Archive for April, 2009

Buffalo 66 (1998)

April 28, 2009 at 11:57 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , , ,

Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) is an angry young man. He also needs a pee.

He’s just got out of jail. He grabs a young Miss Layla (Christina Ricci) around the mouth and drags her off to see his parents. He wants her to pretend to be his wife: “Just be nice. Be a decent girl. You’re there to make me look good“

He still needs to pee. We’ve got a bit of a bladder situation going on here.

He repeats every sentence 3 times to make sure everybody gets how angry he is. Billy is a horribly misunderstood person: “Just calm down Billy“. Billy is a screw-up. He’s got screwy parents (Angelica Huston and Ben Gazzara)  Tempers are flying. “Please calm down”. Layla is doing her bestest to make him look good. Look too good.

Billy thinks nothing of ripping into his best friend “Goon”: “You know why they call you Goon? You’re a retard, and you’re ugly. You’re an ugly retard, and they call you Goon because you’re ugly and retarded – and you’ll always be Goon. So fuck you!”

Gradually though we’re warming to Billy. Underneath that angry shouty facade is a little hurt boy. Little Billy No-mates. Little Billy who never had a girlfriend. Little Billy who can never please his parents.

Layla seems to know this. Even when Billy is chastising her sat on his knee in the photo booth (a funny and touching scene this): “Just look like you like me. Look like we’re husband and wife. Spanning time. Like you like me, like we’re in love. In love. Spanning time. Don’t do your best – just do it right”

We’re warming to Billy cus Layla is warming him up. Something tender is starting to happen. Something that looks like love – or might even be love – is being let in.

In the end its become a funny sad sweet oddball film thats got Vincent Gallo stamped all over it (he starred, wrote, directed and composed the music for it)

Dir: Vincent Gallo, USA

7.5/10

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The Realm of the Senses (1976)

April 23, 2009 at 9:43 pm · Filed under Good

Art film or porn film? Probably considered more porny when it was made, back in the mid-70’s. But these days we’re used to seeing just about everything.

First thing i noticed was how small his todger was (compared to mine…. Lol) Maybe they weren’t allowed to show erect penis’s of more than 4 inches back then. Or maybe Japanese blokes have smaller willys. Or maybe his todger got worn away by all the grinding it had to do.

“You’re a man-eater” he says, grinningly, to Sada. “Did you hold it all night?” Yes she did. Not only holding it but sticking it in. “It’s as if it were yours” he says.

It becomes hers; she claims it, appropriates it. The Geishas won’t come in and clean. “You’re perverts. You never stop sucking him” they complain.

They become drunk on desire for one another. She wants his cock all the time. “You’re driving me mad” she moans.  He wants her to want his cock. “You are ready all the time” he groans.

He eats egg soaked in her cunt.

“You want me to strangle you?” she asks. He does. To give their fucking that extra thrill, that further frisson.

“I’m gonna kill you” she says throttling him with a belt….”It’s extraordinary… it’s marvellous…i’m killing you”. Then she stops. This time. Just in time.

But next time. She does. Kill him. Then cuts it off, and cuts off his balls too; carries his tackle around Tokyo for 4 days “resplendent with happiness”

Apparently this had been a “true” story.

Of course we’re far more familiar with Sado-Masochistic sex these days, the erotic intensity of BDSM type shenanigans is almost becoming aspirational in the 21st century.

So maybe this film is not so abnormal after all (apart from the last bit that is) Maybe it was already showing the obsession with “total sex” we seem – increasingly – to want to be moving towards.

Dir: Nagisa Oshima, Japan

7/10

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Trainspotting (1996)

April 18, 2009 at 10:18 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , , ,

I know some people find this film spine-curdlingly awful; not in the sense that it’s a badly made film – more that certain scenes in it are disgusting. Like that infamous Ewan McGregor head down “Worst toilet in Scotland” scene. Or when he’s going cold turkey and hallucinating babies crawling across the ceiling.

It’s meant to be getting at you, and to you. That’s what Danny Boyle wants you to be experiencing; not just watching cute smack-heads shooting up, but viscerally feeling the hit of that needle into the vein, the spew of guts  sicked up, the mad agony crawling thro the blood aching to score.

Its got so much visual verve and stylistic panache. And i like the pumping soundtrack by Underworld too.

Yes, i like the film. Mind you, i find psycho nutcase Begbe (Robert Carlyle) veers too far into unredeemability. I don’t find him funny. I find him nasty.

Ewan McGregor is great. As is Ewen Bremner. I’ll be keeping this film. It’s worth watching again. Especially if you just want to indulge yourself in the “Fuck you!” part of your head for a wee while.

The opening scene has McGregor and Bremner on the run from store detectives – and this is being said (by Ewan) over the top:

“Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose washing machines, cars and electrical tin openers. Choose a 3 piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics; choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing, game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all…..

I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reason? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin“

Real life, the life of the Ordinary Joe simply pales into pathetic given that kind of rationale. Cus as we know, heroin blows your mind away, “Heroin has got a great fucking personality“.

This film kind of gives me access into why heroin addiction becomes so attractive, so necessary (when you’re into it that is)

By the end tho Renton (McGregor) has fucked off with the loot and he’s booting heroin into touch. He’s lucky:

“I’m going to be just like you: lesuire-wear, DIY, game shows, walks in the park, good at golf,  washing the car, choice of sweaters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die”

Or maybe not so lucky…..Lol….

Dir: Danny Boyle, UK

8/10

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Your Friends & Neighbours (1998)

April 17, 2009 at 10:50 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , , ,

This is a nasty film. Compelling but cruel. Cruel because psychologically cold. Most of the characters – in particular Jason Patric – are calculatingly and coolly self-servingly ego-centric.

Actually lets rephrase that last sentence: Jason Patric is simply a nasty bastard. You could probably chuck sociopath, misanthrope, misogynist at him and they’d all stick to his shitty fan.

The perverse thing is that although you want to smack him one you can’t stop watching him and taking an interest in every hateful obnoxious thing he says.

“I fucked her. A complete revenge fuck. Which are always the best”

“I don’t give a shit about anybody. I’m not to be messed with. This is my life”

“The bitch desreved it. She never understood me. And it was a good joke. I find a certain clarity in the gesture”

“You are a useless cunt. Get used to it“. This said to Catherine Keener who is also smeary with egotistical obnoxiousness: “Fucking is fucking. It’s not a time for sharing”.

They’re all New York professionals: writers, actors, artists; Jason Patric is a doctor (Christ!) Jaded with life, cynical about love: “It’s a sickness anyway. Relationships. Caring. Love’s a disease” says Catherine Keener.

What was Neil Le Bute wanting us to get watching this? That men are mostly misogynistic arseholes or pathetic creeps, and women crave tenderness – but are better off by-passing men all together, and looking for affection with other women? Or is it as Catherine Keener says near the end: “Life is complicated. People can’t communicate. And you couldn’t keep your erection”.

She says this to little Ben Stiller. Who had wanted to shag big Chads wife. But that turned out to be hopeless and pathetic; mismatch, miscommunication, estrangement, sad.

It is all complicated this relationship stuff, tangled and entangled in complexes, woundedness, stinky neurosis.

It’s a wonder men and women bother to relate to one another anymore.

Especially if they live in New York and they got too much thought to think about why they don’t or can’t love one another.

Dir: Neil LeBute, USA

7/10

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Kitchen Stories (2003)

April 7, 2009 at 9:13 pm · Filed under It stinks

Disappointingly, this is a period drama set in the 1950’s. Therefore its probably going to be wilfully winsome.

The quirks of quirky Norwegian males and all that. Males without females. Maybe males that prefer males to females (is what gradually dawned on me)

So we have the lonesome solitary habits of the pipe-smoking Norwegian male to do a time and motion study of for the next hour and a half. Circa 1956. Observation without interaction – no talking allowed. Ha ha.

It’s meaning to be laconic with that mood of melancholic Scandinavian deadpan humour. But Kuarismaki it isn’t. And “interessant” it isn’t.

Possibly one of the oddest films i’ve seen in the last year – and possibly the dullest.

Quirksome or maybe tiresome.

Dir: Bent Hamer, Norway

3/10

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Familia Rodante (2004)

April 3, 2009 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Tedious

Tiny white subtitles. Difficult to read, i must have missed a good third of the dialogue.

Not that it seemed to matter too much.

Family Rodante are going on a “great journey together” exclaims Granny Rodante. Turns out to be not so great. Turns out to be your usual internecine small-fry family bickering and squabbling.

The whole family (so many i lost count) are cooped up in a tin-can camper van travelling hundreds of hot dusty miles across the Argentinian Pampas. Things are bound to get a bit hot under the collar, short tempers are gonna fuse and fray.

Tin can breaks down. All out to push.

There’s some predictable shouting going on. Then some kissing. Then some slapping.

It’s all mildly madcap. Actually “madcap” isn’t the right word. Maybe if it had been madcap and peopled with charming eccentricity i might have warmed to it more.

But these characters seem like normal, regular, fuck-ups – stuck lumpily together in life’s of ordinary banality.

It’s all ever so slightly tiresome, and made more so by those tiny white subtitles – Grrr!

Dir: Pablo Trapero, Argentina

5/10

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