Movie Club Selection for April: Do the Right Thing

1989 joint

Rating: 19/20

Plot: A day in the lives of a handful of Brooklynites on Stuyvesant Street. It's so hot. How hot is it? It's so hot that it can melt the melting pot! Racial tensions burble.

A recipe for disaster--an Italian-run pizzeria with no pictures of black people on the walls, some old-school blacks who have been there and done that several times over, some new-school disillusioned punks, a guy with a boom box and only one song, Korean grocers, a sprinkling of Hispanics. Mix all ingredients in a large pepper pot with two quarts of water over intense heat. Season with Chuck D. and Flavor Flav screaming things about Elvis at you.

Speaking of Public Enemy, I wonder if "Fight the Power" won or was at least nominated for Best Song. And speaking of the songs, here's some interesting trivia: I noticed that left-handed pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee did the musical score for Do the Right Thing. Unless (and this is doubtful) there's another Bill Lee out there.

This movie has an infectious energy that is impossible not to love, from the Rosie Perez dance off against herself during the opening credits to the powerful and devastating denouement. It's alive, alive in a refreshing way. The amount of color rivals Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and I'm not just referring to Samuel L. Jackson's array of hatwear. The neighborhood's drenched in color, like some little kids got a hold of a box of Crayolas (the bulbous 900 crayon box) and just went nuts. The characters are colorful, too. Stuttering Smiley, weirdly contrasting with the backdrops in almost every shot he's in. Ossie Davis's Da Mayor brings his street wisdom and contradictions. Sal and his sons, Sister Mama, Mookie, Radio Raheem. The latter, by the way, reminds me of a young me actually. When I was in middle school, I carried around a boom box and blasted my Spike Jones and the City Slickers "Best Of" cassette. Also, my peers used to call me Sweet Dick, so this movie brings back all kinds of memories for me. But I digress. Such colorful characters, and the actors who bring them to life are terrific. For three-fourths of the film, we're treated (and it is a treat!) to comic vignettes, the story bouncing rapidly from character to character. I loved seeing the characters roaming about in the background when it wasn't their turn to be the center of attention, too. But there's this building, underlying intensity, this anger bubbling beneath all those colors, so the climax, even though it successfully shocks and disturbs, isn't totally surprising. Finally, I was impressed with the deft camerawork in this one. There were some really creative camera angles, and I liked how smoothly the camera maneuvered through the characters on Stuyvesant Street. It slides with grace, especially impressive when showing conflict. The scene with Smiley hanging up that picture borders on "Too Much," but I think it's powerful, leaving things wonderfully foggy. This movie is stupid fresh!

I'll save discussions about the movie's message for the comments.

Step Brothers

2008 "comedy"

Rating: 6/20 (Anonymous: 4/20; Pump or Astro-Pretzel: 3/20)

Plot: A couple unemployed middle-aged good-for-absolutely-nothing jackasses become the titular step-brothers after their parents hook up at a convention and later marry. Initially, they can't stand each other, but once they realize they have a lot in common, like their shared affinity for night vision goggles, they become friends. But their shared interests and attempts to start their own company threaten to tear the happy newlyweds apart.

I wanted to watch In the Line of Fire, but my step brother wanted to watch this instead. We fought over that for a while--rolling around on the floor, poking eyes, farting on each other, giving wedgies, kicking nutsacks, etc.--before realizing that we had a love of Mary Steenburgen in common. Then, we high-fived each other awkwardly, and he broke his finger. And that story, ladies and gentlemen, is just as clever as the one in the movie Step Brothers. Attempting to recapture the magic of Talladega Nights, a movie I've been told is a classic, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly stupid it up in this one that reminds me simultaneously of a whole bunch of predictable 80's crap and every single other Will Ferrell movie I've ever seen. There's not a single laugh to be had in this thing. It fits right in with that disturbing trend in modern comedies where lazy writers assume that creating really uncomfortable situations for characters who could never actually exist is automatically going to be funny. Awkward is not a synonym for hilarious. I should know because I looked it up, and I'm an English teacher.

It took me a while to remember it, but I made a promise around Christmas that I would not have another Will Ferrell movie on this blog. See? I'm really sorry that my own step brother made me break that promise. Maybe I'll fart on him later.

Girl Shy

1924 silent romantic comedy (with horses)

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Because of a speech impediment and a less-than-impressive status as a poor tailor's assistant, some character probably named Harold has trouble meeting women. He's girl shy. But that doesn't stop him from writing a piece of nonfiction with the ambiguous title How to Make Love to Women and attempting to find a publisher for the tome. He eventually does meet a girl on a train and engages in the lengthiest and most awkward sex scene in silent cinema history. A horse is involved.

Question: If a stutterer stutters in a silent movie, and there's no sound enabling you to hear it, does it make a sound? Another solid Harold Lloyd movie with his typically likable protagonist, some very sweet romantic moments, and an explosion of craziness at the end where the actor does something wildy funny (i.e. climbing up the side of a building [Safety Last] or clang-clang-clanging on a trolley through New York streets [Speedy]). In Girl Shy, he's racing against the clock, stealing cars and endangering the lives of everybody around him. I bought the sweetness of his character a little more than in some of his other movies, but I also enjoyed how he had no issues with misbehaving like a four-eyed gangster rapper. And I'm really impressed with the amount of vehicles they managed to throw into that wild chase scene at the end. I think it was a zeppelin away from breaking some sort of vehicular record. This also may have gotten a bonus point for a Harold Lloyd spanking scene. Hot! No way any warm-blooded male could watch that without becoming aroused. Which reminds me--a baseball coach at my school was telling me today that one of his players couldn't make it to practice because he injured himself by "diving onto his bed with a hard-on," hurting the member. It's doubtful, but I wondered if he was watching Girl Shy when that happened.

Another really gay movie poster, by the way. It might not deliver the gay that Feet First delivers, but it's still really gay.

Band of Outsiders

1964 Godard funk

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Two buddies named Franz and Arthur meet the fetching Odile in an English language class. They fall for her, likely because she's fetching, and try to persuade her to help them steal a wad of cash from a bureau in her aunt's house. Love triangles, Hollywood B-movie imitation, half-assed crime sprees, and dancing ensue.

This is Godard at his most playful, most winking, and most ornery. Snippets of jazz in the score, a scene featuring a minute of silence (I think it's short about twenty seconds though), a lengthy dance sequence, wanton melodrama, cheeky omniscient narration. Following (not directly) the more sophisticated Contempt and Breathless, this is like a crazy uncle of a movie, standing up right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner to show you that he's got his napkin sticking out the opened fly of his trousers, a cloth phallus that he, of course, points to with both thumbs. I like the three leads. Well, I guess Sami Frey as Franz (reminds me of John Lurie a bit) and Claude Brasseur (no relation) are fine. I enjoyed some of Franz's mannerisms anyway, cool-guy pointing and show-off Fedora tricks. But honestly, I'm not sure how either of those guys did because whenever Anna Karina was on the screen, I couldn't take my eyes off her and nothing else mattered. I'm not just talking about nothing elses in the movie either. Nothing else in life mattered, nothing in the past, nothing in the future, and certainly nothing in the present. She's a goddess! The narrative's simple, but the dialogue's clever, self-referential and almost-funny. The style's simple, too, but deceptively so, especially during a scene in Odile's house where violence begins to escalate, a scene that almost works like a ballet with Godard using the architecture similarly to how he used space in Breathless. Tarantino named his production company after this movie, and it reminds me a bit of Jeunet's work although that could just be the playfulness and narrator use. This is one crazy uncle you won't complain about after you catch him fisting the stuffing when Grandma turns her back.

Cat People

1942 Meow Mix commercial

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A horny guy marries an immigrant who may or may not be a cat. Person. Cat person. He realizes soon after their wedding day that she has no interest in sleeping with him and decides to hook up with his secretary. The wife, already stressed out because she thinks she's a cat, finds out. Cat fight!

Jacques Tourneur's films are stylish but not overtly or extravagantly stylish. This is a quiet Tourneur movie like I Walked with a Zombie, meaning it doesn't have a big goofy demon like or Night of the Beast a big Robert Mitchum like Out of the Past. What it shares with those movies is Tourneur's good eye. The visuals don't pop, and there's nothing in this movie that you could describe as flashy, but I really like how shadows and light (especially shadows) are used to frame the titular Cat Person. The great-named Simone Simon plays her, and I liked her accent in her face, not necessarily in that order, in this. Like the direction, her performance is quiet, and she plays desperate very well. The dialogue's really good for a 1940's semi-horror film, too, but it's the simple style that really makes this a winner. It's a sneaky non-style where the director's making it look so easy, but this is stuffed with some terrific scenes--the pool scene, the pet shop scene, some shots at a museum and in the guy's office. Mysterious and quietly haunting.

Master of the Flying Guillotine

1976 kung-fu classic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: After a one-armed man kills a pair of his former students, the blind and bearded titular master of the titular weapon of mass decapitation goes on a one-armed man killing spree to get revenge. The shenanigans threaten to ruin a kung-fu tournament.

It's no wonder this is a favorite of Tarantino and kung-fu aficionados. It's balls-to-the-wall action, that sort of uncouth action that nudges aside any semblance of plot. The characters are very colorful. The least interesting character is probably the hero, the one-armed boxer played by director Yu Wang. I'm not even sure that's a knock on the one-armed boxer played by director Yu Wang, but when you have a disco-dancing flamboyant Thai boxer, a guy named Wins-Without-a-Knife who wins with a knife, and a guy whose arms extend to a length of about ten feet when he fights, having only a single arm is not going to seem like a big deal. I like when the weirdness in these movies is played straight. I'd almost understand if, following the first time that guy's arms extended, there was a comic shot of a guy with really big eyes and a springy noise sound effect, but Master of the Flying Guillotine doesn't have anything like that and is better for it. The bad guy's awesome, and the guillotine might be one of the most menacing weapons in the history of martial arts movies. I didn't think about the special effects used to make the guillotine be a flying one, and that's a credit to the special effects team. This is a "tournament" martial arts film, and there's a bulk near the middle made up of a series of fights. It's a great excuse to show a variety of characters and fighting styles. Another thing great about this is the music, some really cool krautrock stuff including Neu!. And the climactic fight scene between the one-armed man and the blind man? As epic as you'd think a fight between a one-armed man and a blind man would be! Definitely recommended for fans of the genre.

Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South during an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

1986 self-indulgent documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy's given some funds to make a historical documentary about General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea that devastated the South during the Civil War. He gets sidetracked and ends up making a documentary about his failed attempts to find love. Tracing Sherman's path, Ross McElwee meets various women, falls for them, and then watches his chances at a lasting relationship with them fall to pieces. Meanwhile, nightmares about nuclear war keep him up at night.

Full disclosure: I had to give this a bonus point once I found out the title was much longer than Sherman's March. At 2 1/2 hours, this is a little too long, and I'm not really sure who the audience would be for this sort of thing. People like me, I guess. It's got a Woody Allen vibe (or maybe a Michael-Moore-without-a-Point vibe), philosophically self-conscious, and folks annoyed by Woody's filmed dissertations on romantic love would likely be just as annoyed with this but for a lot longer. And it's essentially a guy making his own reality show in a time that predates reality television. But I like how McElwee's inner conflicts revolving around art as well as love become universal, and the freeform approach is as revealing as it is humorous. The film tackles a trio of discursive topics--love, nuclear bombs, Sherman--but they somehow come together as a cohesive whole. It's also a series of nice portraits of random people from America's South, almost working as an ethnological study on the side. You've got militia men, a woman who thinks slavery should be allowed for blacks who want to be slaves, and island-dwelling hippie chicks. The episodic, meandering structure makes this a very watchable, entertaining 150 or so minutes, and chances are, if you don't mind the guy, you'll probably enjoy this movie just fine.

The Legend of the Suram Fortress

1986 folk tale adaptation

Rating: 17/20

Plot: All these crazy Georgian cats want to do is build their goddamn fortress, but it keeps falling down. Drastic measures have to be taken to ensure that the walls will stand.

My third Sergei Parajanov movie (see this one here and that one there, both highly recommended for anybody with a tolerance for the unconventional) and another winner. This one came after a lengthy sabbatical when Parajanov was jailed for homosexuality and smuggling religious icons [My guess is that doing just one of those is fine, but combined? Oh, boy.] and is somewhere in between The Color of Pomegranates and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, borrowing the folkloric source material and general narrative feel of the latter and the visual flair and complete abandoning of cinematic conventions of the former. Being from Georgia, Parajanov's movies are naturally foreign, but his are in this second level of foreign movies, the types of film that seem almost alien or made by a creative spirit who either hasn't seen very many movies, refuses to be influenced by other movies, or just can't obey the rules. His movies are in a different spoken language, but they're also in a completely new cinematic language. Like Pomegranates, this has these great artistic shots filled with numerous colors and is stuffed with symbols, most which I'm missing too much cultural context to really connect with. The actors stare mutely directly into the camera, and although there are some close-ups, most of the movie is made up of these deep deep (way back, it might be, it could be, it is) long shots where you almost have to squint to see what's going on. The narrative's confusing, but the strong mood makes up for it and I always felt like I had enough of the plot to grasp on to keep me from being frustrated. Also like Pomegranates, I couldn't piece everything together, but the visual details and novel camera work kept me interested for the duration. It's like my brain was saying, "Hey, wait a second. Can we pop in Dumb and Dumber or something? This Russian crap is confusing!" but my eyes just kept saying, "Ssshh! Hold up a second. Let's see what Parajanov shows us next!" and my brain answered, "Fine! I never get what I want! I need to be in the cranium of somebody who's not a pretentious knob!" and my eyes said, "If you don't shut up, I'm coming up there!" My ears then added, "Hey, the music's really cool, too! It'd be nice if I could hear it over your bitchin', Central Nervous System!" I had to pause the film so my nutsack, the pacifist, could break up the little fight. Anyway, a great movie for that class of cinephile like me who appreciate visuals and aesthetics more than anything else going on in a movie.

There's one more essential Parajanov (Paradjanov?) film--Ashik Kerib--to watch and then I'll revisit those other two again. And speaking of movies from this area of the world, I just remembered my goal to watch all of Tarkovsky's movies this year.

Kick-Ass

2010 comic book movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Although he's not been bitten by a radioactive chicken or peed upon by a radioactive monkey, comic aficionado Dave decides to become a superhero. He sends off for a costume, dubs himself Kick-Ass, and wanders the city in search of crime to fight. He finds out quickly that fighting crime ain't all that easy after his first attempt puts him in the hospital with numerous broken bones. But he doesn't give up on his dream and eventually gets some media attention for his exploits. Meanwhile, a father/daughter crime fighting duo with actual superhero training and a hodgepodge of weaponry make plans to overthrow a big-time crime lord responsible for the death of their wife/mother. Their paths cross.

I'm not a comic book guy. Kairow is, and that's probably why one night during our freshman year at Johnson Bible College, the two of us and a guy called Wombat dressed up as superheros, left our dorm after curfew, and tried to find our campus security guard. I'm not completely sure what our goal was. We were probably just bored, and after Kairow had discovered that his pant leg (after he cut it off to make himself some bitchin' jean shorts) actually fit over his head, there's no way it wouldn't become a mask. And if he had a mask, he'd have to have a cape. And if he had a mask and a cape and a thing of Stain Stick and a cool superhero name like Stain Stick Man, then I'd have to have a costume. So I become the Human Fly with a jock-strap worn over some running tight things and a see-through hat over my face. And a tennis racket. I think that was the only thing I ever used the tennis racket for actually. Wombat was the type of guy who had both boxing gloves (no, he was not exactly a boxer; too round) and a monk outfit, so he became the Boxing Monk, probably the ballsiest of the trio since his face wasn't even covered. We waited outside our dorm entrance for a while before wandering off to find the security guard. We finally located them (didn't make me feel all that secure, I must say) and approached the car. Then, probably anticlimactically, we had the following conversation:

Stain Stick Man: Hello!
Security Guy: Hi.
Stain Stick Man: What are you boys doing out so late tonight?
Security Guy: Not much. How about you guys?
Stain Stick Man: Just fightin' crime.

Then, we walked back to the dorm. And that was pretty much that.

My point? We almost came up with this idea before the comic book was written. And it was a much more entertaining way to spend ninety minutes. No, I'm not saying that the makers of Kick-Ass ripped us off and owe us royalties or anything. I'm not exactly saying that it's a rip-off of anything. But it did have a tone similar to Scott Pilgrim, only less thrilling and with a protagonist who wasn't quite as likable or Michael Cera-ish. The romantic subplot made it seem derivative, like an 80's movie, and there wasn't anything going on with the main plot that felt like anything I've never seen before. It wasn't funny enough or playful enough to be satire either, so to me, it was just another comic book movie, and aside from a couple vibrant fight scenes featuring the cute little girl, a pretty tired one. Oh, and Nic Cage's surprisingly subdued performance as Big Daddy. I like how he Adam Wests it up when in the superhero garb, and the majority of the fun in Kick-Ass, is courtesy of America's finest actor. Craig Ferguson's also got a cameo, and it's always good to see him.

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

1966 superhero B-movie

Rating: 5/20 (Mark: 11/20)

Plot: After twenty-two years, Mark and Shane get to sit down and watch a movie they had only dreamed of seeing. Rat Pfink a Boo Boo! Shane decides that he likes technology after all, stops lamenting the death of the video store and even mom 'n' pop record stores, and declares that he is no longer a luddite. He agrees to be a guinea pig for the latest movie technology involving microchips implanted into the hypothalamus but passes away during the surgery. Fortunately, he died the happiest of men because he got to see Rat Pfink a Boo Boo before he died. His life flashes before his eyes, but he realizes it's not his life at all because he never stood up in the sidecar of a moving motorcycle driven by his sidekick, a mentally-challenged groundskeeper. He would never have been able to point with that kind of superheroic enthusiasm.

I really feel bad about giving this movie a 5/20 because a) I really really enjoyed watching it, and b) it's a borderline classic for a movie made for twenty dollars. In fact, despite the lowest production values you're ever likely to see (just check out those superhero costumes constructed of various articles of clothing garnered at Sears), completely inept filmmaking, and the worst comedy writing ever (admittedly, I did chuckle when Rat Pfink reminded Boo Boo what their one weakness is), you do get what I'd call some iconic moments. I want a poster of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo on the Pfinkmobile, Rat Pfink standing like Batman or Superman wouldn't have to balls to stand and pointing straight ahead. I'd probably stare at it for hours a day and never get any work done though. The story's completely schizophrenic. For the first forty minutes, there's not a single clue that this is even a superhero movie. It's barely a story even, a psychological non-thriller about some punks (one who likes to hide out in just the right trash can) crank-calling the girlfriend of a pop singer in order to later kidnap her and demand a ransom. Then, boom. Superheroes and comedy. There's an endless fight scene in a what I assume is Ray Dennis Steckler's (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies) backyard followed by an endless car chase. Then, boom. A killer gorilla. So Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (the title, by the way, was a mistake, but Steckler couldn't afford to fix it) has a little bit of everything unless you're looking for a plot. It doesn't have much of one of those. Mark enjoyed the "colorful" black and white and the gnarley go-go music.

Our heroes:

Irreversible

2002 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Alex goes out for a night of partying with current boyfriend Marcus and ex-boyfriend Pierre. She's raped and beaten nearly to death, and the two boys go hunting for the criminal in order to get revenge.

It's not a movie that I can give away the ending to because, like Memento, it's told in reverse chronological order. Instead, I don't want to give away the beginning which, with the help of Beethoven's 7th (2nd movement, the one I've told people I'd like to some day die to), gave me a genuine emotional jolt. The entire movie's an experience unlike any other. I don't necessarily mean that in a positive way, and I'm not likely to recommend this movie to anybody. Argentine director Gaspar Noe (this is my first Noe movie) displays a gift for making a movie into a very raw, visceral experience, and Irreversible is a movie you watch more with your guts than anything else. Discombobulating camera angles in which the handheld camera spirals and bends and undulates, barely discernible off-kilter incidental music, sickening lighting effects, and long takes where either nothing at all happens or too much to handle is happening make this a queasy viewing experience. Noe's techniques, which I'll tell you again are the types of things that a lot of viewers will despise, put the experiences of these characters, especially a scene of brutal violence and the infamous and seemingly endless rape scene, right in your face. It's strange because the effects and storytelling techniques make you aware that you're watching a movie and that these actors will be just fine, but it just doesn't sit right and you're disturbed. I had difficulty sleeping after watching Irreversible and didn't feel like watching a movie for several days afterward. And the reverse chronological order thing? Unlike Memento, a movie that felt cold and gimmicky to me the sole time I saw it, the trick adds an emotional intensity and fits right in thematically. I imagine that Noe reached his cinematic goals with Irreversible. I can't imagine that I'll ever feel like putting myself through it ever again. I do, however, really want to check out more of his oeuvre.

I also want to see Memento again.

Yellow Brick Road

2005 documentary

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A New York program called ANCHOR (Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation [Note: Shouldn't the acronym be ATNOCWHTOR then?]) brings together a collective of actors with a variety of disabilities to put on a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. The documentary captures everybody at work as they prepare for opening night and gives a glimpse of a few of the actors' lives outside the theater.

My favorite being the guy who was showing off his stuffed characters from Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. I was touched by this documentary and its subjects. My only gripes? I wish the performers would have done their own singing. The film opens with the mostly-wheelchair-bound Tin Man singing "If I Only Had a Heart," and I really liked his voice, and not just because he reminded me of a certain singer at Johnson Bible College. And I really wish we could have seen more of the actual production and really wonder why we didn't. Even though that makes it all a bit anticlimactic, this is still stuffed like a scarecrow with great moments--the hysterical reaction when one gal gets a part, watching the guy who played the Cowardly Lion show off his acting chops, the Tin Man's curtain call, the mayor of Munchkin Land trying to get his one line memorized. Yellow Brick Road is ultimately a look at some individuals who, despite not fitting most people's ideas about what actors look like or sound like, are given a chance to do something they love doing, and it's an absolute pleasure spending some time with them.

The Lickerish Quartet

1970 sex comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: In their big fancy castle, a middle-aged married couple watch a pornographic movie with their twenty-something son. The son objects; the father cracks jokes. Eventually, they decide to get out and walk to a carnival where they enjoy the stunt driving of a trio of motorcyclists. When the female driver removes her helmet, they recognize her as one of the actresses in the movie they were watching. At least they think it's her. Naturally, they take her back to the castle, have some really awkward conversations, and then show her the pornographic movie. The next morning [Spoiler Alert!], they all have sex with her. Individually, of course, because together would just be disturbing.

Came across this title in a "Cult Movies" book, and I can't say I'm really glad I did. It drools like the 1970s, weirdly alternating between jerk-off material smuttage to pretentious dick-with-the-audience arthouse flick. It's an Italian movie, and it has the feel of one even though the dialogue's in English. The acting is stilted, forced and awkward, and the writing doesn't help the actors out much. Observe:

Girl: Who has the gun?
Father: What gun?
Girl: To do the shooting?
Father: There isn't going to be any shooting.
Girl: Of course there is.
Father: Of course there isn't!

Actually, with dialogue like that, it's hard to imagine that this isn't a comedy. An artsy erotic comedy! I actually did laugh quite a bit if you stretch your definition of "laugh" to include scrunching up one's face and saying, "What the hell?" I really liked the father's butterfly joke and its subsequent no-reaction. And I agree with the father that watching erotic movies in reverse and at a higher speed is worthy of a hearty guffaw. And how can you really hate a movie with a magic show, a motorcycle stunt scene, a spirited game of hide and seek, and a shot of a python swallowing a baby pig? You can't. I won't complain about the nudity either. Star Silvana Venturelli's easy on the eyes. The taste I can't wash out of my eyes, however, is the visual of the father and the visitor rolling most unerotically on a library floor that happens to have the definitions of sexual terms all over it. That was following the foreplay which consisted of the couple throwing books at each other and the father resenting his son. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. Awesome song during that scene though, all layered psychedelic guitar noodling. There's some neat elements here, but the pretentious camera play, random shots of feet and people falling down the stairs, World War flashbacks, and the overuse of visual motifs just scream artsy-fartsy. It was like director Radley Metzger decided he better make The Lickerish Quartet artistic or risk offending his mother and, after realizing he had no story whatsoever, decided to just befuddle the audience by blending present and past, reality and fantasy, motorcycles and shadow puppets. "See, Mom? It's not pornographic. It's Art!" Unfortunately, the pseudo-intellectual erotic mess it adds up to is no more intelligent than the erotic mess I made while watching it.

How about that tagline, by the way? "Beyond the physical edge. . ."

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

1970 sex ed video for girls

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Inceptionesquely, menstruating Valerie dreams a little dream and then a dream-within-a-little-dream, little-dreaming of earring-thieving vampiric chimera, foul grannies, guys with ukuleles, lustful priests, stake burnings, lesbian smoochings, and funky little poisoned demons. Thanks for the trip, Valerie!

As beautiful and as visually interesting this little Czech trip through a pre-pubescent girl's subconscious was, I'm really glad it wasn't much longer. I appreciate cloudy technicolor symbol-laden seemingly-plotless abstract and surreal foreign films as much as the next guy, but this is almost hyper-dreamy if that makes sense. If it's not the sexuality, it'll be the vampires that offend the sensibilities of the religious right, and there are some startling shots of the black-cloaked pale-faced, dysodontial, gaunt figure contrasted against the softer backgrounds of the village. The colors in this beg to be remastered. They're muted and fuzzy, maybe appropriately so, like colors worn away from being from once-upona fairy tale times. This is definitely a case where director Jaromil Jires (don't ask; I don't know him) makes up for the whole no-plot thing and what seems to be a limited budget with a consistent vibe, alluringly hypnotic. It's a frustrating yet tantalizing visual treat, like an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland without the hallucinogenics or a Heidi with fistfuls and a liberally dog-eared copy of The Softest Metamorphosis--A Nubile Girl's to Her Body and How to Avoid Priests and/or Vampires.

Alice

1988 animated classic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: See Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

My favorite retelling of Carroll's book, Svankmajer's Alice is, in my opinion, represents the master animator at the peak of his grotesque powers. The story's essentially the same, and most of the characters from the novel find their way into Svankmajer's Wonderland. Svankmajer's vision and leftfield creativity breathes unique life into them, making the White Rabbit a sawdust-leaking stuffed buck-toothed thing, the March Hare a wind-up toy, the Mad Hatter a wooden marionnette, the Caterpillar a sock puppet, and, most disturbingly, Bill and the White Rabbit's other pals a perverse menagerie of skeletal reptilian things. The pace is quick, and there's plenty to see, especially for lovers of quirky nightmares. The narration kind of annoys me, probably more so because of some terrible dubbing, but I can put up with that because it's such a treat visually. I definitely could have done without half the lip close-ups though. Nevertheless, bitchin'!