes sincere, curious reflection. I really enjoyed this. (Almereyda’s other doc on Sam Shepard–This So-Called Disaster–is also a fine film, about the staging of a play but best when hanging out with the playwright.)

One hit, one foul out.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped admittedly had me racking my brain for dim memories of the original (Fingers), and I never really got past reading the lead–who is astonishing–as a gallicized Keitel. But this film was gorgeous and engaging and always a beat off the conventional rhythms of any of the genres it riffs on: noir lowlife melodrama, Rafelson-ish/Tobacksian existential guy stuff, the destructive passions of the artist. Whatever its roots in that earlier film, it goes in its own direction.

Left of the Dial is also five blocks shy of interesting. It’s a documentary about the birth pangs of Air America, but it lacks any kind of narrative focus, instead Real-Worldishly cycling from clips of on-air personalities to back-office financial shenanigans to the occasional articulation of liberals-fighting-the-good-fight-against-conservative-media-domination blah blah. None of those narratives get explored in any depth, let alone synced together. I wanted more Marc Maron, a lot less of everyone else. But, hell, I hate talk radio, whether it’s Rush or Franken or whomever–if I want people yelling their opinions at me, I’ll hold another poker night and break out the Cointreau. Least that way I might walk away with five dollars in addition to the headache. Crap film. (But I have two other interesting-looking docs on deck: Kirby Dick’s Twist of Faith and Mark’s and now Chris’ recommended Mondovino.)

I also highly recommend the new Flaming Lips album–just put “It Overtakes Me” on constant rotation–and the novel _The Futurist_ by James Othmer, instead of watching basketball.

The Corporation

I think Mark commented on this doc once before, but I couldn’t find the entry. Smart, biting, engaging. Yet…. besides a new case history or two, a sometimes-unfamiliar set of talking heads (academic and corporate), and its useful condensation (and surrealization) of the history of the corporation, I didn’t feel like I really got pushed in new ways by this film. Maybe I’m–we’re?–not the audience for this documentary; I know I’d be very keen to teach the thing, as I think it would provoke and entertain equally well.

But my own engagement with its politics and history was lesser than with Richard Powers’ very fine novel Gain, which told a clearer, more incisive story because… well, it was a clearer story, I think. Or even Michael Moore’s The Big One, which makes many of the same points with more jokes, albeit less depth or breadth of information. I recommend it, but almost like I recommend eating 5 servings of fruit a day. Good for you, probably even as tasty as the pretzels that make up 46% of my daily caloric intake. Alas. (The dvd, it should be noted, does have some very nice extras.)