I also somehow got sucked into reading that Buffy v. Twilight debate. I'm not sure how it held my interest insofar as I've no active exposure to either one (never saw the show, never saw the movies, never read the books, etc.) but the one thing that seemed glossed over -- at least in my loose, quick reading of the discussion, I might've missed it: Vampires in Twilight may be a superior species in terms of having magic powers and they may need us for food, but they also look exactly like us. I think any moral reordering becomes a lot harder to simplify/predict when you want to fuck the species you feed on. There are a lot of interesting possibilities in that dynamic and I doubt Twilight deals with them in a very interesting way, but hot white caucasians differentiated only by their thirst for blood and ability to leap tall buildings or whatever are going to instinctively feel more empathy than Humans v. Chickens, or even Civilized Caucasians v. Primitive Africans in the course of history. And Nazism and other totalitarian realities are only confusing to mix in, in that they weren't superhuman, but fantasizing themselves to be so; they were the same species trying to control and differentiate themselves from people in their own category.

K

Speaking of wanting to fuck things that look enough like you:

Splice: I admire the perversity the film shoots for, but outside of that and a pretty fascinating creature design, Splice seems anemic and poorly written. Directorial decisions are generally obvious and boring, as are the characters. The "science" of it is gradeschool level at best (science fiction written by someone who has only the faintest knowledge of the subject he's fictionalizing). That could more excusably be scrapped had this been approached as an art film, by someone with vision. That could have been amazing: imagine Miike or Von Trier or Lynch working with material like this. But as it exists it's more just a somewhat doofy, overbearingly topical curiosity. I feel somehow that Don Murphy being a producer has something to do with it. At least it went new places.

The Proposition: I was sort of underwhelmed by this one, too, after the many good things I'd heard. It had a relatively interesting cast of characters, but not a great deal is done with them, and they all revolve around one of the least interesting protagonists in recent memory. The enigmatic older brother seemed poorly cast. The direction didn't really wow me and Nick Cave's crooning got on my nerves. Still, it seemed like a well-meaning effort to try something different in the Western genre; it just didn't quite come together for me.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: This movie seemed a little like Dogtooth or The Headless Woman if you drained out all of the actual ideas and left just the realism and atmosphere. While I'm hardly after pendantry, it also didn't seem to me to have much of anything to say about its subject matter. That said, it was a pretty good minimalistic take on post-cult confusion and paranoia, in a purely illustrative way. Olsen plays her part really well. The little nuances of character and personality feel very authentic and well considered.

K

Splice was okay. Hard to believe someone would be in a movie like this after once winning the Best Actor Oscar once, though. Hilary Swank was is the middle of filming The Gift when she won hers, and I think Halle Barry had already done Catwoman when she was in the running. But Brody is doing razor commercials now, so... The girl who played the creature was very brave, and I was reminded of her recently by the girl who plays the savage in The Woman.

MMMM was a real disappointment. It was like the polar opposite of an action movie. Like, on past drama. The script was positively catatonic.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot there. It's not so much a bad script as it just doesn't give you a lot to sink your teeth into. In the case of a movie like The Headless Woman that's ok -- she's not supposed to be very inherently interesting, in and of herself. A problem with MMMM is that it's subject matter is almost too good. You can't help but want to know more about Martha, more about the cult, more about the people in the cult. Instead you get a 100 minute portrait of a person being confused and out of it while the people around her grow increasingly annoyed. Interspersed of course with the memories of life in the cult. All the content seems authentic and is handled with subtlety and care; I could appreciate that. And as I've mentioned Olsen does a stellar job as Martha. But I inherently wanted more content than what was there. With a movie like Dogtooth or The Headless Woman, you fall back on ideas. The first, in addition to being twice as creepy as MMMM, is partly a political allegory and functions effectively on a variety of metaphorical levels; and the second is very much about class, about systematic injustices creeping into the peripheral vision of a woman who is shaken by them, but not sophisticated or driven enough to change anything. Her catatonia, her inability to comfortably re-engage the world/life around her, is central to the film (hence "The Headless Woman," aka a zombie, an animated corpse). Martha's confusion and its depiction are of course central to MMMM, but you have this fascinating cult floating there, just out of reach. You get little glimpses of what it's like and what the people in it are all about, but only glimpses. I'm pretty interested in cults, cult leaders, and the manipulations that allow cults to exist, so being stuck solely with a portrait of Martha's initial post-cult confusion was a little frustrating. It's like going to a grand cathedral but getting so caught up looking at an exterior decoration that you never actually get inside. Well, that's a poor analogy, actually, but you get the idea. So while I did think the film well made and interesting and full of well-chosen details, and a part of me admires its discipline in focusing on one specific piece of the whole subject, I share your disappointment to a degree. Reminds me also how disappointed I am PT Anderson's "The Master" was canned.

K

While the subject matter reminds me more of Dogtooth, the focused, well-chosen details -- especially audio detail -- reminds me more of The Headless Woman. I liked the motif of distant hammering and knocking, or small sounds like the pinecones on the roof (which causes Martha to recall the thrown stones that accompanied the cult's home robberies). Sound is really important to psychological character studies of this sort. I like the title too, the repetitious M name, with the Ms forming a kind of neutral drone/hum. The water scenes are shot well, the focus on the sub-surface, submerged bodies kicking. Lotta good stuff. But yeah.

K

Death Proof: I revisited this one on blu-ray, and, although it almost pains me to say it, because he's so over-exposed and consistently ass-kissed, I think I was too hard on Tarantino when I first saw it. It's actually quite good, a very sophisticated, well-shot, uniquely structured love letter to not only several genres dear to QT, but to the unsung heroes of those genres, the stuntmen and -- in this case -- stuntwomen, specifically Zoe Bell. It's a bit over-written in that Tarantino way, and the girls in the 2nd half in particular get a bit grating, but the climax makes up for it. All in all it's a really good little movie with a lot of great little things going for it.

Now to see how Planet Terror -- which I initially liked better -- holds up on a 2nd go. I suspect that might suffer from the opposite effect, since Rodriguez generally is neither as interesting or sophisticated a filmmaker as QT. But hopefully it'll still hold up as good fun. I had a blast with it the first time I watched it.

K

The retro part of Death Proof was decent, would have made a nice Masters of Horror episode. The rest was filler. Completely undermined the Kurt Russell character (and the car).

I think Planet Terror was the last time I got drunk. It was so boring, I had to.


I'll probably see Dogtooth and The Headless Woman soon. Although I'm slowly working through a book called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which only goes up to 2004.

I don't think you will like them -- Dogtooth, maybe, but for someone who found MMMM boring/tedious, The Headless Woman is likely to be more or less unwatchable -- but let us hear your thoughts if you see 'em.

I still haven't gotten around to Melancholia. I recently picked up the Antichrist bluray, so I'm eager to have a fresh look at that one too. Also ready to go whenever I get to it: The White Ribbon, Tron (original), Sin City Recut/Extended, and a couple others I'm forgetting...

K

Wow, you weren't kidding. I think the filmmaker's point was to say something about the Argentinian class system — the natural inclination of the higher social classes (in this case, upper-middle) is to automatically cover up wrongdoing, rather than to allow any kind of investigation (which, in this case, would have discovered there was nothing legally actionable).

I thought we had all seen and discussed The White Ribbon already? Haneke definitely knows how to lead an audience to water, and them give them vinegar; whereas in THW, director Martel never even offers the possibility of satiation (and doesn't deliver it).

I know it's come up, but I've certainly never seen it. I liked Cache and Code Unknown quite a bit; and I admired Funny Games to a degree, but kind of hated that one at the same time. Charles had a pretty good take on Haneke that I remember agreeing with. Talented filmmaker but his own snootiness undercuts him a bit.

I finally got through Melancholia, which I found rather disappointing. It just seemed so anemic compared to Von Trier's other films, and it's really kind of a silly plot. If you've seen the trailer, you get the idea. Depressed rich girl can't find happiness in her own lavish wedding, but is sort of resolute and calm when the end of the world comes. Her sister Claire is sort of the inverse of the same idea against which Justine (Dunst) is contrasted. Claire is Earth (her sister even calls her 'Clay'), Justine is Melancholia; and they throw in a little boy as Leo (the Sun I guess, a gravitational force linking the two other celestial bodies).

Oh, and on that note, also: tits!

It just doesn't have any real tension or resonance or seem to add up to anything, and the apocalyptic element feels kind of goofy and miscalculated. All the weird (and mostly arbitrary) visuals take place before they even flash the title card, and after that it's just a long slog with characters who -- at least for me -- failed to ignite any particular sense of interest, through an environment (a nice mansion) whose thematic purpose (pointlessness of life's rituals and material pleasures, I assume) is very weakly exploited.

For me, the whole thing just didn't evoke the feelings or questions or awe it seemed to imagine itself evoking; it was actually kind of a chore to sit through. And that's coming from someone who *liked* The Headless Woman.

Ah well. Rewatching Antichrist should be fun, anyway. (Afterthought: I don't think the common criticism of Von Trier as anti-woman is fair. His portrayal of men is hardly any more flattering, and I think he actually relates to his female characters a lot more so, even when they're bitchy egocentrics wreaking havoc on civilization.)

K