All The Points Where Contact Fails Us, All Of The Dead Spots In The Zone

Shame (McQueen, 2011)

Addiction is tough. Each day, I would imagine, we confront it in many different ways. This seems, certainly at first, to be at the core of Steve McQueen's Shame, the visual artist turned director's sophomore follow up to the harrowing (it will be fun to see how many times I use this word in the forthcoming paragraphs!) Hunger. Moving from Ireland all the way over to the red blooded American soils of New York City, McQueen crafts a movie that confronts, in an admirably direct fashion, main character Brandon (Michael Fassbender) as he grapples with a crippling sex addiction. What results is a deliberately paced character study that has sent critics all aflutter, and produced some of the year's greatest pull quotes. Take, for example, this gem from Tony Macklin's review of the film:

"Shame is a noxious porridge of porn and pointlessness. It's a penis in search of a plot. Its protagonist is a masturbating cipher."

With a glowing endorsement like that, how can Shame be anything but excellent?

Keep Your Pekinese, Turkish Cigarettes, And Your Lighter That Looks Like A Gun

Twelve (Schumacher, 2010)

Many would say that Joel Schumacher is responsible for one of the worst films ever recorded: Batman and Robin. I have not seen this travesty, so aside from the film's reputation I have little else to form any sort of valid opinion. Similarly, I have incredibly limited exposure to Schumacher's filmography, so when I saw this film about two weeks ago all I took into Twelve dealt with the reputation that the film had built up since its premiere at Sundance. The film was ridiculed by the collective press so horribly at the event that Schumacher had all future screenings canceled and did not conduct any interviews at the festival after the film finished screening. So is the film as hollow and pretentious as the individuals on display in this world or is Schumacher's latest film an unfortunate victim of critical group think that, like the residents of this upper New York society, is simply cornered by expectation?

Screw Rehab, I Love My Addiction. No Sleep. No Sleep. I Am Always On A Mission

Spread (Mackenzie, 2009)

It seems almost universally American to, at some point or another, fantasize about an easy life out in Hollywood. Perhaps as an actor, a writer, a director, a singer. It's your fantasy, not mine, any aspirations I had to venture out west dissipated many years ago. However, the life of Ashton Kutcher's Nikki in Spread is almost enough to place the stars back in my eyes, drop any cynicism, and try out a life filled with great meals, beautiful women, and no work. Of course this, rather predictably, does not completely work out according to Nikki's plan, which is where much of the tension can be found in David Mackenzie's fourth feature film is found.

Mackenzie works a wonderful camera as the Kutch lights up the screen as the disengaged playboy, Nikki. Similar to Josh Peck in The Wackness, Kutcher is sometimes a bit too detached for his own good, but he brings a compelling personality to a figure who is easy to play solely for laughs. Nikki is humorous, by nature, but he is also a self destructive force who has too much ego for his own good. He's a fascinating central figure to begin with, but Kutcher's spin on the character makes the film even more compelling. No other supporting actor is worth mentioning though, even Heche does not make the most of her screen time. Thankfully none of the supporters hurt the film either, so I find any specific complaints too minor to worth mentioning.

Spread is nowhere close to a flawless film and I can see it alienating many audiences, but the film glorifies the fast life and tears it apart, all with an underlying darkness that one would not expect to encounter in a film starring Ashton Kutcher. Helped along by a noticeable technical precision, Spread is at worst an interesting character study, though given the final scene and the thematic development throughout the film I am certainly willing to call it one of the year's most overlooked films.

B+ or 4.0112839216742642973

Comments are welcome and, for anyone with a literary mind, I encourage checking out my poetry blog filled with all original works for your reading pleasure.

Also I am on the old Twitter thing so I guess you can follow me at twitter.com/FLYmeatwad.

Baby, Who Turned The Temperature Hotter?

Fired Up! (Gluck, 2009)

Let's get this out of the way right here, right now. I have a soft spot for coming of age films, I have a soft spot for high school films, I am a 20 year old male and I am naturally inclined to like grotesque jokes about sexuality because I'm an immature prick. There, we have it. Mercy street! Despite all of those affections, even I have a hard time calling Will Gluck's Fired Up! anything resembling a solid comedy. Covering territory that other 'should have been rated R' teen comedies such as Accepted have tread upon before, the film is a hodge-podge of solid ideas that are kept in check by a studio's desire to market to as large an audience as possible.

Anchored by Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen playing two high school super stud football players, Shawn and Nick, we watch them sign up for cheer leading camp in an attempt to hook up with as many girls as possible in two weeks. We have seen this story before, and before that, and probably even before that. Thankfully at least half the time D'Agosto and Olsen actually do the comedy thing really well, especially individually, and when there is noticeable chemistry between the two the film gets fairly funny quicker than it takes the blood to rush to these oversexed teenagers' sperm poles. Wow, a lot of phallic references in this post.

The supporting cast here is really interesting as well, and they all play to the material they are given as well as they can considering how devoid of humor some of the gags are. It was interesting to see Margo Harshman who played Tawny on Even Stevens show up, but she is mostly wasted because her running joke makes little sense in context. John Michael Higgins has a few funny bits as well, but the standout is obviously David Walton as Dr. Rick, the generic frat boy tool bag who slides nicely into the role of antagonist. Not only does he nail the part perfectly, he is given the best recurring jokes. Hearing him proclaim how "Tubthumpin'" by Chumbawumba is part of the soundtrack of his life is simply hysterical. He is a breath of fresh air in a sea of generic, age appropriate, semi-edgy teen humor.

Yes, the film is mostly mediocre, but I have to admire the film for instituting a number of running jokes that it never gives up on, whether they are funny or not. The narrative takes no turns, the direction is sub-par at best, and the script is not deep or anything of the sort, but the film is as funny as the rating will allow and all of the pieces of a great comedy are present. Hopefully in the future projects like this can get an R rating and be phenomenal, because seeing all of this potential go to waste is simply frustrating.

C+ or 2.989473825467328516

Comments are welcome and, for anyone with a literary mind, I encourage checking out my poetry blog filled with all original works for your reading pleasure.

Also I am on the old Twitter thing so I guess you can follow me at twitter.com/FLYmeatwad.

He Has Fixed His Sign In The Sky

Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)

Word out of Cannes this year was that Lars Von Trier's latest film, Antichrist, was either one of the greatest things to grace a screen in recent memory or one of the most horrible, disgusting, worthless pieces of shit to ever masquerade as art. Now I knew little of this film when the buzz started building at the festival, but as the US release date started approaching I saw a trailer, heard that a video game tie in is planned, and learned basically He and She go back to Eden for something or another. Also, people have sex on a tree, potentially a tree made of people. I have to imagine, at least partially, that Terrence Malick would be proud of a more direct representation of his flora fetish. Either way, I still did not know entirely what to expect as the innocently chaotic title was etched across the screen in such a diabolical yet childlike fashion. All I knew was that I should be excited, and then it all starts, and I am left questioning if this is, in fact, the best place for me to begin delving into Von Trier's filmography.

Well, let us answer that question through a more thorough look at Antichrist, or at least what I am able to surmise with only a single viewing and a mind that still is attempting to process all the symbols and themes that Lars is compelled to toss my way over the relatively lean 110 minute run. Through a wonderfully disciplined style, possessing the occasional whimsy of Alice in Wonderland mixed with the stark realism of a film more akin to Elephant, Von Trier crafts what is, without a doubt, one of the most visually beautiful films in a year that is packed with gorgeous cinema. Whether wandering through the woods and back to Eden, or remaining captive in the close quarters of the run down shack, the film blends the real and the surreal fantastically, which further highlights the Biblical ideas that run throughout without ever directly weaving the real world, theoretically 'our' world, together with the perceived, or perhaps symbolic is the better term as the religious aspects certainly do not appear to be presented as factual. It may be overly cliche to say that the filmmaker is a artist whose canvas is his film, but Von Trier has so many sequences in this film that just stand out as portrait~esque that the comparison is more than relevant. And then to have such sequences placed alongside the sex scenes, it just creates a magical juxtaposition, given the presentation of sex throughout the latter part of the film.

Speaking of sex, it seems that there is a good deal going on here, but it all serves a greater purpose and is really not as plentiful as is to be expected given how much attention I am drawing to the scenes. I suppose in many ways the film is about, at least to an extent, the evils of sex, or pleasure in general. Dafoe's character advises against sex with his wife during her mental healing, it may partially be to blame for the initial tragedy, and Gainsbourg's behaviour in the final chapter can likely support a reading of the evils of sex. Yet Von Trier does not make things that simple at all, he adds in the whole portion about acorns to show the preciousness of life, he directly frames sex as beautiful during at least three portions throughout the film, and he does not let Dafoe off in the least, in fact he may even be condemning Dafoe. To prevent any further rambling, for now, I'm going to completely ignore transitional rules and jump right into performance. Dafoe is solid, and perhaps he has the tougher task given that he is expected to mostly be the serious and straight character, but what Charlotte Gainsbourg does as the She character is phenomenal. I liked her role in I'm Not There, but in Antichrist she does not only turn in a performance worthy of an Oscar, she displays one of the greatest performances of all time. The strength is not found in how much she has to do so much as it is found in the emotion that she brings to the role. Given the film's ambiguous nature she has to play evil and righteous, whore and saint, sane and insane, and still convey the grief that anyone in her situation is expected to possess. Praise upon praise can be given to Gainsbourg for her performance in Antichrist, but the most effective summation is best kept simple: she brings an insane complexity to a nameless character, Gainsbourg is fantastic.

Aside from performances, the chapter structure of the film is interesting as well. The breaks help keep the pacing pitch perfect and they all tie together into a mostly cohesive whole, retaining meaning as individual portions and as a collective. They chronicle the degradation of everything as well, and I do not mean to be vague by using the term 'everything,' but I do feel that it is the most applicable word in this case. Either way, let's toss up a spoiler warning now for the parts that seem to have audiences all riled up. Likely it will not mean too much out of context, so you should be safe reading, but if you do not want some specific actions revealed then I guess continue to the final paragraph for my closing thoughts. Antichrist was, despite causing who knows how many people to scream and faint and whatever else at Cannes, relatively tame throughout. Sure the film is occasionally overt in the way sex is handled and Gainsbourg has a scene where she walks around completely topless, and then there's that doe with the miscarried deer hanging out of it, but the only parts that I had any trouble watching, and even these are watchable as they are not very long, is when Gainsbourg smashes Dafoe's penis in with something, though that is concealed. However, the follow up where she gives him a hand job so he ejaculates blood instead of semen is slightly unnerving. I was unsettled throughout the whole scene, but I suppose that is to be expected. The other, and likely more unsettling, bit is when Gainsbourg castrates herself by cutting off her clitoris. It's an intense scene, but it serves a purpose and showing the act graphically is necessary to get the full effect, especially when paired with the cut to the deer that immediately follows. So yeah, the film gets unsettling in a few parts, but otherwise I do not understand exactly where the disgust for the film originates.

So was this the best place to start with Von Trier? I'm not entirely sure without seeing what else he had worked on, but given the numerous layers, symbols, themes, and ideas that he has going on during this film I have to imagine that it will be tough for his older works to create the same reaction I had toward Antichrist. Antichrist has all the markings of a technically great film, and as far as the extraneous material goes I found myself engaged throughout the entire run, so from an entertainment perspective, and I use the term referring to my mental engagement with the film not any pure bliss of simply watching, it's pretty fantastic as well. Antichrist contains some of the year's best cinematography, likely the year's best performance so far, and more literary and artistic flourishes than just about anything I have seen all year. I need time for it to sit and another viewing to process a good majority of the material properly, so I cannot say if the film is nearly as good as Adventureland, Lymelife, or The Cove just yet, but Antichrist is at least the fourth best film of the year and a truly jarring and rewarding experience.

A/A+ or 4.7891724235416938561359136519

So I'm also pretty behind in other reviews, which means that my next entry will probably be a short three or four paragraph post covering films that are more happier than Antichrist. On tap for that entry are, at the very least: Away We Go, Tulpan, Sin Nombre, and Anvil! The Story of Anvil!

Comments are welcome and, for anyone with a literary mind, I encourage checking out my poetry blog filled with all original works for your reading pleasure.

Also I am on the old Twitter thing so I guess you can follow me at twitter.com/FLYmeatwad.