(Robert Bergman, 1987)
Superficially slick, writer-director Bergman gets in way over his head when he starts fussing up this simple revenge plot with his notions of human behaviour. The gang of murderous criminals is bad enough - Didn't they know Skull was a sadistic pedophile before they sprung him from jail? Why are they getting cold feet now? - and the attempts to complicate Robbie Rox's boneheaded characterization with phobias and frailties only serve to make him as incomprehensible as his cohorts. But those guys have nothing on Robert Bideman's cop, one of the most agonizingly stupid protagonists in the entire exploitation canon. An emotionally intelligent filmmaker might conceivably have kept us identifying with the schmuck as he accidentally shoots hostages, fucks around on his wife, lets mass murderers escape for no reason, and drives into a swamp instead of calling for backup, but as things stand he's just contemptible. As a result, when he finally goes into avenging-warrior mode, we wouldn't give a shit even if the routine didn't inexplicably reverse the trauma-based impotence which defines the guy's entire characterization to that point. By the end, you desperately want the gasoline-soaked Bideman to obey the laws of physics and go up in flames along with the exploding house he's two feet away from - or at least for his wife to kick him in the balls instead of accompanying him on his walk into the goddamned sunset.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Things
(Andrew Jordan, 1989)
Forget "Strange Brew", "Fubar", even "Goin' Down The Road". This astonishing film is the ultimate hoser movie, because the beer-guzzling dimwits at issue are also in charge, although not in control. Disheveled and distracted, manically overstated without purpose or effect, constantly interrupted by a 'newscaster' porn star whose cue cards are way too far off to the side, the holy trinity of Barry Gillis, Bruce Roach and - my very favourite - Doug Bunston are just about the least motivated protagonists in cinema history. Hordes of bloodthirsty, inert papier-mache ants are erupting from the stomach of Bunston's wife, and yet these dudes are so into drinking beer, rifling the cupboards and making the stupidest of stupid wisecracks that they barely notice - until they have to a) take a leak or b) change a blown fuse, which banal endeavours comprise the entirety of this film's 'narrative'. A couple agonizing dream sequences and some alienated mad-scientist torture stuff barely register given the overwhelming discontinuity of this grimy, stuttering, grinding catastrophe of a movie. Those intrepid or stoned enough to stay seated, however, will find themselves utterly enthralled by the movie's unprecedented will to fail - every time you think it's explored every possible way to be bad, it comes up with something new.
Forget "Strange Brew", "Fubar", even "Goin' Down The Road". This astonishing film is the ultimate hoser movie, because the beer-guzzling dimwits at issue are also in charge, although not in control. Disheveled and distracted, manically overstated without purpose or effect, constantly interrupted by a 'newscaster' porn star whose cue cards are way too far off to the side, the holy trinity of Barry Gillis, Bruce Roach and - my very favourite - Doug Bunston are just about the least motivated protagonists in cinema history. Hordes of bloodthirsty, inert papier-mache ants are erupting from the stomach of Bunston's wife, and yet these dudes are so into drinking beer, rifling the cupboards and making the stupidest of stupid wisecracks that they barely notice - until they have to a) take a leak or b) change a blown fuse, which banal endeavours comprise the entirety of this film's 'narrative'. A couple agonizing dream sequences and some alienated mad-scientist torture stuff barely register given the overwhelming discontinuity of this grimy, stuttering, grinding catastrophe of a movie. Those intrepid or stoned enough to stay seated, however, will find themselves utterly enthralled by the movie's unprecedented will to fail - every time you think it's explored every possible way to be bad, it comes up with something new.
Suzanne
(Robin Spry, 1980)
This film dooms itself right out of the gate by boasting its status as a treatise on Anglo-Francophone relations, as embodied by Jennifer Dale's 50/50 babe. In fact the parade riot under the credits is absolutely the only onscreen incident in this multi-decade narrative where Dale is engaged in anything other than romantic entanglement. If she's with a friend, they talk exclusively about men; if she's got an enemy, it's because they like the same guy; if she gets a job she's not at it for fifteen seconds before one dude or the other comes charging in; she doesn't even get a one-on-one interaction with her fucking kid. No wonder the filmmakers run over her mother with a truck; this is a man's, man's, man's world, and the femme-free production team seem to be consciously laying the ground work for the Bechdel Test. Perhaps as a result, although there's nothing particularly wrong with Dale's performance, she comes off as considerably less interesting than her suitors, angelic Gabriel Arcand and devilish Winston Rekert, both of whom do well under the circumstances. Some individual scenes are well-observed, and Helen Hughes is a riot as Rekert's souse mom, but it's just not worth it.
This film dooms itself right out of the gate by boasting its status as a treatise on Anglo-Francophone relations, as embodied by Jennifer Dale's 50/50 babe. In fact the parade riot under the credits is absolutely the only onscreen incident in this multi-decade narrative where Dale is engaged in anything other than romantic entanglement. If she's with a friend, they talk exclusively about men; if she's got an enemy, it's because they like the same guy; if she gets a job she's not at it for fifteen seconds before one dude or the other comes charging in; she doesn't even get a one-on-one interaction with her fucking kid. No wonder the filmmakers run over her mother with a truck; this is a man's, man's, man's world, and the femme-free production team seem to be consciously laying the ground work for the Bechdel Test. Perhaps as a result, although there's nothing particularly wrong with Dale's performance, she comes off as considerably less interesting than her suitors, angelic Gabriel Arcand and devilish Winston Rekert, both of whom do well under the circumstances. Some individual scenes are well-observed, and Helen Hughes is a riot as Rekert's souse mom, but it's just not worth it.
Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks
(Donald Brittain, 1985)
Deft, ironic, and scathing, this excellent film achieves the mythical synthesis of drama and documentary. One reason is that Brittain actually understands drama, and the many re-enactments and speculative dramatizations are achieved with a precision and wit that the wonderful cast could not have achieved without his steady hand. Further, where archival inserts and retrospective interviews can usually be counted on to drag such projects to a screeching halt, here the mixing of media actually adds energy to a narrative that would otherwise be rather heavy on the union meetings. One reason you notice the film's wondrous balance is that, regrettably, it eventually loses it - while the courtroom drama of the third act is better than most it remains courtroom drama, and for its duration the multiplicity of inputs is boiled down to a less than satisfying transcript. But even Brittain's occasionally pushy narration can't stop Maury Chaykin in his riveting performance as the common thug turned Commie-busting union boss - the film presents so much factual evidence of the guy's rampaging malevolence that Chaykin is free to concentrate on the endearing eccentricities that the absolutely powerful are free to indulge in. While Brittain's larger social critique unfolds in measured tones, you can't miss the parallel between Banks' goldfish and Jack Pickersgill's sausage dog.
Deft, ironic, and scathing, this excellent film achieves the mythical synthesis of drama and documentary. One reason is that Brittain actually understands drama, and the many re-enactments and speculative dramatizations are achieved with a precision and wit that the wonderful cast could not have achieved without his steady hand. Further, where archival inserts and retrospective interviews can usually be counted on to drag such projects to a screeching halt, here the mixing of media actually adds energy to a narrative that would otherwise be rather heavy on the union meetings. One reason you notice the film's wondrous balance is that, regrettably, it eventually loses it - while the courtroom drama of the third act is better than most it remains courtroom drama, and for its duration the multiplicity of inputs is boiled down to a less than satisfying transcript. But even Brittain's occasionally pushy narration can't stop Maury Chaykin in his riveting performance as the common thug turned Commie-busting union boss - the film presents so much factual evidence of the guy's rampaging malevolence that Chaykin is free to concentrate on the endearing eccentricities that the absolutely powerful are free to indulge in. While Brittain's larger social critique unfolds in measured tones, you can't miss the parallel between Banks' goldfish and Jack Pickersgill's sausage dog.
Tell Me That You Love Me
(Tzipi Trope, 1983)
Here we have something approaching Method soap opera - so felt and so nuanced that for a while you're fooled into thinking it's meaningful. The key is the agonizingly unresolved Andree Pelletier/Kenneth Welsh subplot, which foregrounds the issue of domestic abuse as an outcome of personal trauma and learned non-communication. In this context, the central marital breakdown between ambitious journalist Barbara Williams and jet-setting lawyer Nick Mancuso digs beneath its glamorous trappings and takes on some actual emotional power, attentively performed and mercifully free of hyperbole. The film is so true to its characters and situations that for a while it seems almost organic, embracing struggle amid chaos instead of the usual pat prescriptions. But after Mancuso leaves for New York Williams is saddled with too much meaningful gazing, and her own fleeting and unconvincing descent into abusiveness betrays the narrative's psychological complexities with the usual romance-versus-career trash. The predictable resolution is handled with a surprisingly light touch, but since neither Williams nor the audience has seen the slightest evidence of self-examination on Mancuso's part, it feels false anyway.
Here we have something approaching Method soap opera - so felt and so nuanced that for a while you're fooled into thinking it's meaningful. The key is the agonizingly unresolved Andree Pelletier/Kenneth Welsh subplot, which foregrounds the issue of domestic abuse as an outcome of personal trauma and learned non-communication. In this context, the central marital breakdown between ambitious journalist Barbara Williams and jet-setting lawyer Nick Mancuso digs beneath its glamorous trappings and takes on some actual emotional power, attentively performed and mercifully free of hyperbole. The film is so true to its characters and situations that for a while it seems almost organic, embracing struggle amid chaos instead of the usual pat prescriptions. But after Mancuso leaves for New York Williams is saddled with too much meaningful gazing, and her own fleeting and unconvincing descent into abusiveness betrays the narrative's psychological complexities with the usual romance-versus-career trash. The predictable resolution is handled with a surprisingly light touch, but since neither Williams nor the audience has seen the slightest evidence of self-examination on Mancuso's part, it feels false anyway.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Storm
(David Winning, 1987)
Made for zero money by a bunch of Calgary kids, this film has exactly one thing going for it, and that is its eccentric, amiable tone. It was an inspired choice to yank gawky nerd David Palfy out of the film's initial high school milieu and into a tense rural-thriller narrative, and his work is of a piece with the nasty, displaced, casually ironic direction. A prologue that comprises three guys glancing at each other in balaclavas for eight full minutes makes a surprising joke out of relentless overextension, but soon enough it becomes apparent that the joke's on the audience, because things never pick up - everything goes on far, far too long, with little payoff. The relationships and motivations are vague, the geography of the action ill-defined, the various cute props never exploited to their potential. The school sequence makes one joke, then takes ten minutes to make the same joke again. The narrative contrivances are incredible and annoying, and get more so as the movie goes on. And it's telling that in the first scene, two of the balaclava guys look so identical that I couldn't tell them apart until they unmasked. This is half a real movie at best.
Made for zero money by a bunch of Calgary kids, this film has exactly one thing going for it, and that is its eccentric, amiable tone. It was an inspired choice to yank gawky nerd David Palfy out of the film's initial high school milieu and into a tense rural-thriller narrative, and his work is of a piece with the nasty, displaced, casually ironic direction. A prologue that comprises three guys glancing at each other in balaclavas for eight full minutes makes a surprising joke out of relentless overextension, but soon enough it becomes apparent that the joke's on the audience, because things never pick up - everything goes on far, far too long, with little payoff. The relationships and motivations are vague, the geography of the action ill-defined, the various cute props never exploited to their potential. The school sequence makes one joke, then takes ten minutes to make the same joke again. The narrative contrivances are incredible and annoying, and get more so as the movie goes on. And it's telling that in the first scene, two of the balaclava guys look so identical that I couldn't tell them apart until they unmasked. This is half a real movie at best.
Strange Brew
(Rick Moranis/Dave Thomas, 1983)
Even in their sainted heyday, the SCTV gang could rarely navigate the rigors of an extended plotline. And that was with a full comic ensemble pushing from behind - here Moranis and Thomas are stranded at the head of an endless sea of failed straight men. You can literally see their spontaneous, improvisational working methods die on screen - they encourage countless little bits of business from Paul Dooley and Max von Sydow, but without an actual director at the helm or any comic verve to the performances, these barely catch your eye. Where the original routine was defined by its strict formal limits, this film plods through a formless and pushy narrative, some corporate hypno-espionage thing that takes up way too much space and limits the stars' creative elbow room. And where the McKenzie brothers originally conspired to take the piss out of the Canadian stereotypes they embodied, this movie's endless silly riffs on beer and hockey are lazy signifiers for the outside world and pandering, fist-pumping affirmations for the dumb louts these guys never really identified with in the first place.
Even in their sainted heyday, the SCTV gang could rarely navigate the rigors of an extended plotline. And that was with a full comic ensemble pushing from behind - here Moranis and Thomas are stranded at the head of an endless sea of failed straight men. You can literally see their spontaneous, improvisational working methods die on screen - they encourage countless little bits of business from Paul Dooley and Max von Sydow, but without an actual director at the helm or any comic verve to the performances, these barely catch your eye. Where the original routine was defined by its strict formal limits, this film plods through a formless and pushy narrative, some corporate hypno-espionage thing that takes up way too much space and limits the stars' creative elbow room. And where the McKenzie brothers originally conspired to take the piss out of the Canadian stereotypes they embodied, this movie's endless silly riffs on beer and hockey are lazy signifiers for the outside world and pandering, fist-pumping affirmations for the dumb louts these guys never really identified with in the first place.
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