Enter 500 Days of Summer:

Now, before we get carried away let’s set the parameters on this one. It’s a romantic comedy. Not necessarily a traditional one, and not one where all loose ends get tied up but a romantic comedy nonetheless.  So what sets it apart from the 25,000 other romantic comedies released each year? It’s smart, well-done and includes a musical dance number¹.

500 Days of Summer hooked me immediately with the image of the happy couple sitting on a park bench, holding hands, with a zoom to a shiny engagement ring. The rub? This was only Day 473². Our immediate reaction to this number is “uh-oh, this movie doesn’t end with them together.  The narrative then proceeds to jump around in its chronology skipping between Good Days and Bad Days as we piece together the love story.  Such antics could be dismissed as a quirky device to make a standard plot a little more interesting. Except for the opening shot, an announcement by a narrator and perhaps even the title of the film letting us in on the secret that “this is not a love story.”

So, we’re left to figure out how it falls apart and what makes the story interesting between days 1 and 500. I won’t give the ending away any more than the director does at the outset of the film. The boy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets the girl (Zooey Deschanel) while working at an L.A. based greeting card company. He believes in true love³, based largely on a misreading of The Graduate in early adolescence. She believes in living day-to-day and not putting labels on things. Inevitably, the boy falls in love and the girl feels hemmed in. This isn’t new territory by any means.

Ultimately for me this movie succeeds on a visceral level. The movie just seems to get everything right. For much of the story our leads are cardboard cutouts, but they are likable cutouts. The bit players complement the film perfectly, including the karaoke-mad co-worker and the Nietzsche-quoting 12 year-old sister. And every time you want to dismiss the wardrobe as silly hipster posturing, Deschanel or Gordon-Levitt appear on screen dressed not as irreverent youth but as young professionals paying homage the the Hollywood greats that still haunt the streets they walk.

The movie had me interested from the outset, but the point at which I declared, finally, “I like this movie” was during the musical number about halfway through. The film perfectly balances the strum und drang⁴ that plagues single folk with the unselfconscious joy of being in love. We’re in this for a good time and to tell a story. And really, there’s not much else you can ask of a movie⁵. The couple doesn’t end up together, all loose ends are not tied up. But by the end of the film you feel that the boy-meets-girl story had a good run and even though things didn’t quite work out as planned it may just be possible to survive love and life in Tinseltown.

^{1 And you can ask my wife I DO NOT like musicals, but in this movie? I works.
2 or thereabouts, I didn’t take notes so I’m doing this from a week-old memory of viewing the film
3 and the movie makes adequate hay from the irony of this and the way that he trivializes it in his profession
4 or, in the parlance of our times, emo
5 especially in this genre}

To ring in the new year, I bring you no grand epic films, no artsy fodder for discussion of what the hopes and fears of man might hold in light of the upcoming inauguration, no space oddities…. Winter is a good time for television, methinks. And there’s not much better television than British television—thankfully for them, as they’ve not got the weather, the cuisine, nor the haute couture (ok, I do like them tweeds…) going for them. We watch a lot of British tele through Netflix at the Walter household, and here’s a list of my current favorites:

Black Books takes place in a small bookstore owned by Bernard Black, a curmudgeony [young] dodger if ever there was one! Black is irascible, filthy, drunk, and smart, and the interpersonal foibles between Black, his assistant, and the female shopkeeper next door are hilarious. Short episodes (20-25 min.) make this show work.

Hotel Babylon is new and flashy, and I like it! Based on the confessional novel by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous (how scandalous!), the show centers on life inside the five star Babylon hotel in London, from the staff’s perspective. The show is narrated by the Babylon’s front-of-house manager, Charlie, and is at times surprisingly touching and thought-provoking. Super hip, we eat this stuff up! Tip your concierge, by god!

Waking the Dead is a “cold case” police procedural, though I’m not sure if it’s what our American Cold Case is based on. Each story is told over two separate hour long episodes, so they get really involved, which is something the Brits, it seems, always have over us dumb Yanks and is a large part of what draws me to these shows. Unlike some similar shows, Waking the Dead has so far focused more on the actual police procedures of digging through the old case files rather than the gruesome acts of violence that [may] have been perpetrated.

And lastly, I’ve been watching through a show that I watched with my brother back when I was in high school—Lovejoy, based on the Jonathan Gash mystery novels. Our hero, Lovejoy, is an antiques dealer of sorts, though “miscreant” might be the more apt term (antiques dealer who wears a leather biker jacket), and he’s always finding himself in the midst of situations that need solving—usually to prevent his landing in jail or owing someone a huge sum of money. Surrounded by a delightful cast of other miscreants (one’s a drunk named Tinker) and taking place in the beautiful English countryside, Lovejoy is a real pleasure and a treasure, especially if you like antiques at all.     

Happy viewing, and if you’ve never given British television a chance, you’re a right ninny!

At the outset, the film is about a choice that the protagonist, Alessandro (Ale or Sandro, for short) makes to free his older brother, Augusto, who, as the only healthy and financially capable amongst them, has born the brunt of responsibility for many years, from the burden of his ill and eccentric family. Wouldn’t it be better, he asks his older brother, if he did not have to support their blind mother and retarded, epileptic younger brother, not to mention Sandro himself with his attacks and their sister who is, well, lazy and weirdly sexual with all the brothers? Augusto does not take Sandro’s question seriously, but on the other hand, he doesn’t take it seriously, leaving us to wonder whether he really would just like to pick up and leave it all behind. Sandro’s initial plan of throwing his family off a cliff, himself included, while careening down a twisty road in the family car gets sidetracked, and everyone arrives back home safely, leaving Augusto with the knowledge that Sandro is, for the most part, still pretty incompetent.

But Sandro’s initiative in concocting such a plan and almost carrying it out proves to Augusto that he is ready for more responsibility and can take on some of the routine duties of the household, such as driving their mother to the family cemetery plot to visit their father’s grave. It is on one such drive that Sandro and his mother pull over at the precise spot where Sandro had planned to execute his entire family, save Augusto, to catch some fresh air. Sandro leads his mother to the edge of the cliff, explaining that there is a wall upon which she can sit, and then simply pushes her with one finger over the edge. This is no violent outburst, nor is it quite cold and calculating. He doesn’t really want to touch her, and this seems to be the point. It’s as if he’s waiting to see what happens too. The whole scene is like some strange ceremony where nothing happens and yet the consequences are incredible, some weird communion where the priest touches his finger to your tongue and you vanish into thin air.

Out with the old, and burn it! There are two scenes that stuck with me the most from Fists in the Pocket, and both are the aforementioned harbingers of something bigger going on. The first is when the family is mourning the death of their mother. The house is full of fellow mourners and the coffin is set up in the middle of the room with curtains drawn around it. Sandro relieves his sister, Giulia, of her duty of sitting with their mother, and she goes to sit on the other side of the curtain to talk to her brother. Hearing a noise, she looks over the curtain to see her brother doing calisthenics over their mother’s body, using the coffin as a balance beam. It seems that finally carrying through with his plan, if only in part, gave young Sandro a sense of accomplishment he had rarely before felt. Sandro reveals what he has done, Giulia is smitten, and the two later decide to begin cleaning the house, beginning with their mother’s room. It is snowing outside as they throw countless armfuls of furniture and papers and the rest of their mother’s possessions out into the yard. They set fire to the pile and watch it burn, laughing and happy with themselves. This scene is not merely celebration of the wanton rebellion of the young against the old, however. It is all so strikingly reckless and careless, and the camera lingers on the smoldering pile of rubbish long after the two have gone back inside as Leone, the retarded younger brother, comes by and begins to pick out what is salvageable, including his mother’s old reading glasses (we don’t know how long she’d been blind). It’s a stirring scene, to say the least, and I think it is important to note that Bellocchio was a young filmmaker at the time. Is there room for responsibility within revolution?

Sandro’s quest is for freedom. With their mother out of the picture, Augusto moves to the city, leaving Sandro and Giulia in the big country house, their only burden being young Leone. This is not a problem for Sandro, though, as he now knows how to relieve himself of his burdens. He gives Leone an overdose of his epilepsy medicine, and while he is passed out in the bath, simply pushes him under with his fingertips and holds him there until he drowns, some strange baptism in the church of the mind of Allesandro. Giulia realizes what Sandro has become, and falls ill. I won’t ruin the ending of the film, because it’s really worth seeking out and watching Sandro try to discover who he is and what he wants. There is a scene earlier in the film, after he has killed his mother, where he is at a party in the city at the apartment of his brother’s fiance. Everyone is dancing some ridiculous line dance and Sandro is sitting on a bench at the front of the room, facing them. He is apart from them quite literally, sitting and not dancing, but also socially, living secluded out in the country. He seems to disdain them all and yet also to want to be a part of their scene, having just before been approached by a young woman. It is unclear whether the freedom Sandro seeks lies in breaking free from his familial bonds to forge new bonds with people like this or, quite literally, breaking free of bonds entirely and killing them all, every last one of them.

I was amazed to learn that Fists in the Pocket was Marco Bellocchio’s first film. I don’t know why, as first films are often fine films. This was just so good. As so often is the case, this is likely due to the magnificent editing of Silvano Agosti. The film flows effortlessly, and no frame is superfluous. On Bellocchio’s part, and cinematographer Alberto Marrama, the film offers beautiful black and white that only enhances scenes such as the bonfire mentioned earlier. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the score by Ennio Morricone, exceptional as usual—I should devote a post to Morricone. Fists was a first for Lou Castel as well, the actor who played Allesandro. Castel was not an actor, and that probably brought an authenticity to the character that an experienced, and certainly a known, actor could potentially have spoiled. He was compared by someone in a special feature on the DVD to Marlon Brando, and I think that’s accurate, both in intensity and style, if not beefy good looks. While he may not have gone on to enjoy the same success as Mr. Brando, Castel is utterly captivating at the center of this strange menagerie, as are his supporting players, one and all, from the beautiful and absurd Giulia to the august Augusto to innocent Leone and blind Mama. What a tale!

Halloween (1978). Ok, ok, if I was forced to pick a favorite, I think this would be the one. I watch this film a couple of times a year, and I never tire of it. Much like The Amityville Horror, it shows us that less is more, and that so much of film rests in the storytelling. Halloween was made on a shoestring budget, but it doesn’t really show because there aren’t many things in the film that call for a big budget—there is simply a simple story with a few characters that unfolds over the course of one afternoon and evening in a small town and yet manages to concern itself with, well, Pure Evil! Well acted, sublimely paced, and full of inspired cinematography, I absolutely love this film! There are scenes that still make me jump, even after all these viewings. Part of what I adore about Halloween is that so much of it takes place in the daylight, where the perfectly mundane becomes perfectly terrifying. My favorite example of this is when Jamie Lee Curtis, looking out the window, thinks she sees a man standing amongst the laundry hanging on the line. Doing a double-take, she decides there is no one there, but then the camera cuts back and we see that it is indeed Michael Myers, the dreaded escaped mental patient, simply standing there plain as day. My heart skips a beat every time, and I know it’s coming! Watch the Halloween Trailer.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). This is one of those films I saw as a young child that scared the crap out of me! For one thing, Freddy Krueger is a monster’s monster, to be sure, complete with burned-up face and razor blade fingers. And something about that red and green striped sweater is so freakin’ sinister! Unlike Halloween’s daytime haunts, Elm Street’s terrors truly go bump in the night, as Freddy preys on the fears running rampant through children’s nightmares. Pretty frightening stuff, even now that I’m all grown up. This was Johnny Depp’s first role, in case you were wondering. I’m a big fan of Wes Craven in general, and find most of his films to be a good bit smarter than a lot of their contemporaries. He’s always concerned with psychology and the interplay between what is real and not real, or real and perceived. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) is a fascinating continuation of the Nightmare story, where Freddy begins infiltrating both the dreams and reality of the actor who played the girl in the first film. Craven plays himself in the film, revealing that Krueger plagues his dreams as well, and that the only way to attempt to control Krueger and the evil he represents is by capturing him/it in a story—a technique as old as time itself. See Wes Craven discussing the film New Nightmare. Other favorites by Wes Craven: Scream (1996), The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989).

Just about everything by Dario Argento. Really, just about everything! Argento’s films are full of a particular ambience, flamboyance even, that helps set them apart from a lot of other similar Italian films I’ve seen. His recent efforts have not been as memorable as the films he’s most famous for from the 70’s, but they’re still fun. At their best, his films are full of rich and vibrant colors, elaborate sets, kitsch, fantastical music (much of which is composed and recorded by Argento’s own band, the Goblins), and plots as twisted and twisty as they come. Argento does gruesome torture and grisly death really, really well! All are done, however, in the context of the film and are often quite artsy, so that the point of viewing the horrific event becomes not so much the viewing of the horror, nor the horror itself, but more so the almost magic-show nature of the staged technique. My chief complaint with so much contemporary horror is its inherent torture-porn quality. This is not that. My favorite Argento: Suspiria (1977), Deep Red (1975), (these first two are likely available at most video rental stores, should you wish to check out this Italian icon), The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970), Opera (1987, featuring my favorite Aregento terror—sewing needles taped to the lower eyelids, forcing the victim to keep their eyes open or else endure much pain upon closing them… wicked!!), Tenebre (1982). I should note that I saw Tenebre some years ago on television, and it was this introduction to Dario Argento that caused me to begin a quick slide down a steep and slippery slope. I had watched horror movies as a kid, but the discovery of Argento and Italian giallos opened up a whole new can o’ worms, so to speak. If you’re looking for a good Halloween night movie, I highly recommend any of the above! Catch a clip of Argento’s classic Suspiria here.

Another director I’m fascinated with is George Romero. He has shunned Hollywood and success in order to make his films his way in his hometown of Pittsburgh, often employing friends and family members along the way. His zombie films offer fine social commentary, interesting special effects (it’s nice to watch a film and think, ok, with five gallons of corn syrup, red food coloring, carrots, a pot roast or two, some ground beef, chicken bones, and string, I could do that!), and enough post-apocalyptic warning that they ought to be shown in schools ‘round the country! It is interesting to see a theme carried across a body of work—Romero has made five zombie films to date: Night Of The Living Dead (1968), Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Day Of The Dead (1985), Land Of The Dead (2005), and Diary Of The Dead (2007). All are fine films, but my favorites are Dawn and Land. Dawn takes place in a shopping mall and is at times truly funny. It is worth noting that Dario Argento shares a production credit on this film, and edited the Italian release of the film. Land Of The Dead, set much later, sees the effects of widespread zombism and the government’s self-preservation methods of walling-off their remaining cities, protecting those who can afford to stay within the walls. The film also shows some humanization and socialization of a group of zombies, as they begin to work together to break down the walls surrounding the city. While chiefly known for Night Of The Living Dead, Romero has written and directed some other fine films as well which deal not at all with the undead. My favorites of his non-zombie fare: The Crazies (1973) and Bruiser (2000). The Crazies may be my favorite Romero film, actually. None of Romero’s films are particularly scary or horrific, but zombies eatin’ brains is enough for the genre, I suppose.

The Last Broadcast (1998) is a mockumentary about the Jersey Devil. The film is a “documentary” attempting to solve the bizarre events that occurred when the hosts of Fact Or Fiction, a cable-access investigative journalism show, ventured into the New Jersey Pine Barrens to do a report on the fabled Jersey Devil. They had employed the aid of a psychic who may or may not have been a charlatan, things went horribly wrong, people died, and now our filmmaker is trying to sort out the “facts” through interviews and recreations. This is a really fun film that is also, at times, pretty spooky! It predates The Blair Witch Project by a year.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) pretty well sets the tone for Spawn-of-Satan films. More thriller than horror movie, perhaps, it’s still a good supernatural tale that’s a real nail-biter, full of twists and turns that’ll have you second-guessing everybody and everything. Exquisitely paced, you can’t help but get caught up in Rosemary’s plight!

I could go on for pages and pages, but I’ll leave off with some honorable mentions:
Jaws (1975–one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen!), They Live (1988), Candyman (1992), The Shining (1980), It (1990), The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954), The Wicker Man (1973), The Exorcist (1973), and, because it’s a list of favorites and not greats, Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988).

What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

Each season of The Wire deals with a season-long story arc, and characters and plots are continued throughout subsequent seasons as well, so it really pays to watch this show from the very beginning.  As the name implies, each season has something to do with the Baltimore Police Department and a wiretap, whether or not the tap is really the main concern of the season’s story.  The seasons’ subjects are, in order: drug trafficking in the inner city, corruption in and on the docks, politics and the mayor’s office, the public school system in the inner city, and the press.  The Wire delves deep into these institutions, examining, without hesitation, their corruption and poverty, offering us a grim picture of a contemporary city in decay, rotting from within, and everywhere, it seems, on the verge of collapse.  Hmm, perfect pick-me-up fodder for a Friday night, Walter…. I just want to watch a spot of tele.  Fret not, gentle viewer, The Wire, while bringing itself to the proverbial Brink, manages not to throw itself, and You, over the edge.  It does teeter there perilously….

One message is consistent and clear throughout each season of The Wire: the war on drugs, as it is being fought in Baltimore, specifically, but presumably throughout the nation, is no longer relevant and effective, if indeed it ever was.  It is a battle lost, and it is time for a new strategy.  The Wire does not presume to offer any rosy plans for reconstruction and renewal, however, and we thank it for that– this is no fantasy, after all.  There are no easy answers to any of these questions.  When we are given something radical or ambitious, its faults and inadequacies are quickly pointed out.  In the third season, a police lieutenant nearing retirement decides that the way to meet the unrealistic statistical demands of his superiors regarding lower violent crime is to legalize drugs by establishing a blind-eye zone within his district, affectionately dubbed “Amsterdam” by the police and referred to by the corner kids, who have no idea what, much less where, in the world Amsterdam is, as “Hamsterdam.”  The plan goes swimmingly at first—beefing crews no longer beef, junkies can get their fixes in peace, and everyday Baltimore citizens can step out on their stoops to get their morning papers without wading through throngs of, well, not-so-everyday Baltimore citizens.  It takes a very short time, however, for the dream of Hamsterdam to become a nightmare, situated somewhere along the 13^th or 15^th levels of the firey bowels.  Throughout The Wire we are often witnessing the deleterious ends of quick fixes, if not more so the results of inaction in the lives of, to steal a phrase from some people who have probably never seen the show, those left behind. 

Bleak, depressing, outraged, desperate—The Wire is all of these, but its ability to confront and acknowledge these existing situations in Baltimore (read: Inner City, USA) in a way that is all at once dramatic and plot-driven without being overly dogmatic is really astonishing.  The result is downright entertaining.  It’s even truly funny at times, lots of times!  The show’s stark sociology is ultimately humbled by incredibly good writing, and this, after several long introductory paragraphs, sorry, is really what I’d like to say about The Wire:  Politics and agendas aside (the slightest research into the show’s creators, David Simon and Ed Burns, will reveal said politics and agendas), these people can spin some quality yarn!  Wonderful genre elements of Greek tragedy, the Western, the Police Procedural, Film Noir, Naturalism and Realism, good old fashioned Postmodern fiction-chasin’, among many others, are at play in these stories.  David Simon was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun for a number of years, so it’s no surprise he can write, but it is a surprise to me that the journalist can work so well in the dramatic arts.  It probably helps that many episodes are written or co-written by fiction writers, chiefly among them crime novelist George Pelecanos, also a producer for the series, but including others such as Denis Lehane and Richard Price.

A testament to the quality of writing in The Wire is the cast of the most wonderfully drawn characters ever to have graced my television screen.  This is difficult territory here, because I don’t want to spoil anything for potential viewers of the program, but know that you will meet people the likes you haven’t seen since Radar and Hawkeye!  There are good guys and bad guys, but sometimes the bad guys are good and a lot of times the good guys are bad.  There are sinister cops, stupid cops, sinister drug dealers, stupid drug dealers, smart cops, smarter drug dealers, even smarter cops, and a junkie named Bubbles.  Bubbles is The Wire’s Greek chorus.  There is a duster-wearing, sawed-off-toting vigilante named Omar.  Omar robs drug dealers.  Omar is terrifying.  Omar does not use foul language.  Omar lives by a strict moral code.  Omar is awesome.  The Wire is a predominantly black cast, and it is interesting to see the diversity of African Americans represented in such a large and all-encompassing way—it’ll make you think twice about contemporary black roles in mainstream television.  It’s subtle, but it’s yet another institution The Wire levels its eyes on.  I digress.  While each season introduces a new set of characters with its respective storyline, and some characters are short lived, there is a core cast who we get to know very well throughout the run of the show.  Some are likeable, some are despicable, some are despicable for several seasons and then show a slight bit of humanity in the face of their long history of inhumanity (fascinating!), but all are incredibly complex and well-wrought, and, for the most part, very well acted.

This brings up another interesting Wire tidbit.  Many of the actors in the show are non-actors, but more interesting, they are often former employees or practitioners of the very Baltimore institutions the show is representing.  One of the Homicide detectives was the former police commissioner for Baltimore.  A school principal really is a school principal.  A school superintendent in the show was in real life the Baltimore city council president.  A particularly ruthless “muscle” for a drug dealer in the show served real time in prison for drug-related violence in their pre-Wire life in Baltimore.  Perhaps most fascinating is the character of The Deacon, played by real life Baltimore drug lord Little Melvin Williams.  The list goes on.  Why, Walter, your research talents are unparalleled!  Nope, there are some nice special features on a few of the discs, though not nearly enough for my needs, but all of which are worth watching.  The Internet will provide you with a lot of interesting info as well, though I must caution against this:  I ran across a couple spoilers, even whilst diligently watching for them!  I’ve already mentioned the show’s creator, David Simon, worked at the Baltimore Sun for a number of years, but it is interesting to note that the show’s co-creator, Ed Burns, was a Baltimore City Police Homicide detective for ten years or so and also taught middle school in Baltimore City.  What does all this mean, aside from the fact that the former police commissioner can’t act worth a hoot (but he sure seems authentic)?  It makes me think these people know what they’re talking about, for one thing, but knowing this adds yet another human element to an already incredibly human drama and elevates it way above its devices.  A Homicide detective, standing over a body in the street, saying, “God I love this city,” is ironic, bitter, disturbing, morose, etc., a good scene in a hip police story.  Knowing that that man, in real life, was the commissioner of police in that real city, gives the scene a wisp of lingering realism that, however subtle, is unsettling to say the least. 

One bit of criticism I will level at The Wire (say it ain’t so!) is that the arc of each season’s plot is not so much an arc as a rise to a precipice and then a swift and decisive plunge off of that precipice.  So far (I have yet to watch the fifth and final season), each season’s final episode has concluded with a rather to-be-expected montage, set, and gag me here, to music!!  I suppose you have to wrap things up a little in order to have viewers make the leap of faith to return to the show in its next season, especially when watching in real time, I have no problem with that.  It does seem, however, that The Wire takes some particular exception to this notion, and therefore chooses to proceed with business as usual until the last seven minutes of the final episode of season X, whereupon they deliver the goods and it’s curtains until the next season’s slow crawl up the plot hill.  I’m being a bit harsh, but it’s only out of love and respect, and because I’d like for these seasons to go on for, I don’t know, about 52 episodes or so.  One a week, that would do me just fine.

Criticism aside (yep, they get off that easy), let me conclude by saying, as subtly and gently as I can… Watch this show!  It really is as wonderful as I say it is!  Each episode starts with an epigraph.  I leave you with one of my favorites:

“Thin line ‘tween heaven and here.”  –Bubbles

A general sense of tepidity permeates everything in the film.  The story’s characters are flat all around, and are not aided in the slightest by bored, insignificant acting.  The troupe of high school players is full of stereotypes—the gay teacher’s pet drama (literally) queen, the religious goody-goody, the disinterested hoods, the gum-smacking chicas, the silent girl, the druggie, etc.  This is all fine and dandy, but nothing is made of these stereotypes, cynical or meaningful, they are simply there, lacking depth and gravity.  Our protagonist, played by Steve Coogan, is pretty good at physical comedy, but falling down time and again will only get you so far.  His wife and roommate are one-dimensional glitches in the storyline, popping up just enough to refresh our memories as to who they are and where they belong, but falling short of any further meaningful development. 

Tongue-in-cheek silliness, slapstick, absurdity, and depravity are all fine devices, some of my favorite really, but the film fails to capture any of these in their fullness, leaving us, well, yawning and not laughing.  What could have been really dark, cynical black comedy is instead watered down for the masses and left floating on the surface.  Hamlet 2 bills itself as a parody of a tragedy.  The problem is that nothing is really tragic enough to make parody necessary or even reasonable.  Attempts at irreverence and offense come off equally tame and lame, which is quite surprising given that one of the film’s writers has writing and production credits on many South Park episodes.  I’m sure that some of the most conservative religious zealots out there might find their hearts burning at the portrayal, in the play-within-the-film, of Jesus as a sexy, fit, time-travelling dude’s dude, but then again, probably not.  In fact, they probably aren’t even watching the film.  I want something that might offend me, thank you, regardless of how difficult that might be.  It’s the thought that counts!

About that Jesus comment.  The plot of our protagonist’s play, Hamlet 2, has Hamlet hopping aboard a time machine at the end of Bill Shakespeare’s original in order to travel back through time to stop Gertrude from drinking the poison that kills her.  In his travels, he meets Jesus, who joins in the time-tripping, and the two are able to confront and reconcile with their fathers.  And, he makes it back in time to save Gertrude.  All of this is set to ridiculously funny musical numbers like “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” and “Raped In the Face,” stealing tunes and imagery from the likes of Elton John, Star Wars, and Grease.  The ten minutes or so of this part of the film are incredibly funny, but, sadly, not worth the wait.  I would much rather have seen a feature-length film of this sub-plot, a la the likes of such Troma classics as Class of Nuke ‘Em High and Tromeo and Juliet.

Amidst these shenanigans, we’re reminded of our earlier let-downs.  The tough guy school official who attempts to shut down the play is seen watching with a sense of realization and self-discovery as Hamlet and Jesus confront their respective fathers and the pain caused by their strained relationships.  We know, then, that this guy must have some unresolved issues with his own father, which helps to explain his hardened temperament.  The film feels the need to spell this out for us, though, when later the character says, “I was abused as a child.  I have issues with my father too,” or some such dreck.  The movie is full of qualifiers such as this, leading me to wonder if there is some definitive shift in what is found humorous by youngsters these days.  Did the writers have such a lack of faith in their audience that they felt the need for these explanations?  Is the act of calling attention to the joke funnier than the joke itself, as in the “That’s what she said…” phenomenon?

Perhaps it is simpler than that– ok, Walter, you didn’t like the movie, that’s that–  but I’m still suspicious of larger, more sinister, forces at work.  The death of irony, for instance, or fear of being offensive or vulgar (I haven’t seen Tropic Thunder, but when freakin’ Ben Stiller gets mud slung at him, something’s up, yo!).  I don’t know.  I’m a paranoid if I’m anything, and I’m straying into territory not easily covered in the remainder of this post, but the exposure to those ninety minutes of utterly vapid wasted time (ok, I did like the musical/play) ticked me off and got me to thinking.  Mainly I’m thinking I wish we hadn’t been with friends, ‘cause I would have walked out after about twenty minutes!  What a stinker!

Aaltra concerns two neighbors in rural northern France, one blue collar, the other white collar, who detest one another.  When the office worker is summoned by his boss to be in his office in Paris in half an hour or face termination, he races in his car to catch the next train, only to be cut off by his neighbor, pulling out of his field in a huge, and slow, piece of machinery.  The man cannot get around the farm machinery, misses his train, and consequently loses his job.  Oh, and when he returns home he finds his wife in bed with another man!  At his wits’ end, he races across his neighbor’s field, confronts him, and the two begin pummeling one another furiously.  In the midst of their pugilism, a huge piece of the farmer’s harvester breaks off and falls on the two men.  They wake in the hospital, still bitter with one another, and both without the use of their legs.  What ensues is nothing less than outright hilarity, of the blackest pitch, as the men begin their lives anew from the confines of their wheelchairs and embark on a journey across Belgium all the way to Finland, to the headquarters of the harvester’s manufacturer, Aaltra, in order to demand compensation for their suffering.

The film is shot in black and white, and beautifully so.  Every frame is stark and at times alarmingly realistic.  There is nothing soft in this story whatsoever, and the visual aesthetic confirms this beyond any doubt.  It is suggested in reviews that part of this harsh style is due in large part to lack of budget, but I really cannot imagine this film in anything but the concrete, hardened images in which it is presented.  It’s a grey world after all, kids, no matter what Disney tells you. 

Aaltra easily brings to mind one of my favorite French Fatalists, Samuel Beckett.  The simple plot of two men wheeling themselves across Europe to confront a faceless entity is so plagued by the insanity and futility of itself that it becomes farcical.  Only, this is no farce.  These men exist.  And they are paraplegic.  One of Beckett’s famous one-liners is “I can’t go on.  I go on.”  This is a fitting mantra for these brothers-in-chairs, as, throughout their journey, they are confronted with situations which would make the most even-keeled amongst us lay down and cry like a baby.  For instance, while attending a dirtbike motocross (our whitecollar protagonist is a motorcycle enthusiast), the two men park themselves by the front gate, right up against the fence, affording themselves the best possible view.  Someone from the track comes along and tells them they have to move, as they are “killing the dream.”  I reiterate, this is dark humor.  Another scenario finds our protagonists abandoned on the beach as high tide is rolling in.  Unable to wheel themselves out of the sandy mire, we watch as the water rises to just about chin level, where it halts, and one man says to the other, “I think it’s going down now.”  It’s ok to laugh out loud; I did.

The brilliance of this film, and what makes it impossible not to laugh, is that these men, who were complete jerks before their accident, remain complete jerks in the wake of the accident.  The reason they are left alone on the beach is that they swiped a bottle of hooch from the kind family who had picked them up in their RV and proceeded to drink themselves into a stupor, in front of the kind family’s children and their idyllic sand castles.  There is no grand soul searching here, no Nicholas Sparks-esque feel-good revelation, only the grim, black and white, even, reality that what is, simply, is.  Their unfortunate condition does not give these men license to treat others the way they do.  And yet they do.  It might help explain some of their bitterness, but we’ve already seen them act just as bitter and nasty before the accident!  Various people throughout their journey attempt to help the men, out of, we presume, some great self-imposed moral imperative to help those in need.  You know, just like the good Book says.  Don’t worry, they are all taken advantage of.  All of this, as with Beckett’s plays, seems imbued with a sense of the apocalyptic, only, through the simple act of going on, the apocalypse becomes livable.  It is not surmountable, but, somehow, less harmful, endurable.  Just as the waiting around does not kill Vladimir and Estragon, consequently the universe does not weaken the wills of these men to the point of suicide.  It maims them, for sure, but they go on.  In fact, they manage by the end of the film to find themselves in Finland!

I won’t spoil the ending here, only I will say that there is much more of the same.  Aaltra is at times morose, always unequivocally irreverent, and often laugh-out-loud funny.  It’s razor-sharp, and will have you thinking about the ins and outs of what defines a handicap, what determines cruelty, and the nature of best intentions.  If you deal with a chronic health condition or know someone who does, you may see aspects of yourself or that relationship in some of these characters.  Seek this film out (Netflix has it on their “watch now” feature)—I already want to see it again!

The plot is very similar to the 80’s Lost Boys.  The sister from our pair of sibling protagonists falls in with the local cool surfer dudes, who happen to be undead (in the original it was the older brother, and the dudes were bikers) and who trick her into drinking the blood of the head vampire (yummy!), bringing her halfway toward being one of them.  The brother must find and kill the head vampire before little sis has her first feeding in order to reverse the curse.  As in the original, the pair is aided by self-taught, self-ascribed vampire hunter Edgar Frog, played by Corey Feldman. The other brother Frog is missing in this film, “lost to the other side,” as Edgar puts it.  Edgar gives the brother a crash course in vampire mythology, specifically how they can be exterminated (knowledge he has culled mostly from comic books— In Lost Boys, you’ll remember, it is in the local comic book store that Sam, played by Corey Haim, first meets the brothers Frog.). A bloodbath ensues, the head vampire falls, and little sister is happily human once more.

As for criticism, let me point out a few things I liked about the film, and a few points where I found the film really lacking.  The movie’s pretty entertaining, with a few gotcha! moments, enough but not too much gore, and solid enough acting to warrant my earlier pronouncement of “not bad.” There are some nice homages peppered throughout, my favorite of which comes in the early moments of the film. Our surfer vamps are raising a ruckus on a private beachfront in the middle of the night and are confronted by the property owner, played by none other than horror movie special effects phenom Tom Savini.  Savini rose to notoriety working on George Romero’s zombie films, and went on to work makeup magic on the sets of many horror movies, including various Friday the 13’s, The Prowler, Maniac, etc. (In an interview on some extra feature on some Romero film, Savini credits his tour in Vietnam as the major inspiration for his gory creations, that this work is a way for him to deal with those horrific images.)  Savini’s character reveals that he’s a vampire, but, much to his chagrin, so are the hooligans, and they promptly rip him to shreds, taking care to sever his head so he won’t come back to the undead.  This is not the first time Savini has played someone who falls victim to massive head trauma.  There must be some pleasure for him in having the tables turned in this manner, being on the other side of the special effects.

As in the 80’s, Corey Feldman’s Edgar Frog is hilarious.  In adulthood, Edgar has taken it upon himself to become ordained through an online church, thus able to make holy water that is otherwise normal.  Handy, no doubt, when engaged in hand-to-fang combat.  Edgar also has updated the tried and true wooden stake, giving it a handle which not only increases thrusting force, much like a small sword, but, when turned over, resembles a cross.  And for ultimate speed and durability, there are the carbon fiber stakes.  Among Edgar’s other updates to his arsenal is the holy water balloon launcher (you remember the 80’s holy-water balloons and holy-water guns, right?).  Let’s just say it makes a holy, err, unholy mess!  These little tidbits, along with Feldman’s seemingly unwavering sincerity in this role (he’s exactly the same guy from the first Lost Boys), make the film watchable, if not even enjoyable.

All in all, the plot is too straightforward, without any twists and turns to surprise us or even make us think.  In the first movie we’re led to believe the whole time that Kiefer is the head vampire, only to be surprised when he’s not and we learn who really is.  Gone are all the somewhat complex relationships explored in Lost Boys that lead us into ambiguity regarding our nighttime brethren.  There is no real question in The Tribe as to the morality of the characters.  The vampires are the bad guys and must be stopped.  The brother is lured briefly into their fold, but only out of his intense desire to save his sister.  The film is sadly one-dimensional in all of this, when it could really have been an interesting continuation of its earlier counterpart.  Where are some of those characters now?  Has vampirism become an epidemic plaguing southern California?  Also, aside from Edgar’s kitschy killing devices, nothing new is explored regarding vampire mythology.  Actually, the film really doesn’t comment much at all on what it means to be a vampire, it just sort of takes them for granted.  Edgar tells us there’s a lot to be learned about vampires from comic books, but he doesn’t explain any further. 

On a side note, Angus Sutherland, while clearly a Sutherland, has a really bizarre accent!  We spent the whole film trying to decide if he sounded Canadian, British, Scottish, Southern California Surfer Dude, Australian, or like a Keanu Reeves clone.  Really quite strange.

So, in conclusion, this is no Lost Boys.  If you can get past that, if you like cheesy horror flicks, and especially if you’re a Lost Boys fan, The Tribe will suffice to keep you entertained for a brief time.  Again, watch it to see what has become of our dear Edgar Frog.  Stake on, brother, may their souls burn in hell!

Bale’s Batman is flawed. Quite literally, he is seen stitching his own wounds and tweaking his armour to be more flexible (to get out of the way of that which wounds him, presumably). Bale seems uncomfortable in both of his own skins– not quite at home with the jet set as Bruce Wayne, and beginning to doubt the efficacy of his nighttime vigilantism as the masked Batman. The latter point is driven home early in the film as a group of Batman impersonators is torn to shreds by some mobster thugs they are attempting to intimidate. Luckily, Batman shows up to save their hides, but the tone is set for the rest of the film. What good is Batman? He is, let us not forget, but a man, possessing no powers of the supernatural. My Webster’s describes “vigilante” as “Any person who assumes the authority of the law, as by avenging a crime.” Certainly Batman is this, and he is held in high regard for his assumptions, but this sort of justice must always fall short in any serious consideration of crime and punishment. Without the due process of the law, however flawed its institutions, we would experience moral chaos. Heavy language, no doubt, perhaps especially for those of you who know me, but the imposed morality of the Constitution is, to paraphrase another favorite film of the sidewhites.com crew, at least an ethos. Tit for tat, an eye for an ear, and everyone in shoot-em-up America armed to the gills, vigilantism is to be Feared. The Joker knows this, alluding to his and Batman’s need for one another. Not simply the classic battle royale between Good and Bad, they are locked in a sick dance, which, throughout the film, spirals further and further out of control.

Batman wishes to pass his mantle to someone worthy of the “hero” moniker, an honest-to-god elected official, D.A. Harvey Dent, who can pursue the ends of justice within the parameters of the legal system, the way it ought to be. Dent himself, spurred by events both tragic and beyond his control, succumbs to the allure of the vigilante, becoming Two-Face, a moral-less badass who decides the fate of those who cross his path with the flip of a coin. The flippant coin flipping rings of the Coen Brothers’ recent No Country For Old Men, though Wikipedia tells me the comics of old got the device from the 1936 Scarface film (a thriller beyond compare!). Either way, it’s downright dirty. Dent’s fall to villainy forces us to call once more on Batman, though it is with regret and a bitter taste in the mouth that we admit that once more our system has failed us. Batman, however conflicted, holds his moral ground and refuses, when given the chance, to kill the Joker, but by this point in the film we are conflicted as well, and Batman’s motives are questionable. Part of us wants this creep (the Joker) out of the picture, while another part knows there’s a whole heap of creeps waiting in the wings. A true vigilante would have ripped the Joker’s throat out. I shudder.

One review I read panned the opening sequence of a camera flying into Gotham’s (Chicago’s) skyline, zeroing in finally on a single window of a skyscraper, as a somewhat flippant and unsubtle play on our post-9/11 fears. This imagery helps solidify in the viewer’s mind the connection between modern terrorism and the Joker’s wild pyrotechnics– among other atrocities, he blows up a hospital in the middle of the city and elsewhere uses as a detonator a cell phone he had surgically inserted inside one of his minions. Holy Terrorism, Batman! The critic points out that the Joker is not a terrorist, he simply wants chaos, to “watch the world burn,” as it is put in the film. Perhaps it is my concurrent reading of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, set in the immediate aftermath of the towers’ falling, but the skyscraper skyline will always be, among anything else, for Americans, a visual reference to That Day. Always. Terrorist language often refers to America-in-flames, and we have seen on newsreel countless effigies burned in streets in corners of the world, how shall we say, “not in our camp.” Do these images in the film prey on my fears? Sure, I admit that, but this stuff is scary. Subtle or not, these are easy connections to make, and I don’t fault the director for making them, as it again lifts the Batman mythology from the realm of adolescence and fantasy to which it had been previously relegated on the big screen.

The movie runs a bit long (as long as this review, Walter??), but is well worth a look on the big screen, and fully entertaining the whole way through. Ledger is as good as all the hype– one glance at this Joker and you’re squirming in your seat– and one hopes the fact of his passing is not lost on even the most casual viewer. The Bat-toys are cooler than ever, Christian Bale is handsome, Maggie Gyllenhaal is hot, Michael Caine is funny, Eckhart’s Two-Face is, well, two-faced, and the special effects are not annoyingly CGI a la The Incredible Hulk (gaack!). So, until we’re given the Frank Miller treatment and Batman and Superman fight to the death in theaters throughout the world, The Dark Knight is the best of the Batman films to date. Enjoy!