Adam Baran

Here’s February’s movie catch up, y’all. 

The Devil’s Backbone - After Pan’s Labyrinth I wanted to check out some of Guillermo Del Toro’s work, since I’d always sort of avoided it, thinking it was in the same class as the crappy roach-fest shlocker Mimic.  But it’s clear now that film was molded after the fact by studio execs, and Del Toro does have some talent up his sleeve.  This one, about an orphan at a boarding school who’s haunted by a ghost, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War has a lot of the same themes and ideas that show up more skillfully in Pan’s Labyrinth.  I watched this movie on a sick day, pondering what it was about this movie that made it Michael Jackson’s favorite film.  I mean, other than the young boys, naturally. 

Stick It - My new roommate and I bonded over this piece of garbage from the writer of immortal teen classic Bring It On.  The film was sort of billed as Bring it on with Gymnastics, but it lacks all of that movies’ heart and spirit, not to mention jokes, and talented direction.  Every attempt at comedy falls flat.  The film is about a misfit girl who does something wrong, and for some reason the judge sentences her to go to gymnastics school, purely for plot machinations.  She’s a troubled teen who walked out on the Olympics, leaving her teammates in the lurch.  And now she wants a second shot.  The lead, unfortunately named Missy Peregrym (in real life) is so utterly unlikeable (bordering on loathsome) that it’s of no interest to the audience to root for her or hope that she sees the error of her ways.  Obviously, she goes against the grain, gets tamed, and though the unpredictable ending is sort of a nice touch, it’s too heartbreaking to see poor Jeff Bridges wandering around the set looking like a wounded puppy at the pound.  The sound work is so bad you can’t understand what people are saying half the time.

Danger! Diabolik!  - The inspiration for the Beastie Boy’s “Body Movin” video.  Super campy 60’s over-the-top Mod James Bond-y British spy spoof (sort of) about a super thief Diabolik, who’s alternately busy being lured into traps and finding his way out of them.  Mario Bava lays it on thick which accounts for the film’s passionate cult of followers.

Casino Royale - The real thing, no imitation here.  Daniel Craig is great, but the film is overlong and stupidly convoluted.  I realize that in general the plots of the Bond movies are pointless to overanalyze, but this one was so stylized and overly melodramatic at points that I couldn’t help watching as a passive observer.  Eva Green is the Pits with a capital P.  She’s. Just. Awful. 

Maniac - The Grandfather of Insane exploitation films.  Made in the thirties, this little bit of madness is as off the wall as they come.  The film mashes up Frankenstein and Murders in the Rue Morgue, telling the story of a doctor who forces his young servant, a wanted criminal, to steal bodies for him from the local morgue.  The doctor revives one hot dead mama, but when the servant fails to deliver again, the doctor wants to use his body for experiments.  Instead of shooting the servant, the doctor actually hands the gun to his servant and tells him to shoot himself for the good of science.  D’oh!!!  Once the doctor is dead, the servant uses his special effects makeup skills (seriously! that’s one of his talents) and dresses himself up like the doctor and starts receiving patients.  Among the patients is a man who thinks he’s “An orangutang from Murders in the Rue Morgue,” who ends up stealing the newly revived dead girl, and raping her.  This would seem like it would be plenty to go on for the plot, but not so.  There’s a whole nother world after that happens - in fact, the rapist and victim are never heard from again!  Then there’s a lot more - including a crazy old man who collects cats (his monologue is one of the most bizarrely retarded things you’ll ever hear) and pokes out one of their eyeballs onscreen.  What’s most startling about it is both just how insane it is for it’s time and the fact that it predates John Waters by about 40+ years.

Hercules in the Haunted World - Seven years prior to making Danger Diabolik, and one year after his cult smash Black Sunday, Italian giallo godfather made this campy Hercules movie starring muscle hunk (and I mean it) Reg Park as Hercules, and super-villain Christopher Lee as King Licos, who commands an army of zombie vampires against the strongman.  It’s super gorgeous colors, and ridiculous sets and costumes are enough to recommend it, though my personal feeling is that it suffers a lot at the end from pacing issues, meaning, some of it’s pretty boring. 

The Blackout - Pretty unknown Abel Ferrara film from 1997 starring Matthew Modine as a Matty, a drug addict movie star who goes nuts when his girlfriend Annie (Beatrice Dalle) tells him she’s aborted their baby.  Whilst staying in Miami, he goes to visit his friend Mickey Wayne (Dennis Hopper, in a usual awesome off-the wall performance) a strange 60’s-ish filmmaker who stages bizarre Lynchian porno happenings and, we’re sure, has something very dark about his life.  The night progresses through much weirdness and Matty blacks out.  The film flashes forward to years later, when Matty is living in New York, clean and sober with girlfriend Claudia Schiffer (who’s pretty good!)  He can’t get the idea out of his head that he did something horrible when he blacked out, and so regrettably he goes down to Miami to seek out Mickey and find out just what he did.  It’s an interesting film, one that doesn’t totally work, but it’s more fascinating to see the energy created by it’s unusual cast.  Hopper brings an electricity that’s totally mesmerizing.  It’s a dark, moody film, check it out if you like Abel Ferrara or Dennis Hopper.

Sonny Boy - Right up there with Street Wars and The Toy Box as one of the most insanely  bad films ever made.  The film tells the story of Slue and Pearl, a backwoods couple of outlaw criminals who live in a trailer and are basically local crimelords in the desert town of Harmony.  When Slue’s henchman Weasel kills a couple of travelers and brings their car back to Slue, they find a baby inside, and Pearl decides to raise it as her own.  But that’s not what Slue has in mind, and instead, he cuts out the baby’s tongue and decides to torture it into obedience, raising it as a feral killing machine trained to do his bidding. 

Did I mention that Pearl is played by David Carradine?  And that the film never explains why he’s in drag the entire movie?  Did I mention that this film will break down every shred of your psyche so that you are lucky if you’re not a quivering mess of primordial ooze a’ la Altered States by the end of the film?  It’s out of print, unfortunately, so call me if you want to watch it. 

Cure - Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late 90’s pre-J horror creepfest about a killer who uses the power of hypnotism to get people to brutally kill other people.  I didn’t mind this film when I was watching it, but it just didn’t stick with me after the fact.  I have seen a few films by this director, who’s usually heaped with praise in the film press, but I tend to think he’s a bit overrated. 

The Mad Room - 1960’s remake of Ida Lupino’s Ladies In Retirement, stars Stella Stevens, wearing an outrageous beehive-y hairdo that never seems to move, and Shelly Winters as her overbearing, obnoxious boss.  Stevens has two siblings who supposedly killed their mother and father when they were younger, and now they’re ready to come home!  But once they’re all back in Shelly Winters’ house, things start to go wrong, and murders start to pile up again.  It’s a good creepy Grand Dames Guignol picture, but the ending comes too soon and doesn’t really ratchet up the tension enough to be fully satisfying.  Shelly Winters is great as usual. 

The Graffiti Artist - I met director James Bolton in February and wanted to check out his films.  This one tells the story of a young graffiti artist in Portland who’s arrested and flees to Seattle, where he meets another writer and starts to go out tagging with him.  Their relationship develops, and the boys hook up, and then everything’s changed between them.  It’s very well done, and there’s skillful camera work - so close on the faces of the actors that the tension is at times unbearable.  Really great, recommended. 

Rafter Romance - Lost RKO film shown at the Film Forum as part of a weeklong series.  This film stars Ginger Rogers as a woman forced to share an apartment with a man - he gets it during the night, and she during the day, or something like that.  Anyway of course they never see each other, and outside the apartment they meet and fall for each other.  Inside the apartment though, each one is pulling awful pranks on the hateful person they think shares the apartment.  It’s cute, but not great.  Remade as Living for Love. 

Double Harness - This was part of the same Film Forum series, and this one is a truly great film - undeservedly lost and unknown.  The beautiful Ann Harding shines as a woman who tricks the dashing playboy William Powell into marrying her and then has regrets later in their marriage.  The dialogue is cracking and sharp and funny and startingly honest for it’s time.  I had never heard of Ann Harding but she’s very beautiful and it seems, should have been a bigger star.  It’s airing on TCM this month so try to find it and DVR it for sure.

Half-Nelson - The pluses:  Ryan Gosling is amazing.  He’s smart, honest, funny, gorgeous, a totally great performance from a future major movie star.  The minuses: The story doesn’t really pay off in the end.  Major question in my mind - what happened to Ryan Gosling that made him a crack addict?  It killed me that we never found it out.  I really think this film was cut from the same open-ended Sundance institute, indie cloth that spoiled so many films in the 90’s.  It just feels like honesty for honesty’s sake - meaning, that in my mind it seems like indie films - and by this I mean films that bill themselves as such - all they do is take standard plots and update them with something hard hitting.  For instance Transamerica - it’s a road movie you’ve seen a million times before, but with a trannie.  And this one is To Sir With Love, with crack addiction!  I never bought the story in a full honest way, and the ending is really unsatisfying.  Open ended doesn’t cut it sometimes.  This is one of them.

The Oscar - A fabulous bad bad bad film from 1966 - it’s the perfect movie to watch on Oscar night, with a double bill of Pia Zadora’s The Lonely Lady, of course.  The film is a hilariously melodramatic rise-and-fall biopic of Frankie Fane, a two bit hustler who’s charm and charisma get him on the fast track to Hollywood super-stardom.  He’s aided by Tony Bennett (The singer, yes) who plays Hymie Kelly (the film name to end all film names!) in the performance that ensured he wouldn’t appear in another film until Analyze This.  When Frankie Fane’s career starts to falter, and he’s on his way out - an Oscar nomination starts to resuscitate his career - if he can win it, that is!  Fucking hysterical movie, also stars Jill St. John, Joseph Cotten as the studio boss, Merle Oberon, and Frank Sinatra(who appears even though the trashy film is basically his life story) - trust me, you won’t see this cameo coming!  “When you lie down with pigs, you get up smelling like garbage!” - shouts Hymie Kelly, and it’s never truer than in this delicious crapfest. 

Stingaree - Expected more from this lost RKO classic by hardboiled quickie director William Wellman, but it’s a ridiculous Australian western starring Irene Dunne as a maid who’s swept off her feet by local bandit Stingaree.  When he’s arrested, he leaves money to her and she goes off and becomes a worldwide Opera Star.  But when she returns to Oz, all bets are off and she’s lookin for her man!  S’okay, not great.  But the story is nuts. 

A Man to Remember - The other part of the double bill with Stingaree - this film is about a doctor who’s so unselfish that on his dying day they entire town gathers weeping at his funeral procession.  The film tells the story in flashback rather elegantly, although in my mind, it’s best remembered for the most tender and romantic incest plotline in early film history - between a brother and his adopted sister.  “Wow, sis, you’ve turned into quite a woman!”  The audience was howling!

That’s February, March coming soon!