grindhouse

i saw grindhouse, the postmodern homage to the experience of 60s b-movies, about a week ago and am still excited about it. grindhouse consists of two feature length films, planet terror (directed by robert rodriguez) and death proof (directed by quentin tarantino) as well as four trailers for non-existent films. two of these trailers come before the first feature, machete (rodriguez) and don’t (edgar wright), and two come before the second feature, thanksgiving (eli roth), and werewolf women of the s.s. (rob zombie). taken all together, these films and trailers are meant to recreate the experience of visiting a seedy grind house theatre during the 60s were exploitation films heavy on sex and violence were screened. rodriguez’s planet terror does exactly this; the plot revolves around a highly contagious virus spreading through a town and creating zombie-like creatures, complete with disgusting bubbling goiters, and rose mcgowan with a machinegun leg. rodriguez captures the feeling of these films including using effects to make the film appear damaged and announcements and apologies for missing reels. while i found planet terror to be a lot of fun and probably a genuine facsimile of exploitation films, i felt that tarantino’s death proof was a far more interesting reinvention of the genre. death proof begins with a group of three girls going out to a bar in texas one night and meeting stuntman mike (kurt russell) who claims to have a car that is ‘death proof’, meaning you cannot be killed while in it, regardless of the damage inflicted. stuntman mike also meets pam (rose mcgowan again) and offers to give her a ride which is when we see him finally turn out to be the creep we can tell he is. after pam’s death, stuntman mikes goes after another group of four girls all working on a film set, and it feels as though an entirely new film is starting. the four girls have the day off and three of them end up taking an old and expensive car for a ‘test drive’ that involves their daredevil australian friend to ride on the hood while holding onto belts attached to the doors. stuntman mike finds them and tries to run them off the road; thus starting the longest and most intense roughly fifteen minute car chase that i was almost certain would end in a disgusting bloody mess, given all of grindhouse that I had seen up until this point. what does end up happening is a complete surprise within the context of the film but not so surprising when you realize tarantino is directing. the final scenes take the typical treatment of women within this genre, i.e. exploitative, and turn them on their head. the women are no longer frightened, nor do they allow themselves to be objectified or taken advantage of. they save themselves from stuntman mike and essentially end up kicking his ass. it only took about five minutes of death proof to realize that it was a quentin tarantino film, right down to the atmosphere and the dialogue-heavy script. i realize a lot of people criticize tarantino for his pretentiousness but i think it’s at least partly earned; he has enough knowledge and understanding of these genres to enable him to not just pay homage to them but to construct and completely re-imagine an exploitation film for an audience in 2007. i’ve been hearing lately that due to grindhouse’s poor performance at the box office, planet terror and death proof may be separated and sold as two different films, albeit in longer cuts of each. and while granted, i’d enjoy seeing longer versions of each, i think it would be counterproductive to the effect that rodriguez and tarantino were hoping to establish; that of a grind house double-bill, something that many of us have never had the opportunity to experience. i think this speaks to the complications in trying to recreate this genre inside a box-office driven multiplex, instead of the grind houses that would have screened them in the past. i think it’s clear that rodriguez and tarantino love and respect these exploitation films and wanted to bring the experience to a younger audience but it just doesn’t quite work within the current structure of north american cinemas.

watch the trailer

the namesake

the namesake was directed by mira nair (vanity fair, monsoon wedding). it is an adaptation from the novel by jhumpa lahiri, and follows the story of gogol, a young man born in america to indian immigrants. the film is essentially about leaving one’s homeland and assimilating in a new country with entirely different cultural codes and beliefs, all the while attempting to instill a sense of heritage into children born outside of this culture. i found that the film was effective at establishing how frightening and lonely it would be to leave home through the character of ashima, gogol’s mother. we are aligned with her as she enters into an arranged marriage with ashoke and he brings her to america where he is working on his phd. i was completely drawn into the first half of the film as it followed the story of gogol’s parents immigrating to america and establishing their life there. however, there is a noticeable shift when the alignment of the film switches to gogol (kal penn) and his difficulties being an indian american, desperate to discard his heritage and be just an american. we start with gogol at his highschool graduation where he is getting high with friends and then must go home to visit with family friends. we see him traveling between his two worlds and the familiarity with both, but we also see how he clearly resents his parents for expecting him to celebrate his indian heritage. this shift of identification in the film causes it to feel like a completely different genre. when we were with ashima, i felt like i was watching a carefully paced and executed indian film, and when we our brought forward to gogol’s teen years, i suddenly felt like i was watching a teen movie meant for kal penn’s harold and kumar fans. i found his character very annoying during this period of the film because we see him rejecting his parents over and over as they patiently try to explain to him about his culture. i think part of this frustration comes from the fact that we’ve been aligned with the parents up until this point and all of a sudden we are thrown an obnoxious teenager who wants nothing to do with them, but also from the fact that I don’t think kal penn is a great actor. i never really believed him as a teenager, nor was he convincing as he got older. i don’t think kal penn should be blamed entirely for this odd change in the mood of the film; it also felt like maybe the filmmakers needed to edit it quickly and tried to rush a lot of the second half of the film. there are several important plot points that get fast forwarded through and almost glazed over; whereas everything in the first half was given great attention. an example of this contrast would be when we first see ashima and ashoke, there is a scene where ashima is about to meet her soon-to-be husband and she is trying on his shoes in the hallway. there is so much time spent on watching her put these shoes on and model them as she considers what america will be like. conversely, in the second half we are shown gogol’s relationship with maxine (jacinda barrett), ashima’s death, the breakup of gogol and maxine, his subsequent relationship with moushumi (zuleikha robinson), her infidelity, their breakup, and the conclusion of the film. because of this rushed conclusion, i was taken out of the film and found it really hard to believe many of the characters’ actions.

watch the trailer

300

i saw 300 awhile back but luckily i don’t have much to say about it. 300 was directed by zack snyder and is the newest frank miller graphic novel adaptation. the film is based on the true battle of thermopylae and the 300 spartan soldiers who fought in it. this film has a similar aesthetic style to that of sin city, 2005’s frank miller adaptation. having read neither of the graphic novels upon which these films were based, i can’t really speak to the quality of the adaptations, but in terms of purely comparing the films, i enjoyed sin city more. while the visuals of 300 are impressive, i found myself a little bored part way through the film. the beginning of the film that builds towards the battle was interesting, but once at war, the film was somewhat tedious. the style of the battle scenes were all the same (regular speed, fast motion, slow motion, etc) which looked amazing but didn’t impress me as much once i’d already seen the techniques. the dialogue of the film is primarily meant to inspire the spartan soldiers, and us in turn, the audience. for the most part though, the script is cheesy, flat, and decidedly uninspiring; the same could have been true of sin city given that both have a graphic novel as source material but in my opinion, sin city was a much denser text. i think its safe to say that 300 is attempting to wow us with its visuals and violence and that the focus should not be so much on the narrative or the acting. but in retrospect i don’t find myself remembering the aesthetic as particularly exceptional, and therefore i feel like 300’s visuals failed to compensate for its lack of a strong story.

another aspect to the film i found interesting was the way it negotiates between being homophobic and homoerotic. as a film targeted primarily towards heterosexual males, there are surprisingly few females in it; only one in fact comes to mind, queen gorgo. not only are there very few women present, but the incredibly muscular, half-naked spartan soldiers who all live and fight together have clearly formed strong bonds amongst each other that leave open the possibilities for queer interpretations. these homoerotic overtones seem to be balanced by the homophobic treatment of the persian leader, xerxes (rodrigo santoro). xerxes, the spartans’ enemy is highly feminine and could potentially be sexually threatening, and thus the film demonizes him by implicating the villain as queer. the homoerotic nature of the spartan soldiers relations are a threat to masculinity within this testosterone-heavy film and therefore xerxes is villianized to ease these anxieties and reinforce the heterosexuality of the soldiers. granted, all this comes with the comic book territory and fanboy culture but i still hoped for less adherence to this gendered structure.

watch the trailer

black snake moan

black snake moan, the new film from craig brewer (hustle & flow), feels like a pulpy, almost-exploitation film, with a budget. however, it emphasizes the importance of human connection and the possibilities for salvation. the film begins with rae (christina ricci) and ronnie (justin timberlake) spending their last moments together before ronnie leaves for military training. it is hinted at briefly in this scene that ronnie has some sort of anxiety issues and that rae seems to calm him. once ronnie leaves, we see that rae has issues of her own; being that she is essentially a nymphomaniac, and without ronnie there, she sleeps with several different men and abuses drugs and alcohol, seemingly to deal with the fact that she misses him so much. simultaneously, we are shown lazarus (samuel l. jackson), a man who’s wife is leaving him for his brother. both his wife and brother attempt to make peace with him but being a strongly religious man, lazarus will not accept their apologies for their adultery. cross cutting between scenes, we watch lazarus get drunk at home and throw out much of his wife’s belongings and rae attends a party where she ends up taking too many drugs and drinking too much. after the party, rae is beaten and left in the middle of the road near lazarus’ house and he finds her the next morning. wanting only to help her, lazarus takes rae in to let her sleep and sober up. she remains for a few days and wakes up to find that she’s been chained to the radiator because, as lazarus explains, she’s been having fever-induced dreams that cause her to run around the fields surrounding his home. but his intentions are also to cure rae of her “evil ways”. the relationship is tense at first as rae is held against her will but eventually the two develop a friendship of dependency, as both are in need of companionship and help. we see rae’s flashbacks of abuse from her childhood and her angry interactions with her mother who works at a store in town. blues music plays an important role in the film; lazarus used to play guitar and sing at a local bar and rae finds it soothing when she plays for him. when ronnie returns, he finds out that rae had been sleeping with other men and when he finds her and lazarus together, he assumes that they are involved sexually. once all is made clear, rae and ronnie realize that they need each other to stay sane and healthy. the plot, which sounds odd whenever i explain it, actually worked for me inside the aesthetic of the film and the soundtrack. i found that even the opening credits won me over by being, for lack of a better word, cool. the acting was strong by all the main characters, particularly ricci, who does white trash really effectively. i’d also heard criticism that this film was misogynist, but i think that would be an over simplification of brewer’s images in the film. granted, ricci spends most of the film in short shorts and a cut off shirt, but i didn’t feel that he was trying to objectify her character; we are aligned with lazarus and he doesn’t look at rae with sexual intentions. nor do i think that just because brewer has a woman chained to a radiator in his film, that this would indicate that he hates women. if we were to subscribe to this reductive logic of filmmaking, we’d be forced to reexamine many films that have dealt with sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. i thought brewer used all of these components to give the film a particular mood and aesthetic that is constant throughout.

watch the trailer

little children

****spoiler warning***** (there's a lot of plot description and i give away SOME stuff that happens at the end so proceed with caution...)

little children is the new film from todd field (in the bedroom) and i recently saw it for a second time. the first time i saw it, i wasn’t exactly sure what made me like it so much so now i’m attempting to figure that out. i think it has to do with field’s structuring and pacing of the film and the treatment of the subject matter. little children was adapted from a novel by tom perrotta and he worked on the screenplay with field. the narration in the film makes it feel very much like a novel as the narrator usually expresses inner thoughts of the main characters. the film begins with sarah (kate winslett) at the playground with her daughter and three other women who also have children there. it appears that the film might be a satire of suburban life as we witness sarah’s outsider perspective to the organized, strict, routines of the other moms. the narrator tells us that sarah wants to view these women anthropologically, and we are shown that she does not fit in when she forgets her daughters snack. the leader of the moms, mary ann (mary mccann) looks on condescendingly as she offers sarah tips on how to be better prepared for the day. at this point, brad (patrick wilson) enters the playground with his son and the women tell sarah about the ‘prom king’ as they refer to him, the very attractive stay-at-home father who makes them slightly uncomfortable. the women see brad at the playground every day that week and when sarah’s daughter and brad’s son end up on the same swingset, they finally meet. intercut with the playground scenes, are some news footage about a pedophile who has been released from jail to return to live in the neighbourhood; the man had been in jail for indecent exposure to a minor. the mothers at the playground are quick to condemn this man and there is a suggestion more than once in this film that “they should just castrate him”. brad and sarah end up spending most days of the summer together with their children, at the pool and eventually they begin an affair together. sarah’s much older husband is shown to have a porn addiction and brad feels inferior to his wife, kathy (jennifer connelly) although neither is shown as having a particularly bad home life. the affair seems to come out of their mutual dissatisfaction with their current states; sarah never finished her phd, and brad has failed the bar twice since finishing law school. they are both highly educated stay-at-home parents who have plateaued in their lives. i think we are meant to see them both yearning for passion in their lives and this causes them to regress to an adolescent state. i kept noticing that sarah and brad were acting very much like young adults; sarah comes to brad’s football game and cheers enthusiastically, brad becomes obsessed with the skateboarders, and their children become almost secondary thoughts for them; more like a mutual interest that provides the excuse for them to be together. i noticed this with sarah most when she takes her daughter swimming for the first time and tells her to just pee in the pool so that she won’t have to interrupt her flirtation with brad. along with this affair, both sarah and brad become more socially involved with other friends and clubs. sarah joins a bookclub with her workout friend and brad joins a night football team with larry, an old acquaintance. sarah’s interpretation of madame bovary makes clear her motivations for the affair, as well as confirms mary ann’s suspicions about her and brad. i believe larry and mary ann are counterparts who each represent the group mentality and panic surrounding ronnie (jackie earle haley), the pedophile. they are both the characters who suggest that he should be castrated, as if this would be a final solution to the problem. similarly, sarah and brad are deluded in thinking that their relationship would solve their mutual dissatisfaction in life. as we see in one of the final scenes, as brad and sarah are planning to run away together, ronnie takes the castration suggestion literally and this is what wakes sarah up to her delusions (she misplaces her daughter while talking to ronnie). i think brad recognizes his mistake when he attempts to skateboard and ends up unconscious, proving to himself that he is no longer a young man without responsibility. ironically, ronnie and his mother are the most self-aware characters and yet they cause the most anxiety to the neighbourhood. ronnie’s mother loves him unconditionally, and only wishes he could be happy. ronnie himself says to his mother that he has a psycho-sexual disorder, and in this scene we are shown that he recognizes and owns up to his problems. it is through ronnie that sarah, brad, and even larry eventually come to terms with their own. i think also by seeing how public ronnie’s indiscretions are, brad and sarah fear the same kind of shaming that ronnie consistently endures should their affair continue and be brought to light.

ps - i realize there's a lot going on in this movie that i didn't really touch on...so i'm interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the other stuff too.


watch the trailer

this film is not yet rated

this film is not yet rated is a documentary made by kirby dick (twist of faith) who wishes to expose the processes by which the mpaa (motion picture association of america) assigns ratings to films. the purpose of the mpaa is to be a board of parents who decide how appropriate a film is for a particular age demographic; basically policing what children should and should not be able to see. yes, they’re doing it for the kids. apparently the mpaa’s practices have long been contested, in large part due to the fact that the identities of the raters on the board are kept secret. the official reason for the secrecy is to protect the raters from outside influence. as dick points out, since the mpaa is owned and run by the major hollywood studios, the raters are actually most susceptible to the influence of these studios. these 5 major studios and the other media conglomerates have a monopoly of around 90% control over all media viewed in the united states, thus explaining why it is nearly impossible for independent films to get distribution or an audience. the film explains how the highest possible rating a film can get is an nc-17 meaning that no children under the age of 17 are to be admitted. this is essentially a death-wish for filmmakers because it means they will have great difficulty advertising and a large part of the population will be unable to see their film in theatres. dick uses interviews with several filmmakers like kimberly pierce (boys don’t cry), kevin smith (jersey girl), atom egoyan (where the truth lies), john waters (a dirty shame), and matt stone (team america: world police) who have all received an nc-17 rating and dealt with the mpaa and their appeals process. all of these films received the rating for sexual content, while films with gratuitous violence tend to be given the tamer r-rating. this double standard is indicative of deeper social values and the taboo placed upon sex in this culture. similarly, films portraying queer sexual content seem to get stronger ratings than straight sexed ones. and beyond this, scenes of female sexuality are more restricted than scenes of male sexuality. the bottom line to this is that there are no definitive standards that each film is held up to; the rating process is relatively arbitrary. this point is demonstrated when during the appeals process, filmmakers are not allowed to cite precedent using other films as examples. in terms of aesthetic, this documentary is fairly standard; a mixture of talking heads, interviews, archival footage, statistics flashing on screen, and the footage of what is essentially dick and his private eye stalking the raters. dick hires this private eye (becky altringer) to help him identify all of the people on the ratings board. becky’s own personal narrative factors in to the film as she is, although it is never blatantly said, a lesbian living with her “best friend” cheryl and raising their children together. i thought this real narrative worked well when combined with interviews with queer filmmakers, such as jamie babbit (but i’m a cheerleader). babbit disagrees with the way the mpaa purports to be a group of average parents looking to protect children from films that are unsuitable for them. babbit herself is a mother and a lesbian and calls into question what the “average” american parent is. and unsurprisingly, one former member of the mpaa admits that there were no openly gay or lesbian raters when he was on the board. i thought this documentary was effective because dick went beyond the showcasing of several condemning facts about the mpaa, to actually identifying all of the current raters as well as their demographics, like the ages of their children. and I recently heard that the mpaa is changing some of their policies, to make available the demographics of the raters (although not their identities) and to allow filmmakers to cite precedent in the appeals process. it was speculated that this is due to this documentary’s fast-approaching release on dvd (february 6), and the expected impact of it.

watch the trailer

notes on a scandal

notes on a scandal is a delight. this film was adapted for the screen by patrick marber (writer of closer) from zoe heller’s novel. we view the film from barbara (judi dench)’s point of view with her voice-over, which is taken from the diaries she keeps throughout the film. barbara is a history teacher one year away from retirement when sheba (cate blanchett) starts working as an art teacher at the school. barbara quickly takes a liking to sheba, which we discover is more like an obsession; and not the first of its kind. the two women become friends and sheba invites barbara to her home frequently as well as other social gatherings. for about the first half of the film, we are aligned with barbara and therefore find out along with her that sheba has been pursued by one of her 15-year old male students and they have developed a sexual relationship. instead of turning sheba in, barbara agrees to keep the secret if she ends the relationship. i don’t want to give away much more of the plot because this film is fun to discover. essentially, barbara believes that sheba wants out of her marriage to her older husband and away from her two children and sees this as her way to win sheba for herself. what i found most interesting was the way the film dealt with predatory sexuality in more than just the illegal relationship sheba has with her student. this relationship is the most obvious example of predatory sexuality, but sheba is a participant in three separate relations with people who are significantly older or younger than she is. first, sheba’s husband, richard (bill nighy) is visibly older than sheba and we learn that he is a professor, this is his second marriage and that he met sheba when she was twenty and one of his students. and I think it’s assumed that he left his first wife for sheba when he was about twice her age. second, barbara is significantly older than sheba and while her interest in her is somewhat ambiguous, we are to assume she is hoping for a more intimate relationship. and thirdly, sheba’s sexual relationship with steven, her student, who is only a teenager. a story about a teacher engaging in relationships with students is something we hear about frequently in the news, yet i believe this film takes a different approach to its judgment of sheba for this act. we all have our own morals surrounding the appropriate differences (age, race, gender, etc) involved in sexual relations, and this film does not steer us towards any particular judgments. the way in which the film situates sheba as the common person in all three relationships seems to suggest that if we are quick to judge any one of the relationships as immoral, we should consider how similar all three are. there is a scene between sheba and her husband that i think best articulates this notion. once he has found out about her affair with steven, he asks her if she thinks she’s the only person who’s ever wanted someone younger, and references his own attraction to her. they discuss how she was only twenty when they met and how steven is almost sixteen now, and the fact that they are both student/teacher relationships. i didn’t view sheba as a pedophile (and i don’t think the film wants you to see her that way either), but more as a woman who ended up in a situation that quickly escalated beyond the point that it could be considered innocent. in the same way that it would be an oversimplification to label sheba a pedophile, we cannot just call barbara a lesbian with an unrequited crush. she never once refers to herself as a lesbian (even when her sister and other family members suggest it) and frames her desired relationship with sheba as a friendship. i never got the impression that barbara had even been a part of any lesbian relationships in the past; only a series of obsessions with women she couldn’t have. i think it is barbara’s deluded perspective and manipulative actions that we are meant to view as inappropriate in this film. i am impressed with the way notes on a scandal handles this topical subject matter from an open-minded perspective and without any arbitrary oprah-like judgments.

watch the trailer