"Wild Tigers I Have Known," Cam Archer's visually striking but somewhat
self-indulgent debut, is an abstract and meandering portrayal of teen
angst and burgeoning sexuality. Its youthful protagonist, Logan
(Malcolm Stumpf), seems perpetually caught between a daydream and and
the harsh, uncaring real world.
Sounds kind of like Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth." Except that movie actually had substance. Oh well. This movie at least looks pretty, and art-chic-happy film students might find more to love in the film than I did.
13-year-old Logan is lonesome soul, given to walks on the beach and recording himself going on a abstract tangents. He also is in the midst of discovering his sexuality (gay as a maypole) while harboring a crush on Rodeo Walker (Patrick White), the most popular boy in school.
"The Forbidden Zone" takes place in a world entirely unlike our own. From the bizarre recreation of California to the freaky-deaky "Forbidden Zone" of the title, nothing looks the way it should look and none of the characters act the way a normal person would act under any given circumstances.
This is absolutely one of the weirdest movies I have seen in my life. If this intrigues you, this may be the movie for you. If not, maybe not. This bizarre surrealist musical follows Susan B. "Frenchy" Hercules (Marie-Pascale Elfman), a Californian with a pretentious French accent, who passes through a door in her parents' basement to the "Sixth Dimension" a bizarre world ruled by a jealous queen (Susan Tyrrell) and amorous dwarf king (Hervé Villechaize,)
Frenchy quite willingly becomes the dwarf's sex slave, but the queen, Doris, becomes determined to destroy her. Meanwhile, Frenchy's dunderhead brother Flash and Grandpa enter the Sixth Dimension, hoping to rescue her.
"Julien Donkey-Boy" is an occasionally emotional, mainly tedious foray
into the art of Dogme 95, laden with grainy visuals and non-existent
plotting. It recalls the much better film "Buddy Boy," which came out
the same year. "Buddy Boy" director Mark Hanlon knew how to engage your
interest and make you care about his main character, despite his
shortcomings.
Julien is a 20-something paranoid schizophrenic played by Ewen
Bremner, one of the most underutilized character actors of today. Julien
lives with his equally disturbed father, younger brother, and sister,
who he has impregnated before the film's beginning.
Uncomfortable yet? The whole movie works to make the viewer feel
discomfort while also invoking sadness and emotion. At this it is only
moderately successful. The dialogue is often random and directionless.
The experience of the film is akin to having hundreds of puzzle pieces
of differing shapes and sizes, none of them fitting together in the
least.
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is a bookish, imaginative little girl trapped in a harsh world. She and her pregnant mother have come to live with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi López), an officer in Franco's army. The Spanish Civil War recently ended, and Franco's fascist regime is battling tenacious groups of resistants taking refuge in the forest.
You might suspect that being one of Franco's generals is a role that
would require a special penchant for brutality. But Captain Vidal goes
above and beyond the call of duty.
Buddy Boy, Mark Hanlon's debut, is a haunting and potent film about dead end lives that provokes more questions than answers but remains bizarrely interesting throughout.
The film provides a look into the surrealistic existence of emotionally stunted, stuttering misfit Francis (Aidan Gillen), who lives with his trollish invalid stepmother (actual amputee Susan Tyrell), in a squalid apartment.
Suffering from overwhelming guilt concerning his sexuality, his religion, and himself, he goes to confession monthly, admitting every impure thought and indiscretion.
The contrast between faith and the id is revealed in the opening, which presents the viewer with a montage of religious imagery followed by Francis, uh... pleasuring himself to a pair of voluptuous breasts in a magazine.
I've avoided Eyes Wide Shut for years because I didn't care for the two lead actors. I didn't think even Kubrick could get me interested in these two. I've only ever liked Cruise in two roles and Kidman in one. But their performances in this film were flipping fantastic.
Allegedly, it took director John Albo six years to distribute this pseudo-art film to the public. He should have waited longer. Or better yet, not distributed it at all. Flexing With Monty is an unappealing, unlikable, incomprehensible, badly written mess. It's not the acting that's the problem. The actors try their best (Rudi Davis being the weakest) but are weighed down by a bad script. Very little of the dialogue seems like something anyone in the real world would say.
Stylized dialogue can be an asset -- it can be witty and smart (Juno) or deliberately enigmatic and formal (The Living and the Dead, an art film which I loved, by the way.) The dialogue in Flexing With Monty is stiff, pretentious, overly sexual-minded, self-indulgently perverse, and shocking for the sake of being shocking. There are several characters in this movie, and I didn't like any of them, and that includes the masturbating guy in the cage, the tattooed nun, and the cockatoo.
Monty is the center of this film, and as nasty and unlikable a character as you can come across. Monty, played by the deceased Trevor Goddard, is a misogynistic, hateful bodybuilder who works out constantly but who's mind is dull and doltish. His brother Bertin (Rudi Davis), who is described as "sensitive, gay, and intellectual" by reviewers, seems like a character I would like, but he isn't. He's nearly as obnoxious as Monty. And I'm not entirely sure he's gay, as he harbors incestuous fantasies about his birth mother.
The movie is full of incestuous overtones. Monty and Bertin show inappropriate impulses towards each other, their one-eyed grandmother gave them (naked) rubdowns, and when Bertin finally discovers the identity of his birth mother, a make-out session commences. I'm no fan of Harmony Korine, but the similarly incestuously themed Julien Donkey-Boy was way better than this. Bertin purchases an "exotic animal," which turns out to be an Aborigine man who wanks, makes moaning sounds, and, in one scene, sings harmoniously. His part in the story is never explained. Why would it? He's there to enhance the cultish quality movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show strive for.
A nun appears on the scene. She is collecting money to stop a nuclear holocaust, and Monty tells her to piss off. But the nun keeps coming back, insisting on seeing the brothers. "What is the connection between them?" the movie wants us to ask. Do we even care? A prostitute is mysteriously sent to the house, and she and Monty engage in some role-play (in which bear-rape comes to the table). In one scene, Monty bangs an inflatable doll while watching a slide show of himself flexing (one of the few witty parts, as it shows him in all his masturbatory grandiosity.) Bertin and Monty fight and engage in weird sexual tension. Not much happens, and what does happen is in equal parts bewildering and inexplicable.
There are some attempts at controversy, such as the knitting-needle abortion dream sequence and Monty's brutal attack on the gay man, but they seem kind of silly compared to movies like Audition. Another problem is the soundtrack -- the music turns on and off as it pleases and has no sense of dramatic tension. Someone online described it as a satire of American Values (not a direct quote), but even as a film that pokes fun at Americans, which never gets old for some people, it's a dreadful mess of a movie that should not be watched under any circumstances.
I'll admit it, I didn't come to this film with high hopes. I had seen Netflix reviewers trash it again and again, but I hoped that it would at least be original. By the middle, when the talking fruits showed up, I was waiting for the one hour ten minutes to end.
By the credits, I was wondering how such a horrific train wreck ever came into existence. There's a vague possibility that this could have been a good, albeit strange, film. What went wrong? As it turns out, almost everything.
The plot (if you can call it that) follows two prepubescent girls named Anna and Sarah through their joined imaginary realities. Their parents are struggling -- Sarah is nearly blind, and Anna has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. As their psychiatrist attempts to understand their increasingly bizarre fantasies, we watch dream-like sequences done through stop-motion animation and special effects. When tragedy strikes, the girls retreat further into their imaginations, causing the psychiatrist to wonder what the visions mean.
That's pretty much the sum of the story, avoiding spoilers. It actually was an interesting idea, visualizing two introverted girls' secret world. The result, however, is horrendous.
First of all the acting is pathetic -- it's hard to watch. As you watch the actors' pitiable attempts to be "emotional," you wonder how they could have possibly set themselves up for this kind of humiliation.
It feels like the director went out to a local park, watched people for a while, and chose a few, asking them to be in a movie. They agreed, despite their complete lack of dramatic skills. The two girl's performances are understandable -- they're still young, after all. However, watching the adults, especially the psychiatrist, desperately trying to play their roles leaves you shaking your head in horror.
The other problem with Imagination is that Anna's "Asperger's Syndrome" and Sarah's blindness are pointless, more or less just there to rationalize bizarre dream sequences. What may have helped this film is to explain why the girls "live in a world all their own." Anna, we are told again and again, "can't socialize," but we rarely see her interact with anyone in the film.
It would have been interesting -- more interesting, perhaps, than the weird trip scenes -- to try to explain Sarah and Anna's need to go into their own realities. Ben X did this efficiently. We understood why the main character, Ben, became obsessed with the virtual world and tuned out of real life. Imagination, however, is obviously a miserable attempt to play with hallucinogenic effects and claymation, without a glimmer of character development or logic to make sense of it.
There is one good quality, however. Even though the filmmakers got so many other things wrong, their skills at claymation are apparent. One scene, in particular, is darkly creative and weird, in a good way. In this case, the bizarre imagery actually attracted my attention. It makes you kind of wish they had kicked out the actors and let the clay figures take center stage.
All in all, I wouldn't recommend this movie to practically anyone, unless they are especially fond of weird for weird's sake. Do not watch this looking for a realistic or informative view of Asperger's -- you won't find it here. If you want something unusual, watch The Fall -- in fact, watch practically anything else. Just stay far away from this bizarre, pointless mess of a movie.
Not your first pick for Mother's Day, The Living and the Dead is morbid and horrifying, and I mean that, strangely, as a compliment. It is a family drama, a psychological thriller, a tragedy, an art film, all these things at once, and and despite it's flaws, it doesn't overextend.
The film opens with Lord Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd-Pack), a worn-down, silent shell of an old man, pushing an empty wheelchair through a quiet room. The image delivers the same feeling as a dark grey painting, lonely and despondent.
He watches, lip quivering, as an ambulance pulls into his massive estate. Cut back an undetermined amount of time. Donald stands straighter. He maintains a kind of pride that must come with being one of the British elite, but he is grieving. He has a lot to grieve about.
His wife, Lady Nancy Brocklebank, is terribly sick and probably won't be with him much longer. The bills are piling up, and they will soon lose their mansion. His son James (Leo Bill, in an over-the-top performance that works), dashes around the house with little clear purpose.
James is in his mid-to-late twenties. He is stuck in a kind of permanent childhood, the kind of childhood that is made up of nightmares, not whimsy. Although Simon Rumley, the director, describes him as "mentally challenged," I suspect paranoid schizophrenia.
James is by far my favorite character in the film. He is a complicated movie creation, and his emotional limitations do not hold back his complexity or ambiguity as a person.
Donald treats James with the casual cruelty that is most likely inflicted on the mentally ill more often than we think, condescending to him, forbidding him to use the phone or answer the door.
James is desperate to prove to his father that he is an independent adult and plans to do so by taking care of his mother.
His father understandably rejects the idea.
In an matter of days, James will have locked the door, shut out the nurse, skipped his pills, and may have destroyed the lives of those closest to him. Soon, as his lucidity deteriorates, the viewer begins to wonder if the past events were only in James' head.
This is a film for a patient audience -- it's a while before anything happens and the reality of the events is questionable.
The atmosphere is palpable, and the characters are well developed.
There are many plot holes and unanswered questions throughout the film, as the story itself seems on the edge of reality, with its Gothic features and abstract images.
People have had different opinions on whether James is "good" or "bad." He is a disturbing character, to be sure. He is not a sex maniac, mad slasher, or stony-faced killer, but an exceptionally childlike and deeply disturbed man.
This movie might make you feel differently about a crime, in the paper, in which mental illness was a factor. Despite naysayers, The Living and the Dead is an emotional bombshell and thought-provoking film.
