The Rake Magazine

An Evening With Kenneth Anger. Friday night at 7:30 at the Walker Art Center Cinema.

Holy tapdancing cats, there's a ton of intriguing movie choices opening Friday. Army of Shadows, the crazy Existentialist-Noir-French Resistance picture, is in town for a few days at the Oak Street Cinema (and here's my review, from an earlier showing this summer). Then Venus is opening at the Uptown Theatre, while Anthony Minghella's intelligent and deeply flawed Breaking and Entering is opening around town. All three films offer a fascinating night out, and the latter two are sexually honest pictures (a rarity). Of the last pair, the first is a sweet story that doesn't pull any punches about the hungry libido of a very old man, played by Peter O'Toole, who deserves this year's Oscar, and not just because he's due. The role is often unappealing and brutal, and well worth watching. B & E is surprising emotionally, though it spins out of control, losing focus and relying on a horribly pat ending. But the sex scenes betwixt Jude Law and Juliette Binoche are heart-thumping and real. I guess old Jude is the only actor willing to go down on his lady love in Hollywood today...

But I would really like to point you in the direction of the Walker, who are bringing in our favorite Satan-worshipping, homoerotic short filmmaker, a man who's influenced Scorsese (by his own admission) and David Lynch (my own observation, though you'd have to be blind not to notice the comparisons), in the guise of former child-actor Dr. Kenneth Anger. Anger might be most famous for his wicked tell-all book Hollywood Babylon, which at times is so mean-spirited and gruesome it'll give you nightmares during your afternoon nap.

Anger will be in town to plug a new DVD collection of his works, and mesmerized theatergoers will also be treated to his films Fireworks, Rabbit's Moon, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos and Invocation of My Demon Brother. Scorpio is an obvious precursor to Blue Velvet, with its soundtrack of rippin' 50s and 60s hits, including Vinton's "Blue Velvet", all this playing while leather-clad bikers stroke their motorcycles, and other objects. Fireworks is startling, if only for the fact that it's an American film from 1947, and its rampant homosexuality is shocking even today (a man has to be torn to pieces by angry sailors in order to finally enjoy a relationship). These films really beggar description, but are beautiful, moving at times, and well worth watching. I imagine that Mr. Anger will be giving us some interesting commentary to accompany them. To say the least!

In other words, if you're interested in a movie and have your thoughts provoked, there's a veritable smorgasbord in town--not to mention all the good stuff that's already here.

Step right up, everybody: it's Oscar time once again. Early this morning, probably far too early for an actor or actress with late-night tendencies, the Academy's stuffed shirts (and Selma Hayek) made their announcements to a quivering world. I'm sure that Baghdad is quiet now, if only to reflect on Dreamgirls getting the shaft. I haven't seen Dreamgirls, but know this: the Academy doesn't typically bestow Best Picture status on just anything, especially well-made musicals (or conventional films, for that matter) about African-Americans. Especially when they can give the nod to a white family on a road trip, the brilliantly marketed Little Miss Sunshine.

Surely the blogs and airwaves and television entertainment shows are all agog with the news: no Dreamgirls Best Picture, certainly this will be Scorsese's year, who's going to win it all, will Eddie Murphy win an Oscar, and so on. Will the Academy give Borat Best Original Screenplay (intriguing, as it was mostly improvised) just to see what that saucy Brit would say?

Do not ever forget that the Oscars are marketing. They are the Super Bowl advertisements, Valentines and Sweetest Day, only with arrogant celebrities.

Which leads one to wonder what all the fuss is about: the greatest movies never get nominated (this year, see Children of Men), the best performances ignored. Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren are incredible actors. But their performances were hardly even their best--and they were mimicry (Whitaker's was a bit better). Clive Owen, Ivana Baquero (Pan's Labyrinth), Ray Winstone (The Proposition), Charlotte Gainsbourgh (The Science of Sleep), and Toby Jones incredible performance in Infamous... all ignored in favor of Will Smith and Meryl Streep.

And this question: Martin Scorsese, having seen his great pictures snubbed so that awards could go to John G. Avildsen (for Rocky, when he made Taxi Driver), Robert Redford (for Ordinary People, in the year of Raging Bull), and Kevin Costner (for Dances With Wolves when GoodFellas was begging for the nod), is likely going to steal his statuette from Paul Greengrass for the superior United 93. And I wonder if it bothers his cinematic soul to see politics reward him and take the prize from a young, edgier artist... just as it happened to Scorsese years ago?

This list of great actors and actresses and directors denied their Oscar glory only gets longer, while the mediocre fill the Academy's coffers, as usual. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who really believes that Babel and Little Miss Sunshine are better pictures than Children of Men or Borat or even Talladega Nights. But they're better marketed. And that's all that counts.

Old Joy and Pan's Labyrinth

Old Joy, 2006. Directed by Kelly Reichardt, written by Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond. Starring Daniel London and Will Oldham.

Now showing at the Oak Street Cinema.

Old Joy begins with a phone call between friends. Mark (Daniel London) is seen talking with his old college pal Kurt (Will Oldham) about a last minute camping trip. The conversation is awkward, a discussion between two people whose relationship, you already notice, is on the wane. Mark wants to take the trip, but why? Well, perhaps it is because he needs a break--a hiatus from his pregnant wife (who wonders about this mysterious friend from her husband's past), from his job, from his life. Mark is a man about to take a very important journey into fatherhood. He is lost, and needs to get grounded again.

Old Joy is about nothing more than a camping trip between two friends, a pair of men who met in college and had an intense friendship, of long talks and shared observation, and have since watched, baffled, as their lives divided on the road to adulthood. In the hands of Kelly Reichardt, Old Joy is a quiet, ruminative film, a small blessing for those of us battered by CGI and Big Events on the big screen, soundtracks blaring and actors strutting. Here, you walk with her characters through the Oregon forests, you listen to their quiet admissions, stare at the trees and the sky. Like a hike with a good friend, you come away refreshed, and perhaps a bit frustrated that life is not always this calm.

Kurt promises his friend Mark that there is a hot spring nestled in one of the old growth forests in rural Oregon. They drive. Along the way, they talk, just as old friends do. And Reichardt subtly, so subtly, gives us the details of these two friends: Kurt is a wanderer, utterly confused about the world he lives in, trying to figure out how to survive. He wants life to reflect the beliefs he developed in college. Mark has embraced the rush to adulthood. He has a child on the way, political talk radio fills his car--and he is the one who has the house, who has the car that runs, whose possessions don't fill an old beaten-up van.

Kurt has lost his way literally at first, missing an overgrown path that leads to the spring. Mark shows his frustration, calling his wife, complaining to her and lying to Kurt about his anger. Unable to find the springs, they spend their first night sleeping on an old abandoned couch in the woods, watching the embers from their fire climb into the clear night sky. They talk--about nothing, and about everything.

Next morning, over breakfast, another call home, some reassurance, and then they light out and actually find the springs. Here, Kurt is in complete control, in his element, and the scenes are just beautiful, and moving. Reichardt's camera is never intrusive, low to the ground, weighing down these scenes with a sweet gravity that we've all enjoyed on trips with close friends. The men relax, profoundly, and Kurt massages his friend's shoulders, in a scene so fraught with tension--and it's really not sexual--you'll find yourself reeling.

Old Joy might try your patience. If you dislike the characters, you won't like the movie at all. But if you can embrace them, as I did, recognizing yourself and your friends in both, then you will be rewarded with a powerful experience. Neither character is given short shrift here--Kurt eventually finds the springs, and he was right, they are a transcendent experience. Mark has his feet more firmly planted on the ground, and in the city, at the end, we see that he is right back in control. Kurt is lost. He will always be lost.

And perhaps that is the most heartbreaking thing about this movie, the inevitable loss of this friendship. Undoubtedly, these two will attempt to keep in touch, but they will drift. They have different lives, utterly different, and they need one another desperately. Mark's more button-down world must have the release a trip with Kurt provides. And Kurt needs someone to help him maneuver the modern world. But these never last. Who among us doesn't have that friend who seems to be a bit wild, too lost in this world, who won't settle down? We travel down our road, and eventually stop seeing the landscape, the stars, or the water that rushes beneath the bridge. We scoff at those who stare, just as those who stare and wonder scoff at us for continuing to struggle, making a living and settling down. Reichardt understands there is magic in both worlds, and the division between the two is a matter of pure heartbreak.

...

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), 2006. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Starring Ivana Baquero, Adriana Gil, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Alex Angulo, and Doug Jones.

Now showing at the Uptown Theater.

Briefly: If your children can endure a couple of scenes of violence, then Pan's Labyrinth is an almost perfect fable for the young ones. This is the story of a little girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, simply marvelous) who is shuffled off to a remote military outpost, where her pregnant mother Carmen (Adriana Gil) who is newly married to the vicious Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez--as complexly evil as Ralph Fiennes was in Schindler's List). The girl falls deeply into a fantasy world, where she must perform three dangerous tasks in order to return as the princess of the underworld.

A friend told me that one of his colleagues was disappointed in the lack of magic in this film. Unfortunately, what was meant was that there is a lack of Narnia overkill--Pan's is not the ticket for the hordes of fantasy fans everywhere seeking monsters and battles and fairy dust. True, Pan's Labyrinth, like Del Toro's Devil's Backbone before it, has little CGI--you get most of it in the previews!--but it is rich with characters, plot, and metaphor. And it is sad, and hardly triumphant. But it will make you think; it will make your children think. Perhaps they will emerge shaken, and have bad dreams. And you might just have to talk them through this, have to use this little story to help them to understand this big, often cruel and beautiful world. You will have to wrestle with their curiosity, and their difficult questions. Is that so bad?

Letters From Iwo Jima, 2006. Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Iris Yamashita. Starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Ken Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura, and Hiroshi Watanabe.

Now showing at the Uptown Theater.

During World War II, the Marines used to tell their recruits that they were being trained so hard so that they might be able to survive the worst that the enemy would throw at them. "You live for your country," they preached. "Let the other guy die for his."

The Japanese soldiers in Letters From Iwo Jima were undoubtedly trained to be tough as well, but were they told to live for their country? According to my shallow understanding of history, and this film, they pretty much knew they were going to die. They dug trenches and then tunnels in Iwo Jima, scraping and clawing past the loose black volcanic dirt and into the hard rock, burrowing deep down into the island whose tactical promise seemed dubious at best. Like the Americans, many of these were citizen soldiers, bakers and horsemen, destined, we know, to die in this rotten battle.

There is one moment of crazy brilliance in Letters From Iwo Jima, when an officer abandons a unit he considers to be cowardly. The man wants to have an honorable death, so he straps some mines on his body, storms away from a group of baffled and terrified soldiers, and lays down amongst some American corpses in the hopes that a tank will plow over him, detonating the mines. Amongst the dead, in the wicked heat and stench, he waits and waits and waits, staring up at the bleak sky as buzzards circle overhead. Unbelievably, he will survive. Is he unlucky? Or, in his survival, has he found redemption?

Letters From Iwo Jima is the second of Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima saga, and, unfortunately, it is by far the weakest of the two. Letters is a profoundly noble effort, and the saga is notable if only for the fact that, just a few years ago, it probably couldn't even have been made. Who would think that one of America's premiere directors would make a motion picture celebrating a former--and, in many cases, still loathed--enemy? Unfortunately, Letters is a rather dull film, and worst of all, it lacks insight into its characters. The Japanese in this film are a purely American invention, a people who do not, in any way, seem to embrace their country's philosophy. The hero doesn't want to be there, the soldiers are not brutal, and if you go by this movie, Americans and Japanese would all just get along if only there weren't this damn war. And its final revelation--that surviving, and finding redemption as a POW--doesn't give us any glimpse at the still mysterious (to me, and I imagine many Americans) belief that it was more noble to die.

There is virtually no plot in Letters From Iwo Jima. What story there is concerns the arrival of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (played by the great Ken Watanabe) who is trying to instill some intelligence to the defense of this island. Contrasting this is the struggle of Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a young private, a former baker whose wife and child wait for him to return from the war--a war that we know very few returned from.

Saigo is a young man who truly does not want to be there. This kid has a fresh and friendly face, a young fellow who could be described as happy-go-lucky. Ninomiya is an odd choice for a lead actor on which the moral gravity of the film is laid upon. This guy doesn't care about Japan's reasons for war, wants to live, but doesn't even possess the desperate need to survive. Mostly he's lucky, pulled out of this jam or that by the General. He is also not a noble idiot, in the Candide sense... really, Saigo is a cipher, and Letters becomes more and more frustrating as men who do have strong beliefs--like the colonel who seeks to blow himself up under a tank--are shuffled away for us to focus on Saigo and his memories of home.

What do the Japanese think of this film? Certainly, it's a great idea for Eastwood to show our former enemy in new light. The problem, as I see it, is that the Japanese are not at all real. Virtually all of our heroes have decent reasons for defending the island to the death--to save children, etc. The Japanese here are altogether too noble, barely getting their dander up in the face of this defeat. When an American soldier is captured, he's not tortured (as one was in Flags of Our Fathers), but treated with the little medicine the Japanese have even for themselves, and the men come to realize that they're very similar to this strange American. That's well and fine, but if you're going to show these men as being a people who would rather commit suicide than surrender, they remain enigmatic.

Great war films are intense, and in my mind great war films are also insane, and come to grips with that madness. Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, even moments of the overrated Saving Private Ryan showed how utterly demented war can be. People went berserk during the Battle of Iwo Jima, they went mad, and when they did it was not pretty. Both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima don't spare us blood and guts, but they do spare us the insanity of combat. Which is why Letters falls so short of being great.

Someday, perhaps, someone will make a great film from the Japanese perspective. There are great movies about the Germans--Das Boot is one. Until then, Letters From Iwo Jima serves, perhaps, as a necessary, though clumsy, first step.

Idiocracy, 2006. Directed by Mike Judge, written by Judge and Etan Cohen. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepherd, Terry Crews, and the narration of Earl Mann.

A film so fundamentally lame that I'm not even going to provide you with a blurry still. This travesty is available anywhere you can rent lousy DVDs.

Everybody has good story ideas. Everybody. Writing good screenplays and making decent movies isn't simply a matter of having great concepts, but of crafting a compelling plot, casting interesting actors, and pulling it all together under the watchful eye of editor and director. Talk to anyone who enjoys movies, and they'll tell you of some story idea that they think is interesting. Chances are you'll find the nugget of a decent story in the imagination of every single person you know.

Much has been made of the great concept of Mike Judge's Idiocracy, and even more has been made of 20th Century Fox's decision to bury the film. Clearly, many critics have surmised, Fox is embarrassed by the film, whose central conceit--that in the future, an America weaned on Fox-style television has become so stupid that it can barely even feed itself--is so brilliant and scathing that Fox believed it must be hidden from the public. Watching Idiocracy, however, belies this: instead, one is struck even more by the sheer genius of the Fox Studios, for in allowing this film to get buried, releasing it in a handful of theaters without fanfare, and stoking the flames of conspiracy, they have, instead, guaranteed that critics will spend at least half their review complaining, the other half noting the great idea, and only a brief mention of how Idiocracy is one of the most ungodly stupid films ever made.

The idea is hardly original. A lazy soldier of average intelligence, Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson), is plucked from his easy job and put into a top-secret experiment. Apparently, the Army is interested in placing a man into year-long hibernation. The idea is that, if successful, we will be able to place our best people in deep sleep to use in the future (why this is considered a good idea is never explained). In a typically lame twist, the Army seeks out a prostitute, Rita (Maya Rudolph), to join Joe, obviously since Judge apparently thinks the Army remains all-male. Due to yet another mind-numbing turn involving the head of the program and whoring, they are forgotten, only to wake up 500 years later in a land that has become monumentally stupid. It gets worse: Bowers is jailed and is discovered to be the smartest person on the planet. He has to try to escape this crazy world, attempting to flee to a time machine buried in the bowels of a giant Cosco.

Mike Judge has been acclaimed for the way his movies and television shows tap right into the inanity of world, but like Beavis and Butthead and Office Space, he is really a writer who seems to have a dozen great ideas but no wit or ability to create decent work from these notions. Office Space has a spot-on opening but, like Idiocracy, devolves into a routine revenge/romance without a lick of intelligence. Aside from the fact that Idiocracy is marred with inconsistencies--the idiots of the future apparently have the technological smarts to keep electricity and television going, and someone had the knowledge to manufacture and maintain the dumbed-down machines--Judge seems to find his own jokes so damned funny that he has to repeat them over and over. Fuddruckers becomes Buttfuckers, a sports drink has replaced water, and work has become nothing more than simply pushing buttons with pictures on them. Language has retreated into grunting and yelling "Shut up!" or "Fuck you", but that's about it--a narrator has to remind us, over and over, that Bowers sounds "like a fag" for his intellectual way of speaking. What a decent writer couldn't do with this future! Ebonics, grunting, text-messaging... the possibilities are endless, unmined, and therefore endlessly frustrating. And Judge seems utterly incapable to basic exposition, as he relies on a bland narrator to point out a number of simple things we should witness ourselves. His dystopia goes nowhere, and eventually the plot becomes yet another chase, yet another romance and redemption, and has a sweet ending that should make everyone smile. In the end, it's perfectly OK to be as sharp as a bag of wet mice.

Ultimately, Idiocracy, like Office Space before it, seeks not to challenge us, but rather to cater to our base instincts--just like the people the film supposedly mocks. The idiots of Judge's world--people who find Jackass a masterpiece (which is itself lampooned repeatedly with "Ow, My Balls!", a futuristic TV show whose main character gets smacked in the testicles, over and over, throughout the film)--will find Idiocracy hilarious, and aren't going to walk away thinking they ought to read. Of course, Judge has a moment where Joe Bowers, now the president, implores people to read and be smart. Just in case we didn't get that point.

If Idiocracy does anything, it makes one hunger for wit and intelligence--I found myself plucking P. G. Wodehouse off the shelf and wishing I'd seen something like Monty Python's Life of Brian, with its sex and political jokes, its attacks on religion and lampooning the fine art of Latin declensions. But then, maybe, in Mike Judge's world, that just makes me a "fag"--and since there really aren't any smart people in the film, Judge seems to share his characters' beliefs. Watch Idiocracy if all you seek is a night of stoner laughs, but avoid it at all costs if you think it has anything to say about this world.