Movies
My first Rob Zombie movie. Based entirely on this, I understand why his filmography has the rapturous following that it does, but I couldn't really get entirely onboard myself—though I'm given to understand that this isn't really the best of his anyway (we'll see, I guess). The hallucinatory vibes / psychedelia of the film style is memorable, and the conceit of taking the nightmare Americana of the infamous dinner scene of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and making it the movie's entire thrust is definitely a choice with lots of potential to be harvested (and presumably Zombie's more acclaimed films do just that). As it is here, though, whatever striking effects Zombie gets out of these features eventually gets run into the ground by the film's somewhat exhausting, busy cinematic energy and its oddly meandering, structureless screenplay, and it definitely feels more like shtick by the end than anything truly inspired. Parts of it are legitimately cool, though (I deeply dug the Murder Ride, for example), and Zombie's got a good finger on the pulse of just what can make something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or honestly, while we're on it, The X-Files, which I think this movie strongly evokes, too) so unshakeably chilling—that visceral fear that the warped histories and environments America has willfully forgotten in its drive toward modernization have curdled into unspeakable malice. Looking forward to seeing how Zombie approaches that idea in a more overall successful package. Grade: B-
A supremely weird slasher-ish movie, though it's not really clear how weird it is at first. The early goings play like a proto-home-invasion film, involving a special effects artist and his family being terrorized by a group of "punkers" while on vacation. And then it takes a turn. Several turns. By the end, it's become this goofy treatise on the nature of film and its role in flattening/distorting reality itself. Whether you're in the movie's meta final act or the relatively more conventional first two thirds, it's pretty consistently entertaining, elevated by some truly gonzo performances (particularly Brad Wilson, who plays the leader of the punk gang and gives the most intense iteration of that archetype this side of Wild at Heart) and a devilishly unpredictable plot. It of course doesn't all work, but the whole package is something to behold. Grade: B
Probably the most Bakshi film I've seen, which means that you've got this awesome mix of urban grit with jazzy alt-comics character models and a singularly feverish ambition to re-invent the language of animation itself. This one also has some really great music, too—pretty much wall-to-wall songs, including a sublime recurring cover of "Scarborough Fair" performed by Sérgio Mendes and Brasil '66—and Bakshi's attempt to capture the vibrancy, beauty, and terror of '70s NYC results in a deeply evocative film that pulses with an organic life uncommon within animated features. But unfortunately, being the most Bakshi film I've seen also means that Bakshi's usual fixation with unquestioned sexism, racism, and puerile sex acts for the sake of """transgression""" gets dialed up to the nth degree. It ruins a would-be great movie, and that ain't no fun. Also, given how much Bakshi has griped about the pat sentimentality of Disney films, it's pretty dumb that this movie goes with the dopey happy ending that it does. Still on the hunt for a Bakshi movie that isn't heavily compromised in some way. Grade: C
Music
The older I get, the more I'm interested in that odd transitional period Pink Floyd went through in the late '60s and early '70s, after Syd Barrett left but before they found their role as rock odyssey philosophers. More (the soundtrack for a movie I've never seen) is a pretty good encapsulation of the spirit of that era: a hodgepodge album in search of an identity that flirts with hard rock, ambient, and the early sounds of what would eventually be kosmische musik, but that nonetheless coasts along on vaguely unified psychedelic vibes. It is slight and messy, but it is also appealingly cozy in that particular way that this period of Pink Floyd's career tends to be. I dunno, I like it. Grade: B
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