The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

I still have not read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but if either film adaptation is a fair judge, it's a messy, convoluted mystery that meanders heavily on the personal lives of the main characters. All of this, in desperate hope of warming up the cold data streams, the dusty record books, the obscure photos and the torn newspaper clippings found therein. While the Swedish version and the American version certainly have major differences, one thing remains consistent - the emphasis on research. For better or worse, that seems to be the core of Mr. Larsson's novel.

David Fincher recently presented to the world his version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it is an adaptation that is ultimately too reckless to be great, but too tactile to be awful. The film peripherally tracks the recent disgrace of esteemed journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the sexual abuse of the young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, as the two become involved in a 40-year-old investigation regarding a disappeared member of the wealthy, devious Vanger family.

I will say right out of the gate that Fincher paces the story much more effectively than Niels Oplev did in the Swedish version of the film. Unlike Oplev's indecisive stop-start motion, you can tell Fincher wants to get on with things, and it never stops moving forward. Unfortunately, a hefty portion of the director's trademark gravitas is sacrificed in the process. Unlike the tense build-ups, dark humor and rich characterization of his previous works - Zodiac, Se7en, The Game and even The Social Network - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo feels like it's a new luxury car being pushed out of a manufacturing plant to meet a strict deadline. The pacing may be more effective but the contents framed within don't always meet Fincher's typical standards of quality.

The best example of flawed execution are the research segments, which are littered across the entire movie. Where as in Zodiac you felt like you were an active and engaged participant in the investigation, Fincher forces you outside in Dragon Tattoo. In an effort to streamline the story's chronology, the audience becomes ineffectual bystanders, just nodding along and thinking how cool it looks to see the vague research methods employed by Lisbeth and Mikael as they uncover the truth. There are so many sequences of panning by desks filled with notes and books, shifting laptop programs and wall photo trees with indiscriminate yarn and push-pin strewn across them. You just look at all of it and say to yourself, "yes, they have been doing research". There's no personal satisfaction or epiphany, it's just, "this is the plot, this is how the plot came to be", which would be fine if the story's severity didn't come directly from all that esoteric research.

I thought all the performances in Dragon Tattoo were decent. Nothing necessarily to write home about, but the acting was solid all around. I actually preferred Daniel Craig's Blomkvist to Michael Nyqvist's in the Swedish version. Nyqvist's portrayal seemed to be more of an ineffectual buffoon, where as Craig presented some slapdash (but affecting) passion into the character. Of course, the real draw is the black leather punk, Lisbeth Salander. Rooney Mara plays her with a mousey defiance, never really raising her voice or acting out of turn, instead taking on the role of deadpan harbinger. Naturally, as a damaged 23-year-old waif with tattoos, piercings and partially buzzed hair, she embodies the assertive goth/punk/emo fantasy expertly. She certainly doesn't shy away from sex, even turning rape to her advantage at one point.

Perhaps that says something about the preferences of Stieg Larsson? All I know is that I would have rather had Noomi Rapace back in the role of Lisbeth. I feel like Rapace's more intense and volatile rendition of Lisbeth was more affecting. She still had her apathetic drawl but it always met with a fiery passion burning underneath.

So, add to all that a disappointing and misplaced music score (a big step down from The Social Network) filled with generic bells on top of wavering ambience, and you have a sloppy, sloppy film. Sloppy in its material, concise in it's form. The question really is, was this version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo even necessary? It doesn't improve enough upon the Swedish version (which is already Hollywood-ified) to justify its existence. Is the idea of not having to deal with subtitles an excuse to blow $100 million dollars?

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Sometimes Hollywood manages to misstep into a modest level of quality. Considering the ratio of garbage comic book adaptations they've been putting out for a decade, one can only assume that happy accidents (such as the director, writer or producer actually wanting to do a good thing) are the only cause for such rare occurrences. While it was never destined to be an amazing or life-affirming adventure, X-Men: First Class retains a competence and, dare I say, intelligence that breathes modest new life into the superhero genre.

The film is made by Matthew Vaughan, which, at this point in his career, doesn't really tell you much. The man has only directed three other movies, two of them terrible (Kick-Ass, Stardust) and one of them quite good (Layer Cake). Kick-Ass is the only other comic book adaptation Vaughan has done and, hoooo boy, is that a god awful train wreck of a movie. Not only is it blatantly sexist, junior high school hip and unfunny, it's also weirdly paced and the action sequences, save for one, are so dull you'll want to pluck your eyes out of your head and pour hydrochloric acid into the sockets.

So, First Class is a bit of a new thing for Vaughan. The director does what he can to fairly represent all the origins and back-stories of the major players in the X-Men chronology by providing insight as to how the team of super mutants was first formed. Before Professor X became a stuffy Right Said Fred paraplegic, he was Charles Xavier, a tussel-haired ladies man at Oxford University, obsessed with genetic mutations. Before Magneto was a taciturn silver fox in fashionable red and purple, he was Erik Lehnsherr, a Polish refugee, experimented on by a rogue doctor (later to be Sebastian Shaw) working for the Nazis during the Holocaust. It's this paradigm that the movie revolves around - the forming of a mutant division in the C.I.A., the rising hostilities of Cuban Missile Crisis-era Cold War, the desire to see a mutant dominant or mutant co-existent world - it all hinges on the dueling philosophies of Xavier and Lehnsherr.

Vaughan does an admirable job of giving his main actors some breathing room. James McAvoy plays Xavier at first with a breezy confidence, but he soon turns into a compassionate "fun dad" as he takes on the responsibility of teaching students how to control their powers. Michael Fassbender plays Lehnsherr as a brooding revolutionary, using his station within the C.I.A. mutant division to hunt down the man who killed his mother. The character development is about as well-paced as it may get in terms of the Hollywood blockbuster. Xavier and Lehnsherr share many tender moments and contentious debates. You feel like these two have become actual friends, rather than the relationship just being a device to set future-flung plots into motion.

That said, First Class does still feel ultimately forgettable. The time taken to foster a relationship between the two leads forces others to the wayside - Beast and Mystique, White Queen and Shaw, Lehnsherr and Mystique, Xavier and McTaggert - all end up feeling empty and unnecessary. On the other hand, the action and special effects look decent. The scene where Lehnsherr lifts an entire submarine out of the ocean and when he forces missiles back at the ships that originally fired them are definitely fun to watch. But ultimately, it's transitory. You don't feel that exacting satisfaction because such scenes have not been effectively built up to. It's more of a revolving door carnival, "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT THESE CRAZY POWERS I HAVE, I MATTER IN THIS FILM", especially from background characters we only kind of care about (Banshee, Azazel, Havok, Angel and Darwin).

Like I talked about in my Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II review, many Hollywood franchises are subject to the double cheeseburger effect - the idea that too much, too fast will keep the audience blindly intrigued and force them to accept the thin characters and story arcs present with a stifled, conciliatory satisfaction. First Class suffers from the double cheeseburger effect but, unlike Deathly Hallows, Part II, manages to cut the burger in half and eat it just a little more moderately. The best thing that Vaughan does here, is show that superhero films can be smart AND entertaining. Proving the importance of effective pacing is an entirely different (and much more difficult) battle to fight.

Perfect Blue (1997)

You can liken the odds of finding good anime to the art of dumpster diving. Most of the time you're going to find used condoms, diapers, half-eaten pasta, a Big Wheels that's missing both back tires, bandaids, rain-rusted patio furniture and a denim button-up shirt with crusty ketchup stains. There are rare occasions, however, when you'll make a great discovery, like a unopened set of decorative Lion King mugs or a pair of hot teal leather pants. For all the overblown contrivances of the form, there are still directors out there, such as Satoshi Kon, who put forth the message that, yes, anime can be serious, and, yes, it can tell an engaging story that is unique to it's craft.

Kon's Perfect Blue is considered to be a prime example of serious, adult-oriented anime - an assessment I definitely agree with. It still has the stylistic hallmarks of being strange, scatter-shot and epileptic, but it uses these elements in a very effective and mature fashion. Following Mima, a beloved Japanese pop idol that trashes her career in favor of becoming an actress, the film details the pitfalls of zealous fans and disassociation from one persona to another. The narrative is squeezed into a carousel of surreal transitions and abrupt visual U-turns, so at any moment you're feeling confident and caught up on what's happening, the next you're completely thrown for a loop. This movie probably set the world-record for most "randomly waking up after a traumatic experience that may or may not have really happened" scenes in the history of cinema.

I'll admit that I wasn't initially impressed with the quality of the animation. Especially at the beginning of the film, there seemed to be a lot of heavy lines and blocky colors, the characters would move and speak in that herky-jerk Pokemon fashion, where it's essentially just to two of the same frames repeated over and over. Luckily, Kon must have gotten a boost to his budget during production, because Perfect Blue develops into an expressive and fluid psychological nightmare. The rich gradient tones of Mima's merging realities and fantasies provide a kind of layer-cake effect, sitting heavy on top of the film's totally bizarre structure and the grotesque situations that Mima finds herself in.

That's the other great thing about Perfect Blue. It doesn't pull any punches. Kon is sending a bright, shiny laser beam of criticism (and a bit of cheek, too) against the lack of control in fame. Mima constantly finds herself in situations where she lacks control over her life and career - her most devoted fan posing as Mima on a fake blog, her agents casting her in increasingly degrading roles - Mima is living her life vicariously through the decisions of those around her.

The particularly effective rape sequence, in which Mima is being fake-raped in a strip club scene for a movie, Kon likens the intrusive spectacle to a facsimile of the emotional deterioration and powerlessness involved in actual rape. Mima finds herself surrounded by unknown men, strobes lights beating red down upon her. Her clothes are torn off and then suddenly, the director yells, "cut!" and the man on top of her, leans down and says, "I'm really sorry about this, miss". Kon also suggests a kind of sadistic pleasure from all the attention Mima is given, as the shooting continues, she fantasizes about the audiences at her pop concerts.

It's that kind of tempered perception that makes Perfect Blue both engaging and insane. Since the story elements feed so directly into the wild editing and visual ephemera, Kon is free to slather all kinds of meta-fiction in our faces and have it feel satisfying each and every time. This should not be a surprise, considering the man's other esteemed credentials, such as Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. So, all in all, if you're looking for a surreal and stylish thriller with a clear-headed, cautionary message about the ravages of fame, you can't go wrong with Perfect Blue.

Fish Tank (2009)

I had the initial feeling that Fish Tank was going to be another soupy  "mumblecore" film, soon to be buried alongside legions of other Sundance Film Festival entries in the mega-graveyard of movies. Suburban kitsch, slacker wisdom and reflective acoustic guitar scores certainly have their right time and place, but it's the kind of style where any cream-filled goodness is rare to find. But Fish Tank really surprised me. Not only was it expressively paced and shot through with gorgeous cinematography, it contained a spot-on performance by a young, unknown female lead.

The film tells the story of Mia Williams, a 15-year-old living in a rundown apartment complex in Essex. Constantly at odds with her lush of a mother and bratty little sister, Mia spends her time wandering around looking for shit to stir and secretly practicing hip-hop dancing. I know, it sounds like the plot for Step Up 3D, but bare with me. One day, her mother brings home Connor, a hunky (and much older) guy that instantly draws Mia's attention. Mia reluctantly accepts Connor's presence and the two begin to grow close.

From start to finish, director Andrea Arnold injects the film with handheld tracking shots, executed with just the right amount of shakes and jitters. There's something about the persistence and flow of Arnold's style that speaks to Mia's personality. Her simultaneous bulldog defiance and gentle naivety feel all the more genuine thanks to the loose and almost impulsive camera. At the opening of the movie, the camera, like a clumsy but curious child, tracks Mia as she walks around the courtyards of decrepit apartments, calling a friend who won't answer, head-butting the nose of a neighborhood girl who thinks she can dance, attempting to save a captured old horse, home to snatch up her CD player and finally out again to engage in some phat dance-nastics in private.

Katie Jarvis' performance as Mia is pretty remarkable considering she's credited with little to no acting experience, aside from Fish Tank. I was expecting a melodramatic archetype, the kind of teenage daughter you would see in an after-school special about drug abuse - snotty, unreasonable, apathetic. But Jarvis threw a total curve and made Mia into a realistic young woman with altered moods and motivations - at times she is selfish and reckless, while at others she is compassionate and cautious. This multifaceted approach shines in her interactions with Michael Fassbender's Connor.

As Connor's support of Mia's dancing aspirations morph into serious flirting, you'd expect the experienced, fun-loving Connor to take the reigns, but Mia holds her own. There's a scene where Connor is getting dressed in front of Mia, where he leans in, asking her to smell cologne he sprayed on his neck. She takes a big whiff, looking momentarily dazzled, then with her mouth right next to his ear, quietly tells him it smells like "rat piss".

Mia's experience is framed by naturalistic cinematography, letting sunlight gleam through windows and street lamps flood through the camera lens. Add to that a prime selection of block-rockin' beats - the likes of Nas, Ja Rule and Bobby Womack - and you've got a film with a distinctive personality. As a music lover and CD enthusiast, I was glad to see compact discs prominently represented throughout the movie. I'm guessing with all the CDs and the popularity of Ja Rule, Fish Tank takes place somewhere between 1998 and 2002.

I think the most impressive aspect of the film is that it remains tempered and vaguely optimistic throughout. Even at its most harrowing, there's no sink into melodrama. There's no easy sympathy or condemnation. Arnold presents you with Mia's tale and allows you to decide for yourself what you found acceptable or unacceptable about the relationship between Mia and Connor. Overall, Fish Tank is a refreshing portrayal of youth, sexuality, ambition and social taboos, and speaks well to the future of Andrea Arnold. What's she doing next? A provocative new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I know I'm intrigued.

The Silence (1963)

Ingmar Bergman's The Silence has remained at the forefront of my good graces, despite the constant influx and exposure to new movies. The film is a dark specter, it's presence has never faded. I got cozy with the film for the first time back as a sophomore in college - it was an indirect discovery, as I had purchased the movie as part of Bergman's famed trilogy of the '60s. Although I had gotten the box set for Winter Light (which remains one of my all time favorites), I discovered that The Silence remained true to Bergman's idea of stark minimalism - no music, small sets, few characters - the delivery of which was equivalent to being hit in the stomach with a bag of bricks. Naturally, I mean that in the best way, as these particular bricks are made of acute, tactile observations on the nature of sex, family, death and relationships.

It was very gratifying to revisit the two disparate sisters of The Silence, Ester and Anna. Ester, the older sister, is a terminally ill translator who is traveling home in hopes of dying in a familiar place. She is accompanied by Anna, her anxious, spiteful sister, and Anna's curious child, Johan. The three cut their journey short when Ester gets sick on the train. Laying up in a local hotel for a few days, the fragile relationship between the sisters begins to unravel. Johan is forced to create his own world in Anna's absence, exploring the hotel to distract himself from the isolation.

I often use the The Silence (along with Persona and Cries and Whispers) as an example in my theory that Ingmar Bergman was one of the best horror filmmakers in addition to being one of the best drama filmmakers. Shot in beautiful black and white, with flowing pans and very little angle movement, the film's drama is escalated by simple (but effective) elements of tension and disturbance. Brooding chimes, recurring clock ticks and darkened rooms punctuate the unraveling sanity of Ester and the vindictive sexuality of Anna. Bergman is careful to never fully reveal the source of anxiety between the sisters. Instead, he drips in little sneers and accusations, like Anna falsely confessing to a random act of sex or Ester tripping some sticky guilt on Anna, saying "Go, then. While your conscience lets you", right before Anna heads out to indulge herself.

Gunnel Lindblom does a good job portraying Anna as a devilish and distracted upstart, but it's Ingrid Thulin who steals the show as the desperate, dejected Ester. It's hard not to become enraptured by Thulin's subtle mannerisms - her rueful grins and tortured lip bites make you feel the tumorous regret in her situation. The two sisters always seem to be searching for the best way to tear each others heart out, but in each there is a deep, underlying desire to be loved, acknowledged and approved of. In one of the climatic scenes of the film, Ester confronts Anna during her sex-fest with a complete stranger. Anna barks and lashes out at Ester, telling her that her moral, intellectual lifestyle is a meaningless way to live. At first, Ester is disturbed but she soon realizes that Anna's outburst is a reflection of her insecurity, and perhaps, a cry for help.

One thing I noticed about The Silence this time around, was Bergman's second focus - Johan. Johan provides a bit of comic relief and comfort for Ester, but ultimately the boy is resigned to aimlessly wander the hotel. He interacts with a fumbling old bellhop and a troupe of performers, all of whom are little people. These are interesting diversions and some of it feeds back into the main narrative of the two sisters (Anna watches the little people perform at one point, the bellhop takes care of Ester), however, these sequences slightly dilute the power of the sister's fire and brimstone. I can understand wanting to exemplify the boy's isolation due to his mother's negligence, but the sequences take too long to resolve themselves and you find yourself wondering when you'll see Ester and Anna go at it once again.

I also noticed recurring images of tanks and allusions to a military presence in the small sweaty town where the action takes place. While I believe this was primarily to show the lack of culture and the abundance of repressive government in the town, it's hard not to draw comparisons to the tension and conflict between Ester and Anna. Unfortunately, it just seems a bit too on-the-chin, especially for Bergman in this particular portion of his career. The images are memorable, particularly the silhouettes of the tanks Johan sees on the train, but they don't provide anything that isn't already crystal clear.    

So, even with a bit of extra fat, The Silence is still an intense drama with the audio/visual decorum of a subtle horror film. I prefer the creeping disturbance of a film like this to the shlocky thrills of most "proper" psychological horror films. Bergman's first true love may have been drama, but he realized many times in his career, including The Silence, the greatest horror can manifest itself from fractured relationships.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (2011)

Even with all the embarrassing and clowny moments that pockmark the Harry Potter films, I stuck it out and watched the series to the end. While I think the direction is oft times flawed, the characters are one-dimensional and the special effects are totally inconsistent, the Harry Potter films do retain a certain mysterious (and reckless) charm. The series is a lot like the Lord of the Rings films, the Pirates of the Caribbean films and even the original Star Wars films, where, upon close scrutiny, the movies are ultimately just strawmen with expressive faces painted on them. Each series' true purpose is to provide an esoteric - but ultimately hollow - whirlwind of thrills for the audience, subsequently setting up endless licensing for books, video games, spin-off films, TV shows, clothes, backpacks and all the rest of it. Harry Potter has done exactly this for years, but it has also allowed directors and actors to toy around with the children's blockbuster formula to a small degree.

Just look at Prisoner of Azkaban as an example. The film was helmed by Alfonso Cuaron, who had proved his unique skills with the smart and sexually adventurous Mexican arthouse film, Y Tu Mama Tambien three years prior. Not exactly a safe Hollywood choice, hiring an auteur. But they did, and, in my opinion, Prisoner of Azkaban turned out far better than the rest in the series. Cuaron's pacing of the convoluted plot and usage of a handheld, lingering camera made the movie stand out, especially when he captured a more genuine relationship between Hermione, Harry and Ron. And Gary Oldman is in it, which is automatically a good thing.

Unfortunately, even Prisoner of Azkaban is mired by hammy acting, overwrought production and a fly-by checklist of  subplots to tie up. All of the films have that double cheeseburger spectacle, where it's way too much, way too fast, except for The Deathly Hallows, Part I, which was a solidified, deeply personal adventure film. The focus was placed squarely on Harry, Ron and Hermione's evasion from Lord Voldemort and his agents, the incessant threat of danger nearly tearing the trio apart. It's this intimate focus that pushes The Deathly Hollows, Part I into interesting territory. It's not quite a children's film based on a beloved novel anymore, but it's also not a strictly-for-adults hardcore drama.

I had high hopes that The Deathly Hallows, Part II would continue in the same style as the first. I wasn't exactly crushed by a hard reality when I watched it, but at the same time I did feel pretty disappointed. Ultimately, the film veers back to its double cheeseburger strategy, heaping character after character and plot line after plot line down your throat. It's almost like The Deathly Hallows, Part II dares you to remember certain characters that had such miniscule parts to play in the first few films, then laughs at you when you see that they don't do much other than look scared (or alternately, determined) and shoot magic from their wand once or twice. After Voldemort's epic attack on Hogwart's, Harry walks through the hall of wounded and dead, looking at mangled characters we're supposed to give a shit about, but there's nothing there.

It's the same with the characters and the development that occurs throughout the film. Where, in Part I, there's cohesive character arcs abound and it's almost a standalone film within a series, Part II smashes all the players, main and secondary, back into the flat, gross little pancakes that we've become accustomed to. The search for the horcruxes is quickly diced through, Harry and company are just along for the ride until they reach Hogwart's.

Harry himself had grown up a bit in Part I, Daniel Radcliffe made a genuine effort to express a boy wizard becoming a man wizard, but Part II sees him back in the role of blank, frustrated crucible. It's the same with the fine actors that have dotted the landscape for the entire series - Alan Rickman's Snape, Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix LeStrange, David Thewlis's Remus, Jim Broadbent's Slughorn, Maggie Smith's Professer McGonagall - all had, at the least, interesting turns in their roles, but Part II sees them swept under the rug or out into oblivion as fast as they first appear in the movie.

Roughly 15 minutes after finishing Part II, I had forgotten or not cared about most of what I had just seen. I felt similarly when I watched Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. The most I can say about Part II is that it is a conclusion. It's not necessarily bad in comparison to some of the other films but it doesn't do anything special or memorable to act as sufficient punctuation on a bloated, uneven film series.

White Dog (1982)

I found out a long time ago that just because a movie has a fantastic cover and/or is on the Criterion Collection doesn't mean it's automatically going to be good. Criterion has a lot of great films under their wings, but they also have a lot of shit films that skate by on the very thin virtue of historical controversy. Samuel Fuller's White Dog is one of these films. It never received a wide release, due largely to the racist subject matter in the film. Potential distributors scurried off, leaving a trail of dust in their wake. And now Criterion has resurrected this terrible shamble of a movie for everyone's viewing displeasure.

The initial idea for White Dog is actually pretty intriguing - a dog trained from early in its life to distrust and attack black people, sent to a black trainer who attempts to exercise the animosity from the canine. In the hands of a more discerning director, the film might have been a stark observation on the carnal nature of racism, but as it stands, White Dog is a laughable and haphazard affair that would make any self-respecting exploitation film or b-movie scratch their head and say, "are you fucking serious?"

Kristy McNichol plays a weird grandma-face actress that finds an injured white dog on the side of a road. She takes the dog home to nurse it back to health. One night, in a truly overblown moment of ultimate plot convenience, a man breaks into the actresses house and tries to rape her. The dog chases the man off, breaking through a window in the process (you know, like dogs typically do), effectively bringing the actress and the dog closer together. Soon after, she finds out the dog attacks black people and takes it to a trainer known for calming the most ferocious of animals.

White Dog's problems begin with its plot. There were many times throughout the film, where I had to audibly wonder, "really?" and "what?" and "Jesus". The biggest example of plot failure is the utter uselessness of the relationship between between the actress and the dog. Fuller could literally have had Keys, the "maverick" animal trainer find the dog on the side of the road and cut out 30 minutes of total fluff in the process. Keys relationship with the dog would be more intense and well-paced, but no, weird grandma-face needs to act as a racial buffer. Which, in turn, introduces a trait in the dog - it's defensiveness to men in general - that is never explored or tied up after it leaves the actresses care.

The abysmal look, special effects and editing make up the rest of the White Dog shitstorm. Set against dull, sun-bleached cinematography, Fuller slops moments of crazy violence and blood at the screen - moments that never seem to follow in any logical accordance with what the dog is doing. Every scene where the dog goes to jump on its victim, there is a quick cutaway to another shot of said victim instantly bloody and properly gored. So, am I to understand that upon first contact during a dog attack, a human's flesh and blood vessels instantly fail, rip and spill out? Because that's the only explanation that would have such a visual device make any sense at all.

There is a scene in the film which I think sums up the irresponsible, overwrought clumsiness of White Dog perfectly. The dog has temporarily run off, looking for fresh black people to kill, when it comes across a black garbageman parked near a store front. The dog growls and stares menacingly at the man, but he doesn't notice. With the passenger door wide open for no reason at all, the dog jumps in and mangles the garbageman. This causes the man to somehow shift his truck out of park and drive it through the store front, leaving a path of crazy destruction. This scene has no consequence. There is no police inquiry. There is no investigation by the main characters. Just a random dead black guy and a completely destroyed clothing store in the middle of L.A. Even if you're armed with a mentality of humorous ironic spectacle, such moments are not worth the time spent watching them.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

It's not often that you find a film director who can effortlessly articulate the woes and triumphs of day-in, day-out love. Eric Rohmer is one member of this rare breed. Having only seen Love in the Afternoon prior to My Night at Maud's you could hardly call me a nerd for Rohmer films, but I can already tell why he's garnered such a prestigious reputation. The man is just so damn good at plucking buried emotions and profound realizations from the mundane existence of domestic life. His primary focus is the relationships between men and women, but he also shows how those relationships effect personally held philosophies and religious beliefs. He pulls these observations down and presents them with a thoughtful, breezy confidence that leaves you both curious and affected.

My Night at Maud's is foremost a love/hate letter to Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician and philosopher. I'll tell you right out of the gate that I don't know very much about Pascal. I thought it would make for an interesting (and much more honest) review relating what I learned about his ideas in the movie to the narrative itself.

The film focuses on a Catholic engineer, Jean-Louis, as he tries to reconcile the whims of his romantic life with the strictures of his faith. Splitting his time between work and church,  Jean-Louis comes across a young woman, Francoise, during a night at mass. Despite knowing nothing about her, Jean-Louis is instantly enamored with Francoise and secretly vows to marry her. Before he can ask her out, an old friend, Vidal, invites Jean-Louis over to the apartment of Maud, a recently divorced woman looking for a bit of excitement.

The film has a distinct mode of pacing, going from successions of short scenes to drawn out sequences and back again. Jean-Louis' intrepid desire to marry Francoise is summed up quickly, while his night with Maud stretches its feet and lingers. Naturally, this is done to emphasize the importance of the discussions being had, rather than action driving the plot steadily forward. It's almost as if Rohmer wants to get plot out of the way so he can sit you down, pour you a nice glass of milk, and let loose an avalanche of deeply pondered ideas.

Pascal seems to always be on the tip of Jean-Louis' tongue, however, his love or hatred of the man is never made completely clear. As Jean-Louis stays up with Maud on the titular night in question, the two discuss at length the rigors of love, morality and compromise through the lens of the philosopher. Though both characters tend to be racked by dualities, Maud holds to the notion that love based on religion is a sham and she questions the validity of Jean-Louis' passion for Francoise. Jean-Louis maintains that, while he isn't a perfect Catholic due to his various affairs in the past, he knows without a doubt that love, sex and faith are inextricably bound.

Jean-Louis asserts that Pascal shunned intellectual diversions (mathematics) in favor of his faith to God, finding passion in tangibility rather than abstract ideas. In this sense, Jean-Louis' tangibility is a woman that he loves for her faith and conviction before the indulgence of her sexuality. His diversions are the women he ran with in the past, the idea that he found out too late that he was wasting his time with them when he could have been pursuing something meaningful. Maud finds Jean-Louis' ideas intriguing but reminds him that marriage is far from perfection, having gone through a divorce with an unfaithful man. The morning after provides the crux of the entire film, Jean-Louis laying next to Maud in the most defiantly platonic fashion. There is a brief moment where Jean-Louis nearly gives in to Maud's charms, going into kiss her, but at that point Maud has had enough of the indecision wrought by his conflicting morality.

This particular scene is the centerpiece and the soul of My Night at Maud's. It acutely captures the combination of stuffy intellectual posturing and poignant emotional observations that make up the bulk of the film's dialogue. Whenever the dialogue feels like it's about to go jerk itself long and hard, a heavy, tactile set of lines are delivered to anchor the whole thing back into reality. This way, Rohmer gets to express his views on religion, love, morality and Pascal while maintaining a palpable intimacy. My Night at Maud's is essentially one of the best proponents for late night conversation, where all those woozy but profoundly expressive thoughts are formed.

Blue Velvet (1986)

I feel like, after watching Blue Velvet, and a number of David Lynch's other works (such as Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive) that I can safely say he is a frustrating director. Now, I don't mean frustrating in that stupid modern art rally-cry kind of way - the "ah, it's just too fucking subversive and crazy fantastic for you to handle". I mean frustrating in a way that says "the quality of the film is dictated by a sloppy seesaw of styles".

It seems like in much of his work, Lynch is attempting to bridge the gap between consciousness and subconsciousness, where dreams meet reality and reality don't much like what ensues in the resulting collision. He attempts this balance, but always ends up cheating on reality for his true mistress, dreams (and the repressed desires contained within them). I wouldn't have nearly as big of a problem with Lynch if he fleshed out ideas exclusively in his 11th hour, ghoulish worlds, but he stumbles over himself by simultaneously filling in the shoes of a hackneyed drama coach.

Blue Velvet provides a lot of clarity on this point. The film's narrative about Jeffrey, a young man who finds a severed ear in a field, leading him to get involved with a distressed older woman and a circle of criminals, already has fundamental problems at work. Jeffrey's motivation to look into such strange circumstances is never really justified. There are no scenes that establish Jeffrey as a compassionate social servant or an overly curious junior sleuth, he's just kind of winging it the whole time. You would think that as the film progressed perhaps some insight would be shined down upon Jeffrey's intentions, but they remain vague and pedestrian throughout. Why? Because Lynch was far too interested in watching Dennis Hopper writhe on top of Isabella Rossellini, shouting "Blue velvet!" and "Don't you look at me!" to care that much about the protagonist.

And rightfully so. I didn't really give a shit what happened to Jeffrey or why he was there in the first place because I was distracted by the excellent scenes involving a pitch-perfect Dennis Hopper as the deviant sexual maniac, Frank Booth. Whether it's his unnatural fondness for the song, "Candy Colored Clown" by Roy Orbison, or his faintly homoerotic intimidation of Jeffrey, Frank is what saves Blue Velvet from becoming a giant waste of time. You could replace Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey with a paper lunch bag that has a frowny face drawn on it and not notice much of a difference. However, taking Hopper's Frank out of the equation would unhinge the film entirely.

The night-time hijinks of Frank and his crew provide a welcome tear away from the flaccid, melodramatic relationship forming between Jeffrey and an equally unnecessary love interest, Sandy, who is portrayed by Laura Dern's nose. I mean, Laura Dern. It was hard to even care about the affair forming between Rossellini's Dorothy and Jeffrey, even though there is a fantastic sequence where he hides in her closet only to be found out and forced into taking off his clothes. But ultimately, she's sucking the dick of a paper bag with a frowny face, so the emotions you should carry away from it don't last, only the image of it stays with you.

All in all, Blue Velvet goes quite well with my David Lynch hang-ups. In a sense, you could liken his strengths and weaknesses to a director obsessed with special effects in his or her movies. The effects may slap you in the face with their awesomeness but when someone asks you about the story, you respond with, "what story?" The main difference is that Lynch's "special effects" have enough intelligence and permeating presence that they create stories in and of themselves. So, why, Mr. Lynch, even bother with white-bread, by the numbers drama? It only gives off an uneasy, after-school special vibe in your case. Just stick to making pretentious short films about rabbit humans, selling naked pictures of your girlfriends for $500 and making blues albums with ridiculous titles like Crazy Clown Time.

The Dungeonmaster (1984)

The Dunegeonmaster, also known, hilariously enough, as Ragewar. I have to admit I had really high hopes for this clearly awful movie, what with it's esoteric poster of a heinous man looming large over a red grid with a miniature brawny man wearing cricket pads and shooting lasers from his wrist-guards. The poster had that awesome, excessive art style that has graced a plethora of '70s, '80s, early '90s movies and even early Nintendo games. I thought to myself, "well played, Netflix, I'm intrigued." And, though it sat on my queue for a few weeks, I always glanced over it in my browsing, the heinous man's cackling face watching me as I swept it aside for something else.

76 minutes of my life were thus ended upon the playing of this movie. 76 minutes I'd pay to have back. To be doing anything else, like showing up at my sophomore year Homecoming only to find that the girl I was head over heels for, Katie O'Donnell, had brought some cocksucker to the event instead of me...or, you know, sticking needles in my eyes.

To get the particulars out of the way, the movie tells the story (if you want to call it that) of a brawny computer geek, obsessed with his computer girlfriend instead of his real-life girlfriend. Despite this, brawny geek asks his real-life girlfriend to marry him. Real-life girlfriend doesn't give him an answer but still inexplicably considers his offer while aiming some crazy jealousy at computer girlfriend. Brawny geek and real-life girlfriend go to bed one night and soon find themselves transported to a sort of fantastical plane, where a pseudo-European pornstar conducts a lengthy gauntlet of challenges in order for brawny man to save real-life girlfriend.

For one thing, the movie looks like it's shot on a low-grade camcorder that the director borrowed from his mom. Wait, I take that back. There were multiple directors that steered this shit-ship, so maybe they all borrowed their mom's camcorders respectively. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why multiple directors were even -necessary- as the style remained completely the same for each sequence, that style being "absolute shit."

The plot is so laughable and convoluted that you can actually see the actors themselves become confused and tired as the film progresses. Oh, and that pseudo-European pornstar wizard that I mentioned before? That's Richard Moll. Yeah, the bald guy from Night Court. Total icing on the cake. I feel the film was conceived in a very hazy and vague manner, something like all the directors sitting around a table at a bar and saying in unison, "wouldn't it be funny if..." or "wouldn't it be crazy if..." They even have the audacity (or stupidity) to try and throw in a moral to the story. Since the dialogue is so hackneyed and robotic, it's far too difficult to even paraphrase it, but it was something along the lines of abusing power out of boredom. You know, because having pointless, shoddy fantasy fight sequences is a cure for boredom.

And yet I think the most unforgivable aspect of The Dungeonmaster is the wrist-guard that brawny man uses throughout the film. All the props, costumes and set pieces look like garbage, the barren landscapes, the caves, the dungeons, the zombies, that SHITTY HEAVY METAL BAND "WASP" - but nothing stands quite as tall as this wrist-guard, which is a mix of a Texas Instruments calculator and that electronic sequencing game, Simon.

 This wrist-guard is the blatantly convenient plot device to be measured against all other movie plot devices. It has to be the most esoteric swiss-army knife man has ever conceived. If brawny man finds himself needing to shoot lasers at enemies, no problem. If he needs to shoot lasers in multiple directions at once, no problem. If he needs a laser-generated bar to pull himself up from certain death, no problem. If he needs very small, specific lasers that unlock handcuffs, no problem. If he needs to run a background check on a criminal, no problem. If he needs to plan the trajectory of ricocheting rocks off cave walls to hit a single target, no problem. If he needs to deflect samurai swords, no problem.

Jesus, this movie isn't even worth existing. It should negative exist. This isn't even just a "bad" bad movie, it's like taking the art form of movies on a cheap date, to IHOP or something because The Dungeonmaster is too cheap to splurge on Denny's, and still expect to get the goods. Also, I cannot condone any film that supports stealing from frozen Albert Einsteins.

Welcome to The Movie Gestapo!

Welcome to The Movie Gestapo, a blog of criticism, editorials, ideas, silly thoughts, serious thoughts - all about movies!

This blog attempts to make sense of my schizophrenic taste in movies. Like most critics, I have an undeserved, presumptuous and skewed sense of authority on the topic. Nonetheless, I hope that you will enjoy what I have to say about movies from all walks of life - new and old, popular and unpopular, ribbed for pleasure and magnum, Harry Potter book club and Twilight book club, the shitty cookies you make yourself and the good ones at the grocery store, medium rare and well done, god-fearing and godless, double pen and cumshot.