The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Belle de Jour

1967 fantasy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The sexually aloof wife of a doctor decides to take an afternoon job at a brothel.

"Semen retentum venenum est." If I had that line in my arsenal growing up, I might have gotten laid before my 25th birthday.

Tarantino probably likes this movie because it's got a ton of shots of Catherine Deneuve's feet. That's not exactly why I like it. I like it because of its mystery. This movie blends the line between reality and fantasy, between the humdrummery of everyday life and the free-floating exuberance of a life of dreams. Bunuel, unsurprisingly, uses this woman's story to dick around with his audience's minds, and he's one of the best ever at doing that. And he's probably the best candidate to take us on a little tour of the titular whore's dream/reality mash-up. Bunuel certainly creates an interesting rhythm with her journey, and rhythmic sound effects--bells, a few clocks, an ambulance, waves--seem to suggest something, but it's that kind of something that's just out of reach. You know, like in a dream. Catherine Deneuve's classic pretty face is perfect for the character, and I don't know if it's something she does or just her basic shapes and tones, but she's got just the right of naughtiness mixed in with this innocence. I also liked Pierre Clementi as bad-boy Marcel, a guy who either has a grill or forgot to take off his Jaws (James Bond villain--not the shark) Halloween costume. Jean Sorel makes a good schmuck, and shady friend Husson is played shadily enough by Michel Piccoli. And there are a few whores to add a little bit of color. This is a more adult Bunuel for better or worse, one who is not at his most audaciously playful, but its poetic eroticism makes it float. And who can pass up a glance through a peephole into Deneuve's subconscious?

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.

Even Dwarfs Started Small

1970 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Inmates at some sort of institution run amok.

This was actually the first I knew of Werner Herzog because I was on a crazy quest to get my hands on bizarre movies as well as movies that had little people. I was instantly a fan. What choice did I have? It's a cast of little people! I'm not actually sure what the point of that is. Honestly, I'm not completely sure what the point of the entire movie is. I don't think Herzog's focus is broad, and I don't think he's filming anything satirical. Instead, I think this has more to do with individual psyche, a kind of duel between the part of a person that wants to go by the book and follow the rules and be normal and the part of the person that wants to raise hell and burst seams and piss fire. Herzog films this almost like it's a documentary. There are several times when the performers--all, I believe, non-professionals--will look at the camera and presumably at Herzog, sometimes like they believe they might be in danger. It gives this an odd kind of realism. At times, they do look like they're in danger, especially Gerhard Maerz who plays a character named Territory. I believe that's the little guy who was run over by a car at one point during the filming and caught fire in another scene. He's the real stuntman of the group--climbing out of a moving vehicle to the top, etc. Herzog put these little actors and actresses through some stressful situations, so stressful that he promised he would jump into a bunch of cacti following the filming. None of these actors went on to have film careers. In fact, almost all of them have only this movie in their filmography. Pepi Hermine played "The President" in this and also played the president in Downey's Putney Swope. Helmut Doring was also in Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and he's awesome in this, spending almost the entire movie laughing demonically. It's the kind of laugh that you'll hear long after the movie has ended, maybe in your dreams and maybe in somebody else's dreams. You really can't take your eyes off this guy. Doring is the tiniest of the bunch, and there's one scene where he spends about five minutes trying to get onto a bed. Of course, that's not the most interesting thing these characters do. They have a forced marriage ceremony, peruse dirty magazines, interrupt a blind duo's game, disrupt piglets' dinner, conduct an insect wedding, make a car drive in endless circles, destroy typewriters and rugs, start cockfights, have pointing contests with trees, and crucify a monkey. Other than that crucified monkey, there are other shocking and bleak moments involving animals. There's a one-legged chicken that Herzog's camera watches for a long time, a scene where some chickens play with a dead mouse, and a really disturbing scene with piglets suckling a dead mother. And the movie starts with a slow circular pan of the premises and then a shot of a chicken pecking at a dead friend. Herzog's always got great endings, and this one doesn't disappoint. In fact, it's one of my favorite movie endings ever--Helmut Doring laughing while watching a defecating camel. It's a shot which goes on way too long which, in my opinion, is just the right amount of time.

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.

Motorama

1991 road trip comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ten-year-old Gus decides to run away from home. He does it in style though, first stealing a Mustang and fashioning some leg extenders so that he can drive the thing. He starts out on an Odyssey across the country, stopping at participating Motorama gas stations to collect cards for a game in which he'll win a buttload of money by spelling out M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. Unfortunately, he can't find the R. He does find a lot of eccentric characters, however.

Drew Barrymore is on a lot of the poster/dvd covers for this movie, and she's in the movie for literally about ten seconds and gets no lines.

This is one of the stranger coming-of-age movies you'll ever see, not surprising since it was penned by screenwriting genius Joseph Minion who wrote both After Hours and Vampire's Kiss. It's a surreal episodic little adventure that you're not sure is a comedy until you start laughing. There's a great cast. Jordan Christopher Michael plays the kid, this really unlikable little runt who steals, curses, and litters. He reminds me a little too much of Macaulay Culkin's character in the Home Alone movies though. John Diehl plays a dopey gas station employee named Phil who's got this interesting way of trying to impress God. The beautiful Jack Nance is hilarious in his small role as a hotel manager. Only Nance can deliver the line "I forgot to tell you. . .if you catch any squirrels, give them to me" like he does. Garrett Morris and Michael J. Pollard are funny, and both Meat Loaf and Flea are in this movie. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Meat Loaf, Flea, and Eraserhead have been in another movie together. Best of all is seeing Sandy Baron--one of my favorite Seinfeld characters, Jack Klompus--who plays a really creepy guy. All kinds of odd little details--currency that is very clearly not American, a road map that is very clearly not accurate, arm wrestling, multiple occurrences of auxiliary characters thinking the protagonist is a grown man or even an elderly man, and a trip through a Purgatory called Essex which features a Klan lynching and a priest being killed. The coolest scene might be where Gus meets another character, a much older character, who has also been playing the game. This movie has a similar rhythm to After Hours and might jerk around a little too much for its own good, but fans of existential coming-of-age road movies might want to check out this little gem. 

The City of Lost Children

1995 fantasy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An evil guy, with the help of six clones and a little person, attempts to extend his life by stealing the dreams of children. One of those children is the "brother" of a strongman who teams up with an orphan thief to save him.

Hot damn, how I love this movie! Everything about it! From the whopper of the opening with the multitudinous Santas, a chilling little nightmare with wobbly visuals, to the happy little ending, the director duo of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet use the film medium to show us things that we've never seen before. And there's just something beautiful about that. They build a world, an unknown time and an unknown place, that we've never seen before. There's a ton of brown, dilapidation, decay, general stickiness, and it's the perfect place for this little story to take place, this grotesque little fairy tale without a glimpse of a single fairy. There's a little Dr. Caligari in the landscapes, a little sci-fi, a whole lot of imagination. Love the details, especially all the stuff in the background of the bearded original Dominique Pinon's underwater home. Speaking of Dominique Pinon--how brilliant is he in this? There are seven of him, often on screen at the same time, and his facial contortions and slapstick silliness are hilarious. Daniel Emilfork plays the evil Krankg, and he nails evil but not without a bit of humor. The scene where he becomes Santa is uproariously hilarious. Emilfork's got the perfect head for this movie and this character. I also love the Octopus twins choreography, and there are plenty of sight gags with those two, my favorite being where the one smokes a cigarette and the other blows out the smoke. I'd also watch a cooking show hosted by those two. I think Tati would have appreciated the Octopus. And then there's Mireille Mosse, a little woman with a giant head. It's another example of perfect casting, maybe one of my favorite little person roles ever. And that's just for the line "Good bye, Grasshopper." This movie is just pure child-like imagination unleashed. Flea hypnotism, Cyclops men forcing a fellow Cyclops man to watch his own murder, a talking brain in an aquarium. It's one of those rare stories where nothing that happens feels borrowed. Also, it's the type of story where nothing simply happens. Instead, you get all these Rube Goldberg shenanigans. The demise of the Octopus and Miette's breaking into a room are the best examples. Add Badalamenti's beautiful score, and you've got yourself a classic! I do believe, by the way, that this thing is symbolically chunky, a story about innocence and what happens when childish innocence is corrupted by things in the adult world. It hurts my head trying to pick this thing apart, however. For me, it's a movie to just absorb. I can still remember the first time I saw this; it put a smile on my face for weeks. Subsequent viewings are just as rewarding. It's one of those movies that I really can appreciate more because I don't remember any of my dreams. This, and a litter of other movies from the Lynches, Jodorowskies, Maddins, and Svankmajers of the world, are substitutes for dreams and nightmares that float away from me before I wake up. Just beautiful, imaginative stuff.

The Dark Backward

1991 black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Marty Malt, a garbageman and hopeful comedian, has exactly one fan--fellow garbageman and accordion-enthusiast named Gus. He stinks, but his career starts to go uphill when he grows a third arm out of the center of his back. The pair find themselves an agent and shoots for the stars.

This is a weird little movie, one that's the equivalent of a really great joke that is delivered so poorly that nobody really gets it. I like that it's rated R for "brief scenes of bizarre comic sensuality." I think that's the nice way of saying it's got naked fat people and Bill Paxton's rear end. Director Adam Rifkin wrote both the very good and very funny Mousehunt and the almost-criminal Underdog, the latter which I wrote should have cost people involved with the production their lives. I kind of feel bad about that now. The direction is uneven, but there's a definite charm to the proceedings. The setting is one of urban decay, and the set designers are absolutely committed to this filth, a lot of it shown with circus music in the background. The performers are terrific, almost all of them stepping out of what I'd imagine are their comfort zones. Judd Nelson is unrecognizable, and thinking about this slow turn he'd do after telling a joke in order to show the audience his third arm makes me laugh. Paxton straddles the line between offbeat and overly-crazed, and Wayne Newton almost reaches Slim Whitman-esque territories as a sleazy talent agent, and Rob Lowe, Lara Flynn Boyle, and James Caan are also in this for some reason. I have no idea what Rifkin might be saying about show business or fame or artistic endeavor or anything else. And the movie's plot not only doesn't really ever go anywhere but seems to take forever doing it. However, this surreally comic nearly post-apocalyptic little flick smells like enough of a cult classic that I'm sure a handful of people would really like it.

Best moment in the movie: Apples Yonahan, the man of a thousand faces. There's also a scene with gratuitous little people--five of them in sailor costumes played as a human xylophone. One of them is Tony Cox of Bad Santa fame. (Billy Bob Thornton is also supposed to be in this somewhere, unconfirmed. Of course, there's a Tony Cox and Bill Paxton's rear end connection there, so it seems possible.) And if you know this blog at all, you know I'm probably going to look up the other little people. Tonya Renee Banks isn't in a lot--Death to Smoochy and Bad Santa in which she's credited with stunts. Cindy Sorenson got to work with Adam Sandler in what I'm sure is a hilarious movie. Arturo Gil has been in quite a few things, including a Mary-Kate and Ashley Christmas special that has me imagining the hottest menage-a-trois I've ever imagined. And there's John Hayden who was only in this movie. That's a pretty disappointing diminutive quintet. 

Nightmare on Elm Street

1984 horror movie

Rating: 15/20 (Rating changed after I was told that my pretentiousness was making somebody sad.)

Plot: An undead janitor attacks teenagers in their dreams.

I suppose this has enough gross-out gore and jump scene thrills to lure your typical fan of the horror genre, but after a cool beginning showing the construction of Krueger's scissor hand and Tina's nightmare which for some reason features a goat or a sheep, things get and stay pretty goofy. And that--the unapologetic goofiness--is really what appeals to me. Consider the villain, for example. He scowls and has bad skin, and if he was just lurking or popping out of dark places, he would be pretty terrifying. Instead, there are all these goofy Freddy antics, mostly with 80's synthesizer accompaniment. His "Watch this!" followed by cutting his own fingers off for absolutely no reason? Tina's look during that scene is priceless, by the way. The goofy long-armed thing? Cutting himself open and exposing maggots? Some silly tongue wagging? An obscene phone call with more tongue wagging action? Nobody needs to make a Freddy Krueger parody movie because he's already sort of a parody. I also don't really understand his character and what he does or how he does it. Is that explained in sequels or something? I believe I've only seen a couple of these. But he's inside dreams and then he's outside dreams. What's going on? Is this whole thing thought out very well? Am I just not paying enough attention? Freddy also gets some pretty silly things to say--a blasphemous reference to his scissor hands [By the way--has Johnny Depp appeared in a third scissor hand movie? Is there a scissor hand trifecta that has been completed?], "I'm your boyfriend now," "I'm gonna split you in two." They really should have made him a silent killer, instead of a snarling trash talker. Of course, nothing Freddy says seems dopey compared to Jsu Garcia's Rod, a character who not only says "Up yours with a twirling lawnmower" but also throws out a line I used to woo Jennifer: "I woke up with a hard-on, and it had your name on it." Depp, in his first movie, also gets a lot of stupid things to say. Still, he still manages to be Johnny Depp in this. He's got an It, a charisma, even in a small, silly role. This isn't all silliness, however. Tina's death--a scene where she is dragged up to the ceiling--looks really cool, and Johnny Depp's demise is also creative and pulled off with just enough black comedy. And if you look fast, you'll see Bruce Campbell. And I really do like Freddy's look, at least when he's not moving. So there is quite a bit of coolness in this little horror movie. But then there's a character reading from a book called Booby Traps and Improvised Anti-Personnel Devices and the whole movie threatens to turn into Home Alone and the silliness is back. This is a movie that really needed to pick a tone. They certainly picked a tune, and those repeated nine notes really got tiresome quickly. It all ends with a waving skeleton, one of the goofiest things that I've ever seen, an image that makes me wonder if this entire movie is a joke.

Question: Who do you think would win in a battle between Freddy and Jason? 

Rubin and Ed

1991 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Titular Ed befriends the reclusive and bizarre Rubin in order to try to sell him something. Rubin's trying to get over the death of his cat, and Ed agrees to help him find a place to bury the pet. They wind up in the desert.

Ed Tuttle: "It's going to get weird now, isn't it?"

No, Ed. It starts weird. This comes off like a low-brow Waiting for Godot with absurdist arguments about whether there's hair on a head or if a cat is really dead. Or if Andy Warhol is really a great artist or if he "sucks a big one." Crispin Glover is deliriously odd in this movie that is quirky anyway. He's got a pair of striped pants, perhaps the same pair of pants that Richard Harris was singing about in "MacArthur Park," and these platform shoes that I'd imagine are hard to walk around the desert in. In fact, there were moments that I gasped audibly and feared for Crispin Glover's life a few times as he walked around in those things. It's the same garb he wore for his infamous Letterman appearance when he came on the show as his character but neglected to tell anybody associated with the show and just freaked everybody out. This is the perfect kind of role for Glover. He gets some outbursts, gets a chance to dance rhythmically with a squeaky mouse, and has a dream sequence that will be the best thing I see in a movie in my entire lifetime. That, my friends, is no hyperbole. It's got this in it:

I should have spoiler-alerted that, but you can still know about that one and be surprised by it, so it probably doesn't matter. That cat, by the way, can eat a whole watermelon. One of my old favorites, Howard Hesseman, does an admirable job of keeping up with Crispin. He gets a few angry outbursts himself. And they bounce lines off each other like this:

Rubin: "Why don't you keep your hands off other people's refrigerators?"
Ed: "Look, you don't eat those things, do you? A guy could get sick eating cats."
Rubin: "It's a pet!"

The whole thing cracked me up even though I could understand the argument that it runs out of gas about halfway through and has a few tangents--barking people, dancing bullies--that make it a little too goofy. Still, this is one of those undiscovered gems of a movie, and I'm throwing it in my list of favorite Crispin Glover films.

A Report on the Party and the Guests

1966 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A group of picnickers are bullied and later fed by a creepy guy.

First--no, I do not know for sure that this is the right poster. But just look at that. You're telling me you're not rushing out to buy tickets to a movie after seeing this poster? I'm wondering if it's the wrong poster because although I don't speak Czech, that title looks like "A slobbering hostage" to me instead of A Report on the Party and the Guests. This movie was actually "banned forever" at one point, but it wasn't because of the poster. No, that was because this movie attacks the idea of conformity in a unique and subversive way. That or it has characters having an elaborate dinner party by a lake which might be dangerous. This movie has a Bunuel feel, probably because the characters are enjoying an elaborate dinner party. And like the last Bunuel movie I wrote about, this one feels a little like a cinematic joke but with a punchline that isn't as satisfying. Although the situations are very strange, the movie isn't really funny. As a matter of fact, the vibe I got from the whole thing was more in the neighborhood of creepy. It's a short film that I'm glad that I watched, but I wonder if I'll remember it in a few months.

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.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for June: Johnny Suede

1991 movie

Rating: 16/20 (Mark: 18/20)

Plot: The titular wanna-be teenage idol is missing that little special something to complete him. Luckily for him, that something--a pair of black suede shoes--lands on top of a phone booth he is using. As he works to get his band going, he juggles a relationship with a woman who already has a creepy photographer boyfriend, another relationship with a teacher of special needs students, and chicken-eating time with albino rock star Freak Storm.

Here are some of director Tom DiCillo's memories of making Johnny Suede which I found interesting. One of the things I really like about this movie is that it's a classic example of a director doing a whole lot of cool things with not a lot of money. Link Wray's guitar during the opening credits automatically sets this great mood, the kind of music that--for me at least--gives the story this almost timeless quality, and then it almost clashes with this weird cheap post-apocalyptic world littered with Christmas decorations, one where people go to discotheques with underpants on their heads and lizards roam freely the landscape of a pompadoured young man's subconscious. Johnny's sort-of nightmare fairy tale world is like a slightly less-sinster, wackier, and more comedic David Lynch world. Not that David Lynch's movies aren't funny. Johnny Suede is just more overtly funny, I think.

I do think this movie is hilarious, and since you could get away with calling it a romantic comedy, I'd say it's one of the more satisfying and funniest examples of the genre. Nick Cave's offer of chicken is one of those scenes that makes me laugh a little bit while I'm typing about it. I also loved the scene where Darlette doesn't like Johnny's Ricky Nelson single and asks if he's got anything else. He says he does and flips the record over. She asks for Freak Storm (believe it or not, that's only the second coolest name in the movie), he gets irritated and criticizes the plant she gave him ("Why would I give you a dead plant?"), she leaves, he catches Flip Doubt (there's the coolest) peeking through a curtain, he runs after her, she's just waiting in the shadows downstairs anyway, he says he's going out, she asks him if she can wait until he gets back and then goes upstairs, he ponders the situation, and then Ricky Nelson starts playing again. That is a little bit of comedy genius, such a well-written little joke that also manages to add a little bit to the pair of characters. The long scene in which Deke and Johnny make a pros/cons list is also very funny. The "Sorry I rip you shit" picture that Yvonne's student made Johnny also cracks me up, but not as much as Pitt's reaction to first his reading and then Keener's explanation. And for whatever reason, I just love this dialogue:

Deke: "When we gonna get the band started?"
Johnny: "I just told you, man--as soon as we get a gun."

Oh, and there's this one:

Darlette: "With those shoes on, you remind me of a prince in a fairy tale."
Johnny: "Yeah, well with that pink dress, you remind me of a strawberry ice cream cone."

So romantic. But with a lesser cast, this wouldn't have worked. The dialogue, which is admittedly dopey or corny, would have come across as nothing but dopey or corny. But I love the way the actors play it straight with this almost soap-opera delivery of the lines. Along with the aforementioned cheapness of the location, it gives the film this style that I really like--like a withered soap opera. I had seen Brad Pitt in a couple films before this one, and I was not impressed at all. When I saw this for the first time, I didn't get it and thought he was pretty awful here, too. But upon a second viewing, you don't need to look further than that opening scene where he's giving himself this look in the mirror to realize how good he is at creating this character, and he's about perfect as this naive man-child thing. He's got the look (and the hair apparently) to create this confident outer shell, this facade, but on the inside, he is fragile and gooey and really immature. He unfortunately reminds me of Hayden Christensen on Naboo during the "Suede is a funny thing" speech though, and I probably could have survived with less shots of Pitt in those ill-fitting and holey underpants. Alison Moir (Darlette) nails that soap opera actress thing, and she's cute as a button. And that accent? Oh, my--it'll melt you! If you look closely and are as perverse as I am, by the way, you can catch a brief nipple. Watching the scene where she comes to Johnny's pad for a date, gives him socks, and then announces that she has to go makes me think she should have had a great career playing characters in romantic comedies. And Catherine Keener? Any close readers of my blog (not sure I have any of those) know that I have a thing for Keener anyway. She's just so good here, something a little more real and human than the others. There's hurt there, a little confidence, a lot of fear, and this upperhand in this fledgling relationship with this new guy, and you can see it all in those wonderful eyes of hers. I love the look she gives Johnny after she and he share a "real kiss," and she's incredible in that "watermelon seed" scene. I'm not sure what's going on with her hair in this though. Calvin Levels is another who should have had a much bigger career after this. Hell, he could have been a Huxtable! He's good as Deke and has a great smile. Deke, by the way, was almost Steve Buscemi, but there's no way Buscemi would have been able to pull off that sweet spin move during the bands rehearsal in that freezing abandoned warehouse or wherever it was. And you've got Nick Cave who only needs to succeed at being a presence in this movie, stand out and draw attention to himself. He does that really well, and that whole scene with Johnny and Freak Storm in the alley is a lot of fun. You get Samuel L. Jackson in a very tiny but very cool role as Bebop, a badass with a standup bass. Love this dialogue:

Bebop: " I seen a cat cut half in two once."
Conan the accordionist (played by a potential Torgo Award winning Tom Jarmusch, brother of Jim): "You saw it happen?"
Bebop: "No, but I seen 'em put in two bags though."

And then the band plays, and they sound like they could have gone places if Bebop wouldn't have run off or if Deke or Johnny had more talent or if Conan the accordionist would have had a more prominent role. The original songs in this are a lot of fun, by the way. The song about eating a carrot for breakfast should have been a hit. "Never Girl" is great both before and after Deke "gasses up the tempo," and Freak Storm's "Mama's Boy" song is sad and beautiful. Oh, and the landlord's improvised "Hey, Hey, Today's the Day" is pretty wonderful, too.

There are a lot of little things that I like about Johnny Suede that really make it one of those movies that make it easy to overlook its flaws--you know, like the completely unnecessary narrator--and keep it on my list of movies that I'd call a sentimental favorite. There's the Terror in Tiny Town reference and Pitt's "Even the horses are midgets!" There's Peter McRobbie's pasty, lurking Flip Doubt who really does like he wandered off the set of Lost Highway or Blue Velvet. There's a great tiny performance by a guy named Ahmed Ben Larby as an angry taxi driver. I looked up his filmography. He's got only seven roles, but one of them (in The Cowboy Way with Woody Harrelson and Keifer Sutherland) is playing another taxi driver. And there's one of my favorite movie midgets (again, that's only for the alliteration, so calm down, little people) ever with Joseph Barry using an antenna to look at Catherine Keener's undergarments. I can identify, little fellow. Johnny Suede is the only feature-length film he's acted in, but he was Haley Joel Osment's stand-in for The Sixth Sense and he did stunts in The Royal Tenenbaums. And those three surreal dream sequences with lizards, exploding windows, a shot of a lizard and a gun that looks like it could have been a still from Herzog's Bad Lieutenant, a naked old guy? Far out.

But what's this movie about? Identity? Is it a coming-of-age story? There's a lot about time in this movie, and Johnny is almost an anachronism. "I'm not into now," he says. "Now is a fly's fart in the wind." Later, he claims that "Good music has no time." What's time do to characters like Johnny? There's also a lot of symbolism or possible symbolism in this movie, and I just don't get it all despite having seen this several times, twice in the last month. What do you think about the following?

--shoes--the "one thing missing"--shoes thrown and shoes lost?
--Johnny's guitar--what's that represent for the protagonist?
--the hairdryer that doesn't work
--the gun
--painting, the job that Deke and Johnny do really really well
--that hand he finds in the street and its twin on the "Be a bank teller" sign in the subway
--the plant that might have been dead when Darlette gave it to him
--the girlfriends themselves--what do Darlette and Yvonne represent for Johnny?
--signs--an exit sign and a "dead end" street sign in the background
--Johnny's puking after singing the song Freak Storm gave him (or was that just the chicken)

So, friends--what did you think of our Oprah Movie Club pick for this month?

Pi

1998 math movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A brilliant but paranoid mathematician is inspired to get a haircut after a Hasidic Jew and some stock market thugs bully him and try to steal his numbers.

You have to love a movie that gives you the same feeling you'd have if you were watching television and saw somebody standing outside your window and staring at you with bulging eyes. Like a modern update of Eraserhead but with a lot more numbers and a conflict you can taste a little better, Pi doesn't really show us anything that you'd see only in the realm of the subconscious but still manages to feel like a strange little third-person nightmare. Connecting the pieces is difficult, more so for a math illiterate, so you go with the greasy flow and feel this one. And it feels claustrophobic, troubling. Aronofsky comes out with directorial guns a'blazing, throwing tricky camera angles and other gimmicks at us to not only push his story along but to put us right inside Maximillian's scrambled head. There's just something so nerdy and poignant about the whole experience. I also loved Mark Margolis, probably because he reminded me of Patrick Magee from A Clockwork Orange. I wanted to learn how to play Go just so I could sit across the table and play with him, probably touch his knee accidentally on purpose. Aronofsky's usual themes of obsession and lives knocked out of balance by obsession are present here, and for a first feature, this seems very assured and confident albeit artsy-fartsy and difficult to completely connect with. Clint "Pop Will Eat Itself" Mansell's score perfectly compliments. A playfully nightmarish flick.

Oprah Movie Club for March: Paprika

2006 anime

Rating: 15/20 (Mark: 12/20)

Plot: Some fiend's stolen a dream machine, and it's up to a scientist and her titular alter-ego to save humanity. Or something like that. Honestly, I wasn't nearly smart enough to figure out what the hell was going on here.

But I liked what I was looking at! This stretches the elastic boundaries of what animation can do, dips deep inside the old noggin, scrambles things around, and leaves you baffled but aesthetically pleased. I thought the story was frustratingly incoherent, but that might not be the movie's fault. Then again, my brother's reasonably intelligent and was also confused, so maybe it was the movie's fault. He's not seen Inception, a film that seems to have borrowed a lot of this one's ideas--Jello floors, elevator rides through the subconscious, frog musicians. I have seen Inception which might have given me an advantage although I did have an extra obstacle in trying to avoid thinking about Leonardo Dicaprio. The guy's just dreamy. On second thought, I'm not sure there were frogs in Inception. I think part of the problem for me (and again, keep in mind that I'm a dumb guy) is that I had trouble understanding the motivations of most of the characters. There's a character we never really get to meet who befuddled me, and the villain's logic never really made much sense to me. But again, I did appreciate the manic creativity and goofy surrealism, and cartoon nudity always is good for a bonus point or two. I don't see how there could have possibly been enough room on a storyboard for all the ideas that show up on screen here. You get walking refrigerators, giant headed guys, butterfly girls, talking dolls, musical animals. The screen's just filled with this stuff, and even though a lot of the imagery was redundant, I looked forward to seeing that parade. As much as I enjoyed the cartoon visually, however, I hated it aurally. The soundtrack, other than the cute and unhinged parade music, was irritating. A lot of times, I watch a movie like this (Synecdoche, New York; anything from Czechoslovakia; You've Got Mail) and think that if I just watched it a second time, I'd understand it all a lot better. I think I could watch Paprika a dozen times and still not figure out what was going on.

OK, what other Oprah Movie Clubbers got a chance to see this one? What did you think?

Lost Highway

1997 psychological nightmare

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A jealous guy meets a creepy pale guy at a party and then either murders his wife or doesn't murder his wife. He probably does. While in jail for the crime, he transforms into a mechanic and makes a series of decisions that are probably going to get him into some trouble. There's the creepy pale guy again. Cue backward explosion! Marilyn Manson! And cut.

I think David Lynch's last three movies were made as some sort of test. This, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive. I've not really had the urge to see any of them again unlike Eraserhead which I could watch once a week. These three are a test on the senses, perplexing and frustrating riddles, clumsy nightmares. Thinking about any of those three movies--a trilogy? They are linked thematically, right?--kind of gives me a headache actually. They're so dark, so dismal and hopeless. The non-linear approach is fine, but Lost Highway seems to almost break its own rules, and Lynch creates this world that very few people will want to enter and fewer will want to stick around in. Neo-psycho-noir, blacker than black. It's not always entertaining even though there are some things you kind of want to laugh at and other things that you'll never forget (that conversation with the creepy pale guy at the party is as terrifying as dialogue gets). This starts with Scott Walker, by the way, so that's cool. And Richard Pryor's in it, only he doesn't look so good. His best moment: "There are nine people down here. I'll let you ask seven of them, and if you can get that price from one of them, I'll let you ask the other two." My very favorite moment though is probably getting to watch Mr. Eddy's road rage. Ultimately, I think this a movie about movies, but I'm not completely sure, and I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about this movie in a bar. It's as fascinating a two-plus hours as you'll get with a feature film, but I can't say it's entirely pleasurable. Either something is wrong with David Lynch or something is wrong with the human mind in general. I'm guessing it's the latter.

Idiots and Angels

2008 adult cartoon

Rating: 16/20

Plot: He goes to work, he's mean to people, and he hangs out at the local bar where he lusts after the owner's wife. And that's about it for our protagonist until he wakes up one morning to discover wings growing on his back. They seem to have an effect on him--making him do good--so he desperately tries to get rid of them. Others try to figure out ways to exploit the wings for profit.

Easily my favorite Bill Plympton feature. Or featurette for that matter. See the color on the poster? Those are pretty much the colors you get throughout the film, but they're beautiful grays and they work well with the dream-like nature of the strange, Bukowski-esque plot, helping to set a definite tone and bringing a focus on the character and his flighty plight. I don't think there are any spoken words, just sound effects and a soundtrack provided by Pink Martini and Tom Waits. But there's still a lot of dark humor featuring the artist's usual shape-shifting characters who we get to spy on at their humorously lowest lows. Regardless of what I generally say about Plymptoons, I do like the way he animates character movement, and here, they move through his typically bleak settings in grossly poetic ways. Plympton's surreal hand-drawn animations are often very ugly, appropriately as ugly as human beings, and whereas I usually think they work better in small doses, this one just connects. I'll have to reread Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" to find parallels.

Viva La Muerte

1971 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After some war and a little boy's father's arrest for Communist suspicions, the boy tries to make sense of everything and figure out his mother's role in daddy's tribulations.

This odd mix of dream logic and historical happenings has an El Topo texture (indeed, the main character is named Fando like another Jodorowsky character--Fando) but it doesn't quite match the drive and the otherworldly brilliance or spiritual depth. The weirdness comes at you in episodic waves, and after a while, it just collapses under the weight of a bunch of kind of repetitive but nevertheless shocking imagery. A cow is eviscerated quite poetically, about as erotic as I imagine the slaughtering of livestock can be. That scene, falling near the end of Viva La Muerte, manages to stand out as an exclamation point following a series of psychotic fantasy sequences and pseudo-psych shenanigans. The images might be memorable, but I had trouble really absorbing them and couldn't be sure if they really added up to much of anything. I did really like the artwork during the opening credits, surreal Boschian-inspired torture scenes drawn by Roland Topor, a guy who helped make Fantastic Planet, wrote the book that Polanski later made into The Tenant, and had a part in the Werner Herzog vampire movie. I liked the accompanying silly French folk song, too. This is probably worth watching for anybody with an interest in the cinematic ideals of Jodorowsky and his peeps. I've seen it twice now, but I won't be in a hurry to watch it a third time.

Horrors of Malformed Men

1969 malformed men movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy wakes up in an insane asylum with no idea who he is or how he got there. Clues surface, including a beautiful folk song that he links to an island. He assumes the identity of a dead man and sneaks his way on the island. And what's on the island? [Spoiler Alert!] Malformed men! Oh, snap!

Artistic trash, surface B-grade horror but with arthouse sensibilities that makes it the type of thing you should watch in your basement while stroking either your goatee or your girlfriend's goatee. It's sort of a Dr. Moreau as David Lynch would see it if he watched it through goggles he ordered from a Japanese pornographic comic book. It's also got this surreal noir flavor, a bizarre nightmare mystery that is likely only completely unpredictable because you won't be able to keep the characters straight and be confused anyway. All kinds of psycho-psychological stuff going on here; the characters who survive the experience will need years of counseling. I wonder if any of this malformed man business has to do with the bomb droppings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When this movie eventually gets to the island where the deformity is on full display, things get really interesting. Probably because that's where the mad scientist character played by Tatsumi Hijikata boogies onto the scene with moves that would anticipate the most demented chunks of the disco era. You get the impression that his fingernails could kill you. Haunting and perversely poetic, it's horror that doesn't necessarily scare you as much as it troubles you. Not for everybody--a lot of people would probably just want to wake up from this nightmare by popping it out of the dvd player. I thought it was a treat of grotesque visuals though and enjoyed it despite a clunky story and characters I couldn't keep track of.