Tim Burton

I had a Tim Burton marathon to evaluate his filmography. I skipped Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks, Big Fish, Big Eyes, Planet of the Apes and Dumbo. I am familiar with those enough. That leaves Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, Miss Peregrine..., Vincent, the 80s and 2010s versions of Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride, Charlie & The Chocolate Family & Alice in Wonderland, Shelly Duvall's Aladdin. The obscure films I had mostly never seen.

His aesthetic is built on a childlike cartooning of horror film tropes. Again and again his films reflect his biography as a moody California outsider to a depressed Disney animator to a star director of Hollywood blockbusters and small Gothic serio-comedies. The films reflect his always shifting on the spectrum of positive and negative, black and white. This has left him seen as wildly uneven, repetitive but also unpredictable and cathartic in his obsessively dialectic style.

As an auteur, which camp does he fall? He's known more for dark Eurocentric visuals, weird characters, grand setpieces and excessive visual effects so he's erroneously thrown in with horror directors or oddball New Hollywood types like M. Night or even Spielberg. I think thats more to do with the commercial projects offered to him. Sadly, he's matured into a "Franchise" director for hire, selling his popular style for an excuse to experiment and collect a fat check with his famous friends. Even then, he's one of the better in that genre.

But as a stylist and a potential poet, I find Tim Burton in the realm of dark liberal satirists like Billy Wilder, Roman Polanski, Mike Nichols, Tobe Hooper, later Woody Allen with the shrewd commercial sensibility of B-movie capitalists like Roger Corman, Charles Band, H.G. Lewis, Joe Dante. I think its fair to argue Burton inspired and paved the way for filmmakers like Wes Anderson, J.J. Abrams

Its important to note he was mentored by Francis Ford Coppola who produced Sleepy Hollow and whose young daughter Sofia starred in Frankenweenie. Interestingly, Coppola took some tonal & stylistic cues from Burton when he made Dracula with Winona Ryder. A queasy subversive element arrives in Burton's work when you tie together how many pedophiliac references there are from the casting of Jeffrey Jones & Paul Reubens to Winona Ryder being the goddaughter of NAMBLA member Allen Ginsberg and Johnny Depp's ties to Ginsberg & Polanski. It could just be coincidental and expected in such a small fringe group of Hollywood weirdos.

But Burton's films also  have a preoccupation with the sexuality of young girls. The villains seek to attain it, almost always from small blond underage girls, but they rather give it to the dark man-child hero. An underage Winona Ryder as Beetlejuice's child bride and the teenage love interest of Edward Scissorhands. Sofia Coppola plays this archetypal blond desire object in Burton's original Frankenweenie. In the remake, the little blonde is represented as a creepy girl obsessed with Burton's avatar and replaced by a little Goth girl. In Burton's personal life you can chart this sexual obsession in his romance & breakup from blonde bombshell Lisa Marie to marry the dark, eccentric Helena Bonham Carter. Since their divorce, Burton returned the blond teenage lover in Alice (the last film to feature Carter) and Miss Peregrine. Alice also featured a 50ish Crispin Glover trying to seduce the barely legal Alice.

There's also the references to Michael Jackson in Johnny Depp's performances as Scissorhands and Wonka. Chocolate Factory ends with Willy Wonka inviting Charlie to live with him alone and becoming upset that Charlie insisting on keeping his family.

Almost as disturbing but not at all surprising is, as Burton's motif shifted from black & white contradiction to a synthesized moral grayness, his politics have shifted to centrism. Miss Peregrine is a quirky but lazy X-Men ripoff that also serves as a Zionist propaganda. During WW2, a group of genetically superior white children are terrorized by the dark skinned Samuel L Jackson's shadowy, Nazi-like band of child-eating villains. The solution? They are guaranteed a piece of land as sanctuary just for existing. These children are never shown as heroic superheroes protecting society either. They're valuable just because they are different and persecuted. The metaphor is clear.

Burton's films always center on the "magic" of individualist entrepreneurship, middle class values, Eurocentrism, white normality, a distaste for the working class and many visual references to Freemasonry including checkerboard, secret societies, aristocracy, favoring hierarchical systems to equality and a love of Disney. Either Tim Burton is just so within the Hollywood bubble that he doesn't see the Masonic influence on his own work or he's supportive of their craft of Republican centralism against expanding democracy aka socialism. Likely, he's a Mason himself. They are often sickly little European guys in big business. Batman was obviously his first big Masonic work.

Dr Lamb 1992

Nowhere in this notorious Hong Kong film is the killer called Dr Lamb. He's not even a doctor. And this isn't truly a horror film. Its in the serial killer genre and deliver the exploitation goods like campy stereotype characters, lurid gore FX, inappropriate sexual titillation & wild expressionistic style. But its really a humanistic character piece that exposes the dregs of Hong Kong's impoverished families and the psyche of the young men in them (the target audience I suspect). The filmmakers condemn but sympathize with him fully and the bureaucratic police force are played as bumbling cowards & equally cruel weirdos with no moral code except the honorable chief. This is a common portrayal of roles in HK cinema in the late 80s/early 90s. Its sympathetic of the people trapped in the hell of Communist China and somewhat disgusted with the Westernized freedom given to HK's Chinese and paints a bond or mirror image between disparate participants but it must side with the law, painfully sometimes.

I have been absent from this blog but I've watched tons of movies. Mostly Hong Kong cinema, Charles Band cheapies & cult films that I finally found access to. I post reviews at letterboxd thinking the reviews will live on & find a bigger audience and I think the platform is awesome for reviewing movies but the membership sucks. Its almost only Millennial hipsters virtue signaling through poorly written "humor" reviews. Its a queasy mix of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and it seems funded by the major conglomerates because they only push those corporate "indie" films with a phony "liberal" message & veteran bland Hollywood bit players. Nothing international, nothing DIY, nothing by filmmakers outside of LA, nothing made for less than a million.

But they all repeat the same dead-eyes moral of "Made by compassionate capitalists who love our diverse workers and they think should be paid well, but not as much as us... and stay in your tiny mafia-run unions"

Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys 2004

So it seems the best Puppet Master films of this century haven't had anything to do with Charles Band or Full Moon. Back in '04, Band loaned out the PM franchise to the SyFy Channel to produce a TV movie that I watched then, forgot and rewatched to find its among the better films starring these killer puppets. Band's films are so minimalist (cheap) that they sacrifice watch-ability and marketability for basic producibility and even profitability.

PMVDT spends the extra chump change to cast a few C-level marquee names, build at least one impressive set and actually give the star puppets some on-screen energy and motivation. More so, the script has a potent plot about evil corporate occultism, child media manipulation & the sacrifice of innocence for the bloodthirsty greed of the elite. These are natural extensions of the themes found in the classic PM films but Band has always ignored story, integrity or art to self-promote himself and his brand.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

I am blown away by how excellent this first movie-watching experience was. Finally we get a reboot that delivers by creating a new continuity without plagiarizing or disrupting the source material. And unlike the well-meaning but unoriginal and lazy reboots coming out of Hollywood, "The Littlest Reich" isn't stifled by political correctness and trying to please everyone. Yet it doesn't sacrifice intelligent morals for its shock value.

Its a simple yet clever premise based on the essential ingredients of a classic modern tale. Essentially its a dark spoof of the original film with the same motives but its own voice, style, universe, politics and point of view. Most importantly it only strengthens the subtext of the original story and showers it in obvious fandom.

Where I think the screenwriter struck genius is making this a film for fans of the original first and foremost but still accessible to wider tastes, not the opposite. Too many reboots and sequels throw out the appeal of the old for eager accessibility by not studying the story mechanics that do or do not still work. This fella knows you have to have Nazis, puppets, slasher victims and 80s fanboy chic, but he finds new uses for all of these things. He fashions something personal from the first film and transplants it to a modern platform. The Puppet Master mythos is reinvigorated but NOT re-purposed.

TLR echos the many obsessions, themes, tropes, aesthetics & appeal of the entire PM catalog, so it fits in like a jewel among its dated and meager family to uplift them to younger, hipper and maybe less educated critics who wouldn't expect so much value from a reboot of an 80s horror cheapie about killer dolls. This is why its not just great cinema, its a great meta meditation and pop cultural commentary on cinema itself. And I'm grateful that a modest indie production could still accomplish this in 2018.

Godzilla 1998

Few films have given me the intense sadness that this film gives. As I grew bored watching it, I researched the troubled production and failed release. Its the perfect example of how not to make a film. But almost all tentpole Hollywood spectacles are reminiscent of this film. This bad movie might be superior to the 2014 reboot simply because its not as boring.

Thats not to say its not bland and boring in its own right. We have a bloated, past his prime Matthew Broderick surrounded by more C-list actors re-enacting scenes from Jaws, Independence Day and Jurassic Park. Its done in a heavy camp tone courtesy of openly gay German director Roland Emmerich, who sneaks in a lot of subversive images and ideas such as Godzilla being a pregnant male victim this time around and the many baby Godzilla's taking the place of black men in a large basketball stadium. Gay Nazi humor? I dunno. The film is a sick joke on immigration and a huge critique of American nationalism with a very communist slant.

You can argue "Zilla"is some kind of Luciferian metaphor as its a hermaphroditic animal god bent on depopulation. Emmerich's films are obsessed with normalizing depopulation: Independence Day, 2012, Day After Tomorrow. This film is maybe one of the earliest examples of an openly pro-NWO Hollywood blockbuster. Its offensive propaganda that will be a curio someday soon.

The film starts with a lot of good moments. The film looks good and Emmerich actually tells the story visually with a few memorable setpieces and action scenarios. Some moments are extremely disturbing in psycho-sexual ways. But we don't care about any of the annoying cartooned humans, the broad humor is very flat and Godzilla himself seems like an afterthought.

I recommend it as evidence of Hollywood's sick leftist capitalist agenda, depressed Y2K aestheticism and a sometimes amusing slice of poorly rendered schlock.

Jerry Lewis

Rewatching old Jerry Lewis films after recently rereading his book The Total Filmmaker.

The films have aged well, but more so the films he didn't direct. 

I was blown away by Frank Tashlin's Who's Minding The Store? He brought a humanity, romance, sexiness and refinement to Jerry's screen persona. 

Jerry's own directing is a mutation of Tashlin's, more bizarre but more sloppy, amateur and rushed. Lewis experimented more as he was less focused on plot, character, emotionality or personal statement. It feels like he's assuming what audiences like rather than giving us what he likes, which is why his films are more difficult, not very funny and often boring. 

But Lewis was definitely a more economical and lowbrow director. His directorial debut "The Bellboy" is among his best not because of plot or even cleverness of the comedy. The production aesthetic is minimized because of cost and schedule so he's making what was then a postmodern silent film. Lewis could throw a film together out of nothing and it would be mostly filler but always have a few moments of gold.

He would remake Bellboy into better films like The Patsy, The Errand Boy and The Ladies Man until making his zenith The Nutty Professor thanks to a growing stable of great repertoire writers, actors, designers and a fine budget and premise. Later films like The Family Jewels and The Big Mouth are almost painfully bland, forced, thin, repetitive and unoriginal. Lewis was always more of a performer than an artist and too much of a capitalist lapdog cut off from real social experience. His films often reek of insecurity, depression, sexual confusion and a violent madness, especially as he aged and his star fell.

Tashlin was the real genius who made solo Jerry as well as Martin & Lewis bankable. Lewis developed his style from the colorful and gag heavy Tashlin form. But Tashlin always tempered it with just enough plot, antagonism, protagonism and (imagine it) well thought out jokes. Lewis would depend of improv and putting himself center stage. Tashlin storyboarded, had excess material, surrounded Jerry with amazing supportive players and always respected the audience. He controlled the anarchistic Jerry ego and made it something universal and appealing.

Jerry scored a late stage masterpiece with Cracking Up. I've reviewed it on this blog because it is Jerry at his most focused, experimental, mature, dark and professional. 

Lewis maybe wasn't a genius as a director but he was an important and decent comedy director and probably a genius actor when he was coached properly. One of the most tired jokes is that the French are crazy for thinking Lewis was a genius, let alone funny. He was both when he wanted to be.