Sunday, April 19, 2020

The COVID Diaries--Part 3

Movies: various

Here's what I'm watching during the quarantine for  COVID-19.

***

Antichrist

[Trigger warning: discussion of violence, child death, and genital mutilation]

Anyone who knows anything about Lars von Trier's 2009 film Antichrist knows why the film is so infamous. In addition to a self-disemboweling fox that says "chaos reigns" and a scene where an unconscious man is masturbated to completion and ejaculates blood, there is a full-blown self-clitoredectomy via scissors--and yes, you see everything.

An average person may ask "Why!? Why, God, why!?" But cinema buffs will simply answer: Lars von Trier. This is what he does, man. Antichrist is perhaps his most extreme film in terms of showing violence, but it is par for the course in terms of showing extreme emotion, degradation of women, and taking the audience to their limits.

Here's the thing: I fucking love Lars von Trier. The man himself is a horrible piece of shit by all accounts, but his movies are, in my opinion, very good and unafraid to really make you feel something. I would only recommend his films Breaking the Waves and Melancholia to the uninitiated since they are *slightly* more accessible.

Von Trier's films focus on women suffering* and Antichrist is no different. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe (both amazing in this movie) play a couple (unnamed) who lost their toddler son (they were having crazy monkey sex and the kid fell through a window, which adds a layer of guilt to the whole thing). The husband is a psychologist and is convinced his grief-stricken wife will improve if they go out to a remote cabin in the woods called Eden where she spent the previous summer working on her thesis. Well, things don't go as planned and eventually the woman, and all of nature, turn on the man.

A big idea in the film is that women and nature are both inherently evil. The woman's thesis was on "gynocide"--basically, the torture and murder of women throughout history. But her work on the thesis convinces her that women ARE, in fact, evil...and eventually this plays out in reality as she attacks the man and tries to kill him. In addition, the film touches on severe depression and grief and the ways is can destroy a person if not handled correctly.

*You may be asking, "Jenny, why do you, a feminist, like the work of a director who focuses so much on women suffering?" I answer: because I personally feel that there is more to these films than the overlay of misogyny. I think by portraying extreme misogyny, von Trier (who is arguably a misogynist himself) reveals how evil such hatred and violence is and, ultimately, how women (as a group) cannot be kept down and will always prevail in the face of it. That said, I understand why some folks avoid von Trier's films like the plague. They are not easy things to digest.

In conclusion: Antichrist is a beautiful film that depicts ugly things. But if you can get past the actual imagery to the ideas they represent, I think you will find that this film is an intense meditation on grief, guilt, and healing. Also: don't watch it unless you know exactly what you're getting into.

Grade: B+

***

The Night Porter

[Trigger warning: Nazis]

Here's another movie that is very good, yet hard to digest. Italian director Liliana Cavani's 1974 film stars (a very, very good) Dirk Bogarde as Max, a former Nazi SS officer who works as a night porter in a hotel in Vienna. One day, a well-regarded orchestra conductor checks into the hotel with his wife, Lucia (Charlotte Rampling, also great). Lucia was the daughter of a socialist during the second World War and was sent to a concentration camp, where she became the plaything/lover/victim of Max.

Max is startled and terrified to see Lucia and she is shocked to see him as well. The film shows their "relationship" in brief flashbacks and reveals how Max tormented Lucia and then became her protector, in a way. The climax of the film is an infamous scene where Lucia, wearing only an SS cap, pants, and suspenders, entertains a group of SS officers by singing Marlene Dietrich's "If I Could Make a Wish". As a reward, Max gives her a box containing the head of a prisoner who had been bullying her.

Lucia and Max almost immediately fall back into the dynamics of their relationship, which could be called sadomasochistic but minus the "safe, sane, and consensual" part. Well, perhaps it is consensual (as Lucia argues to another ex-Naxi), but it is hardly sane.

Watching Lucia and Max's affair is, to put it lightly, difficult. The chemistry between Bogarde and Rampling is off the fucking charts, which causes the viewer to empathize with them and even root for them, against all reason and logic. However, the two lovers are doomed. Max is part of a circle of ex-Nazis who are keen on "filing" (i.e. murdering) any witnesses to their war crimes and atrocities and Lucia is no exception. When Max decides to choose her over them, he seals their fate.

Cavani's film is considered both a great work of art and a low-brow piece of exploitative trash. It is perhaps the Citizen Kane of Nazisploitation films which had a big moment in the 60s and 70s (and live on today in films such as Inglourious Basterds). I only recommend this film to folks who can parse the absolute evil of Nazis with a story in which a Nazi is still the bad guy, yet is humanized. Not everyone wants to watch that, for good reason, especially today. But in general, Cavani's The Night Porter is a challenging, well-acted film.

Grade: A-

***

Certified Copy

Now here is a film I really thought I'd like more than I did, especially since it consistently appears on lists of "top films of the 21st century" and "top films of the 2010s". Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami directs Juliette Binoche (never not great) and William Shimell in a story about two strangers whose relationship changes dramatically over the course of one day.

Shimell plays James Miller, a writer whose new book, Certified Copy, argues that authenticity and originality in art are meaningless since everything is a copy of something and that a well-done copy of a famous work of art is as good as, perhaps even better, than the original. He meets Binoche (not given a name in this film) in Tuscany during a book talk and the two meet up and go for a drive. They discuss the ideas in the book and even argue a bit.

While in a coffee shop, a woman mistakes the two for a married couple. Binoche plays along, saying they've been married for 15 years. She tells James about the confusion and he plays along too. But when the two leave, they continue to act and talk as if they in fact ARE a married couple. They argue about their son's behavior, about how he fell asleep on their 15th wedding anniversary, and about other things couples argue about.


That's basically it--that's the movie. It's really less about the plot and more about the ideas, which boil down to: truth is in the eye of the beholder. The mystery of the film is: are these two actually married and just playing a weird, flirtatious game pretending to be strangers? The answer is: it doesn't matter. The truth is what you make of it. Just as Miller argues in his book that a copy is no worse than an original since an original is copying something or someone else, the film Certified Copy argues that inauthenticity is the same as authenticity if others perceive it to be true.

The film is peppered with weird little examples of this. For example, there is a scene in which it seems like an older man is talking down to and being quite mean to a woman, his wife. But then he turns around and it is revealed that he is actually on the phone, yelling at someone, and not at his wife. Another example is when Binoche mentions offhand that her sister loves costume jewelry and then later, while freshening up in a bathroom, pulls some costume earring out of her purse and puts them on.

Overall, I enjoyed this film. But I also found it a bit boring and meandering. It didn't suck me in the way I thought it would. And, this will amuse my readers, even though I can watch movies about Nazi love affairs and genital mutilation, as shown above, I really struggle to watch couples fight. It grates on me in a way more extreme content doesn't. While the "fighting" is usually playful in Certified Copy, there was enough of it that it got on my nerves big time.

Grade: B

***

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Day

[Trigger warning: abortion]

I'm just watching all the cheery movies during the quarantine, huh? Cristian Mungiu's 2007 film takes place in 1987 Romania--not a very cheery place to live given the Communist government's extreme restrictions on its citizens, but an especially bad time and place to live if you're a pregnant woman who doesn't want to be pregnant.

University students and roommates Otilia and Gabita are planning on procuring an illegal abortion for Gabita. Gabita is meek and weak, so Otilia ends up doing to bulk of the work: borrowing money to fund the expensive, underground procedure, trying to book a hotel, and meeting with the abortionist, Mr. Bebe.

Mr. Bebe is extremely unhappy to find out that the women couldn't get a room in the hotel he wanted (presumably he's known at certain hotels and can be assured the workers won't rat him out to the authorities). He's further infuriated to find out that Gabita is well into her 4th month of pregnancy and not, as she told on the phone, only two months pregnant. Because of these hassles, and because he's a fucking despicable pig, Bebe makes it clear he expects to have sex with both women in exchange for the abortion. They go along with it.

The movie pauses to follow Otilia to her boyfriend's house for supper while Gabita recovers in the hotel room. At dinner, the older guests talk about the "good old days" when younger people respected their elders. Afterward, Otilia returns to help dispose of the fetus.

Obviously, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not a happy film. It's a movie that shows how a corrupt government which limits people's reproductive choices (as well as career choices and freedom of speech, as Romania did during the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu. Communism isn't all that fucking great, folks) forces people into dangerous and degrading situations. I'm not just shitting on Romania here, because *obviously* it can/did/currently is happening in the United States. Anyone who is anti-abortion should consider the lengths people will go to end a pregnancy and maybe rethink their strategies.

But it's also a film about women taking care of other women, no matter the cost. And not in a feel good "sisterhood" type way, but with a grim sense that this is how women survive: by fucking an abortionist so their friend's life isn't ruined. Otilia is exasperated by Gabita's lies and weakness. She is forced to be the strong one. But women before her and after her have done worse to help a friend in need.

Grade: B+

***

The Hypnotist 

Anna Biller's The Love Witch is one of my favorite movies. It's a sort of homage/parody of films of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, filmed in brilliant technicolor and with purposefully "classic" acting (I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, you just have to watch it). So I was delighted to see one of her earlier films on The Criterion Channel. The Hypnotist is a 45 minute film that is obviously parodying thrillers/film noirs of the mid-twentieth century. The set design, clothing, and use of technicolor could easily fool an uninformed viewer into thinking the movie was made 60 or 70 years ago.

However, unlike The Love Witch, which had a playful take on feminism and femme fatales, The Hypnotist doesn't really care to be anything but ridiculous and weird. Which still makes for an entertaining movie. An old, extremely wealthy man, Mr. Cooke, dies and stipulates in his will that in order to inherit his money, his three adult children--Charles, Beatrice, and William--must live together in the family mansion for the rest of their lives. Sadly, the Cooke children all hate each other, especially hard-drinking Beatrice and snide, effeminate Charles. So Charles hires one Dr. Schadenfreude ostensibly to serve as psychoanalyst to the Cooke's sickly mother, but actually to declare his siblings insane so that he, Charles, can commit them to an institution and keep all the inheritance for himself.

This overheated, intentionally poorly-acted (so, in a weird way, I guess it was well-acted!), cheesy short film was a hoot. Not nearly as good as The Love Witch, but it shows Biller's roots as a wildy creative visionary director.

Grade: B+



Dr. Schadenfreude at your service.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

The COVID Diaries--Part 2

Movies: various

Here's what I'm watching during the quarantine for  COVID-19.

***

Blow the Man Down

Written and directed by Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole, Blow the Man Down is an absolutely delightful, strange little comedy-thriller. The film takes place in Easter Cove, Maine--a small town that relies on fishing as its main source of income. Morgan Saylor and Sophie Lowe play sisters Mary Beth and Priscilla Connolly, whose mother just passed away, leaving them the family fish shop. On the night of the funeral, the sisters get into an argument and Mary Beth, the younger and more reckless of the two, leaves in a huff and goes to a local watering hole where she gets drunk with Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, whom you might recognize as Desi from Girls). When they arrive at Gorski's house, he pops the trunk and for a second, Mary Beth sees blood, hair, and women's clothing in the trunk. This leads to a scuffle where Mary Beth fights Gorski and ends up skewering him with a harpoon and beating his head in with a brick.


After coming clean to her sister, the two young women chop the body up and throw it into the sea, thinking that's the end of that. But when a different body--that of a local sex worker--washes ashore, the sisters get pulled into the dark underbelly of Easter Cove, which involves a local brothel run by Enid Devlin (Margo Martindale, amazing as always). The film slowly reveals secrets and betrayals among the matriarchs of the town (played by Martindale, June Squibb, Annette O'Toole, and Marceline Hugot--the film is packed with talented actresses).

Blow the Man Down has literally everything you could want in a movie: sea shanties, death-by-harpoon, a nearly all-female cast including a number of women over 60, thick New England accents, and fish guts galore! Basically, imagine if Manchester By The Sea was 100x funnier (but still dark) and didn't star an abusive asshole as the main character.

I HIGHLY recommend Blow the Man Down to all movie lovers.

Grade: A

***

Safe

Well, I wouldn't recommend Todd Haynes' Safe to everyone, especially these days, but it is an absolute masterpiece. Though the film came out in 1995, it is set in 1987. Julianne Moore plays Carol White, a very wealthy homemaker who lives in a giant home in the San Fernando Valley with her husband and stepson. She is extremely timid and polite and spends her days ordering fancy furniture and lunching with her other housewife friends.

But Carol starts to feel vaguely ill, and overly sensitive to chemicals around her. It starts inconspicuously enough when she has a coughing fit after driving behind a truck emitting exhaust fumes. But soon she is having allergic reactions to everything: milk, pesticides, and her expensive new couch. Her doctor says nothing is medically wrong with her and her husband is annoyed by his wife's ailments. Carol finds a flier in her gym about chemical sensitively that leads her to stay at a retreat called Wrenwood, where people can strip away all the chemicals in daily life in order to reduce their chemical load--or "clear" as the call it.


Safe is ambiguous about Wrenwood. To the outside observer, the retreat is a chemical-free place for folks to heal. But the founder of Wrenwood, Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman), comes off as a cult leader, especially in his insistence that individuals cause their own sickness by being filled with anger, rage, and despair. To me, the bigger idea in Safe is that even though Carol is truly physically sensitive to chemicals, she's also spiritually sick. Her life is empty: she lives in a huge house with a husband who treats her more as a nuisance than as a partner. She spends her days with inauthentic people talking about fruit diets and baby showers. At Wrenwood, all of the luxuries of her life are stripped away and she has to confront herself head on.

Safe is a masterpiece of social commentary and how we tend to fill ourselves up with material possessions and mindless activities in order to blot out the yawning emptiness inside. In a way, Carol's illness is a gift since it no longer allows her to live a shallow, unthinking life.

Grade: A-

***

Always Be My Maybe

I don't care for most romantic comedies. AV Club has a series called When Romance Met Comedy, which explores romantic comedies and their impact on culture. Scrolling through the entries in this series, I realize that nearly every movie they cover I either haven't seen or don't like. Why is this? I think I have two problems with the genre: 1) it's formulaic and 2) it's inauthentic. Real love doesn't look like romantic comedy, and I'm more interested and emotionally drawn to realistic depictions of love.

All this is to say that, yeah, the Netflix original Always Be My Maybe is a conventional romantic comedy. It has: misunderstandings that could be cleared up with one honest conversation, wise old people dispensing common sense, wacky sidekicks, cross-country travels in order to make grand gestures, annoying love interests the main characters have to dump in order to be with "the One". I could go on....but...

...but Always Be My Maybe has a trick card up its sleeve in the form of a dope and hilarious cameo that takes the movie from "meh" to actually kind of hilarious in the couple scenes this person is in. Ali Wong and Randall Park as Sasha and Marcus, the lovebirds at the center of the film, are really great (though it was weird to see Ali Wong doing PG-13 comedy) but this cameo, you guys. It makes the entire movie worth watching.

In conclusion: I am a monster that hates love, but loves cameos where famous actors portray asshole versions of their real selves. Always Be My Maybe is cute, sweet, at times laugh-out-loud funny even if it is formulaic and cliche-ridden.

Grade: B

***

The Platform

And here we have the complete opposite of a sweet rom-com: a dystopian thriller/social commentary film that takes place in a vertical prison where a platform of food is sent down level by level--each lower levels gets the leftovers of the levels above, and of course because people people are disgusting, selfish animals, by the time it reaches the lower levels there is no food left.

The Platform is pretty fuckin' on the nose. You're telling me if people only took what they need in life there would be plenty for all? My mind is blown. But the movie gets points for capturing my attention and not letting go until the end. The main character is Goreng (Ivan Massague), an intellectual who trades six months in the prison for a college degree (which hints at, but maddeningly never fully explains, what the actual fuck is up with this prison in the first place). He wakes up in a cell with Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor), a jaded old man who explains how this shit works. Each month, the two will wake up on another level--and there is no rhyme or reason to how high or low they go (i.e. you don't get to a higher level for good behavior...much like how social class works in reality).

You can probably guess what folks on the lower levels resort to in order to survive, but Goreng is different--he wants to find a way to send a message to everyone in the prison. To figure out how to get food to the lower levels and/or get the people at the top to figure out a new system.

As I said, The Platform is very unsubtle in its symbolism, but it's still an interesting, shocking film and one that I'm still thinking about a week after seeing it. It's not quite Snowpiercer, but it's worth a watch if you like sci-fi/horror/thriller.

Grade: B+



Saturday, April 4, 2020

The COVID Diaries--Part 1

Movies: various

Here is what I am watching (so far) during the quarantine for COVID-19.

***

Audition 

I saw this infamous Takashi Miike slow burn film years ago, so this was a rewatch. I have to say, the second time around simply does not have the same impact as the first time around. For obvious reasons. If you haven't seen the movie--do yourself a favor and don't read anything about it, just watch it (and brace yourself). If you have seen the movie, you know what a jarring experience it is.



What starts out as a drama/romance turns into something incredibly disturbing when a middle-aged widower holds a fake movie audition to find a wife. He claims to his movie producer friend he wants a "mature" woman. LOL. He's looking for a sweet, pretty, submissive bride. And he seems to find one in Asami, a young woman whose career in ballet was tragically cut short due to a hip injury. But Asami is not what she seems. Hint: if you have a phobia of needles (or vomit), sit this one out.

Grade: B

***

The Taking of Deborah Logan

This found footage horror film has a unique angle. A documentary team are creating a film about Deborah Logan (Jill Larson), an older woman in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Very quickly, things take a turn for the strange: Deborah wanders the house at night, nailing windows shut. She has random fits of aggression and violence. Some of these symptoms are typical of those with Alzheimer's...but levitating onto a counter in the middle of the night isn't. Having super strength isn't. The twist is...she's possessed!

I had mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, the use of Alzheimer's as frame for a horror film about possession is interesting because I'm sure many folks who have loved ones who suffer from the disease feel very much like their loved one is "possessed" or not themselves. The problem is that this film borders on exploiting the very real, very devastating disease and how it can take not only memories, but dignity away from the sufferer. Too many horror films make mental illness the "demon" or the "ghost", and it's very fucked up (in this movie's case, there very much is an actual dead person possessing Deborah). The Taking of Deborah Logan walks a fine line of taste. And to be honest, the ending was kind of boring.

Grade: B-

***

Horse Girl

Horse Girl is a frustrating film. It has a lot of promise that it doesn't fulfill. Alison Brie plays Sarah, a shy, odd young woman who works at a crafts store. She doesn't have much going on in her life, other than visiting the gave of her mother, who died by suicide the previous year, and visiting the stable where her horse (or former horse? It's not clear who exactly owns this horse), Willow, resides.

Sarah begins to experience episodes in which she loses time. For example, she falls asleep at 11pm and wakes up outdoors and has to make her way home...only to see that the clock says 11:02. She begins to believe that she is being abducted and experimented on by aliens. Additionally, there is a history of mental illness in her family--not only did her mother complete suicide, her grandmother had some sort of mental breakdown as well.

The movie left me with more questions than answers, and the biggest question is: what is the point of this movie? In some ways, it's reminiscent of the kind of cute, twee movies that were popular in the early 2000s (think: Little Miss Sunshine) and still pop up these days: movies about quirky people (usually cute girls) doing quirky things. But Horse Girl is way darker. But it's also not dark enough. It doesn't commit to a genre, which I'd be ok with, but the plot is meandering and non-sensical as well, so it ultimately felt very boring to me. The best part of the film is Brie's performance, as well as a strong supporting performance by Molly Shannon as Sarah's boss at the crafts store. Sadly, these two wonderful actresses cannot save this confusing mess of a film.

Grade: C

***

Dogs Don't Wear Pants

The delightful 2019 Finnish film Dogs Don't Wear Pants has one of my favorite themes: people who discover  BDSM and decide that life is worth living (think Secretary, Sick, etc). Juha (Pekka Strang) is a nerdy doctor and father to a toddler when his wife drowns in a tragic accident. Years later, Juha is severely depressed and his now teenage daughter, Elli (Ilona Huhta), is trying to encourage him to start dating again. But dating isn't what Juha needs.

During a visit to a tattoo parlor to get Elli a tongue-piercing, Juha discovers a back room with a sex dungeon. He touches some of the dominatrix's toys and swiftly gets shoved down and choked by Mona (Krista Kosonen), a black-haired, pale-faced, leather-clad pro-domme. After the encounter, Juha feels alive in a way he hasn't in years.

He returns to Mona to engage in choking/suffocation play, which relates to his wife's death (the sensation of not being able to breathe makes Juha feel closer to his dead wife) and leads to some intensely cathartic scenes between him and Mona. Editor's note: um, don't try this at home kids. It can literally kill you.



I really enjoyed Dogs Don't Wear Pants, but I had some issues with it which bump it from an A-level grade. For one, Juha becomes addicted to seeing Mona and starts to stalk her when she no longer takes his calls. He even follows her at night at one point. The fact that he's a gangly, bespectacled, nerdy dad doesn't excuse him from treating sex workers with respect. That brings me to the second issue: this film is NOT trying to accurately portray sex work. There's a lot of stuff that wouldn't happen in real life, from Mona's initial aggressive encounter with Juha to the (presumed) romance the two engage in, to the violation of boundaries on both sides. It's a romantic comedy/dramedy with leather and pain. It's not a documentary. So be aware of that if you choose to watch it.

Grade: B+

***

The Tiger King

What would March 2020 be without social distancing and Netflix's The Tiger King? This documentary chronicles the decades-long feud between Oklahoma zoo owner Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue in Florida. The story contains so many twists and turns, it reminds one of the adage "truth is stranger than fiction". I'm not sure I need to go into details since probably everyone and their mother has seen it and, if not, there's plenty to read about it.

However, I did not LOVE The Tiger King the way some folks did. To me, it started off very interesting and bonkers and just got less interesting as it went on. Or rather, I became less interested. I don't know why. Perhaps the sheer amount of wild details in the story just hit their max and I couldn't process anything more. Or the fact that there's basically no one to root for in the story, but there ARE casualties--human and animal. Watching so many pathetic assholes squabble and money and petty rivalries while knowing animals were being killed by these people (not all of them -- Carole Baskin, despite what she may or may not have done to her husband, is clearly the only one who gives a shit about animals) is kind of sickening after awhile. In any case, while I started out as enraptured as anyone by this koo-koo bananas story...by the end, I was over it.

Grade: B