All the Movies That's Fit to Print!

Movies: Side Effects, Weekend, Evil Dead


Yo! I've been ignoring this blog for a while and it's time to catch up.


Side Effects

Forgive me if I can't recall all the details of this film since it's been about two months since I've seen it. Supposedly, this is Steven Soderbergh's final film (other than his Liberace biopic for HBO). It's not a bad movie, but it's not really that amazing either. While ostensibly about the negative side effects of anti-depressants, including sleep-walking, Side Effects has more twists than a Chubby Checker single. Some of these twists are creepy and ingenious, and others are, eh, a bit overkill.

It all starts when Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara, of Dragon Tattoo fame), goes to the minimum security prison to pick up her white collar criminal husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), who has just finished serving four years for insider trading. Emily, who has a history of depression, begins to sink back into a funk as she helps her husband adjust to life outside the pen.

When Zoloft doesn't work for Emily, her psychiatrist (Jude Law, in a very strong performance) recommends a new drug, Ablixa (cleverly mimicking the ads for the real life drug Abilify), and that's when the shit hits the fan.

Side Effects clever because you're primed to think that it's a film that exploits the love/hate relationship our society has with medication: we're Americans, so we're loathe to admit we need help, especially mental help. But everyone and their brother seems to be on something--and some people don't think twice about offering a Valium or Adderall to a friend in need. However, Side Effects veers off the path of hand-wringing "social message" movie and into bat-shit crazy town pretty quickly.

3.5 out of 5 stars


Weekend

We were going to watch this film in my queer cinema class, but it got bumped out due to lack of space in the schedule. I went ahead and watched it on my own and I'm glad I did. It made me cry.

Weekend is like a more elegant, gay mumblecore movie. Nothing much happens, but it captures some of the intricacies of life and emotion really well. Two British men, Russell and Glen, meet at a gay bar. Russell takes Glen back to his place and they spend the night. What should have been a one-night stand turns into a deeper connection when the two men decide to hang out again that evening. And then Glen reveals that he's moving to America (Portland, actually!)...for two years.

Weekend is both sad and comforting. It's a familiar situation: you meet someone and connect really well, but they're on vacation, or they're moving soon, or they want to date someone else, or they just fade away. I tend to get very interested in people I meet and I feel sad if I don't get to fully know them well. But as someone who has moved a number of times throughout my life, I am aware than many relationships are temporary and few last for a lifetime. It's not about maintaining every friendship or romance you've ever experienced--it's about learning from the people you've met throughout your life. It's about the journey, you guys!! *sniff*

When Russell meets up with Glen at the train station (which will presumably take him to the airport, since you can't take a train from England to America...), it doesn't feel cliche at all. It feels heartbreaking and hopeful. Glen gives Russell a gift and when he opens it, man, my heart exploded.

Weekend isn't really a queer film--not to me anyway--although Glen and Russell discuss coming out and being gay. It's just a movie about two people who form a brief, yet intense connection...and then move on.

4.5 out of 5 stars


Evil Dead

This "remake" of the original Sam Raimi film is a pretty cut and dried horror movie. 5 friends meet in a dilapidated cabin in the woods at the request of Mia, a recovering heroin addict who wants to use the weekend to kick the habit. She's joined by her brother, her brother's girlfriend, and two college friends. When the friends discover rotting cat corpses and a book bound in human skin in the basement, they decide that the best course of action is to STAY IN THE CABIN, thus securing their fate for being stupid.

The blatant stupidity continues as the bookish friend begins to read from the human-skin book and inadvertently summons a demon who possesses Mia and makes her do a bunch of violent, crazy shit that her friends write off as an attempt to escape the cabin and avoid getting clean.

The violence is pleasantly outrageous--my favorite scene involves a chainsaw--and although some critics have claimed that Evil Dead is a comedy, the only funny parts are when Mia's brother keeps telling everyone "It's ok! It's ok!" even after fountains of blood have spurted and it's very clearly not ok.

Evil Dead is an entertaining movie, but it doesn't really have a gimmick to make it original. After seeing Tucker and Dale Versus Evil and The Cabin in the Woods, I think I'm spoiled for these types of horror movies since they seem very paint by numbers.

3 out of 5 stars

Suck the Marrow Out of Life...

Poetry: Favorites

April is National Poetry Month. Now, if you're like me, poetry bores the fuck out of you. It's pretty much just words strung together in such a way that you know there is meaning to those words...you just don't know what. If you're like me, you're a secret philistine when it comes to poetry: you know you *should* like it, the way you *should* like broccoli, but on a day-to-day basis, you tend to ignore poetry's (and broccoli's) existence.

But, as a lover of words, poetry occasionally gets to me. In college, I took a creative writing class that was half devoted to creative fiction (I was terrible at it) and half devoted to poetry. I surprised myself at how much I enjoyed writing poetry. I wrote one poem about Allen Ginsberg that contained the line, "The cocksucking youths who loitered behind the dumpsters of your work." The professor told me my writing was "sensual and intuitive". You can imagine how a compliment like that would go directly to the head of a 21 year old.

Since college I have rarely written poems, far preferring the kind of writing I'm doing now: critical non-fiction. A sort of academic-lite type writing. And, sadly, I rarely go out of my way to read poetry and seek out new poets. But the love of a perfect turn of phrase is still there, in my heart. A heart like an artichoke, weighed down by many wings*

So in honor of April, here are a few of my favorites, along with just a touch of commentary about why I like them.


***

Tornfallet
by Joseph Brodsky

There is a meadow in Sweden

where I lie smitten,

eyes stained with clouds'

white ins and outs.


And about that meadow

roams my widow

plaiting a clover

wreath for her lover.


I took her in marriage

in a granite parish.

The snow lent her whiteness,

a pine was a witness.


She'd swim in the oval

lake whose opal

mirror, framed by bracken,

felt happy, broken.


And at night the stubborn

sun of her auburn

hair shone from my pillow

at post and pillar.


Now in the distance

I hear her descant.

She sings "Blue Swallow,"

but I can't follow.


The evening shadow

robs the meadow

of width and color.

It's getting colder.


As I lie dying

here, I'm eyeing

stars. Here's Venus;

no one between us. 



Joseph Brodsky was a Russian poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 and was named United States Poet Laureate in 1991. 

I don't know, there's just something about how this poem is broken up--how he rhymes words with other words that don't rhyme perfectly. I take it to be about a man watching his wife from beyond death and feeling equal amounts of ecstatic beauty and crushing loneliness. "Here's Venus; no one between us"--suggesting the complete freedom that comes with death. You get that much closer to the universe. Yet he still can't stop thinking about his wife's red hair. Beautiful.


***

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
by Robert Herrick

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
    To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
    The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
    And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
    When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
    Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
    And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
    You may for ever tarry.



So basically, this poem is like: Go out there, young ladies, and find a man to have sex and babies with! Now, before you're a hag!


But putting aside the fact that Herrick was probably addressing 14 year old girls, this is a beautiful poem that was, of course, featured in that wonderful love letter to poetry and life: Dead Poets Society. Robin Williams' exhortations to his young charges to "Seize the day!", "Suck the marrow out of life!", and "Gather ye rosebuds" is the kind of advice that appeals to the very same 14 year olds Herrick was addressing. When you are young, before you've made the compromises of adult life, it's natural and good to want to run away and read poetry in a cave. Or to imagine that you will BE SOMETHING in life. CHANGE THE WORLD. Not let your heart die when you grow up.

Being an adult, with responsibilities and the freedom to do any number of things I was forbidden to do a decade ago, is the best. I wouldn't go back to high school for anything. Yet, this poem, like Dead Poets Society, captures an altruism and an innocence of a time when everything felt like a discovery. The world felt fresh.


***

The Garden of Love
by William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

If William Blake had a hammer, he would be beating you over the head with it: RELIGION DESTROYS LIFE. Religion and faith are great and beautiful, and so much poetry and art (especially older stuff, not Thomas Kincade shit) owes itself to religious belief. But once in a while, it's nice to twist the knife a bit. Blake's problem here, as I see it, is with dogmatic, nature-destroying religion. The kind that "bind[s] with briars, my joys & desires". Religion that says sex is bad, nature is bad, love is bad--the only love worth having is cold piety for the Lord. A medieval view of religion, if you will, versus the more humanistic Renaissance view.


***

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

 This is an obvious choice, but oh what a lovely poem. None of the words in this poem are long, 50 cent words, and yet they completely immerse you. "Between the woods and frozen lake"--I see that lake clear as day, don't you? "Easy wind and downy flake"--I can hear that sound when you're out in a rural area and it's snowing and you can actually hear the snow hitting the ground. "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep"--I see those woods, and they aren't scary. The look like something out of the Grimm fairy tales. It's all so simple, yet so effective.


Not to mention the line "The darkest evening of the year." If you read that literally, perhaps Frost means December 21st, the shortest day of the year and thus the darkest evening. Also, my birthday. I like the think that the reason I have a secret dark side is because I was born on the darkest day. But my dark side is as lovely and deep as Frost's woods--and there's a light, just on the other side of that frozen lake, that's part of me too.

***

Thanks for listening to my completely un-academic pontification. If you have a favorite poem, please post it below!




*Joseph Robinson wrote that.