Boob Tube

TV: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Handmaid's Tale, Hannibal, MST3K: The Return

Disclaimer: Very few actual boobs in this post

In the past four months, I've blown through 3 seasons of Hannibal, 2 seasons of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, 1 season of The Handmaid's Tale, and 1 season of MST3K: The Return. And a partridge in a pair tree. So I figured it was time to review some TV shows instead of movies for a change.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

A friend of mine said I needed to watch this show as an "obligation of friendship". I was skeptical at first because I didn't "get" it...I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel about the characters and at moments, CEG is a little too cutesy and "the moral of today's episode is..." for my tastes. But by the time I got to the second half of season 1, I was like hooked. I binged season 2 in about a week.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a comedy that also has musical numbers (some of them are GREAT) and features a women, Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom, also co-creator of the show) who moves from New York City to West Covina, California to be near a guy, Josh, whom she dated for one summer when she was 16.

Well, the situation is actually a lot more nuanced than that.

Despite many schemes and shenanigans that wouldn't be out of place in a traditional romantic comedy (a genre the show mercilessly spoofs), CEG isn't afraid to make it's main character actually "crazy". As in, probably-should-be-on-depression-medication-and-practicing-cognitive-behavioral-therapy crazy (not Hannibal Lecter crazy. See below). Rebecca is a character who does bad things but remains relatively sympathetic throughout the show because we see glimpses of real suffering. Likewise, the supporting characters have struggles of their own: Greg's a grumpy alcoholic who uses sarcasm to avoid being close to anyone; Paula is obsessed with Rebecca's love life to the point of codependency; Josh loves the attention he gets from Rebecca but refuses to dump his girlfriend to be with her--or to cut off contact with Rebecca to fully commit to his girlfriend.

Blam!

The shows gets deeper, darker, weirder and better as it goes on (and I think the songs get better too).  CEG does a lot of work: it's legit funny, but also very absurd at times. It's got singing and dancing going on. It's satirical. It has the most likable unlikeable characters on TV.  For a show with so many flights of fancy (exhibit A: "dream ghosts") it's not afraid to look mental illness right in the eye and show the kind of damage it can do, while also humanizing those who suffer from it. 

Grade: B+

***

The Handmaid's Tale

Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu is a knot in the stomach. A chill down the spine. A deep-seated feeling of dread. And not because of a ghost or monster, but because everything that happens in the dystopian world of Gilead is happening now, or has happened, or could easily happen.

THT takes place in the former United States, after a violent cult, The Sons of Jacob, takes down all branches of the government and creates a Biblically-based theocracy where women are divided into groups: the wives of the Commanders (men in charge), "Marthas" who cook and clean for them, and "Handmaids": fertile women who serve to bear children for the Commanders and their infertile wives. Women are not allowed to read and have basically no rights. Handmaids get the distinct honor of being ritualistically raped once a month by the Commander whose house they live in. Offred ("Of Fred", since her commander is Fred Waterford), formerly June, is played by Elisabeth Moss. When the country falls, she is taken from her husband and child and forced into a re-education center to prepare to be a breeding slave for her assigned Commander. The series is told mainly from her perspective, but it also gives us glimpses of the lives of other handmaids, and other women, in Gilead.

 I don't have to explain why The Handmaid's Tale is such a potent story in this particular moment in history where a man who has the emotional control of a toddler is president and he beat a competent, intelligent woman to the highest office in the nation because...of her emails? We've indeed come a long way as a society, but THT shows that under the right circumstances, it could all fall apart. Fear of death is a powerful weapon in making people behave and adaptation and acceptance of a new lifestyle comes very quickly for many people.

Although the series strays from the original book, it still stays true to the universe of the novel. And since the series has been picked up for a second season, it will be interesting to see where Offred's story goes in season 2.

Filled with gorgeous cinematography and excellent performances all around, The Handmaid's Tale isn't the easiest show to watch, but it is undeniably great television.

Grade: A

Just as God intended, amirite? 









***

Hannibal

Hannibal has some of the goriest, most fucked up stuff I've seen on television. So, of course, I love it. Based on the character created by Thomas Harris, Hannibal puts a new spin on the liver-eating, Chianti-drinking charismatic psychopath. The first season opens with Hannibal Lecter (played, to absolute perfection, by Mads Mikkelsen) a free man. The timeline starts well before Clarice Starling set eyes on Lecter when he was behind bulletproof glass. Lecter is a psychiatrist recruited by Special Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne, excellent as well) to befriend and analyze Crawford's gifted (and unstable) criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy).

The fucked up (and homoerotic) friendship between Graham, who is able to feel empathy to the point where he can understand the motives of serial killers, and Lecter, who feels no empathy at all, is the heart of the series. Which is a good anchoring point since the series tends to be a bit uneven, wavering from straightforward crime show to hilariously campy soap opera. Once they introduce Mason Verger (played by Michael Pitt), the camp really hits the fan big time, for better or for worse.

Hannibal has an old friend for dinner.

Although Hannibal is far from a "perfect" show, it is wildly entertaining, intensely gory, and visually stunning. Much has been made of the scenes involving food: Hannibal lovingly preparing it, serving it, and enjoying it with his many guests. But in addition to the artful food scenes, the show has many dreamy, fantastical scenes. In Hannibal murder is elevated to an art form. With that in mind, please consider if this is the show for you, because I can assure you it's not for everyone.

Grade: B+

***

MST3K: The Return

As a young kiddo, I LOVED Mystery Science Theatre 3000, specifically the later episodes with Mike Nelson, which played on Comedy Central on weekend mornings. As an adult, any given Friday night when I want to stay in and relax, you can find me queuing up one of my favorite episodes (I'm particularly partial to The Devil Doll, Squirm, Hobgoblins, and The Girl in Gold Boots) on YouTube. Additionally, I've attended Rifftrax screenings, including a live one at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville (where they riffed--with all new jokes--on the classic terrible movie Manos: The Hands of Fate).

So I was over the moon to see MST3K rebooted with 14 brand new episodes and a new host, Jonah Ray. After watching them all, I can say while the reboot doesn't quite live up to the Joel and Mike years, it's pretty entertaining.

My biggest beef is with the casting of Felicia Day as Kinga Forrester (granddaughter of the great Pearl Forrester). I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here, but I don't think Day is funny at all in this role. It's as if she's going out of her way to NOT be funny. And her pairing with Patton Oswalt just feels awkward and forced. They have zero, nada, zip comedy chemistry. But since Oswalt and Day only show up for about 10 minutes per episode, I can deal with it.

My favorite movies in this season are Cry Wilderness, The Loves of Hercules, and The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. And although none of these episodes quite get to the level of genius of Final Sacrifice, it's not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening lounging on the couch.

Grade: B

Satan's Little Helper

Movies: The Blackcoat's Daughter

Do you wish there was a movie genre that consistently passed the Bechdel Test? Look no further than the Renaissance that is modern, independent horror. Between The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, and many more, the horror genre is brimming with women and girls--some of them evil, some of them good; some of them virginal, some of them sexual; some of them victims, many of them predators.

If you're a feminist who is a scaredy-cat when it comes to horror movies (hi Alex!), might I suggest exposure therapy? In the name of Sisterhood? I, too, was once too scurred to venture near scary movies, but after seeing a couple amazingly good ones, I have embraced the horror genre full stop and I actually consider it my favorite genre of film now. How the tides have turned.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (previously titled "February") is a super indie movie directed by Oz Perkins (who also directed the apparently great I Am a Pretty Thing That Lives in the House--I haven't watched it yet, but it's in my queue). Perkins is, incidentally, the son of Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame. His brother, Elvis Perkins, is a musician who composed the score for Blackcoat's Daughter, and it perfectly elicits feelings of dread in the viewer. A good score truly elevates a film of any genre.

Blackcoat's Daughter stars Kiernan Shipka, best known for growing up on TV as Sally Draper on Mad Men, as a freshmen at Bramford, a Catholic girls boarding school in upstate New York. The school is on break, but Kat's (Shipka) parents haven't shown up. The headmaster leaves Kat with an older student, Rose (Lucy Boynton), whose parents are picking her up a day late, and the school nurse and her assistant.

Almost immediately, something seems very off at this school. As Rose prepares for a secret date with her boyfriend, she tells Kat that the nurse and her assistant were apparently seen "worshipping the devil" by a previous student and that the two women have "no hair on their entire bodies". It seems like Rose is just a bitchy teen trying to scare Kat, but this scene reminds one of the movie Suspiria, about a coven of witches at a ballet school.

Meanwhile, the film cuts to another young woman, Joan (Emma Roberts), who wanders aimlessly near a train station a few towns over. She is offered a ride by a middle-aged couple, who have a Bramford bumper sticker. Perkins takes his time in revealing the connection between all the characters, but when he does, it's an unsettling doozy of a twist.

Without giving too much away, The Blackcoat's Daughter is about vulnerability, loneliness, and the connection between parents and children. Buried underneath 90 minutes of absolute dread and swift bursts of violence is a heartbreaking sensation of loss. Whatever is lurking in the shadows at Bramford, it preys on weakness and fear. Shipka gives a gut-punch of a performance as Kat, a quiet, odd girl who you just know is terrified to wonder where her parents are, but also too scared to admit that fear to the older students and adults around her. Having watched Shipka transform from a devastatingly adorable child to a sullen teen on Mad Men, seeing her in this role was very satisfying in the sense of watching a very talented individual "level up" to the next stage of her craft. I'm excited to see what Shipka does next.

Horror fans will appreciate The Blackcoat's Daughter because it's a scary movie that gets to have its cake and eat it too: it's subtle and unusual enough that you don't feel bludgeoned by tired horror tropes, but it's also ghastly enough that gorehounds won't feel left out. It's bloody and nerve-tingling, but also surprisingly emotionally affecting to the point where a scene near the end almost made me tear up. In a word, it's masterful.

Grade: A

I'M BACK

Movies and TV: Beauty and the Beast, Loving, Death Bed: The Bed that Eats, The Gift, The D Train, The People Vs. OJ Simpson


Oh my lord, it's been a while. But rest assured, I have been steadily consuming media to review for your enjoyment. Since I have such a hefty backlog, I'm sticking to very short reviews. Enjoy!


***

Beauty and the Beast

I was pleasantly surprised by the live remake of Beauty and the Beast. It probably helped that my expectations were pretty low going in. The film hits on all the nostalgia factors when the characters break into songs like "Belle", "Be Our Guest", and "Something There" (I didn't particularly care for the new songs written for the movie). Also: Luke Evans as Gaston is all that.

Grade: B

Glorious.










***

Loving

Loving is understated biopic about the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision of 1967 that overturned anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. The love story of taciturn Richard Loving and quietly strong Mildred Loving is a subtle one. These humble, hard-working people are the definition of "salt of the earth" all-Americans. Mildred just happened to be black and Richard white. The film is, to be honest, not particularly exciting or memorable, but it is powerful and reveals how foolish and unjust the anti-interracial marriage laws were back in the day...and also reminds us how attitudes still haven't changed enough.

Grade: B

***

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is exactly what you think it is. It's a MST3K-worthy, hilariously awful mid-1970s "horror" film (I use the term loosely, since the film inspires more laughter than horror) about a bed that is alive and eats people by digesting them in a yellow liquid that looks suspiciously like urine. The movie looks smelly, if that makes sense. Perhaps because it stars a bunch of long-haired hippie types who look like they could use a bath. There are gratuitous boobies, a scene where the bed eats just a guy's hands so that he ends up with skeleton hands, and a backstory about a sleeping demon. In other words: I *highly* recommend this movie.

Grade: F+ 

ugh, I hate it when a bed eats my hands!







***

The Gift

Not to be confused with the sleeper 2015 thriller directed by Joel Edgerton, The Gift is a 2000 film that just OOZES late 1990s atmosphere. I mean, it has all your favorite actors of the late 90s: Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes, Giovanni Ribisi you guys!!!

Blanchett stars as Annie, a single mom living in Georgia who reads fortunes for extra money. She has "a gift" (get it). But when a character is murdered, she has to testify about how she was able to lead the cops to the site of the dead body.

Despite being directed by Sam Raimi, The Gift isn't very good. But if you're looking for a random trip down memory lane, you could do worse (for example, by watching Disturbing Behavior).

Grade: C+

***

The D Train

The D Train stars Jack Black as the overly eager chair of his high school's reunion committee who discovers that a fellow alumnus, James Mardsen, went on to "become famous" by being in a Banana Boat commercial. Black's wildly uncool character thinks that if he can convince Mardsen's character to attend the reunion, everyone will see Black as a hero and super cool guy.

Sounds like a dumb Jack Black movie, right? Well, there's one plot point that makes The D Train both unique and just...fucking bizarre...and to reveal it might mean spoiling what's sure to be a shock to many viewers. So stop reading now and skip to the next review if you don't want to know...

...

...

...


Black and Mardsen get super high and drunk and fuck about 1/3 into the movie. Even though Black's character isn't gay and is married.

Surprisingly, The D Train isn't homophobic, like one might assume given its twist. Black's character is so in awe of Mardsen's that you kind of get why an otherwise hetero guy, pumped full of liquor and coke, might end up in bed with another man. And his confusion about why he did it and what it means leads to a confrontation at the reunion (Mardsen ends up...coming [see what I did there]) that will leave you squirming in the awkwardness of it all.

I'm not sure I can fully recommend The D Train, but I can say that was weird as hell.

Grade: B-

***

The People Vs. OJ Simpson

The People Vs. OJ Simpson: An American Crime Story is absolute fucking perfection in every way. I binged all 10 episodes in two days and enjoyed each one. I would pause the show to Google things like "Mark Furhman racist?" and "Marcia Clark Christopher Darden hook up?" in order to learn more as I watched (the answers, respectively, are "hell yes" and "probably not, but it's fun to imagine").

The best thing about the series is how it deals with race issue at the heart of Simpson trial. It comes down to this: yes, the LAPD was/is hella racist and a disproportionate number of black men were/are in prison for minor crimes and ALSO yes, OJ was guilty as hell. Chris Darden, in a confrontation with Johnny Cochran in the last episode sums it up by explaining that "they" (the cops and the justice system) will continue to put black people in prison...unless said black person owns a home in Brentwood. Wealth and fame overcome race.

Just watch it. It's truly a work of art.

Grade: A+

***

Until next time, adieu!

In Space, No One Can Hear You DIE

Movies: Life, Pet

Here are two horror movies, one good, one kinda stupid, that both use claustrophobic situations and gruesome AF deaths to heighten tension. Also, animals die in both, so if you're not into that, don't watch.

Life

I went to see the film Life on a whim--seemed like a good popcorn flick about aliens fucking shit up and also my bae Jake Gyllenhaal is in it. While not exactly the most original movie, Life did not disappoint.

The film is about a crew of astronauts on the International Space Station who are responsible for some samples taken from Mars. They are specifically looking for evidence of life of Mars and they find it. A single-cell organism is discovered in one of the samples and is nursed by biologist Hugh (Ariyon Bakare) who develops a bit of a parental relationship with the seemingly harmless little bugger, named "Calvin" by a group of school kids on earth.

By feeding Calvin glucose, the little alien starts growing larger and larger. The turning point comes when Hugh tries to stimulate Calvin with a mild electric shock and the alien grabs onto Hugh's arm and refuses to let go. Yup. This alien isn't the cute little Martian everyone thought it was. Calvin is a killer.

Let me warn any sensitive viewers: Life is gruesome as hell. The way Calvin survives and grows is by feeding on other organisms and it ain't pretty. There is a lab rat in the space station and, oh god, when Calvin gets to it--I almost wanted to throw up.

Life is incredibly effective at tapping into a variety of natural, human fears. There's the claustrophobia angle--with the six astronauts being trapped with this monster in a space station where you can't see around corners or get away very quickly. It's similar to the spelunking horror movie The Descent in that way.

Also, Calvin himself (itself?) is a deeply, deeply unsettling creature. He basically looks like a space octopus, with tentacles that can crush bones and a body that can swim easily in zero gravity. The way the alien moves taps into an animal part of the brain that screams PREDATOR.

Additionally, the way the characters die in the movie--and they all get to die in super gross and terrifying and creative ways--will haunt you. Two deaths in particular let camera linger on the actors' faces in their final moments, making the film have an almost "snuff" feel to it. Lovely.

As I said, Life isn't super original. It borrows heavily from films like Alien (duh) and (likely, unintentionally) Titanic, when two crew members are plotting their final escape while shivering in the cold space station and saying things like "Tell me you trust me." "I trust you". I mean, they basically ripped off Jack and Rose's final scenes together.

Still, if it borrows, Life borrows from the best. And while it takes a while to get going, once Life's on a roll it is a gory, freaky roller coaster ride to the very end.

If you can stomach the violence and enjoy scary movies, I heartily recommend Life. Be warned: it is almost entirely guaranteed to give you nightmares.

Grade: A-

***

Pet

And now something from the "stream, but don't pay money to watch" pile, Pet. A psychological thriller starring Dominic Monaghan (Merry Brandybuck, nooooooo) as Seth, an awkward, "Nice Guy" type dude who runs into an old classmate of his, Holly (Ksenia Solo), and promptly becomes obsessed with her and trying to talk to her and ask her out. Holly is not interested, but Seth persists, stalking her and even stealing and reading her diary to get more insight into Holly's mind.

Seth also works as a security guard to an animal shelter (sorry folks, it's not a "no kill" shelter and the dog dies. I repeat: A DOG DIES). So Seth has access to things like cages and water bowls and sedatives. Can you see where all this is headed?

Now here's the thing: Pet has about 14 plot twists to it. It's obviously from the fucking movie poster that Seth kidnaps Holly and locks her in a cage. But the reasons he does this are not what they seem from the get go. When Holly asks him why he's doing this, he says he wants to try and "save" her. You see, it turns out that Holly isn't exactly an innocent person after all. In fact, she's...

(Spoiler!!)

(Big Spoiler!!)


...a serial killer. Which she writes about in the diary Seth finds. Which is unlikely, but you have to suspend your disbelief a bit here. Seth confirms Holly's violent tendencies by following her around and watching her violently kill a bunch of randos. First of all, Seth happened upon literally the one female serial killer who violently kills strangers (female serial killers are incredibly rare, and the women who do kill multiple people tend to prey on vulnerable individuals, like the elderly and children, not adult men they meet on the street) and he decides not to call the police, but to "save" Holly. Fucking LOL. This guy deserves whatever's coming to him for his stupidity alone.

Once he has Holly in that cage, she uses the one tool she has to get out: manipulation. And because she's a SERIAL KILLER, she's really fucking good at it. And because Seth is a stupid Nice Guy, he falls for it in like two seconds. This guy really needs to read more true crime books before he attempts to redeem a psychotic killer.

Anyway, I'll stop there and let readers find out what happens if they so choose. Pet isn't that great of a film, but it does have some elements of novelty, such as the fact that it's a movie about a woman in a cage and 1) it's not sexualized, 2) there's no sexual violence or rape, and 3) she's actually not the victim. HE is. So, Pet has some qualities that make it worth streaming on a boring afternoon.

But the dog dies, so don't see it if you don't like that.

Grade: C+

Rock Out With Your Docs Out

Movies: 13th, Tickled

Here are reviews of two documentaries I've watched recently that couldn't be more different (except for the fact that they're both very good).

13th
Directed by Ava DuVernay 

13th, which refers to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, is absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating. It is also essential viewing and there is no excuse not to watch this incredibly important documentary.

Director DuVernay traces the rise of mass incarceration in the US starting with the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". DuVernay traces a direct line between the end of slavery and the extremely high population of people of color in prison today. She covers the portrayal of black men as animalistic criminals in DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation, the rise of the KKK and lynch mobs, Jim Crow laws, the war on drugs, and mandatory minimum sentences--all of which contribute to the (false) ingrained beliefs many people--including black people themselves--have regarding the inherent criminality of black men.

Starting with Lyndon B. Johnson, no United States President is safe from DuVernay's criticism, as both Republican and Democratic POTUSes have contributed to the rise of mass incarceration. Perhaps most interesting to me was Bill and Hillary Clinton's continuation of Reagan's war on drugs and the "three-strikes laws" which led to non-violent criminals ending up in prison for decades or even life.

DuVernay interviews public figures who vary widely: from Angela Davis to Bryan Stevenson to a surprisingly sympathetic Newt Gingrich. These figures explain how the criminal justice system is essentially rigged so that people of color who commit the same crimes as whites end up with much harsher sentences. DuVernay's thesis is that mass incarceration is the new slavery. And with all the facts and historical context she presents...it's hard to argue against that.

13th will leave many people angry and upset and not knowing what to do. But even just knowing and acknowledging that we have an incredibly unfair and punitive justice system that is 1) inherently racist and 2) aims to brutally punish rather than rehabilitate is half the battle. Years ago, prison reform was barely a blip on my own radar and now, after reading and watching much more about it, I see prison and criminals in an entirely different light. The more intelligent, empathetic folks who watch this doc with an open heart and mind, the better. And the sooner we can fix this broken, sick system of institutionalized slavery that exists right under our noses.

Grade: A


Tickled
Directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve

Tickled is a bizarre documentary. It all began when New Zealand journalist David Farrier came across a Facebook group--Jane O'Brien Media--looking for young, athletic males to compete in "competitive endurance tickling" videos for cash. Let's just get this out of the way: yes, this is a sex thing. Though Farrier and his co-director Dylan Reeve play dumb at the beginning of the doc ("I was starting to think that "competitive endurance tickling" wasn't a real sport after all!" Farrier says at one point. OH REALLY?), anyone who wasn't born yesterday and who has been within 10 feet of the internet can see that this is a fetish thing.


Intrigued by such a strange "sport", Farrier emails the group asking if he can interview whoever is in charge and possibly do a story on it. He receives an insulting email back by someone named "Debbie Kuhn" who writes that their group wants nothing to do with a "homosexual journalist" (Farrier is openly bisexual). Farrier is taken aback, especially since the videos put out by Jane O'Brien Media are, well, pretty gay (attractive men tickling each other...fully clothed, but still...). But the harrasment doesn't stop after one email. Farrier is soon flooded with messages from this Debbie person calling him a "faggot".

Well, the lesson here is that if you try to intimidate a journalist into not looking into something, it will backfire.

Farrier and Reeve travel to Los Angeles to confront some of the folks behind Jane O'Brien media and are met with threats of legal suits and even personal threats against their families. They finally get a participant in one of the videos, T.J., to talk, and his revelations are shocking: after starring in one of these videos, whoever was behind Jane O'Brien Media began harassing T.J. and sending the video to his family and employers as well as emails claiming T.J. was gay, a fetishist, and even a child molester. He lost jobs over it. T.J. points out that most of the guys in these videos are young and strapped for cash. The person behind Jane O'Brien Media would send these dudes loads of cash and even buy them cars if they starred in "her" videos. But once "she" got them hooked, she'd turn on them and humiliate them by posting the videos all over the web without their permission.

You'll notice I'm writing "she" with quotation marks. Farrier and Reeve eventually uncover the name and identity of the definitely-not-a-woman behind these videos and this person's history and the magnitude of his (surprise, creepy dude on the internet is a man!) criminal activity is actually pretty shocking.

Farrier and Reeve, in their quest to understand the motivations of Jane O'Brien Media, interview a guy named Richard Ivey, who runs a website called "My Friend's Feet" (please God, don't let my parents be reading this!)--a gay, tickling fetish site. The difference between Ivey and the person behind Jane O'Brien Media is that everything Ivey does is aboveboard. He's comfortable with himself and his sexuality. He doesn't blackmail the men in his videos. By comparing Ivey to the criminal behind Jane O'Brien Media, Farrier and Reeve make sure that Tickled is not about mocking people with unusual sexual interests, but about not tolerating harassment and bullying.

Plenty of people will be weirded out by Tickled. As someone interested in sexuality, I was fascinated by it. But what was perhaps most fascinating is that for a film about sexual fetishism, it barely touches on the sexual aspects of this so-called "sport" Farrier runs across on Facebook and instead delves into what can happen when a person with a lot of money and no ethics decides to ruin someone's life for no reason. As Farrier says at the end of the doc: "It was never about the tickling. It was about the power". And that might be the strangest sentence I've ever typed out.

Grade: A-
 

Love Coming Out of Her...Wherever

Movies: The Love Witch

Anna Biller's film The Love Witch is...indescribable. It's a super-super-super indie movie that was not widely released. I only saw it through the grace of a true cinephile friend (hi, John!) who seeks out weird movies and tells me to watch them (he's the one who first told me to watch Duke of Burgundy and for that I will be forever grateful).

Perhaps the most notable thing about The Love Witch is that it was filmed in technicolor, so it looks ripped straight out of the late 60s/early 70s. Additionally, the costumes and sets give the film a retro look although the time period in which the film is set is ambiguous. Really, the best thing I can do is post some screencaps and let you see for yourself:

See what I mean?

The Love Witch is worth watching for the unique cinematography alone and it truly is its saving grace as the actual plot starts to lag in the second half of the film.

Briefly, The Love Witch is about a woman, Elaine (Samantha Robinson), who identifies as a witch (she went through a sex ritual and everything!). After the death of her husband, Jerry, she rents a room from her friend Trish. Elaine wants to make a man fall in love with her, so she begins seeking out potential bachelors (or, in the case of Trish's husband, Richard, married men) and using her witchy spells to make them fall for her. Problem is, Elaine's love magic is TOO powerful and then men fall SO hard for her, they...well, they die. Girl's still learning, ok?!

The film's message is both radically and subversively feminist. On the one hand, Elaine's desire for a man--any man!--and her seduction tactics (Cook him dinner! Wear sexy lingerie! "Be his fantasy", as she tells Trish) are directly out of a 1960s relationship advice book. Additionally, Elaine's "dicks before chicks" attitude toward her friend Trish (she seduces Trish's husband, like, immediately) is very anti-feminist.

On the other hand, Elaine is a frighteningly powerful woman. First of all, she can--and does--kill men. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose. Her first victim is Wayne, a college professor. After being hexed with love, Wayne becomes attached and needy. He eventually dies of a broken heart. Elaine takes one look at the sobbing man and sneers "pussy".

Elaine's blase attitude toward men borders on the hilarious. She's a full-blown sociopath who loves 'em and leaves 'em when they inevitably fail to live up to her romantic fantasies. And this is perhaps where the crux of the feminist message of The Love Witch lies: it's not *men* or any one *man* Elaine wants, it's *love*. She doesn't give a fuck about these dudes--they're merely vessels to provide her with something she wants. And if they don't work out, she's on to the next poor sap to cross her path.

Also, and maybe I'm reading to much into this, but the men Elaine seduces all have penis/bluntly masculine names. There's Wayne Peters (peter!), Richard (i.e. Dick), and Griff. Maybe I'm getting a little too Feminist Cinema 101 here, but I feel like Biller was trying to express that, to Elaine, men are interchangeable symbols of masculinity. They're merely ready and waiting phalluses (phalli?) in suits for Elaine to mess around with and then dump.

The Love Witch is a real trip. It's High Camp, complete with purposefully cheesy special effects, saturated colors, and gratuitous female flesh. I watched it with a few friends and half the time we were going "what the fuck?". It's certainly not the greatest film ever (although it has an inexplicable 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I guess the critics liked it), but it's too unique to be denied.

Just watch the trailer. Perhaps you'll be as mesmerized by Elaine as her beaux were...before they perished...

Grade: A

White Fright

Movies: Get Out

Director Jordan Peele (of Key & Peele fame) has directed the perfect horror film that taps into the American Zeitgeist of race relations and white privilege. As any dedicated fan of horror knows, a scary movie is never just a scary movie, but a commentary on culture and common cultural fears. Much has been written about women in horror movies: the slut who gets taken out in the first act for the crime of having sex, the pure (often brunette) "final girl" who lives to tell the tale, and all the shrieking bimbos and feisty women in between.

But what about race and horror movies?

Like the "slut" trope in slasher movies, plenty of horror films also feature a token black character who gets offed pretty quickly to make more screen time for the white protagonists. Get Out, however, is different. Black people are indeed the prey of the film, but not as a careless afterthought. The movie is about the everyday horror of Living as Black in the United States taken to the extreme.

Detailed plot discussion ahead. If you want to go in with a blank slate, stop reading now!

Get Out's opening sequence features a black man trying to find someone (his girlfriend's?) house in a white, wealthy suburb. A car pulls up next to him and then begins following him. He says "Not today" and turns around, eliciting knowing laughter from the audience I was watching the movie with. Sure enough, an assailant whom we can't see exits the car and attacks the man, all set to the creepy 1930's tune "Run Rabbit Run". This is only the first instance in Get Out where a black person is symbolically liked to an animal--prey--to be hunted down by white people.

The film then cuts to photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, whom savvy pop culture aficionados will recognize from the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits") who is about to take a trip to upstate New York to meet his white girlfriend, Rose's (Allison Williams of Girls in full basic bitch mode), parents. He asks her if they know he's black. She gets a little annoyed with him: "They aren't racist" she assures Chris. SUUURRRREEEEEE thinks the audience.



While Rose's parents, beautifully played with subtle condescension by Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, are very polite, it's clear that they really don't know how to interact with black people. Whitford's character, Dean Armitage, is all too eager to tell Chris he would have voted for Obama for a third term if he could have and keeps calling Chris "my man". Keener's character, Missy Armitage, is a psychiatrist who keeps aggressively offering to hypnotize Chris to help him dump his "nasty" habit of smoking. When Rose's brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry-Jones, the one false note in the movie), shows up, things get even weirder.

But the weirdest thing to Chris are the Help: the housekeeper, Georgina, and the groundskeeper, Walter, are both black and act bizarrely robotic and, well, "white". When Chris tries to interact with them, one black person to another, they act confused and upset. As is often the case in horror movies, something is Not Right.

But the action really begins after Armitage's host a lawn party and Chris runs into another young, black male who acts so "not black" that Chris is thoroughly creeped out.

For once in a review, I won't fully blow the plot twist, but I can tell you that Get Out combines the everyday horror of black people being stared at, condescended to, and fetishized by white people with actual horror movie elements. The film makes symbolic reference to Trayvon Martin--a boy seen as a threat to white people even as he was literally stalked, hunted down, and murdered by George Zimmerman. While white people hold their bags closer and lock their car doors around young black males, those same males are treated as animals to be dispatched and controlled. Who should be afraid of whom?

Get Out also makes specific reference to Olympic winner Jesse Owens, as Dean proudly tells Chris that his own father was beaten by Owens in the qualifying races before Ownes went on to show the world--and Hitler--that black athletes can best white ones. "[My father] almost got over it" Dean jokes to Chris. In the movie, white people discuss black bodies in fetishistic terms ("Is it...better?" an old white lady asks Rose. Wink wink), referring to black men's supposed prowess in sports and sex. These conversations should be familiar to black audiences and cringe-y to white audiences. I myself have been privy to conversations from white relatives about how "blacks are naturally better athletes".  And guess what, America? That's racist! Because it's reducing black people to their bodies...not an unprecedented thing in American history.

White people can be such dumb motherfuckers sometimes, I can't even.

Get Out, with a nearly perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes (the one negative review is by a black journalist for The National Review--make what you will of that!), is a genuinely creepy, suspenseful movie that is also filled with laughs (it is directed by Peele, after all). It's also deeply cathartic, especially given our bullshit political atmosphere right now. It's not perfect (the character Jeremy really just feels like he belongs in another movie), but it's really good and doesn't hesitate to make the audience stare both benevolent and malevolent racism right in the face.

Grade: A