52 Pick-Up # 24 – A Dirty Shame (2004)

 Welcome back.

It's been an interesting few weeks here, hasn't it? Two weeks of very dark films interspersed with my unexpectedly downer read on Sex and the City. Feels like a strange tone to take as summer is getting underway.

So what say we try for something a little brighter this week, eh?

I'm thinking...let's go sexing!

Some of you are now thinking “Oh boy, here we go!” while others are going “Wait what?”

For the latter camp, this is my lead-in for saying we come to the penultimate entry of Uncharted Waters with John Waters's (to date) final movie – the prudes vs pervs satirical comedy A Dirty Shame.

I should be up front with you and say this won't be COMPLETELY devoid of a bit of a downer streak (as much of a downer as a John Waters movie has, anyway.) It won't be on the level of the last few weeks though – mostly just some thoughts pertaining to this movie's role in the larger Waters filmography and when in his career it was made.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let me set the scene for this one:

PERVERTS ARE TAKING OVER THIS NEIGHBORHOOD!

That is either the rallying cry of ominous warning that hangs over the Baltimore suburb of Harford Road. On one side, the uptight, puritanical neuters (their term), the other, the free-wheeling, hedonistic perverts. In the former camp, we have the particular wound up Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman) working through an increasingly frustrated (not that way - yet) day on the job. This all changes when a blow to the head unlocks something in Sylvia, further added to by an encounter with the charismatic pervert Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville.) Sylvia soon finds herself caught in the ideological tug of war for the soul of Harford Road between the neuters and the perverts as she begins to come to terms with her own now fully unleashed sexuality and her part in a larger prophecy among the perverts of a new sexual move to be discovered.

That's a story of spiritual awakening you don't get from most filmmakers.

It's a fun idea on paper, and there are definitely some entertaining moments in this movie overall. Which is why I kind of feel bad that, as an overall film, this is one in the camp of 'I wish I liked this more.'

I'll start with a positive note for this one – the cast wins this movie a lot of good will for me. Ullman especially is giving this movie a lot of juice with her balance between Sylvia's constant 'on her last nerve' puritanical side and then her swing hard the other way into depravity. As her spiritual guide into sexual exploration, Knoxville's Ray-Ray is equally worthy of praise: a sleazy, endearing bolt of lightning livening up the world of both Sylvia and the audience. Alongside them, the rest of the cast continue Waters's track record of being able to shine with his material – in particular, giving shout-outs to Chris Isaak as Sylvia's well-intentioned, but clueless husband Vaughn, and Suzanne Shepherd as the neuters' de facto leader, Big Ethel.

And when I say clueless, I mean Isaak is playing
'goofy straight' to the hilt.
Also, just to clarify - not a love triangle, but not necessarily
NOT a threesome waiting to happen in the context of this movie.

As fun as the cast is in this movie, it makes it a shame the actual film itself feels prone to some very abrupt stopping and starting. The first act hits the ground running and has a good momentum going, but once the movie introduces the idea of the ability to switch from being neuter to pervert and back again with a blow on the head, it feels like it stalls out on a lot of its initial momentum, with obstacles feeling more arbitrary than organic. When the movie's final act rolls around – with Ray-Ray leading a pervert uprising determined to go beyond Harford to take the country by storm – the movie feels like it's regained some of that lost momentum, but not enough to make that floundering middle a non-issue.

With that said, that final act was one that struck me in context, similar to the feeling watching Cecil B. Demented earlier this year. As I said before, this is still the last movie Waters has been able to make as a director. Officially, this wasn't intended to be his swan song, and he has tried to get other movies off the ground since, most recently trying to adapt his novel Liarmouth. Unfortunately, as he has also been very upfront about over the years, his big hurdle has been securing funding for these projects.

It's, sadly, not a unique story in the world of film. Even moreso when it pertains to directors with a very distinct vision and style that may not be the most financially friendly as a rule.

Which is why, even with that knowledge this wasn't explicitly his farewell, it's hard not to wonder if, in the back of his mind, Waters went into this with the possibility that this would be his final directorial rodeo. There's certainly context that would lend to that – this was his feature followed Demented, a movie which is as cynical of the state of modern film as it is defiant of the safe, sanitized sensibilities of studio shareholders. That Demented was seen as a box office dud may have meant Waters was starting to see the writing on the wall. In that regard, looking at the story and themes of A Dirty Shame, it's hard not to see this as the man issuing one last full-throated battle cry against the buttoned down, straight-laced and safe state of film. Especially with the film's conclusion of a pervert uprising culminating in a massive figurative (and eventually literal) sexual release of the people of Harford, and presumably the world.

In true 'just going for it' style - the ranks of the perverts
include a character named Fat Fuck Frank as well as the
above group identified as, you guessed it - The Three Bears
(Happy Pride, by the by!)

In that light, I guess I feel a little more sympathetic to this one. I'd still say it's coming in on the weaker side of Waters for me (see with the final rankings next month), and there's a lot of rough edges here that don't have quite the same charm of the old Dreamlander offerings, but there is still some scruffy charm here. Further, the idea of this as reading as Waters's final triumphant flip of the bird in the face of an industry he had read for filth less than five years earlier does make me respect the idea, if not the overall finished project.

I'd still love it if the man could come back swinging with one more movie, but if this does become the capstone on his career, it feels like a suitable place to close the book – warts and all.

Hey, not bad, even with a bit of a downer, this came out looking positively.

Now come on, universe, manifest that one more movie for him!

But, in the meantime, I've gotta be moving on here.

With one more week left in June, I will admit I put a bit of a thumb on the scale here as I wanted to get something else in here for Pride Month beyond my Waters theme. So I'm closing out this month with another movie I've had on the to do list for a long time now – it's the breakout movie that put the name Wachowski on the map, Lily and Lana's neo-noir directorial debut Bound.

Till next time.

52 Pick-Up # 23 – I Saw the Devil (2010)

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up!

Wow, that felt like a weirdly enthusiastic way to start an entry for both a pretty grim movie as well as the third and final part in what has accidentally become a fun Bleak Week cycle here.

For anyone somehow just checking in, this is my year spanning project to keep myself writing and expanding my cinematic horizons with 52 movies I've never seen before. Some on my to do list, some tagged in by my wife who has been a good sport in this endeavor.

With this entry, I'm coming to the end of what has inadvertently become a fun, strange mini-cycle in this project. By sheer happy accident, the past few movies turned into a trifecta built around the art house theater custom known as Bleak Week, a week in which indie cinemas specialize in varying incredibly dark movies. That the week itself – sandwiched between this week's movie and Incendies – went to Sex and the City, wound up being amusing to me. That even before the writeup turned into a meditation on the movie as a snapshot of the last hurrah before the financial bubble burst.

So where do we go after war crimes and financial collapse? How about blood-soaked vengeance that no one walks away from happily?

To those of you who said 'Yes'? Good, cause we're going there anyway.

With that as our set-up (and I suppose VERY vague spoiler), let's get into the pitch.

Kim Jee-Woon's I Saw the Devil introduces us to two men: serial killer Jang Kyung-Chul (Choi Min-Sik, returning to the revenge genre from his earlier iconic work in Oldboy) and intelligence agent Kim Soo-Hyun (Lee Byung-Hun.) The movie starts as Kyung-Chul has killed his latest victim – Soo-Hyun's fiancée. Soo-Hyun, determined to avenge her death, first starts by wreaking terror on multiple suspects before finding Kyung-Chul. With his target located, Soo-Hyun isn't interested in bringing Kyung-Chul in alive, but rather has decided he will make the man suffer as he has. What follows is a violent, cold-blooded game of cat and mouse between the two men, first as we see how far from the path of law and order Soo-Hyun will stray in his desire for revenge, and then what Kyung-Chul is will to do to return to favor.

Again, gotta love how this trio sorted out. Right down to ending with the grimmest of the three.

And honestly? I really liked that it went that way.

I know, I know, it feels weird to apply 'liked' to a movie that is a fairly brutal, violent entry into the 'vengeance as a double-edged sword' subgenre. I swear, this isn't out of some weird sadism at the violent acts committed – in fact, there were a few times I was actually surprised to see the movie not pull a punch. In this case it came down to two things. The first – this is just a genuinely well-made, tense thriller further enhanced by two top notch performers in Min-Sik and Byung-Hun. The second is how hard this goes into that double-edged aspect of the vengeance. 

Additionally, coming into this with my last time seeing
Lee Byung-Hun being the dark comedy No Other Choice,
this gives me a whole other level of respect for his range.

It's not a universally set rule, but it's not an uncommon occurrence in these kinds of stories where that sort of blow back comes in the idea of the protagonist simply resorting to more monstrous means than those they are against to settle the score. It's even present in this to a degree, particularly early on as it becomes clear that Soo-Hyun isn't satisfied with simply seeing his fiancée's killer arrested or killed. Where this movie steps it up for me comes with the fact that the movie remembers the man Soo-Hyun is pursuing to this degree is still a violent, dangerous psychopath. Once Kyang-Chul starts to key in to what's happening, he starts pushing back. Instead of this simply being one man going too hard to destroy another, it becomes murderous one-upping. What started as Soo-Hyun determined to torture the source of his misery to death turns into him realizing he let a monster live too long, and realizing he can still lose more at this man's hands, turning into a race to see which man can destroy the other first.

It is bleak. It is cold-blooded. It is mean-spirited. And dammit, it worked on me.

It still feels genuinely weird to say that incredibly bleak tone is what I enjoyed about this movie, but there's no other way to put. There is just something about the grim balance that this movie hits that really resonated for me and I'm glad I finally got to watching it.

I'm also glad this was the movie of the three to close out this accidental Bleak Week cycle, going out on the darkest, and most final of the three movies.

So, for anyone who's been reading these and going 'Jesus Christ, could you lighten up a little?' lately – I've got good news!

Sort of. Depending your tastes.

There will be a tonal palate cleanser on deck next time as I make my penultimate foray into Open Waters. Next entry, I'm coming near the end with (to date, fingers crossed) John Waters's final directorial outing, 2004's A Dirty Shame.

Till next time!

52 Pick-Up # 22 – Sex and the City: The Movie (2008)

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my year long challenge to keep myself consistently writing and engaging with films I haven't seen before.

I can't exactly say this was one for my to do list, but it is one I did invite on myself by virtue of giving my wife the wild card/veto option.

In hindsight, I should have realized she would be using this to test my limits and specifically trying to angle towards films outside of my general wheelhouse just to see what I'd do. In that regard, I commend her, because in this case, I got both a challenge as well as just a larger general experience.

Which is probably where I should start this review by saying that, before watching this, I had little to no experience with Sex and the City. There were bits I had gleaned second hand, either details from my wife or jokes about it on The Majority Report (host Sam Seder had a guest spot on the show back in the day) or American Dad! (See screenshot below – I get this particular joke THAT much more now.)

"This is Michael Patrick King's first draft of the
Sex and the City movie.
It's 700 pages!"

So when I agreed to watch this movie as my wife's veto pick (and the locked picks are turning into a wild list so far) I was also counting on her for general explanation/reference for a lot of what I was about to watch.

That's a lot of preamble for this one as my way of saying 'this was one it took me a while to wrap my thoughts around for a write-up, so please bear with me.'

So, to start with, the elevator pitch, comprising of the movie itself as well as the context points I was given for this. This movie was designed to serve as a big budget send-off to the hit HBO TV series. In particular, the focus being on Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie finally tying the knot with her on-again, off-again love interest Big (not his actual name and played by the...let's now say troubled Chris Noth.) This is the main focus, anyway, though all four of the leads each has their own storyline to work through.

It's a lot of movie, but I get it – it's an ensemble show and this was meant to be the curtain call.

Speaking of which – yes, there's also a lot of focus with the clothes. This is, as I've been informed, something the show sort of evolved into after its first few seasons as designers saw this as a good showcase, so with this movie as the big finish, it made sense that would also factor in.

Stick a pin in that, by the way. It's going to come back for one of my points later.

But first, I'll just say this – I didn't hate this. It's not gonna be among the best I've seen this year (and there have been some solid gems I'm glad I've finally taken off the list) but I also wasn't in Hell watching this. In fact, there were some things that I did find enjoyable to watch. In particular, the cast earned this a lot of good will (with special shout to Kim Catrall, continuing to elevate most things she's in.)

I feel like this can be best summed up as a 'It's not for me, and there's nothing wrong with that.' Which is something I'm kind of glad I got to experience in this run. Don't get me wrong, I like that I've largely been happy with what I've watched, but there is something healthy to encountering something that isn't bad, but just isn't really something you're meant to click with. For lack of a better way to put it, it's like a perspective check, and one I feel like I appreciate more now in the current age of film discourse where so many takes are of an all-or-nothing stance where a film is either the best thing ever or the worst. There's a place in the conversation for this sort of feeling, and it's good to be reminded of it.

There is one thing I will say did bother me about this. I will acknowledge this may also be partly the 'this isn't for me' talking when I say it but – damn, two and a half hours was a big ask for this one. Which seems weird to say as I've watched other long movies for this before – in fact, next week is coming in only a little shy of this runtime. In this case, I think it was one where I just felt it more at times – most notably the mid-movie trip to Mexico. I'm not saying the movie shouldn't have gone there, cause I see its function in the larger movie, but it also feels like it takes more time than it needs to wallowing in Carrie's misery, and setting up for a single scene pay-off in which someone craps themselves (which, in theory, I commend the ambition of, less so in practice.) There isn't really something I can really say is a case of 'lose it' in this movie as much as 'this could have been tightened up a bit.'

As I was requested on this, I will quote my wife 
on this scene - "Don't throw flowers. Throw hands!"

I can also see why it runs this long. At the time, meant to be the grand finale, so the impulse to go big is understandable. It's also something I do have to give this movie – as movies based on TV shows go, there is always that tricky balancing act where you want to capture the charm of the show, but you also want to avoid just feeling like you're making a jumbo-sized episode or what feels like several episodes cut together. I've seen some that clear this hurdle well (The X-Files: Fight the Future and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) and others that don't quite get over it (production budget aside, The Simpsons Movie, I'm looking at you.) While I will admit I'm not familiar with the series to make the full comparison, just taken on its own, this felt like a case of recognizing 'we have a movie budget, so let's blow the scope up' in a way that largely pays off. I'm deferring in part to my wife on this as far as if this is an accurate reading compared to the show, and have been informed overall, yes.

Honestly? The most fascinating part about this watch has been, as I said above, just the general experience. More than just watching a movie, this was me getting a crash course in a series (I feel strange calling this one a franchise) I had very little prior experience or knowledge of in time for what was functionally their series finale. In that regard, it was a winding, strange, and sometimes fun deep dive.

By this point, I'm sure some of you are going 'You do know they made another one, right?'

Well, that's the other thing that stuck with me on this one.

See? I told you we'd come back to this.

So, there is one moment in this movie in particular that hit me and really stuck. The kicker is, it's a moment that happens entirely by accident.

Okay, not ENTIRELY. The scene itself is meant to be a moment of revelation for Carrie, but there is a detail in the scene, not relevant to the context of the story, but watched through the eyes of 2026, it hits VERY differently. Without going too deep into set-up, there is an early plot point of the movie where Carrie agrees to a magazine shoot for her wedding, a decision that turns what was meant to be a small affair into an oversized production. Later in the film, after this has led to Big jilting her at the altar, she finds the magazine again and realizes this may have been the problem. Now for the fun part – the magazine in question is under another magazine. That other magazine's cover talks of a looming financial bubble.

Screenshot to prove I'm not lying.

It was at this point that I found myself looking up when in 2008 this movie came out. This was just ahead of the crash. Which led to an interesting discussion with my wife about that timing, particularly paired with her pointing out how a big part of why the second movie is generally regarded as awful is the very tone deaf way it navigated that post-crash world.

This meta aspect lent an interesting feel to the experience of watching this knowing it was originally meant to be the end. Since then, they've had that sequel movie as well as a follow up TV series which, while it still has had some decent audiences, has never quite regained the momentum the original series had. With that detail it really hit home that this movie was, for this larger series, an end of an era. With the crash, this kind of a series (or more accurately what this series had become) would not land quite the same way, despite the game attempts of the people behind it to do so. Like a band still performing after a major member died, something was missing (this all before getting into the fact Kim Catrall declined to be part of the sequel series, but as far as this goes, that's more of a side note.)The performance continues, but as far as it was described to me, it never quite sounds the same.

In a way, I think that's the thing I'm most fascinated by in this movie. The fact that it is a very particular sort of time capsule taken just before things changed in a drastic way, and it's interesting to see in that light knowing how much of this would play very differently a a year or two later.

Huh...and here I started this joking about the relative absurdity that this wound up being the movie I wrote about for Bleak Week. I found a way!

Of course, it's also funny that this landed on that particular week as it's sandwiched between two fairly dark movies otherwise.

In the spirit of the shuffle pulling wild tonal shifts, we're going from the high fashion world of a pre-bubble New York to a blood soaked slice of Korean extreme with I Saw the Devil.

Man, this month is gonna be a wild one.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up # 21 – Incendies (2010)

Ah, the end of May. It's getting warmer out, plants are in bloom and critters are all out and about.

And over here, 52 Pick Up is...
Oh.

Oof.

I mean, this was good, but oof.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my year long documentation of going through 52 first time watches of movies that have been in some degree of my to do list.

As as I come in to the tail end of the fifth month of this project, it's been an interesting grab bag. Especially this past month, going from the wonderfully weird world of John Waters, to a Coen Bros screwball comedy, and last week's audaciously insane Wild Zero. It's been a fun romp of a month.

That I will now be closing out in a fairly bleak fashion, courtesy of Denis Villeneuve's Incendies.

I'm going to apologize up front – this is a movie where I'm going to be trying to avoid getting too into the details, as functionally this movie is as much a mystery as it is a character piece and a tragedy. It won't ruin the movie if you know some of the details, but it does help keep the momentum on that first watch.

One more note while we're being up front – while this is one to go into without knowing too much, I will give a courtesy warning. This movie touches on some heavy themes, in particular war crimes and sexual assault (neither is presented in an especially lurid light, but still, they are there and the movie isn't ambiguous about it.) I'm saying this here because these are things that it feels, if I may be blunt, dickish to blindside someone with. It's still worth seeing if you think you can handle that, and letting the story unfold on its own, but if that's a hard pass, no judgments if you sit this one out.

And with that disclaimer...

Like I said above, Incendies is, alongside being a character piece, presented as a mystery. The movie begins following the death of Nawal (Lubna Azabal), a woman from an unnamed Levantine country (the movie, and the play it's adapted from, were inspired by the Lebanese Civil War and one particular prisoner from that war, Souha Bechara.) We're introduced to her twin children, Jeanne and Simon (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) who have been informed their mother has left instructions that she is not to be given a proper grave until they deliver two letters – one to their father they have believed dead, the other to a brother they had no idea existed. While Simon is initially put off by the whole endeavor, Jeanne sets to work trying to find the identities of these people. Her efforts lead her to dig into her mother's past as she does so. The viewer then follows Jeanne, and later Simon, as they inquire further, learning of the secrets and tragedies that their mother went through before they were born.

That's about as far as I can take it without getting into spoilers, humor me.

The instinct to try and avoid spoilers has, I admit, made this another movie where finding a particular aspect to discuss has been a challenge. Especially as that mystery, and the momentum it gives this, is a big part of what drew me in in the first place.

Which is interesting for me as, in reading up on this, much of the mystery is unique to the movie version.

As I said above, this movie is an adaptation. In this case taken from the play of the same name by Wajdi Mouawad. Curious, I decided to look into this – particularly since, as film adaptations of plays go, this is one that it somewhat surprised to me learn was a play. I can see elements that would play on stage, but the execution feels very much designed for film in this case, particularly compared with some other attempts to transplant a play to film (Aronofsky's The Whale comes to mind, a movie that it isn't at all shocking to learn is based on a play, as the trappings feel very bound by the 'single set stage' aspects of the material.) Reading up on comparisons between Mouawad's play and Villeneuve's movie added to my interest from both sides of this particular translation. While Villeneuve keeps much of the core story, he also makes some very striking changes to accommodate the medium (one particular reveal that Mouawad appears to set up early, Villeneuve holds till the end, making for a genuinely shocking drop when it comes.) Adding to the changes in structure, there are also extensive revisions to the dialogue, with whole scenes being rewritten, either for dialogue, structure, or both.

Maybe it's the fact that I was taking part in a general discussion on adaptation in film earlier this month that has this prominent in my brain, but I am struck by the choices made in this particular version and how they measure up to what I'm seeing about the original. In particular, and with that discussion in mind, looking at this in the question of 'which is better?'

Without having seen the original play (though I must admit I now want to), the sense I get in the comparison isn't so much that one is better than the other as much as each is better for its particular medium. A number of the changes Villeneuve has made feel specifically like they were done specifically to play to the medium of film and the freedoms and limitations that allows for. Things like the fact he has a broader visual canvas to play with (which is at times used to haunting effect in this) but in turn, he is beholden to a more rigid structuring, even as the movie finds its own ways to explore the narrative shifting between the past and the present. There are elements and lines Mouawad has that I can see working incredibly effectively on a stage that would feel forced or clunky in a movie, just as there's things Villeneuve does here that a stage performance would be hard pressed to capture.

Despite those differences, the movie ultimately reaches the same core that the stage play is reaching for – two siblings discovering the horrific past their mother tried to keep buried in life, only discovering it after her death when they are tasked to help her say the things she couldn't at the time. I can see why this was the movie that really put Villeneuve on the map, both for how it translated its source material as well as helping highlight a lot of the skills that would define many of his subsequent movies.

I'm glad I watched this one and I can tell I'll be thinking of it for a long while after this.

Which is probably for the best, as it may be a good long time before I feel like I'm game to revisit it.

On that happy note, it is time to bid adieu to May and get ready to kick off June as the halfway point is fast approaching.

And just how am I kicking off the informal start of summer?

After pulling June's shuffle, my wife has decided to invoke her veto power, in a move that she has since confirmed was chosen to try and test my specific limits of 'this just isn't for me.'

I have to admit, she brought the big guns with Sex and the City – The Movie. But, that's a discussion for another week.

So, until then!

52 Pick-Up # 20 – Wild Zero (1999)

Wow.

Sorry, that is just the best way I can think to describe this one.

Okay, okay, my first response would actually be 'holy shit', but I felt like I should start this a little cleaner.

Okay. Let's start again.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. For those of you just showing up, this is my year long bid to keep myself consistently writing by going through my cinematic 'to do' list of 52 movies I have never seen before and doing a writeup of general impressions. As of this writing, we are now mid-way into month five and it's been a weird, wild journey so far.

And even with that bar set, and even knowing the upshot of this movie, I was still not prepared for the wonderful batshit insanity of Wild Zero.

For those of you wondering 'What the Hell is Wild Zero?' this is either going to be the movie you didn't know you wanted or something you'll know isn't your jam pretty early on.

In a nutshell – Wild Zero is a star vehicle movie for the Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf – a hard rock group sporting pompadours, leather jackets, and more than a fair bit of Ramones flavor. They appear in the movie as themselves, performing their music and acting as the superhuman guardian angels to protagonist Ace (Masashi Endo), a punk rock fan who finds friends, love, and survival amid an alien invasion and a zombie apocalypse.

No. That's not a joke. That all happens in this movie and more.

And it is a Goddamn delight.

I openly admit, I may sound like I'm copping out a bit in this write-up. I can assure you, I'm not trying to, but with a movie like this, it's hard to really break it down as a cinematic achievement and more just take it as a giant vibe. As I said above, this is a movie you'll either click with almost instantly or bounce right off of.

I'd almost argue this movie defies captioning,
simply because most jokes one could make here still fall
short of just how gleefully unhinged this movie lets itself get.

Okay, there may be some in the middle, but in general, it's a movie where it's really going to be a matter of whether you vibe with it or not whether than if it is an objectively good movie.

In the interests of at least trying to elaborate, I suppose I should go into just what about this appealed to me. Which, I will warn you, is still gonna read as a bit off form and outlandish.

So what is it about this movie that has me all kinds of hyped? If I had to put in a single word, it's the audacity. This is a movie that knows what it is and what it's doing and kicks right off with that in mind – the opening titles are going between the above mentioned aliens coming to Earth and a Guitar Wolf performance right from the jump. From there, it doesn't feel like it wants to take a slow road with any of the other elements it brings into play – be it Ace's chance encounter with the band that makes him their blood brother, the zombie outbreak that is only loosely tied to the alien invasion, or the band's unhinged manager, The Captain, on a quest for revenge against the talent he's fallen out with.

Yes, I didn't mention those two elements above. This is before getting into at least three other storylines and five other characters I didn't touch on before. That's the level of audacity at play here. This is a ridiculously packed 100 minutes of movie, and to the credit of director Tetsuro Takeuchi and writer Satoshi Takagi, it never feels overloaded. Each new twist and turn feels less like “Oh God, what now?” and more “You know what? That tracks, come on in!”, building on the earlier craziness as they go. By the time I got to the finale of this, I was in a state of grinning madly at the screen as I half-laughed and half-commented “What the fuck?” over one particular revelation. If you've seen the movie, you can likely guess which one. If not, oh, there is another reason to dig into this.

Case in point.

In first coming away from this movie, I found myself torn as far as comparisons to earlier movies. I could have easily done effective versions of the 'two nickles' bit comparing this both to Yellow Submarine (real world rock band, in a fictional form, is called upon to save the day when the world is attacked by an outlandish menace) and Streets of Fire (fantastical rock and roll genre mash-up that simultaneously both feels in a particular vein while seeming to defy said vein at the same time.) The more I work on this, I feel like it tips slightly closer to Streets of Fire, if only for the fact that, like that movie, the mash-up here turns into an almost superhuman balancing act. In this case, it's an action, horror, sci-fi, comedy, rock and roll movie with a quirky love story driving its hero, and somehow, all those threads feel well represented, rather than something feeling tossed in and ignored. It's a movie that, on paper, feels like it shouldn't work, and be an exhausting slog of a mash-up, and yet not only does it work, it somehow works spectacularly well.

At least, if you can get on its wavelength. Again, I recognize this won't land for everyone, and hey, maybe it won't land for most – in which case, I'm happy to be one of the weird freaks that this played beautifully for.

Also, gotta hand it to this one -
For a movie made in 1999, Guitar Wolf
being pretty open minded here.

It took me several years from when I first watched this to finally see it. In the lead up to this week, I was initially concerned I might have built the hype for this up in my head to more than it could match.

Damn, am I glad it measured up.

With that, it's time to move on as month 5 here starts to come to a close. I've got one more on deck to go before we head into June though.

And the shuffle has decided the month of May needs to close out with a little emotional whiplash. Coming on the heels of this light, fun three weeks, I'll be closing out the month with an early breakout movie for Denis Villeneuve, Incendies.

It feels weird to sound hyped with a dark note like that one ahead, but that's how it goes when you left shuffles call the line-up.

All the same, will be looking forward to this one.

Till then.

Okay, one last bonus.
Just cause Ace's crashout moment here was one I looked at and thought
"2026 in a nutshell."

52 Pick-Up #19 – Hail, Caesar! (2016)

 Don't compare the release date to now. Don't compare the release date to now. Don't compare the--

Oh, hi!

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my coming-up-on-halfway bid to keep myself doing some form of writing and working through my cinematic to do list project that I'll eventually find a clever short hand for. Until then, you're stuck with this.

With May now fully underway, I'm coming into this week's title off of two weeks of John Waters. In one way, this is a fitting jump as it is going into the works I'd missed from another acclaimed American director (okay, directors.) In another, going from John Waters to the Coen Brothers is a shift I didn't see coming when I started this. Can't complain, really – I picked the shuffle approach in part to keep things from getting into a rut, so this is performing exactly as intended.

So, as I leave the delightful chaos of Mortville in the rearview, it's time to let Joel and Ethan Coen take the wheel and head to the west coast for a change in time zone and...well...time, with their old Hollywood caper Hail, Caesar!

As of this writing, it's been a few days since I watched this movie, and I've been pondering how to proceed in terms of focus. Normally this is the point where I tend to give a pitch of just what the movie is about, that will still be happening. But what this movie is about is also, the more I think about it, a big part of what I wanted to focus on here. Going in, I had avoided trying to look up too much on the plot, at most allowing some memory of the promotion on its initial release.

Looking back at it now, especially on having rewatched the trailers after the movie, that was the smart decision, which brings us to what this film is about.

Hail, Caesar! takes us into the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at a Hollywood studio in the 1950s – a job that is as much about fixing up messes behind the camera as it is making sure everything in front goes to design. Mannix has his hands full in a number of areas – one talent has gotten pregnant out of wedlock, another is being woefully miscast in an attempt to change his image, and the star of his big budget epic (George Clooney, continuing his streak of lovable buffoons with the Coens) being kidnapped. All this as Mannix jockeys a potential job offer that would trade the hectic world of the arts for a more stable world in airlines.

At the time of the movie, the offer is with just Lockheed, 
so it's not AS morally dubious a choice yet.

As I was watching this, I was struck by those memories of the promotions on this movie and why it seemed like they were putting more emphasis on Clooney's storyline.

So I went back and rewatched that trailer – and realized they didn't just overemphasize it, they actively recut it to make it feel like that storyline was the whole movie. To the point where it plays several of the people involved as though they're part of this wild plan to solve the kidnapping.

Which suddenly made the cold audience reception make a lot more sense. I get that marketing had a challenge on this one – the movie as it is is essentially more of a 'a few days in the life of' story, where the central conflict everything hangs on isn't if Mannix will get his epic's leading man back but rather if he will take the job offer that will get him out of the movie business. Yes, the kidnapping storyline is presented as the biggest hurdle Mannix has to navigate, and that is less the crime and more keeping his studio's big tentpole picture afloat and free of scandal (externalized best in Tilda Swinton double billed as two competing gossip columnists each trying to get a behind the scenes exclusive.) The stakes are less about what becomes of the star and more the movie within the movie. The Coens even play into that with the repeated cuts back to Clooney and his kidnappers – where the closest thing to any danger may depend on how the audience feels about the idea of a 1950s actor learning some of the basics of communism.

In true Coen fashion, there's something genuinely
entertaining about the fact that, for all their
in-fighting and practical ineptitude, they actually succeed (sort of.)

I could tell this wasn't the movie I remembered them selling in 2016, even before actively revisiting the marketing. Having said that, I didn't mind that. In fact, I think I actually preferred this version. Yes, I would have been interested to see what the Coens could have done with that flavor of movie where it is a giant kidnapping caper, but I also feel like this kind of a character study is still very much in their wheelhouse. 

Additionally, for all the star power that goes into this cast (alongside Clooney, the cast also sports Scarlett Johannson, Channing Tatum, Alden Ehrenreich and a pre-troubles Jonah Hill), there's something that feels appropriate about the fact the movie is centered on Josh Brolin – an actor who has led movies, but marketing never quite managed to make into a big name in quite the level of the people cast as on-screen talent. In fact, one of the things I've pretty consistently appreciated about Brolin is he has had something of a chameleon streak that lets him disappear into a role that is an asset in this case. He comes across believably as a put upon producer whose need to keep his actors' problems out of the public eye requires him to be an on the ground fixer as well as a dealmaker. It's the normal guy in the movie surrounded by larger than life figures and he helps ground it well.

Also, I know it's gotten its laurels in general, but it bears
repeating - damn, Channing Tatum is a very pleasant surprise
in this entertaining song and dance number.

I know this movie does have its defenders, but it's also one I hope more people come back around on if it left them cold when it first came out. Yes, the Coens have made better, but this is still a very solid entry in their work (from what I have seen, there are other gaps to fill ahead!)

But, the works of Joel and Ethan will have to wait for another time as I wrap this week up. Don't worry though, the lighter tone is keeping up next week, if in a VERY different direction.

See you next week where I'm taking on a movie that has been on my to do list for years and I'm excited to finally see it – the cult favorite Japanese zombie rock and roll movie, Wild Zero.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up # 18 – Desperate Living (1977)

 This MIGHT have the most quoted line in all of John Waters' filmography, even if not everyone knows they're quoting it.

With that as the opener, welcome to 52 Pick-Up, my ongoing year-long experiment in cutting down my cinematic to do list and keeping myself consistent with writing.

The last couple of weeks were a little erratic – that was on me due to a mix of life in general and a busy rehearsal schedule, but things will be getting back on track for the foreseeable future.

Now that the housekeeping notice is out of the way, let's get into this week's movie. As April turns to May, the chance shuffling of titles means I'll be staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Going from last week's correspondence from the front lines of the Cinema Wars, I'm taking things a bit further back into John Waters's filmography, this time closing out his Trash Trilogy with 1977's Desperate Living.

I'm trying not to make this a theme, but this is the third time in a row I've had a John Waters movie that I find myself looking at particularly in light of when it came out. In this case, like Multiple Maniacs, this is going into where this falls specifically in Waters's own body of work. Alongside being the final chapter in the Trash Trilogy (the previous two parts being Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble), this also feels like a turning point in Waters's movies in general. While his subsequent movies maintain a lot of his gleefully subversive elements, such as following this up with his gleefully warped take on melodramas in Polyester, this marks him taking a step back from the more overtly shocking. As though to signal this, we start seeing the cast of some of his movies shifting as well: David Lochary is not present due to issues he had been having with drugs (and his subsequent death meant Female Trouble would be his final Waters appearance), while Divine would return, a prior commitment meant she had to reluctantly bow out from this, and this would be the second to last appearance by Edith Massey. I can't quite call it a full 'end of an era' picture, as many of Waters's regulars did continue with him from here, but looking at where his work went after the 70s, this movie definitely feels like something of a turning point.

So how did Waters close out that wilder era of the 70s? Starting in a vision of archetypal American suburbia, we're introduced to Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, opening this movie in top form) a, to put it mildly, high strung housewife coming off of a nervous breakdown. After a crash out involving yelling at the neighborhood children, she gets into an altercation that leaves her with a dead husband. Wasting no time, she finds herself on the lam with her maid, Grizelda (Jean Hill.) Eventually, the two make their way to the shantytown of Mortville, an ostensibly lawless burg ruled over by the iron-fisted Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey.) From there, they become caught up in the lives of many of Mortville's regulars, such as wrestler Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), her lover Muffy (Liz Renay) and Carlotta's daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce.)

Told ya. Easily one of his most quoted lines.

There's something fitting about the fact Divine had to back out of her commitment to this due to being involved in the play Women Behind Bars. While it's not expressly giving off the same vibe, the very woman-focused (and yes, very gay) nature of the characters in Desperate Living evokes feelings of the exploitative prison genre that the play is similarly poking fun at. In particular, some of the character dynamics and the power structure, right down to Queen Carlotta serving as the archetypal corrupt warden figure all feel a hop, skip, and a popper-fueled jump from the more traditional tropes of the genre.

Having said that, I do feel a little bit torn on this movie. It has its charms, and when it's funny, it can be very funny. In fact, like I said above, the opening to this may be one of the most quoted moments in Waters's cinematic body of work, and it is a genuinely hilarious sequence in its own right as well as one of the career highs for Mink Stole. Unfortunately, it also sets a high note that the rest of the movie never quite manages to match. There are still elements of what follows that are fun (Massey is clearly having fun with the over the top villainy of Carlotta, and Lowe is a scene stealer as Mole for two big examples) but the movie feels like once it gets to Mortville it goes from the bonkers charge it starts with to a more meandering pace that causes the movie to feel like it loses some steam. I'm also not sure how to feel about the fact the movie seems to pivot its focus with the arrival of Mole and Muffy. Like I said before, Susan Lowe is a lot of fun in the role, and she is an enjoyable character to follow, but it also makes it feel like the movie lays on a heavy dash of Peggy and then she gets sidelined out of what is initially framed as her story.

This MIGHT be my favorite Edith Massey performance.

All in all, I still enjoyed this even with those flaws factored in. Yes, it makes it feel uneven, but the highs are still enjoyable and more than balance out the lows (which aren't even as much lows as just not quite landing as strong as they could.) As to its role in the concluding the Trash Trilogy? Maybe my opinion will change with time, but as it is now, it feels like it's probably the one I'd put at the bottom in ranking the three, though that is also just a matter of the fact the other two movies are Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. What can I say? They set a high bar. Beyond the quality, like I said above, it also feels fitting as the final offering from the younger, more overtly shocking era of Waters as he transitioned into a different brand of subversive.

Two titles left to go before the final rankings. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty intrigued to see where the last of his filmography goes.

But, that is for another month. In the meantime, the rest of May has been rolled and next week marks a shift to another notable filmmaker (or filmmakers) whose body of work I have gaps to fill. So, next week I mark the first of a few gaps in the work of the Coen Brothers that have been on the to do list with Hail, Caesar!

Till then.