Blade Runner 2049 review (epilogue)

So I'm just finding some subtext I may have missed in 2049. Not sure if it was intended (possible with Ridley Scott & Denis Villeneuve's involvement) but 2049 underlines, lampshades and deconstructs the original Blade Runner's inspiration from Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. This influence is obvious in Alien Covenant, itself a sequel to Scott's Prometheus. And Frankenstein itself being an inspired scifi retelling of Milton's Paradise Lost.

There's a higher degree to 2049's narrative references for sure, but I'm still a bit troubled by the execution and lack of originality. Its reversals and injections weren't radical enough to be mentioned with those greater works, so it feels like the tail end, compromised clone of these medium-defining works of art.

Example: God creates Adam & Eve and they are destroyed by Lucifer who is then punished by being turned into Satan. Mary Shelley used this narrative but her God (Dr Victor Frankenstein) suffers revenge for his cruel creation of Lucifer/Satan (The Monster) by refusing to give him his dream of being like Adam & denying him an Eve (The Bride). By using this legend of a Devil's bride aka Lilith, Shelly creates a subversive pro-Lucifer/anti-God metaphor totally in debt to Milton's view of The Old Testament, but updating it ethically, morally and spiritually. But her Lucifer also finds himself in Hell and not replacing God after he is destroyed. Frankenstein is essentially atheistic or opposed to the Biblical God.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?/Blade Runner creates a more evolved and high tech version of Frankenstein where The Monster is so well made and satisfied that he is unaware that he is one. Only through a benevolent God/Dr Frankenstein surrogate (Gaff or Tyrell) and rejection of the temptation of an admittedly malevolent Lucifer/Monster (Roy) & Lilith/Bride (Pris) does Deckard find his true identity as Adam and receives his Eve (Rachael). Its a story of an atheist finding his soul in spirituality.

Now 2049 is much more convoluted and less poetic, but its still quite heady.

K's characterization is all over the place. He is Deckard/Adam and Roy/Lucifer, both sides of Frankenstein's Monster and God's creation of light and dark. This is complex and quite well achieved. But it reduces the original role of Deckard into what? K turns on his creator (Joshi) to stop a human version of Roy (Wallace) and a suped up version of Pris (Luv) while retaining sight their intended purposes as monsters unleashing a destructive race of anti-life.

But its the inclusion of Stelline, Deckard's daughter, that changes things from previous versions of this fable. K thinks he is Adam to Deckard's God, the first creation of a creation (the realization of The Monster's dream), but finds out that it is actually Stelline (Eve) and there is no Adam. A cute feminist touch to show a female Messiah & of course a move towards the cultural dismantling of white patriarchy.

K finds that HE is The Monster but he saves his own soul by saving Deckard from drowning whereas The Monster drives Victor to freezing in water. K dies like Frankenstein's Monster, but peacefully, as he has helped the survival of his race of replicants. This is basically a repeat or underline of Blade Runner Part 1's moral, but made more confusing, not clearer. K has saved Deckard's Adam and reconnected her with Stelline's Eve, but this was already established in BR. 2049 exists simply to introduce & worship K's obedient, self-sacrificing Jesus figure as he takes on the ironically Jesus-resembling Wallace, the AntiChrist. This lampshades the relationship between Deckard and Roy previously, but loses the metaphor of Jewish vs Nazi. The only interesting contrast between K & Wallace is that our hero is always identified as replicant and Wallace is human. So its The Monster vs Dr Frank all over again. So K is a combination of Deckard and Roy, both Adam & Lucifer. Jesus does his job, dies for us all and we are thankful.

Now is this a responsible or even original sentiment? Its telling is extremely layered but its payoff is quite anticlimactic. The simple Jesus metaphor is so pedestrian in scifi and stories like BR, Frankenstein & Paradise Lost are special because they reject it to show the complexities of Lucifer as a character. 2049 does not. Its a remodernist appropriation and a quite conservative version of radical text. I believe its 100% intended to be. Does that make it better? Worse? Or just different? Its certainly more mainstream and widely held, but you have to ask is Christianity the proper antidote for BR's Old Testament values? Thats really your own choice so I understand why this new reboot is much more ethically resonant for many viewers.

I personally think it less optimistic and more asinine than BR's perfect metaphor of an android Adam & Eve defeating an android Devil & Lilith (or I guess AntiChrist & Whore of Babylon). 2049 casts a simulated Jesus and turns Adam & Eve into Father & Daughter and the Satanic Dr Frankenstein figure isn't destroyed, only losing his Whore (Luv) and having his apocalypse postponed. This is essentially the narrative problem with The Book of Revelation. As a spiritual book of peace it ends with Satan still promised to return and Jesus to stop him. We don't get any peace, just a promising hope for its return. This unintentionally mirrors the sour mood Evangelicals have returned thanks to the political climate of 2017.

2049 is still a mess as I originally rated it, but it is certainly a very ambitious and intellectually probing failure. The previous fables don't tell you what to believe, they just examine and deconstruct these Western legends as legends. 2049 tries to deconstruct The New Testament within the Blade Runner framework (as the Godfather did with its sequels) but simply adds the story of Jesus without critically theorizing. This is why Blade Runner is a postmodern masterpiece and Blade Runner 2049 is shallow remodernist commercialism masked as post-structural art.

On its own, 2049 is nothing too special but paired with Scott's deeply Satanism-inspired "Alien Covenant" the Blade Runner/Alien semi-franchise is one of the highlights creatively in 2017's popular cinema sphere. 

DIY or DIE

Senseless production for production's sake is anti-art. Purely commercial films can not solve society's problems, only contribute to them. As studios turn out product simply to stay ahead of competition with incoming revenue, the true filmmaker must make spiritual works of art that are for no one but the Self. Not a masturbatory ego piece but something that connects the auteur's vision to to the spectator's in a mutually positive and progressive way. Some of the dreck we've seen this year is only interested in the keeping the status quo instead of probing it.

I've yet to see Get Out, but I already admire its headstrong bravery to confront dangerous and unpopular mainstream topics. Jordan Peele brought up the elephant in the room, something "entertainers" are prohibited from by their masters, agents, sponsors and even their fanbase. I've intentionally saved Get Out for my yearly ritual of the major releases that I wasn't able to see in theaters.

I enjoy the theater experience but not locally. We have some seedy mini-multiplexes here. They occasionally get cool revival showings or a new indie film, but its mainly commercial films aimed at teens, the military, Christians and old people. I live in the Southern United States which has a long history as a conservative, bigoted market. My best theater experiences have always been out of state (Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida) and Atlanta is one of the better Southern cities. Florida has a good history of exploitation and indie film of a more left and experimental nature.

Please, comment where you're from down below and what the local cinemas are like.

What gets me is that films (at least in North America) are made mostly by the banks' money. Now the theaters probably are in debt to banks too because its just expensive to start anything in this economy. So the banks are in control of both the production and consumption of media. I think its a rigged system that eats itself. Government regulation of cinema & maybe all media is preferable to consumerist propaganda put out by conglomerates. And it doesn't mean all films will be sanctioned by gov. Just the ones made with high government subsidies. The new independents will be the films made by Hollywood or big media empires. If you want to start your own indie, use the profits kept from the government film you made. And by "government film" I just mean it passes some democratically agreed standards. Cinema developed because of science labs given government grants to innovate technology. Never forget cinema is first an artistic science. 

http://www.filmsite.org/pre20sintro.html

And Thomas Edison, who gave the resources to start the North American film boom, was not a fan of banks and the current, almost mandatory trends in movie production. From his wiki:

Thomas Edison was an advocate for monetary reform in the United States. He was ardently opposed to the gold standard and debt-based money. Famously, he was quoted in the New York Times stating "Gold is a relic of Julius Caesar, and interest is an invention of Satan."^[110]

In the same article, he expounded upon the absurdity of a monetary system in which the taxpayer of the United States, in need of a loan, can be compelled to pay in return perhaps double the principal, or even greater sums, due to interest. His basic point was that, if the Government can produce debt-based money, it could equally as well produce money that was a credit to the taxpayer.^[110]

He thought at length about the subject of money in 1921 and 1922. In May 1922, he published a proposal, entitled "A Proposed Amendment to the Federal Reserve Banking System".^[111] In it, he detailed an explanation of a commodity-backed currency, in which the Federal Reserve would issue interest-free currency to farmers, based on the value of commodities they produced. During a publicity tour that he took with friend and fellow inventor, Henry Ford, he spoke publicly about his desire for monetary reform. For insight, he corresponded with prominent academic and banking professionals. In the end, however, Edison's proposals failed to find support and were eventually abandoned

Film should be treated as it once was as more than a cheap entertainment business but a kind of encompassing technology like print to educate in classrooms, share journalistic news, spread spiritual awareness (church films have always been big in the South). Cinema is bigger than Hollywood or narrative commercial filmmaking. Its a social service that should be regulated and given bigger tax breaks. State government gives small tax incentives to film producers but the government doesn't own the federal reserve banks that milk them dry through media conglomeration. 

The U.S. gov needs to give huge tax breaks to INDEPENDENT producers and less to the debt financiers running corporate Hollywood (and trying to run the government). That would give leverage back to the artists and/or capitalists producing the films and maybe help pay off our country's serious debt. The private money in Hollywood takes too much profit from the world through monopolizing. 

Let true socialist American cinema take the money back from those who abuse it. I think a mixed economy of socialism & capitalism is the only answer for the world's dollar and filmmaking should be at the forefront of making this transition that will lead the 21st century into the future. So much of cinema is already Marxist leaning anyway. Its always better than the purely capitalist or communist cinema (aka fascist, authoritarian & solely technical). The government is afraid to get behind the arts but the arts are the only reason we live to enjoy the government. Not to be morose but you know modern life is centered on entertainment, escapism and distraction from terrible world government issues but now even our amusement is stifled. We are reaching a head where none of the old system works anymore and it all needs new life. 

Directors like Godard, Fellini, Lloyd Kaufman & definitely Jess Franco have anticipated this future for cinema. Its fun to see how tuned in they were, but now our generation has to see independent art thrive and have its own Revolution & Renaissance. The 21st century of cinema must be better than the 20th.

Dick Randall

This site is kinda garbage in its deal with Youtube. I try to embed many great independently made film essays and doc clips, but the Youtube feature on blogger only promotes popular ad-based videos : (

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxFhScV_u3s

Anyway here's a cool clip about the vintage exploitation producer Dick Randall. Very important even if he made very gritty, cheap schlock. But he had the right methodology for his level of film production and helped grow it.

What gets me is independent creators want to work for Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, WWE, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, all of these distributors of only mainstream content. They buy indie talent sure, but only to make their kind of product. And thats their right. So indies need to create their own intellectual property. That originality is the only leverage that indie filmmakers have.

But if someone is just a fanboy at heart or its their aesthetic to make fan-art or adapt popular mythos or they just don't have original ideas, I think indie creators can land established characters. You just have to know who to lease from and for what kind of money. The old exploitation filmmakers mined Zorro, Tarzan, Dracula and other popular names that were public domain. I've seen a few filmmakers use Night of the Living Dead in this way. I think young filmmakers need to raise money to make projects for more affordable famous franchises.

Someone can raise the money for a new Friday the 13th or a new Toxic Avenger. In fact some indie producers are leasing Puppet Master who once leased SyFy the rights to a one-off film. Get creative with investors and make connections to people who do business reasonably. Shit, maybe you can shoot a short film they can use as a commercial/media traffic.

I'm about depowering the wealthy's exploitation of the poor. I'm not above helping other struggling artists who also stand for independence, liberty and the love of cheap art. Art should be free and paying should be optional, but thats for another rant.

Amityville: The Awakening 2017

I checked this out because I was raised on low budget horror films. Amityville: The Awakening is like a culmination of where the genre is for better and worse. The film was shot in 2014, faced 2016 reshoots because of "negative" test screenings and was a sizable success in foreign theaters. In America it was just dumped out on streaming with no fanfare. Its a shame because this film is a great example of low budget TECHNOLOGY today. I'm talking practical gear like the excellent camera, lighting and editing we now have.

But its also so streamlined that basically every film produced on this economic level is the very same in aesthetics. Worse the budget & technical aspects determine the creative. This film is automatically stunted by the minimal script, shooting days, casting, FX, etc. And this is bare bones. The film is a Frankenstein of stale cliches dressed up in some modestly modern direction. The score is dead, the pace is too tranquil for a horror film and its an identical experience of the big budget exploitation that inspires it. Awakening has no respect for its shared history with the rest of cinema. Its a cold commercial enterprise with no morals or values to share. It sets up a lot of gritty, dark, nihilist tropes and then feeds you kind of warmed over, totally utilitarian philosophy about nothing. Its a great showing of materialism, escapism and maybe its a bit more progressive than horror films from 40 years ago look today, but its not as experimental or energized or focused on entertaining or engaging you in some beauty of its art.

Despite all of that I think Bella Thorne & Jennifer Jason Leigh do a lot to inject some life and honor in this bad movie. Its a waste of Thorne to be honest because she has too much range for such bad scripts but she makes it an opportunity to show her acting chops, which are still green but. being a child actor, she's definitely learned a lot from other actors. She gets a lot to sponge from Leigh who has always been a tragically powerful and very capable B-movie actress. I think Leigh is stronger than this film which hurts her performance a bit. There's no range to the character so her forceful acting seems campy & hammy, which she's done well avoiding in her career.

Do we blame the producer & director or the production company? I think we blame the banks that invest in these films. They demand films fit something old & popular over potentially being important & entertaining. "Awakening" is so beholden to the past and playing safe, just making a cheap buck and exploiting its workers. Also the film has a disgusting number of gratuitously sexual shots of an underage lead actress. No surprise that this has ties to the Weinsteins. And again its the same dreck they've put out for 20 years. So maybe the fault lies with the current studio heads running the film business into the ground.

https://www.slideshare.net/RobOgden3/fundamentals-of-film-finance-09-mar15-web-version

Check out this nifty slideshow on Film Economics. It really breaks down why so few indie films get produced and why Hollywood films are so market research driven and entirely depend on their marketing budgets. Investors and banks do most of the funding in Hollywood's steep marketplace and they do not like risk. So we get titles that are designed for box office performance and not customer reward or creative expression. Indie cinema has creative freedom in lieu of profits & fame. But if indies could give their investors better understanding of the business schematics, raising money would be easier.

An auteur is a DIY director

Hollywood is the center of production only for the studios. Its not the capital of filmmaking. But it is the distribution capital for America. We have to destroy this old psychology of Hollywood as a disgusting, corrupt, artificial place. It needs to reflect better of the world's best films. Hollywood theaters are always packed with agents and producers looking for the next trend or talent. For years they watched the more exotic films like exploitation, foreign, animation, ethnic, genre, etc. But now they've appropriated their own corporatized version of what were the indies' territory.

If Hollywood isn't going to support indie filmmakers (and there will always be many) then indie film must start investing in other cities, countries and communities to bring cinema to the people in the audience. 2017 was one of the poorest years ever for new films. Everything across the spectrum of the mainstream is homogenized, neutered and stale creatively. Its a revolutionary period for digital effects, art directed cinematography & crossover with existing intellectual properties and popular non-cinema. But much of it is mediocre or frankly harmful to the genre. Because we are in a recession still and profit is the underline for most producers who resist risk and experimentation or idealism.

But the indie artists, new or already established, must return independence to audiences. It doesn't matter if its streaming or downloaded or shown for free at a local cafe. Cinema is cinema. Thats something the audience has learned in the 2010s. TV, news media, video games, our dreams and wishes for the future are all essentially cinema because cinema is more than a technology or artistic practice or an aesthetic judgment. Cinema is the soul's ability to see the unseen and make it real. Its pure magic and the only physical evidence of it. You can project an abstract original idea from your mind's eye and years later it is being seen by someone you will never meet and they can feel everything you felt but see it from their own perspective. We should be embracing this gift of art to save our bring back peace & positive social standing. Cinema has done it many times before and will only become more powerful with time & innovation from fans.

I'm just a big fan of the "art house" cinema. Abstract, surrealist, auteurist, spiritual, postmodern. Those films always have their own text from the artist that must be translated by the audience, but these filmmakers leave open the personal emotional reaction as its own thing. They aren't dictating the reaction and not trying to push buttons for expected effect.

Heidi 1992

Paul McCarthy is a very important figure in the fine art world, a conceptual artist who works with different media including video. His video art includes very scatological performance art & abstract non-narrative montage. He's an extreme postmodernist, probably one of the first "post-postmodern", and his work usually deals with destructing the power dynamics of society and dramatizing the sickness of Western culture.

Heidi is loosely based on the famous Scandinavian fable but it is purely inspired by it. McCarthy collaborates with Mike Kelley to take that story's cast (Heidi, Peter & Grandpa) and expose the psycho-sexual tension in their dichotomy as archetype to form a mirror of society in 1992 or perhaps forever. They very obviously draws comparisons to the archetypes in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and adopts much of that film's aesthetic to illustrate this. Corpse-like mannequins in lieu of actors, grotesque masks, genders swapped artificially, the dark oppression of the dysfunctional family home and dinner as a place of ritual and twisted power game.

This is really authentic footage of a fringe artist of great note doing his thing in a time where the American art film was struggling. And this is truly an art film in the classic sense. Its all experimentation and not about exploitation or commercial interests in any way. That purity is the obvious goal for McCarthy and even if you find this too weird or don't get much of it, the energy and focus is refreshing. "Heidi" greatly inspired Harmony Korine, whose "Trash Humpers" is essentially an intentionally pop/hipster remake. 

The whole thing is on youtube for the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NLoGyoitqA

Since my reviews reflect whatever I'm focused on at the time, I should post that I'm lately watching cinema looking for post-modernism, radical Leftist ideals, anti-fascist propaganda and conscious or unconscious occult influences.

Right now I'm obsessed with Nietzsche's idea of Master & Slave and The Ubermensch, how that leads to Ayn Rand's more populist ideas about Free Market Capitalism & a Libertarian Utopia. Basically he rightly divides society into those who feel meant to rule and those who feel meant to serve and the dichotomy that leads to high level sadomasochism aka war & peace through slave labor. Nietzsche favored the 1% wolves who feast on the oblivious sheep they control and breed at large. While Rand agrees on this power dynamic, her invented morality of Objectivism tries to marry capitalism with the Golden Rule of "do unto others". She gives it a valiant try but ultimately leads to a utopia that has been proven impossible by Wall Street, the banks, Enron, you name em. She loved her masters too much, but hey she grew up rich under Lenin.

But this divide applies to not only politics & morals but religion. Essentially we are seeing more & more of the Luciferian image of the anti-hero grow in popularity. Mad Max, Kylo Ren, Death Wish reboot, Donald Trump, Satan himself is becoming a popular character in shows. After 8 years of Obama, white rightwing audiences (who America keeps as their prime "demographic") want a rejection of Jesus Christ, role models, martyrs, altruists, heroes & saviors. They want the Tragic Fool, the trickster, the crybaby, the greedy, the jealous, the amoral and the vengeful. By the bipolar, bipartisan, binary thinking nature of our sick version of "modernism", this is the only option for people who don't know they are slaves. See the Left know they are slaves so they resent their masters and want to kill them or see them fall. The "good" slaves on the Right will sacrifice themselves to protect their masters, like good coons, bucks and mammies. Its trippy how this all ties into the negative brainwashing done to blacks in the early years of cinema. Its come back to haunt the white blue collar audience.

I think the Rightwing is finding how hollow their religious fanaticism is, their soldier worship, their love of violence & sex. Its traumatic to look in the mirror. This is all reptilian brain shit that everyone grows through in adolescence but this immense populace of the 1st world is stuck on the emotional level of children. Guaranteed that cinema & entertainment will follow this. Just like in George W Bush's terms.

This over saturation of gritty dark heroism was a kind of wish fulfillment from the Left about Obama, their desperate need to take this friendly average guy and make him their avenging perfect black knight. In a way, they led to this current Satan complex in the zeitgeist. Is society's mission to create an AntiChrist to affirm 1000s of years of paranoid nightmares? This is essentially confirmed by the most popular religion in our country. We are a bunch of ticking psychopaths trying to destroy our world and create a Rapture. The best films in recent memories keep exploring this. We must transcend this deep, black phobia of success, love, happiness. Why do we hate happy endings? Why do we think failure is reality? Did the fiction poison our fantasies or were they rotten to begin with?

We need an overhaul in enlightenment and evolution, intellectually and spiritually. Fuck the stupid aesthetics of lighting and CGI. That is Hollywood carny trickery. 21st century cinema must be a tool to fight the collective oppression of self and the selfish oppression of the collective. Balance pre-conceived notions of Good & Evil. We need new heroes and truer villains. We need light & dark. Both Marvel & DC, WB & Disney. Indie & mainstream. American & foreign. Male & female, all races. The worst of us will follow the path to conservatism, laziness and reject any change or growth. If you are a filmmaker, resist this Luciferianism. It is still Satanism, no matter what they sell you.

I worry about the future of Troma. They seem far removed from their roots and very segmented. It feels like Michael Herz isn't around at all and its just a small publicity team run by Lloyd until they get enough money for a Toxic Avenger 5 (which might never happen) which will definitely be a flop unless there's some miracle that SyFy or ElRey picked it up.

Troma should merge with Full Moon films as a bi-coastal library of retro exploitation. Distribute & produce new films occasionally, but mainly keep these films alive in media anywhere possible and how about giving film grants to indies for once? Not just distributing their scraped together work in some unfair deal. These 80s companies that followed Cannon and AIP always did shady business and saturated the market with crap, so now their best efforts go unnoticed.

If Troma and Full Moon go belly up I want there to be other companies to take up their mantle. And their intellectual property could totally energize the film world if utilized properly. If Michael Herz (not Lloyd Kaufman) could make a deal for a Toxic Avenger show on MTV or let Adult Swim borrow the character or something, Troma could remain independent.

In this economy every company depends on every other company. Competition is impossible with the monopolies and conglomerates in place. All of the indies should unionize because they far out number the big Two (Warner & Disney) because the "big 5" model is dead. Universal, Paramount, Sony, MGM, is New Line dead? Miramax? Everyone under WB & WD are independents imo. And there have to be 100 strong indie media companies thanks to foreign & online channels. We think so domestically in America that we give no credence of influence to anyone else. But it will take a global effort of economy & ecology to save the world, let alone stupid movies about super villains. 

Dog Eat Dog 2016

Guess what this film's political subtext is from its title...

Rewatched Paul Schrader's darkly comic crime film from last year. Holds up well. Its a disturbing omen on the political/economic/identity issues that have made 2017 so bleak and divided. Yet its also more brutal and honest than this first post-Trump year.

Schrader shows the growing depravity, hopelessness and blind evil bubbling up from society
s most privileged outcasts - American white blue collar thugs. He finds them absurd and a bit amusing as well as their ignorant bigotry and hatred. This is an updated, more satirical version of Schrader's Taxi Driver, focused on social factors that produce this particularly toxic and media-protected/media-enabled type of malcontented misfit. The politically correct might mistake Schrader as being sympathetic to the alt-right or amorality when really he is curious to the human condition and finds these despicable characters as intrinsic to solving today's problems because they are the sickest victims.

Nicholas Cage is quite sharp as the lead thug, calling on 100s of his seedier, more conflicted anti-hero roles in the past. The role itself is a kind of dark mirror to his breakout character in Raising Arizona, which is cute. Also Cage is reunited with Willem Dafoe. As in David Lynch's "Wild at Heart", the two are eccentric robbers and like that film Dafoe steals the show as a totally unhinged white trash stereotype of a more realistic color. Christopher Matthew Cook is very well cast and directed as the Curly in their gang of Stooges. Not that he's funny or the focus, but he totally pulls off the illusion that these are not over-the-top parodies but truly insane men you might meet if your life falls apart.

DED works best if you've seen many modern gangster films or at least Schrader's work in the genre, but its a very stylish and intelligent affair. Schrader uses his decent budget, material and technology to make one of his most abstract and surreal films. I feel like there's Godard and maybe even some Refn nods here. The end of the film will definitely lose casual fans but its a clever metaphor for the entire film's theme and ties directly back to Taxi Driver, confirming that Schrader's intention was always that Hollywood endings are very sick, dishonest and self-aggrandizing dreams to insult the intelligence of the audience and that they should deconstruct them to find out what reality holds.

Schrader is proving in his autumn years to be one of the best indie directors we've seen, always sticking to his guns and producing a sharp, critical and entertaining bit of style cinema. And of course Cage and Dafoe have carved out great names without ever having to worry about the budget or exposure of their projects. These are artists who know good art.

20 years apart, how many pairs of actors get to work with strong creators like Lynch & Schrader?

The Farce Awaken Pt 2

That last post turned into a long-coming political rant. This net neutrality decision shows the Trump administration is on the side of Hollywood and not independent film, so I am thoroughly disgusted.

But Disney's handling of Star Wars details how gloomy the future of mainstream film is. They took the most successful truly independent film company, LucasArts are turned it everything evil about cinema. They quickly killed Han, Leia and Luke (because old people are not cosmetic enough) to replace them with dumb Millennial aged puppet characters who add nothing but superficial social progressivism to grab a broader base of tickets. Its such shallow, cynical and morally bankrupt garbage for human toddlers.

I'm disappointed in George Lucas for selling Star Wars to them, knowing the positive influence it once had and how much Disney would liquidate, neuter and corrupt it. But maybe they gave him no other option. They could've waited til he died to buy it from his estate, but Lucas decided to enjoy and use the fortune while he still can. I can't hate him for selling out but it ruins the whole sentiment behind Star Wars a bit when they are owned by Hollywood's "evil empire".

I expect Luke becomes the new Emperor but Rey and Kylo overthrow him because Kylo turns Rey against him. Uh-oh! Kylo becomes the new ruler or whatever with Rey by his side... until the 3rd movie where she comes to her senses thanks to her old buddies... Is that an inspiring Disney princess feel good message for kids? Sure. But its just rewriting the old movies and not actually telling a new story. Gender-swapping. Race-swapping. Extra happy endings.  Its glorified fan fiction. And I wouldn't be surprised if Disney cops out now that Hillary Clinton isn't president. They love to go conservative when their fanbase leads them to it. Because its about dollars to them.

Fuck, I don't care. Disney has bought and sold tons of cool properties before and I doubt Star Wars will stick once Disney has milked the cow dry, like they always have. They always over-do things and kill the golden goose. I just pray Star Wars doesn't get too shitty beyond repair. Ironically this is the nightmare that movie fans claimed the Prequel/Expanded universe was. Fools.

The Farce Awakens

The future of Star Wars is the same as the future of Disney. They will make a mega popular Disney princess icon out of Rey while we get a safe, lovable, sexy Ken doll out of Poe, Finn & Kylo. It will serve a major slot in history culturally but won't have the lasting positive futurism of George Lucas' vision and personal intention. Because its commercialized and child-proofed like the Star Wars films that had too much conglomerate interests and TAMPERING from outside studios. Lucas wanted an independent theatre group, like Jim Henson's and other special effects companies. And he made an impressive American dream company out of his artistic vision. And he let other artists express themselves through it. He learned that from Francis Ford Coppola; who supported plenty of filmmakers without signing their souls away to constrictive deals. By extension and osmosis, Lucas comes from the same cloth as Roger Corman and all other independent artists in the film industry. Independent cinema has influenced almost everything. It must continue for us to innovate ideas, worldviews, politics, art and entertainment. But it mustn't become propaganda for conglomerate pirates. Things are too connected to business and hucksterism within Hollywood movies. And through them independent films became too cut-throat and heavy on exploitation.

Movies seem like a dying art in today's climate. But the climate always changes. It hasn't soared in years but there are things in place making filmmaking a soul-sucking job. And cinema influences our lives so much. TOO MUCH. How the brain is wired, humans are hypnotised and magnetised to blinding light. Its in our reptilian brain. So films stimulate and simulate our dreams. But that can be a negative experience when the magic of an artform or technology becomes stifled & homogenized. If government must get involved in cinema to preserve it, so be it if they economically support the most lucrative and positively influential independent voice.

Trump's administration is the most cold-hearted, corrupted, dishonest and self-destructive thing I've ever seen. Its frightening and I'm scared for the first time in ages about D.C.'s effect on the rest of the world. But I think the older American states plotted together to get him elected. Senators and private interests on lower radar's then the "big conglom-o".

But if Donald Trump can put money back into independent film by making it a subsidized industry and not a Hollywood monopoly, I will be grateful for this disastrous and poor showing as a president. He's gotten his hand caught in every cookie jar but he hasn't been a detective or avenging hero of the common man & woman. He has no real connection to his kids so I imagine childhood will be numb and vacuously commercialized. Trump's just not a good influence on anything. But there is a tiny bit of good in him. Everyone has God in them, I say. So maybe he can do this one favor for the history of mankind and start socialism in the 21st century. I only have faith in this possibly happening because Trump originally wanted to be a movie director as a child, before a traumatic indoctrination into the world of old-school "card shark" business via NYC. He's a dulled, brutalized, machismo-built, poorly bred, off the cuff, brutally honest meathead jock who wants you to like him but he's also spineless, backstabbing and a proficient spinner of lies. He's a bullshit artist. He's a reflection of proper society's archetypal king complex. The apex predator wet dream of capitalist market merchants. The egomaniac & money. And the sickest person with that disease is modern white men. The 20th century and all of human history has resulted in a pyramid scheme for the most vicious animal behavior humankind can muster. Its so sad, monstrous, haunting, demoralizing.

Our culture is too violent. Are films too violent? Does cinema produce this sick violent expression in humans? Has humanity always been as brutal as the rest of the jungle? If anything film has fought to neuter the viewers with its anti-violence messages. But there's always been a balance of pro-violence propaganda, inspired by gladiator-obsessed war instincts in weak willed, ego-driven men who cling to childhood and the status quo. The "patriarchy" can't let go. That hurts movies! It makes the films unwatchable to about 9/10ths of the world's population and limits the amount of storytelling, perspectives, dialogue, language, evolution, know-how and knowledge.

Film (all of entertainment and human interaction, really) is very vanilla right now. Too conservative, frightful, uninterested, repressed and uncommunicative of the world. Film should be about the world. Not just American mainstream white male interests. Its a one-trick circus and its tanking in popularity. Because Disney and Warner Bros have the most market share of the distribution & marketing in film. Its too much power given to a symbiotic rivalry out to profit on regular customers. You can't abuse the audience's money. Film should be free, produced by government money or private money (independent). Its started more as a technological exercise, a kind of prototype for the modern computer, but only the visual making aspects. Thats why CGI adapts so well to established filmmaking techniques and technologies. But the Hollywood studios aren't groups of independent producers anymore. They are a unionized, privatized, tax-paying arm of conglomerate telecommunications & news "infotainment" media. Its so divorced from honest documentary. Its all basically cinema now. You can't give all the means to these private banks essentially. You have to stimulate government funds with return from investments. They could make more money for the entire world by taxing Hollywood more than the little filmmaker in Arkansas, Africa who borrows a few thousand to shoot a film they thought people might want to see. If you want to make money, filmmaking shouldn't be the interest you pick up. Its not a job, its a calling.

Make movies because you love movies and the making of movies. Not because its an easy way to get rich. I 100% trust Donald Trump because he could've easily become a filmmaker later, but didn't. So that shows he 's this soul crushed guy who really is withered to nothing emotionally. Or is that a projection. The world is projecting so much on this president and we don't know what is him and what is our idea of him. Because he's such a shocking character to some, he is popular and protected and his downfall is ignored. But to the rest of us he's a trainwreck waiting to happen if he doesn't change, ask for help and own up to whatever he's guilty of. Having a liar for a president is toxic for America. And it will be very hard for Hollywood to show this side of nature. They steer away from mature, R-rated, adult content. And TV gives a pale imitation of reality.

Independent filmmakers like all artists are the biggest hope of inspiration, motivation and innovation out of our problems socially, ethically, emotionally, intellectually, etc. So I think if Trump can make a profit from entrepreneurs OTHER THAN HIMSELF, he would become a popular president globally and historically. But can he do it before his time is up? You have to hope he will be remembered for something good. If its all darkness, we have to get him out of power. He's gonna serve time if they find anything, if he tries to overturn it secretly he will become more hated than Richard Nixon, so he's left to confess and hand over all of his power to other people just to save his own life. I almost feel sorry for him, but with these last moments to months of his reign before getting Caesar'd, he can do something to become a tragic anti-hero and not just a complex hilarious villain who gets punished.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith 2005

Its Star Wars season again and I'm preparing for the temptation to see the newest film, The Last Jedi. I found the last film to be offensive, dumb, cheap and somewhat boring, but its surely an important and popular piece of 2010's Hollywood populism/propaganda. But its attracted or given voice to a kind of anti-intellectual casual movie fan who has to hate George Lucas' prequels as the only defense of the Disney continuations. It irks me to no end because I have a soft spot for those films and I genuinely think Episode 3 is George Lucas' finest hour, an actual masterpiece to prove his genius. And we know genius is understood too late... because most people aren't geniuses... or else they would enjoy the work of another genius.

Episode 3 works on a conceptual level as THE only companion piece to the original Star Wars genesis (Episode 4) actually directed by the guy who understands it enough to have created it. This prequel was actually conceived along with the original concept that would become what we all know as the Star Wars mythos. Granted Episodes 1 & 2 are inferior and less essential, but they were engineered that way; to be prequels to the prequel, not standalone hit films like Empire or Jedi. Lucas seems inspired with Episode 3 as becoming a testement that prequels can be superior to sequels. Whether you prefer Empire to Sith is moot because one is objectively more accepted without much kickback. This is about Lucas making a Star Wars spin-off he can embrace as HIS and not a work of studio committee.

Now Episodes 5&6 were the most commercial and successful until the Disney reboots, but they are vastly divergent from the style, tone and overarching themes of Lucas' first film. What Star Wars started as was a post-modern kids film based on bygone sci-fi serials, a bizarrely refreshing blend of childish American fantasy and academic British-inspired theater. It quickly evolved into a more cold, realism-based soap opera set in space and an outrageous campy merchandised FX reel. Those were two extreme sides of Lucas' creation, but not a pure mix of both. But to match them Episode 1 is a queasy yet ambitious experiment in style trying to reclaim the series from "Jedi" back into a violent, mature kid's film & Episode 2 is more of a teenage soap opera/popcorn adventure film like "Empire". And with "Sith", Lucas reboots his series back to the politically serious, technically dazzling, spiritually questing allegory for modern morality during wartime.

Lucas has always been recognized more for his technical invention and know-how than his commercial flair or legit artistic talents, because he has always shared credit with his crew more than Hitchcock. But why is the latter considered an auteur but the former is not? Its because Lucas is even bigger fan of radical experimentation and expects more intellectual understanding from his audience. He doesn't care if the film isn't understood or doesn't make a ton of new fans, having created the comic books, video games, cartoons, etc. to serve his immature fanbase. The films are for connoisseurs of classic cinema, not casual sci-fi fans. Surely audiences in the 2000s expected a showcase of sexual innuendo, slapstick jokes & good triumphing over evil. But Lucas refuses to retread, while still cleverly throwing the nostalgia critics a bone.

"Sith" allows Lucas to identify himself as a director fully and the previous films as warm up's. Here is a showcase of George Lucas the abstract visualist, the "pop art" lover, the political theater deconstructionist, the social progressive, the hippie nerd, the digital animator, the narrative editor with non-narrative editing influences, the Buddhist sympathizer, the Democratic Socialist, the critic of bad Y2K culture. All of that artistic impression, lamely dismissed as hollow stylistic masturbation, is really contextualizing Lucas' own worldview of his created universe. Fans still seem confused as to what Lucas was saying in the prequels because they refused to understand the clear language and sentiment in them.

But with this climax of his 2nd trilogy and really a puzzle piece that legitimizes FIVE previous films, Lucas goes for a new level of closure and cyclical completion. We finally see the maturation in legendary figures and clarity in what a young George Lucas initially wanted in Empire & Jedi. In many ways this film is a deconstruction of Star Wars for his haters as much as his fans. The film is packed with allegories to politics & spirituality that are timeless and have become relevant again. While Hollywood was asking very mild and sometimes flawed philosophical questions in Lord of the Rings & Harry Potter films, Star Wars was exploring new levels of mass-media communication. Something so mainstream and accepted as Star Wars is used to confront horrible social conflicts and looming global fears that have unfortunately become more pressing.

And Ep 3 succeeds in becoming a kind of coping device for the Post-9/11 American atmosphere. Lucas gives valuable backstory and motivation to The Jedi & The Sith, placeholders for any binary conflict you want by asking the essential question of all morality, "Am I my brother's keeper?" This has divided religions, political parties, artistic movements, families, races & communities and (I assume most urgently to Lucas) futurists. Lucas gives a very well-versed and elegantly boiled down perspective on human conflict by presenting "Light" and "Dark" as choices both valid emotionally and rationalized socially, much more nuance than is given in Star Wars films before or since. And he still offers a positive beam of hope to remind us that there's a meaning for all of the suffering. Thats GREAT drama.

Darktown Strutters 1975

Here's a standard "weirdo" 70s film that was covered a lot on early film blogs. Its produced by Roger Corman's brother Gene and its a very typical blaxploitation comedy. So typical that its kind of an anomaly in how much of an anomaly it is (is that possible?)

There are 2 kinds of blaxploitation films - the first are made by black filmmakers and the others by white filmmakers. While black "black cinema" is usually realistic, political, reactionary and artistically charged, the other kind is usually exploitative genre trash meant to denigrate the first kind. Darktown Strutters is unique in its attempt to honor black radicalism while still playing to miseducated white male potheads. Its a queasy mix but it has a few moments of success. But showing blacks as ineffectual, mindless clowns, even ironically, is not as positive or interesting as showing them as humans or educating them or their critics.

"Strutters" focuses on a black female character named Syreena as she searches for her mother Cinderella in a ghetto Wonderland full of racial stereotypes. Its campy, offensive, ironic, satiric and ambituous, but its execution is far below its conception. Civil rights inspired a lot of brilliant and dangerous racial comedy in the 1970s but really only a few masterful comedians pulled it off. There's nothing worse than seeing black actors playing unfunny, corny, embarrassing comedy by white creators designed to highlight white racism to black people. Its supposed to be a reversal of harmful social programming but its usually too tall a task for cheap grindhouse hucksters.

"Darktown" is inspired in its surrealism, anarchy and embrace of social change, but its very timid and opinionless. It follows whatever Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks or National Lampoon would do without actually extrapolating on or understanding the motions. But there's enough residual energy to make 2/3rds of the film watchable.

One big problem is the film takes on the task of a black female protagonist but reducess her to a flat, predictable and boring Mary Sue. The actress Trina Parks brings a lot of energy and grace to the performance but none of her skill is cultivated into a character. She's directed to just swivel her hips endlessly, bug her eyes, shout "cute" ghetto English and always get the better of everyone. Contrast with Jack Hill's direction of Pam Grier. This film isn't interested in its protagonist beyond her identity politics. The film has no real respect for black women and certainly isn't playing for black women in the audience. Mainly it empowers them on-screen to provoke white male bigots, so essentially the film is for and about them. This is the Catch 22 of so many critical attacks on "the patriarchy".

We get an ironic gross-out slapstick deconstruction of 1970s race politics with a great shell but not enough enthusiasm to carry it. I recommend the artful low-budget production design and its a curiosity showing how far American liberal media has come, but this is no feather in the cap of anyone. Its like a giant cinematic metaphor for the N-word: appropriating all of this disgusting, embarrassingly cruel human history into a cute ironic insult does NOT work.

random thoughts

Why do general audiences like bland, generically directed superhero films but not the radical, resourceful, faithful work of Zack Snyder? Would they enjoy Tim Burton in a post-Nolan, post-Whedon superhero genre? The Avengers solo movies are endless remakes of Richard Donner's Superman, so audiences still like light quirky action fantasy heroes. But they don't want to go beyond a nostalgic, campy peek at geek culture. They want to look at the cover and imagine what's in the comic book than actually read it or respect +50 years of history. Audiences aren't ready for true comics-inspired superhero films. I wish the genre would go underground again so at least the comic books would get better.

When will broad comedy return? Generic audiences get their fill of fantastic absurdity and postmodern jokes from all of the campy self-aware grindhouse-meets-tentpole films rolled out each year. And the real connoisseurs of surreal humor have Adult Swim and its clones. But its been a long time since a truly "wacky, zany, screwball" styled film popped up in the mainstream. I don't think many working filmmakers care about slapstick or vaudeville or the era's they were in. And the younger audience don't even what what that stuff is besides maybe a heavily edited Three Stooges episode their dad showed them. Jerry Lewis died this year and no one under the age of 50 cared much online. That was shocking and sad. Not that I expected much else, but that the gap is that open and so many people have already missed out on live action horseplay and intricate gags. Our entertainment is so much more muted & reality-based. It comes back in forms like Seinfeld and Monty Python, but I would love to see it dominate the culture a bit. I think the 1980s had a comeback thanks to the SNL breakout stars. But today's SNL isn't that bizarre or wild.

I'm not optimistic about there being lots of to enjoy next year, but I think the best of the best will shatter expectations. We have so much access to cinema that there is no excuse for the true film lovers to be the most educated fans ever. Some great stuff will come out of this but the rate may continue to slow if Hollywood doesn't lose its grip on the medium. Independent artists need entry and means to entertain audiences. This can only save the major studios from self-destructive monopoly. But who will work with independents? Who will stop corrupting the distribution and marketing systems? Who will put the audience first again? Maybe streaming will elevate cinema in ways video, grindhouse, TV, etc. avenues couldn't. I root for them.

Novocaine 2001 / The Fearless Vampire Killers 1967 / The House on Skull Mountain 1974

After 3 glowing reviews for 3 fun watches, here are the less favorable reviews. But these were interesting enough to write about (and not painful to watch). I wasn't shocked these films weren't successful but I'm glad they have some cache value now.

Novocaine is a weird comedy from the same year as 9/11. It represents that cold, moody, protestant (in the political & religious sense) era where the flippant, firm-standing 1990s became the wary, depressive, chaotic first decade of the 21st century. Now it was probably filmed in 2000, a very celebratory, radically progressive & casual time. Bill Clinton was a popular & socially melding president for most people, but he faced a tough scandal and society was very jaded & shaken up again. It was a flashback to Nixon's discrepancies and a quieted minority saw the dark cloud forming in the Middle East, Russia, Asia and within powerful Western institutions. It was a gray period where there wasn't much unrest or commotion but there was smoke still in the air.

Novocaine brought all of the mystique back. Its in every level of the production and the 1st time director David Atkins (who also wrote the film) knows that this moment is important. He makes it as ephemeral as possible, presenting a cartooned vision of the Y2K era. Stylistically, it almost reaches the clean design of a work of futurism or an avant garde play. And that was the actual commercial style of TV & film at that time. Its European, independent, retro, experimental. MTV video techniques mixed with French New Wave references and slasher film tropes pureed with primetime sitcom cues. It was just a surreal time for audiences. It was a collected & shared enterprise globally where everyone was happy and putting out the content they wanted and audiences respected.

While Novocaine isn't the best film of that year, its unique & full of ideas. It seems amateur by standards now and thats whats refreshing. This film is evidence that Hollywood can abandon the cookie cutter formula of glossy factory "product" and let movie-lovers make love movies for movie-lovers. Novocaine has its warts, but it doesn't offend the audience's intelligence ever. It might be a bit drab compared to fratboy comedies or too highfalutin for families. Its a tad derivative but its wide influences are a nice salad of Hitchcock, Tarantino, Wilder & Coen Bros. "Crime comedy" was kind of a saturated genre then, but at least Atkins nails the noir tones & gives his characters life. Watching the film in 2017, I'm reminded of most television now by the serio-comic aspects, the Euro-techno-Goth visuals. Its interesting how mediocrity from some years will stand up to the best work of other years, at least in films.

With all of the sexual abuse claims in Hollywood, I dared myself to review films from some controversial names this past month (strangely, TV was more than game to show these films despite the ostracization of current stars by Hollywood & streaming). I'm hesitant to cast out Woody Allen and I don't think Victor Salva is a threat to worry about, but Roman Polanski is a much scarier name now. He is a confirmed criminal who took illegal advantage of a VERY underage prostitute. But he is also a special case with uniquely tragic & unrepeatable circumstances. To complicate matters, he's regarded as one of the most important stylists and voices in Hollywood's modern golden age.

Now I've never been the biggest fan of him. I can dissect the brilliant economy and freshly gritty subtext of "Repulsion" but despite its towering influence, I think some parts of it are backwards and maybe offensive or toxic in their wrongness. Polanski injects his films with a sadistic, cynical, pessimistic & somewhat abusive philosophy. It wouldn't bother me too much but you can't divorce his films from the tragedy that derailed his career & the resulting crimes he committed.

FVK is a great snapshot of an enthusiastic, educated and subversive young talent. The film itself is a cynical exercise in deconstructing the vampire genre without much blood or brains beyond tricky technical shots and stunning, sometimes sexually perverse eye candy. Its a lot of surface without much substance. Really Polanski doesn't seem in love with the material, just using it as a stepping stone or calling card. It reminds me of newer directors like Denis Villeneuve and Damien Chazelle who think being stylish and sour is all it takes to be compared to  Kubrick or even a David Fincher. And an ignorant film public fell for it n 1967. To be fair, Polanski deserves high esteem for Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. Polanski could make enlightened, important works of art when he was at his peak. But this isn't peak. Just a warm up for a star who burned out too soon.

The House on Skull Mountain is like so many blaxploitation films not made by black filmmakers or fans of the genre. Its conservative, pandering, backhanded & a brainless exploitation for profit. But sometimes these hired filmmakers found inspiration in the totally radicalized and relieved black talent of the post-Civil Rights era. Skull is taken with its subject matter of black lives, culture, religion and spirituality. Mostly the sexuality and heathen/dangerous persona inherited from white racism. Racism is never addressed here which may generalize it for some but legitimizes it for its target audience.

So few "black films" were allowed to embrace the honesty & grit of the Neorealists films that inspired the world at that time. Black films had to be gratuitous, simple and commercial by not shaking things up and usually playing to the status quo of white patrons. Skull Mountain would be remembered fondly if it had some of the black ideals that made 70s black culture so influential. The film cops out but its a fun disaster. Its kitschy, dated, too obtuse and half-baked. But there is an elevated air about it. The cast especially give 110% and you wonder why it didn't lead to better work for the cast, D.P., production design & special effects. But the answer is obvious when you consider the bland director, writer and producer probably got their positions from privilege and not talent or dedication.

T2 Trainspotting (2017) / Willard (1971) / The Passenger (1975)

Danny Boyle scored a real winner with T2, the best sequel/spinoff film I've seen this year. It respects the original so much because its a totally natural progression as a story & personal meta-narrative. T2 succeeds because its not someone new giving their version of the old vision. Its the original vision just 20 years more mature and established. So many corporate reboots fail because they decide on a fresh update and re-treading. Boyle makes a great theme out of the past and uses his first entry as a stylistic gimmick, but he (and the material itself) clearly state that they are not suckered by a cheap nostalgia tour. The film is helped tremendously thats its working off a sequel novel, but only loosely.

T2 won't get its props because its one of the rare higher profiled films this year that wasn't for kids, teens or families. This was the only mature 2017 film I've seen that wasn't partly trying to pass itself off as exploitation or a "popcorn film with a message". But the film isn't overly bleak. Its fun, gorgeous, experimental, sincere, thoughtful and a bit abrasive. Its a self-aware mid life crisis for the characters within and outside of it, including our society. Its not interested in returning to the70s, 80s & 90s but analyzing the changes, positive and negative, and celebrating LIFE 20 years later. Its so grateful for its audience and the opportunity to step back into its rare lot in cinema history.

I won't say its better than the original but maybe equal. I didn't want a Trainspotting sequel but this is the film I didn't know I needed. It totally recontextualizes and romanticizes and in some ways eclipses the original. Maybe this is easier to find in European cinema than in American when I think about the charming and welcomed Ab Fab film from a few years back. They are more accustomed to picking up stories again and respecting the virtues of storytelling in commercial filmmaking.

Willard took me by surprise too. I remember the stylish but hollow remake from the 2000s and that both films follow a 1967 novel. I expected a brainless Psycho ripoff with rats eating people. This is much more sophisticated, at least the script is. Its a very introspective study of society's victims and the realistic circumstances that leave them reduced to animal behavior to survive. Willard creates a complex, intelligent metaphor out of its title character. He's a true anti-hero or tragic hero. And the actor Bruce Davison does a lot of good work in the role.

Now the production is not so ambitious but quite memorable. Produced as studios faced a recession, Willard is shot closer to a B&W 1960s thriller TV series like Twilight Zone or Hitchcock Presents. Its very bare bones and muted, but this serves the tone of the film. There isn't much on suspense or action, so we the directing is focused on fleshed out performances and a sense of nerve that creeps up.

But the film is more than a serviceable adaptation of a good story. It surpasses the original text from my understanding in that Willard becomes a catalyst for the zeitgeist of angry youth. It worked well for the political climate then & now. Millennials will relate to the economic and generational abuse this character suffers. He rises into an avenging arm of rebellion, a Marxist. And he suffers a fate that is more poetic and radically leftist than his modest Poe-esque fate in the original tale. He becomes a mirror for the failures of the Love generation and a casualty of class warfare, selling out his own ideals by following the cycle of abuse he set out to destroy. Its heady, very appropriate and shocking for a low budget horror film that could've wasted effort on FX and decor (like the remake and surely the upcoming re-remake).

Jack Nicholson might be the greatest film actor of all-time by body of work. He's made a long list of excellent films because he's worked with some of the best directors of his era: Kubrick, Mike Nichols, Roger Corman, Polanski, Tim Burton, Scorsese and fit all of their esteemed aesthetics. The Passenger unites Jack with influential director Michelangelo Antonioni for a political/existentialist/postmodern/travelogue about identity and freedom. Antonioni loves to create surrogate characters of himself who take on harsh journeys into themselves to either triumph or crumble from their own reflection.

This is the 3rd Antonioni film I've watched and the 3rd in that timeline. Following Il Grido and Blow Up, The Passenger is an even wider and more abstract pilgrimage into the cinematic form. The director is fine playing off established tropes and motifs because he bends them in new ways, like he's revising a world view by performing the same story in vastly different ways. One big distinction is the change in female perspectives in these stories. In this one, Maria Schneider plays a radical youth who acts as a spirit guide or perhaps a siren who leads him to one of two fates. Antonioni might've been a Hitchcock fan because the film builds to an incredibly intense climax loaded with meanings.

"The Passenger" is a sure masterpiece like Blow Up before it, "Willard" is a very tuned in piece of mainstream-meets-counterculture that has aged terrifically & "T2" is a spiritual poem that lives up to the spiritual poem that inspired it. 3 great movies to enjoy forever.

The Man With Two Brains 1983 / Cracking Up (aka Smorgasbord) 1983

Two very intellectual, avant garde comedies from the same year. Carl Reiner directs Steve Martin in "2 Brains" & Jerry Lewis directs himself in Smorgasbord (its original title by Jerry).

Now TMW2B is more commercial, more Americanized and less personal, but its still a far classier experience than most comedies since. I'd argue its better than most comedies that came before too. This is not the Reiner/Martin collaboration that gets the most props or notice, but its probably the most consistently funny. The plot is secondary but its not non-existent or throwaway. The film is a collection or selection of comedy skits all with the theme of modern romance. It has a detached coolness in its intimate portrayal of social suicides & defeating heartbreaks & magical rebirth.

Reiner was of course rivaling his ex-partner Mel Brooks at the time, so there's heat of critical gesturing and maybe loaded rejections of certain Brooks-style gimmicks. This is a pure Reiner madcap effort while Martin is at the top of his game as a performer & thinker. He trusts the humor and brings his own twists to much of Reiner's retro vaudeville. He plays it in a perfect slapstick tone so Reiner can build the rest of the film (Kathleen Turner, the plot, the music) as the "straight man". The film has a dreamy, sometimes queasy mixture of deadpan with the texture of absurdist realism. Its between a cartoon and a documentary.

I have to heavily recommend this to anyone. Its very welcoming, gentle and yet brilliantly enlightening.
 
Smorgasbord should be watched afterwards, when you have a wet palette for comic extremism. "Cracking Up" was a title studios slapped on it to appropriate it for "general" audiences. "Smorgasbord" is so much more fitting as the film is an almost plot-less collection of wide ranging dreams, fantasies, episodes and introspections from Jerry's well-established clown persona.

Its very low budget, feels European in production style and it actually plays to the European critics who were Lewis' biggest fans at the time. Lewis has some of the most fun of his career here as a humble aging master performer playing to his adoring crowd of philosophically astute and culturally accepting post-French New Wave. This might be Lewis' most auteurist work. Its filled with naked confessions, mature honesty, fiery snark & love for the craft of being a film comedian.

Lewis is one of the greatest screen comedians ever, if not the best. He utilized gags, reactions, one-liners, misdirection, staging, scope, color, timing, editing, emotion, etc. so simultaneously that it all felt effortless. And this is his purist effort. He's like a kid playing with cinematic toys. And he gives us all a fun, strange, gripping seat on a ride through a portrait of his mind. Excuse the word salad, but this film is that psychological, surreal and existentially profound. Yet it stays unpretentious and grounded in the spirit of a big kid having fun in the street with every other big kid.

Jerry famously taught a lot of people how to stay a big kid, but also how to remain an intellectual adult on the outside. In this film, Jerry apologizes for any negative reproach his fans might get, but assures them that they are the real geniuses for understanding his humor. This was the last feature film of Lewis' directorial career and its a wonderful swan song.

Jeepers Creepers 3

I caught this despite the serious controversy around it. I knew the director served time for sex with a minor, but I didn't know that when I became a fan of the 1st film. It disturbs me but I trust the director is sorry for what he did and is probably just another artist trying to survive. I will feel terrible if Victor De Silva turns out to be some awful predator still, but I want to see new art so I watched his piece. Its a frigging free watch on cable, I'm not paying the guy. But it is odd that SyFy's politics allowed this. Progressive or just weird?

Anyway, its a decent sleepy watch. Not scary. Not overly entertaining. Not above the quality of a lot of "prestige" TV shows. It reminded me of bad straight-to-video horror sequels in the 1990s. Its the same kinda aesthetic & economic resources. The big difference is low budget technology has evolved and old cinematic tricks haven't aged. De Silva deserves credit for making a film that is well-crafted.

Thats about all I can say about it. I reviewed this film because I want to prove I'm fair. If I loved it I'd say it & if I hated it I would say it. This was super mediocre. The first film was a genuinely creepy minimalist horror film from the bleakness of the 9/11 era. The 2nd film was a campy, pervy softcore teen porno spoofing the sado porn of straight teen horror softcore pornos. Neither is great, but its unique and darkly human.

Pt 3 was hollow, stilted, gratuitous, depressive, uninformative and a little uniform. Its better than much of 2010s' ' horror, but its so dependent on Netflix, Hollywood, old horror classics, some obscure foreign influences & ESPECIALLY The Walking Dead.

This film wasn't as creative or worthwhile (or cinematic) as Cult of Chucky. Stick with that film. JC3 is just kinda gross & creepy and not in the good & honest way. We can pull the plug on this kinda Hollywood surviving.

The Priest's Wife 1970 / Marriage Italian Style 1964 / Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 1963

Bam! 3 Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastroianni films to review. Thanks, TCM.

I started with Priest's Wife, a very unusual rom-com which starts on a slapstick note and gradually winds down to a somber ultra-realistic reflection of human casualty. Its obvious that Sophia & Marcello were very game to push boundaries with their electric screen chemistry. They give audiences the darker, more obscure sides of male/female relationships. This one explores bureaucracy, fundamentalism, sexual experience, maturity levels & intense personal differences. While it is very mature and even tragic, its somewhat hopeful and vague. The filmmakers were respectful enough to let the viewer decide on the ending they want. Of course, the film is beautifully arranged, decorated and shot too courtesy of director Dino Risi.


Vittorio De Sica directs the screen couple in the next two films and wins a "Foreign Film" Oscar with Marriage. Its an excellent, theatrical piece of work where both actors flex light and dark sides of their souls. Its so much fun to watch them play off each other in various games of roleplay. The plot is fairly elaborate, operatic & testy. This was the 2nd (but earlier) film I've watched of theirs to use domestic abuse as a moment of high emotional bonding or romantic pretext. And very interesting that Scorsese would explore this in his films as well. Italians don't have a monopoly on abuse, but they don't shy from representing it in cinema. Its that touch of neorealism, that brooding and violent rejection of judgmental American artifice, that frees this subculture to address the uglier and steamier sides of human romance. The frankness of this film must have been so radical and yet its so commercial without selling out its Italian roots.

Yesterday is even earlier and even more radical. First, its an anthology rom-com that plays the same actors as very unsavory but human roles. This film studies the class difference of couples and the struggles that brings. Its all the most subtle and realistic of comedy with a very muted and mellow seriousness. One excellent touch is how De Sica personalizes the aesthetic of each short film. Story to story he toys with camerawork in the 3rd, lighting in the 2d and staging in the 1st. There are lots of other subtle distinctions to savor and analyze.

This was a big exposure to me. I'm very familiar with low rent grindhouse from Italy and I'm growing a huge appreciation for Italian arthouse, but hadn't found the big budget middlebrow productions like these rom-com's or what Sophia Loren was surprised to learn are called romantic "drama-edies". These films were meant to rival Hollywood's sanitized cheesecake films starring Doris Day & Lana Turner. They are not rip-off's but reactions, reversals and rejections. The spirit of Italian cinematists was more jaded and unwilling to repress or reproach from pressing psychological, emotional and sexual issues in home life. And we must thank them for it. These films played with the medium in less restrained or commercialized ways. They established a technical style highly influenced by theater and photography of Italian nature, fashion and still life. You can feel the exuberance the filmmakers had in just putting these films out into the global market while representing & speaking to their country primarily.

The films have aged nicely and they were beautiful to begin with. This is important & influential stuff and you revel in the fact that it still plays as relevant, immediate and sensual as it was then.

Cult of Chucky 2017

The Child's Play franchise will go down as the best of the 80s slasher franchises that dominated pop culture once. Chucky has outlived & outclassed the likes of Freddy, Jason, Pinhead & the others. Only Leatherface stands next to Chucky as both had new films this year, but Child's Play has retained most of its first predecessor's charm, intelligence & horror credibility by keeping the voice of its creator. No, the Child's Play producers have gone a step further and given the auteurist credit solely to the writer by letting him direct. And Don Mancini has evolved into a formidable & singular talent. He's already one of the supreme directors of low budget horror IMO.

"Cult" follows the very strong "Curse of Chucky" from 2013 (the same year as TC3D hmm). That film was a pseudo-reboot that returned the film to its Urban Gothic roots as a serious mind-bending supernatural stalker film with a psychotic twist. That film was also built on Mancini's economical crafting of a vintage Hammer Studio-like atmosphere & VERY sharp social awareness and genre postmodernism & it was a much more successful experiment than the misunderstood and less popular Seed of Chucky.

Cult is not as successful as Curse, but there is so much to recommend. The plot is cleverly weaved, witty in its plot twists, surprisingly lyrical for a Chucky film and very hard to classify. Like Antonioni's Blow Up, the films of David Lynch & many European styled films, the main gimmick is perception. This is the most essential but underutilized theme in telling a story on film. Mancini has done his homework and even stretches it a bit. He makes some interesting comments about the nature of truth, reality, sanity, society & morality. The film works like an old school art film, not like a killer doll movie. In fact, there might not be enough Chucky for slasher fans. I think its an okay trade-off.

It fun to let the other characters in the Chucky myth basically drive the entire plot. Chucky becomes a Hitchcockian "McGuffin". He ties these vastly different perspectives together and represents different psychological traumas for them & that works best after 6 movies. These characters being the leads in different chapters all meeting for the first time. Very cool.

I was a bit disappointed in the resolution. It was more neat, bleak and open-ended than the previous endings. Even that is a twist on typical slasher sequel expectations. It leaves us in a new territory thats more abstract and gritty than anything in the other Chucky stories. I'm totally sold on Mancini's direction for the next film as its shaping up to be a very personal epic saga of his own demons & angels. 

Nick Zedd

Michael Pitt & Ryan Gosling in "Murder By Numbers" 2002

What is the underlying opinion on race in the Alien franchise? With the Prometheus/Covenant entries Ridley Scott suggests the story has always been a horror deconstruction of white racist eugenicist theories, specifically targeting the intersectionality between Nazism & white Christianity. This is supported in the thematic work of Dan O'Bannon & HR Geiger, Alien's respective screenwriter and key artistic designer. 

Prometheus details the absurd idea of a white God complex poisoned by his own black genetics and the authoritarian fascist corporation out to profit from the realization/discovery of the "Master Race". Ridley Scott's horror/scifi franchise is destined to be one of the most frightening, intellectually probing and subtle fictional constructs in popular media. Whats most frightening is how many simply buy it at face value as a story about "mankind finding his roots". Scott is playing on the audience's own deeply ingrained racism/authoritarianism and using it against them, to produce scares and ticket sales. Thats one reason he's one of the best directors ever.

Venus In Furs 1969 (2nd review)

Writing reviews this year has opened up my appreciation of cinema and I've learned a lot. Much of that credit belongs to Jess Franco, the obscure Spanish surrealist/grindhouse director I covered for the first half of 2017. Studying his work properly introduced me to tons of concepts & artistic grammar that I was only fuzzy about. Postmodernism, Dada, Existentialism. These themes perfectly reflect the dark crises Earth is handling now. I'm a totally different viewer after this harsh year and my outlook has widened tremendously.

I can admit I'm now embarrassed by one of my early reviews. Rewatching "Venus in Furs" last night, the film was a richer, more clear experience and it deserves a new review. But I will not erase my initial, less informed opinion. We should all give things an educated perspective.

https://hollyweedbabylon.blogspot.com/2017/01/venus-in-furs.html

Now Venus is a case like Blade Runner or Night of the Demons where a young ambitious artist made a deeply existential work of art and producers interfered to make it more commercial, thus losing a lot of the intended power. Funny how all 3 of these films revolve around the concept of perception, an essential component of cinema but maybe the least understood or examined.

I wrote off Venus as a clunky, sexy supernatural slasher like Franco's later work because thats what it is on the surface. Even on first viewing I could tell the film was heavily inspired by Vertigo, Carnival of Souls & Dr. Caligari, as its a dream narrative with dream logic and heavy political symbolism. Franco's film is a uniquely Spanish work examining themes of chauvinism/feminism, racism/colorism, sadism, schizophrenia, memory and probably LSD. The sex & supernatural is only a hook for audiences, but the producers re-edited the narrative to highlight these elements at the expense of any meaning. The film can seem convoluted if you aren't keenly aware of the lyrical storytelling that is mostly intact.

One of my favorite writers of the film blog era, Jeremy Richey of "Moon in the Gutter", detailed a connection between Franco's Venus and Lynch's Lost Highway. I originally thought he was off-base but now the similarities are glaring. The way Franco uses surreal photographic techniques and jazz scoring to highlight the dreaminess and artificiality of certain plot points. Franco gives clues and absurdist touches the way Lynch would after him. There's also the shared sensibility in ghostly, unreal femme fatales, unholy affluent boules and a confused, jazz playing spectator to all of the violent insanity who is oblivious to his role in everything. Franco & Lynch both imply that the world's depravity is at the heart of our sick culture, not a byproduct or separate fringe entity. You have to seriously ask if David Lynch, a monolithic American artist of our times, is a fan of this totally ignored cult director.

Its a hard argument for those uninitiated to Franco because Lynch is so quiet about his influences, unlike Franco in his day. Also Lynch fans are a bit dogmatic in praising Lynch's originality and genius. How can that great unique savant be compared to an inconsistent director of lesbian vampire pornos? As I've tried to argue in the past, Franco was a true auteur and genius and I'm sure his infamy is well-known to enormous film fans WITHIN the directing field. Jess Franco's films predicted so much because they were so structuralist and eventually post-structuralist. By "Venus", every shot is a reversal of the expected. Its a totally fresh experience despite its debts to other films. Because Franco, a super movie buff, was combining all of the radical ideas of his contemporaries (Godard, Antonioni, Bunuel, Welles, Fellini) and boiling them down to a level Spanish & American teenagers could even understand. Following these postmodern directors, it could be argued Franco was the original major post-postmodern & remodernist director like De Palma, Tarantino, Rodriguez and so many later.

I see now how seminal this film is to Franco's oeuvre, even if it wasn't the career gateway he wanted. It really summarizes his aesthetic well and explains the frustrated vision of his later, cheaper work. Many times he tried to execute the misunderstood mysticism of Venus in different terms. Some more mature (Other Side of the Mirror), some more juvenile (Virgin Among the Living Dead). I think Venus is more successful and watchable. But maybe Franco's best and most original take on this type of film poetry was "Succubus". But Venus is right next to it as Franco's attempt at a Roger Corman-esque drive-in mindblower. And to be honest, its a perfect hybrid of Corman's LSD and Gothic horror films, but better than both.

Death Laid An Egg 1968

I told myself while watching this, "this is one heck of a movie".

I was usually so caught up in the impeccable camerawork or stunning use of montage to make sense of the plot. But I think I understand it: a man is driven insane from the numbing experience of working at a chicken farm with 2 women who are fighting over him. The plot is extremely loose and a bit absurd but its full of clever metaphors for the social factors in his breakdown.

 Gian Piero Brunetta, author of The History of Italian Cinema, considered the film to be "worth remembering", comparing it to the works of Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni. Brunetta felt the film held several thematic undercurrents, dealing with the conditions of farm labourers and the changing social attitudes towards the class system in Italy

I want to compare it to the work of Jess Franco because its so jazzy, surreal, sexy, psychological and obtuse... yet commercial. Its actually more polished and entertaining than the typical Franco film by a long shot and has the added poetics, social commentary and New Wave sensibility of maybe a Jean Rollin film. But this baby doesn't come from Spain or France. Its Italian. One of the most extreme Italian films I've seen from the period. Its somewhere between a Fellini & Bava, art & exploitation. Its a beautiful experiment in contrasts. A marriage of high and low art. Aesthetically and politically its very similar to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so that details its pedigree.

Essentially you want to see this if you love giallo AND "acid cinema". I imagine it was inspired by the radical commercial experimentation in the previous year's "Bonnie & Clyde", but "Death" manages to outdo it in sheer stylish lunacy.

Numero Deux 1975

I'm getting back into Godard. "Breathless" totally opened up my world when I downloaded it from an old file-sharing network as a teen. I remember thinking this is the coolest and hippest B&W film I'd ever seen.  Its unbelievable that that film was made in 1960. It just happened to be French & low budget too, so I felt like I was now a true cinema hipster. I haven't looked back since, but my other experiences with Godard's work have been shaky. I thought Alphaville was intriguing, Masculin Feminin was cute but underwhelming & Weekend was as astounding as it was frustrating.

Number Two is the most extreme thing I've seen from him & I really enjoyed the experience. I know much more about where Godard was coming from politically and I have a better appetite for challenging, non-commercial art.

The whole thing is one big gimmicky experiment where we join Godard in the editing room as he watches footage on TV moniters of a poor French family speak their minds in a candid but decidedly lyrical style. The family are unhappy with their roles but also desperate to fit in the "machine" that is their family. The parents wrestle with philosophical questions from the mundane to the familial to the political to the existential. There's no plot or action or character growth. Its a stream of Godard's consciousness spoken through 1-dimensional people, making the audience aware of the transference we place from auteur to actors. Another fun game Godard plays is filling the screen with 2 or more images in a frame, letting us edit the footage ourselves. Godard shows that the film is already a film before its "properly" edited and sometimes a rawer experience in this way. Indeed it does create an intimacy with the films within the film. Godard is between his film and us. We are removed from the "story" that we can properly deconstruct it as pure communication.

This is a cool, conceptual piece that will bore newcomers to Godard but will satisfy anyone who likes interacting with or decrypting their cinema. Its self aware pretentiousness and its preaching to a very radical choir, but its definitely art and good art too.