My Year in Movies, Part II

In which I use too many hyperbolic adjectives to describe some more movies I liked watching this year.

Johnny Guitar

You all know how weird this movie is, right? Because it’s the cinematic equivalent of walking down a flight of stairs and missing a dozen steps. It’s a Western where the main source of conflict is the sexual jealousy one woman feels for another. Sure, Sterling Hayden is the fastest gun west of the something or other but he spends the entire movie pining after Joan Crawford who has much more important things on her mind, like wearing pants and being a self-made woman. It’s all too exciting for words and features loud garish colours that just make my heart melt.

Drunken Angel

Kurosawa isn’t a cerebral filmmaker. He’s a visceral one. His stories aren’t meant to be pondered, they’re meant to be felt. Like a blow to the gut. Drunken Angel is a perfect example of the kind of full-throated emotion he was so good at. It’s simple. Sometimes barbarically so. But that is all to the benefit of its raw, angry humanism.

To Be or Not to Be

Has there ever been a more elegant filmmaker than Ernst Lubitsch? Maybe not. And it rarely gets better than this fantastic comedy about a group of Shakespearean performers trying to swindle the Nazis. It’s witty, seductive and hates Nazis. Because honestly, fuck the Nazis.

White Dog

Few people could elevate exploitation to great art with as much intelligence, energy and intensity as Sam Fuller. And White Dog is a vicious piece of exploitation given angry, throbbing life. A young woman finds a stray dog that attacks black people on sight and tries to rehabilitate it with the help of a black animal trainer. It’s cruel, trashy stuff. But Fuller doesn’t sand off the edges, he hones them. White Dog’s allegory is brutal, nasty and sharp – a merciless flagellation of American racism.

Bambi

It’s The Lion King but better.

The Lady Eve

Barbara Stanwyck is a money grubbing con artist, Henry Fonda is the dopey heir to a whole lot of beer money and you can make up the rest of it as you go along. But even the studio system at its finest could only churn out one of these babies - a well oiled fizz machine of charm, romance and lascivity. And if you have a thing for Barbara Stanwyck or ears, well… you’re going to have a fun time.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

From the prime romcoms of yesteryear we come to the really good romcoms of more modern yesteryear. And let’s face it, context has a lot to do with how much I liked this one. Quality romantic comedies aren’t exactly a dime a dozen nowadays. But Johnnie To is as solidly reliable as they come and he delivers with a charmer I like to describe as Manic Pixie Dream World. Cute girl has chemistry with two cute guys and has to end up with one or the other (why not both?) It’s a load of pish but it’s a delightfully entertaining one. And that’s all that matters.

Shivers

Calling this early Cronenberg feature unpolished feels close to lying outright. It’s a rough mess of stiff acting and low-budget making do. But even through that haze Shivers comes through fiercely intelligent and disturbing work of modern horror. The setup is basic: a virus runs rampant through an apartment complex stirring its hosts to defilement, depravity and murder. If the opening scene, a TV ad for the complex, doesn’t get you the last half hour of grotesque, nightmarish imagery will.     

Schizopolis

Sometimes, when nearing the end of one’s creative rope, artists need to just let out steam. And sometimes they do so by fucking right off and putting every half-formed idea that floats through their head into one silly, stupid piece of work. But because some people are Steven Soderbergh their dumb brain puke ends up being one of the most exciting, ridiculous, revitalizing and ecstatic bits of modern American cinema. Schizopolis!

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary

It’s a Gothic ballet done in the style of a 1920s silent horror movie. If that doesn’t lead to goosebumps in the deep, dark recesses of your soul, I don’t think you'll ever truly get me.

Next time on Cinecdoche: Pirates! Geisha! The sharp soullessness of German society!

My Year in Movies, Part I

Every year filmy peoples from all over the world get to do their top ten movies of the year. Sadly, I’m an inveterate slacker and can't work up the energy to go see a movie. So I don't have a list of my favorite movies from 2014. I don’t think I’ve even seen ten 2014 releases yet. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching something. So here’s the first part of my list of favorite movies I saw for the first time this year.

Dead Man

Jim Jarmusch is the quintessential face of the American art house cinema: cosmopolitan, cool, ironically detached, multifarious, a white dude who loves non-white dude stuff. But only he could have made Dead Man, a hypnotic death dream that’s equal parts acid trip and revisionist Western. If nothing else it’s worth it just to hear Chris Farmer say “stupid fucking white man”. 

Stranger by the Lake

Sure, the other LGBT movie came out of Cannes with a Palm D’Or but for my money this twisty little noodle was far better. A wonderful concoction that takes the easy sunkissed settings of Eric Rohmer and mixes it with the sly undulations of a slasher movie’s sexdeath obsession. Also, fun looking (if occasionally nerve-wracking) gay sex for once!

Wake in Fright

The Outback has got to be the scariest desert ever. The Sahara has its deceptive bulks of sand and the Gobi looks a flat and dreary tundra, but God if the Outback doesn’t seem like a sun scorched death blasted hell slab. So who in the world wants to live there? Meet the cheery folks of the Yabba who drink, gamble, screw and hunt with animalistic abandon. And they might still be better than namby pamby assholes with something to prove about their masculinity.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

You know who makes really good movies that seem like they’re for kids but are actually for adults? The Czechs. I know, right? Who would’ve guessed. But between this and Jan Svankmajer’s Alice I’ve got to say that they really have the “fragile but beautiful, creepy and somewhat sexual fairy tale fantasy” stuff locked down. It’s a gorgeous movie with the best kind of surrealist dream logic and I would love it if for nothing but the astonishing set design.

American Mary

I’m not sure this movie has the best grasp on what it’s trying to say but damn if it doesn’t have a wonderfully good time saying it. After a terrible tragedy aspiring surgeon Mary Mason decides to use her skills to help the underground body modification community. But will she be pushed a little too far until bodies get modded without prior consent? Of course! Why would you be watching this otherwise?

Rushmore

The best superhero movie since the original Superman. Full review here (heavy spoilers).

White Material

I don’t get Claire Denis’s movies. They are strange and elliptical and they float from idea to idea and scene to scene like a free association poem. But boy do I love them. This one especially. It’s almost a collage of concepts – strong willed white woman, colonialism in Africa, power dynamics in post-colonial states, the ownership of black and white bodies, loyalty, cruelty, pain. But it has an incredible rush to it - a complex coursing heart that pulls together all the disparate artsy elements into a visceral gut-punch of an experience. Just magnificent.

The Revenge of Frankenstein

I am incredibly proud to present Messrs. Sangster and Fisher, the greatest writer-director team in horror cinema. The Hammer Horror hellraisers managed to revitalize the genre with a magnificent shot in the arm of intelligent and well-acted Gothic horror. With Peter Cushing as the magnificently douche-y Herr Frankenstein, the crew managed to pop out a number of canonical entries. My favorite, however, might be this one which finds the good doctor in an unusually likable mood. Sure, he’s still slicing up bodies and playing a cerebral game of musical chairs, but this time it’s in the service of his deformed assistant getting to live life in a beautiful new body. It’s unusually moving stuff and it works like gangbusters. And I will never, ever forget the delicate prissiness with which Peter Cushing handles a rose.

Ravenous

To those of you who don’t like this cannibal comedy thriller which starts by flipping off Nietzsche, that’s too bad. But for the rest of us (there are dozens!) this is one of those cult classics that make you consider how well a dark hooded robe would go with your ensemble and whether you can make room for unspeakable sacrificial rites after Sunday brunch. Believe.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I really want to see the play but I'll make do with Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

On the next exciting episode of Cinecdoche: More movies I liked and stuff!

Turn Your Brain On and Enjoy It

There’s a particular argument that crops up a lot in the comments section of game and movie discussions: “Eh, don’t think too hard about it. Just turn your brain off and enjoy it!” My response to this is usually “NO.” Or, if I’m being slightly more honest: “FUCK NO.”

The impetus for this rant is Chris Plante’s post on The Verge about his discomfort violence he’s asked to commit in Far Cry 4. It’s a pretty nuanced piece all told. Plante loves the game but is unsure about the protagonist’s motivations for the violence. With the recent slate of releases criticizing the player’s choices in games, Plante wonders if developers have also become skeptical about the ways in which violence is used in mainstream video games.

The topic of video game violence is best saved for another time (I’d suggest starting with this if you want to dig in). But what I’m more interested in is the comments on the piece. A surprising number of them fall into the “it’s just a game”, “why do you have to overthink it?” and “there’s too many of these damn articles criticizing the things I like in my games” categories.

And that last strawman is the point. When you’re asking for games criticism (remember, this isn’t even a fricking review) to ignore certain aspects of game media you are wrong. Criticism isn’t about assigning a goodness score to a piece of art. In fact that’s its absolute lowest form. Media criticism is about understanding how and why a piece of media works and the ways in which it fails. And that includes more aspects of the media than just its level of professionalism and polish. Criticism isn’t about recommendation. It’s about creating an understanding. And those comments want to, in an indirect and unintentional way perhaps, stifle that discussion.

The reason why they do this is simple. People like things and they don’t want to be told that the things they like are bad. That’s pretty much what this idea comes down to. Here’s the thing: tough shit. If you’re interested in discussing things you have to take the bad with the good. Not doing so results in the horror that is fan-ism, an uncritical acceptance of whatever’s brought before you.

That’s dangerous stuff. Especially with media. Media isn’t particularly good at getting you to DO stuff. But it is surprisingly good at getting you to think stuff. And without that critical lens you’ll be hard pressed to oppose what the media thinks. Paranoid? Yes. Justified? I think so.

And it’s not like a critical lens means you give up on enjoying stuff! Not at all. If a movie or game is actually good it'll hold up to the scrutiny. In fact, for the things that are truly good and wonderful I’d argue that critical thinking opens a whole degree of nuanced appreciation you might not have caught before. For every skeevy feeling I get playing BioWare romances (which I enjoy) I also get to appreciate the breakneck pacing of Tales of the Borderlands. So don’t be scared that your love of media’s going to leech away when you look at it critically. Turn your brain on and enjoy it. 

New Blog+

Hiya folks. My name's Shoumik and I like talking about movies, tv shows, comics and games. This here's my third (?) attempt at blogging. Hopefully it'll stick around longer than the others. If anybody would care to join me in this endeavour or contribute to this nonsense, please let me know. So, chill out and enjoy whatever gets posted here.