Performances aside, I think the real deal here is the positively immaculate look of the film. Every single second of the Hunter is beautifully composed. Shot on a lavish UA sound stage, every moment leaks glorious artificiality, magnificently arranged light spilling over every board and fake brook. To heighten the beautifully ersatz facade, real creatures of nature (aside from the child actors, of course) are posited among the plasticine shrubbery. Frogs croaks and foxes bark in trees so idyllic they can only be fake. It's the sort of heightened serenity which can be found in the glorious films of the fifties.

Before the melodramatics gave way to the (narratively) grander, more theatrical showmanship of the sixties, performances, particularly those depicting small town life, were wooden and what we would not call meta - self-acknowledging. Performances aided to ease the reading of the film (which unveiled itself with more austere blatancy than our tricky narratives do now). Those films were not trying to pull the wool over your eyes. They played into the fact that their morality tales were rather simple to decipher. This lead to a far greater forfeit of personal reservation. One got involved with these movies, similar to certain persuasive contemporary tactics, but in a far more passionate way.

Straying from conventional narrative structure (as the more daring works of the era did) was a more shocking thing then than it is now. And Hunter is both startlingly different and alarmingly familiar. The narrative track ruptures mid-way through as the film diverges in a very different direction than you may have initially anticipated. But, when you look past the shocking midpoint action, the formula is rather reminiscent of a typically structured film the era. The film follows a progression of a typical three act structure in an alarmingly disturbing way.

Helen Mirren and Cube Gooding Jr. are a duo of assassins. While on assignment, they discover that the woman whom they are supposed to be snuffing is not only 9 months pregnant but inducing labor at that very moment. Mirren, who is slowly dying of cancer, has one of those trite "life - death" moments and believes that God has put her in this moment for a purpose. So, instead of shooting her in the head, she delivers the child and takes the two into hiding. Enter Gordon-Levitt and Mo'Nique (playing a character named Precious) as a doctor and nurse team(yes, you are reading correctly). Of course, Stephen Dorff(who has a gruesomely gratuitous be-condom'd full frontal fuck shot) is the mother's husband and has a nack for nasty murders. Convinced that she is dead, her moves on to her best friend (a debilitatingly drunk Macy Gray). That's the first half, at least. Then, as you may have surmised, the film becomes an idyllic, watching baby grow in a secluded country house movie.

Not a single moment of traditional logic plays itself out in Shadowboxer. Neither does the film create a world in which its bizarre moments make sense. In one scene, a drunk Macy Gray asks the bereft and haggard tranny sitting next to her in an otherwise upscale bar if she wants a drink. 'What is this to' up tranny doing here?' one might wonder. A dramatic draft causes Mirren's kimono to billow in one of the few scenes where we see the pain caused by her cancer (I've never seen a healthier terminal cancer patient - nor one who smoked more cigarettes). Trouble is, she's indoors. 'Where, pray tell, is this interior gale?' Every black character has a substance abuse problem, save Gooding Jr. who is, instead, a masochist. Everyone seems to light their cigarettes whenever the new-born is brought into the room. Rats race Mo'Nique in Gordon-Levitt's doctor's office. You get the idea.

Now, because of all of this absurdity, Shadowboxer is actually a bit of a pleasure to behold. Oh, it's bad alright, and it looses precious steam when Mirren parts ways with the cast, but as a bizarre amalgam of Lifetime Women's movie and TNT style thriller it's rather priceless. The poor decision to theatrically distribute the film will not prove economically fruitful. This is one of those films which may (and I stress may) develop some sort of cult appreciation on DVD. As an almost self-fulfilling act, one scene finds a character watching Susan Hayward and her mobile co-star belt out "I'll plant my own tree" from Valley of the Dolls. The odd mish mash casting proves more desperate here than awkward as it was in Monster's Ball and The Woodsmen. Obviously someone has a bunch of industry ins, but I'm not sure that means they should necessarily use them. Save this one for the last in a alcohol addled marathon evening, but do see it. It's perplexingly sensational.]]> http://film.flukiest.com/2006/08/strange_fruit.html http://film.flukiest.com/2006/08/strange_fruit.html Out Now On Screen Sat, 05 Aug 2006 18:25:49 -0800 Today, in our numbed cultural mores, it is exceptionally difficult to imagine how a film like Jaws could affect a whole era of people, making our parents afraid to go in the water. How Psycho could make their parents afraid to shower. And though this analogy has been used for countless B horror previews, typically without warrant, believe me when I say, 'I will never, for the rest of my life, go spelunking.' The thought of sliding through thick rock tunnels barely larger than your person is enough to get me squirming out of my skin. And I will admit, I am rather susceptible to hype. I ducked my way through 28 Days Later (to later rewatch it and find a deeply flawed film) and was completely traumatized when I saw The Blair Witch Project on a preview screener VHS, more inspired by the petrifying 'Is this true?' website which used the ambiguities of the dawn of internet technologies to sell their one-time-only movie. These sorts of films have become part of a large cultural ritual. But The Descent, I assure you, is one terrifying film. It's the kind of nail biter that, when it finally unleashes its all (which, believe me, is quite a lot), you wonder how much more you can physically take. I'm none too sure I not speaking with a certain bit of swayed hype, but, ultimately, it all comes down to how frightened I truly was, and trust me, I was quite scared.

The premise involves six thrill seeking ladies who, in search of a greater rush, descend into an uncharted cave. Things quickly become very problematic for our tough, while still uber-feminine heroines. Some egos inflame. Someone gets stuck. Someone breaks her leg. A passage collapses. And then, there's the crawlers.

Of course, the film is to its viewers what spelunking is to its ill-fated protagonists. It delivers a rush of exhilaration so extreme that I am hard pressed to find a comparable film with which to liken it. So dense is its tension that, when the women who remain begin to fight back, it arrives with such wanted gratification that I could not help but yelp and holler along with them as they wrestle, hack and gouge at the beasties. The film, impressively sure of its construction, takes great glee in the lavishness of its grostesqueries. In those fantastic moments of frenzy(films like Resident Evil could learn a great deal, here), the viewer, who is so unfathomably wrought with tension that the assaults come at them, just as they do the protagonists(but we, as viewers have the fortune of keeping our intestines, however knotted they may have become throughout the course of the film).

Director Neil Marshall possesses a seemingly casual finesse of the horror genre. Today, a typical horror film seeks more to startle its viewer than to scare them. Tension has become the new foreboding. You know the moment. A girl looks out of the window to investigate some spooky noise. In that relieved moment of calm, an owl beats its wings against the pane and the music crescendoes. You jump. It's a cheap ploy that is not scary. Unnerving, perhaps, but not scary. And though The Descent has its share of jumps, it seldom includes them without excusing itself for patronizing. Here, when you leap only to friend a friend, animal or non-crawler, it is almost always followed by some sort of visual pun, making fun of its own formula.

The establishing sequence, which carries its own load of trauma, starts the film off with an assured confidence, reminiscent of early DePalma. It becomes quite clear that this analogy is self-imposed as Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), resembling a young Sissy Spacek, at one point emerges from a pool of blood in a complete visual homage to Spacek's most famous scene in Carrie. It is Marshall's remarkable knowledge of Horror film history that makes The Descent eligible for inclusion in such a lineage. It is, dare I say, the best horror film to come out of this decade. The Descent is certainly not for the faint of heart, but then, what horror film is?

The Descent hits theaters tomorrow.

Brothers is a quieter film, though one quite indebted to both aforementioned films. Fronting as a documentary, this fictitious retelling of the tale of two Siamese twin brothers who form the front of a cultishly successful punk band called the Bang Bang. It is a film in constant flux, from overtly simplistic (which would seem to be the fate of conjoined twin fiction - really, it is a genre in itself) to surprisingly complex. As a writer, who arrives to condemn the manager for exploiting the twins' deformity observes, instead of finding two weak victims, Tom and Barry are strong and reverent individuals who seem quite comfortable with their circumstance.

Never quite settling on what you expect, the film is at once a condemning parody of the contemporary Biopic, a mutivalent exploration of collaboration, a love letter to the punk era, a visually driven non-narrative experimental film and an all-too conforming doco (even though it's not really). I'm not convinced that it should have presented itself as a documentary. That would seem to be the one great flaw in the film. The "source" footage being so beautiful, one is slightly irked when the camera returns to the talking head which he already knows to be a falsity. This critic, of course already admirously familiar with the cult director Ken Russell was pleasantly surprised at his appearance at the film's opening. Russell, the film would have you believe, followed his (actual) Tommy with a biopic called Two-Way Romeo which the film presents in small segments (though it is quite obviously not a Russell film)

To claim that Brothers was free of flaws would be completely incorrect. They are quite prevalent throughout, but I am hard pressed to recall a film whose aesthetic was as tight and breathtaking as Brothers of the Head. A fictitious documentary film crew shoots the "archival" footage from which this film has been assembled. It is some beautiful footage, grainy and sensual. There's one shot of the brothers bathing themselves in a darkened room. The smoky haze of "dated" filmstock renders the scene with a pictorialist sumptuousness. Light cascades over the lens as the brothers practice in a window-lined sitting room. We never truly believe that the twin actors are conjoined - mainly because of the directors' endless efforts illustrate their dependence. They do cartwheels together. They run together. They play guitar together. Overcompensation works oppositionally. Yet toward the end, you stop caring and give yourself over to the story. It's one that's not terribly original, but so beautiful that I found it difficult to tear my eyes from the screen.

Brothers of the Head opens this Friday in Los Angeles.]]> http://film.flukiest.com/2006/08/head_case.html http://film.flukiest.com/2006/08/head_case.html Out Now On Screen Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:59:32 -0800
Apparently, Stephen Peters, who scribed the deliciously trashy Wild Things has written a sort of follow-up starring the prior film's Neve Campbell and (the ever campy) Denise Richards. There's little known about the project save the dunderheaded plot involving double crossing, kidnapping, bodyguards and a renouned bank. Sounds like fun to me. I mean, when one sees this sort of film, plot is the last thing on their mind, right?

Though terrifically critical (at times), director Laurent Cantent (Time Out) allows the viewer to understand the womens' intent. He humanizes them in a way which allows more sympathy than one might expect to find in a story about an impoverished island where wealthy and sexually voracious women have their way with the powerless, penniless men who inhabit it. Vers Le Sud serves as a wonderful document of orientalization and of the internal struggle between personal conduct and private passions(a theme similarly explored in Lars Von Trier's Manderlay). The women comprehend the regression of their gaze, and, as women of culture, this violation of respectable social codes excites them. Brenda could never cum before her Haitian endeavors. Ellen finds all Bostonians dull and trivial. This is true passion - under the sun, in the crystal blue waters, white on black. Taboo.

Vers Le Sud has its remarkably poignant moments, but peppering the film, and in some cases, canceling out the good, some hopelessly trite moves lead to a very heavy handed final act. In a scene which could have come straight out of Crash (albeit, with a far better cinematographer), Legba sits in a shanty's kitchen and looks at the life-worn face of his loving mother who dotes on and chastises him for his shenanigans. Of course, Legba has been saving all of his stud-money for her. It's a bit too simple of a scene for a film which establishes great density in its other climates.

Rampling leaps into her role with a feral gusto while Young leaves a bit to be desired. The physical acting is all there, but her speach is hopelessly theatrical, recalling the weaker moments of Lili Taylor. It's a far better film than either of Cantent's previous ventures and a rather fantastic indictment of culture robbing. But for god's sake, does every black man have to be the purest, nicest angel known to man? I mean, after Crash, I lost all of the remainder of my white guilt. The simpler bits here merely drove the nail in the coffin.