The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Lake Placid (1999), directed by Steve Miner

 

The Trailer

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 The Appropriate Tune - "Crocodile Rock", by Elton John

 

 

    Humanity has been menaced by a lot of big things across cinematic history. Giant ants, giant grasshoppers, giant rabbits, giant women (though some might find that less menacing than others and so on and on. Occasionally the giant thing is even something that was already pretty dangerous to begin with. Like remember The Meg? The one where Jason Statham plays Jason Statham fighting a giant shark? Or Meg 2: The Trench, where Jason Statham plays Jason Statham fighting a giant shark, again? You might as well show Jaws to your five year old, no one is gonna be scared of some normal ass fish anymore.

Enter Lake Placid. Bridget Fonda stars as Kelly Scott, a New York paleontologist who, after an awkward situation with her boss/ex, is sent to Maine to study a tooth found in the half of a diver dragged out of a very placid lake. The result? Crocodile, but who ever heard of a crocodile setting up camp in Maine. So Kelly joins up with Fish & Game Warden Jack Wells (Bill Pullman), local sheriff Hank (Brendan Gleeson) and eccentric mythology professor Hector (Oliver Platt) to locate and take down this beast. As long as it’s a regular sized crocodile and not some kind of huge super croc, I think everything will turn out all right.

If I were some kind of weirdo who grouped movies into lists and I needed entries for ‘popcorn horror movies’, then you’d definitely see Lake Placid in a prominent. Not in the derogatory way that the term often implies, but in the way that it is a very accessible horror film. There’s gore but not excessively so, there’s suspenseful moments and more action-packed thrills, there’s some explosions, it’s funny, just a little bit of everything that builds up to a solid picture. The kind of movie that you’d pick during movie night when no one can agree on something and everyone ends up having a great time. Well, the kids might be a bit traumatized seeing a dude’s head get bitten off, but hey, they might be better off in the long run.

And yeah, Lake Placid is pretty funny. Not in the gross out humor way, like in that plague of Scary Movies that infested the 00’s, it’s just well-written with good actors bouncing off each other. It’s also hard not to love seeing the late Betty White calling a cop ‘Officer Fuckmeat’, just an atomic blast of a line that comes out of the blue. And importantly, these bits of levity don’t undercut the tension that the film has built. When these people are in danger they behave like it, they just have the ability to crack jokes about it if they survive.

If there’s any nits that really need picking, I suppose it’s the CGI. Lake Placid has scenes using a crocodile model (done by Stan Winston’s studio), and ones that use a CG croc. The crocodile model looks fantastic, the CGI looks like CGI. Not bad CGI really, there are certainly worse examples of it in 1999, but it’s there. That being said, the big danger in CG is overexposing your monster, allowing the audience to recognize its artificiality and breaking the suspension of disbelief, and I don’t think Placid reaches that point. I don’t know if Miner is following the Jaws mindset, but I think the balance he ended up with works out.

As I said, if you’re looking for a fun evening, maybe you’ve got a few friends and a few beers, then you’re going to be okay with throwing Lake Placid on the screen. It’s got that Jurassic Park everyman quality. If you’re looking for sterner stuff, then this probably won’t satisfy. And avoid the sequels. I haven’t seen any of them, but it’s a horror movie franchise man, if you’re trying to find a good sequel you might as well test your luck panning for gold instead.

 

STATUS: RECOMMENDED

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Straight Story (1999), directed by David Lynch

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Arthritis Blues", by Ramblin' Jack Elliot

      Now we can’t revisit directors on this Marathon without bringing up David Lynch, and I mean why not? Of all the directors that frequent this blog, and because of my tendency to return to the well that’s quite a few, he’s one of if not the most successful one of the bunch. I mean when you kick off your feature film career with a cult hit like Eraserhead, and then follow it up with a mainstream hit like The Elephant Man then you’ve already done better than 70 percent of Hollywood. Of course there was a bit of a stumbling block in Dune, so-called in my opinion, but then Lynch struck gold with Blue Velvet, and again with Twin Peaks, which has since become the most enduring work of his entire film career. Again, he could have stopped right after that and still be considered one of the best filmmakers in the country, maybe get a head start on that whole transcendental meditation shit, but he kept on going all the way up to the mid 00’s, even getting another home run with Mulholland Drive before it was all over. Last year we covered Lynch’s first step into the 90s with Wild at Heart, a love story, a rock ‘n’ roll story, a crime thriller and something about the Wizard of Oz all wrapped up with a big Nicholas Cage looking bow to make sure it could never be mistaken for normal. This year, then, how about we see how David Lynch closed out the decade?

Released in 1999, The Straight Story written by John Roach and Mary Sweeney, directed by David Lynch and distributed through Buena Vista Pictures, which indeed makes this a Disney movie made by the same guy who did Blue Velvet. Richard Farnsworth plays Alvin Straight, a 73 year old man living in the sleepy town of Laurens, Iowa with his daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek). Alvin is getting up there in years; He can’t see too well, he can’t move too well and his penchant for sausages and cigars probably isn’t helping either. When he gets the call that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a stroke however, he decides that come hell or high water that he’s going to see Lyle again. So he buys some supplies, hitches up a wagon to his lawnmower and sets off on his journey. It’s a long way from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, especially if you’re only going about 2 miles an hour, but Alvin wants to make the journey under his own power, and that’s exactly what he’s gonna do. Based on a true story, or at least a Straight one.

Where do Lynch’s interests lie, as a filmmaker? What is his style? Most people I think, myself included in earlier reviews, would mention something like dreams or the concept of schmaltzy sentimentalism hiding the true dark, gruesome world that we know. Kyle Machlachlan and Laura Dern’s storybook romance derailed by a severed ear in a field, Laura Palmer’s murder revealing the complex web of sin in this small Northwest town, and so on and on. An inference perhaps, but perhaps even Lynch felt like he was getting too deep into the weeds in that regard, as The Straight Story is the most unapologetically sentimental movie of his career. There are moments of darkness and Lynchian surrealism sure, the Deer Lady scene comes to mind, but the film isn’t mired in it as other Lynch films are. They inform the characters as memories and regrets, but the characters are still human, and in the world that Lynch here has created humans are essentially good. It’s a refreshingly calm, sincerely humanist film from a director whose previous attempts at portraying such things often come across as parodical or satirical, whether that is his intention or not.

Much of that has to do with the titular Alvin Straight, played by Richard Farnsworth. Not since your grandpa have you seen a man who embodies gentle warmth and wisdom like Alvin Straight here, the pinnacle of Lynch’s fascination with the Midwest, so even the simplest of tasks gain an increased importance. What will he do if the lawnmower breaks? What will he do if he runs out of food? Hell, how’s he gonna walk? When you’ve got a movie that’s driven by one character you’ve got to make sure that one person can handle it, and I think Farnsworth manages to pull that off.

If you go into David Lynch movies expecting all that crazy stuff however, you’re probably going to be disappointed in The Straight Story. In fact not much stuff happens at all, dark or otherwise, until you count past regrets and the ever present fear of death . Some traveling, some talking, and plenty of montage shots of harvesters set to Angelo Badalamenti’s folk-inspired score. For those who need action in their movies The Straight Story will be nigh on intolerable, but if you’re in the mood to chill out and just take in the mellow atmosphere then I think you’ll be able to get into this film pretty well.

Not the best review in the world, but The Straight Story gets the recommendation. While David Lynch would get back to the weird stuff with his last two theatrical films, The Straight Story manages to invoke Lynch’s style while at the same time feeling unlike anything he had ever done before. A simple story, simple characters, going in a straight line towards a simple goal. Unflinchingly, unapologetically, and it makes for perhaps the most out-and-out enjoyable film that Lynch has made.that has been covered on this blog. Maybe not something you want to break out at a Halloween party, but I think if you’re feeling out of it or stressed out about the world around you (for whatever reason) this might help even you out a bit. I’m just sorry I’m too stressed to give it its due diligence as a reviewer.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: eXistenZ (1999), directed by David Cronenberg

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Games Without Frontiers", by Peter Gabriel

      Again we return to the 1990’s, and are again reminded that all things change. Mountains crumble, flowers wither and die, and some popular 80s genre film directors lost their touch. So it was with John Carpenter, who kicked off his 90’s experience with the Chevy Chase flop Memoirs of an Invisible Man, briefly revived with the cult hit In the Mouth of Madness, and quickly went downhill from there. So it was with George A. Romero, who contributed a couple segments to anthology flicks as well as an arguably unnecessary remake of his film Night of Living Dead in 1990, and rounding things off the unregarded Rochard Bachman opus The Dark Half in ‘93. So it might have seemed for the film industry’s kookiest Canadian, David Cronenberg, and yet he never suffered the precipitous fall that Carpenter or Romero or Verhoeven did in that decade. His first film of that period was 1991’s Naked Lunch after all, which ended up becoming one of his most famous films, so he was starting off hot. 1993 saw the release of romantic drama M. Butterfly, which despite it being a commercial and critical flop heralded Cronenberg’s willingness to break with the popular perception of him as a filmmaker, which ended up leading towards his career resurgence in the 00’s. Crash was next in 1996, the only film of his career thus far to win at Cannes (the Jury Prize rather than the Palme d’Or but still), as well as a couple of Canadian Cinema Awards. Not that bad of a run for a director, but before the decade was out and we all died from Y2K ol’ Croney figured he’d throw out one more for the road. A film that brought him back to what made him so famous in the first place, while also serving as a capstone for that : The horror and science-fiction genres.

      Released in 1999 by Miramax, Existenz (or eXistenZ if you’re naughty) was written and directed by David Cronenberg, the last film to be credited as such until 2012’s Cosmopolis. The year is unspecified future, and world famous game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is leading a product testing seminar of her latest game eXistenZ, a landmark new title for the game pod, which is basically a bag of flesh that you jack yourself into through a hole in your spine. Everything is going well until a lone gunman arrives and starts shooting up the joint with a gun that shoots teeth. Allegra is rushed to the safety of the countryside by marketing trainee Ted Pikul (Jude Law), but she’s less interested in her own safety than she is in the health of her game pod, which was damaged during the shootout while downloading the game. She wants to get in there and see if things are alright and she needs Ted’s help to do it, only Ted doesn’t have the spine hole he needs to do the jacking. So they head off to a back alley hole dealer, only to learn the truth of the matter: There’s been a hit put out on Allegra, 5 million dollars for her death. Scary stuff, but they still need to get in that lumpy sack and poke around, and so Ted gets his cherry popped and they get all up in there. Which only raises even more questions, some more eXistenZial than others, but I think I’m running out of lewd wordplay so we’ll stop there.

      1999 was not only the end of Cronenberg’s dabbling in the science-fiction and horror genres, but of course it also was the Golden Year for the concept of virtual reality. The 90s had been littered with such films of course, Total Recall, The Lawnmower Man, etc., but of course ‘99 was the year of The Matrix. Even though cyberpunk had existed years before, The Matrix’s explosive popularity was such that it became the defining example of those concepts. It’s as if no one had questioned the nature of reality before the Matrix, and then suddenly you couldn’t go anywhere without people saying it’s all a simulation man, although I’m not sure how much would really in the world besides basically recreating religion but for nerds. That all died down somewhat by the time the Matrix sequels and subsequently underperformed, but with the success of films like Inception it seems that the idea that the reality that we live in may not be what it appears to be is still going strong. Probably because it allows people to disconnect themselves from the problems of the world rather than trying to solve said problems or something like that.

      So it is with our film here: Multiple layers of reality, surrealist imagery, characters who aren’t what they seem, hell there’s even a terrorist group here that’s dedicated to killing those who have committed ‘crimes against reality’. Where eXistenz changes things up, however, is that it approaches these things through the lens of game design. Again, a topic that had been tackled in cyberpunk literature, see Snow Crash, but I don’t know how many movies at the time were tackling aspects of game design like NPC and railroading the player. Not that deeply, it’s not like anyone is bustin out cheat codes or exploiting mechanics or what have you, but keep in mind that this is 1999; While video games were certainly on a hot streak at the time, with the release of the Dreamcast in North America and the Playstation 2 a year away, the rest of pop culture was largely stuck in the arcade days. They certainly weren’t art, so the story goes, merely mindless trifles meant for children and teenage boys that can’t get laid. So even if this film could be taken as an anti-video game film if nothing else it’s kind of cool that Cronenberg, whose film career began in 1969, wasn’t so immersed in the mystique of film that he couldn’t even fathom video games as a medium..

      Of course we all know what to expect when we go into a Cronenberg movie, and eXistenZ is no exception. Everything about the game pods have been tailor made to be as gross and as off-putting as possible; From their lumpy misshapen forms containing their horrific insides, to the way they squirm and wriggle around, to the absolute hell that is their creation, the absolute last thing you’d ever want connected to your spinal column. On the other side you’ve got the skeleton gun that shoots teeth, pretty badass, which was featured far more prominently on the posters than it ever is in the film. Not a lot of people-centric body horror this time around, but you do get a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence, so if you’re worried about your movies being bloody enough then Dave has got you covered.

      What is body-centric in this movie though is the eroticism. All that innuendo I was using in the synopsis is not hyperbole, this film is blatantly, openly horny. That’s not too much of a surprise, as Videodrome and Crash were both very sexual films, but Cronenberg isn’t even trying to be subtle in this one. One of the leads is a woman who spent her life creating this thing which resides in this unformed lump of flesh that is connected to one’s body through a fleshy cord, while the other is a young man who’s afraid of penetration and catching a disease who is introduced to this pleasurable thing by an experienced older woman, not to mention they way they treat those bio-ports looks like it was lifted from pornhub. It’s such an obvious Intro to Film Theory style symbolism that you can’t help but think it was intentional on the part of Cronenberg, which makes sense with regards to revelations in the final act, but up until that point you’ve gotta wonder just what Dave was getting into in that writer’s room.

      As for the cast, I think Jude Law plays a pretty good virgin and Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a good junkie. Then you’ve got Willem Dafoe as Gas the gas station attendant, who is always a good pull when you’re trying to make a creepy movie. The biggest surprise for me though was that Christopher Eccleston was in here, better known as the ninth iteration of The Doctor from the British sci-fi series Doctor Who. He doesn’t have a big role or anything but I believe this is the first movie I’ve ever reviewed that featured someone who played The Doctor. Besides the Doctor Who movie of course, and no Peter Cushing doesn’t count.

      It’s always a bit frustrating when you try to critique these movies though, because your problems with the story can be countered by the nature of the premise. Why are they using mutated frogs you plug into your spine to play video games? How exactly do you make games on a mutated frog? How did Allegra make the game eXistenZ but is oblivious as to what’s in it, and if she seems to have no control over what’s in the game how would she know what was wrong with it?  How is a game that’s so complex that it plugs into your central nervous system to function still dealing with the equivalent of adventure game text parsers? Well that’s because it’s a simulation, it’s all fake, so it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense because that mystery tho. Which is fine, I enjoy a good mystery, but there’s a narrowness to this film that prevents me from digging too deep into. Like why is this what games are? Why is there a group dedicated to murdering game designers? Has the world fallen into some sort of dystopia where they’re addicted to virtual reality and they’re trying to liberate mankind, or are they just dicks? Who knows, because the entirety of the movie seems to take place in one 20-mile stretch of land in the Pacific Northwest, and we know nothing about how this world works. Who cares, because it’s all a simulation, it’s all fake, and none of it matters.So yeah, it’s a tad frustrating.

      What is the crux of Cronenberg’s focus as a filmmaker? I dunno, as I haven’t dipped into his entire filmography, but if I pretend to be one of those big shot paid movie critics I’d say that he’s a people person. Humanity, violent and sexual animals that we are, how those urges are expressed as the species grows ever more advanced. Secret government experiments change infants into psychic killers in Scanners. James Woods transforms into a super-powered monster through the power of video porn in Videodrome. Crash has man using the tools of man (automobiles) to violently inflict change upon itself, to the point where horrific scars and mutilations, which would be considered antithetical to the ideal life otherwise are considered signs of passion and lust. Existenz is the logical conclusion of that idea; Mankind has pushed itself to the point where reality itself has become an inconvenience that one can slough off for something better at the earliest opportunity. Why be just a person when you can be a god of your own private universe? Indeed, when reality is a game what does it even mean to be a human? What does it mean to exist?

      Heady stuff, but honestly as a film I found eXistenZ to be a rather sedate experience. Rather ironic for a movie centered around video games to contain such little action (unless that game was Myst I guess). Criticize the Wachowskis if you want, but as goofy as The Matrix is story-wise the reason it was as successful as it was because of that story was bolstered by kung-fu fights and slow motion bullet dodging. It was a movie that both the nerds and the jocks could enjoy. That being said, The Matrix never had Neo try to tongue-fuck an open wound on Morpheus’ back, so I think I’ll give eXistenZ a mild recommendation. I’ve referenced them about 30 times so far, but if you liked Cronenberg’s previous films like Videodrome and Crash, then you’re probably going to like this one as well. Make sure you’re wearing your Oculus Rift while watching though, so you can get the full experience.

The Thunderbird Double Feature: Stanley Kubrick

       When I first started doing this blog I had always intended to avoid big names. Movies, directors, actors, what have you, I always wanted to keep at least a step or two out of the mainstream. So rather than doing the original Universal Frankenstein film for example, I did the relatively obscure Bride of Frankenstein, and when I felt like covering The Transformers I steered clear of anything resembling Michael Bay. The greats have already been talked about after all, the books have been written, the podcasts recorded, the blogs written, so what would throwing one more opinion on the pile really accomplish in the grand scheme of things? You had to get weird and obscure and cult, my mind told me, because that was where the action was, that was the way to get attention that I so desperately craved. Write about the movies that no one else is talking about and by default you gain a monopoly on the subject. For better or worse, I mean The attention my review of Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin has gotten over the years has always made me feel a little paranoid.

Of course nothing ever lasts forever, and sooner or later some bigger and bigger names started creeping in. David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, John Carpenter, et cetera, I’ve grown such an obsession for film over the years, and since I rarely watch films anymore without reviewing them, I couldn’t help but dip my toes into that inviting water. Not that I thought that my worthless opinion would be the deciding factor in someone seeing Vertigo mind you, but that such historic films would provide a great backdrop for me to stretch the mind muscles a bit and work my way through a thought that I might not have a chance to otherwise. That’s why I write movie reviews in general I suppose, even if they’re shit and the only people who’ve read them are a couple of bots that hit the right string of key words in the search algorithm: It’s self-expression, just as painting a picture or performing a song is self-expression for someone else. I like writing and I like cinema, and it makes me happy to combine the two. Nuff said.

In the past I’ve used the Double Feature model to showcase some of those big names I’ve mentioned (and also the folks who made Dollman) and since it’s been so long since I’ve used it I figured it best to dust off the proverbial cobwebs with one of the biggest names of all: Stanley Kubrick, director of a good portion of the most iconic movies in American film history, making his debut appearance on this blog. Narrowing things down to just two was a bit of a hassle, but in the end it seemed appropriate to go with his very first feature film, 1953’s Fear and Desire, and his last (not including the stuff he did for A.I.), 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut. You can’t judge a decades long career on only two movies, like reading the first chapter of a book and then skipping to the last page, but I’m interested to see what, if anything, got its start in ‘53 and what managed to stick around until ‘99. Who knows, maybe I’ll unravel that vast web of conspiracies that Kubrick apparently shoved into all of his movies, if that documentary on The Shining is anything to go by. Who knows, maybe it’ll turn out that he staged the Moon landing after all. Guess I’ll see.

Fear and Desire (1953)

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "This is War", by Thirty Seconds to Mars

While his filmography technically begins two years earlier, with the short documentaries Day of the Flight and Flying Padre, Stanley Kubrick’s directorial debut truly began in 1953 with the film Fear and Desire. Set in a time and place removed from our own, yet still familiar, the film centers around a quartet of soldiers (Frank Silvera as ‘Mac’, Kenneth Harp as ‘Lt. Coby’, Paul Mazursky as ‘Sidney’ and Steve Coit as ‘Fletcher’) who have been stranded 6 miles behind enemy lines after their plane is shot down. With the pressure of being spotted by a passing aircraft constantly looming over their heads, the soldiers locate a nearby river and decide to build a raft in order to float across into home territory, only to discover a nearby enemy base and airstrip occupied by troops and a mysterious general. Mac wants to go after the general, Coby just wants to get the hell out of Dodge, but when it comes to war you’re never going to end up getting what you really want.

The story goes that Stanley Kubrick hated this movie, which he described as ‘boring and pretentious’, to such an extent that he actually tried to have all copies of it destroyed Star Wars Holiday Special-style. While that might seem a little extreme at first, I can see where he’s coming from to a certain degree. This was a man known for his obsessive perfectionist streak when it came to his craft after all, and Fear and Desire was a film made for around 50 grand and looked like it. The entire cast was made up of seven people (two of whom played dual roles) walking in what looks like about a hundred square feet of state park for about an hour set to music which sounds like it’s from an episode of Gunsmoke, spending whole scenes talking in internal monologues like it’s David Lynch’s Dune. That and some melodramatic flourishes, in particular when they finally introduce the general, does give off something of an ‘amateurish’ atmosphere. A college film project before the advent of college film classes if you will.

Which isn’t to say that’s a film without merit, or one worth destroying. I think the acting, while nothing extraordinary, is solid, with Frank Silvera (a year removed from his film debut) and future screenwriter and director Paul Mazursky (in his film debut) doing most of the heavy lifting. The music, during the moments when it is reduced from the usual bombast to a deep throbbing bass, is incredibly effective during the tense parts of the film. Ahead of its time in that regard you could say, going hand in hand with the overall tone of the film, which feels more at home with the existential dread of the Vietnam era than the Sgt. Rock flag-waving days of the 50s. These are not faceless avatars of patriotism, they are regular people who have been thrust into the meat grinder, where death awaits behind every corner, and their behavior reflects that. Confusion, indifference, a suicidal drive to prove oneself, and even a complete retreat into fantasy in the case of Sidney, it’s a straight line from what we see in Fear and Desire and what we would later see in Full Metal Jacket
  
It’s also just fun to see a young Kubrick experimenting behind the camera. His love of cutting to close shots of people’s eyes and faces, the way he plays with shadows during the scene with the general, the cutaways during the scene where the soldiers raid a cabin, it all feels like things Kubrick saw in other movies and wanted to try out for himself. Particularly silent era films, as it seems that there’s an emphasis on the visual. 

Fear and Desire is indeed a Stanley Kubrick film but the feeling of Kubrick, the essence of what has become known as Kubrick, is not quite there. The pieces don’t quite fit. Because of that I can’t say that Fear and Desire is a must-watch film, but it’s not a huge time investment and it’s impressive enough for a debut outing that it’s worth a watch if you’re in the mood.

Now let’s take a quick stroll around the wheel of time, about 46 years, and see where Stanley Kubrick ended up, with-

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Waltz No. 2", by Dmitri Shostakovich

12 years after the release of the release of the infamous Full Metal Jacket, and several years of projects that were never realized or incomplete (what would eventually become A.I.), Kubrick came out with what turned out to be his final film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut. Based on the novella “Traumnovelle” by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the film stars Tom Cruise (coming off his award-winning performance in Jerry Maguire) as Bill Hartford, a well-to-do doctor living in New York with his daughter Helena and wife Alice (Nicole Kidman). Things seem to be going well, until a bitter Alice recounts a story about her almost cheating on him with a sexy sailor. Disillusioned with himself and plagued with thoughts of Alice in the arms of another man, Bill heads off into the bowels of New York, a city where you can’t even throw a rock without someone trying to hump it. While chatting with an old med school chum, Bill by chance learns about a mysterious club where some supposedly super sexy shit is going down, and decides that he needs to get all up in there. Turns out that secret sex clubs aren’t all that happy about uninvited guests.

So like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet or David Cronenberg’s Crash, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is one of those erotic psycho-drama kinda films or perhaps more accurately a part of the ‘white guy discovers pornhub’ genre. Attractive white guy, predominantly rich, who somehow isn’t getting enough sex already get pulled into a seedy underworld of all that weird sex you’re always hearing about. In fact Eyes Wide Shut consciously or unconsciously takes a lot of cues from Lynch and Blue Velvet, what with some off of the off-filter performances, a score that (by Jocelyn Pook) that runs the gamut from isolating to menacing, and there is this attempt at an unsettling, surreal atmosphere that hangs over things, almost as if it were a dream. Which you can tell by all the times they beat you over the head talking about dreams.

       Compared to Blue Velvet or Crash however, Eyes Wide Shut unfortunately comes across as rather sedated. I mean you’ve got Tom Cruise in the lead role, a man who in 1999 was probably considered one of the most attractive men in Hollywood, and he doesn’t do anything. Of course a slow burn in a Kubrick is nothing to be surprised, but in Eyes Wide Shut it seems to be take to a whole new level. To put it bluntly, Tom Cruise’s character is one that doesn’t do anything, doesn’t accomplish anything, and after 2 and a half hours nothing about his life really changes. Even the mysterious sex club, the one part of the movie that has passed over into the popular culture, feels rather toothless in retrospect. I mean this is a guy who had a character blow his brains out with a shotgun in his last film, and the most he can think of for this shadowy clandestine meeting of the rich and powerful is some people wearing masks and having sex? Not weird sex, there’s no bathing in blood or goat sacrifices, the positions don’t go more exotic than Cowgirl, just some sex and a bunch of nudity (almost entirely from women, god forbid we even get the hint of a penis anywhere in the public sex scenes). Like who the hell cares? And if they’re really the major power-holders of the world, and they’re all masked, why would they be worried that some dude happened to sneak in? What’s he really gonna do, realistically speaking? Call the cops, and tell them ?

       Yeah, I already mentioned the references to dreams, so you might be able to forgive things being more metaphorical than realistic or things not adding up necessarily, but the movie is just dull. In Blue Velvet, you go hand in hand with Kyle Maclachlan's character as he gradually loses his innocence, in Crash, even though it’s rather boring as well, you get to see James Spader drag himself and others into this strange world, they are active participants in their stories. Which you could say is a bit of subtext on Kubrick’s part, that Alice’s dissatisfaction with Bill leads him to become ‘impotent’ in terms of his affect on events, but a movie isn’t built on subtext alone. Even if it were the case, you don’t need to take 239 minutes to say Tom Cruise got his dick wet. Most movies do that in half the time, easy.

Of course this is a Kubrick film, so the meat & potatoes part of the film, the guts of it, are excellent. Every scene, from the ritzy hotels of the wealthy to the dingy apartments of the poor, looks as if it were meticulously crafted, a mixture of reality and cinema just uneven to become noticeable. The prominent use of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 is also touch, as it’s a piece that I’ve always found to be both elegant and slightly foreboding, which fits in well with the ‘Great Gatsby’s sex life’ aesthetic that the film is going for. I also like that even 4 decades later there are some familiar elements from Fear and Desire here, shots emphasizing the face that cut to graphic scenes, the music stings, even a little internal voice clip like old Frank Silvera and the boys used to do. Stanley Kubrick seems to have a knack for crafting movies that could work just as well as a collection of paintings or photographs, and Eyes Wide Shut is no exception.

In the end however, whether it’s that oft-mentioned 2+ hour runtime or what, there’s just this...spark missing from Eyes Wide Shut for me. It feels like it should be a thriller, it feels like I should be on the edge of my seat in suspense, but it's not and I'm not. It’s not really a ‘bad’ movie though, the production is solid as I said and the cast is great, so I don’t feel as if I can just dismiss it as bad and say you shouldn’t watch it. So this is another one of those shitty, non-committal ‘play it by ear’ reviews then; If you’re interested, or you saw that one episode of Venture Bros. and you were curious then go for it, but if you’re looking for ‘the’ Stanley Kubrick film to watch, this ain’t gonna be it.

The first double feature in years, covering one of American cinema’s most famous filmmakers, and I end up covering two movies that I didn’t care for all that much. Somehow I’m not surprised. Even if he did make a couple of clunkers (in my opinion) though, there aren’t many people who had a strong an influence on the medium as Stanley Kubrick has had, even after his death. I mean when your style is so well known it’s become an adjective then you know you’re pretty big. I don’t know whether I’d like the man if I ever met him, reading about him ended up making me depressed, but above anything else the man was a craftsman, and I think he’d be pleased to hear that.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Guest House Paradiso (1999), directed by Adrian Edmondson

     

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Last Night", by The Bum Notes

     In the early 80’s, when MTV had first pushed itself out of the primordial ooze and the new brand of alternative was starting to become the mainstream, the audiences of the BBC was assaulted, mentally and spiritually, by the comedy of The Young Ones. At its most basic, the show was a sitcom about the trials and tribulations of 4 students (of prestigious Scum University) living together in a horrid bit of college housing: Self-proclaimed ‘People’s Poet’ and narcissistic punk anarchist Rick (Rik Mayall), psychopathic force of destruction Vyvyan Basterd (Adrian Edmondson), technophobic hippie and perpetual downer Neil Whedon Watkins Pye (Nigel Planer) and Mike the Cool Person (Christopher Ryan). Cartoonishly violent, frequently acerbic, and prone to bizarre, surrealistic tangents, for two seasons The Young Ones was the show you quoted to your friends so you could seem cooler than you actually were. There was plenty of great comedy in the U.K. around the time, Blackadder as just one example, but I find The Young Ones to be one of the most interesting.

      In the 90’s, longtime comedy partners Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson collaborated once again on what was probably their most popular series, Bottom. Starring Rik as Richard ‘Richie’ Richard and Ade as Edward Elizabeth Hitler living in a disgusting flat in Hammersmith, London, the show was the logical conclusion of the Rik/Ade comedy stylings that had gone back past The Young Ones to the beginning of their working relationship. Bottom was more violent, more perverted, more nihilistic and chaotic than ever before, a show about two complete bastards destined to be other, because no one else could stand to be around them. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might be the closest modern equivalent, but there’s not really anything like it that I’ve seen.

      Three years after the show ended, the duo released a full-length based on the show by the name of Guest House Paradiso, which you’ll noticed has made it onto this list. In the film, Richie (who goes by the name of Richard Twat in the film, rather than Richard Richard) and Eddie are the owners and employees of scenic Guest House Paradiso, known throughout the United Kingdom as the worst hotel in the nation. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the hotel is built next to a nuclear power plant, or the fact that building itself is basically a derelict, or that the food sucks, or that the place is run by a couple of obnoxious, brutish, deviant fuckwits, but the reputation of the Paradiso is at an all time low. It’s astounding to think that anyone would ever want to stay in such an abominable hellhole, but since this is a movie and thus requires a story, some unfortunate souls happen upon the hotel and fall into the insane world of Richie and Eddie.  Including the lovely and mysterious Gina Carbonara, famous film star and fiance to the most violent mafioso in Italy. Hijinks, as they say, abound.

      While there’s nothing especially horrific about Guest House Paradiso (aside from the living conditions #rimshot), the show definitely falls into the black comedy range, with a couple strange use of special effects to boot. As far as British comedies film, it might be one of the most appropriate for Halloween, all things considered. So why not give it a go?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Being John Malkovich (1999), directed by Spike Jonze

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "David Watts", by The Kinks

     As someone with depression problems, anxiety problems, self esteem problems, self image problems and (on occasion) self harm problems, the idea of not being myself has been an especially appealing one over the years. I’m not alone in that line of thinking either, in fact most of the history of man is dedicated to the concept of ‘escapism’, of being so absorbed in something that for a time the thing that is ‘you’ ceases to exist. Drugs, alcohol, music, films, art, the theater, all created so that we might forget that we are who we are and what the world is like. At the end of the day you’re still you, with all the worries, problems and fears you’ve compiled during your life, but at least it’s a way to pass the time, right?

     What if you could go beyond the simple forms of escapism we’re stuck with in our everyday lives though? What if you could literally be someone else? Live their life, experience those intimate moments that we all have when we’re alone, if only for a moment? Wouldn’t it be a little intoxicating? Spike Jonze thinks so, so much so that he decided to base his directorial debut around that premise. It’s a movie called Being John Malkovich and it’s about puppets.

     Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is the world’s biggest schmuck. He’s an extremely gifted puppeteer in a world that doesn’t need puppeteers, especially when superstars like Derek Mantini are around. He’s stuck in a humdrum marriage with Lottie (Cameron Diaz), who has evolved past crazy cat lady into a ‘crazy animals in general’ lady. Worst of all though, he’s been forced to take a job as a file clerk at a company called Lestercorp, which is situated on the 7½ floor of an office building in downtown New York (the building’s architect had a thing for little people). Mostly because life as a working man seems to be much worse than being a street performer; his boss, Dr. Lester, seems to be a brain-addled sex maniac and he is hopelessly infatuated with his coworker Maxine, who knows the exact right ways to treat him like dogshit. He even makes a puppet that looks just like her, which I guess is either incredibly romantic or incredibly creepy depending on your preferences.

     Craig’s life, and the lives of all the people he knows are irrevocably changed the day he discovers a mysterious door in his office. When opened, the door leads into a passage, and when one enters into the passage, they are transported into the mind of famous film and theater actor John Malkovich. More than that, for 15 minutes they are John Malkovich, seeing through his eyes, living in his skin, before they’re somehow spit out outside the New Jersey turnpike. What a incredibly metaphysical discovery, Craig thinks. What a great business opportunity, Maxine thinks. So the wheel turns and leads them all on journeys of destruction, enlightenment, and for some, salvation.

     Not since The Trial way back in the first ever Marathon has there been a film on this list that was so blatantly Kafkaesque as Being John Malkovich, and the former had the advantage of being based on a Kafka novel. A world that borders on the surreal, people seem strangely aggressive to those that don’t really understand the same world view, no one is really a good person and the ones who end up happy are the ones who care the least about other people. Yet Jonze manages to inject enough humor, I think the proper term would be ‘offbeat’, throughout the film that he manages to push it more into the realm of existential black comedy than existential tragedy. That one scene where John Malkovich is walking down the street and someone beans him in the back of the head with a can alone is enough to push it from “The Metamorphosis” to “Breakfast of Champions”, if you catch my drift.

     The late 90s and early 2000s really were the era for proto-indie films though, weren’t they? Proto-indie in the sense that they predated the ‘quirky but totally deep man’ style that we’re so familiar with in modern day indie . Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity, Joel & Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, you get the picture. Being John Malkovich is a bit more artsy than most of those films (dat cinematography doe), a bit more philosophical (life is an unending vortex of misery and she will never love you), even a bit more fantastical (the best use of magic realism since Salman Rushdie) but there is a distinctive thread of melancholy, and in some cases disaffected 20 somethings and hip alternative music, that runs through all these films that should feel familiar to the educated viewer. Chances are if you liked those films, you’ll probably find something to like with Being John Malkovich, and if you didn’t then it’s quite probable that you won’t like Being John Malkovich.

     Amazing puppetry in this movie, by the way. It’s worth watching the movie just to see it, in my opinion.

     Well I like all of those movies, and so I really like this one. If you’re the kind of person who is stuck in their head a lot, as I am, and you’re looking for a movie to feel some feelings at this Halloween, then why not take a shot at Being John Malkovich? Just don’t stay too long, or you may not want to leave.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: The Matrix (1999), directed by The Wachowskis

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Firestarter", by The Prodigy

     Although time, a series of disappointing sequels and whatever the Wachowski’s were smoking when they made Jupiter Ascending has diminished its legacy somewhat, one cannot overstate the importance The Matrix had on the film industry. Just as Star Wars and Raiders reinvented the adventure movie, and Alien and Blade Runner redefined science fiction, it was The Matrix that really informed how action movies were made afterward. If you ever got annoyed of the preponderance of white guy karate or unnecessary slow motion (looking at you Watchmen, you piece of shit) in today’s action films, a little of the blame has to go to the Wachowskis, but at the time it was revolutionary. Huge martial arts fights straight out of your favorite animes, mind-bending special effects, and a concept that instantly grabbed the minds of the moviegoing audience, paranoid schizophrenic and otherwise. Cyberpunk may have already been an established literary genre, and cyberpunk stories may have already been adapted to film before, but when The Matrix came along, with it’s level of scale and technical polish, it was the only girl in the room. And this lady loves black leather.

     That being said, this is a movie that lives and dies by its action scenes. While the concept of the Matrix, that life as we know it is actually a computer simulation run by an advanced A.I. that almost all of humanity is trapped in, is fantastic and raises a lot of question about the nature of perception, the given purpose for the Matrix’s existence is rather silly and the story seems more interested in trying to replicate Star Wars’ quasi-mystical horseshit in a medium that doesn’t really need it. The characters are forgettable at best (aside from Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving, who really bring it home), especially Keanu ‘Am I Watching Techno-Jesus or the Board He Was Nailed To’ Reeves, who seems to be taking the approach that you’ll never be able to tell who’s a human and who’s a machine when he’s around. A distinction which seems to revolve around constantly dropping koans like we’re a fucking Shaolin temple. Yes Matrix, we get it: they’re big into prophecies and mess with reality all the time, and so you expect a bit of ‘these characters know what’s up but can’t just say it for whatever reason’, but does the dialogue have to constantly dip into this vague nonsense that tries to sound deep in the moment but isn’t saying anything at all? Maybe if I felt Neo were absorbing this information, learning from it like some cyber-bodhisattva and gradually getting better, but Neo seems even more clueless than we are, and his sudden ascension to computer god in the third act seems like a leap considering he was some Office Space desk jockey living in a pod a day ago. It seems like something that would really grab you when you were an impressionable teen (which I wasn’t at the time of release), but once you get older you really notice the plasticity of the whole thing.

     That also being said, a lot of those problems can be forgiven due to the sheer fact that this movie is exciting. Not just with the slo-mo and dodging bullet stuff, your mileage may vary on that, but every fight scene, every shoot-out, every chase seems to radiate this frenetic energy that draws you into the action, which seems like another facet of The Matrix that has wormed its way into modern filmmaking. Say what you will about the plot of any Wachowski product, as I demonstrated earlier they’re not story-driven directors, but in terms of visuals and artistic design they’re definitely above the norm. You may not get why the machines keep people in pods or why Cipher is a total shitlord, but to see it play out (especially on a big screen) is fascinating.to behold.

     Like drinking a glass of expensive scotch, it’s a totally smooth.experience.

     Which is why I recommend watching The Matrix at least once, if you’re a fan of action films or science fiction, likely a large crossover appeal. As ridiculous as it can be and essentially is, it’s nevertheless a cool movie. Dare I say it, a fun movie, one to drink a cold beer to with a selection of friends and loved ones. So I have no problem recommending it to you this Halloween, where that situation is very likely to play out. I’d avoid it if there are kids around however, that cyber-silverfish scene freaked me the fuck out back then.

Trailer Park Boys (1999), directed by Mike Clattenburg

Sometimes I'm fast, sometimes I'm slow. When the next entry will be posted I don't really know.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Liquor And Whores", by Bubbles

     I mentioned previously in my Coffee & Cigarettes entry that I was actually introduced to Jim Jarmusch with the Neil Young rock-doc Horse, which I saw at the home of my friend Big John. Big John, besides being a fantastic friend, has really helped to to expand my horizons past what my normal limited viewpoint would allow, and gain a newfound appreciation for the Macho Man Randy Savage, the music of Pentagram and hard liquor. Occasionally we disagree on things (I’m still not a fan of Limp Bizkit, for example, and he really doesn’t like Primus), but a person who shares every one of your interests and opinions is more a living mirror rather than a real friend, wouldn’t you say? Of course I can’t speak for him, but I’d like to think he feels the same way, and that my constant fear of one-sided friendships is all in my head. Like most of my problems.

     Please note other friends that you are all awesome as well, but far less relevant to the story at this time.

     One of the best things that Big John has ever introduced me too, what has become one of my favorite TV shows ever, is a little program called Trailer Park Boys. Birthed from the mystical fields of Canada , TPB is a comedy series that follows (in documentary form) the trials and tribulations of childhood friends and career criminals Ricky, Julian and Bubbles as commit various illegal money-making schemes in Sunnyvale Trailer Park. Featuring a motley crew of comical characters and a ample bounty of alcohol, marijuana and guns, the TPB franchise has spawned 7 seasons (soon to be 8!), 3 films (soon to be 4!), and a recently launched website (swearnet.com), and it just gets more extraordinary the longer it goes on. I love everything about the show, even that drunk bastard Lahey, so I decided to do something to spread the word about this show I’m so fond of. This being a blog geared towards first impressions rather than Ebertsian criticism, and I having already seen Trailer Park Boys: The Movie and Countdown to Liquor Day some time ago, I either needed to wait what could be months for the new movie to come out, or pull out something I’ve been meaning to watch for a while and get another entry out of it.

     I am not a patient man.

     Trailer Park Boys was the first entry into the TPB franchise, a pilot for a potential series which was originally pitched to Comedy Central but was eventually picked up by Showcase. The film begins by introducing us to Julian (John Paul Tremblay), who has hired a film crew to document his life, in the hopes that he can ‘help people’. Julian is a gruff yet otherwise composed man, a frequent criminal, and a heavy user of alcohol, cocaine and firearms. Julian’s only source of income, aside from selling drugs to his fellow trailer park residents, is a business that can only be described as ‘pet murder’. Literally people put hits out on pets, either their own or someone elses’, the pets are shot in the head and disposed of. Which is pretty fucked, when you get right down to it.

     His partner in these animal killing escapades is the sideburn sporting Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian’s childhood friend. Ricky is rather unintelligent and immature guy when compared to the calculating Julian, but he’s also a loving partner and father to his fiance (former ‘trailer park ho’) Lucy and daughter Trinity (presently 6 years old and on the nicotine patch). Once a trailer park boy himself, Ricky has since moved himself and his family into a new non-mobile home, thanks in part to a lucrative drug deal and Julian. Supporting a family takes money however, and as much as Ricky would love to stay home and spend time with his future wife and kid, he has no choice but to go along with Julian and pop a cap in Rover’s ass. A seemingly foolproof plan, but when you’re a trailer park boy, there’s no such thing as ‘foolproof’.

     There are couple differences between Trailer Park Boys and the show it inevitably spawned. Firstly, most of the characters that appear in the show do not appear here; We have Ricky, Julian, Corey & Trevor, Lucy and Trinity, and that’s it (Patrick Roach and Sam Tabasco also appear in this film, but not as their respective character in TPB). Also the drug of choice here is not weed, as has been so prevalent as the years go by, but good old-fashioned cocaine (Julian especially loves sniffing coke, but Ricky and even Corey & Trevor get in on the action). Obviously the cocaine use wasn’t something that would would carry over to TV, but it’s interesting to see the a proto-TPB world with such a limited cast. Most of what you have to work with here is the relationship between Ricky and Julian, and it works because Tremblay and Wells have a fantastic chemistry together. In hindsight it feels a little empty without Bubbles filling out the ranks, yet if there was nothing comedic there in the first place it would not have reached the point of having characters like Bubbles or Phil Collins in the first place.

     Those of you coming into this blind will find a black comedy about, as I have mentioned, a couple of guys who do coke and murder pets for a living. It’s an outlandish premise, but the characters are always played straight, so that it almost feels like Ricky and Julian actually are real people acrually doing this stupid shit. I may not describe it that well, but if you’re a fan of character-centric comedies, check this one out. Or if the idea of poodlecide gets the bile rising in your stomach, try a couple episodes of the tv show. I can guarantee that you might enjoy it. Maybe.

Result: Recommended