Mini Reviews for November 21 - 27, 2022

Yes I was without internet for part of this week and had to watch random movies I had on my laptop—why do you ask?

Movies

Bones and All (2022)
It's a lot of things, maybe too many things: a YA romance, a road-trip movie, a cannibal movie, a Badlands / Bonnie and Clyde "one step ahead of our past catching up with us" sort of thing, an '80s nostalgia movie (if what you're nostalgic for in the '80s is heartland rock, wood paneling, and everything smelling like cigarettes), a philosophical inquiry into the most ethical way to eat people if you are biologically compelled to do so, maybe a queer metaphor, maybe an addiction metaphor. I'm not sure if the extremely bummer ending satisfyingly ties up any of these threads or modes, but like a lot of road trips, the interesting part is how you get there, and this movie is certainly a journey: parts of it deeply unsettling with unexpected moments of terror, other parts evoking a profound loneliness, others a deep well of pathos. Whether or not this completely holds together thematically, it's able to make all of these disparate threads feel like a cohesive whole through a confident stylistic hand as well as some terrific performances (the entire principal cast is great). There's a strong emotional throughline, if nothing else, and some of these scenes are going to stay with me for a while. Grade: B+

Rosaline (2022)
A worst of both worlds situation: neither the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by way of Romeo and Juliet that I was hoping for, nor the sugary-sweet rom-com-revival fun that this movie thinks it is. It has the feeling of being written by someone who hasn't touched Romeo and Juliet since they read the SparkNotes summary in 9th grade English class; Tromeo and Juliet has a better literacy of the Shakespeare play than this one does, which is theoretically fine: so what if Paris is now Rosaline's gay best friend and that famous lines are misappropriated by characters in nonsensical contexts? If you're not trying to be deconstructive, there's no point in actually caring about your film's relationship to its source material. But you gotta give us something in the source material's place, and the watery gruel that we receive is a bunch of warmed-over rom-com clichés employed with a flimsy gloss of girl-power and sarcasm, not to mention a completely empty love interest. As uninterested in Romeo and Juliet as this movie is, it seems even less interested in the elements it's added, and I'm not sure why we're supposed to care about anything going on in Rosaline's life. Kaitlyn Dever is pretty good here, at least—a performance in search of a movie that has any idea at all how to use it. Grade: C-

Joshua and the Promised Land (2004)
It's basically unwatchable, but it's also fascinating because it so clearly is a product of evangelical Christianity while also being a work of outsider art, something you can't say about a lot of more visible evangelical media, which usually comes from a fairly large industry with established tropes and modes of discourse, almost none of which this movie even bothers with. For example, it's not uncommon for evangelical media to use the post-parting-the-Red-Sea stories of Moses and Joshua to justify genocide, but there's usually some tact or rhetorical sleight of hand that makes it seem like it's not justifying genocide. Like, Focus on the Family media has definitely said genocide is okay, but you usually have to analyze it a little to understand that that's what it's doing. This movie doesn't have the guile for that kind of decorum and literally just states outright that it's okay to exterminate a people group if God tells you to, and it does so by using some of the most amateur CG animation I've ever seen as well as some of the most head-scratching decisions in character modeling (if they're supposed to be lions, where are their tails??), which is kind of an out-of-body experience. There's such an incredible purity of vision here, a vile, cancerous, eye-melting vision. I'd love to hear what Phil Vischer thinks about this. Grade: C

Song of the Miraculous Hind (Ének a csodaszarvasról) (2002)
I know so little of Hungarian history and folklore that this film's plot (a telling of ancient Hungarian "history" as seen through its mythology) quickly lost me. Basically the only parts I understood were the pieces that had widespread mythological tropes like the "cosmic hunt" that makes up one early section of the movie. So I would probably have a drastically different reaction to this movie if I were Hungarian or even just knew anything at all about Hungarian history—I dunno, I would definitely have some strong opinions about a movie that tried to dramatize the national mythology of the United States, so this seems like the kind of movie that is fraught with political implications that I have no access to. But from where I sit, it doesn't matter that I couldn't follow the plot, because the film is directed by Marcell Jankovics, which means that it has dazzling animation. It's a lot more stylistically experimental than his masterpiece, Son of the White Mare, which makes sense given this movie's episodic format, and not everything is a home-run here; in fact, there are sections with animation that is surprisingly prosaic for Jankovics. However, other pieces of animation here are incredible in ways that aren't exactly superior to White Mare but also are far more intricate and complex than anything that the other movie attempts, sequences that are overtly psychedelic or even strobe-like, playing around with kaleidoscopic color variations and unstable character forms in a way that is as mesmerizing as it is bewildering. The early sequence with the cosmic hunt is pretty great in this regard, as is the final sequence of the film when Jesus Christ appears to a medieval king. There's something about this kind of stylistic kitchen-sink that, when it works, approaches the sublime when paired with mythological storytelling that I don't understand. Again, I'm sure I would have a much different reaction if I actually did understand the mythology. Grade: B+

Rock and Rule (1983)
The kind of movie that is probably best reviewed by listing out its component parts and just basking in the miracle of the existence of something this bizarre: a nuclear war has destroyed the human race and in the human's place grow a society of animals mutated into character designs I can only describe as "edgy Goof Troop," among whom is the rock star Mok, who needs to find the magical voice that can release a demon who will help him rule the world and gain immortality. This story is told as a rock musical with a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense and with compositions and performances from Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Earth, Wind & Fire, and assorted configurations of Cheap Trick, and it's visual style has a blending of the kind of squishy character animation you might see on children's programming with a less-abrasive form of Ralph Baskshi's urban mixed-media approach for the backgrounds, plus another technique I can't quite identify for Mok's demon that reminds me of Yuri Norstein in its earthy textures. Everything in this movie has these smirking comic-book naming conventions, e.g. Mok Swagger, Carnage-y Hall, Nuke York, etc. A real stew, this movie. A complete meal. Grade: B

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
This is an amazing story about a man's sociopathic drive to destroy his marriage on his honeymoon, and as a depiction of monstrous self-destruction, it's about as hilarious as something like that can get (which is: very). Truly one of the great evocations of masculinity at its most pathetic and loathsome. But also... also... the incredible coup that this movie pulls is that by casting Cybill Shepherd as the object of this man's desire, there's a part of me, not a significant part but a part nonetheless, that watches her in this movie and thinks, "You know, I get it." Audience-implication sometimes feels like a cheap shot, but this one totally got me. Grade: A

Mini Reviews for July 5 - 11, 2021

For those of you who describe by email, I'm working on a new way for y'all to still get emails of each post after the current email-subscription feature goes away at the end of the month. Stay tuned.

Movies

A Glitch in the Matrix (2021)
It's honestly deeply frustrating to me that simulation theory, an unfalsifiable thought experiment with a huge leap of a first premise, has been embraced by a lot of the same extremely online techbros who (used to?) enjoy poking holes in religious belief for being an unfalsifiable thought experiment with a huge leap of a first premise. Points to this documentary, which at its best draws the line between religious mysticism and simulation theory pretty well. There is something to be said for the way that a rigidly rational, naturalist worldview of the kind promoted by the Enlightenment onward is ill-equipped to deal with the epistemological complexities of living a subjective existence—that's something that a lot of religious, literary, and philosophical thought has wrestled with since the Enlightenment itself, but if the only things you ever watched were The Matrix and Elon Musk interviews, I suppose simulation theory would seem like the only possible explanation for the human experience, and the movie is at its best when it's gently poking at the sad, pseudo-secular solipsism created by the alienating framework of post-religious digital capitalism. I wish the documentary burrowed into that idea more, though, or honestly any idea here—in typical Rodney Ascher style, the meat of the film involves letting a handful of true believers just meander through the wildest, far-flung regions of their ideas, but the difference between this and a movie like Room 237 is that Room 237 had a pretty whimsical and specific premise (people's interpretations of The Shining) that allowed the interviews to cluster into a natural geography in tension to one another, whereas simulation theory is such an all-encompassing idea that the movie just ends up skipping around and briefly lighting on these enormous ideas about consciousness and belief and epistemology and alienation without settling on one quite long enough to tease out the implications. Also, by virtue of being a grand theory about life, simulation theory is a bit more serious than wacky exegesis of a Stanley Kubrick movie, so A Glitch in the Matrix gets really grim at times, touching on sociopathy and murder in a way that is both scary but also frustrating in that it doesn't get any more in-depth investigation than any of the other two dozen loose ends this movie tugs on. A weird kind of movie that is endlessly fascinating in the moment while also being fairly empty as a whole. Here's hoping that Ascher can find a smaller subject for his next movie, because I don't think his style can really sustain something this big. Grade: B-

The Orphanage (El orfanato) (2007)
This movie has a really rich setting in its central haunted house/orphanage, and the ending is surprisingly great. But the movie just takes forever getting there, with some fairly generic spooky atmosphere padding out places that either should have had more engaging drama or more hair-raising scares—as a mushy middle ground between those two, the vibes of this movie don't really work for me until the aforementioned ending, which, again, is super good. Too little too late, though. Grade: B-

 

 

Mysterious Skin (2004)
I was severely under-prepared for what this movie was, and I don't know if that was just because I was cavalier enough to have not done more than read the logline or because the movie's advertising was intentionally playing coy about a subject that would have almost certainly been impossible to market (which kind of calls into question how crass the whole enterprise of commodifying art is, right?). Regardless, this movie should come with the biggest content/trigger warnings imaginable, and I'm rating this movie in terms of how well it's made rather than my usual way of how I feel from having watched it—Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet alone make this a masterclass, giving what have to be two of the greatest, most human performances of the cinematic century so far. But whew, I probably would have skipped this one if I'd known more about it. Sending as much love as I can muster to anyone who has experienced sexual abuse. Grade: A-

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (봄 여름 가을 겨울 그리고 봄) (2003)
Begins as something of an anthology film of Buddhist parables and eventually coalesces into a much larger spiritual/monastic journey. It's told through this patient but still conventional style that seems to be trying to evoke the effects of slow cinema without actually using the techniques of slow cinema. Both the storytelling and the cinematic style have moments that left me a little restless and unfulfilled, but the overall effect is so strong that it ends up not really mattering that every moment doesn't work. Grade: B+

 

Johnny Corncob (János Vitéz) (1973)
So, Hungary's first animated feature is extremely racist/nationalist—almost fascist, even, which was a real unfun surprise for me. There are like thirty straight minutes of this that are just the hero with an army mowing down dozens of caricatured Asians and Africans. I guess that's what you get when the government commissions an adaptation of an epic nationalist poem, as I assume a lot of this is just baked into the source material. Luckily, the story structure has that fun, dream-logic folktale shape that Marcell Jankovics would explore more in his later masterpiece, Son of the White Mare, and the animation here is truly spectacular, a really engaging midpoint between Yellow Submarine (which Jankovics cites as a direct inspiration) and White Mare (a purer achievement of the aesthetic this movie is gesturing toward). So I guess I'm going to shake out positive on this one, which maybe reflects poorly on the strength of my opposition to fascism. One last thing: why on earth is the English title of this "Johnny Corncob"? As best I can tell, the literal translation of the Hungarian title is "John the Knight," which makes sense with the actual story instead of the hicksploitation vibe we got in the English title. Grade: B

Pink Flamingos (1972)
It's so rare to get a film with a vision this radical make it to the screen this uncompromised. But holy cow, here we go. I don't think I've ever seen a more transgressive movie in my life. Explicitly a contest of escalating hostility between two groups (two bourgeois posers vs. drag legend Divine and her crew) to see who can be "the filthiest person alive," and every minute of this movie is a direct engagement with that conflict, whether that's the unbroken shot of a butthole lip-syncing (sphincter-syncing?) to "Surfin' Bird," the unbroken shot of Divine just chomping on some dog poop fresh from the dog anus, the unbroken shot of a couple bashing to death a real-live chicken with their bodies as they have sex, or the unbroken shot of... well, I could go on, but for once, the MPAA got it 100% right by giving this the single greatest content descriptor of all time when they rated it NC-17 for "a wide range of perversions in explicit detail," a description which I imagine writer/director/cinematographer/editor/narrator/pervert extraordinaire John Waters was ecstatic to receive. I'm sure he would also be excited to hear that I was pretty turned off by the animal cruelty and really, really excessive sexual assault in this movie. Transgression as an end to itself is a two-edged sword maybe never better embodied than by this movie—on the one hand liberating from oppressive social forces, on the other hand lacking an ethos coherent enough to avoid hurting the vulnerable, I guess. I know it's a losing game to accuse a movie premised on poor taste of having poor taste, and maybe I'm a bourgeois poser myself, but I really didn't find that stuff fun at all. But the rest of this is really magical. There's this frothing contempt here for all hierarchy and social convention that I found super appealing, and its delivery through Waters's exquisite, borderline dreamlike sense of camp makes the parts of this movie that I didn't find actively risible to be transcendent—and in a turn that should be impossible, that transcendence finds a rich humanity and even a kind of affection within its anarchy. Plus, of course Divine is one of the most compelling screen presences of all time. Grade: B+

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Feels like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents or The Twilight Zone stretched out to feature length, which makes sense given that Ida Lupino, the director, went on to direct episodes of those shows. But like both of those series, this movie has a terrific sense of atmosphere that simply isn't sustainable as the primary engine for a feature film (or even, in the case of The Twilight Zone's fourth season, an hour as opposed to a half hour). But for a while at least, this is pretty gripping. Grade: B-