Well, THAT Was Different

I decided it was time to try some of the more oddball items in my inbox, so stay on your toes, batters, there's some wild pitches coming your way...

FILM:


Thale - 2012
Written & Directed by Aleksander Nordaas

This low-key tale from Norway centers around Leo and Elvis, a couple guys who seem ill-suited to bio-hazard clean-up work, given how much they (but mainly Elvis) vomit throughout the film, but there you have it.  They're doing clean up in a house deep in the forest; evidently the site of some grisly murder, given the amount of blood and gore they're mopping up.  In the process, they discover a hidden basement full of cobwebs, old lab equipment and corroded canned foods.  There's also a tub filled with something like milk.  A young woman emerges from the tub capturing their attention (but mainly Elvis).  She doesn't speak, and it's impossible to tell how long she must have been in there, given the lab's state of disrepair.  Elvis in particular is compelled to care for her, possibly in connection to his feelings about recently discovering that he has a child, but possibly for a more direct and mysterious reason.  The mystery becomes who is she, what is she, and why is she in this strange environment?  When Leo and Elvis' superiors send in an armed response team, the answers become deadly.

It's a very slow-paced movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but one is bound to notice it.  Given that it's rooted in Norwegian folklore, I might have appreciated the developments more if I had been familiar with the legends, but I'm going to leave that to you to decide whether or not that's something you'd want to know.  The story is, frankly, on the spare side, which again, isn't inherently bad, but having been introduced to this legend and character, I would have enjoyed seeing more done with it.  The actress who plays Thale (TAH-leh), the young woman is convincing as a strange and otherworldly beauty.  I would definitely have preferred for her to have more to do, as opposed to the two depressed Norwegian dudes.  It wasn't a mind blower, but it was far from a bad movie, and made for a very welcome change of pace.

Lo - 2009
Written & Directed by Travis Betz

Now this I loved. 

Justin, a heartbroken young man summons a demon to do his bidding, and his bidding is the return of his lost love, April.  The demon, Lo, is antagonistic if not outright threatening and questions Justin's motivations, putting off the job at hand with traded tales about Justin and April's past, and questionable suggestions that Justin may not have known his beloved as well as he thought he did.

The film was clearly made on a shoestring budget, but it is at all moments entertaining and enthralling.  Set almost entirely in the nether-space between Justin's apartment and Hell (in other words, the dark), Lo could easily be produced as a stage play, and indeed frames its flashback sequences as though they were.

It's not strictly horror, in that it's not really scary, but by that measure you could discount 80% of the genre.  It's an effective hybrid with moments of tension, humor, romance and even a couple musical numbers.  It's really remarkable what they were able to accomplish in terms of story and emotion with such a minimalist approach.  Joyless viewers need not apply.

WNUF Halloween Special - 2013
Written & Directed by Chris LaMartina & co.

If Call Girl of Cthulhu was Chris LaMartina's homage to the 80s, the WNUF Halloween Special is his attempt at an identity theft.  The entire production is made to look like a bootleg VHS copy of a news broadcast and special from Halloween, 1987, including commercials.

First there's a hokey local news broadcast covering the requisite Halloween stories -- the dentist with warnings about tooth decay, the fundamentalist Christians who claim it's all devil worship, etc. -- all hosted by the bland and corny anchors.  Their broadcast feeds right into the on-location special with a reporter at the house which was once the scene of a horrible double murder and has been notoriously rumored to be haunted ever since.  Crusading reporter Frank Stewart means to go inside with a husband and wife (& cat) team of paranormal investigators to hold a seance and determine once and for all whether the house is truly haunted.  Frank also has a Catholic priest in tow, just in case an exorcism should become necessary.

This is what you call "committing to a bit."  The top priority is making the whole thing look like an actual UHF-band broadcast from the 80s.  As such, much of the humor is derived from "Ha, the 80s, what were they thinking?"  The commercials are all terribly produced (on purpose) and several are for equally terribly produced programming on Channel 28.  There are a few places where the video fast forwards past boring parts, although I could have done with a lot more of that.  The joke, frankly, gets stretched pretty thin long before anything really starts to happen.  The other source of humor is Frank Stewart getting fed up and frustrated when things don't work the way they're supposed to, like opening the phone lines for questions during the seance and getting the totally predictable "MAIDEN RULES!" calls.

While I generally felt that the whole thing got stretched too thin, I did, ultimately, feel modestly rewarded with an emergent narrative from seemingly unrelated elements throughout the broadcast.

New Moon Rising

FILM:

Wer - 2013
Written by William Brent Bell & Matthew Peterman
Directed by William Brent Bell


Wer is a completely fresh and au courant take on the werewolf legend, updating the concept in the most significant way that I have seen in a generation.  I don't expect it to redefine the sub-genre, but it certainly breathes fresh life into the idea.

What starts out as a mystery and legal thriller eventually turns into an all-out action/horror piece in the second half.  It's not exactly a found footage film, but it does rely heavily on footage from video cameras, police cameras, security cameras and such, combined with psuedo-documentary shooting (like, say, The Office, though never acknowledging the camera) for the meat of the storytelling.  The news reports and found footage cut into the film provide a sense of verisimilitude that sells the idea that this is a more realistic approach to the concept in our modern context.

The film opens with vacation video of an American family in France, out enjoying a campfire in a field by moonlight -- full moonlight.  Something stirs in the trees.  Bad things happen.  Very bad things.  Cut to news reports about the attack. and the capture of the suspect, then hospital footage of the surviving family member talking to the police.  Whoever it was, whatever it was, was hairy and had these teeth...

Taking the case on behalf of the defendant is a French-American lawyer with the civil rights commission, Kate Moore.  Kate very aggressively challenges the French police who are all too willing to treat their suspect as though he's already been convicted.  He is, after all, a giant of a man, extraordinarily hairy, socially isolated, lives conveniently close to the crime and... Eastern European.

Kate and her team (one of whom happens to be a former lover) press the authorities to come up with some physical evidence linking their client, Talan Gwynek to the crime as evidence carries much more weight than testimony in the French legal system, and so far the police have none.  DNA analyses repeatedly come back as tainted.  The deeper they look into Talan's story, the more convinced they become that he suffers from a genetic condition called porphyria; an actual disorder that can cause bone deformities, skin problems (including excess hair growth) and receding gums (which would make the teeth look abnormally large).  In other words, all the things that have made Talan an outcast, but also something that would make him too weak to commit the kind of carnage of which he is accused.

I'm going to pause here for a moment to discuss a situation in horror movies that try to inhabit our skeptical world while still being monster movies in the end.  Characters spend the first act or two doubting and denying that vampires or zombies or ghosts or werewolves could possibly exist, and on the face of it, we find this acceptable because that's what we imagine we'd do in that situation.  The snag in this situation is that we as viewers already know that there's going to be a vampire of zombie or ghost or werewolf, or we wouldn't have bothered to watch the movie in the first place.  As such, the amount of time spent in denial can become increasingly frustrating to us as viewers.

I bring this up because, while I could play along and keep up the sense of mystery, we all know that there's going to be a werewolf in this werewolf movie.  So, although Wer does an excellent job of treating Talan's various conditions as scientifically explainable and logically believable to the characters, someone's throat has got to get torn out sooner or later.

Someone's throat indeed; and once it does, the chase is on.  Wer makes extraordinarily clever use of its lower-budget CGI effects.  We don't get a transformation as complex as American Werewolf's or Professor Lupin's, but the subtler werewolf is befitting the film's more believable world's tone.  There's one specific moment where the narrative turns for both the characters as well as the viewers, and the simple effect used there creates a jarring sense that we (and by "we" I particularly mean "they," the characters) are dealing with an entirely new situation that outstrips expectations.

Meanwhile, throughout the story, two subplots have been building that will develop into Wer's final confrontation and its final twist.  The twist at the end isn't a jump-out-and-grab-you one, but it does change some of the film's meaning.  It's a rare treat that a horror film's final twist is actually supported by the narrative and not merely tacked on for "gotcha" value, so the film scores a full point for that alone (were this a scoring game).

I almost didn't watch Wer, because the whole defense attorney angle didn't really sound that appealing to me, but I found it to be a tremendously refreshing take on the mythos, and I'm encouraged to know that the old dog can still hunt.

La Agrodolce Vita

FILM:

La Grande Bellezza - 2013
AKA The Great Beauty
Written by Paolo Sorrentino & Roberto Contarello
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino

It would be easy to dismiss this blogazine as primarily interested in lowbrow genre entertainments.  I feel that it would be inaccurate and unfair, but it would be easy, even excusable.  So, if for no other reason than rehabilitating that image, I'd like to add a little bit of highbrow fancy-pants foreign cinema to the mix.  But, that's not the only reason.  The fact is, I saw La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) well over a month ago, and it has continued to resonate with me.

La Grande Bellezza is, in case you had not yet caught on, an Italian film, and it indulges with gusto in the kind of things that set European cinema apart from commercial American film, almost to the point of caricature.  That also just happens to be part of its greatness.  This film is absolutely head-over-heels in love with Rome, and part of that expression is to be the most Rome it can possibly be, and that includes cloaking itself Fellini-esque cinematic language.  This one goes to eleven.  Eleven Rome.

And that's apt, because its central character, Jep Gambardella is Eleven Rome.  He puts the romantic in roman antics.  He even savors his disdain for Rome, for it's the kind of disdain that only someone who loves it and knows it intimately can understand and appreciate.  When I say that Jep is central, I mean like the sun.  He is the gravity around which the entire film revolves.  A case could be made that Jep is the only one we can be certain truly exists, and all others are but part of the Rome he dreams.

The dream metaphor is no coincidence.  The entire film has a very dreamlike quality; not so much driven from scene to scene by the demands of plot as strolling through a series of gorgeous locations content that it doesn't need to get anywhere else but where it is in any given moment.  Each scene is worthwhile on its own merits, an experience to be drunk in, savored, and allowed to go to one's head.  This kind of languorous pacing will irritate and infuriate certain audiences, but let's not talk about them.  The wine is kicking in and I can't think of a single reason to invite them over when we're having such a nice time already...

The film opens with one vast Fellini-gasm as Jep and about a hundred living, dancing faces of Rome (there's even a little person, in an obvious nod to Fellini) bump, grind and extemporize their way through his 65th birthday.  Jep, you see, is the man.  He's the author of one smashingly successful novel who has spent that last 35 years getting by on that success, trading on reviews and talk panel appearances to fuel his life-of-the-party lifestyle.  He's a somewhat less tortured Roman Gatsby of sorts.  There is no one special in his life, and yet he loves all those in his orbit, probably because they each represent a sparkling facet of his true life partner; Rome.  It is, however, a detached kind of love, arguably narcissistic, because they merely reflect Rome's light, and he is the sun that shines upon it.  Rome might be his life partner, but it's not the passion.  Something is missing, and that may be why he hasn't written another book in 35 years.

Following the party, Jep gets to bed around sunrise, due for some serious sleep.  Because of this scene, I continued to believe that the rest of the movie would be a dream.  It never tipped its hat to this, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't.  He drifts between social engagements and placid moments of art appreciation.  People come into his life and leave; sometimes in ways that should be startling but aren't experienced as such by Jep.  It's a grand canvas smeared with emotional pigments, faded by the Roman sun.

I don't want to suggest that there is no narrative arc to La Grande Bellezza.  Jep's seemingly ephemeral wanderings of Rome each key into an ongoing personal development that doesn't really connect until deep into the third act, unlocking that which has remained bound deep inside him.  Even then, it still isn't handled in as definitive a manner as your average American film-goer has been trained to expect and thus demand.  This is a show, not tell kind of movie.  The feelings that we're given to deal with are not tidy, and are sometimes just plain confusing -- but isn't that a huge part of human emotion, after all?

Once seen, it almost goes without saying that it is visually gorgeous.  It's simply redundant, unless you're explaining it to one who hasn't seen it.  I hope the director got a kickback from the Roman tourism board, because every single frame is filled with something incredible to look at.  Jep's wandering a museum again?  Well why the hell wouldn't he?  He's surrounded with wonders and recognizes it; fills his life with it, and life becomes pretty wonderful even when sadness arises.

It was only after watching the movie that I found out it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.  It's pretty easy to see why.  It would never be included in a race of Hollywood/New York/London movies, but it wholly embodies its Italian foreign-ness.  The way that it embraced the Italian lifestyle, or a certain depiction of it, anyway, really stuck with me.  It was not at all unusual for the old and young to be enjoying life and partying together.  Generational separations meant far less than Italian togetherness.  Everyone was out enjoying their lives rather than huddled around their televisions in their homes secured against their sca-a-ary fellow countrymen.  That was certainly my experience 30 years ago when I was a student in France as well, and I appreciated the reminder.

La Grande Bellezza is what it says -- it's a painting, a sculpture, a chapel, a dance, a concerto, a work of heartfelt art.  It is a Great Beauty.

Tune In, Fall In Love, Freak Out

FILM:

Frequencies - 2013
Written & Directed by Darren Paul Fisher

Something very interesting happened in 2013, and as far as I can tell, no one noticed.

There's been a lot of bandwidth committed to the decline and fall of the romantic comedy; much of it myopic and limited by standard expectations.  Yes, perhaps what we have come to expect from the commercial "rom-com" has fallen into sharp decline.  Hugh Grant and Katherine Heigl haven't been foisted on us in vacuous "girl movies" for a few years.  Matthew McConaughey decided to go be freakin' awesome instead of flashing his dimples at another fashionable blonde.  But something else has happened, and it's kind of amazing.

There is still romance in film, but it got less screwball, and a lot more clever, at least for one year.  Call them... romantic dramedies, with a sci-fi twist.  I did a fair amount of raving about Spike Jonze's Her... and Richard Curtis' About Time back around list-making time, but it took me a while to catch up with the WAY-under-the-radar Frequencies.  Well, better late than never.

The sci-fi conceit of Frequencies is that all human beings vibrate at certain (wait for it) frequencies which determine their favor with the universe, and therefore, their fate.  People with high frequencies are luckier; the universe goes out of its way to give them what they want or need.  People with low frequencies will rarely be in the right place at the right time, are destined for struggle and will rarely fit in.  Low frequency humans can still be intelligent, but they're bound for failure.  There are also emotional side effects to one's frequency, and the highest ones convey an emotional disconnect.

And that's where Zak and Marie come in.  We join them in childhood as they take a blindfolded exam to determine their frequencies.  Zak, it turns out, has an ultra-low frequency.   Marie has an ultra-high.  She affects the outward signs of human emotions to put others at ease.  Zak is in love with her.  It turns out that ultra-highs and ultra-lows cause conflicts in nature when they're too close together -- like, thunderstorms and parts falling off of airplanes conflicts -- for more than a minute.  Romeo and Juliet had nothing on this star-crossed love.

As they grow up, they occasionally meet up for a minute here and there.  Zak sees these meetings as dates.  Marie sees them as experiments.  After graduation, they each go about their own separate destinies, until fate (or something else) brings them together again.

And that's all I'm going to tell you about that.  The story is so unique that there is incredible joy in its discovery, and I want you to have that for yourself.  But what Frequencies is about is so much more than its story.  The element of frequencies serves a few metaphors, the most obvious being caste/class roles, but others crop up along the way.  There are some beautiful considerations on what it means to love.  There's also a recurring theme of fate and self-determination that you'll want to pay attention to because it becomes a much bigger deal at the end. Frequencies considers the power of words and music, and whether our choices define our fate or vice versa.  It's like the best all-night philosophizing session you had in college, baked into a magical and refreshing narrative.

While there have been more romances in film with sci-fi plots than you'd expect, there aren't so many that use these things to really roll around in philosophical concepts, and I think that's what makes About Time, Her... and Frequencies so distinguished.  The romantic stories and the science fiction conceits all serve larger considerations about life that apply to us much more universally than Kate Hudson trying on dresses or aliens/robots/monsters smashing cities.

I had almost no idea what to expect from Frequencies, going into it.  What I discovered was a masterfully cut gem of refined beauty.  If it sounds like I'm gushing, then you have understood me correctly.