Cheap Thrills: Funny Games, but with less formal aptitude
and virtually no limb obtruding out of the figurative posterior. Both films are
tackling a problem within the human condition, a problem brought about by
larger social/economic ills, and each meticulously designed to lure out the
worst proclivities towards destruction supposedly veiled within each of us. The
difference of course is that Cheap Thrills opts to play it loose and have fun
with it and for that I choose to salute it with some stipulations. I like it’s
attitude. I like it’s style. I like the performances; though there isn’t much
for poor Sara Paxton to do (she’s basically one of the masked villains from The
Strangers, without the mask). As timely as the film seems insist, it’s too
eccentric to take seriously, and maybe that’s why it worked overall for me. I
was also impressed by its “tastefulness” in regards to what it actually decided
to show us, though that fades with time. Plus, that final shot is gold.
Blue Ruin: Like Cheap Thrills, this movie follows seemingly
ordinary people, dropped into violent situations by outside circumstances
virtually beyond their control. We follow and relate to the main character’s
rationale, and suffer with him through the various forks in the road or arrows
in the thigh. Revenge means something to us, even those of us who have been
lucky enough to not seriously contemplate it. The main schlep’s goals in what’s
left of his ruined (no pun) life are simple, to kill the man responsible for
his parent’s death. Like any responsible film about revenge, things get knotty,
nasty, and virtually irresolvable. Motives and actions aren’t as black and
white as they initially appear and our anti-hero starts to blur the lines
between himself and those that we once considered so worthy of cold hard retribution.
This is the nature of violence, as many books and films have reminded us, to
seemingly no avail. I would have liked Blue Ruin more if it stuck to its guns
as opposed to firing them off in hopes to tie up loose ends. I would have also
liked it more with a different lead, but that sounds mean. Still, it’s got a
nice sense of environment, and by that I guess I mean it brings the setting
into the action in ways that enhanced the drama. What does that mean? I have no
idea. I guess a better version of this mess would be Shotgun Stories, but you
can do a lot worse than Blue Ruin so see it.
Locke: I don’t know that the gimmick here serves any other
purpose than to draw audiences but the story and central performance are good
enough to push beyond its aesthetic weakness. I haven’t seen a film in recent
years with the fortitude and composure to handle adultery this way. If you boil
the title character down to the man he is trying to become, he’s an honest husband/father/worker
trying his best to make the best of a bad situation, a situation that he openly
admits to fumbling all by himself. The adulteress is not the crazy psychopath
who boils rabbits and attempts to rat out or kill in order to win her man. She
has made a similar decision to move forward and only wants him to be there for
the birth. The man doesn’t blame anyone. He briefly tries to explain his
mindset, but understands that he’s in for the battle of his life if he wants to
mend any of the damage his egocentricity has caused. This is a moral film that
reaches beyond its simple allusions. It’s not necessarily a cinematic marvel
(there really isn’t much to do visually with this gimmick), but it’s timelier
than Blue Ruin and Cheap Thrills combined.
The Blob (1988): I used to be grossed out by the 1958 film
so you can guess how much this one ruined my dinner. I don’t think I can be
even slightly objective here because that slimy 80s gore really gives me the
creeps. You’d think I would appreciate it more for getting under my skin, but
no. I didn’t eat jelly for months after watching the original, and honestly I’m
starting to think this one viewing might have similar reverberations. No more
of this for me.
The Ascent: Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent descends to hell, hell being war and war being the type
of hell that turns even the best of us into devils caught up in its vortex. I
guess the notion suggests that all of us are implicated within its web of
compromise, backstabbing, tattling, killing, and the list goes on hopelessly.
It’s a domino effect eventually making its way to everyone, at least every
character in this bleak film. The first chapter slowly chronicles the crux of a
specific moral plummet as we follow a soldier through some of the prickliest
physical scenarios imaginable as he bravely drags his wounded comrade to safety
through the snow, wind, and brush while also attempting to save his own life. I
immediately associated might with right just like in any other war film ever
made, a formula almost too conveniently turned on its head later on. I also
found the temperature in my living room dropping the longer the film raged on. The
brave soldier’s actions are unquestionably valiant and even death defying, a
true fortitude. It speaks to the warrior’s capacity to confront death in the
thralls of combat, but it also calls into question the warrior’s motivation and
possibly his need for glory. As we are asked to call his bravery into question
in the second and third act, it’s as though he was merely hearing his own
triumphant score playing in his head as he trudged on. It’s all the more
jarring to find this same hero suddenly dwarfed, cowardly, and trembling in the
face of a decidedly less decorated slow systematic death. Suddenly it’s the
weaker wounded soldier who becomes the “hero”, the “Father forgive them” symbol
of bravery and nonconformity. Shepitko challenges the triumphs of war in a way
that may be too on-the-nose and emblematically opportune, but I’m happy The
Ascent left me with more questions than answers, and it’s a powerful experience
if you go with the flow. Tragically it was Shepitko’s final film, which only
piles on more questions about the director she might have been.
Strozsek: I’m far from the “Herzog can do no wrong” fan
club, and believe me when I say that such a crowd exists. I think sometimes I
veer a little too far in the skeptical side of the aisle that I’ve created for
the convenience of this paragraph, but just when I found myself rolling my eyes
I was reminded of why such a club exists with Strozsek. One of my annoyances with Herzog’s painstaking self
mythology would be his audience’s incongruous laughter of the unconventional
characters that inhabit his films. On one hand the director seems to imply that
those who reject the supposed norm should inherit the earth (to which I would
mostly agree) but he’s also clearly wringing amusement out of their behavior
and personality for his own good. We are invited to laugh at them, not with
them. I guess I shouldn’t use the word “clearly” as I’m not privy to his
intent, but when you read interviews in which he boasts about his reputation as
“certifiably insane” you understand that he’s not only in on the joke but also
at least partly constructing it. Long winded bunny trail aside, I’d rather
spend time with the characters of Strozsek than pretty much anything or anyone
coming to the multiplex this or any other summer. I got the sense that he’s not
exploiting his three wandering companions here for cheap laughs in order to
further build up his own myth. And anything characteristically “weird” here is communicative
and caring first, and maybe odd only if you try and reason with it; i.e.
dancing chickens, tractors manned with angry armed farmers, etc. It’s more than
the disillusioned American Dream set-up, it’s the perception that the world at
large has no place other than a cell, a brothel, or a nursing home for people
like Bruno, Eva, and . Herzog clearly hates this, and the film feels like an
altar unto their unrewarding talent and exuberance. He’s stepping out of the
limelight for his characters. Bruno S. is a hero, one of the most admirable
screen cohorts that I’ve ever come across and it’s clear that Herzog shares
that same respect. At the end of the
day, or the movie in this case, you get the sense that he and his protagonist
are simply throwing their hands in the air, and we the audience are invited to
share that same sensation of frenzied surrender, and somehow this chaos feels
incredibly enriching.
Godzilla (2014): I think Hollywood should start about limiting
these big sprawling blockbusters to a small clump of characters experiencing
big, mind blowing incidents from a level relatable to the rest of us. Don’t bounce
back and forth from the military man with his hand on the detonator to the wife
in the hospital. Don’t place us the conference rooms where generals and
scientific experts expound on the beasts wreaking havoc. Am I the only person
who spaces out during these scenes? Let’s just hang with the guy who happens to
see it all go down. Let’s watch most of it from his perspective. Let’s
occasionally cut away to see the mayhem from the sky or a skyscraper. But root
the action in something personal and the whole enterprise will work as well as the
admittedly worn scene where the great Juliet Binoche dies just on the other
side of a fortifying door. Even with these complaints, which have kept me from
giving a hoot about almost all of this or last summer’s tent pole attractions, I
liked this 32nd installment quite a bit.
That’s all I got for now. I’ll try and do a Cheddaresque
post sometime this month to keep up with all of the movies I’ve been watching.
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