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Reviews
Maps to the Stars (2014)
Maps of the Stars - the Ninth Circle
Cronenberg performs his Hollywood Autopsy with deft hands, accompanied by an able and at times brilliant cast. Average sensibilities will be chagrined at the Gothic treatment, the somnolent line delivery. I found it a wonderfully acid vision of Hollywood - the violence and criminality pressed beneath layers of suffocating ambition and ego and ignited by suffering. The lines of the poem Liberty by Paul Eluard that so inspire the siblings provide a surrealist underpinning to this dance of death. This film is after all a surrealist film, taking inspiration from the work of Luis Bunuel in the austere sets amid the obvious wealth and luxury, the desperation and violence unleashed by children and the notably minimal music. A very confident work, yet likely challenging for many viewers.
Kamikaze 1989 (1982)
Fassbinder At the End
Kamikaze 1989 is an ambivalent film that manages to be both anti-corporate and anti-statist at the same time. It was perfect for 1982 when I was an anarcho-rightist skateboard punk. Today, it couldn't be appreciated by 1 in 100,000. This is the last of the great pre-Microsoft/ pre-End-of-USSR films that sought to reflect the hunger of the dawning information age. A bad phosphorescent TV look to the film makes it look fresh in our day. Fassbinder is Lt. Jansen and his investigations are predominately self-defeating - and that could be the point.
Disguised as a predator, Lt.Jansen is an amoral and voyeuristic, yet totally flaccid being. Tired and sluggish this detective only incriminates himself - but the Inquisitor he faces - is us.
I liked this odd movie - it is neither all low nor all high-brow art. It will probably put many to sleep - the violence is gratuitous and minimal, the main character is a walking dead man (interesting fact is that Fassbinder after dying in real life was BURIED in the costume of Lt.Jansen) - it has a charm that remains intact despite its pedigree as art-house junk.