My Bloody Valentine 3-D

A scribe doesn't rate a film like My Bloody Valentine 3-D like, say, Benjamin Button or Slumdog Millionaire. But compared to the other horror movie released in 09 (The Unborn) My Bloody Valentine 3-D elicits a yawn. Compared to the slate of early 1980s 3-D films, titles like Friday the 13th Part III, or Parasite, MBV3D wins by a nose. Actually a remake of a 1981 film by the same name, My Bloody Valentine chronicles an insane miner who kills with a pick-ax.
The current Valentine is full of loud noise for scares and naked victims for its R-rating. There's a slight rooting interest in the last act as Jamie King must decide which of the suspects (her husband or her ex boy friend) is the sadistic killer. The director, Patrick Lussier, has worked for Wes Craven as an editor and also helmed Dracula 2000, a movie I defy anyone to remember plot points about.
There are a couple of things Lussier does right, and that ring true to the genre. One, he casts Tom Atkins (Halloween III: Season of the Witch) in the hambone supporting role of the mining town's ex-sheriff. Second, and this is the coolest effect of the 3-D visuals, the establishing shots are done in the style of tilt-shift photography. This gives everything a miniature look especially from high angles, although it would hardly be reason enough to recommend the entire film.

X rated films and other 60s oddities

I recently tried to score a copy of Tropic of Cancer a 1970 movie with Rip Torn and Ellen Burstyn on eBay. There was only one for sale, and on an eBay store as opposed to an auction, for over $60. But if you wait somebody will list one for ninety-nine cents. Sure enough I scored a copy for under six bucks including shipping.
Now the high priced movie I am trying to find is DR SYN: THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH, starring Patrick McGoohan. Disney released it on VHS wayback when and recently in a limited edition DVD. The DVD is selling for over 50 bucks on eBay. But I'm going to snag a VHS copy for pennies when nobody's looking.



My colleague Joe reminded me that Tropic of Cancer was one of a couple of X rated films that Paramount released, but since they weren't successful Bob Evans passed on distributing Last Tango in Paris, which of course was huge. The other film Paramount made that had the stigmata of X was Medium Cool. Other studios X releases in the 60s included:
Myra Breckingridge from 20th Century.
Midnight Cowboy from MGM.
Can Hieronymus Merkin .... from Universal
The Killing of Sister George from Cinecom.

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky has my full attention. Few directors start their careers making films that are as singularly different from one another as they are good. Aronofsky follows up the soul experience that was The Fountain with a piece of kitchen sink realism about an aging wrestler's swan song. The Wrestler pulls emotional ham strings you didn't even know you had.
Mickey Rourke plays Randy The Ram Robinson with close to the edge of the precipice histrionics. This isn't your grandfather's or your daddy's requiem for a heavyweight movie. Those were boxing films. The Wrestler culls another type of fisticuffs. The kind of staged antics and genuine masochism on display (in two scenes in particular) are unlike anything one would normally expect. It's this tone of the film that will limit wide appeal because of its ability to psyche out its audience.
There's plenty of subtext if you want to examine what you watch in The Wrestler but the surface stillness without pretension is what makes the film powerful viewing. Rouke's Ram goes from humiliation to letdown to heart attack without loosing his cool. He's been locked out of his trailer and instead of being able to use his reputation to earn money in the ring he must take a job at the deli counter. Okay, he loses his cool in a couple of scenes. In Aronofsky's movie the deli counter represents the psychological equivalent of Sisyphus rolling a stone up a hill. The Ram may have won a title fight in the past but his current rank and glory means having had a vintage action figure made in his image.
The Wrestler allows us to see The Ram being directly responsible for his own fuck-ups, mistakes that lead to irrevocable loses and pain. Aronofsky draws us into The Ram's circle, not of friends, but acquaintances like an estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) or potential romance (Marissa Tomei). The actors and situations give The Wrestler a kind of current that amps you up. The Wrestler rates high on my fight card because it takes a grim view of the human condition yet in a forgiving way.

Notorious

Notorious is a by the numbers biopic about Biggie Smalls. As directed by George Tillman Jr. Notorious shows a very unglamorous depiction of an artist and his rise to the top of the recording game. Tillman also helmed Men of Honor and Soul Food. I had a friend who worked on Soul Food and he told me it was some of the best catered food he's ever had on a movie set.
Specifically Notorious charts the friendship between Biggie and Tupac and attempts to put some order to the confusion about their respective murders. It's especially touching that Biggie's son Christopher Jordan Wallace plays the title character as a young boy in the movie's opening scene. The movie chronicles Smalls starting out as a drug dealer while still in school and how he eventually hooks up with Puff Daddy after a stint in prison. Notorious is wall to wall sex and drugs although the emphasis centers on how Smalls uses his new found largesse to insulate himself from the world.
The most compelling reason to see Notorious is for the performances of several actors playing famous singers. From Angela Basset as Biggie's mother with a huge heart to Jamal Woolard in his career defining debut role as Notorious B.I.G. the acting is solid and unforced even in emotionally turbulent moments. Particularly engaging are Naturi Naughton as Lil Kim, Antonique Smith as Faith Evans, Derek Luke as Puffy Combs and Anthony Mackie just knocking it out of the park as Tupac Shakur. Tupac's getting mugged and shot in the lobby of Biggie's East Coast recording studio plants the seeds of suspicion in what was until then a great friendship.
Even at the gutter level Tillman throws in hints of redemption. In the manner of a studio movie from the 30s we see that the worst character, a crack addict that teenage Biggie has no qualms selling rock to, has become the role model for motherhood. It's a brief shot near the end of the movie but it says a lot about what the filmmakers are trying to achieve.

Revolutionary Road

For a movie that reunites three cast members from Titanic, Revolutionary Road is the exact opposite of a romantic adventure film. About halfway in one character remarks "Plenty of people are onto the emptiness. But it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." Revolutionary Road is the kind of film that celebrates its hopelessness. Under the hand of Sam Mendes and the seamless photography of Roger Deakins this tale of suburban angst set in Connecticut during the 1950s simply shines in every scene.
Frankly this is the kind of film I really sink my teeth into while other erudite writers have little patience for the kind of nihilism on display. Everything about conformity destroys you in Revolutionary Road, and the only really sane person is the one on a weekend pass from the insane asylum (Michael Shannon, playing Kathy Bates' son with a vengeance). Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet headline as the married couple who want to follow their passion and move to Paris. Other supporting actors as well as costumes and production design are superb around every door jam.
Frank and April Wheeler (Winslet, DiCaprio) seem like a progressive couple, the kind of dyad to break free from the rat race. But does the rat race also include bohemia in its pedigree? Frank and April make rational as well as irrational choices and the film puts us front and center in that process.
Occasional shafts of light brighten up the Wheelers existence, but the same illumination as in the case of Shannon's character also has the tendency to burn. "If you want to play house you have to have a job. If you want to play really nice house you have to have a job you hate." It's not surprising that the drama is so precise, in parts theatrically so. That's the way Mendes rolls.
Frank wants to live both dreams: the artists and the realist. It's only a fluke and his good looks that set him up for a promotion at his corporate job in the city, a promotion that would mean more money but the end of his and April's Paris dream. The cynicism meter rages in the red throughout Revolutionary Road, but the reality meter makes it solid whether the emotions are in the 50s or present day.