MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, Jim Mallon Writers: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Paul Chaplin, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Mary Jo Pehl, Bridget Jones Director: Jim Mallon
Now on DVD from Rogue Pictures (Universal)
Like all of the best comedy, there’s something gleefully anarchic about Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show, which ran on cable in the United States from 1989 to 1999, had a simple premise that both postmodern deconstructionists and couch potatoes could get behind: a humble working stiff (Mike Nelson, who replaced series creator Joel Hodgeson) is shot into space by a demented mad scientist (Trace Beaulieu) bent on world domination. His evil plot: find the worst movie of all time and use it to melt the minds of the public. (Well, I’m still not sure on the specifics of his plan – it’s pretty vague).
Nelson, aboard the ‘Satellite of Love,’ is a guinea pig, forced to watch dozens and dozens of terrible, Z-grade films, ranging from Japanese monster films to juvenile delinquent melodramas, and films by Ed Wood and Roger Corman, among others. To maintain his sanity, Nelson, along with his robot friends Tom Servo (voice of Kevin Murphy) and Crow (Beaulieu), fire a series of wisecracks at the screen while the moving plays. Seen in silhouette at the bottom right corner of the screen, their sardonic running commentary consisted of something like 700 quips during each 90-minute episode. And far from taking lazy potshots, the script (which was extensively written and re-written by a large writing staff) could contain references to Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Aristotle alongside jokes about bodily functions.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was my first exposure to this concept. I saw it for the first time in 2000 when I was 11-years-old and discovering the cheesy wonder of Ed Wood and Godzilla films. MST3K:TM takes as its target the 1955 Universal sci-fi epic This Island Earth, about a race of big-foreheaded aliens looking to conquer Earth since their planet is dying. This Island Earth, a big-budget production in its day and fondly remembered by sci-fi fans with too much time on their hands, was full of all the hallmarks that defined a cheesy sci-fi movie to my 11-year-old self: a wooden he-man lead (Rex Reason), goofy special effects, and some of the most ridiculous make-up in movie history (big foreheads? Really?). As Mike, Tom, and Crow are seen in silhouette filing into the theatre, the ‘50s “Universal International” logo appears. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s universal make it international?” says a member of the peanut gallery. Seconds later, when the opening credits appear against an outer space backdrop, partially obscured by stars, Crow says, “Hey, who sneezed on the credits?” These guys are on the audience’s side, appealing to the part in us that gets outraged when marketing hype lures us into a Hollywood bomb. MST3K serves as a sort of movie police agency, holding lazy and untalented filmmakers accountable for their poor work in an articulate, hilarious way. To me, this was revolutionary.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was released in 1996 shortly after the series was cancelled after seven season on Comedy Central and before it was picked up for another three by the Sci-Fi Channel. By all accounts, it faced a difficult production process, with scenes deleted by the studio and the writers required to produce a broader, more accessible commentary. The movie is not as good as the best of the television show (look for the episodes skewering Mitchell, Space Mutiny, and Manos: The Hands of Fate, all available on DVD from Rhino), and at 73 minutes, it’s shorter than the average episode (and, for that matter, the original, un-edited This Island Earth, which is 87 minutes). Apart from some more elaborate sets it doesn’t really take advantage of the feature film format, and the intermission scenes are startlingly lame…
…but, those 73 minutes contain a lot of laughs. When a geeky scientists says, “You know what my kids would say?”, Tom blurts, “You’re not my real father!” When dramatic music plays after a character announces he’s shifting an ‘interoceter’ to Normal View, the gang sings along, “Nor-mal view! Nor-mal vieeeew! NOR-mal, Vieeeeew! NO-RMAL VIEEEEEW!” When an asteroid falls crashes onto a planet, Tom says, “Oh no, Tinkerbell’s goin’ down! Pull up Tink!” Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is smart snarkiness.
(The MST3K crew taking on a ’50s educational film)
LAKE OF FIRE Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: Alan Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, Norma McCorvey, Paul Hill, Nat Hentoff, Frances Kissling, Randall Terry Writer: Tony Kaye Director: Tony Kaye
On DVD from ThinkFilm
Can there ever be such a thing as an unbiased movie, particularly with a subject as divisive as abortion? It’s an issue that inspires so much passion that I wonder if anyone could rise to the challenge. I thought Todd Solondz came close several years ago when he made Palindromes, a very disturbing film about a young girl who gets an abortion and runs away to join a pro-life ‘family.’ Now comes Lake of Fire, an ambitious documentary by Tony Kaye, the British director who nearly got chased out of Hollywood several years ago for his career-killing behavior surrounding the editing of American History X. Kaye spent seventeen years collecting footage for this film, with his stated goal being to make the definitive abortion documentary.
Kaye has attempted to cover both sides of the issue impartially. I don’t know if the film is “definitive” (how could it be?), but Kaye certainly tries to cover just about everything. Interviewees range from Noam Chomsky to Norma McCorvey (the infamous “Roe” of Roe vs. Wade), and practically every abortion clinic shooting is covered at least in passing. We see rallies, pickets, shooting victims, pregnant teenagers, preachers, philosophers, rock musicians, news reports, and, in a few nearly unwatchable scenes, aborted fetuses.
Many critics have said that it is impossible to assign either a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” label to Lake of Fire. Kaye has refused to make his own position clear (if anything, the movie itself is his position), and both sides are given strong defenses, but the pro-choice side is given stronger defenses. Most of the film’s most articulate speakers (Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz among them) are pro-choice, while the majority of the pro-lifers are simplistic and closed-minded bible thumpers. One of the few reasonable figures representing the pro-life side is Nat Hentoff, an atheist libertarian who writes for the Village Voice. He says that there needs to be consistency among the pro-lifers: not only should they be opposed to abortion, but also to capital punishment, war, and governments who wage war. But Hentoff is a pretty lonely voice of reason. One of the many dunderheaded pro-life interviewees seen in archive footage (who turns out to be abortionist murderer Paul Hill) says that not only should abortionists be executed, but so also should any kind of blasphemer. This, according to Hill, includes those who say the word “Goddamn.” Was Hentoff really the only intelligent pro-life person Kaye could find? To be fair to Kaye, he makes the controversial decision to show, in graphic detail, several actual abortion procedures. In one unforgettable scene, we actually see the remains of several of the aborted fetuses. There are little feet, arms, and eyes in this puddle of muck.
Kaye shot Lake of Fire in black and white, a brilliant decision for many reasons. On an aesthetic level, it looks great, making even the oldest footage look like it was shot yesterday. On a practical level, it doesn’t punish the audience any more than it has to during the procedural scenes. On a philosophical level, it conveys the polarized way people are expected to react to the abortion issue.
Kaye’s film portrays American in an ugly light, a land of closed-minded, angry, and sour people completely to listen to the other side. Intentionally or not, it also portrays the pro-life side as being somewhat in shambles – why must they build their case around the irrational and inarguable concept that is God? At 152 minutes, Lake of Fire is too long, with some of the interviewees becoming redundant, perhaps a side effect of Kaye’s self-conscious goal to make the ultimate film on the topic. Still, this is a constantly engrossing, sometimes shatteringly powerful, and inarguably important work. If Lake of Fire fails to be as even-handed as Kaye might have liked, it might not be Kaye’s failure as much as America’s.
Cast: Jackie Chan, Kent Cheng, Law Kar-Ying, Blacky Ko, Ken Lo, Mars
Director: Kirk Wong
ROBIN-B-HOOD
Rating: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Jackie Chan, Louis Koo, Michael Hui, Matthew Medvedev, Charlene Choi, Yuen Biao, Gao Yuanyuan, Ken Lo, Daniel Wu, Nicholas Tse
Director: Benny Chan
Dragon Dynasty, part of the Weinstein Company, is becoming the best label for Asian action movies, releasing old chop sockies (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer) and newer movies (SPL, The Protector) in good-looking, extras-packed editions, most featuring commentary by Bey Logan (author of the excellent book Hong Kong Action Cinema) and some featuring Quentin Tarantino’
s fanboy-friendly stamp of approval.The Weinsteins took a lot of flack at Miramax for the way they treated their foreign acquisitions, often editing films or, worse, keeping them on the shelf.Asian genre films suffered particularly.The Promise and Shaolin Soccer, for example, were both shorn of over twenty-five minutes.
And what would an Asian action film distribution label be without some Jackie Chan?Recently released on Dragon Dynasty editions were Crime Story (1994) and Robin-B-Hood (2006).
Robin-B-Hood (Hong Kong title: Rob-B-Hood.The ‘B’ is a reference to ‘baby,’ but I think something got lost in the translation) is Chan’s most recent Hong Kong production, released throughout Asia in September 2006.In Hong Kong, its infant star, Matthew Medvedev, was central to its marketing campaign, dwarfing even Chan on most of the posters.Thanks in part to this hook, Robin-B-Hood ended up as Hong Kong’s second biggest domestically produced box office earner for 2006…and little Medvedev received a Hong Kong Oscar nomination for best newcomer!
Chan plays Thongs, one third of a merry band of robbers also comprised of Octopus (Louis Koo) and Landlord (Michael Hui).When a job goes wrong, Landlord finds himself in prison and Thongs and Octopus find themselves with…a kidnapped baby!It’s taking extraordinary strength of will on my part not to crack a joke involving the title Three Black Belts and a Baby.
Robin-B-Hood panders to every demographic, with young heartthrobs, overcooked drama, action set pieces, and a whole lot of poop jokes.Chan’s character is a gambling addict with daddy issues, and the melodrama that results is pretty queasy.Also less than satisfying is the underdeveloped subplot between Koo and his pregnant, neglected wife (Charlene Choi), which grinds the movie to a halt every time it rears its head.(Incidentally, if you don’t think raising a baby will make these flawed men change their wicked ways…well, you’ve never seen a movie before).
The film was obviously intended to reach a broad, family audience in Hong Kong, but baby-related highjinks aside, Western audiences looking for kiddie entertainment might be surprised by the violence, crude humour and language, which would surely earn this at least a PG-13 rating (the original version even contains an abortion reference, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the Weinsteins cut this).
But then there are the action scenes, which are spectacular.At the midpoint, there’s a real doozy involving a car chase and a baby carriage.The climactic scene is about fifteen minutes of wall-to-wall action, and it’s surprisingly exciting.[SPOILER WARNING] Goodwill is quickly dashed by a scene in which Chan and Koo try desperately to save the baby’s life with a hotwired defibrillator, a scene which is unprecedented in the annals of Jackie Chan cinema in its melodrama; Chan, normally a surprisingly good dramatic actor, overacts intensely.And in the condescending final scene, everything works out implausibly perfectly.Look, I’m expecting anything bleak from a Jackie Chan family movie, but this ending is over-the-top sunny.[END SPOILERS]By the time this dreary conclusion passes, Robin-B-Hood has run an inexcusable 125 minutes.That’s a lot of padding
Crime Story is a much better film.It was made in 1994, near the end of the Jackie Chan golden age, and, bluntly, it’s awesomeness.Interestingly, it’s based on a true story of the kidnapping of a Hong Kong diplomat.Jackie plays Eddie Chan, a dedicated cop who slowly begins to realize that his corrupt partner (Kent Cheng) may be involved in the kidnapping.
Crime Story was Chan’s first attempt at a serious action film in many years.Most of his films released after 1978 had him playing a variation on the same character: cocky, mischievous, and pretty darn silly.Here Chan gives an effective dramatic performance. Crime Story is gritty, intense and violent in a way that calls to mind the work of John Woo.It’s often very exciting stuff: there are gunfights a plenty, a great car chase, and several of Jackie’s signature martial arts battles.The final scene, in which he saves a small boy from a burning building, is all the more thrilling because Chan actually was running from a real burning building.God, I love these movies.
I saw Crime Story a few years ago and was disappointed by its seriousness.Watching it again, I found it a genuinely thrilling potboiler, one that should rank near the top of the Jackie Chan filmography.
Over the years, the cinema has produced certain figures that have gained immortality through there work. Humphrey Bogart is one such man, as are Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, James Dean…and Godzilla, the 200-foot tall radioactive monster who has starred in twenty-eight films from Japan’s Toho studios of wildly varying quality. Fans of low-budget drive-in fodder savour the big guy’s cheesier films, full of alien attacks, senseless monster fighting, and special effects that could charitably be described as unconvincing. At their best, however, the films inspire a sense of primitive awe and even social commentary.
Classic Media has released a boxed set containing several of Godzilla’s adventures from the 1950s to the 1970s, most directed by Ishiro Honda, the Orson Welles of Japanese monster movies. If you like Godzilla (and honestly, why wouldn’t you?), it’s a treasure trove.
GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS! Rating: *** Cast: Raymond Burr, Godzilla Director: Terry Morse, Ishiro Honda
The story has become cliché. H-bomb testing in the South Pacific has woken and mutated a giant, prehistoric monster from the depths of Tokyo bay. Godzilla, looking for nuclear radiation to feed off of, and, frankly, for something to do, rises up and demolishes Tokyo. Meanwhile, in the human story, Dr. Serizawa, a brilliant but troubled scientist, discovers a new weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer, which can destroy the air in water. The Oxygen Destroyer appears to be the only hope against Godzilla, but Serizawa fears that making this weapon public knowledge could lead to it falling in the wrong hands.
Those who know Godzilla only as a man in a cheesy rubber costume in numerous Z-grade movies may be surprised by the original film, which is one of the very best monster movies of all time. Get this: it’s better than the original King Kong. It’s a slow, sober affair, and was one of the first Japanese films to deal explicitly with the subject of nuclear proliferation. The city destruction scenes were meant to be reminiscent of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
Let’s talk about the city destruction scenes. The effects work by Eiji Tsuburaya is surprisingly effective, taking into consideration that even though this was the most expensive film ever made in Japan at the time it was still very low budget. The stark black and white photography helps greatly, concealing the effects’ flaws and giving the film a grainy, documentary feel.
Anyone who has seen a Godzilla sequel will be surprised by the decidedly un-cathartic city-stomping scenes. ‘Thrilling’ or ‘exciting’ or even ‘unintentionally amusing’ aren’t the words for these. They’re somber and grim, as if Honda and company were filming natural disaster footage. There’s one particularly bleak scene of a woman in a burning city block holding her baby and telling it that they’d be joining her father soon. Not the Godzilla of the 60s and 70s. This feels more like an art house drama than a creature feature.
Joseph E. Levine, an American distributor who would go on to distribute films by Fellini as well as the Steve Reeves Hercules vehicles, bought Gojira for American distribution. With journeyman director Terry Morse, he eliminated forty minutes of Ishiro Honda’s footage (including almost all references to WWII and nuclear weaponry). In its place, Morse and Levine added twenty minutes of new footage featuring a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as “Steve Martin,” an American journalist visiting Japan to see his good friend Dr. Serizawa. Burr is integrated into the story fairly convincingly, although certainly not flawlessly (you don’t have to be Sergei Eisenstein to notice that Burr and Serizawa share not a single scene together). This 80-minute version of the film was released in American theatres under the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and proved surprisingly successful, making $2 million in its first run and enjoying a long, long life on TV.
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! certainly isn’t as good as the original Japanese version. By removing the political subtext it loses a lot of its resonance, and as much as I enjoy the Raymond Burr scenes, they don’t add much. But the American version retains much of the tone of the Japanese version, and keeps most of the monster footage. And if you saw it when you were young enough (I was ten when I first saw it), it probably has a special, nostalgic place in your heart.
GIGANTIS: THE FIRE MONSTER (American version of ‘Godzilla Raids Again’) Rating: * Director: Motoyoshi Oda
After the first Godzilla was a success, Toho rushed Godzilla Raids Again into production and released it less than a year later. It shows: the human story is startlingly uninteresting and slow-paced, and the social commentary is not nearly as pervasive as in the first film. Only one cast member from the previous film, Akira Takarada, returned, but his role is little more than a glorified cameo. The mood is once again solemn, but without the direction of Ishiro Honda (who was quite committed to his anti-nuclear message), the film feels soulless and dull. On the plus side, Godzilla Raids Again is once again in black and white, a cinematographic style that really suits the rubber-suited antics of the Godzilla series.
Released by Warner Brothers on a double bill with Teenagers from Outer Space, Gigantis: The Fire Monster, the dubbed American version, is essentially a different film. The most obvious change is that Godzilla’s name has been inexplicably changed to ‘Gigantis’ and all references to the original film removed, but this is the least of its sins. Severely cut and with ridiculous new scenes made from cheesy stock footage that seems to derive from a combination of cheesy sci-fi and no-budget classroom films, Gigantis also features dubbing that somehow manages to be the most incompetent a Godzilla film would ever receive. Quite an achievement. At one notorious instance, a character says the dubbed line, “Ah, banana oil!” – an expression that went out of date in the 1920s. Listen carefully to those dubbed voices, however, and you might just hear Keye Luke and Geoge Takei.
INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER (GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO) Rating: ** ½ Cast: Nick Adams, Akira Takarada, Jun Tazaki, Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Godzilla, Rodan, King Ghidorah Director: Ishiro Honda
TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA Rating: * ½ Cast: Katsuhiko Sasaki, Tomoko Ai, Akihiko Hirata, Katsumasa Uchida, Goro Mutsumi, Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, Titanosaurus Director: Ishiro Honda
Following Godzilla Raids Again, the series, like Godzilla himself, went into hibernation for seven years while other kaiju (giant monsters) made their big screen debuts – Rodan, Varan, Mothra, etc. With the 1962 release of King Kong vs. Godzilla, an enormous commercial hit all over the world, the formula for the series became clear: bright colours, lots of monster battles, and only the most superficial of social commentary.
Mothra vs. Godzilla is universally acknowledged as the best of the sequels in the original series. I have my doubts – I get more perverse enjoyment from watching the so-bad-they’re-good entries like Godzilla vs. Megalon, and Mothra is, frankly, a hugely overrated monster (it’s a friggin’ moth, for chrissakes!). Still, this goofy film is pretty enjoyable, and is the last of the original series to present Godzilla as a ‘bad guy.’
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster just doesn’t do it for me. Too much pseudo-James Bond intrigue, too many talky human scenes, not enough monsters fighting each other. Camp value comes, however, in the scene where Mothra mediates a peace settlement between Godzilla and Rodan so that they can join forces in fighting King Ghidorah. Seriously. More fun is Invasion of Astro-Monster (Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) which reaches new heights (or depths) of silliness with its story of astronauts who travel to Planet X. The space alien residents ask for the human race’s assistance in defeating a monster who has been plaguing their planet named Monster Zero (played, interestingly enough, by King Ghidorah). The human race agrees, sending Godzilla and Rodan to space…but wouldn’t ya know it, those rat finks of Planet X turn out to be double-crossers set upon world domination. Don’t you hate when that happens? The special effects are…well, cheesy, but there’s eye candy to spare in this very juvenile entry, which stars, I kid you not, Nick Adams, shortly after his Hollywood career tanked. Watch closely for Godzilla’s victory dance!
All Monsters Attack (more commonly known as Godzilla’s Revenge) is one of the sadder entries in the Godzilla series. Blatantly pandering to the kiddie audience that was embracing the Gamera series, it’s about a troubled little boy in disturbingly small pants who, to escape his lonely existence, takes frequent naps, where he dreams about visiting Monster Island. There, he hangs out with Minya, the son of Godzilla, and watches the Big G take down a variety of evil monsters. Almost all of Godzilla’s scenes are stock footage from previous movies, mostly Son of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Now, I have a certain amount of affection for this movie (it was another one that I watched a lot as a kid), but there’s no denying that it’s a pretty pitiful excuse for a movie.
Terror of Mechagodzilla is the second worst Godzilla film that Ishiro Honda directed, suffering from an embarrassing budget and another ridiculous space alien plot. The film is a direct sequel to the previous year’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and is about an alien race that has rebuilt Mechagodzilla (Godzilla’s mechanical clone) to, of course, take over the world. Meanwhile, another monster, the forgettable Titanosaurus, makes his first and last appearance in the Godzilla series.
Terror of Mechagodzilla is a bad film, but a slight step up from the Godzilla films of the 1970s that preceded it because of a slightly more mature tone and a slightly higher budget. Some of the monster fight scenes are entertaining as well, but the pacing is uneven and the whole enterprise has a strong scent of cheese. The box office failure of Terror of Mechagodzilla meant it would be the last Zilla thrilla to be released for nine years.
* * *
If you’re as big a fan of the ol’ rubber brute as I am, Classic Media’s DVD collection will have just about everything you could want. Most valuably, each movie contains both the original, subtitled Japanese versions and the re-cut, dubbed American versions. Each film also has a smart commentary by a Godzilla historian (yes, I actually wrote the words “Godzilla historian”), as well as poster galleries and documentaries.
RESCUE DAWN Rating: *** ½ (out of ****) Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Galen Yuen, Director: Werner Herzog
On DVD from Fox.
Werner Herzog’s latest film, Rescue Dawn, is based on his own 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, in which the late Dieter Dengler, a German who became an America fighter pilot in the Vietnam war, described being captured and sent to a POW, as well as his harrowing time in the dangerous jungle after escaping. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is one of Herzog’s best documentaries, and indeed Herzog had talked for years about his desire to turn it into a feature film. The fruit of his labour, Rescue Dawn, has been released on DVD after a disappointing theatrical run last summer, hopefully to find the wide audience that it deserves.
Christian “best-actor-of-his-generation” Bale plays Dengler, and it’s another one of those patented Great Christian Bale Performances. As is often the case with Bale, what gets the most attention is his obvious physical transformation (Bale went on another one of his starvation diets for this film) and his survival of the typically nightmarish Herzogian production (he eats maggots!), but, if you’ve seen Little Dieter Needs to Fly, you’ll notice that he eerily captures Dieter, from his exaggerated mannerisms to his German-tinged voice to Dieter’s essentially optimistic spirit.
The two other major cast members are Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies as Dieter’s fellow captives. Incredibly, Zahn, an actor best known for playing lame sidekicks in lamer comedies, is every bit as good as Bale. His quiet, tortured performance really gives the feeling of someone who has been held captive for two years. As for Davies, I’m not quite sure what to make of his performance, but there’s no doubting his commitment to the part: he’s so terrifyingly skinny that he makes Bale look downright healthy by comparison.
Herzog has spoken about “the voodoo of locations,” or the fact that filming something on a soundstage is no substitute for filming it in the real location. It’s this way of thinking that has led him to film in torturous jungle locations in the past (fun fact: he’s the only director who has made a film on every continent), and again for Rescue Dawn. In this film, the jungles of Thailand do become as important a character as Dieter. Certainly there are times when Herzog’s jungle imagery is beautiful, but it’s just as often oppressive and claustrophobic.
There are few directors who are as consistently interesting as Herzog. To date he has made 54 films (including documentaries and shorts), and while not all of them are successful, they all have memorable moments and are enormously ambitious. He is best known for the five films he made with the volatile actor Klaus Kinski (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde), and those five films, with their non-stop stream of unforgettable imagery, are the ones that most fully capture what makes him unique and valuable.
More recently, interest in Herzog has been on the upswing thanks to his successful 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, a genuine crowd-pleaser that ranks among his greatest achievements. Rescue Dawn isn’t quite on the top shelf of Herzog films – the pacing is uneven, and more establishing scenes with Dieter would have helped to better define his character – but unlike many of his movies, it is plot and character-driven, and relatively commercial. It’s also surprisingly entertaining. If you’ve never seen a Herzog movie before, Rescue Dawn is a good place to start.
* * *
For an excellent and quite touching essay about Herzog by Roger Ebert, go to
THIS FILTHY WORLD Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: John Waters Director: Jeff Garlin
On DVD from MPI
John Waters belongs to a small group of directors – including Otto Preminger and even Orson Welles – whose talk show appearances and side-projects are more responsible for their fame than their actual movies. More than most directors, Waters is a veritable cottage industry. He has hosted several TV shows (including the recent ‘Til Death do Us Part), produced CD compilations, authored some very funny books, written countless magazine articles, and even tried his hand at photography.
And then there are his films. High points of his filmography include 1981’s Polyester, which was presented in “Odorama” and which contains a love scene between Tab Hunter and Divine; 1988’s good-natured Hairspray, which spawned the Broadway musical and 2007 remake; and my favourite, 1977’s Desperate Living, which is completely indefensible but is very funny. Waters is also responsible, I’m afraid, for three of the worst films of the last decade: Pecker, Cecil B. Demented and A Dirty Shame. And, of course, no article about Waters would be complete without mentioning his 1975 “exercise in poor taste,” Pink Flamingos, which put him on the map for its notorious scene in which 300-pound transvestite Divine actually eats the byproduct of a poodle that one would least want to eat.
This Filthy World, directed by the actor/comedian Jeff Garlin, and which played at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, presents Waters giving a so-called lecture at a university campus, although it’s really more of a stand-up act. “I tell my friends, ‘This is not a lecture, this is vaudeville’,” Waters says in the opening minutes.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other major film director who is a more amusing personality than Waters, and This Filthy World is a lot of fun. Waters’ act is loosely structured around his life and films, but with tangents about topics that catch Waters’ fancy, like visiting famous trials (Waters was at the Watergate and Patty Hearst trials), strange sexual fetishes, his old friends (including Divine and Edith Massey), and odd pop culture subjects. Waters’ approach is the material is surprisingly whimsical, although his fondness for bad taste creeps in sometimes, especially in a joke about Michael Jackson that is so disgusting that he actually looked guilty about it afterwards. There are also a lot of anecdotes about the making of his films, my favourite of which are about The Diane Linkletter Story, which Waters and company filmed the same say they read about Diane Linkletter’s death in the newspaper
Waters is a funny speaker, particularly when talking about the schlockmeister directors of his childhood who influenced him, like Kroger Babb, who Waters says would release noxious gases into theatres where his films were playing so that the first person who passed out would be guaranteed front-page coverage. Waters reserves special fondness for William Castle, another director whose films were secondary to his ridiculous gimmicks, like wiring buzzers into the seats during showings of The Tingler and simulating a tingler attack in the theatre. “When it finally came to the theatre in my neighbourhood, they only bothered to wire about two or three of the seats, so I’d go early and look under every seat until I found the Percepto buzzer, and then just sit there, getting my ass buzzed all day long.” Waters continues, saying, “That’s when I realized there could be such a thing as art in the cinema.” Now there’s a statement that goes a long way to explaining his body of work.
SICKO Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: Michael Moore (who else?) Director: Michael Moore
On DVD from Alliance.
When it was released in June, Sicko grossed $24 million at the domestic box office. Strong business for a documentary, but not so much for a Michael Moore film – Fahrenheit 9/11 made $119 million in 2004. An obvious reason for the relatively disappointing box office is that Fahrenheit was one of the most controversial and talked-about movies of our time, while Sicko, with its less polarizing subject matter, was not, making it vulnerable to the louder marketing campaigns of the various Transformers, Spider-Men, and Pirates playing at the same multiplex. But I think one of the most crucial reasons for Sicko’s weak box office was the Weinstein Company’s surprisingly sedate marketing campaign. Much of the pre-release hype surrounding the movie was careful to point out that it was Moore’s least divisive film to date. It felt at times like the Weinsteins were saying, “At last! The Michael Moore film that conservatives can enjoy!” The problem: selling a kinder and gentler Michael Moore to conservatives is like selling them edible shit. It’s edible, but it’s still shit.
It’s too bad that Sicko didn’t do more business, though, because being Moore’s least divisive film, it is, if not his best, perhaps his most valuable work to date. There are fewer cheap laughs here, and while there’s definitely the emotional moments, they’re not as syrupy and manipulative as in, say, Fahrenheit 9/11. This is an entertaining film with a deep undercurrent of sorrow, and if I were American, it would make me want to work for change. All things considered, a very successful film.
Sicko has a very even three-act structure. Moore doesn’t appear in act one, instead focusing his attention on lower-middle-class Americans whose HMOs denied them health insurance for a variety of startling reasons. One woman, for example, was denied insurance because in her distant past she had a yeast infection that she failed to warn the insurance company about. Moore then broadens his focus to include previous failed attempts to institute the dreaded ‘socialized’ medicine in the United States, and points to a disturbing statistic abut the proportional inequality of congressmen to healthcare lobbyists.
The middle section of the film, where Moore travels to countries that have adopted universal healthcare – England, France, Canada – is the most problematic. This section is generally persuasive, but as is so often the case with his films, Moore deals here with a lot of half-truths (more than one Canadian critic pointed out Moore’s rose-tinted view of Canadian hospital wait times), and, frankly, goes on far too long. Ten or fifteen minutes snipped would have dramatically improved the movie’s pacing. My candidate is a scene where Moore learns that the French government will send over nannies to help out new mothers with household chores. It’s funny, but irrelevant.
Things liven up in the last section, with Moore’s notorious trip to Guantanamo Bay (the only place on American soil with free healthcare) and Cuba. It’s grandstanding, yes, but it’s Moore’s best grandstanding to date. It would be nice to get on my high horse and condemn these sorts of stunts, but condemning a Michael Moore film for having gimmicky stunts is like condemning a porno movie for having sex scenes in it. You get what you pay for. Incidentally, you may have heard reports that Moore appears in Sicko less frequently than his other films. Untrue – he may not appear until forty minutes in, but he dominates the rest of the movie, and his sardonic narration is non-stop.
A lot of critics have complained about Moore’s appearances in this film, saying that a multi-millionaire with a Palm d’Or and an Oscar on his shelf can’t convincingly act like a naïve hick and say, “Gee whiz, you mean you Canadians get healthcare for free?” I think this misses the point. Moore isn’t stupid – he knows he can’t pass for a rube, and I think this is part of the joke. But anyway, even if it isn’t, Moore’s onscreen character has become the documentary genre’s closest thing to a Chaplinesque figure, and in a movie about a topic so sorrowful, it’s kinda nice to have him around.
ELECTION Rating: *** ½ (out of ****) Cast: Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Louis Koo, Nick Cheung, Lam Ka Tung, Cheung Siu Fai, Lam Suet Director: Johnnie To
Now on DVD from Alliance.
[I wrote about this movie in a Seven-Day Rentals column a few weeks ago, but since it has finally received an official North American release, now is a good time to talk about it further]
The Hong Kong film industry, which in the 1980s and early to mid-1990s was one of the most productive and innovative in the world, has fallen on hard times. Piracy, always a problem in the Far East, has been seriously eroding box office totals, and interesting young talent has not been forthcoming; many of Hong Kong’s up-and-comers are recording stars who have been given movie contracts regardless of their acting talent, and the actors who can still bring in ticket buyers are the same aging stars from fifteen years ago (Stephen Chow, Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, etc.). Furthermore, Hong Kong audiences have been showing an increasing preference for Hollywood productions. In 1992, the highest-grossing American film in Hong Kong, Basic Instinct, was only the region’s 12th biggest film of the year. In 2005, only two local productions made the yearly top 10.
The silver lining: while Hong Kong is no longer the filmmaking powerhouse it once was, it is not yet creatively bankrupt. The last few years have brought the release of Infernal Affairs, Kung Fu Hustle, 2046, SPL, New Police Story, Curse of the Golden Flower, After This Our Exile, Shaolin Soccer, Lust, Caution, and Dumplings. Any film industry that can release a crop of movies like that should not be written off.
A filmmaker that some commentators have been pointing to as the possible savlation of the Hong Kong film industry is Johnnie To. At age 53, he has already directed 46 movies, but has only recently begun to hit his stride. His recent films Exiled, Throwdown, Fulltime Killer, and Breaking News, among others, have met with critical acclaim and strong box office. He has proven himself to be a master of combining art and commerce, and nowhere is this more apparent than in his 2005 film Election, which won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Picture and played in competition at Cannes.
The head of a powerful Chinese triad society has died, and a democratic election among the triad members has been conducted to determine his successor. The candidates: Lok (Simon Yee), a quiet, calculating family man, and Big D (Tony Leung Ka-fai), a flamboyant and volatile loudmouth. After much in the way of bribery and deceit, Lok wins the election, but Big D, angered by the outcome, resolves to start his own triad clan. The conflict: for over one hundred years, the leader of Lok’s triad group has always possessed a ceremonial baton, which symbolizes and legitimizes his reign in the eyes of the triad members. Big D’s camp has the baton, and are unwilling to give it back.
Election could be compared to the work of Martin Scorsese with its mob milieu and shocking violence, but unlike most American mob movies, this film doesn’t have a breakneck pace or an electric charge. In fact, the two lead characters have surprisingly little screen time. The approach that Johnnie To takes is more clinical. While it has two interesting characters in Lok and Big D, To is more interesting in the chaos around them – the backroom deals, the negotiations, the corruption. The film is fascinating and quite convincing in its depiction of the inner-workings of a triad society.
There are a lot of characters and a lot of plot developments, and Western audiences will likely have trouble keeping track of everything that’s going on, but I’m reminded of what Roger Ebert said of Once Upon a Time in America: “There are times when we don’t understand exactly what is happening, but never a time when we don’t feel confidence in the film’s narrative.” Given the phenomenal success of a certain Infernal Affairs remake called The Departed, I’m sure some American studios have considered Election for a remake, but I don’t think it would work. This is a distinctly Asian film whose internal logic relies on themes of tradition and loyalty that are more Chinese than American. Yet despite this, the film ends on a note of betrayal that is absolutely perfect in its nihilism. The Chinese triads in the film can talk all they want about brotherhood, but in the end, there is no honour among thieves.
* * *
Incidentally, a sequel, Election 2, was released less than a year after the original film, and received similar critical praise. It has recently been released on DVD in North America under the title Triad Election.
