Author: swampflix

New City (2015)

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three star

2015 saw the ten year anniversary of the broken levees that flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The decade that’s followed this man-made disaster has brought various anxieties & concerns to the city, not least of all about the flood of transplants that have moved here during our long road to recovery. It’s easy to get bitter about the speed in which the city is changing. People move to New Orleans because they love its culture, but often try to change the city from within once they arrive. The fear is that along with positive changes like economic growth & much needed educational reform the city might be trading in its more unique cultural traditions, transforming into a modern, homogenized city no different than Anywhere Else, America.

The documentary New City bucks local negativity about the rapid changes we’ve seen post-Katrina, positing the last decade as “a renaissance” for New Orleans, playing almost like an advertisement for the direction the city is heading in. The film is relentlessly positive, countering the exhaustion & PTSD New Orleans has been struggling with in the years since the levee breach with unbridled enthusiasm about the hope that young  transplants bring to our economic landscape. There are a few voices of dissent among the film’s interviewees, but they mostly belong to barflies trapping themselves in negative thought loops. Local business owners, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and other sober voices are selling a purely positive spin, declaring that the city is (in Landrieu’s words) “stronger & better than before”. No one is claiming that the storm’s death, destruction, and diaspora were a good thing for the city (at least I hope not), but when the loudest negative voices about post-Katrina transplants are coming from drunken rants that cover distaste for everything from President Obama to “job stealing” Hondurans, Landrieu & company’s optimism plays like a much more attractive way of thinking.

Form-wise, New City is about what you’d expect from a talking heads documentary about the current state of the city. It feels ready-made to be put in rotation on WYES (which is not at all a bad thing). The film does some interesting things with the format, though. Its aerial shots, most likely drone-operated, are very striking, inviting the audience to pull back & look at the city from a detached, distant angle. I also appreciated the way local cuisine is woven into its narrative. Narrator (and first time documentarian) Max Cusimano often exclaims things like “Let’s take a food break!” or “And now for some food porn” & values interviews from local chefs & food critics like Tom Fitzmorris & Out to Lunch‘s Peter Ricchiuti just as much as he values input from folks like the mayor. In a lot of ways, New City‘s bartstool interviews, drooling food photography, and stray footage of live music & Mardi Gras parades often work like a wordless reassurance that the city’s culture is here to stay indefinitely no matter how much or how quickly the population changes.

I’ll admit that I found certain aspects of New City‘s relentless optimism frustrating. There are entire lines of thought that the film avoids as long as possible in order to keep things posi. It takes almost 40 minutes for the doc to address people being priced out of their neighborhoods in this so-called “renaissance”. Words like “gentrification”, “Airbnb”, and “hipsters” are held off for even longer despite the severe weight they hold for locals. I also bristled at the way some interviewees valued “new, educated, business-oriented people” over undermined & underserved local talent. Even more uncomfortable was watching a Los Angeles couple gush over mix drinks with names like “levee breach” & “flood water” at a restaurant in the 9th Ward. Still, I found the film’s overall positivity to be downright infectious. My own tendencies to get defensive about who’s moving here & how they should behave once they arrive is unproductively negative & ultimately futile. New Orleans is a port city. As protective as we can be about maintaining local traditions, it’s good to keep in mind that our entire history, our very fabric is dependent upon constant influx of new faces & new ideas. This is far from our first “renaissance”.

I found myself agreeing with New City‘s the-future’s-looking-bright attitude most when it was tempered with a little caution for balance. As much as Landrieu lauds all of the new money & young talent coming through town, even he punctuates that opinion with the old adage that once you move to this city you don’t change it; it changes you. I also found myself encouraged by a bar owner’s levelheaded reminder that it’s great to have money flowing through the city that wasn’t here before the storm, but that “Money isn’t everything.” Even though I wish more of New City‘s sentiment was thoughtfully balanced in that way, it was still pleasant to see the city through the film’s hopeful eyes. At the very least, it put a lot of my own personal negativity about where the city might be headed & who’s moving here in check. I genuinely appreciated that. And when it wasn’t working for me, there was always food porn waiting to put my mind at ease.

Side note: When I watched this film on Amazon Prime there were a few sound quality issues in some of the interview footage that occasionally obscured what was being said. So, you know, that might not be the best platform to watch the film on even if it is currently the most convenient.

-Brandon Ledet

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2014)

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fourstar

I’ve been on a bit of a Studio Ghibli kick lately, which lead me to watching a couple animation classics I should’ve watched a long time ago: Howl’s Moving Castle & Pom Poko. A much more recent blindspot/missed opportunity entertainment from Studio Ghibli was 2014’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya, the only Ghibli film I can think of where I planned to catch it in the theater, but missed out due to poor scheduling. It’s probably for the best that I didn’t watch The Tale of Princess Kaguya in public, though. I spent much of the film’s second hour spontaneously bursting into big, ugly tears. I’m not saying that I’m embarrassed to cry in public; it’s just that my couch is a really comfortable place to weep.

Retelling the Japanese folktale “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”, The Tale of Princess Kaguya immediately has a different look to it than I’m used to from Studio Ghibli’s more typical, polished style. The film has a storybook illustration look to it, recalling the visual work of the recent Irish animation feature The Secret of Kells. It’s a visual language that never allows you to lose sight of its hand-drawn origins. Its brush strokes & pencil marks always on open display. At first the effect of this choice is more cute than breathtaking, but as the story’s reverence for the beauty of Nature starts to takes shape, the visual choices start too make all too much sense. The pencil & watercolor visual palette works like intensely pretty & delicate nature studies that you’d fine in the sketchbook or a botanist or some other kind of observer of Nature’s beauty.

“The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” begins with said bamboo cutter discovering a Thumbelina-sized princess sprouting from a magical bamboo stalk in the mountainside wilderness where he lives & works. The miniature princess then transforms into a human-sized infant who seemingly grows as quickly as the bamboo. The bamboo cutter & his wife raise this “beautiful little princess” as if she were their own natural child, a “blessing from Heaven.” Nature opens up & beautifies at the princess’s presence and she similarly brightens up when immersed in the natural world. Her adoptive father, however, encouraged by other gifts found in the bamboo like gold & fine silks, believes that she is destined to become a “real”princess & transports her to the capitol for training in royal etiquette. As she struggles against the social constraints that try to transform her from an active force of Nature to a passive object to be possessed & adored, the princess is haunted by a dark cloud of yearning and the mystery & purpose of who/what she is, exactly, comes to a magical, dramatic climax.

There is some really touching character work in The Tale of Princess Kaguya, particularly between the princess & her “mother”, but that’s not what made me cry. The film’s music, especially the repeated motif of a song titled “Distant Time” just destroyed me. It was almost a purely physical reaction. The song’s minor chords were just pulling tears out of me effortlessly like a magnet collecting metal shavings. This tenderly emotional soundtrack combines with the film’s teenage-yearning, reverence for Nature, and excessive style of hand-drawn animation to amount to a singularly beautiful & delicately sad viewing experience. The Tale of Princess Kaguya is not as immersive of a film as I’m used to from Studio Ghibli titles, but it still lands with full emotional impact, especially when its soundtrack takes center stage.

-Brandon Ledet

Roger Ebert Film School, Lesson 4: A Day at the Races (1937)

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Roger Ebert Film School is a recurring feature in which Brandon attempts to watch & review all 200+ movies referenced in the print & film versions of Roger Ebert’s (auto)biography Life Itself.

Where A Day at the Races (1937) is referenced in Life Itself: In the first edition hardback, A Day at the Races is referenced on page 28. Roger remembers the film as his first trip to the cinema. He says he was so young at the time that he had to stand on his seat to see the screen. He also remembers this occasion as the hardest he’s ever heard his father laugh & mentions that his father was a huge Marx Brothers fan, having seen them on the vaudeville stage before they were in motion pictures.

What Ebert had to say in his review: Roger never had the chance to review the film proper, but he does recount the very same anecdote about watching A Day at the Races as a child in his “Great Movies” review of Duck Soup.

The seventh Marx Brothers feature film, A Day at the Races is par for the course in terms of the impossibly talented comedy crew/family’s brand of sublime silliness & rapidfire insanity. I’ve only ever seen a few Marx Brothers titles, leaning towards indisputable classics like A Night at the Opera & (my personal favorite) Duck Soup, but their comedic style is so instantly comfortable & genuinely funny that familiarity with their work is not necessary for enjoying their material. I have no qualms admitting that of all the comedic acts that spilled over from vaudeville to motion pictures, the Marx Brothers are an easy favorite for me, outshining even names like Charlie Chaplin and Abbott & Costello. I’d like to say that this is due to the quick, oddly sophisticated wit of Marx Brothers poster boy Groucho, but the truth is that it’s Harpo who steals my heart in every picture. Taking physical, slapstick comedy to deeply deranged, yet subtly masterful territory, Harpo is a one of a kind talent. Part of the reason I ended up liking the somewhat minor Marx title A Day at the Races so much is that Harpo is so damn funny in it. I was laughing at his madman antics as the criminal horse jockey Stuffy so hard that almost all of the film’s third act problems (of which there are many) ultimately felt meaningless.

The plot of A Day at the Races concerns a young couple in financial crisis. An entrepreneur owner of a sanitarium (a type of health resort) is struggling to keep her business alive & out of the hands of overeager financial vultures. Her bonehead beau is a musician who foolishly decides to get into the horseracing business without knowing thing one about what he’s doing. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico Marx get caught up in both ends of this struggle. Chico & Harpo help the musician doofus evade the law & prepare his horse to race in competition. Chico & Groucho conspire to keep a wealthy hypochondriac, Mrs. Upjohn, enrolled in the sanitarium’s care, luring her into complacency through seduction & encouragement of her groundless worrying. Long story short, they all fail miserably. Groucho is ludicrously incompetent as Dr. Hackenbush (originally named Dr. Quackenbush, but subsequently changed due to fear that the dozen or so real Dr. Quackenbushes in the country might potentially sue), a veterinarian posing as a medical doctor, an easily recognizable hack/quack (it’s right there in the name, after all). When described as “a doctor with peculiar talents”, he retorts that he has “the most peculiar talents of any doctor around.” Harpo is a silent, deranged jockey who sends far more time running from the sheriff that he does wining races. Chico plays both sides of the coin as an eternal huckster who’s always able to scrape by on a quick buck, but rarely able to pull off any large scale schemes. Their collective incompetence brings the whole story down to the fate of both the sanitarium & the potential marriage of the central couple depending on the outcome of a single horse race. Its a tidy conclusion to a very messy farce that largely exists to support the Marx Brothers’ zany comedy antics, which are all top notch even when the film isn’t trying too hard on a formal level.

As I said, there are some major third act problems with A Day at the Races that keep it from being an entirely perfect product. The fact that it boasts the all-time longest Marx Brothers runtime weighs heavily on the proceedings. There’s a definite point towards the end where the laughter starts to die down & it transitions into time-to-constantly-check-your-watch territory. At first it’s endearing that A Day at the Races fits firmly in the kind of Old Hollywood variety show spectacle that tries to have it all: romance, suspense, comedy, musical numbers, etc. It’s the exact kind of expensive mixed bag that Josh Brolin’s overworked producer struggles to hold together in Hail, Caesar!. By the time it reaches its second song & dance number this variety is a little more trying. It’s time for the movie to wrap up its plot, so a sequence where Harpo plays a demonic pied piper to a poor black community who burst into a rendition of “All God’s Chillun’ Got Rhythm”that might normally be a welcome diversion in another context starts to  feel like wasted time. It also doesn’t help that this sequence is played like a long setup for an unfortunate punchline involving the Marx Brothers evading the law by donning blackface to “blend in”. All of this and a singularly terrible performance by an overacting oaf playing an indignant Dr. Steinberg that goes way too broad to remain endearing, perhaps even watchable, which is saying a lot for a comedy this zany.

With or without that mess of a concluding half hour, though, A Day the the Races is a finely tuned comedic act, one that values spotlighting the talents of its three sibling stars over telling a concise, well-rounded story. It’s no wonder that Ebert remembers his first trip to the cinema so vividly as the hardest he’s ever seen his father laugh. The film really is a laugh riot, especially in its early proceedings. Watching Harpo chew & swallow a thermometer (with a chaser clearly marked “POISON”) when Dr. Hackenbush takes his temperature in one scene & turn around to beautifully pluck the strings of a harp in  another is a treat I’ll never forget. Groucho’s proto-Bugs Bunny one-liners & Chico’s slick, smooth-talking scams are also pricelessly amusing, even if I’m heavily biased toward Harpo’s particular brand of comedic madness. A Day at the Races is widely considered the beginning of the end for the Marx Brothers’ cinematic winning streak, but for me the joke never felt stale in this film, just a little overlong & unfocused in the back end.

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Roger’s Rating: N/A

Brandon’s Rating: (4/5, 80%)

fourstar

Next Lesson: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

-Brandon Ledet

 

Gods of Egypt (2016)

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onehalfstar

campstamp

Director Alex Proyas has been going on some epic Facebook rants lately, decrying the violently dire critical & commercial response his latest film, Gods of Egypt, is being met with at the box office. He’s particularly frustrated that what he describes as “hate bloggers” have organized a boycott of the film due to its predominately whitewashed casting of its Egyptian characters. Much like the recent Ridley Scott epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, Gods of Egypt represents for a lot of people yet another example of a long line of Hollywood pictures in which POC actors have been locked out of the lead roles that, at the very least for historical accuracy, should not have been granted to white actors. Proyas claims that the reason critics have been harping on his film’s problematic casting is that they’re too overworked to form opinions on their own & instead parrot the shrill voices of “hate blogging” (whatever that is) out of convenience or laziness. Proyas genuinely believes that if his film were able to stand on its own merits outside of its political controversy, it’d be doing much better at the box office. He’s taken to the soapbox he claims to hate the most (online criticism) to cry foul, to complain that he hasn’t been given a fair shake as a filmmaker.

Now, I’m not sure if this makes me a lazy critic or a “hate blogger” (maybe both?), but I also hated Gods of Egypt. However, despite what Proyas might believe, I didn’t enter the film wanting to hate it. In fact, I set the bar for my enjoyment so pathetically low that it’s incredible that the film failed to clear it (despite its excess of golden wings). Equipped ahead of time with foreknowledge of the film’s controversial casting, dire reviews, and crackpot director (whose work ranges from total shit like The Crow to actually-enjoyable nonsense like Knowing), I felt like I was steeled to what the film had going against it. Still, there was a visual element in the trailer that made me hopeful that it might be mildly enjoyable as a campy trifle. What I was expecting was the visually striking, narratively undercooked mess of Snow White & The Huntsmen, which I enjoyed despite its negative critical consensus. What the film delivered instead was the bland CGI worldscape that put me to sleep (literally) both times I tried to watch 300 in the theater (and, curiously enough, both films star Gerard Butler). Gods of Egypt has problems that extend far beyond its racially tone deaf casting & temper tantrum-prone director. The film is also a hopeless bore, which might be the most damning fault of them all.

Similar to the way The Witch attempts to breathe life into the religious paranoia of Puritan beliefs, Gods of Egypt aims to illustrate the myths of gods living among men that once populated ancient, polytheistic Egyptian philosophy. The difference is that The Witch dealt in sincere historical recreation while Gods of Egypt attempted to mold its subject’s mythology into a goofy action epic framework & the most despicable genre of them all: the shameless franchise-starter. Through overbearing storybook narration, Indiana Jones-style action adventure, and flat-on-their-face quips, Gods of Egypt tells the story of a half-blind god & a mortal thief who team up to stop a deranged relative who plans on merging life & the afterlife in a quest to claim absolute power. I won’t bother you with many plot details, since very few are of interest & can be boiled down to dual damsel in distress rescues. True love prevails over death & destruction, the men save their ladyfriends, the universe maintains its balance, etc. The stakes rarely feel high in Gods of Egypt, because each challenge is conquered with ease by a pair of protagonists who have no option but to succeed. The Egyptian mythology setting mostly serves as a backdrop for a white knight story we’ve all seen play out countless times before.

The best chance you have of enjoying Gods of Egypt is either as mindless eye candy or as a so-bad-it’s-good camp fest. May the gods pity you in either case. The film’s costume & set design are bathed in sweet, delicious gold, but the effect was tiring after its initial introduction. The brevity of the film’s trailers did its visual style a huge favor, distracting the eye from its bland CGI mediocrity by making it seem downright lush through rapid editing. There’s a few interesting details here or there: a masked army in blood-red robes, a flying chariot pulled by scarabs, gods bleeding gold when wounded in battle, etc. For the most part, though, the film is about as visually interesting as a video game cutscene (something else I find unbearably boring). The creatures were particularly disappointing on that front. I kept waiting for them to prompt me to press “X”. As far as goofy camp goes, there isn’t much of interest to chew on there either. There’s exactly one line that made me laugh. When asked where his buddy is hiding, the mortal half of our heroic tag team responds “Up your butt,” which, you know, isn’t the height of wit or anything like that, but I’m honestly an easy audience. I also found a lot of humor in the way that they visually conveyed the gods’ imposing stature by making giant-sized versions of their props to dwarf their human counterparts. That’s the kind of tactic you’d expect in an old midnight movie like Attack of the Puppet People, not a modern $140 million action epic.

Acting wise, most of Gods of Egypt‘s (again, controversial) cast is on autopilot. Gerard Butler performs as if he’s in 300 Part Deux. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau phones it in as a barely-engaged Jamie Lannister, trading in his missing hand for a missing eye & swapping the moniker “King Slayer” for “Lion Slayer”. Brenton Thwaites & Chadwick Boseman (a legit POC actor! and he’s not even an extra!) overact in a way that’s far more annoying than it is entertaining. The female leads are given little more to do than to dress provocatively & await rescue. Only Geoffrey Rush’s out of nowhere turn as the sun god Ra stands out as wildly-entertaining scenery chewing. One gets the distinct feeling that the renowned actor is slumming it in this feature-length high resolution screensaver, but his delightfully bitchy take on the all-powerful Ra was one of the sole bright spots in a film that could’ve used a lot more of them. At least half a star in this review’s rating is due to his performance alone, which, as you can probably tell, was a much-needed boost.

Part of me kinda feels bad for Proyas. He’s such a typical 90s Guy that he probably had no idea that such a cultural backlash was going to plague Gods of Egypt from its initial announcement to its dismal box office opening. In his mind, he made a grand scale Hollywood epic with a handsome cast & a lot of browbeating about how “In this world you’re either rich or you’re nothing” & the radical idea that slavery is cruel. He expected to get by on good intentions, particularly perplexed that his own Egyptian heritage didn’t allow him to sidestep criticism for whitewashed casting in yet another mishandled Hollywood take on the region’s past. The truth is that just as many people would’ve been annoyed with Gods of Egypt’s casting pre-Internet, but would’ve had a much more difficult time publishing/publicizing their complaints. Casting isn’t the only way the film feels politically stale, though. Take, for instance, the protagonist god’s jealousy that his lover had sex with her wicked, power-hungry enslaver. It’s the romantic jealousy that’s played as a character fault, not the fact that he’s slutshaming his lover for being serially raped. That’s the exact kind of outdated sentiment that seems to be going over Proyas’s head, making him subject to intense scrutiny from “hate bloggers” & “lazy critics”. If released sometime in the 90s, Gods of Egypt might’ve been able to skate by as a mediocre prequel to a forgettable blockbuster like The Mummy. In 2016 its moral ickinees is too much of a sore thumb to overlook, especially for something that aims to be a franchise starter. You get the distinct feeling throughout the film that Proyas & company should’ve known better (or at least tried harder). After reading Proyas’s rants it’s all the more confusing that Gods of Egypt is such a dull slog. This is the film he’s going to bat for? This is what he’s confused about no one liking?

There’s a single scene in Gods of Egypt that perfectly sums up my whole experience watching the film. During a heavily green-screened chariot chase an arrow strikes & kills the mortal doofus hero’s beloved & she dies while he blankly looks on & continues to steer their escape. This scene is everything Gods of Egypt is in a nutshell: visually uninteresting, passionless, seemingly plucked from a time long gone (and I don’t mean ancient Egypt). Again, Proyas should’ve known better. Or he at least should’ve known to concede defeat when it failed to connect with audiences & critics, who, despite what the director seems to believe, are the very same people.

-Brandon Ledet

Episode #2 of The Swampflix Podcast: Evil Doll Movies & Boxing Helena (1993)

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inaworld

Welcome to Episode #2 of The Swampflix Podcast! For our much-delayed second episode, James & Brandon discuss movies about evil dolls with fellow contributor Britnee. Also, James makes Brandon watch Jennifer Lynch’s body horror melodrama Boxing Helena (1994) for the first time. Enjoy!

Production note: The guitar riff musical “bumps” between segments were also provided by James.

-James Cohn, Brandon Ledet, and Britnee Lombas

Movie of the Month: Mrs. Winterbourne (1996)

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Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Erin made Boomer, Brandon, and Britnee watch Mrs. Winterbourne (1996).

Erin:  Picture it:  1996.  Clothes are big, scrunchies are bigger, and a Hollywood team looked at the script for Mrs. Winterbourne and decided that this was the perfect vehicle to launch Ricki Lake into Leading Lady-hood.

The same Hollywood team also thought that the best way to adapt a gritty noir novel about a pregnant woman escaping domestic abuse in the midst of a deadly train wreck and a grieving family was as a lighthearted romcom.

That’s right.  Mrs. Winterbourne is a romantic comedy about a pregnant teenager (Connie, played by Ricki Lake) escaping her scummy, abusive boyfriend, surviving a train wreck that kills another pregnant woman and her kind husband, and being mistakenly taken in by the in-laws (Shirley MacLaine and Bredan Fraser as mother- and brother-in-law) of the dead woman as they attempt to put their hearts back together.  That’s only the first act.  In the second act, just as Connie is starting to connect to the Winterbournes and is struggling with the decision of either revealing her true identity or keeping up the charade indefinitely, her slimy ex-boyfriend comes back to blackmail her. There’s singing! Dancing!  A makeover montage! Murder!

Although I really enjoy Mrs. Winterbourne, the incongruity between the gritty (and bizarre) premise and the lighthearted style in which it is presented makes for a weird movie-watching experience.  There’s a lot of whiplash as the film attempts tell a gritty noir story through the lens of a quirky romcom.

The supporting cast does several things rather well – Shirley MacLaine as the elder Mrs. Winterbourne might be the true heart of the film, and there is real chemistry between her and Lake’s Connie and Fraser’s Bill.  Miguel Sandoval, as the Cuban ex-pat chauffeur, is truly charming as he slings knowing glances and come-to-Jesus talks left and right.  Loren Dean brings a completely awful character to life in Steve DeCunzo, throwing change at a pregnant Connie through his window as she begs for help in pouring rain and stomping around in the baby’s playpen as he threatens blackmail.

Honestly, the least believable thing for me in this movie is the lack of chemistry between Lake and Fraser.  Brendan Fraser had hit his stride in the mid ‘90s, playing hot and goofy leading men after a few years of playing stoner and college roles.  He still had George of the Jungle (1997), Gods and Monsters (1998), and The Mummy (1999) to come.  Ricki Lake, while she never really hit leading lady status outside of Mrs. Winterbourne, was a ‘90s fixture, and would start her talk show in 1998. Despite being in their respective zones in 1996, they just don’t really connect, which is a shame.

Over all, I think that Mrs. Winterbourne is a fun watch.  It’s good natured about its downer plot line, and has a few really funny and touching moments.  I like strange movies, and this one is definitely strange enough to keep my attention.

Brandon, Mrs. Winterbourne is pretty wacky.  What are your first impressions of it? How does well does the romcom genre flesh out the noir bones? What caught your attention about Mrs. Winterbourne?

Brandon: Yeah it’s difficult to write my first impressions on this film without zeroing in on the fact that it’s a fish-out-of-water romcom with a “hilarious” comedic set-up that’s put into motion by a pregnant woman dying in a train wreck. The film’s moody vibe as a neo-noir is in direct conflict with its more lighthearted comedy stylings: a pregnant & homeless Ricki Lake wandering aimlessly in the rain, a butler who escaped homophobic persecution in Cuba through prostitution, a third act murder mystery, the fact that Brendan Fraser’s cad finds himself falling in love with a woman who might be his dead twin’s widow. So much of Mrs. Winterbourne is so darkly fucked up that it’s jarring to watch the film wrap itself in the soft-edge confines of the romcom genre. My favorite moment where these two tones clash is when Ricki Lake’s pregnant/homeless Jersey Girl shouts to her deadbeat baby daddy “I’m about to have your baby out on the street! Wanna come watch?” Uncaring, he tosses a quarter at her feet & shuts his window. Later the baby daddy’s new baby mama recognizes Lake’s protagonist only as “The Bitch Out in the Rain With the Quarter.” I shouldn’t have gotten such a hearty laugh out of that but I shrieked with delight. What a messed up “gag”.

The weirdest part about the film’s compromised tone is how much weight it puts on Ricki Lake’s shoulders. She’s asked to deliver most of the film’s yuck-it-up comedy, which I’d say she accomplishes with just as much bright eyed enthusiasm she brings to John Waters’ (utterly flawless) Serial Mom. At the same time, I’d say that the sole reason the film’s central romance plays like a joke is the very same Ricki Lake performance. Brendan Fraser is entirely believable as the romcom heartthrob, but Lake is too much of a bumbling fool for me to genuinely commit to her end of the romance angle. Maybe it’s all those years of watching her host a Jerry Springer-style talk show that keep me from forgetting the clownish aspects of her screen presence, but I think her making homelessness amusing was an asset, but her making romance funny might’ve been somewhat of a detriment.

Where do you fall on Lake’s performance, Boomer? Is she a sold lead in this role or did the film ask too much of her in too many directions for the performance to be taken seriously?

Boomer: I have a confession to make; I used to hate Ricki Lake. This was through no fault of her own and was based entirely on Baton Rouge NBC affiliate WVLA’s decision in 1997 to replace their daily 4 PM rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation with her syndicated talk show. In the many years since this great sin was committed, I’ve actually come to like Lake quite a bit, especially as I came to be aware of her partnerships with John Waters in my teenage years. She’s a perfectly serviceable actress, and she’s genuinely likable in this role, which could so easily have not been the case with a plot like this that revolves around deception (although Connie does admirably make every effort to correct misconceptions up to the point where revealing the truth could potentially literally kill a woman). Her weakest acting moments come in the scenes in which she is called upon to be histrionic and melodramatic that she comes across more like one of the sideshow people who populated her television stage. Lake can act; she just can’t overact, and she works best when she’s playing off of MacLaine, who brings a warmth to her performance that Lake can’t help but reflect back at her.

The weakest acting link, frankly, is Fraser, who comes across as a bit of a hack here. He seems to think that “playing rich” requires foppishness that borders on recreating stereotypical portrayals of gay men, up to and including the fey and effete way that he drops his napkin in his lap in affected shock at Connie’s initial appearance at the dinner table. There are many other ways to play a man of privilege who assumes that the new family member in his midst is an interloper, but Fraser read his part and went straight to “dandiest dandy that ever dandied,” and the later scenes that show him as a man with the potential to be more open doesn’t erase his performance in his introduction. In fact, when he first started falling for Connie, my assumption was that the film was leading into his public confession that he had latched onto her in an attempt to disprove his homosexual leanings. But no, it was just that Fraser made poor character choices when filming the earlier sequences in the film, and, admittedly, I came around on his character by the end, even if he is stiff and wooden when confronting Connie about having (he assumes) killed Steve.

The standout performance was MacLaine’s, and I especially liked how I expected the plot to unfold in the opposite direction that it does (i.e., that the rich patrician mother would be slow to warm to the new bride her son took an instant liking to, rather than the other way around). This twist helps the film feel less stale than it otherwise could. What do you think, Britnee? Did MacLaine help make this movie “work” for you, or no?

Britnee: MacLaine’s performance was nothing short of perfection. Every line she spoke and move she made was so effortless. I just couldn’t take my eyes off her! However, she officially stole my heart when she hid a lit cigarette in her mouth. It’s definitely not the kind of behavior one would expect from an elderly socialite, and that’s the kind of shock value that I live for.

When I think of how the film would be if there was no MacLaine, I have to say that I still would have enjoyed it. Of course, it wouldn’t be as pleasurable without her, but it would still be a great film. As a fan of Ricki Lake, I can’t help but feel as though she was the one who stole the show. She brings this sort of ridiculous yet unique style of humor to every film I’ve ever seen her in, and this is especially true with Mrs. Winterbourne. Lake as Connie Doyle was beyond entertaining. She does a good bit of overacting throughout the film, especially when she bring her Jersey Girl sass to the upper-class society of Boston. While overacting is usually viewed as a acting flaw, it’s a huge part of Lake’s comedic style, and it always brings out tons of laughs from me.

It’s interesting how this film and our previous movie of the month, Big Business, share the “poor girl in a rich world” theme. Erin, what are your thoughts on this similarity? Does this theme work better with Mrs. Winterbourne’s style of comedy as opposed to Big Business?

Erin: You know, Britnee, it didn’t occur to me that Mrs. Winterbourne and Big Business are similar in their fish-out-water, mistaken identity plots.  Now that we’re looking at similarities, I think the over all feel of these movies has something else in common – while Big Business feels like an Old Hollywood screwball comedy, Mrs. Winterbourne is based on a 1948 noir novel.  I think that the old camp melodrama present in both movies gives them a feeling of a previous era in which audiences might have had more forgiveness for such silly premises.

I’m not sure if either movie works “better” with the “poor girl in a rich world” theme.  Big Business is a madcap comedy, and hardly touches the ground at all.  It’s a hysterical rush through a farcical plot.  Mrs. Winterbourne attempts to have some soul or grounding in drama, but all in all seems to have trouble straddling the line.  Both movies take that particular plot point, as well as the mistaken identities and old school feel, to push different stories along.

I think that one of the biggest differences between Mrs. Winterbourne and Big Business is something that I only noticed in this viewing.  Big Business holds its main characters as intrinsically subjective within the world of the movies.  The movie starts with something beyond their control, the baby swap, but then only advances with actions of the characters.  The Sadies and the Roses are shown, despite their immersion in a comically out of hand situation, to make the world of their movie theirs.  Connie, despite being the main character of Mrs. Winterbourne, is almost completely an object in her own world. She decides to leave her father’s house in the first minutes of the movie, and then everything else happens to her.  Her attempts to take actions are either preempted by other characters or she is talked or coerced out of decisions.

I’m not sure how to understand or interpret this lack of subjectivity in the main character.  Brandon, what do you think?  Any thoughts on why Connie is so objective in her own story, and what that means for Mrs. Winterbourne?

Brandon: If you’re looking to further solidify Mrs. Winterbourne‘s connection with Big Business, consider that they not only both deal in mistaken identities & fish out of water humor. Their plots also revolve around sets of estranged twins, which is kind of an obscure angle for a comedy. Ricki Lake’s protagonist has no twin in this film, though, which is unfortunate, as it would’ve been fun to see her match the eccentricity of the rest of the cast. She also doesn’t, as Erin points out, ever really enact the changes in her life that transform her from homeless Jersey Girl to wealthy heiress. The film’s events just sort of swirl around her as if her rightful place among the affluent was simply a matter of fate.

I think the passive aspects of Connie’s personality transforms parts of Mrs Winterbourne from a silly romantic comedy to a kind of a fairy tale. And I mean fairy tale in the sense of fantasy wish fulfillment more so than Brothers Grimm. Connie never really learns any lessons or grows as a person throughout the film. She mostly just allows the world to pave the way for her road to happiness in which Brendan Fraser is the closest thing to a prince a modern girl could wish for & a milquetoast life surrounded by immense wealth is the height of happily ever after. Keeping Connie passive & grounded leaves open a hopeful It Could Happen to You interpretation for the audience at home, which is not far from the kind of escapism romcoms aim to sell in general. The details that make this fairy tale angle in Mrs Winterbourne feel tonally bizarre, though, are the film’s darker plot points: a miscarriage, a train wreck, a murder. It seems that, according to the film, happily ever after often comes with a body count on its price tag.

What do you think, Boomer? Is Connnie’s passiveness an intentional choice that allows the viewer to step into her shoes & live out her (somewhat deadly) fairy tale or did the writers merely fail to consider giving their protagonist a sense of agency?

Boomer: I’m glad that Erin brought up the original novel above, because I was shocked to learn when viewing Winterbourne‘s Wikipedia page that it was adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel. I went through a noir phase in my teens and although I never read the novel from which this film drew inspiration, I did read some of his other works, and this movie is quite dissonant tonally. I recently reviewed the Francois Truffaut film The Bride Wore Black, which was also adapted from a Woolrich novel of the same name, and that film is much more in line with the Woolrich vision. As counterparts to each other, Bride and Winterbourne couldn’t be more dissimilar, because Brandon is right; this flick is essentially a fairy tale of wish fulfillment.

Connie doesn’t exhibit much in the way of agency in any of the directions that her life takes. This makes sense if you think of her as a rags-to-riches fairy tale girl. Cinderella doesn’t do much but have decisions made for her and be lucky enough to have a magical godmother; Rapunzel is stuck away in a tower until the plot finds her; Talia is comatose in a castle until her “hero” comes along. Connie is much the same; she gets conned, kicked out into the street, pushed onto a train that she doesn’t intend to board, and wakes up after it crashes wearing a dead woman’s nightgown and life. The film is smart to counterpose the agency-free Connie with Grace (and even give them both names that are virtues, as we learn “Connie” is short for “Constance” in the final scene). Although Paco and Bill pester her about taking her medication and not drinking or smoking, it’s evident that Grace runs the Winterbourne household. We would normally see a woman like Connie, who is moved about like a chess piece by other people, used to prop up the story of her love interest. Instead, her more static narrative is used to expand Grace’s dynamic story. In a lot of ways, the film ends up being more of a love story between Grace and Connie than Connie and Bill.

The film is also smart to allow Connie time to make multiple attempts to tell others that they have mistaken her for somebody else only to be ignored, and she still considers it up to the point where she realizes that the truth could literally kill the elder Mrs. Winterbourne. It helps keep the audience’s sympathy with Connie instead of against her. I know you said above that you feel Lake’s broader approach to the material helps it play as funnier than it would otherwise. Imagine that Lake was not available; who would you cast in her part, and why? If you could recast one other person, who and why?

Britnee: Ideally, I would love to see a young Barbra Streisand play the role of Connie. Not only is she my favorite “funny lady,” but she knows how to pull off a romcom, which, as much as I adore her, Lake just can’t seem to accomplish. Unfortunately, Streisand would be more suited for the role of Ms. Winterbourne during the time of the film’s release, so this an impractical choice. Being a little more realistic, I would without a doubt cast Natasha Lyonne for the role of Connie. I can’t help but think of how perfect she was as Vivian in Slums of Beverly Hills, and I see a lot of Vivian in Connie. Two sassy, street smart ladies trying to make their way in this big, cruel world.

If I was given the choice to recast another person, it would definitely be Brendan Fraser. He was just so bland and almost robotic. I understand that his character (Bill) is supposed to come off that way for the most part, but when Connie becomes his love interest and he goes through his little personality change, it just doesn’t feel natural. However, I do have to say that he was excellent in George of the Jungle and Airheads, but I’m not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing. When it comes to recasting Bill, I would chose  James Spader because he is perfect for that type of role. He’s great at being a total snob (Pretty in Pink), but he’s even better at being a romantic snob (White Castle). Spader and Lyonne would have been such an iconic romcom couple.

Lagniappe

Erin: It’s a shame that Brendan Fraser and Ricki Lake have such little genuine chemistry.  The plot is already pretty forced, and some real passion between Fraser’s Bill and Lake’s Connie would have given an ounce or two of believability to a storyline that requires a man to fall in love with his twin brother’s widow.

Britnee: Connie’s little “makeover” was so unnecessary. I could understand the need for a makeover scene if she had ratty hair and holes in her clothes, but her hair was gorgeous and her outfits were so on point. All they did was give her shorter hair and a couple of new tops. Lame!

Brandon: One of the more absurdly funny aspects of Mrs. Winterbourne was how undercooked Connie’s baby looked in the film. I’m not sure if they cast an infant that was too young for that kind of physical labor or what, but the way Connie’s child was always helplessly thrusting its little arms in the air as a wide range of actors jostled & played with it was so dangerous looking in a way that made me laugh fairly consistently (through my heartfelt concern, of course) whenever it was being passed around. I’d like to check back in with the now-20 year old Mrs. Winterbourne Baby in 2016 to see how their neck & limbs are doing, because I could swear the camera caught some permanent damage somewhere in there.

Boomer: I didn’t expect that the truth would be revealed by the appearance of Connie’s ex; I was looking for the late Mrs. Hugh Winterbourne’s family to look up their daughter and discover Connie living her life. Given that this never happens, I can’t help but wonder what will occur when they come to visit their grandchild. Further, considering that all their problems were resolved by a stranger murdering the loose ends, I hope they just send letters. It’s bad luck to interfere with the Winterbourne family destiny, apparently.

Upcoming Movies of the Month
March: Boomer presents My Demon Lover (1987)
April: Brandon presents Girl Walk//All Day (2011)
May: Britnee presents Alligator (1980)

-The Swampflix Crew

 

The Late Great Planet Mirth III – Tribulation (2000)

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twohalfstar

Welcome to The Late Great Planet Mirth, an ongoing series in which a reformed survivor of PreMillenialist Dispensationalism explores the often silly, occasionally absurd, and sometimes surprisingly compelling tropes, traits, and treasures of films about the Rapture. Get caught up in it with us!

Hoo boy, this is a weird one. The back of the box for Tribulation, the third film in the Apocalypse series, claims that the film is roughly 101 minutes long, but the movie really clocks in at less than 90, in the low eighties if you discount the overlong opening credits. Revelation also had a similar problem, as that film started with a long pan through Thorold Stone’s house while a cover of Rapture anthem “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” The difference is that Revelation picks up from there and goes the distance (…mostly), while Tribulation is too down to earth, despite paradoxically also being absolutely bonkers. It takes a risk by crafting (for lack of a better word) a Rapture story that includes elements from sources other than Hal Lindsay’s Premillenial Dispensationalism™, but the more ostentatious features of the movie are at odds tonally with the previous films. It also feels like something you’ve seen in any DTV conspiracy thriller because, despite taking place in the world created by the first two films, Tribulation barely bothers to include the Antichrist, instead playing out like a bargain basement pod people movie interspersed with televangelical talking heads.

Tom Canboro (Gary Busey; yes, that Gary Busey) is a cop in Anytown, USA. His lovely wife Susie (Sherri Miller) is some kind of television producer. Busey says at one point that life isn’t like her show, where she finds “the most romantic angle” for a story; this, combined with the fact that she is friends pre-Rapture with Helen Hannah (returning champ Leigh Lewis), is all the information that we really get about her. Tom has remained close in adulthood with kid brother Calvin and their older sister Eileen (Lois Lane herself Margot Kidder), who’s a bit of an overbearing Bible-thumper. The Canboros also share their home with Susie’s younger brother Jason (Howie Mandel), who is interested in the philosophy of rising European Union figurehead Franco Macalusso (Nick Mancuso).

That’s right! Macalusso is just a minor politician at this point. Tribulation doesn’t start during the Tribulation at all; half of this movie’s runtime takes place pre-Rapture, spending nearly 45 minutes establishing character relationships that won’t matter in the back half. In fact, this film doesn’t feel like it has multiple acts, instead feeling like two parts of a TV two-parter. It is established that Jason is mentally unstable, although it’s apparent that he’s written by someone who has no concept of how mental illness works. Jason is frequently manic, excitedly telling the small family gathering about Macalusso’s idea that if all the people on earth were united in their ideas, man could essentially become like unto a god. Jason is also stated to have a past history of psychological hospitalization and an interest in the occult, which are explicitly linked. He uses a non-copyrighted ouija board, which somehow gives him the clue that Macalusso’s ideas are related to Genesis 11:6, which is in the middle of the story the Tower of Babel. You can look that up in whichever translation suits you, but they’re all essentially a variation on the idea that the builders of the tower could perform any feat they imagined because of their unified language and intention. Don’t let it surprise you that the film ends up having the villains treat this verse like the loophole in a contract with God, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Jason ends up wreaking havoc in the family kitchen while explaining how one group of monkeys spontaneously learned a skill that another monkey group (from which they were isolated) learned independently; this is definitive proof, he says, that Macalusso is right about the boundlessness of human potential. Jason and Eileen argue about their perspective worldviews. I wouldn’t even mention it, but it leads Busey to utter one of the greatest lines ever committed to film while he puts on his badge and gun (I gave the movie an extra star for this alone):

“I gotta go. There’s a whole lotta people in this city who don’t take much comfort in God or a clean banana.”

Elsewhere, a group of Satanists (led by a guy who intentionally looks like Anton LaVey) are standing around under a pentagram, focusing on a model of the Tower of Babel and, well, babbling about how God himself admitted in Genesis 11:6 that mankind is capable of overpowering him. Because the movie needs a scene to drive home how dangerous they are, they possess the sleeping body of a guy who teaches a night course in parapsychology,which is hilarious for a few reasons. First, the fact that the screenwriter specified that this was night school in order to capitalize on the creep factor is adorable. Secondly, after revealing this fact, one of the Laveys hilariously says “This guy’s mind is wiiiide open,” because the Laveys share the same ironically dismissive attitude about New Age concepts that Evangelicals do. The possessed man starts attacking his Christian wife, screaming that she is a “Hater” (thereby establishing that this term for Christians predates the Rapture in this world, answering a question that nobody asked). Tom responds to the domestic disturbance call and confronts the possessed man, who threatens his wife and then leaps through the window of their 14th floor apartment. Intercut (although that word implies a mastery of editing that is not on display here, which I’ll get to in a bit) with this are a couple of scenes showing Jason confronting Susie and demanding to see Eileen, calling her a “hater.” Although we only see the aftermath, Tom is called away to the hospital because Jason also jumped out of a window, but was luckily only on the first floor.

At the hospital, the Canboros learn that Jason will likely be remitted to a psychiatric facility, much to his distress. Lavey Prime astral projects into the room and uses Force Choke on Jason, as he had picked up on broadcasts that weren’t meant for him. Lavey Prime is repelled by the presence of Eileen, like a vampire with the weirdest weakness of all time. While Tom goes to check on the body of the man from the domestic disturbance in the morgue, Susie decides she’s just going to kidnap her brother from the hospital. Eileen is on board because she totally believes his ramblings about the cabal of Laveys and their murderous ways, despite the fact that a psychic Babel cult plays no role in the Hal Lindsey PMD™ beliefs that she is seen to espouse. A couple of minor Laveys brag to each other about having killed the night school instructor, and Tom overhears; he flees the hospital right behind Susie and the others, but the Laveys cause him to crash his car. If this really were a TV two-parter, this is where the ominous “To be continued…” would appear.

We flash-forward to the post-Rapture world established in Revelation, where Tom wakes from a coma in a world he doesn’t understand, presaging similar plot developments from Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead, except that those narratives don’t spend an inordinate amount of time in the pre-crisis world. The hospital room in which he awakes is shared with an amputee, who warns him not to let anyone know that he is awake, as he will then have to put on the VR glasses and choose death or Macalusso’s Mark. Tribulation doubles down on Revelation’s weird ableism (the amputee seems genuinely panicked that he will be forced to don the goggles but acquiesces to take the Mark almost immediately after realizing that doing so will restore his missing arm), and Tom barely escapes detection before taking heart when he sees that one of Macalusso’s broadcasts is interrupted by archive footage from Jack van Impe’s TV show. We learn that these hacks are being perpetrated by Helen and Susie, along with Jake (Patrick Gallagher, who was also a member of Helen’s underground in Revelation), operating out of a broadcast van and staying on the run. We also learn that Thorold Stone was captured and executed between the previous film and this one.

Tom struggles to comprehend the Tribulation in which he has awoken and seeks out Eileen. Every person he encounters turns on him after learning he is not Marked, and the Laveys almost capture him in a disturbing scene in which they murder a group of homeless people hanging out in an alley through which he escapes. Eventually, he makes his way to his and Susie’s old house, where he encounters Calvin, who has taken the Mark and does not remember Eileen; she no longer even appears in photos from their childhood. Calvin attempts to force Tom to take the Mark, but Tom bests him and flees to a sentimental place: a tree that Eileen had designated as a meeting place for them as children should they ever get lost in the woods. There, he finds Jason, who has successfully avoided taking the Mark but still refuses to accept that Eileen’s warnings are playing out exactly as she predicted. Meanwhile, Helen is captured by the Antichrist’s forces after the latest broadcast. Tom sets out to find Susie, hoping that they can reunite before the end of the world.

Tribulation is by far the most bizarre entry in the canon of Rapture flicks, using decidedly non-PMD ideas like the concept that humanity might be capable of defeating God if united in one purpose in an attempt to build a conspiracy thriller. Ultimately, however, it fails to be as engaging as Revelation, which hit the ground running relatively quickly. There’s also a step backward in regards to production value this time around, as the editing in this film is utter garbage. There are splices that are so random that at first I wondered if the DVD was skipping before remembering that I was watching a VHS; in the kitchen scene that establishes character relationships, there is a sudden jump to Jason’s upstairs room, where he is accidentally tapping into the Laveys’ transmissions, a shot that lasts ten seconds before jumping back to the kitchen below. Later, when Tom is confronting the possessed night school instructor, there are similar splices to a seemingly random scene in which Jason is screaming at Susie about his need to find and kill Eileen; we cut back to the domestic disturbance site, see the possessed man leap to his death, and then a quick cut back to the Canboro house, where Jason is lying on the ground outside, seemingly with no cause. It’s only in retrospect that the audience is led to the realization that Jason was receiving the same psychic orders as the dead man. This happens again and again throughout the plot, and it makes for a distinctly disorienting viewing experience. This could be forgiven if it seemed at all to be an intentional ploy to put the audience in the same headspace as Tom, but the only way that could work is if these scenes started after his awakening, which they don’t.

There’s another issue with the narrative, which is what we could call the Problem of Eileen. After Tribulation was released, Margot Kidder famously claimed that she had no idea that the film was meant to be a Christian propaganda piece, and Howie Mandel has made similar statements. Viewing their contributions to the film in isolation, Mandel’s statement is more difficult to believe, given that his character endures the Tribulation and ends up becoming a believer by the end. I’m more inclined to give Kidder some credit, though, for a few reasons. Firstly, her character is taken in the Rapture, meaning that she only appears in the first half of the film and may not have been given a complete script, which lends some credibility to her claims. Secondly, Eileen as presented in the film isn’t the best representation of Christianity; she comes across as obsessive and overbearing, and although these are not uncommon character traits among some believers, Kidder seems to be playing Eileen that way intentionally, as if the viewer is supposed to find her at least somewhat disagreeable. Although her drug use problems have rendered her the butt of insensitive jokes, Kidder’s not a bad actress, and I think that if she had known that Eileen was supposed to be the voice of reason (rather than a fundamentalist with kooky views that she won’t shut up about, the way Kidder plays her), she would have given a more nuanced performance. Finally, given Kidder’s own troubles with mental illness, I doubt she would have agreed to play a character who treats Jason’s instability as something that can be prayed away if she had realized that the filmmakers intended her to be right. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in Christian families in the real world who do not get the professional help they desperately need for this same reason.

There are myriad problems here above and beyond those noted in the plot synopsis. All of the Laveys dress like Charmed warlocks, which severely undercuts the menace of their presence. Their wanton murder of a dozen homeless people adds some of that villainy back in, but the tone deafness of that scene (which follows the shooting of an unarmed black Christian man named Ronnie by the police) and the film’s apparent lack of consideration for the real world implications lacks social awareness. The film would have been better served to illustrate the parallel between the Tribulation and our present and how both worlds are in need of redemption, but blind support of police and blanket privileging of Christianity in our society are both tools that support and reinforce the status quo, so no criticism of the violence and fascism of contemporary America can be made. As a result, this sequence is nearly as offensive in what it doesn’t say as Apocalypse was in its appropriation of footage of real world violence, just in reverse.

As always, this film is not without redeeming features. Busey gives a good performance here as well. Not for an actor, mind you, but for a Busey, he’s quite good. It’s too bad that what could have been a decent outing for him in the twilight of his career takes place in such a shoddily constructed movie. Lewis continues to outshine the material she is given to work with. The sequence that works best is when, post-capture, she is taken into the VR world to confront Macalusso. Lewis plays the internal war between faith and fear admirably, giving a powerhouse performance, and Mancuso’s Macalusso shines more brightly here than in Apocalypse, despite that he never actually appears, being seen only in the VR world and giving addresses on television. Still, there’s not enough here to make up for the poor scripting, inconsistent performances, and overall feeling of cheapness. This movie is only marginally better than Apocalypse in the end, even once you factor in Lewis’s performance. Skip this one.

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Final Thoughts

  •  It’s inconceivable that the Laveys have nothing better to do in this film than spend the entire second half trying to track down one wayward Busey, who isn’t much of a threat. If anything, it only further serves to highlight Tom’s irrelevance to the plot. In Apocalypse, Stone actually had a purpose in the narrative other than to find salvation, since he had the disc that was smuggled to him by the underground; here, it’s Helen who makes the ultimate sacrifice (although she will reappear in Judgment, the final film in the series) in order to get Macalusso’s confession on tape and expose his lies. Tom does nothing to contribute to this plot, as Helen is captured before he even makes contact with the resistance
  • This introduces yet another problem, which is that the ending implies that those with the Mark can somehow overcome their brainwashing, as Macalusso’s television address following the broadcast of his Engineered Public Confession finds him angrily demanding that his flock return to him. Up to this point, those who take the Mark are treated like vampires from Buffy: you are no longer yourself, instead surrendering wholly to a new being that inhabits your body and has your memories but isn’t you. This further cements the fact that this is a body snatcher film, not one about possession.
  • It’s also worth noting that Tom’s escape from the O.N.E.-controlled hospital takes so long that Lavey Prime is notified he has awoken and disappeared but still has time to get to that location before Tom even makes it outside. It’s just one more plotting problem on top of so many that have come before.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Mermaid (2016)

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fourhalfstar

It’s downright shocking how little of an impact The Mermaid is making in American theaters. Disregarding the fact that director Stephen Chow has two legitimate cult classics under his belt, Kung Fu Hustle & Shaolin Soccer, the film is also, no big deal, the single highest grossing film Chinese theaters of all time. It also doesn’t hurt that the film is a bizarre, hilarious, wonderfully idiosyncratic live action cartoon that might stand as the director’s most satisfying work to date (though I’ve heard great things about Journey to the West & haven’t seen it yet). In a better world The Mermaid would be making waves in American theaters at the very least out of cultural curiosity. In the world we live in it’s a difficult film to track down (opening to a beyond-depressing number of 35 theaters across the country), suffering a dismally small distribution for a remarkably silly film that truly deserves much, much better.

I’ll admit that for the first ten minutes or so of The Mermaid I had a somewhat awkward time adjusting to its comedic vibes. A trip through a tourist trap “museum” of “exotic animals” (think of Uncle Stan’s bullshit gift shop on Gravity Falls), a post-auction business meeting involving a malfunctioning jetpack, and a billionaire playboy’s rap video-opulence pool party all are enjoyably silly in  a minor way, but also a little awkward from the outside looking in. It isn’t until the titular mermaid hijacks the film’s narrative that the weirdness opens up in a beautifully satisfying way. The mermaid of The Mermaid‘s moniker not only steals the show with her effortlessly charming, singing, dancing, flying, skateboarding ways, she also brings out the best (and worst) in all the characters that surround her. What at first promises to be a dull male lead in a billionaire playboy pollution junkie ends up being a gutbusting buffoon & a worthy player in the mermaid’s literal fish out of water romance once she brings him to life. The film might need to get kickstarted before it wins you over, but once it gets rolling there’s a relentlessly bizarre, cartoonish sense of humor to it that’s genuinely eager to please in an endearing way.

In The Mermaid‘s mythology, humans & merpeople are both evolutionary descendants of apes. Merpeople just happen to descend from apes who lived in water, having no use for their legs & forming fish tails in their stead. Merpeople traditionally choose to avoid humans due to their historical tendency to hunt & maim their seafaring counterparts, but their populations are disrupted & effectively destroyed by a grand “reclamation” project that makes it no longer possible for the merpeople to live in reclusive peace. Because the heartless business man responsible for the destructive reclamation project is known in the tabloids to be a notorious “pervert”, the merpeople decide to send one of their own to seduce & assassinate him in cold blood. Things inevitably go awry when the mermaid falls in love with the business monster who has ruthlessly maimed her people for profits & brings out a better person from within his damaged soul. The question is whether she’s willing to betray her people in the name of true love or whether the business prick will change his heart in time to reverse the damage he’s done to the mermaid’s natural environment.

At heart, The Mermaid is a very basic tale of “evil” humans learning that making money isn’t necessarily more worthwhile than simple universal needs like clean, unpolluted water & air. What’s fascinating is the way that director Steven Chow tells this story through a kaleidoscope of different cinematic genres. Parts of the film feel like an over-earnest romcom. Parts could pass as a heartbreaking drama about environmental destruction, complete with real life images of very real big business pollution atrocities. Parts are a straight-up spoof of the 60s super-spy genre. The whole thing is bizarrely subverted & repurposed through Chow’s hyper-specific & increasingly focused comedic lens that feels like a melting pot of aesthetics that range from Tim & Eric to Looney Tunes to ZAZ-style genre parody. Chow is becoming a master of his own aesthetic, a sort of goofball auteur. At different times throughout The Mermaid, I felt sincere romance, I laughed until I was physically sore, and I sat in abject terror as the movie took a nastily violent turn in his portrayal of just how “evil” humanity can be. Like most parody artists (or at least most of the ones who are good at what they do) Chow has an innate sense of how genre tropes work & how they can be repurposed for varying effects.

It’s not at all surprising that The Mermaid is performing so well in foreign markets. The film requires a leap of faith in its opening minutes, but once you get into its cartoonish, almost psychedelic groove it’s greatly rewarding. What is surprising is that its commercial success isn’t translating well to American theaters (not that Sony’s distribution gave it much of a chance). This isn’t a bleak foreign film about the ravages of war & the emotional turmoil of the economically downtrodden (at least not the whole film works that way). It’s a sublimely silly, largely physical, slapstick comedic fantasy with a charming romance & a unique visual palette (one that puts its cheap CGI to profoundly effective & deeply silly use) at its core. It should be a commercial hit. If you have the chance to catch it in its limited domestic run, it might be worth a gamble of a ticket price. You’re likely to find something about it that’s worthwhile, since Chow covers so much ground here & the film is, at heart, a shameless crowdpleaser.

Side note: Part of the reason it might’ve been difficult to get on The Mermaid‘s wavelength in its opening minutes is that the version I saw was dubbed into Cantonese & then subtitled in English. The dissonance of this out of sync presentation was at first a little disorienting, but that awkwardness did fade a great deal in time. I do believe the opening minutes are the film’s weakest stretch, but the awkward effect of that double translation should probably still be noted & further points to just how mishandle this film’s distribution truly was.

-Brandon Ledet

Howl’s Moving Castle (2005)

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fourstar

Acclaimed, visionary animator Hayao Miyazaki recently announced that he’ll be returning from what has been a very brief “retirement” to work on a 3D-animation short film, which is exciting news for rabid fans of Studio Ghibli & innovative visual craft of all kinds. Not being especially well-versed in Ghibli’s or Miyazaki’s history, I didn’t realize that this decision was a case of history repeating itself. Miyazaki had “retired”several times before in the past, once doubling back on his resolve to return to the director’s chair (does that idiom translate to animation?) to helm the somewhat troubled production of 2005’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Whether or not Miyazaki was brought in as a pinch-hitter/afterthought on a project that apparently needed a strong guiding hand, Howl’s Moving Castle was well worth the animation giant’s time & efforts. It’s not the most mindblowing or heartwarming film among the few Ghibli titles I’ve seen but it is a singularly magical experience that the world is better off for being enriched with (with its context as a pacifist take on the war in Iraq being especially fascinating). If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Miyazaki in the few works I’ve seen from him it’s that the world is all too lucky to have him & we should all be grateful for each precious gift he delivers on his own time.

I call Howl’s Moving Castle magical because it’s a film that values the folklore of magic, wizards, and witches over the more human realm of physical labor & constant war. A lover’s quarrel between The Wicked Witch of the Waste(land) & a frivolous, vain wizard named Howl claims the health & well-being of an innocent passerby, a young hat shop clerk whose meeting of Howl in passing enraged the jealous, possessive witch. This jealousy inspires the wicked witch to cast a spell that ages the hat shop girl horribly, so that she loses her precious youth & beauty to an old, withered body that upends her life. Determined to win back her cursed youth, the girl moves into Howl’s castle, which is indeed a moving, walking, transitive structure that would serve as event the most casual of steam punk’s wet dream. What she discovers is that he wizard is in a perpetual state of adolescence, in desperate need of someone to care for his body & home, and prone to teen angst temper tantrums that result in him summoning “the spirits of darkness” when he’s bummed & exclaiming things like “I see no point in living if I cant be beautiful!” Howl is in no shape to deal with the crushing realities of a hard-fought war & ends up needing the help & emotional support of the cursed hat shop girl just as much as she needs him.

What feels so right about the approach to magic in Howl’s Moving Castle is just how fluid everything feels in the details. The rules of the curse seem to change from scene to scene as the girl’s age fluctuates depending on her mood. Enemies who initially appear to be pure evil soon reveal themselves to be hurt, vulnerable souls in need of repair. Physical spaces (especially the titular castle) & people’s bodies (especially the wizard’s) change constantly, directly reflecting the ebb & flow of a universe that can be hopelessly cruel or endlessly wonderful depending on the tides of fate in life’s current direction. The only thing that seemingly doesn’t change is the way the film values magic & fluidity over the concrete, destructive concerns of governments & war.

Appropriately enough, it’s that exact value system that makes Miyazaki & other folks at Ghibli feel like such a gift & a blessing. They’re constantly exploring new ideas & techniques within their craft, but their general spirit is deeply rooted in an old world magic & tradition that feels both authentic & endlessly endearing. It’s a testament to how powerful the the studio’s output is that I was greatly impressed by Howl’s Moving Castle, but still hung up on the Ghibli flim about racoon testicles that I had just watched a few days before. Every Miyazaki work is worthy of attention & adoration to some degree and Howl’s Moving Castle was no exception to that rule. It wasn’t the most spectacular, wonderful, magical animated feature I’d ever seen or anything like that,but I still felt like I was lucky to have seen the film, which feels like par for the course for Miyazaki & his peers. May his retirement never be permanent & may the studio never officially close its doors. May our luck never run out.

-Brandon Ledet

The Swampflix Guide to the Oscars, 2016

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Including short films, there are 57 movies nominated for the 2016 Oscars. We here at Swampflix have covered less than half of the films nominated (so far!), but we’re still happy to see so many movies we enjoyed listed among the nominees. The Academy rarely gets these things right (last year’s Birdman Best Picture win comes to mind in that regard), but as a list this isn’t too shabby in terms of representing what 2015 had to offer to cinema. Listed below are the 19 Oscar-Nominated films from 2015 that we reviewed for the site, ranked from best to . . . least-best (*cough* Fifty Shades *cough*) based on our star ratings. With each entry we’ve listed a blurb, a link to our corresponding review, and a mention of the awards the films were nominated for.

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1) Ex Machina, nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Visual Effects

“There’s something about Ex Machina’s straight-forward, no nonsense approach to sci-fi storytelling that struck a real chord in me. It’s not likely to win over folks who are looking to be surprised by every single development in its plot, but for those willing to enjoy the movie on its own stripped-down terms there’s a lot of intense visual rewards & interesting thematic explorations of, among other things, masculine romantic possessiveness that can be deeply satisfying.”

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2) Mad Max: Fury Road, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (George Miller), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

“In a time where a lot of movies, such as Zombeavers & WolfCop, intentionally aim for a cult film aesthetic, it’s refreshing when something as authentically bizarre as Fury Road comes along and earns its rabid, isolated fan base naturally. Although the movie is less than a month old, it’s already gathered a cult following so strong that I doubt that there’s any praise I can throw at it that hasn’t already been bested elsewhere. I loved the film. I thought it was fantastic, wonderfully distinct, up there with The Road Warrior, The Witches of Eastwick, and Pig in the City as one of the best things Miller has ever released onto the world. I still feel like that’s merely faint praise when compared to some of the more hyperbolic reactions out there.”

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3) Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, nominated for Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

“The overall feeling I got while watching The Force Awakens is “What more could you ask for?” Abrams has successfully walked the Star Wars tightrope & delivered something sure to please both newcomers & skeptics and, more importantly, something that’s deliriously fun to watch when divorced from the burden of expectation.”

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4) Straight Outta Compton, nominated for Best Original Screenplay

“Straight Outta Compton is not a particularly great example of a historical document, but damn if it didn’t achieve an incredible Cinematic Aesthetic in every scene, somehow managing to squeeze out a great biopic with exactly zero deviations from the format (unlike more experimental films like Love & Mercy). The cinematography, provided by longtime Aronofsky collaborator Matthew Libatique, confidently supported the film’s surface pleasures (including an onslaught of still-great songs & pandering nostalgia) to the point where any & all faults were essentially irrelevant.”

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5) Anomalisa, nominated for Best Animated Feature

“Anomalisa is a great film that draws you into its headspace with compelling imagery. While the plot may not be as much of a technical masterpiece as its cinematography, its potentially played-out story is sufficiently fleshed out (again, no pun intended) that it will likely remain culturally relevant long after the genre of paint-by-numbers privileged-white-guy-versus-ennui has receded back into the ether from which it came. If not a masterpiece, then the film is definitively a cinematic experience that demands to be seen.”

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6) Creed, nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Sylvester Stallone)

“The pugilist protagonist (played by an all-grown-up The Wire vet Michael B. Jordan) of Creed‘s narrative may go through the motions of successes & failures the audience sees coming from miles away, but the movie is visceral enough in its brutal in-the-ring action & tender enough in its out-the-ring romance & familial strife that only the most jaded of audiences are likely to get through its runtime without once pumping a fist or shedding a tear before the end credits.”

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7) Carol, nominated for Best Actress (Cate Blanchett), Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design

“Carol is a handsome, but muted drama about homosexual desire in a harsh environment where it can’t be expressed openly. The subtle glances & body language that make the film work as an epic romance are very delicate, sometimes barely perceptible. In fact, if you had no idea what the film’s about going in, it’s possible it’d take you a good 20min or so to piece it together. That kind of quiet grace is in no way detrimental to the film’s quality as a work of art. It’s just that the critical hype surrounding the picture puts an unnecessary amount of pressure of what should be experienced as a collection of small, deeply intimate moments shared between two star-crossed lovers.”

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8) Inside Out, nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Animated Feature

“The way Inside Out visualizes abstract thoughts like memories, angst, imagination, acceptance, and abstract thought itself is incredibly intricate & well considered. Its central message of the importance of sadness in well-rounded emotional growth is not only admirable, but downright necessary for kids to experience. Even if I downright hated the film’s visual aesthetic (I didn’t; it was just okay), I’d still have to concede that its intent & its world-building were top notch in the context of children’s media.”

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9) The Hateful Eight, nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Best Cinematography, Best Original Score

“At one point in The Hateful Eight, Samuel L. Jackson’s balding, ex-military bounty hunter says, ‘Not so fast. Let’s slow it down. Let’s slow it way down.’ That seems to be the film’s M.O. in general. Tarantino is, of course, known to luxuriate in his own dialogue, but there is something particularly bare bones & talkative about The Hateful Eight. It’d say it’s his most patient & relaxed work yet, one that uses the Western format as a springboard for relying on limited locations & old-fashioned storytelling to propel the plot toward a blood-soaked finale.”

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10) Joy, nominated for Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence)

“Expectation might be to blame for what turned a lot of audiences off from Joy. Based on the advertising, I know a lot of folks expected an organized crime flick about a mob wife, not the deranged biopic about the woman who invented the Miracle Mop that was delivered. Even more so, I believe that audiences expected a lighthearted drama from the guy who made Silver Linings Playbook. Instead, Joy finds Russell exploring the same weirdo impulses that lead him to making I ♥ Huckabees, an absurdist comedy that might be the very definition of “not for everyone”.”

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11) Sicario, nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing

“Much like how the recent Johnny Depp vehicle Black Mass gets by purely on the strength of its acting, Sicario might be a mostly predictable film in terms of narrative, but it creates such a violent, foreboding atmosphere that some scenes make you want to step out in the lobby for a breath of fresh air (or to puke, as the cops who discovered the early scenes’ in-the-wall corpses couldn’t help doing).”

12) Steve Jobs, nominated for Best Actor (Michael Fassbender), Supporting Actress (Kate Winslet)

“Between Sorkin & Fassbender’s work here, the myth of Steve Jobs is most certainly an arresting contrast between genius & emotional sadism. He’s a true to form Sorkin protagonist who’s better judged by his work than his persona. I’m not sure I left the film knowing any more about the real Steve Jobs than I did going in, but I’m also not sure that matters in terms of the film’s failure or success.”

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13) Room, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Lenny Abrahamson), Best Actress (Brie Larson), Best Adapted Screenplay

“Room is not all broken spirits & grim yearnings. The film can at times be quite imaginative & uplifting, thanks to young Jack’s warped sense of reality & Jacob Tremblay’s wonderful performance. Room‘s strongest asset is how it adopts a child POV the way films like The Adventures of Baron Mucnchausen, The Fall, and Beasts of the Southern Wild have in the past. Because Jack has only known life inside Room (which he refers to as a proper noun, like a god or a planet), he has a fascinatingly unique/warped perception of how life works & how the universe is structured.”

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14) Amy, nominated for Best Documentary (Feature)

“By giving so much attention to a person who obviously did not want it, Winehouse’s unwitting fans made a market out of her gradual death. Again, it’s very similar to what slowly killed Kurt Cobain as well & I’m sure there are to be more examples in the future. A lot of what makes Amy interesting as a documentary is not necessarily the details of Winehouse’s personal life that it turns into a fairly straight-forward narrative, but rather the way it subtly makes you feel like a murderer for wanting those details in the first place.”

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15) The Revenant, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Hardy), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

“At times the film itself feels like DiCaprio’s broken protagonist, crawling & gurgling blood for days on end under the weight of an over-achieving runtime. Shave a good 40 minutes of The Revenant by tightening a few scenes & losing a shot here or there (as precious as Lubezki makes each image) & you might have a masterful man vs. nature (both human & otherwise) revenge pic. As is, there’s an overbearing sense of self-importance that sours the whole ordeal.”

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16) The Martian, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Matt Damon), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

“Despite facing almost certain death in The Martian’s first act, Watney logically explains the details of exactly how/why he’s fucked as well as the practical day-to-day details other films would usually skip over, such as the bathroom situation in a Martian space lab. Speaking of the scatological, there’s a surprising amount of poop in this film. You could even say that poop saves the day, which is certainly more interesting than whatever control room shenanigans solve the conflict in Apollo 13 or other similar fare.”

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17) Shaun the Sheep, nominated for Best Animated Feature

“As always, Aardman delivers fantastic stop-motion work here, but although their films are consistently entertaining, there’s something particularly special about Shaun the Sheep that makes it feel like their best feature at least since 2005’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Because the movie is largely a non-verbal affair, its success relies entirely on visual comedy that feels like a callback to the silent film era & it’s incredible just how much mileage it squeezes out of each individual gag.”

18) Brooklyn, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Adapted Screenplay

“Outside Saoirse Ronan’s effective lead performance, I mostly found Brooklyn entertaining as a visual treat. Its costume & set design are wonderful, particularly in the detail of Eilis’ wardrobe – beach wear, summer dresses, cocktail attire, etc. That’s probably far from the kind of distinction the Brooklyn‘s looking for in terms of accolades, but there’s far worse things a film can be than a traditional, well-dressed romance.”

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19) Fifty Shades of Grey, nominated for Best Original Song (“Earned It,” performed by The Weeknd)

“The best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey recently made its long-awaited debut on the silver screen and, as a fan of the book series, I was very curious to see how this film could possibly be tame enough for movie theaters. What could have been one of the most iconic movies of the year turned out to be a total snoozefest. Literally. People in my theater were sleeping so hard they were snoring.”

-The Swampflix Crew