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."

Election (1999)

Ahhh, fall. Possibly my favorite time of year.

The days are getting cooler, the leaves are turning, and Halloween is right around the corner.

But first, it's September, and for many, including the Criterion Challenge, that means back to school.

To kick things off, we're going back to the far off (oh God, I'm old) year of 1999 with Alexander Payne's black comedy Election. A movie that touches on all the high school experiences - finding yourself, running for student government and...let me check this note again...torpedoing your career when you take out your newfound midlife crisis on the overachieving student in your class.

I'm sure that was a high school experience for some. Thankfully I dodged that bullet.

As a rule, I try not to go into these with a direct focus picked out. A broad direction sometimes, but I feel if I zero in too much, I could miss something, so I'm reluctant to pre-plan too much.

I did break that rule a bit this time. It was hard not to with the debate this movie has sparked with regards to how we're meant to see the above-mentioned overachieving Tracy Flick.

If it helps, that became a jumping off point rather than the sole topic (hence 'a bit'.) As that question kicked around, I found myself instead focusing on a throughline of the movie that I hadn't put too much thought into before - misplaced blame.

Election is a movie that is spurred forward often by grievance. It's the entire reason Jim McAllister feels the need to try and put a stop to Tracy's presidential ambitions. It's what pushes Tracy to nurse a venomous degree of hate for opponents who don't share her enmity. Finally, it's what leads to Tammy Metzler's 'burn it all down' bid for class presidency that throws even McAllister's plans into disarray.

In the interests of some semblance of order, let's start from the bottom of that list and work our way to the top.

Of the three lashing out in this movie, I feel like Tammy is the one who comes out the best, both in terms of recognizing her misplaced anger and how to address that. Yes, her grudge with Paul and Tracy is largely a consequence of her much more justified anger with her former friend/spurned romantic interest Lisa, but that also allows her to step back from it, rather than let it consume her. By the end, even though she's expelled, she is ultimately happy at her new school with the bad blood left in the past.

Tracy's issues with blame are what really got me on this path in the first place. First and foremost in this movie, Tracy Flick is a victim. This is presented to us on multiple levels - first and most abhorrent being her sexual relationship with disgraced teacher Dave Novotny. Behind him, we have her mother, Judith, who is presented as channeling her own frustrations with unfulfilled ambitions into her daughter (I let out an audible 'oof' this time around when her mother's reaction to Tracy's losing is simply "maybe you needed more posters.") Bringing up the rear, of course, is Jim McAllister, Novotny's friend who ultimately makes Tracy the target of his own anger born out of his blossoming midlife crisis (we'll get back to that.)

I mulled over numerous ways to compare the dynamic
between Tracy and Paul to Frank Grimes and Homer Simpson.
I couldn't quite make it stick, but I maintain there is
a case to be made.

Despite how clearly toxic these adults are, Tracy bears them no ill will in her narrations. She commends her mother's drive, she speaks of Novotny sympathetically and recalls their relationship fondly, and even after McAllister's efforts to sabotage her election, she looks on him with pity more than anything else. By comparison, her attitude towards Paul and Tammy is one of complete and utter scorn. She views them as unworthy of the presidency and beneath her, even though neither has done anything to slight her personally.

This watch was the first time I ever really processed how much those toxic adults have affected Tracy. Her narrations give the impression of someone still unwilling to admit they were a victim, and rather than fire back at those who did mistreat her, she takes out her anger on those she sees as beneath her instead. It's part of why, while working on this writeup, I was pleasantly surprised by the reports of Tom Perotta looking to write a follow up to the original novel where Tracy coming to terms with what happened to her is a factor.

I can't really say I see her as a hero or villain as some would contest, but I have to admit, she is a fascinating, complicated character the more I look at her.

If there's anyone I WOULD say is a hero in this movie,
it's the janitor who undoes McAllister's plan because he's
had enough of his shit.

Finally, we have Jim McAllister. Like Tracy, I was struck by how differently he read to me on this viewing. If anyone in this film could be read as a villain (besides Novotny), it's McAllister. A big part of that is just how far he slides over the course of the film. At the start, the depiction of McAllister is, decidedly, positive (taken with a grain of salt, of course - the movie is rife with unreliable narrators). He is a respected teacher, well liked by his students, and when Novotny confides in his affair, his response is one of shock and disapproval. When Novotny's subsequent disgrace is recounted, McAllister isn't immediately hostile to Tracy. It starts to creep its way in as the first signs of what the movie ultimately plays out as a mid-life crisis, not unlike the one that destroyed his former colleague. Perhaps because of that point of reference, rather than recognize what he's going through and trying to sort himself out, he instead focuses himself on Tracy and destroying her ambitions.

Unlike Tammy or Tracy, McAllister's behavior is much harder to forgive, especially because of how he's introduced. He is presented to us as a man who, for all intents and purposes, should know better - he has a good life, is well respected, and at first has a recognition of how reckless and stupid his friend is being. When it happens to him, however, he ignores that, and ultimately abuses the trusts of his students, his friends, and his wife.

The movie's epilogue further adds to why it's harder to forgive him. As everything settles, we see each of the students finding their way in life - Paul and Tammy each happy with the paths they choose, Tracy continuing to aspire higher and still begrudging those around her. McAllister, we find out, lands himself a museum job and seemingly gets his life back on track. He does see Tracy one more time, this time in the cadre of a noted politician. At first, the movie gives you the impression he's let go and moved on, until he dwells on it more, and we find out he still has some unresolved blame for her and her ambitions proceeding while his are stymied. It's a feeling that then carries into the last scene, as he once again finds himself haunted by an overeager student, reluctant to acknowledge her.

Adding a bit of a darker note -
Remembering that this was a movie made in 99, following
the Clinton scandals, this scene very clearly implies
Tracy is again being taken advantage of by someone
abusing their authority.
Which, sadly, ties well with her never quite reckoning
with what happened to her.

Whew. This was a lot.

What can I say? After taking the summer easy, this one gave me a lot to turn over, and I'm glad to be back in the swing of things.

We have one more entry left before October (where, as I promised, we're still doing a franchise dive, and oh what a dive it will be!)

Stick around for one more class next week and then we'll be on our way!

Till then