Shadows in the Cave Digest #04 - April 2010

Features
Charlie Chaplin Month -
Part I - The Life and Times of a Tramp
Part II - The Women
The Kid
A Woman in Paris
The Circus
The Great Dictator
Limelight
Other Films

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma -
Carrie
Sisters
Obsessed
Dressed to Kill

Hypothetical Film Festivals
Ernest Saves The Film Festival
80s Comedies for Grown Ups
Working Class Heroes

Reviews

DocuMondays
Kurt and Courtney
The Nomi Song
Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth
Dirt! The Movie

Wild Card Tuesdays
Eve's Bayou
Dead Silence
Last Days of Disco
Nightmare on Elm Street

Newbie Wednesday
How To Train Your Dragon
Clash of the Titans
Kick Ass
The Imaginarum of Doctor Parnassus

Import Fridays
MicMacs
Mother (Movie of the Month!)
Lilya 4-Ever
The Lives of Others

Next Month: 
Asian Cinema Month!
Orson Welles!
Movie Musings!
And a very special birthday surprise!

Charlie Chaplin Month - Limelight

Limelight (1952)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce, Buster Keaton, Norman Lloyd, Sydney Earle Chaplin

During Chaplin's trip to Europe to promote this film, he had his re-entry to the Unites States revoked (he always legally remained a British citizen). It was the height of Red Panic at the time in the US and Chaplin had never been shy about voicing his personal opinions on the treatment of the working class. Chaplin's long standing tensions with J. Edgar Hoover led to his re-entry papers being revoked and he decided to set up his home in Switzerland. This would be where he would live for the rest of his days and this film (while not his last) would stand as his symbolic goodbye to cinema.

It's 1914,  and Calvero (Chaplin) is a former performer on the East End stages. He now comes home drunk out of his mind in the middle of the day, slowly weathering away in his flat. One afternoon he returns and finds his downstairs neighbor, Teri (Bloom) unconscious holding a bottle of pills and letting gas from her stove fill her apartment. He saves her life and afterwards learns she became suicidal when her dreams of performing ballet were slowly crushed. Calvero nurses her back to health as she suffers from psychosomatic paralysis. Eventually, she regains her confidence and becomes the prima ballerina of a great company. Teri meets and falls in love with composer Neville (played by Chaplin's own son, Sydney Earle). She goes onto secure a part for Calvero in the show as a clown and he eventually gets his own showcase which is to be his final, great performance.

1914 is an incredibly significant year in the life of Chaplin. It was in that year he made a small appearance in the Keystone short Kid Auto Races at Venice. The character he played was called The Little Tramp. The birth of one of the most iconic film characters means the death of the stage variety that brought Chaplin up. As Calvero he recognizes both the twilight of his own career and how his rise to fame was responsible for the end of many East End performers' careers. It's made even more significant that Buster Keaton plays Calvero's old partner who joins him in the final stage performance. Here we have the two men who birthed cinematic comedy taking one last bow in an era that no longer had room for their style.

Despite the symbolic significance of much of the film it is still a very self-indulgent picture. Chaplin made his film's independently meaning he got to make final cut. Limelight clocks in at 2 hours, 11 minutes and it is a real stretch. Much like The Great Dictator, another over 2 hour picture, the middle sections sag painfully. The bits Chaplin performs are never all that funny either. The two man piece he does with Keaton at the end of the film is pretty decent but never lives up to his old films.

Newbie Wednesday - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009, dir. Terry Gilliam)
Starring Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare

After filming the first half of this picture, director Gilliam learned the tragic news that Heath Ledger had died due to an accidental drug overdose. Gilliam is no stranger to films having to overcome obstacles before their release. His 1985 picture Brazil was the victim of an unexcited studio and Gilliam had to break the law to get his version of the picture shown. His attempt to make a film version of Don Quixote at the beginning of the century was ultimately scrapped when financial and natural conditions fought against him. With Imaginarium Gilliam found a way that the film could continue without Ledger's presence and it hinges on the movie's core theme: Imagination.

The movie opens in modern day London and follows a old time traveling show made up of the ancient sage Doctor Parnassus, his daughter; Valentina, his right hand man; Percy, and the boy in love with Valentina; Anton. Their show is no longer captivating to contemporary audience and during the opening performance a drunk man stumble through a mirror on stage that places him inside his own imagination. Parnassus has been in a centuries old struggle with Mr. Nick, the Devil who is in a competition to see who can collect the most souls before Valentina's 16th birthday. If Nick wins he takes Valentina from Parnassus. Into this scenario comes an amnesiac man found hanging underneath a bridge. The man slowly but surely takes over creative control of the show explaining he has Parnassus best interests in mind. As the date moves closer to the bet's end more of this stranger's secrets are revealed.

The film is better than much of Gilliam's more recent films and I credit that to his choice of working with co-writer Charles McKeown. McKeown previously worked on the scripts for Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen which are two of Gilliam's strongest pictures. The story here can be a bit straining on the brain but its able to keep up with Gilliam's visuals the whole way through. I also like the use of CG effects here not in an attempt to replicate reality (see Avatar), but to make surreal landscapes feel tangible. In my opinion, that should be the purpose of using CG in films. While I didn't care for the story of The Lovely Bones is also did an excellent job of created fully realized surreal worlds.

The subtext in the film seems to be Gilliam's own examination of his profession. Parnassus starts out as a man sequestered in a Tibetan monastery where he and his disciples sit around telling the story of the universe. He makes a deal with the Devil and travels out to make his fortune with these stories, being told he will be immortal if he does. Valentina is a living breathing creation and the idea of turning her over to the Devil is what drives Parnassus to fight for independence. In his desperation he turns to a smooth talker who assures him he will be present the show in the way the doctor wants, but instead we see the integrity of Parnassus slipping away.

Like most of Gilliam's work this will never appeal to a mainstream audience. He is very much an artist who makes the things that amuse him and its always coincidental if they appeal to anyone else. If you are open to a film that prefers to play rather than dictate and hit plot beats then I think you'll enjoy this picture.

Wild Card Tuesday - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. Wes Craven)
Starring Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, Ronee Blakely

I remember the first time I ever heard about Freddy Krueger. I was 8 or 9 year old and sitting in my backyard in Smyrna where a neighbor kid was describing the R-rated horror films his parents had let him watch. Nothing stood out about Freddy that was too frightening to me, I do remember the description of the glove sounding creepy. Now it is twenty years later and I am finally seeing the film that was described to me all those years ago. So how does Wes Craven's 1980s horror classic stack up?

It takes barely any time for us to jump right into the thick of the plot. Nancy and her friends, Tina, Glen, and Rod are all suffering from nightmares about the same evil figure. He's a man with a burnt face, in a fedora and striped sweater who wears a glove with blades on each finger. All four spend the night at Tina's house and their slumber is interrupted by Tina's brutal disemboweling by an invisible force. Tina's thug boyfriend Rod is the only suspect and ends up in jail. But Nancy thinks otherwise and has her own face to face encounter with the man who calls himself Freddy. Nancy chooses to forgo sleep as she searches for answers about why this man has targeted her and her friends. But how long can she go without giving in to her exhaustion?

One of the things I noticed right away was how muted Freddy was. I was so used to the personality later films had developed of him as a wisecracking murderer that it was off putting to see him only have a few pieces of dialogue in the picture. Craven also chooses to keep Krueger's face in the shadows most of the time and the make up effects are fairly simply, just a face damaged by fire and turned to scar tissue. I could also see the novelty of how Freddy kills. Figures like Jason and Michael Meyers are fairly one note. They stalk you and stab you. The added twist that you are in danger in your dreams does come across as a greater threat. There's no authorities to go to that can save you in this instance.

Overall, the film doesn't feel very frightening. I think having so many of its scenes used in specials detailing iconic horror and the Freddy Krueger character having been milked for all of its worth harms the ability of the film to still be affecting. I really liked Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, she felt like a real teenage girl who wasn't a huge breasted pin up. The normality of Nancy definitely made her a much more sympathetic character than your typical horror scream queen. The acting was weak for the most part but the film is based on the premise that you will see gruesome kills, not great performances.

I was left with the desire to go back in time and see this film in the theater with an audience who was unaware of what they were getting. I have a feeling it would have been extremely fun. Now horror has become so clichéd and trite that its hard to have that jump in your seat experience anymore. Hoping the remake of Nightmare can find some way to reintroduce Freddy and give us surprises rather than a retread.

DocuMondays - Dirt! The Movie

Dirt! The Movie (2009, dir. Bill Benenson, Gene Rosow, Eleonore Dailly)
Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis

There's is something about the smell of healthy soil that is unlike anything else. My father got his degree in wildlife biology and worked for the Illinois Department of Agriculture for many years so soil and gardening and nature were a big part of my early years, whether I liked it or not. As I have gotten older I've become interested in nature from a global perspective, particularly the way our agriculture has slowly shifted into the hands of a few private corporate interests and away from typical citizen run farms. This documentary focuses on the impact of these practices on our soil and where this practices will inevitably leads us. It doesn't sound all too excitement but the style of the film's presentation keeps your attention.


The film begins with metaphor of soil as a living skin to the earth and goes on to talk about the amount of living microbes in a handful of soil. The film can come across fairly dry at the beginning and sags in moments that feel a little lesson oriented. It's saving grace are the well educated group of interviewees who come from all over the world and present well thought out and reasoned ideas about how to create more sustainable systems. I particularly enjoyed Vandana Shiva and Gary Vaynerchuck.

Shiva is an Indian physicist whose focus has been on fighting against the corporatization of genetics and push towards stronger bioethics. Her experience growing up in India has helped her see the plight of farmers who are forced into working the land as dictated by corporate agricultural firms. The result is that many farmers end up in debt and kill themselves as the land dies around them. She also emphasizes that cultures where women are moving out of a subservient, second class role and into a more active role in their local agriculture are proving themselves to be incredibly sustainable and productive environments. Vaynerchuck, the host of a internet series about wine, is able to provide a poetic look at soil and its intricacies. He talks in length about going to vineyards where he tastes the grapes and the soil to get a better sense of the wine produced there. He has a lot of enthusiasm on the subject which helps pull the audience in.

Dirt! is by no means the greatest documentary made and it does definitely feel didactic in some sections. However, it is a topic that, if given a chance, will pull people in and teach them a lot about the complexity of their environment. I found the portion on mountain top blasting my mining companies to be particularly relevant to situations here in Tennessee. I think its our responsibility as socially conscious human beings to be informed about these topics and ideas.

Hypothetical Film Festival #12 - Working Class Heroes

Film has had a strong focus on the lives of the working class since the silent pictures and work of Charlie Chaplin. Through fictional stories and hard hitting documentaries cinema has taken a look at the struggles to feed, clothe, and house a family in America and while, the images are not always pretty or uplifting, they are always infused with truth.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940, dir. John Ford)
Starring Henry Fonda, John Carradine, Jane Darwell, Russell Simpson

Adapted from the incredibly popular John Steinbeck novel, John Ford was forced to take the film in a less bleak, but still as honest as he could it make it direction. Tom Joad (Fonda) has just been released from prison and returns to his family's homestead in Oklahoma to find them victims of the Dust Bowl. The Joads pack up and head towards California where they believe their fortunes will change. Ford removed or was forced to remove Steinbeck's more socialist themes which is a shame. The film still tries to look at the hardships of the the Okies and the utter lack of hope in their struggle to stay above drowning. John Carradine has always been my favorite as Jim Casy, the wandering preacher.

On the Waterfront (1954, dir. Elia Kazan)
Starring Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb

"I coulda been a contender", the oft repeated line came from this film by Hollywood legend Kazan. Terry Malloy (Brando) is a dock worker in Brooklyn whose boxing career ended when his brother, Charley (Steiger), a lawyer for the mob-controlled docks makes Terry take a dive in a fight. Now Terry is a broken man who hopes to find love with Edie (Saint), however Terry was part of an effort to kill her brother who was going to testify against the mob. It's a tale grounded in tragedy from the start and the performance that really set Brando on fire. It should also be noted that Steiger is excellent in this picture as well and has always been a criminally underrated actor.

Salesman (1969, dir. Maysles Brothers)

Cinema vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking where the director simply lets the camera roll, they may interview the subject, but the majority of the work is just life unfolding as it happens. The Maysles employed this as they followed a group of Bible salesmen in the late 1960s. The film is chock full of amazing and real moments that if we experienced them in our own lives would be dismissed as mundane. However, captured in this frame they vibrate with life and insight. Paul Brennan, the middle aged Irish focus of the documentary, is a thousands times more interesting than most characters a screenwriter can churn out. We see him fighting to make his quotas, trying to sell an product that from our exterior view seems to be an extravagance.

Harlan County, USA (1976, dir. Barbara Kopple)

Another cinema vérité documentary, this one chronicles the battle between striking miners of the Duke Power Company and the brutal strikebreakers brought in to stop them. I was surprised with how riveted I was by this film. The anger on both sides is palpable through out the entire picture. The focus on the strikers side falls a lot on the miners wives, these are strong capable women whose upbringing in the harsh hills of Kentucky have shaped them into formidable fighters. Kopple catches some truly terrifying moments on film, including a nighttime drive-by shooting on the strikers. Though the film takes place in a small town in the hills, throughout we are given information about the work of the unions and how one of the strikers' best hopes is found murdered with his family in their home.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, dir. David Mamet)
Starring Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Pryce

Mamet adapts and directs his own stage play about four real estate salesmen feeling the pressure of quotas and the demands of the management. Shelley Levene (Lemmon) is the focus as the oldest salesman and the one being looked at to get the axed if he can't perform. Baldwin makes a one scene performance that has gone on to be one of his most defining roles. Leads to new properties have come in, leads that are guaranteed to sell, but before the salesmen are allowed access to them they must dump lower end properties. A couple salesmen take it upon themselves to steal the leads from the manager's office and this where things begin to fall apart for them all.

Chop Shop (2007, dir. Ramin Bahrani)
Starring Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales

Set in Queens, New York, the film follows Alejandro (all actors play characters using their real first names), a twelve year old orphan who has set up in the Iron Triangle, a neighborhood full of auto body shops and scrap metal merchants. He spends his days scavenging and hording his money to support he and his older sister. The film is shot in a very loose documentary style with lots of improvisation on the part of its young actors. Because of this openness the picture comes across a feeling more like a slice of life documentary than a work of fiction. Alejandro goes through a complex and meaningful character arc that leaves him in a very different place from where he began and works to highlight the plight of the people who live in poverty their entire lives.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Dressed to Kill

Dressed to Kill (1980)
Starring Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, Keith Gordon

I have said it many times about de Palma already, but the man was obsessed with emulating Hitchcock. Here in his blatant nod to Psycho, we have a film that stays above water simply because of its stylistic flourishes. While much more entertaining and better at keeping my attention than Obsession, it lacks some of the depth of a picture like Sisters or Carrie. And there are moments that trend uncomfortably into homophobic territory as well as scenes that could be interpreted as heavily misogynistic. While I don't think De Palma hates women (they feature heavily in all the features I've seen so far), I do think is highly attuned to the traditional portrayal of women in cinema as constant victims.

The film opens with a heavily "porn-y" shower scene featuring Angie Dickinson as Kate Miller. The heavily erotic scene ends up being a dream sequence and we learn Kate is a housewife who frequents the office of Dr. Robert Elliott (Caine), a psychiatrist attempting to help her through her psycho-sexual hang ups. After a visit which ends in Kate attempting to seduce Elliott, she travels to a local museum where she and a stranger flirt and end up in bed together. It's at his point a catalytic murder occurs that brings a high priced call girl (Allen) and Kate's son (Gordon) into the film. At the same time, Elliott is receiving threatening phone calls from a transsexual patient who is threatening to murder. All of these elements intertwine into a very over the top psycho thriller.

While there is a lot lacking in the structure of the film's story, it can never be said that De Palma is incapable of filming a tightly crafted scene. The pursuit and withdraw flirtation scene in the art museum is a perfect example of how the director can create a scene without a single line of dialogue that tells the a complete story. The scene continues into a discovery Kate makes that sends her running from her lover's apartment and once again contains zero dialogue. The movie is filmed through a sensual haze and has some moments that stand out from others, such a scene late in the film that takes place in a mental asylum. The lighting is a schizophrenic blue that seems to accentuate the twisted nature of what takes place there.

Yet, the film is more a style over substance endeavor. Nancy Allen lacks the skill to make her role sympathetic or interesting. Her line delivery can be truly excruciating at times. But she was sleeping with the director (they were married) at the time so how she got the role was by default. Michael Caine keeps things stoic and nonreactive throughout the film and because that is part of the character its hard to say if this was a poor performance or not. Angie Dickinson is definitely the standout in the picture, and her role consists of very little dialogue. She is a picture of class and is able to provide the perfect amount of information without speaking a word.

Dressed to Kill was certainly entertaining and is viewed best as a campy thriller in the vein of Hitchcock. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if most people guess the film's twist fairly early on. The story is fairly transparent and de Palma does cheat a little in an effort to cover it up.

Next up: Blow Out

Import Fridays - The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others (2006, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
Starring Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme

What if we were able to see Big Brother not as a faceless entity, but as a series of human cogs that make up the machine? And, what if we could see each of those cogs, doing their duty in the name of the state, as an individual human being who possesses empathy and compassion. This is the scenario this Academy Award winning German seeks to explore the humanity of a "Statsi Man", one of the grey men who did the dirty work of the German Democratic Republic so that the authorities could successfully arrest and detain suspected dissidents.

Wiesler (Muhe) is the best the GDR has to offer in terms of surveillance and interrogation. He's a natural pick to monitor the playwright Dreyman and his live in girlfriend/actress Christa-Maria. Dreyman has been associating with a number of dissidents and secretly an East German official covets Christa-Maria and wants to ruin Dreyman. Wiesler's crew wires Dreyman's apartment and begins his ever constant vigil listening to the daily life of the couple. Slowly but surely Wiesler finds himself becoming captivated with Dreyman's joy and sadness. The death of a close writer friend cause Dreyman to become inspired to write an expose on the GDR's efforts to cover up suicide statistics and this puts him in a lot of danger. Wiesler is compromised and must make a choice between his duty to the state and his duty to his fellow man.

Wiesler is comparable to Gene Hackman's portrayal of Harry Caul in the similar wiretapping film The Conversation. Both men are trapped in a world of paranoiac seclusion. The nature of their jobs planted seeds of mistrust and now they live lives of solitude, only feeling safe when they are alone, yet simultaneously feeling empty. Wiesler is glimpsed mostly sitting alone in the attic above Dreyman's apartment with headphones on, transcribing what he hears through his typewriter. He finally breaks when Dreyman receives a phone call telling him his friend has killed himself. Dreyman grieves by playing a piece of music this friend gave him and its inter-cut with images of Wiesler weeping.

The film comes to a dark conclusion but emphasizes its hopeful message through its series of denouements. The film wants to remind us that even in the most oppressive of times and the most tightest chokeholds, that human compassion can never be predicted. No matter how loyal a person has become to an authoritarian body all it takes is a brief moment of human connection to forever change that instrument into a full human being.

Charlie Chaplin Month - The Great Dictator

The Great Dictator (1940)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Reginald Gardiner

The comparison was all because of the toothbrush mustache. That little flourish is what linked Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler at the time. Chaplin was disgusted by Hitler, and the way the American and British governments tried to keep him happy or ignore what he was doing at the time. It was also noted that Hitler was jealous of Chaplin's popularity during a Berlin visit the actor made. To further rub it in, Chaplin wrote, directed and produced The Great Dictator, a send up of the Nazi actions in the build up to World War II.

The Little Tramp is now a Jew living in the fictional nation of Tomainia, fighting against the Americans in World War I. He's clunked on the head and ends up in a military hospital unaware that on the outside dictator Adenoid Hynkel has come to power and is blaming the Jews of his nation for the post-War depression. The Tramp is eventually released from the hospital and is disheartend by the world he discovers on the outside. He eventually falls in love with fellow resident of the ghetto, Hannah and is spared execution by a Tomainian whose life he saved in the War. All along the way the film bounces back and forth with the Hitler parody of Hynkel, leading up to a Prince and the Pauper-esque role reversal.

This was probably the least funny of all Chaplin's films I have seen, and most definitely the longest, hitting the two hour mark. I can see the challenge Chaplin would have making this picture, because he wants to make a comedy but he also wants to skewer Hitler and convey some sense of the pain being inflicted on the Jewish people. Later Chaplin admitted if he had known the extent of the treatment of the Jews and in particular the Holocaust he would have never made this film. Interestingly, the Jewish community was very welcoming to the film and its portrayal of their people despite Chaplin's injection of comedy into the proceedings. The jokes in the film never create the sense of hilarity of early works because they typically involve the Little Tramp being brutalized by Tomainan storm troopers.

The film has a lot of heart and that hurts its comedy in comparison to the earlier films. The chief redeeming moment is one where Chaplin is playing the Tramp and completely drops the persona and it is Chaplin speaking. He conveys his concerns with the direction of humanity and reaffirms his belief that we are capable of so much more. While definitely harmful to the picture as a film, it is a very strong and well thought out political statement.

Newbie Wednesday - Kick Ass

Kick Ass (2010, dir. Matthew Vaughn)
Starring Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong

There's a sort of geek wish deep down in those that read comics that somehow, someway they could don a cape and cowl and fight the criminal element of this world. The superhero idea goes all to the mythological heroes and into figures like King Arthur and Robin Hood to the Three Musketeers and the pulp mystery men and finally into comics. So our protagonist proposes a very legitimate question early on "How come no one has ever tried to be superhero?" It's obvious that there are plenty of crazy people in this world and it comes as no surprise that there actually *are* people who have tried this. You can check them out at the World Superhero Registry. So how does the hero of our film try to tackle the nuances of masked crime fighting?

Dave is a high school student who is invisible to the opposite sex, but very visible to the bullies and street thugs of his city. After being robbed one to many times, Dave purchases a few essential components and becomes the mystery man known as "Kick Ass". Kick Ass is immediately sent to the emergency room after his first battle and has steel rods and plates put in him that ironically grant him a certain level of invulnerability. And this is where the film completely goes off the tracks of its premise "What if superheroes were real?" and decides to be no more different than any other comic book flick. The duo of Big Daddy and Hit Girl are introduced, a father-daughter team of armed to the teeth avengers as well as The Red Mist, the son of a local mafia don who suckers his pop into stocking him up. The film goes through a lot of tonal changes and shifts, finally settling into a fairly predictable final battle sequence.

The movie is only shades different than Superhero Movie, a descendant of the Scary Movie parody genre. Whereas that film knew it was a comedy and behaved thusly, Kick Ass seems to want to be aloof and post-modernly ironic, yet still be a "bad ass" super hero movie. I'm not willing to go as far as Roger Ebert in his review, calling the film "morally reprehensible". After watching the 2006 remake of Hills Have Eyes I think it could serve as a contender for that. I didn't have a problem with the concept of this young girl, trained to be a super soldier by her father, slaughter masses of mob men on screen.

My problem with the film came from a couple elements that diverged from the comics which actually lent it real world credence. If you know me well, you know that I am not one of those comic book geeks who natters on about minutiae that differs slightly from the source material. I'm a geek who can be reasonable about conceits that have to be made in the process of adaptation. However, the first divergence from the original mini-series that irked me was when Dave reveals he is not truly gay to his love interest, she has mistaken him as such for the majority of the film. In the film, she is unnaturally forgiving and its implied the two have sex, after which they are a couple. In the comic book, she is pissed and eventually has her new boyfriend beat Dave up. That would be the actual real world way the story would play out. So while the film wants to be a wry commentary on the implausibility of superheroes in the real world, through this change it actually invalidated its premise to me.

The second divergence colors the audience's entire perceptions of a character in a disturbing manner. In the film, Big Daddy was a police officer whose career was ruined by the mob, sending him to prison, while his wife went broke and died on the table giving birth to Hit Girl. Once out of prison, Big Daddy began training Hit Girl. In the comics, Big Daddy raised Hit Girl with this story. In reality, he was a no body, an accountant who had a mid-life crisis and kidnapped his daughter to create this more exciting existence. Once again, the film compromises its original intent for the sake of "superhero-ing" it up. I found the film to be enjoyable, but nothing I would watch again. Because it is too scared to make its characters truly real and give then the downbeat ending that naturally would happen it ultimately fails and ends up being yet another generic comic book movie.

Wild Card Tuesday - The Last Days of Disco

The Last Days of Disco (1998, dir. Whit Stillman)
Starring Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Robert Sean Leonard, Mackenzie Astin, Chris Eigeman, Tara Subkoff, Matt Keeslar, Jennifer Beals

If watching the burgeoning yuppies of early 1980s Manhattan sitting around vapidly waxing philosophic about the inanities of their lives doesn't sound appealing to you then you may want to skip this film. Despite its title its not at all about disco really. Its about a generation of people who came of age in the 1970s and are focused on self-gratification and the hierarchies and status related to social life in New York. Another of way of looking at it, and how director Whit Stillman was thinking when he made the film, is that this is contemporary take on the comedy of manners genre.


The protagonists of the film are Alice (Sevigny), a recent college grad and an assistant publishing editor and Des (Eigeman), the employee of a disco club which bears a more than passing resemblance to Studio 54. Alice balances a tenuous friendship with snarky roommate Charlotte (Beckinsale) and ending up in awkward social situations with immature men. One of these men is a manic-depressive FBI agent (Keeslar) who becomes a part of a sting on Des' nightclub which has been funneling cash to a Swiss bank account and failing to report millions the IRS. The characters meander through the film, talking in a completely artificial manner and nothing really seems to happen.

It's apparent that Stillman's work (Metropolitan, Barcelona) had a profound impact on the filmmaking of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Stillman's characters aren't so much people as they are roughly painted facsimiles of humans who carry on in conversations peppered with Tarantino-esque pop culture references. One character explains that the reason why so many of his own generation are environmentalists is because of the 1958 re-release of Bambi in theaters. Another conversation involves how Lady and the Tramp teaches women to pursue the bad boy and is at fault for a multitude of bad relationships in their generation.

The characters are dull as hell though. They barely even qualify as characters, as Stillman loves introducing a new and even quirkier one as the film progresses. Yet we get nothing past their surface eccentricities and Stillman struggles to manage any sense of a narrative. He tries to create a partial drama with the illegal business practices of the nightclub but even when the arrests go down all parties involved seem aloof and uninterested. The first hour of the film has potential but the second goes off the rails and becomes a chore to wade through. Much like the decade it highlights the start of, its incredibly shallow with nothing to really say.

DocuMondays - Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth (2008, dir. Erik Nelson)
Featuring Harlan Ellison, Robin Williams, Neil Gaiman, Peter David, Ronald D. Moore

One of the first things you learn about Ellison in this documentary is that once he was so pissed with a television executive that he boxed up a dead groundhog and mailed it to the man. Ellison made sure that he paid the cheapest postage possibly so that it would take upwards of a week to reach the man and be sufficiently bloated and rotting. This is tempered with his friend Neil Gaiman saying that Ellison's entire life's work is one large piece of performance art. That it is not about his 1000+ short stories or numerous award-winning teleplays, but its about the cultivation of this quick-witted curmudgeonly persona.

For those of you not in the know, Harlan Ellison is an acclaimed author of literature both of the science fiction genre and not. He's actually famous for calling the "sci-fi" abbreviation a "hideous neologism" that "sounds like crickets fucking". Needless to say, he is a very opinionated man and any attempt to make a documentary about him is going to be caught up in his fiery and impassioned rantful nature. Ellison was responsible for the classic "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of the original Star Trek, "Demon With a Glass Hand" episode of The Outer Limits (which he sued James Cameron for ripping off to make The Terminator), and for much script work on Babylon 5.

The film focuses on exploring the history and personal philosophy of Ellison. It is near impossible to get the experience of prose across on screen, though the film attempts it by having Ellison recite a few passages from his more famous work against the backdrop of incredibly shitty lava lamp-esque green screen backgrounds. The more interesting pieces are of Ellison expounding on his personal beliefs. He his passionate about writers not being treated like second class citizens by the studios. Ellison tells of how he received a call from woman who told him that on an upcoming Babylon 5 DVD they were wanting to make an extending interview with him a special feature and he agreed, with the stipulation that he receive a paycheck. She replied that everyone else just said yes and did it for free, resulting in a verbal lashing from Ellison about how she and the others in the business side of things wouldn't work for a second if they weren't getting paid.

The documentary suffers due to the absence of any counter to Ellison. He is infamous for public spats and lawsuits and it would have given a interesting balance to the film to have a group of people who disliked the man. Instead all we get is fawning praise and admiration from people who grew up reading his work. Ellison's writing is wonderful, and he is one of the best writers of the late 20th century. The film just hurts from not having those voices to temper Ellison's oft loud and bombastic one.

Hypothetical Film Festival #12 - 80s Comedies for Grown-Ups

A major part of 1980s cinema were high school comedies. From Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Ferris Bueller, teens were a prominent element of the successful comedy films. However, there are a lot of comedies, often overlooked, from the 1980s that stand as some of the best ever made. This film festival is devoted those movies:

All of Me (1984, dir. Carl Reiner)
Starring Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Victoria Tennant

Roger Cobb (Martin) is a successful lawyer who is called in to help with the final arrangements of the eccentric, dying heiress Edwina (Tomlin). Through a mystic mix-up Edwina's dying soul ends up taking over the right side of Roger's body. The rest of the film hinges on Martin's excellent physical comedy chops. While Tomlin provides the voice in Roger's head, there are moments where Martin must switch back and forth between Edwina and Roger in an argument, and then have them physically fight. All of this takes place with just Martin on screen. It was also the fourth teaming of Martin and director Carl Reiner, and the two work wonderfully together.

Lost in America (1985, dir. Albert Brooks)
Starring Albert Brooks, Julie Hagerty

In my opinion, one of the best comedies ever made! Brooks doesn't always succeed with his very specific style of humor, but all the elements come together here. David Howard (Brooks) has crunched the numbers and found that he and his wife Linda (Hagerty) can quit their jobs, buy an RV, and travel the country, with plenty of money to start them up where ever they decide to settle. However, one night in a casino and things go downhill. Brooks is absolutely hysterical in this film, but Hagerty matches him as well. Julie Hagerty has always been one of the most overlooked female comedy talents and this film showcases why is right up there at the top.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987, dir. John Hughes)
Starring Steve Martin, John Candy

John Hughes, most well known for his high school comedies, employed the talents of John Candy in many of his late 80s films. This picture, set around Thanksgiving, follows Neal Page (Martin) and Del Griffith (Candy) as two business whose fates become entangled as they try to make their way home for the holiday. The conceptual nature of the humor isn't revolutionary, its basically the Odd Couple formula, but its the chops of its leads that make it good. This is also the first film I can recall where we are introduced to the curmudgeonly Martin persona. Typically he played the goofball, but here we get the easily irritated character to play off of Candy's happy go lucky everyman.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988, dir. Frank Oz)
Starring Michael Caine, Steve Martin, Glenne Headly

Lawrence Jamieson (Caine) is a con man who has full control of his territory, the French Riviera. That is until brash and crude American Freddie Benson (Martin) shows up in town. At first, Lawrence tries to scare him out of town, then volunteers to teach him what he knows. They partner for awhile till an incredibly wealthy mark hits the scene and then its every man for himself. Martin definitely gets the bigger comedy bits in the film, but don't underestimate Caine. He is forced to be more subtle, but delivers huge laughs of his own. Frank Oz, is a director with major ups and downs in his career but this is definitely the high point of all his work. The comedy feels classy, yet not pretentious. And I've always been surprised that no one thought to team Caine and Martin together in at least one more picture after this.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988, dir. Charles Crichton)
Starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin

The greatest thing this film did was was introduce us to the comedy power of Kevin Kline. Kline plays Otto, a parody of American arrogance who is helping mob moll Wanda (Curtis) plot against her criminal boyfriend, abscond with the cash he stole, and flee the UK. Her boyfriend's attorney, Archie Leach (Cleese) proves to be a nuisance and she attempts to seduce him. There's also Michael Palin as chronic stutterer Ken Pile, a man who loves his exotic fish more than life itself. All of these characters mingle in a film that reaches the thresholds of great farce. The script was penned by Cleese and works on the same level of intelligence as Monty Python, yet grounds itself in a real world that is slightly off. The highlight is Kline though, who typifies the way Americans come off to their British cousins.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Obsession

Obsession (1976)
Starring Cliff Robertson, Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow

Throughout his early career, de Palma was either referred to as a director who made homages to Hitchcock, or was blatantly ripping the master director of thrillers off. And its a very fine line de Palma walks, particularly in this melodrama that is an obvious reference to both Rebecca and Vertigo. In fact, Hitchcock himself was reportedly furious that de Palma's Obsession was so incredibly close to Rebecca. And its interesting to note that Hitch's trademark composer, Bernard Herrmann, once again composes the score to a de Palma thriller. So how does this furiously melodramatic Hitchcock knock-off stack up?

The story opens in New Orleans in 1959, where land developer Michael Courtland's wife and daughter are kidnapped and held for ransom. Courtland's business partner, Robert Lasalle helps him raise the money, but at the last minute the police decide to drop a phony suitcase with a homing device in it. The kidnappers find out they have been duped and escape their hideout with police in pursuit. Courtland watches from the back of the lead detective's car as the vehicle carrying his wife and daughter explodes in a ball of flame. Jump to 17 years later, and Courtland is still haunted by this incident. He takes a trip to Italy where, while touring a cathedral, he happens upon a woman who is the spitting image of his late wife. A romance begins, but Courtland's intentions sink further and further into reshaping this new woman into a facsimile of his wife.

The soundtrack to this film never lets up. From the opening title to the closing credits, the music is not present maybe three times, and those are only for a minute or two. The rest of the film is filled with the rise cry of despair from a choir or the operatic dissonance of a church organ. The music compliments the plot of the film which is an over the top, melodramatic gothic tragedy. At points the melodrama can become so overblown its laughable and the actors play along with this tone. John Lithgow in particular is some times comical with Foghorn Leghorn-esque take on a New Orleans businessman.

Courtland's wife, Elizabeth feels like a non-character. She appears on screen for all of 6 minutes and never speaks and so it was hard for me to buy into Courtland's undying love for her. Though, this could be an intentional choice, by not making her an actual character it passes judgment on Courtland. At one point in the film, Sandra, the new wife discovers Elizabeth's journal and learns that her predecessor saw Courtland as uninterested in his family, and more concerned with his land developments. The final brutal twist of the film operates on two levels, as well, and recalled the 2006 South Korean mind twister of a film Oldboy. Courtland ends up in an embrace that can be read as a beautiful denouement or as a disgusting and bizarre finale.

Import Fridays - Lilya-4-Ever

Lilya-4-Ever (2002, dir. Lukas Moodysson)
Starring Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Pavel Ponomaryov

A young girl, face swollen with bruises, cut across her lip, runs through the overcast streets of an anonymous European city. The streets are littered with refuse; broken bottles, crumpled and empty chip bags. She stops on an overpass and stares down at the cars zooming by below. This is how director Lukas Moodysson introduces us to Lilya, an 16 year old Estonian girl trying to overcome a hopeless existence she was born into and unlikely to get out of. Moodysson is grabbing the audience by the scruff of the neck and forcing them to watch this very real tragedy unfolding before their eyes.

Lilya's mother and stepfather are leaving Estonia, but promise they will send for her once they are settled there. As soon as they leave, Lilya's aunt claims the girl must leave the flat she shared with her parents for a smaller, more affordable apartment. She ends up in a rundown tenement and befriends Volodya, a boy thrown out of his house by his parents. Lilya is tempted into prostitution as her money and hopes dwindle down. Eventually, she meets Andrei, a man who shows genuine interest in her and gives her hope of leaving this place where she has no chance to better herself.

The film feels completely honest in its characters and the universe it builds around them. Lilya feels painfully real and could be one of millions of teenagers in any country across the globe living in abject poverty. The film doesn't leave anyone out as responsible for the situation either. The entire system in place to protect children like Lilya is a farce. Teachers ridicule her intelligence so its no surprise she has no interest in finishing school. Her parents abandon her and her only relative, her aunt, dumps her on her own with no money or food. Every adult she comes in contact with wants to use her for sex or abandon her. Its no surprise that she resorts to prostitution as a means to survive. What is interesting is how her mother and her aunt are also sympathetic in their own ways. The women in this culture are fighting to survive, they may have to hurt another in the process, but they have been conditioned to fight tooth and nail. Even Lilya ends up committing the same betrayal when she has an opportunity to leave Eastern Europe.

Lilya-4-Ever could just as easily be remade in the United States and feature the oft vilified Hispanic population. Immigrants are people looking for hope that their homeland couldn't provide. They fall into crime many times because they are reaching out for anything to hold onto so they don't sink further. What is most touching about the film are the dream sequences Lilya has in the days where life has gotten the worst. She dreams of having wings, righting the wrongs she made in her past, fixing her life so none of this has happened. That painful regret is what tears at you the most in the end, and breaks your heart to see a life of such potential destroyed.

Charlie Chaplin Month - The Other Films

While I am giving in-depth reviews to the Chaplin films I haven't seen, I would be wrong in leaving out films of his I have seen previously, especially because they are some of his best work.

The Gold Rush (1925)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Mack Swain, Georgia Hale

Made after the box office failure that was A Woman of Paris, Rush has Chaplin conjuring up some of his most iconic comedy moments. The dancing rolls bit, which has been referenced continuously in pop culture since. At one point starving miner imagines Chaplin transforming into a human sized turkey. We also have Chaplin boiling and eating a shoe. Chaplin originally intended to shoot the film on location in Alaska but nature had other plans. There is one on location shot in the film and its a gorgeous one. The rest was filmed on Chaplin's United Artists sound stages. If you are looking to make a list of must see films for historical significance, this is a must for that list.

City Lights (1931)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Meyers

This is my personal favorite Chaplin picture and I think its one of the best romantic comedies ever made. The Little Tramp befriends a blind flower girl whom mistakes him for a millionaire. The Tramp promises he will raise enough money for the young woman to have a costly procedure. To do so he signs up for a boxing tournament and the crux of the comedic action revolves around that. The film features one of the best scenes in cinema at its climax when the young woman, now sighted, learns the truth about the Little Tramp. I actually brought a girl to tears in college simply by describing in detail this scene. A beautiful film with a big heart.

Modern Times (1936)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard

This is the last major American film to make uses of silent movie title cards (ignoring silent film parodies that would come after). Chaplin billed this as his first "talkie" but plays with audience expectations while making a point. The only voices heard come from the abstract machinery of the factory the Little Tramp works in. It was all part of Chaplin's ideas about how technology was being used improperly and, instead of empowering mankind, it was being used to take their humanity away. Chaplin also wrote the film's ending song "Smile", which has become a standard since ("Smile though your heart is aching Smile even though its breaking").

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Mady Correll

This was a drastic departure for Chaplin. There was no Little Tramp present here. Instead, he plays recently fired banker Henri Verdoux. Struggling to support his family, he decided to begin marrying rich women, murdering them, and absconding with their money. Chaplin plays the picture as a pitch black comedy and had a lot of difficulty with the Production Code on this one. The point behind the picture came from the idea that if a man murders a few people for money he is a criminal, however if he mass murders as in a war he is a hero. The film proved that Chaplin had little concern for box office returns, and really want to make films that were of interest to him.

Charlie Chaplin Month - The Circus

The Circus (1928, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Al Ernest Garcia, Harry Crocker

This was to be the last true silent film made by Chaplin. The era of the Talkie had begun and audiences were no longer content to have their actors speechless. Chaplin's following films would have elements of silent pictures in them and could easily be categorized that way, but make use of sound. Chaplin leaves the silent era with a bang, though. He pulls out all the stops, referencing the theater acts of his youth and adding the trademark Chaplin twist to them.

The Little Tramp happens upon a circus and become charmed with the ringmaster's horse-riding daughter. The ringmaster sees potential in the Tramp as a clown in his show so he hires him one. The Tramp observed the ringmaster cruelly beating his daughter and sneaks her food when he can. Eventually, a handsome tightrope walker joins the circus and woos the daughter away. The Tramp begins to lose his edge as the hit of the circus and through a series of zany circumstances ends up having to step in for the tightrope walked in the film's climactic sequence.

I laughed harder at this than I have most contemporary comedies. It's not the slapstick, its the way Chaplin's Tramp adds little flourishes of personality. The most symbolic sequence in the film is when the ringmaster has his troupe of clowns perform classic Vaudeville and dance hall comedic routines. The humor doesn't come from the routines, but in how the Tramp bungles them up when it is his turn to perform. Chaplin understands that in the moments where another comedian would ham it up the Tramp will get the bigger laugh by playing dumb. What is also wonderful about the film is the feisty personality of the Tramp. He can be very feminine in his behavior, particularly when he attempts to woo the ringmaster's daughter. Its very interesting that Chaplin takes the traditionally female role when courting, coyly casting his gaze downward, batting his eye lashes, and literally prancing. Juxtapose this against moments when the Tramp has had enough of his poor treatment from the ringmaster and he delivers comical blows.

While The Circus is one of the purest Chaplin comedies I've ever seen, it is not without its moments of  typical Chaplin poignancy. The final scene of the film, as the Tramp sits alone in a field that the circus wagons once occupied, standing, then walking into the dusklight is very beautiful. The background of the film is marred with difficulty. Sets were rained out or burnt down. Footage was scratched beyond usage. And Chaplin was dealing with a messy public divorce and an IRS lawsuit. None of this is visible on the screen though, showing Chaplin was the consummate professional.

Newbie Wednesday - Clash of the Titans (2010)

Clash of the Titans (2010, dir. Louis Leterrier)
Starring Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Artherton, Jason Flemyng

When I was 8 years old I went through the entire Webster's Dictionary so I could catalog the Greek gods and monsters listed therein. Afterwards, I got the idea the library might have books on these things, and from there I devoured the stories of Greek mythology. Once, while visiting Nashville's local to scale replica of the Parthenon around the age of 10, I began telling my mom and visiting aunt whom all the figures in the statues and carvings were. An man touring the structure began following and listening and remarked to my mom "Your son knows a lot!" I tell you these things to show that I am onboard when I hear about films based around Greek myths. How does director Louis Leterrier's (The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk) remake of the 1981 fantasy film stack up?

Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal woman has his adoptive family taken from him when they are bystanders to an vengeful act of the gods. The hero ends up in Argos, where its citizens are rebelling against the Olympian Pantheon and Zeus has decided either they all die or they sacrifice the princess to his beast, the Kraken. Perseus and a rag tag group of Argosian soldiers head out into the wilderness to figure out if there is a way to defeat the unstoppable beast. Along the way they battle giant scorpions, blind witches, a beast who bleeds acid, and finally the classic Medusa. Oh yes, there's flying horses, too.

Why does Hollywood insist on continuing to cast Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation, Avatar) in films? The man is an uncharismatic bore. He has two acting settings: "grunt" and "brooding". It can be said that the action films of the 1980s and 1990s were inane, but at least the leads were charismatic. Think about Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone, etc. They all had charming personalities that made us root for them. With Worthington you root for him out of default, he's the protagonist on the screen so you hope he wins because that's what mainstream cinema has taught you. I also was flabbergasted at the actors cast as gods. Why cast Danny Huston as Poseidon if you give him one line? Just cast an generic actor for the role! And Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, Skins) as Eusebios, what a waste of great talent. And he's a million times more charismatic than Worthington!

The plot is a mix of the original film, mixed with attempts to "bad ass" it up. It became apparent to me that the screenwriters and art directors seemed to want to make a God of War film rather than a remake of the 1981 Clash of the Titans. Every encounter feels like a stage in a video game, complete with boss battles. I can forgive discrepancies between the original myths and the film (Example: Pegasus is the name of one specific winged horse, in pop culture we refers to the species as Pegasi now), I'm not one of those fanboys who harumphs when they change a detail. I understand the need to create a fluid, organic script. However, there are some pretty glaringly dumb subplots in the film that were attempts to blend elements of the original picture. I also rolled my eyes at their attempt to be clever by giving Bubo the Mechanical Owl from the original film a cameo. Bubo has more charisma than Worthington, people!

At the end of the day, this is yet another dull CG-dependent action flick. Leterrier's previous films have left me bored and with this one I was literally falling asleep halfway through. His upcoming Captain America movie has my expectations about as low as they could get. But, if you are hoping to cleanse your palette for Greek myth based flicks, Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) has one coming out November 11th, 2011 titled Immortals. Hoping he shows Leterrier how it is done.

Wild Card Tuesday - Dead Silence

Dead Silence (2007, dir. James Wan)
Starring Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valetta, Donnie Wahlberg

There is just something frightening about facsimiles of humans (i.e. dolls, dummies, mannequins). They have been fodder for horror since the 1920s when both Lon Chaney and Erich von Stroheim played ventriloquists using their wooden cohorts for nefarious purposes. This film seeks to find itself amongst the best of this style of horror and is helmed by the creative team behind the Saw franchise. It begins with a promising opening sequence that evokes a strong atmosphere, but eventually falls into the same chasms contemporary horror can't seem to help but seek out. A lot style and technique over any substance.

Jamie receives a package at his apartment with a ventriloquist's dummy inside. He leaves the house to pick up some food and while he is gone the dummy appears to murder his wife, taking her tongue. The police of course suspect Jamie is behind it and a detective is assigned to follow Jamie. Our protagonist returns to his hometown of Raven's Fair, which happens to have a ventriloquist-related curse behind it. It seems a Depression era performer named Mary Shaw was murdering children and the townspeople assembled a mob who killed her and cut her tongue out. Now her ghost, through the dummies is killing off the members of Jamie's family as revenge.

James Wan is not a bad cinematographer. Using the best cameras available today and tight editing he generates the perfect amount of atmosphere. The set design is top notch and I especially liked the set piece of he Guignol Theater set in the face of a cliff, alongside a lake. Even the dummies presented throughout the film are very effective. Everything came off with the tone of a great, over the top William Castle horror flick. However, the rest of the film is horrendously terrible.

Wan falls back on the same cliche scares again and again. If you have watched even a minimal amount of horror films in the last decade you could easily write the rest of the script after the first 20 minutes of the picture. There seemed to be a plethora of evil things underneath sheets and dummies menacingly turning their eyes to stare at a potential victim. The attempt to add quirks to characters extends no further than having Donnie Wahlberg's character act like an obsessive facial hair trimmer. And the final "shocking" reveal of the picture has so many plotholes you can see straight through it. The movie ends up being yet another contemporary horror film to be thrown into the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.

DocuMondays - Kurt and Courtney

Kurt and Courtney (1998, dir. Nick Broomfield)
Featuring Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, and a cast of thousands...of junkies

I was thirteen when Kurt Cobain killed himself, and honestly the front man for Nirvana existed on my periphery. The whole grunge scene has never been a music genre I enjoyed, I'm more of a 90s BritPop fan (Oasis, Blur, The Verve). But I can understand why the movement was so big, as it was a big deviation from the musical norms of the time. This docu, by Brit filmmaker Broomfield seeks to stir up some of the conspiracy theories surrounding Cobain's death and in the end isn't really about Kurt or Courtney, but about famewhoredom.



What stands out most about the film is the shoddiness. Made on the cheap, the documentary is narrated by Broomfield who doesn't do much to play the neutral observer, but pretty much interjects his personal opinions throughout. That doesn't make the film any less fascinating though, especially with its parade of "friends" of the Cobains. In particular, one young woman who takes Broomfield to a club where Kurt performed during his early days, and whom talks with expertise about seeing the Cobain couple shoot heroin. She promises Broomfield photographic evidence, and when he returns to her apartment later she is anxious and befuddled and has a million excuses as to why she hasn't been able to provide the photos. The woman is incredibly reminiscent of how Courtney Love is described throughout the documentary.

Broomfield pursues some wild leads, including the claim by S&M band member El Duce that Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt and "make it look like a suicide". A less reliable source you couldn't ask for. There's Courtney's former private investigator who now has "scientific" evidence that the amount of heroin in Kurt's blood made it impossible for him to handle the shotgun. However, Broomfield provides actual scientific evidence proving that it is possible, to which the investigator simply ignores. The most awful of Broomfield's interviewees is Courtney's father, a man writing and publishing books condemning his daughter for the murder of Kurt in what he explains as a way to keep in touch with his daughter.

Broomfield reasonably comes to the conclusion in the film's epilogue that Kurt most likely did commit suicide and that Courtney didn't pay anyone to kill him. What the documentary revealed to me was that at the end of the day both people came from incredibly messed up homes where a strong parental presence was absent. Kurt seems like a very personable, intelligent guy in some of the interview archival footage, and Courtney seems like a sad woman who made a habit of latching onto local musicians in the hope of grooming them into the next Sid Vicious, as a compliment to her Nancy Spungeon. The person you feel the saddest for is poor Frances, their daughter, whose childhood couldn't have been an easy one.

Kurt and Courtney is currently available to view on Hulu.com

Hypothetical Film Festival #11 - Ernest Saves the Film Festival

Yes, it's a film festival dedicated to one of the greatest thespians of the late 20th century: Mr. Jim Varney aka Ernest P. Worrell. KnowhutImean?

Ernest Goes to Camp (1987, dir. John R. Cherry III)
Starring Jim Varney, John Vernon, Iron Eyes Cody, Gailard Sartain

The Ernest character got his start as a pitchman for various local businesses in the Middle Tennessee and Kentucky areas. Eventually there were a series of straight to video skit compilation films that made way for this first theatrical endeavor. Ernest is a camp handyman, who wants to be a counselor. He gets his chance with a group of juvenile delinquents which leads to a series of slapstick sight gags. Meanwhile, an evil mining corporation wants to buy and shut down the camp to get to a rich vein of the fictional petrocite underneath it. Ernest rallies the juvies together for a big showdown with the corporate head, where our hero displays the Native American combat skills he learned along the way. A great start to the Ernest franchise.

Ernest Saves Christmas (1988, dir. John R. Cherry III)
Starring Jim Varney, Gailard Sartain, Billy Byrge, Douglas Seale, Oliver Clark

Arguably the high point of the entire Ernest franchise. In the same way The Godfather, Part II outshines its predecessor, so too does the first Ernest sequel trump the original. A jack of all trades, Ernest is now a cabbie working in Orlando, Florida who happens to pick up an old man from the airport claiming to be Santa Claus. It appears Santa is in town to name local children's television host Joe Curruthers as his replacement. Joe of course doesn't believe and is duped into starring in a Xmas themed film which betrays his ethics as a role model for children. The film actually has a very interesting meta-commentary on what Hollywood producers try to do to children's films like this one, by interjecting foul language or gory violence to appeal to older audiences. The one thing about the Ernest films is they never sold out on their trademark live action Looney Toons feel.

Ernest Goes To Jail (1990, dir. John R. Cherry III)
Starring Jim Varney, Gailard Sartain, Billy Byrge

This is my personal favorite out of all the Ernest films. Here our protagonist works as a bank janitor who is a double for death row inmate Felix Nash (also played by Varney). Ernest ends up in prison with Nash on the outside with plans to rob the bank. Two things makes this film phenomenal: Gailard Sartain and Billy Byrge as Chuck and Bobby, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Ernest's doofy Hamlet, and Ernest gaining magnetic superpowers during the jailbreak sequence. The Ernest franchise amped up the similarities to Pee Wee Herman in this film as well, with Ernest owning a home filled with Rube Goldberg-like devices.

Ernest Scared Stupid (1991, dir. John R. Cherry III)
Starring Jim Varney, Eartha Kitt, Billy Byrge

Meant to be a Halloween companion piece, Scared Stupid was shot in the Nashville, Tennessee like all the previous films (except for Saves Christmas). Ernest is a garbageman tasked with cleaning up the land owned by a strange old woman. Through a series of mishaps, Ernest releases a group of trolls that have cursed the land and finds out the old lady is a sorceress. The film's plot gets a lot more complicated than it deserves to be and makes it one of the weaker entries in the Greater Ernest Oeuvre. It is also hurt by the absence of Gailard Sartain as Chuck, yet keeps Bobby and gives him a new partner. They needn't have bothered. The series goes downhill from here...

Slam Dunk Ernest (1995, dir. John R. Cherry III)
Starring Jim Varney, Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Two films were released before this one (Rides Again, Goes To School) and they were lackluster. This picture isn't great compared to the first few films but was one of the last highlights in a dying franchise. Ernest is laundry worker, employed by the Charlotte Hornets, who dreams of becoming a pro-basketball player. He's visited by an angel (Jabbar) who gives him magic shoes that make Ernest a phenom. Of course Ernest dominates with the shoes, realizes the importance of teamwork and ends up scoring without the magic shoes. Hoorah! This was to be followed by the woefully racist Ernest Goes to Africa and the final Ernest in the Army.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Sisters

Sisters (1973)
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, William Finley

Sisters is director De Palma standing up and yelling, "I love Hitchcock!". He got Bernard Hermann, Hitch's composer and most famous for the the slashing string crescendo of Psycho, he gives us murder enigmatically glimpsed from an apartment window, he gives us crazy camera tricks such as split screen wherein figures meet between both views, and many more flourishes that express his admiration for the great suspense director that Hitchcock was. And this film is as disturbing, if not more than Hitch at his most macabre.

The film uses a Hitchcock bait and switch technique of making us believe one character is our protagonist only to kill them off about 20-30 mins into the film. The focus of the story is Dominique (Kidder), a French-Canadian model who is plagued by a possessive ex-husband. Her current date, Phillip, a gentleman she met while working on a game show, escorts her home and helps her ditch the ex-husband. Phillip spends the night and goes out to pick up some medication for Dominique. It's at this point the film goes into psycho overdrive and it is so much damn fun. A neighbor, reporter Grace Collier sees a murder take place through her window and into Dominique's. The police show up and there's no blood or body.

What makes the picture so much fun is how unashamedly de Palma is referencing Hitchcock's work. A murder clean up scene is straight out of the overlooked Hitchcock picture Rope and the way the director plays the idea can't help but get your adrenaline going. Jennifer Salt as Grace plays the traditional Hitchcock style protagonist perfectly. She is determined and focused, despite the skepticism of others around her. She even gets a Grace Kelly (a la Rear Window) in the form of Charles Durning. Durning plays a P.I. hired by her editor to help gather facts for her story.

Alongside all the blatant Hitchcock imagery, there's some interesting subtext about women and their subjugation. Both Danielle and Grace are victims of being forced into a particular societal role. Danielle's is much more external, while Grace's is a psychological one. Having that subtext in mind makes Grace's final scene in the film even more chilling, as it appears she has been defeated. The film ends in a strangely ambiguous way, referencing its opening game show sequence titled "Peeping Tom", a nod to both the Michael Powell film and the act of voyeurism in general. The finale features a character watching, and waiting, with the solution to our mystery hanging up in the air with it.