Crumb

CRUMB is a stunning portrait of a man and his life, tracking Robert Crumb the underground cartoonist over four years of his life. We get a very unflattering view of Crumb, but he speaks for himself at large, and that gives him a sort of dignity that goes hand in hand with his odd lifestyle. He's a wiry looking guy, and his cartoons are just as odd, bulgy and crude and subversive. But I was never really drawn to Crumb the cartoonist as I was drawn to Crumb the family man or Crumb the individual. He holds some truly odd but individual views, believing he's never really been in love (although he's married). But it's a true feat of this documentary by Terry Zwigoff to see some really sad bits of Crumb's life, like his brother who, in childhood, was just as promising an artist as Robert, but now still lives with his mother and chronically medicates. That's why CRUMB is such an interesting film. I was personally not attracted to Crumb's art, but the way that he defends it is almost more worthwhile in itself.

out of Five

Rabid

As David Cronenberg's second distributed feature, RABID is a wonderfully textured and stylized testament of the seventies: one of the greatest manifestations of the decade by transposing all of the newly discovered realism into grungy settings. A free but actually useless protagonist on his motorcycle crashes when a family car gets in the way, sending his girlfriend into a coma. Futurist music glides over the steamed up streets and grungy malls of RABID and the girlfriend named Rose (porno actress Marilyn Chambers) gets an experimental skin graph at a doctor's clinic. She remains in a coma, but awakens sooner than the doctor's anticipated or know. Turns out the experimental procedure has rendered Rose a monster, a vampiric thirst for blood contrasted against her knowledge that what she does is wrong as she creates an epidemic of rabid, infectious creatures across town. Cronenberg keeps the monsters subdued though, looking more like fevered madmen than the easily describable zombies. But Cronenberg's aesthetic works wonderfully here, and the supposed hero of the film actually shows himself to be a weak loser, unable to do much and failing at every opprotunity. Instead, Rose is the complicated one who doesn't want to believe that she's created this disaster, and Chambers' rendition is perfectly directed, her curved lips making the perfect blood-thirsty femme fatale.

★★★ out of Five

River's Edge

It's becoming exhaustive, and it's been a stream of really bad movies lately. Here's another one though: RIVER'S EDGE, a sort of anti-80's era film about teenagers. I admire the attempt at the very least: trying to counter the ridiculous lies of John Hughes films that minimize and degrade the teenage years to a series of rebellions against the obvious. But in RIVER'S EDGE, everyone's a real son of a bitch. The film opens to a young kid riding on his bike, stopping on a bridge and seeing an older boy sit next to a corpse. The corpse is that of his girlfriend's, distastefully stripped nude and laid against the grassy shore. The kid steals a beer for the older boy, and it soon becomes common knowledge that Samson has killed his girlfriend. He brags about it at school and shows the body to his friends, and they all have different reactions to it. Stealing the film is the wonderfully weird Layne (Crispin Glover) who defends Samson on the basis that he's still alive and perhaps they can assist him. Less sure however, is Matt (Keanu Reaves) who teams up with a young Ione Skye in questioning something that should be obvious. There's even a subplot with the kid from the beginning, a pot-smoking ten year old who tries to steal a gun from Dennis Hopper's Feck, a past killer himself. What becomes overwhelming though, is the attempt to make everything so down and out, so that it actually becomes unbelievable. There are some really attractive scenes here and there, but they all mesh together to make nothing shocking, and just all offensive. Sure John Hughes' films are bad and irresponsibly pretending to be the heartbeat of a generation, but this kind of film is the other extreme: one that chocks up to an elderly cry of "kids today" that's mired in fear and misunderstanding. This film portrays every teenager as a criminal, and its just as inaccurate and harming.

★ out of Five

Fritz the Cat

Coming from the underground cartoonist, Robert Crumb, FRITZ THE CAT was the first animated film to be X-rated, and was notably not endorsed by Crumb himself. The film is an ugly manifestation of half-baked ideas, putting Fritz as a hip cat of the 70's who's sexually free but intellectually bland, scowling at everything without having any ideas of his own, and thus immature and weak. The film isn't really about anything except the adventures of Fritz the Cat, as he flees from some pig cops whose pants often fall off to reveal their penises, and a few black crows who offer a couple of funny but racist lines. This is not an terrible movie because of its odd and fetishistic sexual tendencies as Robert Crumb suggested, but because all of its anti-political or supposedly edgy stances are rooted in a sublime ignorance of the contrary argument, subversively heckling but not being very interesting itself.

★ out of Five

Everything Must Go

The second notable Will Ferrell movie that's supposed to be serious, EVERYTHING MUST GO traces its lineage back to a Raymond Carver short story on which it's only loosely based. It's one of those films that consists of a dozen or so one-liners that fit cleanly into a trailer, but, when viewed in context, are far apart and less funny because of what they're retorting against. In the film, Ferrell plays Nick, a Vice President of one of those businesses that vaguely does business. He's fired after an incident with an intern (which holds all the connotation it really even needs), and he mopes back to his house after slitting the tires of fellow executives, foolishly leaving the instrument behind that holds his name on the outer plating. Upon returning home, Nick sees everything laid out on the lawn and a note from his wife saying she's left him in one of those visual manifestations of a metaphor that wasn't meant to be literal. Nick buys some beers, is obliquely a dick to some high schoolers, and returns home to stake out his lawn. For one thing, EVERYTHING MUST GO has an odd sense of where to place blame, for it seems to have a lot of shit against Nick for his moping, but nothing against any of the people who are blatantly being unhelpful and unrealistic like his bitch wife who's acted in the "because I was wronged I have the right to everything you own" sensibility, his banker who throws his hands up in the air, and his supposed detective cop friend who tells him to get his shit together when he has none of the tools to do that with. There's some nice interaction between Nick and a couple of nice people he meets on the block like an overdrawn black kid on a bike, and an old love-interest from college. Both characters are sort of inexplicably interested in Nick though, as if the flair he had that made him Vice President of a company are simmering beneath his alcohol laden surface. But that isn't apparent in Ferrell's performance, and thus, the device goes unexplained. Furthermore, Nick quasi-befriends a neighbor who's just moved in across the street (Emily Blunt), a photographer who he basically creeps on and bosses around proving another pathetic attempt of the film that even if a piece of shit gives you good advice, they're not exempted from being a piece of shit. But Nick's anti-outrage is just as frustrating as the film's anti-outrage, which places its decades old source material against the justifiable outrage of the 2008 and onward recession. This makes it sort of worthless, for it takes a stance that doesn't make any sense, and then parades about reasons to leave that stance on its periphery.

★ out of Five

Fight Club

I found the fighting pretty boring in FIGHT CLUB, despite how revolutionary it supposedly was at the time. I can't speak to that, but as a fan of Fincher while also believing that he's been on an ascent as a filmmaker, I find this film to be pretty damn good, but I also find myself unable to embrace it. In the film, an unnamed narrator (the great Edward Norton) is an insomniac who goes to grief groups to get off, and compartmentalizes his life into a series of odd habits like this. One day, his apartment is blown up and he moves in with a soap salesman he met on a plane named Tyler Durden. Tyler and the narrator eventually come up with an idea for a fight club where men just get together and fight. But mainly, there's an anti-consumerism undercurrent to their fun that takes place so outside of the realm of a society based on consumerism. What I most love about FIGHT CLUB is the idea that the narrator and Tyler change the world, and that they create an alternate world based on the repressed ideas of men. Still though, there's something awry with FIGHT CLUB, and that might exist in central mystery / reveal that the film offers. I feel as if it's unnecessary, or at least, taken too seriously when it actually happens, and that it should of been handled how the rest of the film was. Isn't the world changing purely based on these men's ideas a reveal of its own? But that is handled in an almost deadpan fashion, as the supposedly major reveal should have been. Also, now that that reveal is as commonly known as the end of the SIXTH SENSE, the suspense that leads up to it is kind of anti-climactic. Still good, but compared to what Fincher does nowadays, I couldn't call this the masterpiece it wants to be.

★★★ out of Five

Open Water

I had to see OPEN WATER after seeing SILENT HOUSE. The same directors for both films, I loved SILENT HOUSE, although I felt as if I viewed it as what it had turned out to be rather than what it had been intended to be. There are a lot of failures in that film, but I feel as if they actually strengthen the film. With OPEN WATER though, I see only weaknesses. The film is one of those 'now what if THIS happened' kind of films in which some really obviously ridiculous event happens, and we're manipulated into believing that it could have happened. In this case, a couple on a scuba diving expedition go out with around 18 other passengers to the middle of the ocean. Due to a botched head count, the two are left behind, and everyone returning on the small boat inexplicably forget about them. Did the couple not have a single interaction on the way over or are we supposed to erroneously and unfoundedly believe that people are that inattentive? Nevertheless, the couple are lost in the open water. The current moves them in the direction they don't want to be going, they have no food, and the woman, Susan, decides that drinking ocean water couldn't be all that bad. But the problem with OPEN WATER is that the filmmakers have decided that shoddiness is equivalent to rawness, and their bilious camera-style on the open water waves following the bobbing heads of the Susan and Daniel. There's some talk about what to do, but I feel as if the filmmakers put too much credence in their subject. One of the major conceits of the film is that these are just two regular people, doomed at sea, but what is "regular"? I found these characters so "regular" that it was irregular, and there was no specificity to their lives. They just become symbols for the weak horror device of 'it could be you!" And then the film ends and I've been bored. Watching two people bob around in the water [SPOILER] and then die is pretty boring.

★★ out of Five

Into the Abyss

I've found myself drawn to Werner Herzog's documentaries in a stronger way than my attraction to his narratives had ever been. I like his style, simplistic as it occasionally can be, and he puts everything together in a way that's sometimes clearer than his narratives' set-up. In the same year INTO THE ABYSS came out, Herzog released CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, which, through its simplicity and universality was, for me, a triumph. Thus, I came into INTO THE ABYSS with some real expectations, and they weren't really met. Herzog makes it clear pretty quickly that he's against the death penalty, and then shows us a truly despicable and pathetic Texan on death row. Herzog could make a point here about how Texas has executed more people than any other state, or that some of the people they've executed have been proved innocent, but he instead chooses to focus on someone who is obviously guilty. The man's name is Michael Perry. He has greasy black hair, bulgy eyes, but a clear way of expressing himself in personable quips. He murdered three people, and will be dead in a few weeks. His partner in the crime (also extensively interviewed) was given a life sentence. Herzog breaks the film in a series of parts. The first deals with the crime itself, and then he moves onto people who knew Michael Perry, and then the family members of the victims, once of which actually expresses her disbelief in the death penalty, but her joy at Perry's death. What Herzog fails to do, though, is take any real stance, and I felt deceived by a story that really went nowhere. It's a queasy film, and you can't help but have a lot of hatred for Michael Perry and his accomplice. Essentially, I don't think Herzog knew what he was doing here, because the film's ambiguities feel as if they were non-answers repurposed as artsy vagueness.

★★ out of Five

The Graduate

In Mike Nichols' THE GRADUATE, a blank-faced, pathetic little creature named Benjamin comes back home from college. He adopts a name and uses it, one that is long and formal rather than the shorter 'Ben' form that his parents and parents' friends use. At a party reminiscent of James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", Benjamin walks around like a zombie offering weak retorts to adults demands, and eventually falling into what they want. He's supposedly rebellious, but really all that could be called rebellious is his dissatisfaction, which is really just inactivity, and contrary to the purpose of rebellion. At the party, zombified in his room with his fish, he shies away from the pressures of admiration that his parental figures are trying to throw on him. The matter-of-fact Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a friend of his parents who he's known since childhood, sweeps in and rudely throws his keys in the fish tank, shows obliquely that she doesn't know how to drive, and scoffs away his dissatisfaction by demanding he take her home. He succumbs, and takes her home in his pretentious European sportscar as Simon and Garfunkel fills his empty head. Mrs. Robinson brings him upstairs and slowly seduces him in a style that is sly and weird, which suggests more thought, intelligence, and intelligence due to experience, which is more than Benjamin ever exhibits. He flees from the house but becomes enamored by the suggestion, eventually seeking the woman out in order for the film to display some clever wordplay and play-like sensibilities. For example, at a private event to which Benjamin isn't invited, he's caught up by the hosts who like him just because he's young (another character even remarks "20, that's a nice age to be"), and the butler who lets him into the ballroom says, "Here for the affair?" But Benjamin is an anti-rebel, succumbing to, and even being infected by everything he's supposedly dissatisfied with. And whether intentional or not, Nichols' villainous adult characters are smarter and have more perspective than Benjamin ever displays, who continues to call character by names like "Mrs. Robinson", even when he's angry. His dissatisfactions are always rooted in rationality as well, but the actions of people like Mrs. Robinson are rooted in instinct and desire, the adults all tell him to have fun while he can, and even seemingly anticipate the malaise that he's drowning in, knowing that the future is sad and boring. Except Mrs. Robinson, who is the real rebel of the film: a broken-down alcoholic who plays with her husband's partner's son. But there is nothing to be found within the character Benjamin but the sort of pretend rebellion that effuses itself across American movies. He's weak. Upon a family friend saying that he was probably a ladies man in college, he scoffs it off, and when he finally kisses Mrs. Robinson, she's more bored by what's clearly a boring and ineptly-put preamble to sex than he could ever imagine it to be. Whatever can be found from Benjamin as a hero is also the trickery of the establishment: making you think that rebellion looks like inactivity and Simon & Garfunkel rather than doing what you want because you want to do it.
★★ out of Five

A Better Life

For what is basically an immigrant drama, I didn't have high hopes for A BETTER LIFE. Directed by Chris Weitz, who has made a stream of films that are either schlocky are pretty darn good, the film follows Carlos (Demían Bichir) as he evades danger as a Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles. Carlos is a single father, and he's not at home much, merely lending out some demands in Spanish to his son. Well-intentioned, Carlos is simply unable to raise his son, Luis, who has been descending into the world of gangs. Luis is pretty unlikable, especially when contrasted against his father, who Bichir plays with nobility and a face that falls into empathetic looks of melancholy or hope by scrunching his eyes under a vast forehead. Carlos' gardening partner is moving back to Mexico, and plans to sell his truck. Carlos borrows some money from his sister to get the truck, which he could use in order to sustain his gardening for rich L.A. whites. But Carlos' kindness is taken advantage of, and his truck is stolen. Distraught, he inducts his son in his search for the truck, which results in a colorful and entertaining mystery-plot as the two trek the streets of L.A. looking for just one truck, and with the memory of a generic-looking Mexican named Santiago to assist them. But A BETTER LIFE poignantly displays Carlos as a respectable man who just wants a better life for his son. Any questions that I came up with the challenge the film were answered a minute after I'd thought of them, even having Luis come up with a few queries for his father like "why would you have me?" But what Carlos conveys is a hope and yearning that is still planted in the American dream, false as it is. And the only thing he has to cling to is the though that he might make life better for someone else, and that he'd enjoy that process.

★★★★ out of Five

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

I must admit that I was originally drawn to Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES by a single image appearing first in its posters around the internet and art house theaters, and then it's dvd cover on the racks at Hastings. The image is of a dark figure enveloped in the greenery of a forest, it's red-eyes leering at me. The creature seemed to look like a similar creature that terrorized the space family Robinson in Irwin Allen's 1960's tv series "Lost in Space" in one of the better episodes. My thought that these two creatures seemed similar was even confirmed by Weerasethakul, who said that they were inspired by such cheap monsters that he'd seen as a kid. But despite coming in to BOONMEE with an interest in its images, I found Weerasethakul's images drawing me into a more effusive tone of ideas that must die. At the beginning of the film, Weerasethakul begins the enigmatic experience with Boonmee sitting at his dinner table with a couple of family members, only to see his dead wife of many years to appear beside him, converse with her, and prepare to be lulled into his own demise, guided by the already-dead. When Boonmee asks a practical question, he receives no answer, and when his son, transformed into a forest-spirit, "Lost in Space" gorilla creature walks up to the table and sits, we cannot help but feel some sense of hilarity that is carefully intertwined with poignance. Yes, Boonmee is due to die of organ failure, and yes, we can see how these spirits will help guide him, but there is an obvious sense that the spirits are not as omniscient as they should be. Weerasethakul uses long takes to allow these ideas to stir within his audience, and his images are interesting enough to keep us captivated as he does this. As the spirit world becomes present, Boonmee's past lives become apparent, especially one involving a princess who comes to a lake and sees herself as beautiful in her reflection the lake, but also as white. In this one scene is so much history, comedy, and drama it's astounding, and wrapped up in all of Weerasethakul's film are ideas, the dismantling of those ideas, and simple truths evoked through images such as: the forest, the hotel room, watching tv.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: ★★★★ out of Five

Halloween: H20

A few years ago I set out to see every single Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th film. I failed, but I got to the near-end of most of the series, so, when I saw HALLOWEEN: H20 newly added to Netflix Instant Watch, I thought, what the hell, I might as well continue through the series. Mind, not all of the Halloween films are bad, and a few of them have odd flairs to them which are appealing, but, in HALLOWEEN: H20, I found only a single redeeming quality, and that was that Jamie Lee Curtis drives the same car as I do in the film. Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode, the terrorized sister of stoic, masked killer Michael Myers. It's twenty years later, and she's now the head of a boarding school, living under a different name after faking her own death a few years after the original film's events. Michael Myers has just killed the nurse to the only doctor who ever took him seriously, and died obsessing over Michael: Sam Loomis. Along with Loomis' nurse, Myers also felled a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and that's a good laugh to be had. Now, inexplicably staged, Myers has decided that after his twenty year stint as an unseen masked behemoth parading about the countryside having never been seen or killed anyone, his vacation is over, and it's time to go kill that meddlesome (? why ?) sister of his. The supposedly unstoppable Myers has apparently been halted for a good twenty years, but now he's back dammit, and ready to fuck with anyone who gets in his way. Stealing a car (he can drive!?) Myers takes the information collected after killing Loomis' nurse to find his sister (he can read?!). Meanwhile, a good first forty minutes of the film are spent hashing out the bitchfight between headmistress Laurie and her son, John (Josh Hartnett). He's had to deal with his mom's incessant twitchiness all his life, for she still lives in fear. He thinks she's an idiot for it, and, based on what he knows, he's right, and when Myers finally does show up, I don't know what I was being convinced of: that the twitchiness was justified? Myers kills a couple of John's friends, and there's some idiotic interplay between Laurie and Michael, and she goes badass on us and takes up an axe that she briskly loses as she becomes determined to kill her brother and rid herself of fear. That's a decent premise, but one that comes late in the film and is weakly upheld by Laurie's ineptitude and Michael's superhuman powers of catholic-resurrection. The film ends in an abrupt ugliness, and I determined to not see HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION.

★ out of Five

The Brood

The normalcy with which THE BROOD begins is its greatest strength. Opening to a couple of men sitting on a stage, hashing out some familial turmoil, and ending in the downing of lights and the outburst of applause, David Cronenberg shows an event that seems to be one thing, and is in fact, another. We are very familiar with a normal-seeming exhibition, and we become very comfortable with the low-toned greys and blues and lazy winter jackets in the next scene. But while showing us this over-regularness, Cronenberg puts a sick twist on it. In the first scene with the two men, we learn that one is a doctor who poses as the patient's relatives, putting him under a quasi-hypnosis in order to have the patient talk it out with their aggressor. In the second scene, as normal-looking Frank (Oliver Reed) bathes his young daughter, he discovers scratches and bruises all over her back. He goes to the doctor from the first scene, demanding to see his wife, and then demanding that she never see his daughter while she undergoes therapy there. But Frank becomes the victim of a series of grizzly events that befall relatives of his. First, his mother-in-law is murdered by a ghastly, horrid little mutant dwarf, and he faces these creatures over the course of the film. The rationale behind the cretins is eventually explained, and its a reveal to a growing mystery that's shocking, without much sense, and fun. But the whole film undergoes the same sort of normalcy invaded by hatred or evil. It's pretty good.

★★★ out of Five

The Fly

I've seen THE FLY three times now, each and every time wanting to like it, and each and every time finding it to be a complete failure. I love Cronenberg, but every once in a while I think he gives too much credence to one of his subjects. This was true of his MADAME BUTTERFLY, where Cronenberg let the man in drag eat up every scene, letting him linger under the camera for so long that it became uncomfortable. I think he's created a similar monster here. In THE FLY, an antisocial scientist named Seth Brundle has created a teleportation machine. He shows it off to a reporter named Veronica (Geena Davis) at a party, and as he becomes more obsessed with his work, she becomes his accomplice in a shady scientific venture. The original, and great, 50's version was about how some men who seem normal hide their secrets in their houses, but Cronenberg's film is about a man whose life is consumed by these secrets, and how he could never be meant to have a real life, or a real relationship. The 50's version has evil consume a family, but in Cronenberg's version, only Seth Brundle in consumed. I think this is what makes it so much less dramatic, and sort of obvious, as Seth Brundle makes a grave miscalculation and teleports himself after a fly flew into the device with him. After becoming spliced with the fly, Cronenberg sort of lets go of the film, and lets the makeup department take over. Everything becomes obvious, and we know what will eventually happen to Brundle.

★★ out of Five

J. Edgar

I would be lying if I were to ignore a decline that's been apparent in Clint Eastwood's work ever since his great film, GRAN TORINO. Perhaps because that film was so good, or because subsequent films have been challenging, and daring (sometimes resulting in uneven films), HEREAFTER, which I found less impressive on a second viewing, and INVICTUS, have been far from great, while containing some excellent bits. The same is true of J. EDGAR, which tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover in vignette-like, chapter based sections that follow highlights of his life. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover awkwardly, sopping up the performance with a distractingly fake sounding accent, which is only awkward, oddly, in the scenes where Hoover is young, and works in the scenes where he's old. Furthermore, a lot of the lighting in J. EDGAR just feels contrived, or as if someone should be saying "someone turn a fucking light on in this room!" I actually drained my screen of color for a couple of minutes, and the film looked fantastic, but when there's color in the picture, it just looks bad. Armie Hammer is excellent as Clyde Tolson, and the relationship he has with Hoover in the film is the heart of the film, and the level of its understated nature is perfectly contrasted to Hoover's similarly understated demeanor. About half of the film feels well made, but another half just feels as if it wasn't thought out very well. Didn't someone look at the coloration, or hear DiCaprio's accent and frown? This seems to actually be something that, sadly, is to the fault of Eastwood, who sometimes lets his collaborators run away with his picture, trusting them to much to direct them effectively.

★★ out of Five

Immortals

There are so many great shots in IMMORTALS, that one can almost forgive all the shots in between. But Tarsem Singh's occasionally striking, dreadfully inaccurate film feels like a slump. It's boring, and then Singh throws in some great shot. But too much of the film is muddled in darkness, and incomprehensible battle scenes which consist of a sea of men thrashing their swords in every direction on an oddly corpseless battlefield. The film follows Henry Cavill's Theseus, the famed killer of the minotaur in a giant maze. Here, Theseus is looked over by Zeus (John Hurt & Luke Evans) and eventually set off on a quest to find a mythical bow that aided the Gods in their banishment of the wicked Titans. King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) wants to release the Titans and...rule the world...but Theseus, with the Gods on his side, is due to prevail. Oddly though, Zeus, who has been meddling in Theseus' life in the body of an old man, forbids his fellow gods in meddling. He evil murders some of the gods, and in the final battle scene, the gods fight well, but die pretty easily, which is completely and totally ridiculous. Furthermore, Theseus, who is supposed to be our man, loses so many battles it's laughable. He's not a good hero, and is always calling for the gods to help. The film is only worth seeing for a handful of striking shots, but that's about it. Singh's aesthetics are wonderfully colored, but when they don't work perfectly, they don't really work at all.

★★ out of Five

Martha Marcy May Marlene

As the film opened to a scenery of the Catskills that resembled a painting's texture, the green of the trees and the dark brown of the ground so well shot and damp looking it was stunning, Elizabeth Olsen appears as she begins her plight from a cult. Sean Durkin's atmospheric, slow, long-shot film is an American masterpiece, filling each shot like a palette, oppressively evoking truths through images, and providing the vessel for Olsen, whose placid face contorts into such a range, she's due to become one of the great American actresses. With Olsen we don't just get a character's feeling at a certain time, we get a character whose face feels like the product of emotions from birth to that moment. 

As she plays Martha, a damaged girl whose fled from an abusive cult, she arrives in a vacuous home populated by her sister (Sarah Paulson), who she hasn't spoken to in years, and her husband (Hugh Dancy). John Hawkes plays the seductive cult leader who brings her in, and he lends an extra creepiness to the film. But what MARTHA does so well is stray from clichés while remaining truthful. So many films stray from clichés but result in implausibility. MARTHA understands clichés, and thus uses truths and varieties in order to create a specific character in Martha. When Martha is back at home, her mind is still polluted with the cult's insanity, and her actions are that of a habitual way of life that became normality. Olsen inhabits this role fully and boldly in her marvelous role, portraying Martha as someone admirable and who is truly trying to escape a situation in the best way possible.

★★★★★ out of Five

La Casa Muda

LA CASA MUDA is very close to SILENT HOUSE, except that it's awful. SILENT HOUSE was actually the American remake of this Uruguayan film, but it's surely an improvement. I don't go to a haunted house movie for story or plot, so in SILENT HOUSE, I was mainly led through a good experience by Elizabeth Olsen and cinematographer Igor Martinovíc. In LA CASA MUDA, the single take gimmick is poorly handled, and the story of Laura (Florencia Colucci) running about in a haunted house in the dark, is slow and pathetic. Not scary in the slightest bit, LA CASA MUDA has no sense of focus or interest, and lazily follows Laura about the house while maintaining a distance. She shrieks, and I have no sense where the film is. I yawn, she shrieks. What made the remake so entertaining is that Olsen-Martinovíc gave us a clear sense of where we were at every moment and what Olsen's character was experiencing at every moment. The range of emotions in LA CASA MUDA is scared and not scared, crying and not crying. A bore.

★★ out of Five

Silent House

SILENT HOUSE's problems are apparent in its trailer, which has the same odd mesh of greatness and Hollywoodness, a mesh of something original and bold, and something mired by expectation and self-recognition. Original and bold: I speak of the cinematography and Elizabeth Olsen, who are the true masters of this film. A straight-out horror film, suggesting the Hollywoodness of the film, SILENT HOUSE begins in a very different way, though. A large, overhead shot of Olsen as she sits on a rock before a pond. She looks tranquil, but its the sort of out of place camera placement that suggests something's awry. Then it swoops down brilliantly in an arc, and we see Olsen move across the pond and over marshy ground to a boring driveway, and a couple of flat actors. The first time she spoke in the film, I knew I was in good hands, her iterations are perfect, expressive of a specific kind of person who plays with speech conventions as twirls them around playfully. Such a person can talk about Facebook or other such trite modernities without losing a step in their articulateness. The camera swoops about as she talks, and we enter the Silent House (foolishly named, but artfully rendered). This is a haunted house movie, and Olsen's Sarah goes about the house with her father and uncle as they inspect broken down bits of the dilapidating house. All the windows are boarded up, and the interior of the house is black, although it's evening outside. Sarah encounters a strange girl on a bicycle outside, and then re-enters the house to a volley of noises. By this time her father is the only one in the house but her, and she pleads for him to go upstairs in order to inspect the noises. He yells from another room as she waits for him, and sees intruders in the house. She runs, and runs in a frantic, desperate, real way that is just another testament to her powers as an actress. We never get the sense that her foolish actions are just plain foolish, but foolish because she misjudged a certain situation at a certain time. The plausibility that Olsen lends is astonishing, and she commands the screen with incessant close-ups of her face for the full duration. The camerawork is similarly good, as the camera swoops about and focuses in and out in odd drops and falls. Then comes the Hollywoodness that was apparent even in SILENT HOUSE's trailer. In the trailer, we see the previews of the film, which are mostly good because the film is mostly good, but then, at the end of the trailer there's an awkward yelling and screeching and poor editing that rears its ugly head near the end of the film. Many critics found the ending problematic due to its ghastly twist, but I wasn't off-put by it, because I had followed Olsen for so long that I figured I could follow her a bit more. Instead, there's a bit of a jumpiness near the end that feels unwieldy. Furthermore, the film gained some criticism for supposedly pretending to be done in one take. This isn't so, and is obvious for watching the film that it doesn't do much else but add an effect as it was intended to. To treat it as some expectation or claim is ridiculous and a separate issue from the experience of viewing the movie.

★★★★ out of Five

A Dangerous Method

I found David Cronenberg's latest film, not a bore as I had been expecting and hearing about for months, but an extension of his foray into drama. Here, in A DANGEROUS METHOD, there is no overt act of violence that we've come to expect from him, but a buried fear, a buried dread, and a buried truth. We follow Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) at the birth of psychoanalysis. He takes in a patient who's been sexually abused named Sabina Spierlein (Keira Knightley). He decides to approach the patient with a method of Freud's which has not been tested. Sabina is insane, but through talking, Jung convinces her of her affliction, and she gets better. Innately though, Spierlein is very intelligent, and becomes herself a titan of psychoanalysis. But Jung develops a friendship that shifts to rivalry with Freud (Viggo Mortensen) who is electrifyingly convincing, and actually convinced me of his way of thinking rather than Jung's, which, I think, was Cronenberg's desire for me to end up with. The film worked anyway for me as Jung's life become engrossing.

I became riveted by his life, and by his struggles with a problem that was set in his mind as much as Sabina's problems were engrained in hers. Jung wanted to cure his patients, but Freud points out that such a thing is impossible, and that we are all prisoners to innate decisions. But there's even some mysticism that arises near the end of A DANGEROUS METHOD involving Jung's premonitions, but we see that his affliction was to succumb to Sabina, and that becomes the center of the film. Beyond this, the film is brilliantly shot, and Vienna looks stunningly beautiful. Keira Knightley reveals herself as yet another young actress who was robbed in the last Academy Awards, and stands with Elizabeth Olsen and Rooney Mara as a great young actress. Her portrayal of Sabina is crazed, but justifiably so, and as she becomes normal by the end of the film, her performance becomes more nuanced.

★★★★ out of Five

The Skin I Live In

I can see why many people didn't like THE SKIN I LIVE IN, and I'm glad that they didn't like it, because it shows how far Pedro Almódovar had to go to make a masterpiece. Many of his films are very good, but I don't love all of them, or, really, any of them. They tend to stick to the same, safe storyline that Almódovar is used to, and there's enough transvestites for all of the cinema. But, with THE SKIN I LIVE IN, Almódovar builds suspense like Hitchcock, designing quiet, creepy arenas for his characters to exist in. Basically, the film is about the escape of Vera (Elena Anaya) from a plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas). Ledgard exists within a lush, gated house where he conducts experiments on Vera, but Almódovar uncovers bits of the story like peeling skin back. The way he does this is brilliant, and THE SKIN I LIVE IN is actually his most accomplished work in every possible way. It's cleanly balanced, features astonishing colorful visuals that are his trademark, and Banderas and Anaya are brilliant in their roles. But THE SKIN I LIVE IN raises the stakes on every level, creating compartmentalized worlds for every action of every character.

★★★★★ out of Five

House of Tolerance

Bertrand Bonello's HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is a great film. Emerging languorously among booze, opium, lavish dresses, and naked bodies, it stops at nothing, knowing no bounds to what it wants to express. Such a theme is practically absent from modern cinema, but Bonello's film makes you experience every aspect of it in a hard hitting way. The film begins before the turn of the century, 1899, and ends after it, in 1900. Most of the film takes place in a Paris brothel, upscale and attracting the same gents every night. One girl, however, is tied up one night, and cut from the inside of her mouth on either side. At first we just hear her screaming, and then we see her bleeding and crying and thrashing about. We next learn of life at L'Apollonide, through the arrival of a new prostitute whose just a teenager. But unlike any of the pathetic and offensive Hollywood takes on whoredom, HOUSE OF TOLERANCE emerges us into every aspect of these women's lives. They look after each other like sisters, sharing a specific and horrid existence in the closed-in house of perpetually increasing debts. As one woman is brilliantly photographed, she tells the newcomer of the gels she has to apply to her lips, vagina, and asshole. "It stings at first, but that's normal," she says with boredom. The madam watches her ladies through a one-way mirror, yet the girl from earlier, the scars in her cheeks red as lipstick, still walks about the house like a ghoul. As a decline becomes clear, Bonello's film crescendo's like an opera, pounding music and breaking up shots into four segments of real-time, and then cutting the music off abruptly shifting its focus only to return to pounding opera music. The end of the film only brings everything together under a different lens, but in its similar imagery, reminds us of what came earlier. It's a brilliant film.

★★★★★ out of Five

The Interrupters

I wasn't really struck by THE INTERRUPTERS at any time during the viewing, except at the very end. I don't really appreciate Steve James' documentary approach to the subject, even, finding it sort of run of the mill for 2012. But at the end of the film, I saw what James was aiming for. Only after seeing the entire film, could I really sort this out, but the film is an attempt at a solid work, where there are no excesses, but only a cleanly edited and essentials-driven film. It tells of Chicago's CeaseFire, a group of past gang members called "Interrupters" who use their knowledge about violence from self experience in order to try and convince current gang members not to kill anybody. What's striking about this is that some of these men committed their crimes only fifteen years or so prior, but that the redemption they seek, and the clear headedness of their attempts, are that of someone who is completely different from the young men that committed the crimes. This is what I got out of THE INTERRUPTERS more than anything else. It's clear in the film that CeaseFire is not as successful as you might imagine. Despite the background of these men being essential, it's still not close enough to the mentality of a current gang member. But the attempts are in a good place, and the ones that worked, I was shocked that they did. A noble film.
★★★ out of Five

Bellflower

It's become a recurring theme recently of films by first-time directors that have extremely appealing portions to them, even entire half-films that are very good, and then an ugly twist to them. Such a thing was apparent in CHRONICLE, and here, again, it reappears in BELLFLOWER. The film has a lot going for it. It has some occasionally stunning shots, a cricket-eating contest, and a road trip to Texas just to try a shady gas station's day old meatloaf. But, ultimately, the film is immature. It considers a couple of lazy hipsters who are obsessed with MAD MAX and half-ass prepare for the apocalypse. Woodrow (Evan Glodell, who directed) and Aiden, the lazy hipsters, begin to assemble flamethrowers, a car named MEDUSA that shoots out flames, and loose plans for these instruments. But, Woodrow becomes distracted by Milly, a girl who beat him in a cricket eating contest, and as he falls in love with her, his MAD MAX obsession becomes secondary. What happens though, is that Woodrow gets dumped by a girl who he liked only because of her willingness to discard things she considers excess or compulsory. He shows his depression by wearing a ridiculous beard, and through some cop-out imagery that's the apex of the film's immature notions. Mainly though, the film portrays its characters as important, nice, or evil (any number of vague projections), when they really don't inhabit much more than being immoral or lazy. The acts of Woodrow and Aiden in the eventual apocalypse of sorts isn't anything but obvious given what we've already seen of them, and when the fall out comes, it's just as obvious. We learn as they begin to wreak havoc, nothing. We already knew they were violent idiots, but then, when the whole thing falls out, it's just as obvious. We already knew they were lazy, violent idiots, and the whole film just becomes the daydream of some violent little wretch. How boring.

★★ out of Five

Werckmeister Harmonies

Belá Tarr's WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES is a film that requires a complete surrender. Surrender, and you enter the film's world, with long, 10 minute long takes and an effusive sense of inevitable destruction. The plot is simple: a couple of exhibits that would belong in a circus enter town. One of them is a giant whale. Another is a man known as "The Prince", who never actually emerges, but unsettles the townspeople regardless. One young man, named János, is unaware, or unable to accept that destruction is coming. He walks among rude townspeople and rude neighbors spewing flowery ideas, and visiting the giant whale. He sees the whale as a wonder of the world, a testament to that which God can create. But Tarr's methods are brilliant. Each shot (and there are only thirty-nine of them) is masterfully rendered, the black and white, the actors, and the direction all add to sense that are specific. But Tarr's destruction is one that is not jabbing, but one that is sad and inevitable.

★★★★ out of Five

The Last Circus

THE LAST CIRCUS must cover at least ten different, distinctive styles within its 105 minutes. The film begins with grainy, darkly toned revolutionary times in Spain. Director Álex de la Iglesia's beginning to the story, and each distinctive portion, are each pretty entertaining. In the opening, we meet a couple of circus clowns, one of them wearing a dress and some ghastly make-up. The two clowns' act is interrupted by soldiers, and the practical clown wearing a dress, yells to his son to escape, and run away, while he's given a gun, inducted into the army as they fight opposing invaders. Through some complicated, but intense exchanges, the clown ends up in the mines, and eventually is trampled to death, his dying words a cry for his son to take vengeance. His son, Javier (Carlos Areces), grows up from a nerdy oversized glasses wearing kid into a fat, sad-clown. He finds a circus that looks suitable, but finds himself the toy of Natalia (Carolina Bang), the popular clown's abused wife. These portions are similarly entertaining in contrast to the first part, but they are almost jarringly different, and Iglesia's desire to play with different tones makes for the most uneven of films. Javier's later descent into insanity, burning of his face with acid and irons, doesn't fit with the rest of the film. I never saw any sort of transition that worked, but rather, an alienating frivolity that characterized Iglesia's approach. Besides, when he puts of political allegories next to a guy burning his face off and running around with a machine gun, it's like he's daring us to say that's wrong. But such an approach only comes off as snarky, rather than for the sake of fun, or, really, for the sake of anything but being snarky.

★★ out of Five