Fox and His Friends

1975 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular circus performer loses his job when his boss/lover is arrested. He scrounges up some money to play the lottery, wins, and is then manipulated by his titular friends.

Another happy German movie. Well, if your idea of happy is closer to devastatingly bleak. Parents renting this to show their children because they think it might be a sequel to The Fox and the Hound will certainly be unhappy. It also has nothing to do with this children's book:

Unless, of course, that children's book has a lot more penis than you'd think by looking at the camera. It's possible, I guess. That pig looks a little randy. But yes, there's an awful lot of penis in this movie. One wonders if Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this and starred as the titular loser as an excuse to show his penis to a bunch of people. I didn't realize that as Fassbinder as Fox until I looked it up. He's fine as an actor, but I thought he was a portly gentleman. El Hedi ben Salem, one of Fassbinder's boyfriends and the star of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, makes a brief appearance in this one to as a "Moroccan." Speaking of homosexuality, here's a question. Should I have been shocked at a kiss in the first five minutes of this movie between Fox and the circus guy? And if I was shocked, what does that say about me? Keep in mind that it was kind of an odd moment for a kiss anyway. But it's 2013, and I'm not sure if I should be shocked with an onscreen kiss between two men, especially with the amount of gay porn I watch. Fox says "When I have fun, I want to have regrets." He's a tragic character who has a little fun in this movie and, I'm guessing, a whole lot of regrets. Fassbinder tells his story with a fair share of dramatic irony. I don't think there are a lot of people who could watch this not knowing that Fox is being used by people and that his lottery winnings are going to end up being his downfall. It's a lot like those stories you hear about people striking it rich and ending up with ruined lives. This is a movie about how people, regardless of their sexual proclivities, will use other people and about how money corrupts. It might not be interesting all the time and seemed a little long to me, but there is a lot of penis.

The Comedy

2012 not-comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A spoiled guy drifts through life and annoys people.

Tim Heidecker stars in this. He, along with Eric Wareheim, made Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie which I refused to enjoy, and he also hosts my current favorite movie review show On Cinema which you can watch on Youtube. He does that with comedian Neil Hamburger, and both Hamburger (as Gregg Turkington) and Wareheim are in this movie. But this is Heidecker's chance to show off, and his performance is just about perfect. What Heidecker's good at, both here and the online movie review show, is being awkward. He's got a screen presence that can make a viewer uncomfortable, and he's perfect for his character in this who seems like a candidate for one of the worst human beings who ever lived. He's like Nicholson's character in Five Easy Pieces although updated for the naughtier naughts. His reaction, or more accurately a complete lack of reaction, to a person having a seizure is a genius display of non-emotion. With Heidecker and friends, you'd expect this to be a wacky irreverent comedy, and it's really not, despite that title. Or maybe it is, but it's one of the darker comedies you'll see. There's a lot of funny stuff going on, seemingly improvised, but this weird sadness kind of creeps in and overwhelms the whole thing You're not finishing this movie feeling like you just watched a comedy. When the performers do improvise and go for laughs, they go straight for the potty, having conversations about how hobos' cocks are as clean as a baby's breath and hospital scalpels. Subversive humor to say the least, but it comes across as tacky and makes you not like the characters very much. Heidecker's character's decisions don't make a lick of sense, and the episodic structure and almost complete lack of anything resembling a plot--there's something about a dad dying, a brother in a mental institution, and an inheritance, but none of it seems to matter much) gives this a dreamy tone. And it makes you a little uncomfortable. That all starts with the provocative intro with the mellow sounds of some funk song while tubby guys dance and pour beer on each other and in their underpants. And then--a dick. You'll cringe right off the bat and possibly continue to cringe, but there are a few moments in this that are almost beautiful--a final scene that takes place on a beach and one where the friends have gathered to watch a slide show. And there's a Baron-Cohen-esque scene where Heidecker goes into an African American bar and nearly improvises himself to death. This movie feels raw and challenges; it almost barks at you though it barks in a laidback sort of way. It's definitely not for everybody and might not be for very many people at all, but it really surprised me.

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice)

2010 psychoanalyticka komedie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A bearded gentlemen meets a beautiful woman in a dream and tries to discover a way to dream more so that he can be with her.

I've waited and waited for this to be available for me to watch and finally gave up and watched it on Youtube. Worth the wait? Absolutely! New Svankmajer should 1) be more of a regular thing and 2) should be celebrated as a holiday. This one seems very cheaply done. There's stop-motion, a lot more than in the last feature film, and a lot of the animation is cut-out stuff similar to the hilarious soccer short called "Manly Games" in this collection. This is very funny, too, and although I reckon the imagery and surrealistic asides would befuddle a lot of people, I couldn't keep the smile off my face while watching this. Half of this takes place in the main character's subconscious, the perfect setting for a surrealist like Svankmajer, but the conscious world isn't without the surreal touches. The main character spends a lot of his waking hours being psychoanalyzed, again perfect fodder for Svankmajer. The inside of the noggin is, after all, where all of his movies take place, isn't it? The odd visuals--chicken-headed folk, animated meat, a gigantic tongue, rolling apples, eggs, bananas, extracted teeth, antlered men, faucet-headed people, watermelons, flowers sprouting from women's heads--are easier to digest in this, like Svankmajer is picking and choosing from The Rudimentary Guide to Interpreting Dream Symbols or something. The psychological issue at the heart of the whole thing's been used enough to become a cinematic cliché, but none of that makes this any less fun. If you like your avant-garde animated movies on the playful side, this is definitely for you.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for June: Blue Velvet

1986 neo-noir thriller

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Jeffrey, home from college because his father is hospitalized after a stroke, finds a severed ear while throwing rocks at a trash can. He takes it to a detective, but he and the detective's daughter decide to do a little sleuthing on their own. They uncover a sinister world of kidnapping, sexual depravity, and Roy Orbison lip-synching routines. Soon, Jeffrey is up to his nipples in shadows.

It's been suggested that Jeffrey's story is a neo-noir exploration of the Oedipus Complex, that Dennis Hopper's Frank is an abusive father figure, and Rossellini's Dorothy represents the mother. (See Fetishism and Curiosity by Laura Mulvey--Chapter Nine is all about this and can be found [mostly] online.) It's an interesting idea, but I couldn't get through the entire chapter either because I'm too lazy or not smart enough or some combination of the two. For me, Blue Velvet is really straightforward, perhaps Lynch's easiest movie to digest. It's still Lynchian--sprinkled with his trademark dark quirkiness and horrifying outlook on sexuality and violence. Of course, according to imdb.com, there are also allusions to Lincoln's assassination, so maybe I'm not digging into this nearly enough. I don't buy the Lincoln stuff, however. A Lincoln Street? Frank's last name being Booth? Victim's shot through the head? Seems like a reach or two to me. Something else learned from the imdb.com trivia page: Lynch (during the filming) and later Rossellini both find the rape scene that Jeffrey watches from the closet funny. I find that extremely odd. I don't see any humor in that scene at all; in fact, I think it's one of the more horrifying moments in film. I've always thought Lynch and I had similar senses of humor.

Anyway, this is a movie about things that are submerged, things that either people don't know about because they're actually hidden or people just want to pretend to not know about. Or it's about mysteries and what happens when you're curious enough to start uncovering those mysteries--sociological mysteries as well as personal ones. "It's a strange world." Those words are said during several conversations between Kyle MacLachlan and the lovely Laura Dern's characters. Lynch never hides the strangeness in our world. In fact, he brings it to the focus in his movies, and that's one of the things that can make watching his movies a sometimes-uneasy experience. That submerged strangeness is shown metaphorically right at the beginning of Blue Velvet. There are shots of white picket fences, flowers, a guy watering his grass, and waving firemen to the saccharine crooning of "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton. Suddenly--a gun on the television and a hose caught in a bush, the latter which I just typed and wondered if it was meant to be as dirty as it looks in words. And then insects snarling subterraneanly. Above, things are just peachy, but just below the surface, there's all sorts of nastiness. Look at MacLachlan's goofy character. He's nothing but innocent at the beginning of this thing. Hell, he tries to impress a high school senior with a story about the kid with "the biggest tongue in the world" and something called "the chicken walk." We don't see any evidence that there's anything darker going on with his character until he is in the nightclub watching Rossellini's character for the first time. Then, you see the lust on his face in a brilliantly acted scene. Just eyes, and you see everything start to unravel. Or maybe you don't if you're watching this for the first time. I don't know. Of course, earlier in the story, Jeffrey is plotting to break into a women's house, but there's still a kind of childish naiveté with that whole scheme. No, the sinister nature--submerged evil goop--in Jeffrey will be uncovered a bit later in the proceedings. Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth is the personification of that evil in society and maybe in all of us. And what a performance that is! There's a physicality to his character even when he's not moving, and each curse word he utters--and those are numerous--seems to pack more meaning than when I curse at people when I'm driving. And "I'll fuck anything that moves!" is one of my favorite lines/deliveries of all time. Hopper's at the height of his unhinged powers here. The great Jack Nance is in there, too, introducing himself as Paul multiple times and asking Jeffrey, "Have you ever been to pussy heaven?" Oh, and Brad Dourif. I like all the performances in this movie. They're the typical performances David Lynch usually gets in his movies, performances always threatening to completely cross the line into soap opera performances. They're performances that--almost thankfully--remind you that you're just watching a movie.

Other stuff:

Knife seduction--Lynch would have had to call in a double or stunt man for me, first because my naked rump is disturbing and covered with a layer of hair and second because I would have gotten to excited, lunged at Rossellini, and been stabbed. It would have been a Brandon Lee end to my career.

Oil drill shadows spotlighted on a brick wall. This doesn't have much unusual imagery. There's a guy with a gas mask, a few random shots of candles, and, of course, the severed ear with ants crawling all over it. But Lynch deliberately uses a spotlight to throw the shadow of an oil drill on the wall. I guess it must be important. Digging? Sexual symbolism (i.e. being drilled)? Something else?

There are references to logs or logging, and the town's called Lumberton. It really made me miss the presence of the Log Lady.

Heineken product placement--the first time MacLachlan is drinking it, you could almost mistake the scene for a commercial. It's awkward.

A blind guy working in a hardware store--seems like throwaway stuff. Is there anything deeper with this character?

"I have your disease in me now." I'm not sure if that's hot or creepy.

"Yes, that's a human ear all right." For whatever reason, that makes me laugh. Either the detective doubted that Jeffrey knew what a human ear looked like or he didn't believe him.

There's a song that plays when MacLachlan and Dern's characters tell each other they love each other--"Mysteries of Love" apparently, lyrics about how "Sometimes the wind blows"--and it might be the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. And I can't figure out why anybody would play that at a party unless they were trying to clear the room. It's Julee Cruise singing to Angelo Badalamenti's music. Badalamenti's the piano player in this, by the way. I like a lot of what Badalamenti did here, especially during the title credits where the work could almost be mistake for something Bernard Herrmann did. But this "Mysteries of Love" song is the worst thing ever.

I could have done without Mike, Sandy's boyfriend. I guess something needed to happen so that Rossellini's can wander into the background completely naked, but that pretty great scene could have been completely terrific without that distracting little subplot that didn't need to be there.

Dern discusses her dreams, talking about how it was dark because there weren't any robins. Of course, Hopper refers to it being "dark" a couple different times, too. MacLachlan's response is a beautiful "You're a neat girl" to which she responds, "So are you." Just beautiful. Those crazy kids living in this messed-up world. I sure hope they make it.

Is There Sex After Death?

1971 sex comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Dr. Rogers from the Bureau of Sexological Investigation roams about in the Sexmobile and interviews experts in sexual matters, talks to everyday people on the streets, and visits key sites to answer the titular question and others.

Prankster Alan Abel and his wife created this now-dated look at sexuality. It's funny forty-some years later, but after a while, it gets a little tedious. There are plenty of naked people, but if this makes any points at all, it makes them early. The wad is shot, so to speak, and then it keeps going. Abel himself plays the roving reporter and does it as a sort-of straight man. It's amazing that he keeps his composure while sitting so close to so many naked people or hearing an actor say, "For the vegetable, it was exquisite," or a "Professor of Dildography" talk about "millions of miles of unused orifice," or an x-rated magician ask, "Is that not your urine sample?" or an expert claiming that "you'd be up to your ass in dwarfs" if one of eight didn't die during sexual intercourse. In between all that, Abel takes us to a sex Olympics, a nudist colony where they sing "Dinah Won't You Blow Your Horn" and later dance in a way that makes nudity seem like a pretty terrible invention, a perverse art gallery, and a pornographic opera. Oh, and there's a brief penis puppet show. Robert Downey Sr. makes a pair of appearances, but he's nowhere as entertaining as Earle Doud who plays the x-rated magician or Marshall Efron who plays Vince Domino, the "master of filth and excretion" who talks about making a pornographic film with a goose and a donkey. This is nothing revolutionary, some bits fall completely flat, and it's not always even all that much fun, but it's an interesting enough little time capsule item nevertheless.

American Animal

2011 artsy comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A dying man throws a hissy fit when his roommates gets a job.

Hard to do a plot synopsis with this one since it was pretty much sans plot. This is an interesting little movie actually, but I'm not sure there's a high percentage of people who would make it all the way through it. Matt D'Elia wrote, directed, and starred in it, and I'm having a tough time figuring out if this is bordering on awesome tour de force insanity or if he's just a poor-man's Russell Brand or if he's somewhere in between. Whatever, he's comically unhinged, and the whole movie feels like random acts of insanity shoved into a tiny drawer. There are repetitious snippets that go on too long, the repetition of a word that goes on exactly one second longer than it should but seems like a month longer or what seems like endless giggling. It pushes boundaries, a movie that almost invades your space. And D'Elia's character says things like "You think I'm being a dick? Sabadoo dabbadoo" which I know I spelled correctly because I watched this with subtitles. But then he says, "Why on the name of this earth would I not put on the ritz when I can put on the ritz. If I were to not put on the ritz when I'm perfectly capable of putting on the ritz, wouldn't that make me fucking crazy?" And it makes you wonder if you're watching something that is maybe a little bit of genius. There's also a great poem. Of course, there's also a monologue at around the hour mark when the guy, after a small transformation, tries to rationalize his behavior and almost ruins the thing. The friend's acting doesn't work well for me. Loads of movie references make this kind of fun, but I can't believe how many monologues this has. It might break a monologue record. This if flawed and a little annoying, perhaps intentionally, but it's an interesting little experiment.

My theory: There's a Tyler Durden thing going on here.

America the Beautiful

1996 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: It was Christmas Eve, and I had grown bored with Tetris. I was having trouble breathing, and my back hurt. I was looking for the worst Christmas movie ever made, but I stumbled upon this documentary instead and decided to watch it. I had to watch it in four installments.

It wasn't this documentary. I didn't watch America the Beautiful and have no interest in watching it. I watched a different documentary instead, one about dogs and Nazis and babies. Oh, and there was a bird in there, too, but the bird refused to cooperate. The filmmaker's voice bugged me a little, and this investigation into the subject matter seemed personal and not all that deep. It was superficial giggling, and that's fine, especially here on Christmas Eve, but it doesn't quite justify the existence of itself or sweeten anything after a long day of fishing. If you know what I mean. You probably don't!

Anyway, happy holidays, readers!

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

1971 blockbuster

Rating: no rating

Plot: In a land governed by children, kids run around abusing adults and drawing X's over things.

The only thing I really knew about this movie is that the band Stereolab grabbed its title for one of their album titles. I'm not sure what it's about. It's a frenzy of worn black 'n' white shock images, a lot involving children doing things they're not supposed to be doing. I'm sure director Shuji Terayama is saying something here, but it's going to be next to impossible for most viewers to see it through some really shocking visuals. The imagery invited Holocaust comparisons and thoughts about censorship and totalitarian governments, but none of it was cohesive enough to make a point that a dumb guy like me could fully grasp. No, I'm the type of viewer who's content in being entertained by a scene of a little person emerging from a hole while wearing an army helmet and what appears to be a diaper, running to another hole where he extracts a chicken that he takes an ax to, an act accompanied by a too-loud screech and some scattered applause. There's no real dialogue, but there's some words thrown in (found sound or stock sounds, I assume), none of it that I could understand because I don't speak whatever language it's in. There are also some words that appeared in white on the screen that I wouldn't be able to read even if I could read German. The music is nice if not all over the place. Like many foreign avant-garde productions, I'm missing way too much context to fully appreciate this or even understand it. This might have loads of interesting ideas but it's distracted by its own imagery.

Note: There's a 70-something minute version of this and a much shorter 20-something minute version that I'm guessing only shows the highlights. Like a Michael Bay movie with just the explosions maybe.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

2010 anti-Christmas movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: During a mysterious archaeological dig on a mountain in Finland, a nearby reindeer hunter accidentally captures an old man who he decides must be Santa Claus. Soon after, the children of the village start going missing.

This is not just my new go-to Christmas movie. It's also going to be my go-to movie when I want to see a bunch of naked old men. I'm sure this movie breaks some kind of record for most old man junk in a Christmas movie. This is a cool little story, very quiet and subdued until an action-packed and explosion-filled denouement. The humor is darkly Scandinavian, dry but warm. Scenes are funny because you're just not sure what else they're supposed to be. For example, there's one beautiful shot in a greenish reindeer-butcherin' room where some men sit and eat gingerbread cookies while Santa is tied up and suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Like a lot of Scandinavian movie makers (I'm going to just keep writing that like I know what I'm talking about), director Jalmari Helander (this is his only feature-length movie, by the way) takes his time getting from point to point, allowing the viewer to soak in all the character and setting details. And there are a lot of setting details to soak in. This is very well filmed; they take advantage of the mountainous background and rural settings. This is far from festive and just about perfect for people like me who don't really care all that much for the holiday season. My only hope is that I didn't give too much away with anything I wrote here.

Cowards Bend the Knee (or The Blue Hands)

2003 silent soap opera

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A hockey player knocks up his girlfriend and takes her for an abortion in the back room of a beauty salon. During the procedure, he falls for the daughter of the owner of the beauty salon and runs off with her. Unfortunately, she won't allow him to touch her until the death of her father is avenged. A hand transplant operation takes place, followed by murder and sex. And there are some hockey player wax figurines that come to life.

This ten-part short feature was originally intended to be shown in a museum, each six-minute chunk shown through a separate peephole. That would have been an annoying way to watch a movie. I'd predict that a lot of people would be annoyed by the style of this anyway. It's silent, but even those used to silent movies might find the strange techniques--off-putting camera angles, repetitious movements, rapid-fire movements, lengthy but hilarious title cards--a little too strange. And, of course, there's the subject matters covered in this thing, a wacky hodgepodge that could only come from the mind of Guy Maddin. Jen, who started watching this movie with me, was done when the dicks made their first appearance. In the dicks' defense, I think she was about to call it quits even before they showed up. I found it all hilarious, maybe the funniest Maddin movie I've seen. Lots to love here--hockey seizures in sperm samples, beauty salon bordellos, 5-minute breast grope attempts, a gorgeous slow procession to Beethoven's 7th, titular blue hands and warm pies, forced combing, a smoking and corset-wearing abortionist, blind grandmothers, shampoo murders, faked hand transplants, ghost whores, fisting, an ice breast, the feeding of wax hockey player figurines, a questionable check for a pulse, and an Orlacian shower butt poke. Yeah, mostly the typical ingredients for a soap opera.  And the typing of "Orlacian shower butt poke" reminds me why I watch movies in the first place. My favorite scene was one in which Maddin imagines what a late-20's sex scene's sound effects would have been like. Completely ridiculous, but it made me giggle like a fourteen-year-old with a monocle. Definitely find this if you're a Guy Maddin fan already, and it might not be the worst place to start if you want to dig into his work and have a high tolerance for weirdness.

Klown

2010 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Frank's having trouble with his girlfriend who has begun to doubt his abilities to be a father. A few other ill-timed mistakes (for example, jizzing on his mother-in-law's face) also threaten to end their relationship. To prove that he can be a good father, he kidnaps his nephew for a perverse camping trip. Things don't go very well.

These characters are from a Danish television show that was compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm, so I decided to check it out. The comparisons are apt ones. This finds humor in awkwardness and rude behavior. There's not a lot here that you'd feel all that comfortable watching with your mother. The "pearl necklace" advice and execution that I referenced above (yes, only for the jizz variation) is just one example of how this movie just doesn't understand boundaries. The characters, the kind who you like to watch on the screen even though they're not the least bit likable, sort of unapologetically and lackadaisically venture through taboo land. You can maybe believe that they're doing some of these things in a movie because they're the kinds of things you might see American movie characters. What you can't believe is that they're doing these things so casually. It's gross-out comedy but with subtitles which makes it perfectly ok for a movie snob like me to enjoy. I don't want to go into details too much because like the best comedies, this works because of its surprises. I'd hate to ruin that. Be warned though--you'll probably be offended. There's a quick Chaplin reference in this, a poster of The Kid. This movie has a kid, too. Of course, I don't believe Chaplin ever ejaculated on anybody in any of his movies. Maybe in The Gold Rush?

Tromeo and Juliet

1996 Shakespeare adaptation

Rating: 13/20

Plot: See Romeo and Juliet but with more perversity. Or maybe less. Shakespeare was a pretty randy fellow.

 A first shot of what I believe was a hanged squirrel, Lemmy from Motorhead reciting the bard, nipple piercing, severed wiggling fingers, comical fart sounds, the "king of cold cuts," comical spousal abuse, lesbian cooks, outlandish dream sequences with penis monsters going "Rarr!", crossbow grenades, punk rockers, heads meeting fire hydrants, people carrying lizards inexplicably, guys in cow costumes, a meat factory, glass time-out rooms, bread thieves, pink bondage devices, meat hook suicide attempts, Hitler head bludgeons, guys pissing on other guys, car accidents, more severed limbs, more comical fart sounds, opium dens, hermaphroditic pig people, projectile vomit, exploding heads, incest, and a dream sequence with a spontaneous pregnancy featuring popcorn and rats that is the nuttiest thing I've seen in a long while. This ain't your English teacher's Shakespeare. There is some Shakespearean dialogue juxtaposed with the modern (well, then modern) urban slang, and that's pretty jarring. There are some lines that could be from the play. It's been a while since I read it.

"My name is Capulet. I got a corn nut for a dick. My name is Capulet. My asshole's full of worms."
"What do you think about my milkman costume, Juliet?"
"Get ready to die!" "It happens to everyone sooner or ladder." (Context is probably important for this one.)
"Now you've gone too far! Goddamn heads bouncing off of cars while families are singing 'Found a Peanut'!"
"I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth like a piece of shit from God's ass."

A couple of those could be straight from Big Willie. That Lloyd Kaufman--independent film production company Troma's version of Shakespeare--sure is a goofball, and the ratio of gags that work and those that don't probably isn't all that good. However, there are so many ideas here that there is enough that works, and if you like John Waters or his imitators (like Lloyd Kaufman, for example), this might appeal to you. Troma fan will recognize a lot of the company's movie posters and a few costumes at a party which is either a nice touch or really cheap. If it's the latter, it matches the rest of the movie. This is not a great movie and feels much longer than it actually is, but it's kind of a cute bit of filth if you're into that sort of thing.

I might never hear "Found a Peanut" the same way again.

Keyhole

2011 Guy Maddin movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Gangster Ulysses Pick and his gang take refuge in Pick's home. The police have the place surrounded. Accompanying Pick are a tied-up and gagged young man and a drowned woman. While his men bicker, Pick and the two companions venture through the house in search of his wife. They talk to some ghosts and see a penis or two.

Even a bad Guy Maddin film is going to have enough originality and cool visuals to make it worth the time. This is a clash of all kinds of ideas, but it never feels very complete or even all that coherent. It's more like thumbing through Maddin's notepad which is fun in spots and frustrating in others. It's definitely a weird movie although Maddin claimed it was his effort to make "pure narrative." The nods to silent cinema are still present, but this is shot more traditionally and has a lot of dialogue. I think the less dialogue in Maddin's movies, the better. Anyway, there's a ton going on--a noirish gangster tale, a ghost story, a psychological investigation, a surreal dream playground, light science fiction, and maybe the retelling of a myth. It's a lot to take in, and most people are going to think it's just a little too pretentious. But it's a silly pretentious, not a stuffy pretentious with Maddin his usual playful self. In this, you get naked old guy genitalia, backwards talking, weird moving lights, characters speaking to each other in different languages, undergarments with phallic doodles, wallpapering, symbolic green bowls, a bicycle-powered electric chair, a crowded tub, secret tunnels with a "Cyclops ahead" warning turning out to be a glory hole, old man stump licking, weird antique toys, wallpaper love, Mexican banditos, Kids in the Hall alum Kevin McDonald attempting to sodomize a ghost, and a narrator who says cool things like "You don't even recognize your own son, Ned--Milk-drinking Ned." Oh, and a guy in a closet who plays Yahtzee. A lot of the dreamlike visuals are really cool, but that can only take you so far and this ends up dragging a little and frustrating a lot. It's not where I'd start with Guy Maddin's work if I were you.

Black Moon

1975 unicorn movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A teenager flees a war between men and women and ends up at a house inhabited by an old woman, a brother and sister both named Lily, a horde of naked children, and apparently a unicorn. Breastfeeding ensues.

Spoiler alert: I thought things were a little strange when Lily (the girl one) breastfed her own mother, but the end, in which the protagonist prepares to breastfeed the unicorn. I didn't exactly understand this movie. There was the whole male/female conflict which didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the movie. "Sexual awakening of a young girl" seems lazy, but falling panties, phallic symbols, and the suspicions of incest do lead you to that sort of conclusion. And all the animals allusions in this mama: roadkill in the first shot that sets a dark stage, sheep approach, a snake, a centipede, a grasshopper thing, other insects, a gal riding a horse, a giant pig running with a quartet of naked kids, geese or ducks (like alligators and crocodiles, I can't really tell them apart), a piano-playing kitty, a rat that the old woman talked to, a bird, ants on a piece of cheese, another snake, a chicken pecking at a dead soldier's chest, a decapitated eagle, a yard full of sheep and turkeys. That's a buttload of animals! Malle's up to his tricks again. The guy's virtuosic, a real master craftsman, and I loved a lot of those animal shots, a run through the woods, off-road Pinto action with a windshield wiper knocking out broken glass, a stunning shot of a giant tank with opera music playing behind it, underpants effects, unicorn training. There's also maybe the funniest gag I've seen in a movie all year with a picture in a photo album that that main character looks through. It got a big ol' laugh out of me. And as close readers of this blog know, I really like unusual artwork in movies, and this has a fantastic painting of a guy cutting an eagle in half with a sword while a woman stands crying next to him. This works as a surreal comedy, a little like Lewis Carroll just like it says on the poster, although its goofily avant-gardish dick-around approach might make it a little too silly to take seriously. It's fun for those of you who like more adventurous stuff. And it'll probably be the only movie you ever see with a scene where a woman breastfeeds a unicorn, so that's something.

Pink Flamingos

1972 high art

Rating: I don't want to give this a rating.

Plot: Divine and her son Crackers live in a pink mobile home with Mama Edie and enjoy their notoriety as the filthiest people alive. That title is challenged, however, by the Marbles, a couple who kidnap women and sell babies to lesbians. Filth vs. filth action ensues.

For a movie I don't really enjoy, I sure have seen this enough times. I find it impossible to rate. It's a terrible movie and very much the "septic tank explosion" that the person compares it to on the poster there. It's revolting for the sake of revulsion with its dumptruck load of talking anuses, fecal matter, sex acts involving (and killing, reportedly) chickens, magic marker hair dye jobs, bad narration (Waters himself), egg men (Paul Swift who was in three other Waters' movies), drug references, arson, curse words, syringe violation, and transexuals. But something that succeeds in shocking and sickening this much almost deserves respect, right? Waters is either a very sick individual or a guy who had a perverse vision and with almost no budget succeeded in bringing that vision to life on drive-in screens. And if you dare look hard enough, there's a message beneath all this madness, and disturbingly prescient message at that. In a way, this foreshadows the extremes people will go to in order to have their Warholian fifteen minutes of fame and predating reality shows by about twenty-five years. Of course, reality shows don't go to these extremes. Nobody eats dog crap on reality shows. Or did they do that on Fear Factor? With its anti-style, in-your-face ineptitude, and belligerent distastefulness, this is unlikely to be a movie that very many people can sit down and enjoy. Still, it's a unique statement and an unforgettable piece of work.

Period Piece

2006 thing

Rating: 4/20

Plot: None.

I guess we'll put this in the mondo film or shockumentary genre although it's not a documentary. It's not exactly scripted either though, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure who I should blame for this--Johnny Knoxville, Pink Flamingos, Tom Green, Harmony Korine? All of them. Maybe I should just blame Giuseppe Andrews, the "film's" "director" who, in a brief introduction to this, said, "Well, it's a hard film to synopsis." He also referred to it as a "grenade of wild images, dialogue, and sound" when he could have saved a lot of words and just said described it as "inane garbage." I probably should have heeded the warning at the beginning of the film--"Warning: This film contains senior citizen nudity and dead pigs." Or maybe the appearance of the guy on the cover four-and-a-half minutes into the movie, completely naked and simulating a sex act with an invisible woman should have had me reaching for my remote. This movie feels like somebody flinging feces at you, just shocking scene after shocking scene. It's got a very middle-schoolish "look at what I can say on your television" kind of humor. Or, more accurately, "Look at what I can get old people to say." You get people shooting up in a car wash; all kinds of scenes with people, including a guy in a coon skin cap, having sex with a teddy bear; clowns on stick horses; plays with stop-motion animated tater tots which, of course, evolve into tater tot pornography; smoking pigs; a puppet; a guy eating his own armpit hair; characters pantomiming the cutting and eating of flatulence with a plastic knife and fork. I don't mind experimental movies, and shocking things don't bother me. This is just 80 minutes of pointless nonsense, and 80 minutes which, by the way, seems a little longer than Gone with the Wind. I can't think of any reason why anybody reading this should see this movie. Well, unless you're into tater tots or naked old people. Or stuffed animal snuff films.

I do wonder if Campbells appreciated the (I assume) free product placement in a scene where a can of clam chowder was used to sodomize a teddy bear.

Fat Girl

2001 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: While on holiday (cause that's what they call it in Europe), a pair of sisters meet an older law student. He sneaks in to visit the older sister at night while the titular fat girl snoozes or pretends to snooze across the room. Then, a bunch of other things happen.

Matt recommended this one, and I don't know what to think about it. It wasn't something that I enjoyed, but I'm not sure it was made for anybody to enjoy. And it made me a little uncomfortable, but I suspect director Catherine Breillat was trying to make me uncomfortable. I have fuzzy ideas about what this is all about, but I really feel like I need somebody, probably a feminist, to help fill in some gaps for me. I wonder how I'd see this differently if I were a woman. To me, the whole thing seems like one long joke that was never intended to be funny, a joke with the most depressing punchline of all time. I did like the performances. Roxanne Mesquida plays the attractive older sibling. She's cute (and I can type that because she was of age when this was made) and plays this naive-but-doesn't-quite-know-it thing really well. The villain, Libero De Rienzo, was especially scary for me, a guy with three daughters. He's also cute, and I'm not sure whether or not I should be typing that or not. He's almost good enough to allow me to call this a monster movie. And then there's the titular fat girl played by Anais Reboux, a non-professional actress although she did appear in a T.V. movie around the same time as this. Most of this movie is her doing what she's doing on the poster up there, halfway covering her face while her sister is seduced by an older guy on the other side of the bedroom. But her performance is fantastic here, and I'm not just talking about when she's singing about crows eating her worthless lump of raw meat body. There's nothing all that flamboyant in what she does, but there's this depth, this understanding, that makes it a pretty special performance. The tone of the bulk of this is ominous, like the quiet before the storm, and during that storm, Breillat gets a little tricky. She throws an idea at you, makes it stick (for me at least), and then hits you with something shocking and frightening following by something just as shocking and frightening and a little snippet of dialogue that manages to be even more shocking and more frightening than all the other shocking and frightening stuff. This is not a happy movie.

Antichrist

2009 horror film

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A married couple struggling with a personal loss ventures to a cabin in the woods to try to work through their feelings. Things get graphic.

This is difficult viewing. Like The Wacky and Whimsical Whites of West Virginia, this is the sort of movie that I don't seem to be able to handle very well anymore. I can stomach a lot, but there are at least two shots in Antichrist that I just wish weren't there. Certain things seen, it's been said, cannot be unseen, and I'll admit that I flinched more than once during this one. This is a beautifully-filmed movie and the imagery is powerful for the most part, but von Trier seems to enjoy making me (and I suspect most people) really uncomfortable. Trust me--this one is difficult visually and it's difficult emotionally. A beginning black 'n' white montage, thought stunningly poetic and tragically beautiful, is tough, and things just get worse from there. It's also got Daniel Dafoe who I always have trouble believing is a real person. I'm not sure his penis is real either actually. Charlotte Gainsbourg is solid, and both of the leads wrestle bravely with some of the most challenging roles I think I've ever seen. I don't know why I said "leads" there because with the exception of a little kid at the beginning and some faceless walking symbols near the end, there aren't any other characters. Unless animals count. Talking animals. You know, the kind of talking self-cannabalizing foxes that you're used to seeing in a Disney flick. Ants and hawks, weird subtle wobbly cam effects, a CGI grotesque fawn, ominous acorns, and the tree-root/hand thing you see on the poster up there. I didn't get all the symbolism being shoved in my face, probably because the movie stole my will to live. This one pulls no punches.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

1989 grotesque art

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A brutish bully and sort of vague criminal--the titular thief--frequents the lush dining establishment of the titular cook. The titular abused wife meets her titular bookish lover there and begins boinking him nightly behind her husband's back. He's too busy eating fistfuls of pudding, behaving unruly, and verballing assaulting his friends and fellow patrons to notice anything like that. But when he finds out? Oh, snap! This goose is cooked!

First saw this at Clown College with Kent back in '93. It was my first trip through a Greenaway movie, and I just didn't get it. I think we rented that and Henry and June because they were both NC-17 and wanted to see some boobs. This has some boobs, specifically the two belonging to Helen Mirren, but that's not the reason to see this. The reasons to see this are the performance of Michael Gambon as the thief and the pretty pictures that Greenaway gives us. First, what's not to love-to-hate about Gambon's character? He's got to be in the running for the most despicable movie character in the history of film, right along with most of Shirley Temple's characters. What a villain. But since this is a blacker-than-black comedy, he's kind of funny, too, and he gets all sorts of great one-liners.

"There's a lady present. She doesn't want to see your shriveled contributions."
"You'd just be interested in whipping it in and whipping it out and wiping it on your jacket." (more clear in context probably)
"I think those Ethiopians like starving."
"A cow drinks its weight in water twice a week. For milk. Cause a cow's got big tits."
"I didn't mean that you literally had to chew his buttocks off. I meant it metaphorically."

It's great stuff. And it's dark and filthy, almost enough to make you feel dirty for watching the thing. It's like low-brow potty humor for the artsy-fartsy crowd. I mean, the movie starts, just like Ridicule, with a character pissing on a guy, but this takes it one step further and adds fecal matter. But as grotesque as things get, Greenaway and his cinematographer Sacha Vierny of Last Year at Marienbad fame keep things so artistic. Greenaway doesn't make motion pictures; he makes motion paintings. And there are countless shots in this son of a bitch that just floor me as the camera moves through the kitchen of the restaurant. There's no way this restaurant is passing a health inspection, by the way. There are feathers flying all over the place, a random castrato, a naked guy with shit all over him, cigarettes in the soup, a chubby shirtless guy, a truck of rotting meat, people having sex right there by the loaves of bread. But it's all so beautiful, and it's just not fair that I can only take in Greenaway's visuals with one of my senses. I'd really like to use more of them. I love the way he toys with colors in this movie with the character's clothing changing color as they move from room to room. One great scene involving a fork has this gradual reddening as the thief passively (ironic passivity) spreads something on a cracker before an intense bathroom destruction. And how the heck does one choreograph dogs and breaking bottles? Oh, man. Throw this movie in a museum because it's a visual masterpiece, marred only by a lengthy conversation near the end of the movie that I think almost spoils the surprises at the end. That scene's problem might be the acting of the cook though. Otherwise, just a lovely and disgusting movie.

Ridicule

1996 witty movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some French guy travels to Versailles in order to get the king (Louis CXVII or something) to help him drain some swamps. He learns quickly enough that the only way to get an audience with the king is to be wittier than everybody else. He's assisted by a doctor whose lovely and bosomy daughter is trying to perfect her diving suit invention. Meanwhile, there's a whore who kind of looks like Lyle Lovett, and she keeps trying to play footsy with him while he's busy getting his wit on. I'm sure it would have all made perfect sense back in the 18th Century.

Just two minutes in, a guy whips it out (it, being the penis) and urinates on an old man wearing an eyepatch. Cory recommended this one; he really likes that sort of thing. Here are three things that stand out about this movie:

1) This is exactly why everybody hates French people. In a way, it's hard for me to believe that people were ever like this, but then I think about how people are today and believe that people were definitely like this. I like the characters' faces after they make a witty remark, most, by the way, that I didn't even understand. Their expressions made me laugh and want to punch some random French guy.

2) The writers of this totally took that "jawbone of an ass" gag (where a character thinks of a witty retort way too late as he's traveling home from one of these awesome parties) from a Seinfeld episode. You know, the jerk store one.

3) I'm going to try to find every opportunity I can to say "Your butt is wider than your mouth" to people. I don't even know what that means, but it definitely sounds like something.

I liked this movie though I'm not a big fan of stuffy period pieces regardless of how much beautiful cleavage they throw on the screen. The costumes and settings provided a colorful backdrop to the frequently clever dialogue. And although I thought a lot of this was a little cold or, yes, stuffy, I thought a scene near the end with some deaf mutes was pretty touching. If I knew anything about French history and what happened to some of these people after most of this movie takes place, I bet I would be able to appreciate some of the irony more. Nice recommendation, Cory, and definitely not something I would have popped in on my own.