Reviews

I felt so trashy while watching Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madame, yet it was so engrossing I just couldn't help continuing on. It's an expose of a woman who ran a high class prostitution ring in LA in the early 90s. Nick Broomfield interviews his subjects (call girls, the director of Starsky & Hutch, an elderly madame who looks and acts exactly like the Egg Lady in Pink Flamginos, a gruff voice on the phone belonging to "Cookie" the bodyguard, and eventually Heidi herself) again and again, eventually trapping them all in a web of lies. It's impossible to figure out who is telling the truth, if the people involved are just having a chuckle at Broomfield's expense, or if they're all so wigged out on coke that they legitimately have no idea what is going on.

In exchange for interviews, Broomfield actually hands his subjects huge wads of cash on camera, so at first he seems like the sucker (or, oddly, like he's applying the prostitute/john relationship to the structure of his documentary), but really he's buying a career move while they're just making themselves look silly. Overall I think Broomfield had the last laugh by exposing how absolutely ludicrous some of these Hollywood types are.

Broomfield is a shameless sensationalist, but he certainly knows how to bring out the hilarity and surreal nature of otherwise serious subjects.

NETHERWORLD, a Full Moon picture set in the Louisiana swamps, successfully delivers a Gothic atmosphere filled with lush vegetation, isolated manor homes, and brothels operated by voodoo sorceresses. However, thanks to a hopelessly cheesy script, the film never transcends its early-90s low-budget roots.

The plot concerns a Corey Thornton, a dashing young man who has just inherited a vast estate from the father he never knew in life. While combing through the deceased's papers, he discovers that his father's last wish was to be brought back from the dead. Corey becomes obsessed with this task and seeks help from those around him: Bijou (the slobbering neighborhood idiot-savant), Diane (Southern-fried "jailbait" who actually looks to be about 25 years old), his father's lawyer (who has mysteriously deformed hands), and of course Delores (a prostitute with big hair and mystical powers).

The action alternates between Corey's manor house and Tonk's, the brothel-next-door, where all the girls are named after dead celebrities...or have Marilyn Monroe and Mary Magdalene really been resurrected?! The band plays smooth jazz as passions rise and Delores casts sultry glances at everyone. Then things get weird. A hand flies out of the wall and starts killing people, whose souls become trapped inside the bodies of birds. A bird which is clearly a hand puppet screams "NEVERRRRRR!" We finally descend to the Netherworld, where the forces of evil fight for control of Corey's mind in a scene that will leave you wondering, "Oh...that was the climax?" All in all, Netherworld is a good bit of entertainment which never gets boring; however, one can't shake the feeling that if slightly more money and effort had been put into it, it could have been good instead of just adequate.

Perhaps if I had not watched von Sternberg's SCARLET EMPRESS the day before I watched IVAN THE TERRIBLE, I would have appreciated Eisenstein's film more.

SCARLET EMPRESS is von Sternberg's own historical Russian epic: Catherine the Great (played by Marlene Deitrich) rises to power despite conspiracies against her--conspiracies much like the ones that face Ivan in Eisenstein's film. The films are remarkably similar, and Eisenstein's influence on von Sternberg's lighting and montage sequences could not be more apparent.

Unfortunately, IVAN THE TERRIBLE is light years behind SCARLET EMPRESS in terms of the integration of sound with image, humanistic characterizations, and nuanced (as opposed to exaggeratedly theatrical) acting styles. If I had to guess, I'd say IVAN THE TERRIBLE was made ten years before SCARLET EMPRESS. In fact, it was made ten years after.

I'm a big fan of Eisenstein's BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN, and as a student of Russian history and culture, I expected IVAN THE TERRIBLE to be a thoroughly engaging film. Instead it seemed a primitive effort: a move backward for a man who excelled at silent storytelling but couldn't evolve along with cinema. Of course, this IS Eisenstein, and IVAN is a very intelligent and well-crafted film, but viewed alongside its contemporaries, its shortcomings become all too apparent.

I'm surprised to see that so many other reviewers tolerated and even loved SANS SOLEIL. In my opinion, SANS SOLEIL is an inferior version of KAYAANISQATSI (which was released the same year): while KAYAANISQATSI lets its images of different societies, machines, and crowds speak for themselves, Chris Marker layers a monologue of pseudo-intellectual babble over his. The footage itself is pretty interesting: we see Japanese people performing ancient purification rites, some nice shots of Iceland's lunar landscape, and other scenes from societies around the world, but the voice-over pretty much ruins it. It's like a failed poet hijacked National Geographic and forced them to make SANS SOLEIL instead of something interesting. Honestly, you could probably find more meaningful prose in a teenage goth's LiveJournal.

I had a few ideological problems with the movie as well. Chris Marker (a Frenchman, I assume?) darted about in non-Western societies, viewing foreign people through a camera lens. He then mashed all the footage together, drawing inferences from the images which he then communicated to us, the (primarily Western) viewers through a voice-over. He never interviews anyone he films. His voice is the only one we hear, he is the sole authority who controls the information we receive, and as a result he can construct other cultures to fit a message of his choosing.

What to the people living in the jungle have to say about life? That's what I'd like to know. But instead we hear through Marker that they are noble savages, free in their own way despite being so primitive, practicing mystical rituals the narrator doesn't actually comprehend, etc. Even Japanese TV somehow serves to illuminate Japanese culture for Marker, despite the fact that he admits he doesn't speak Japanese and can't understand a word of what's going on! Edmund Said explores this form of representation in his book "Orientalism," but basically I see Chris Marker as the Rudyard Kipling or Marco Polo of our day. He travels abroad, reports back to us with a romanticized description of other cultures (which the cultures themselves do not contribute to directly), we accept it, and the discourse ends. We never learn anything tangible, besides the fact that Marker found this experience to be personally significant in some vague way.

Also, I had to close my ears while the narrator discusses Hitchcock's VERTIGO... I haven't seen that one yet and had a feeling Marker wouldn't include any spoiler warnings.

How to describe the experience of watching SURVIVE STYLE 5+?! The look of the movie alone was enough to blow me away: it features fanciful costumes that look nothing like any clothes I've ever seen before, sets crammed with all manner of curios, and a use of color which is simply outrageous. Imagine WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN's aesthetic mixed with the texture of a Dali painting as filtered through a commercial for bubblegum. Then put it on overdrive and string it with Christmas lights...and you will only have begun to envision the glorious assault of brightness and fashion that is SURVIVE STYLE 5+.

Fortunately, the movie's abundance of style is matched by its substance. The plot concerns 5 different main characters whose stories become intertwined in a variety of improbable, violent, and hilarious ways. We meet a song-and-dance hypnotist, a businessman who thinks he's a bird, a zombie wife who fires her arm off like a cannon, and a British hit-man who shows up periodically to ask "WOT IS YOUR FUNCTION IN LOIF?" before going nuts and stabbing people. All that, and I'm only describing the first half hour or so...

Despite its absurd and surreal tone, SURVIVE STYLE 5+ makes complete logical sense. Never once does it veer into the no man's land of "weirdness for the sake of weirdness." The plot meanders all over the place, but there IS a method to its madness: a POINT to it all, a moral to figure out and mull over. In this regard, SURVIVE STYLE 5+ outclasses just about every movie of its type, by which I mean the recent rash of movies with multiple narratives that come together coincidentally. SURVIVE STYLE 5+ is definitely better than HAPPINESS. It may be better than PULP FICTION. MAGNOLIA shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence with it. Really, there is no movie I can adequately compare with SURVIVE STYLE 5+ because it seems like the first film of an entirely new genre.

It's hilarious, too. Several days after viewing the movie, I still find myself walking down the street, remembering a funny scene or line, and laughing wildly to myself about it.

So do what you can to see it on the big screen, then pray for a decent DVD release. You will NOT be disappointed.

The Philadelphia Film Fest program guide described the plot of IZO as such:

"A samurai travels through time with just one goal: to kill every single human on the planet."

That basically sums it up. A man takes a sword and hacks away at nearly all the people he comes in contact with. He stabs a military general to death with the help of some zombie soldiers. He slices his own mother's body in half from the waist down. He kills some kids, he kills some businessmen, and he kills a real estate agent who turns out to be a vampiric demon. When he kills infinity (yes, infinity ITSELF, not an infinite number of people) and the movie STILL doesn't end, things start to get a little tedious.

Knowing Miike, you'd be right to expect some outlandish violence, a high body count, and perhaps a mind-boggling plot from all of this. What you might not anticipate is a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo, World War II stock footage played backwards and forwards, and a guitar player who appears every so often to sing throatily about elephants and flowers. (At one point the camera lingers on this guitarist's face for a full SEVEN MINUTES or so without any cuts or camera movement.)

Though I think I may have liked Izo, I have many criticisms.

First of all, for a film about sword-fighting, IZO lacks both the beauty of HERO and the direct outrageousness of KILL BILL. Quite simply, the fights were poorly choreographed and involved too many cheesy stunts. Izo flies over his enemies a few times, just like the characters in CROUCHING TIGER flew, only less elegantly. Izo dodges a bullet in slow motion just like Neo did in the MATRIX. The sound of a heart beating played over fade-ins and fade-outs just like it does in every made-for-TV horror flick in existence. During the rare times when Miike WASN'T deploying effects that have already been clichéd for years, each sequence seemed to go like this:

1. Close up of Izo's face 2. Close up of other guy's face 3. Shot from behind other guy as Izo hits him in the stomach with sword 4. Close up of other guy falling down

For the first ten minutes I didn't mind the lack of special effects or variety, but once I realized that there wouldn't be any progression and that the film would go on like this for a full two hours, I began to feel rather antsy.

The repetitive fight scenes could have been alleviated by some decent cinematography. If you can't give me an engaging plot, at LEAST give me something interesting to look at! But no. The whole movie had a very sloppy vibe, as though it had been rushed through production. Many of the shots seemed haphazardly composed or not composed at all, like arbitrary shots of tree branches and jittery hand-held action footage. Indoor shots were often over-exposed by light coming in from the windows but otherwise under-exposed. I sometimes had the sensation that brief flashes of stock footage were inserted to make up for gaps in continuity. Also, it could be that I saw a worn print, but the first half of the movie had a very brown, drab feel. Perhaps some sharp color could have livened things up.

So yes, the movie was boring, ugly and maybe an EL TOPO rip-off, but somehow I thought it was good anyway. Part of my positive opinion stems from the fact that I admire any director who has a dream and achieves it, no matter how wrong they may be to do so. Also, intellectually, this IS a very engaging film. Since Izo is so unrealistic as a character, the viewer is practically forced to understand his journey as an allegory. In my opinion, Izo represents the grudge mentality: when someone hurts him, or acts like they want to hurt him, he always reacts swiftly and lethally. When a person ignores him or approaches him in kindness (like the schoolteacher, a few of the women, or the children of the future who have learned that nations do not really exist), he lets them pass without harm. His general aim is to destroy anyone who claims to have more power than he does, including the Prime Minister and God. Through juxtapositions with World War II footage, we see that Izo's attitude is linked with Japan's stance during World War II: surrender is dishonorable, but by not surrendering, one is only asking for more violence. In order to stop war, one must cease to threaten it, thereby undercutting the formation of a grudge.

While watching IZO, I felt like I would understand the details better if I were more familiar with Japanese traditions and culture. My feeling was correct. After probing around the internet, I learned that Izo was a true historical figure, a samurai-turned-homicidal maniac. I also learned that the unusual style of music played by the guitarist (fanciful lyrics, anguished voice) is a distinctive Japanese genre that emerged after World War II in response to all the suffering.

Still, I would not recommend IZO lightly, not even to Miike fans. I'm not sure if the film is brilliant or terrible, but overall... life is short and IZO is long. Watch it only if you have the time or patience for such an undertaking.

I found this VHS tape in a $2 bargain bin. Its cover, which depicts a dominatrix/goth with mime-like facial paintings reflected in the sunglasses of a bloody knife-wielding punk, promised an evening's worth of cheesy urban exploitation, the kind of fun only a 1980's grindhouse flick (like MANIAC) can deliver.

The atmosphere was definitely all there: hookers smoking under neon lights, grimy warehouse settings, all the filth and sleaze and corruption you could ask for. I couldn't believe this was filmed in Australia and not New York City. But the knife-wielding punk from the cover illustration? He never shows up. The main character looks kind of like him, but that guy generally wears a suit, and is a pimp, or something kind of like a pimp. He certainly doesn't stab anyone with a knife. In fact, he spends most of the movie running in fear from a bunch of elderly mobsters. The goth mime prostitute does appear, but as it turns out, she only wears the goth mime outfit during one brief scene. Ordinarily she looks like any other fresh-faced, spunky kid.

My hopes of a star-crossed, subcultural romance disappointed, I looked for entertainment in other arenas of the film. I liked a lot of the fighting and chasing, only I couldn't keep the various mob bosses straight and thus most of the plot made absolutely no sense to me. About halfway through it seems like suddenly every baddie in Australia turns against the two protagonists, and the rest of the movie is about them running...and running...and running...until the cop who always hated them becomes their friend, and what do you know but he owns a monster truck! I won't spoil the ending for you, but I will say that it involves tons of car crashes, and it reminded me a lot of THE WARRIORS.

DEAD EASY is enjoyable, but mostly for its relic value--the strange fashions and overall aesthetic. I think it should have lost the bewildering mafia angle and instead concentrated on how an atmosphere of drug abuse, prostitution, and brutality may affect the love between two people alone in the city. Such an atmosphere does eventually bring George and Alex together in DEAD EASY, but the romantic plot--ostensibly the central story of the movie--seems a little too tacked on.

SOMBRA DOLOROSA is probably the best Guy Maddin short I've seen yet! Filmed in vivid color and edited in Maddin's rapid-fire collage style, it follows the story of a Mexican widow who must defeat El Muerto (think El Santo as the Grim Reaper) in a boxing ring in order to save her husband from death. When she fails, El Meurto must eat "The Meal of the Dead" before the solar eclipse so that her husband's soul may be released from his belly.

The short is extremely funny and a little bit unnerving. It shares the "dead father" motif, intertitles, and artificial atmosphere of many of Guy Maddin's works, but the colorful Mexican backdrop puts it into a class of its own.

Definitely check out SOMBRA DOLOROSA!

I knew I had to see this movie when I saw a picture of Little Otik, the misshapen cannibal log baby! I expected it to be an strange romp through fairy tales and stop motion, similar to Svankmeyer's other movies like ALICE and FAUST [which i love]. And it was... only LITTLE OTIK was a little less zany, was more plot-driven, and had fewer stop motion sequences. So I didn't like it was much as FAUST, but it was still pretty awesome.

Other reviews can fill you in on the plot if you really need to hear about it, but basically a childless couple "gives birth" to a piece of wood shaped like a baby. The wood baby comes alive...and really, REALLY likes to eat.

LITTLE OTIK's tone is humorously dreary, in an understated way. I especially appreciated the kitchen table scenes where the mother forces her family to eat nasty soup. I lived in provincial Russia for four months and flashed back to my own times around the table, facing a bowl of mush with bones in it... YUM! Jan Svankmeyer really loves to accentuate slurping and belching noises, too. These are some of the most disgusting meal scenes I have ever seen in a movie.

While this movie has more dialogue than a typical Svankmeyer film, much of the story is still told through pictures rather than words. I found a lot of the pregnancy imagery to be pretty well-done, like the juxtaposition of pictures from the little girl's sex-ed book with footage of the father cutting down the tree which will become Otik. You don't realize the significance of that montage until after Otik is born, then it all makes sense.

There are a few negative sides to the movie. For instance, I wasn't such a big fan of the parts where the girl reads the fairy tale out loud we see pictures of it. A similar device worked in Alice but was kind of needless here, since no one watching the movie would really need the plot spelled out for them, at least not in such detail. I mean, all we need to know is that there's a legend, that the girl is familiar with it, and that the cabbage patch will play a big part in the story. Now, if the folk tale had been shown in stop motion, I would have loved it!!

Also, I got a little weary of the constant close ups, especially of peoples' mouths. And as others have noted, the movie ran about 20 minutes too long. Probably some of the pregnancy footage in the first act could have been edited.

Overall my criticisms are few! I'm glad I saw this movie and would definitely recommend it to other Svankmeyer fans!!

I received a reject copy of Alien Blood for free along with a bunch of other extremely bad movies when I interned for Troma a long time ago. The cover art looked so pitifully stupid that I couldn't bear to even pop it in my DVD player for years. I expected it to be an unfunny, poorly made, boring Alien rip off with bad computer effects, in the vein of Legend of the Chupacabra [another free Troma movie I got in the same batch--possibly the worst movie I have ever seen in my life]. The only reason I decided to watch it tonight was because I'm trying to build up the perfect DVD collection, and Alien Blood is a blight on my shelf. Also, I asked my boyfriend if he would rather watch Alien Blood or Brad Grinter: Nudist. Those familiar with Something Weird's BLOOD FREAK release will understand why he chose Alien Blood!

Anyway, the good thing about having rock-bottom expectations for a movie is that you may easily be pleasantly surprised by some aspect of it. In this case, the cinematography made the movie almost worthwhile. There are many striking shots, most notably a great one of a bagpiper up on a cliff while a gunman waits below in the foreground. A few effects are a WAY overused, such as breaking up a shot with fades to black over and over again, or using slow-motion on a flickering candle. Also, I got a very Pure Moods/Enya vibe from some of the waterfall and nature footage. Overall though, I'd say the photography was great--symmetrical, well-composed, and a lot like Ginger Snaps.

As for the plot itself--ickk! My boyfriend and I figured Jon Sorenson had a vampire movie all planned out, but then someone came to him and said, "What's better than a vampire movie? A vampire ALIEN movie!" so he added a bunch of nonsense about women who run silently through the English countryside, standing atop rocky cliffs and communing with screaming moon-men [depicted in jarringly fake CG]. Admittedly, I did find the screaming moon-man to be hilarious. He shows up in the DVD menu loop, which I watched over and over again with great relish.

Also, I appreciated how the director at least TRIED to tell a complex story without using many words, even though he definitely didn't pull it off.

At any rate, the alien ladies seek shelter in a house full of bickering adulterous vampires. As I type that, I realize that it sounds like an amazing premise. It should have been amazing. Instead, the vampires act just like ordinary people, only they dress in 19th century garb and have pointy teeth. No one is ever bitten, and they can be killed with a regular gun. The alien ladies are also basically normal people. The little girl is a little weird, but then she basically has two lines which she repeats over and over again in exactly the same tone of voice: "Allez maman! Allez maman! Allez maman!"--ARRGGH!

You would probably like this movie if you're into the X Files, but if you like campy exploitation/B movies, look elsewhere for entertainment. The gore effects are minimal, the interesting ideas lack interesting content, and basically it seemed like the longest 80 minutes of my life. The opening credit sequence alone lasted for about fifteen minutes and seemed to list the name of every single person who worked on the movie, including "Second Assistant Camera Operator" or something, in the most excruciatingly slow manner possible. I'm convinced the director stretched out all the slow-mo and long, still shots he could just to make the movie feature-length. I may watch the DVD extra "Jon Sorenson: Man of Mystery" just to find out...although putting an extra on your own DVD about how you're a "man of mystery" seems totally ridiculous!

All in all, this movie is a waste of time aside from a bunch of pretty shots. I plan to sell my copy and get it out of the house as soon as possible!

This is the first and only Jan Svankmeyer movie I have ever seen, and after viewing it I can't wait to see his others. Here, Svankmeyer basically juxtaposes a staged showing of the play FAUST with the story of the man who is kidnapped into playing Faust. As the film rolls on, the character's story and the actor's story become more and more indistinguishable. There are also a bunch of insane devil marionettes and the whole thing has the vibe of a medieval Punch and Judy show.

Probably the main thing I liked about FAUST was the fact that, although it is a fairly surreal film, it doesn't go out of it's way to be strange for strangeness's sake [like the Czech film DAISIES or the Georgian REPENTANCE, though those are okay movies]. Sure, you have bizarre goings-on like a stop-motion fetus in a jar growing old and turning into a skull, but many of the details you thought were unrelated to the story all wrap up in a very pleasing manner.

Of course, not all of your questions will be answered. I still don't understand the significance of the theater sets versus real scenery, or why Faust sometimes appears in his costume and sometimes in his regular trench coat. But I'm glad I don't completely get it--I like a movie to provoke thought rather than explain everything outright.

Also, man, what's with the other comments saying this is an art-house flik, or only pretentious snobs will enjoy it? I work at a video store. We played FAUST on our TV just tonight, and at least ten customers were intrigued enough to stop what they were doing and watch it for a little while--far more people than when we played JERSEY GIRL the other day. Sure, FAUST is not for everybody, because not everybody likes unusual or even minorly challenging movies. Don't let the reverse-snobs scare you away.