I my last post I mentioned that El Topo was not the worst movie I have ever seen. So, to give that statement a little more definition, here are the ten worst movies that I have seen, in no particular order.
Walking Tall -- the original -- the remake could not be any worse
Tremors 2 -- never seen Tremors 3, but I hear its pretty bad
Action Jackson -- this movie is so bad, but it is hysterical without meaning to be
Money Train -- again, funny in all the ways it tries not to be. Featuring Academy Award winner Chris Cooper in a truly baffling role. Also Robert Blake is gut-wrenchingly funny.
Sleepless in Seattle -- I don't know how this movie was such a success, fucking 90s
Boondock Saints -- most . . . overrated . . . movie . . . ever
Smokin' Aces -- could have been cool, but fails epically
Gods and Generals -- over 500 speaking parts, and one of them is Ted Turner
Notting Hill -- vomit
Grand Canyon -- painful bloody vomit. A strange circumstance has forced me to watch this movie repeatedly and I cannot say enough bad things about it.
Honorable Mention: Free Jack, The Hills Have Eyes (remake), Tango and Cash, Sharky's Machine, Rambo, Pearl Harbor, Legally Blond, The Ring
What did I miss?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
El Topo
1970
This movie has it all.
Love, heartbreak, redemption, an armless man and a legless man harnessed together and acting in concert, a lion, a disemboweled horse, a pile of spontaneously combusting dead rabbits, male nudity, female nudity, female midget nudity, voyeuristic public castration, violence, homosexuality, a naked child putting a dying man out of his misery with his father's pistol, weird costumes, some weird sex scenes, gross old women in lingerie, a soundtrack that is ironic at best, Russian roulette, and a race of subterranian deformed inbreds longing to reach the surface only to be slaughtered by weird townsfolk who are then slaughtered by El Topo who then kills himself by dousing himself in kerosene and setting himself on fire.
The weirdest movie that I have ever seen, but far from the worst.
The allegory of a principled, talented, and shockingly insane person.
Costume design, production design, screenplay, score, and direction by Alejandro Jodorowsky. He also plays the starring role, that of El Topo. I would not want to be stuck on an elevator with him.
Also John Lennon was a big fan. That is all.
This movie has it all.
Love, heartbreak, redemption, an armless man and a legless man harnessed together and acting in concert, a lion, a disemboweled horse, a pile of spontaneously combusting dead rabbits, male nudity, female nudity, female midget nudity, voyeuristic public castration, violence, homosexuality, a naked child putting a dying man out of his misery with his father's pistol, weird costumes, some weird sex scenes, gross old women in lingerie, a soundtrack that is ironic at best, Russian roulette, and a race of subterranian deformed inbreds longing to reach the surface only to be slaughtered by weird townsfolk who are then slaughtered by El Topo who then kills himself by dousing himself in kerosene and setting himself on fire.
The weirdest movie that I have ever seen, but far from the worst.
The allegory of a principled, talented, and shockingly insane person.
Costume design, production design, screenplay, score, and direction by Alejandro Jodorowsky. He also plays the starring role, that of El Topo. I would not want to be stuck on an elevator with him.
Also John Lennon was a big fan. That is all.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Passenger
Another dense masterpiece from Michelangelo Antonioni, The Passenger follows a man who tries to rediscover himself by running away from everything he has ever known. David Locke (Jack Nicholson) fakes his own death by trading identities with a dead man, unwittingly involving himself in the dead man's dangerous intrigues. He soon finds himself running away from the man he once was and grappling with the person he has become. He meets a free-thinking, libertine woman (the always beautiful and captivating Maria Schneider) and they go on a journey that is part holiday and part getaway.
The Passenger is almost a thriller, not quite a love story, but it is primarily a study the nature of self, identity and ones relationship with others in the abstract. Locke's personal and legal rejection of everything that makes him David Locke changes the way he relates to everything and everyone around him. He adopts the dead man's persona, but never truly embraces it: so who is he really? During the course of the movie he defines himself more in terms of what he rejects (and flees) than what he espouses. His relationship with Schneider's character (significantly we never learn her name) is indissoluble and fleeting at the same time; their conversations are abstract existential musings. They never know each other, and in a sense neither are knowable. Watch: draw your own conclusions, please.
A word about Jack. I feel as though his most well-know, defining roles (One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, The Shining, Chinatown, to an extent, and others) are portrayed as vibrant dynamos, characters that truly burst off the screen. He certainly is a brilliant and dynamic actor, and fantastic in those movies. In The Passenger his character, by its very nature, will not grab you like many of his other roles -- but he is great. His lesser roles (lesser by virtue of prominence, not quality) are often of a more subdued nature, which is something I have only learned in the last year or so. I would recommend The King of Marvin Gardens and highly recommend Five Easy Pieces as good movies and another side of Jack. OK, back to The Passenger.
An Antonioni movie with a plot! The first such movie that I have seen from him, which is not a knock on the other two in any way. He achieves a striking balance between the world of Nicholson and Schneider and everyone else who is being themselves, playing the parts they have cultivated their whole lives. The opening scenes in the Sahara Desert are disorienting, brilliantly so for the opening of this movie. He makes very limited use of flashbacks, accenting rather than driving the narrative and characterization in interesting ways. The photography is, of course, brilliant. It was shot by Luciano Tovoli (god damn those Italians really have a knack for beautiful composition). I have two favorite shots. while driving down a tree-lined Spanish road, Schneider asks Jack what he is trying to get away from, Jack replies "Face the back of the car," which she does, and as she looks at everything behind them from the back seat while the car flies forward the camera catches her from below, we see only her erect figure set against the canopy rushing by overhead. Description does not do justice. The penultimate shot is sublime, and I am not quite sure how they did it; it defies description. No one knows how to end a movie like Antonioni.
The Passenger manages to be both artistic and captivating, abstract yet grounded. The plot and the point reinforce each other throughout, cemented by flawless direction. Of the Antonioni movies that I have seen, Blow Up and Zabriskie Point, being the others, I would recommend this for a first Antonioni movie. It unmistakably bears his touch but it is much more accessible than the other two. So watch this first and hopefully it won't be your last.
The Passenger is almost a thriller, not quite a love story, but it is primarily a study the nature of self, identity and ones relationship with others in the abstract. Locke's personal and legal rejection of everything that makes him David Locke changes the way he relates to everything and everyone around him. He adopts the dead man's persona, but never truly embraces it: so who is he really? During the course of the movie he defines himself more in terms of what he rejects (and flees) than what he espouses. His relationship with Schneider's character (significantly we never learn her name) is indissoluble and fleeting at the same time; their conversations are abstract existential musings. They never know each other, and in a sense neither are knowable. Watch: draw your own conclusions, please.
A word about Jack. I feel as though his most well-know, defining roles (One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, The Shining, Chinatown, to an extent, and others) are portrayed as vibrant dynamos, characters that truly burst off the screen. He certainly is a brilliant and dynamic actor, and fantastic in those movies. In The Passenger his character, by its very nature, will not grab you like many of his other roles -- but he is great. His lesser roles (lesser by virtue of prominence, not quality) are often of a more subdued nature, which is something I have only learned in the last year or so. I would recommend The King of Marvin Gardens and highly recommend Five Easy Pieces as good movies and another side of Jack. OK, back to The Passenger.
An Antonioni movie with a plot! The first such movie that I have seen from him, which is not a knock on the other two in any way. He achieves a striking balance between the world of Nicholson and Schneider and everyone else who is being themselves, playing the parts they have cultivated their whole lives. The opening scenes in the Sahara Desert are disorienting, brilliantly so for the opening of this movie. He makes very limited use of flashbacks, accenting rather than driving the narrative and characterization in interesting ways. The photography is, of course, brilliant. It was shot by Luciano Tovoli (god damn those Italians really have a knack for beautiful composition). I have two favorite shots. while driving down a tree-lined Spanish road, Schneider asks Jack what he is trying to get away from, Jack replies "Face the back of the car," which she does, and as she looks at everything behind them from the back seat while the car flies forward the camera catches her from below, we see only her erect figure set against the canopy rushing by overhead. Description does not do justice. The penultimate shot is sublime, and I am not quite sure how they did it; it defies description. No one knows how to end a movie like Antonioni.
The Passenger manages to be both artistic and captivating, abstract yet grounded. The plot and the point reinforce each other throughout, cemented by flawless direction. Of the Antonioni movies that I have seen, Blow Up and Zabriskie Point, being the others, I would recommend this for a first Antonioni movie. It unmistakably bears his touch but it is much more accessible than the other two. So watch this first and hopefully it won't be your last.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Conformist
(I am doing away with grading. It is too arbitrary, and who the fuck am I to give something a grade, especially something artistic.)
The Conformist (Il Conformista) is a cinematic depiction of fascism, the political movement that thrust the world into turmoil in the 1930s and 1940s. It is the story of a Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) a man driven by a sense of himself as someone a-typical, a drive which is fueled by the compliant nature of fascism itself. The pressure from within and without to conform leads him to complicity in an act that he ultimately finds repugnant.
In order to take the most away from The Conformist, one must have at least a working understanding of fascism. DJ Railsplitter is here to help. Crudely defined, fascism is the subordination of the individual to the collective. Mussolini referred to fascist Italy (which he governed, as head of the singular Fascist Party) as the "corporate state. Think of it as a corporation, a collection of individual interests united in one body with one collective purpose. Everyone must do their part, working towards a common goal. It is distinct from communism in that it does not entail strict state control of the economy or total public ownership of the means of production. Communist and fascists actually didn't get along too well (see: Spanish Civil War, World War II). This explanation would get me lampooned in any history or political science class, but we're talking film here people.
The Conformist is directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and was released in 1971. Bertolucci adapted the screenplay from the novel by Alberto Moravia. It was photographer by Vittorio Storaro with production design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti. I don't always make a point to credit cinematographers (and even less production designers [not that they are not integral roles in film making]) but so many scenes in The Conformist are dripping with visual meaning that they deserve accolades. This movie is a visual depiction of fascism, and I will mention three scenes: a visit by Clerici to his father, who has been committed to an insane asylum, a dance in which everyone present joins hands and dances around Clerici in a circle that gradually becomes more and more suffocating, and scene which takes place in a ballet studio. It is difficult and kind of senseless to attempt to explain photographic symbolism if you haven't seen the movie. I recommend you see it.
Visually The Conformist is a depiction of fascism. While Clerici's story takes place within the historical frame of fascism, it could be the story of any man at any time who wants desperately to be normal; to feel as if he is walking in the middle of the road that society has laid out for him. He marries a woman who he doesn't really love, and who never had to go out of her way to be a conformist. Haunted by an event in his past, he finds himself not only getting in line, but stepping into the front line of the fascist secret police. Of course, the fascists eventually lose (see: World War II) and Clerici finds himself on the wrong side of the road, yet again.
The lesson, of course, is be yourself. Also, fascism blows. Also people wore really cool looking clothes in the 1930s.
Seriously, though, this movie is seriously awesome. There is a healthy amount of humor, and I actually laughed out loud several times. I hasten to add that the cinematography is not only meaningful but innovative and beautiful in its own right. Trintignant is a revelation; a truly brilliant performance. Bertolucci is a master, and he would follow Il Conformista with his consensus masterpiece, Last Tango in Paris.
In short, I recommend this film to those who consider themselves worthy of its recommendation.
The Conformist (Il Conformista) is a cinematic depiction of fascism, the political movement that thrust the world into turmoil in the 1930s and 1940s. It is the story of a Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) a man driven by a sense of himself as someone a-typical, a drive which is fueled by the compliant nature of fascism itself. The pressure from within and without to conform leads him to complicity in an act that he ultimately finds repugnant.
In order to take the most away from The Conformist, one must have at least a working understanding of fascism. DJ Railsplitter is here to help. Crudely defined, fascism is the subordination of the individual to the collective. Mussolini referred to fascist Italy (which he governed, as head of the singular Fascist Party) as the "corporate state. Think of it as a corporation, a collection of individual interests united in one body with one collective purpose. Everyone must do their part, working towards a common goal. It is distinct from communism in that it does not entail strict state control of the economy or total public ownership of the means of production. Communist and fascists actually didn't get along too well (see: Spanish Civil War, World War II). This explanation would get me lampooned in any history or political science class, but we're talking film here people.
The Conformist is directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and was released in 1971. Bertolucci adapted the screenplay from the novel by Alberto Moravia. It was photographer by Vittorio Storaro with production design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti. I don't always make a point to credit cinematographers (and even less production designers [not that they are not integral roles in film making]) but so many scenes in The Conformist are dripping with visual meaning that they deserve accolades. This movie is a visual depiction of fascism, and I will mention three scenes: a visit by Clerici to his father, who has been committed to an insane asylum, a dance in which everyone present joins hands and dances around Clerici in a circle that gradually becomes more and more suffocating, and scene which takes place in a ballet studio. It is difficult and kind of senseless to attempt to explain photographic symbolism if you haven't seen the movie. I recommend you see it.
Visually The Conformist is a depiction of fascism. While Clerici's story takes place within the historical frame of fascism, it could be the story of any man at any time who wants desperately to be normal; to feel as if he is walking in the middle of the road that society has laid out for him. He marries a woman who he doesn't really love, and who never had to go out of her way to be a conformist. Haunted by an event in his past, he finds himself not only getting in line, but stepping into the front line of the fascist secret police. Of course, the fascists eventually lose (see: World War II) and Clerici finds himself on the wrong side of the road, yet again.
The lesson, of course, is be yourself. Also, fascism blows. Also people wore really cool looking clothes in the 1930s.
Seriously, though, this movie is seriously awesome. There is a healthy amount of humor, and I actually laughed out loud several times. I hasten to add that the cinematography is not only meaningful but innovative and beautiful in its own right. Trintignant is a revelation; a truly brilliant performance. Bertolucci is a master, and he would follow Il Conformista with his consensus masterpiece, Last Tango in Paris.
In short, I recommend this film to those who consider themselves worthy of its recommendation.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Zabriskie Point (A-)
Zabriskie Point was directed Michelangelo Antonioni and released in 1970. It is a depiction of student radicalism, free love, and personal freedom of thought and action in late 1960's southern California.
Many people will find this movie almost unwatchable. The "plot" is the story of two young and uninhibited youth on a journey without direction through the desert of a society of confining social norms characterized by a sterilized commercialism. It encompasses scenes of anti-war protest, quasi-revolutionary activity, hostility to authority for its own sake, and hippie free-love. This is juxtaposed with mainstream culture depicted as impotent, blandly capitalistic, and essentially without a soul.
The most striking feature of Zabriskie Point is the apparent ineptness of the acting and writing. The writing (Antonioni, Sam Shepard, Franco Rossetti, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe) consists of the most cliched hippie speak imaginable, as dry throughout the film as the desert in which most of the movie takes place. Antonioni uses amateurs and non-actors - and it shows. I hesitate to say that even the direction of the renowned Antonioni leaves something to be desired, at least on the surface.
On further contemplation, I believe it is not that simple. I believe, rather firmly, that the direction is in fact deliberately lacking. In fact the previous sentence is the greatest thing I take away from Zabriskie Point. It is a film about not only lack of direction, but the actual rejection of direction as a life virtue. It is a film about characters who have or are discovering that they can live their lives in a way that rejects plans, goals, and any social norms that they so choose to reject. A film without direction depicting life without direction. That is my take anyway.
The cinematography (Alfio Contini) and production design (Dean Tavoularis) is immaculate, and bursting with social commentary. Scenes in which students bent on a life of free expression and rejection of the world as it is drive through streets fraught with corporate logos and advertisement. Through model homes and model families the consummate capitalist markets mass housing developments and a cookie-cutter life while an American flag fills the window in his sky-rise office. Other scenes beg for allegory that is better left for the individual to determine for themselves.
The soundtrack for the greatest cinematic depiction of hippie-dome? Jerry Garcia and Pink Floyd of course. Which brings me to the final scenes of the movie, accompanied by the memorable Pink Floyd number "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." Probably the most engrossing, poignant, and impeccably filmed end to a movie that I have ever seen. And I have seen a few. I would not recommend this movie to many, but I would recommend the final ten minutes to everyone.
Zabriskie Point is a social and cultural commentary. There are few scenes that I would call entertaining. I laughed once, barely. This is a work of art that is truly not intended as entertainment. My grade of A- is merely for this fact. Zabriskie Point is a work of transcendent artistic genius.
Many people will find this movie almost unwatchable. The "plot" is the story of two young and uninhibited youth on a journey without direction through the desert of a society of confining social norms characterized by a sterilized commercialism. It encompasses scenes of anti-war protest, quasi-revolutionary activity, hostility to authority for its own sake, and hippie free-love. This is juxtaposed with mainstream culture depicted as impotent, blandly capitalistic, and essentially without a soul.
The most striking feature of Zabriskie Point is the apparent ineptness of the acting and writing. The writing (Antonioni, Sam Shepard, Franco Rossetti, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe) consists of the most cliched hippie speak imaginable, as dry throughout the film as the desert in which most of the movie takes place. Antonioni uses amateurs and non-actors - and it shows. I hesitate to say that even the direction of the renowned Antonioni leaves something to be desired, at least on the surface.
On further contemplation, I believe it is not that simple. I believe, rather firmly, that the direction is in fact deliberately lacking. In fact the previous sentence is the greatest thing I take away from Zabriskie Point. It is a film about not only lack of direction, but the actual rejection of direction as a life virtue. It is a film about characters who have or are discovering that they can live their lives in a way that rejects plans, goals, and any social norms that they so choose to reject. A film without direction depicting life without direction. That is my take anyway.
The cinematography (Alfio Contini) and production design (Dean Tavoularis) is immaculate, and bursting with social commentary. Scenes in which students bent on a life of free expression and rejection of the world as it is drive through streets fraught with corporate logos and advertisement. Through model homes and model families the consummate capitalist markets mass housing developments and a cookie-cutter life while an American flag fills the window in his sky-rise office. Other scenes beg for allegory that is better left for the individual to determine for themselves.
The soundtrack for the greatest cinematic depiction of hippie-dome? Jerry Garcia and Pink Floyd of course. Which brings me to the final scenes of the movie, accompanied by the memorable Pink Floyd number "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." Probably the most engrossing, poignant, and impeccably filmed end to a movie that I have ever seen. And I have seen a few. I would not recommend this movie to many, but I would recommend the final ten minutes to everyone.
Zabriskie Point is a social and cultural commentary. There are few scenes that I would call entertaining. I laughed once, barely. This is a work of art that is truly not intended as entertainment. My grade of A- is merely for this fact. Zabriskie Point is a work of transcendent artistic genius.
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