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.