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ammacinn
Reviews
King Kong (2005)
Anti-Hollywood theme not taken far enough, plus Forry Ackerman question
Anyone know if that was Forrest J. Ackerman in the crowd scene?
I had two big problems with the Peter Jackson KING KONG, which I wanted so badly to like:
1. Though they're parenthetical to the main drive of the film, the Heart of Darkness references resonate disturbingly with the fact that the (black) "savages" are played as brutal and evil-looking to the point of being demons, and it's strange that a black man is given the job of interpreting Conrad as he applies to the film -- a black man whose, um, narrative is resolved in a way that isn't quite satisfying, as if the film isn't sure if he's a character we care about or not, though clearly his blackness is meant to be significant (as apologia for the racism elsewhere?). Though the point of any of this is unclear by the end of the film, there's something weirdly excessive about how savage Jackson wants these savages to be; if their savagery, along with the Heart of Darkness references, are meant to be underscore primal aspects of the human condition (thus perhaps connected to the primal masculinity of Kong), then we're left with something more than a little politically suspect, which will leave audience members with a nodding acquaintance with post-colonial theory (or, say, Chinua Achebe's essay on Heart of Darkness) feeling a little less than comfortable. One wonders what Jackson was thinking.
2. The film's criticisms of Hollywood are milked quite successfully for much of the movie, but ultimately it is on this front that the film fails badly; though we're allowed at various points to like the Jack Black character, Carl Denham -- a ruthlessly manipulative (but somewhat comical) director/producer who doesn't care much at all about risking the men to get his movie -- there is something very very wrong about the fact that he is allowed to issue the final lines in the film, and that he ultimately has no comeuppance for his role in bringing about Kong's demise. Yes, Jackson is being faithful to the original -- Denham's final lines are pretty much the same -- but in this version of the film, it is so clearly Denham's crass willingness to exploit and use and manipulate, his desire for profit and glory and so forth, that lead to the tragic end, rather than Kong's love for Ann, that you really don't want Denham to be able to get away with milking the events for cheap sentiment, in the classic Hollywood manner. Yet he does; he dodges any accountability whatsoever, and you're left wanting someone to step in and hit him -- for Ann to slap him, say; the film screams for an explicit rejection of the ethos that he represents. Since there is none, we're left implicated ourselves in the pain and exploitation, sharing in Denham's guilt to the extent that we accept his authority to interpret the meaning of the story for us; he ends up a sort of author within the film, Jackson's stand-in, and this is none too pleasing. The film could have been far more satisfying if Jackson had had the courage to continue his departure from the original to hold Hollywood and Denham to account for the ways they use us; in criticizing Denham's ambitions earlier in the film, he awakens desires that he doesn't end up satisfying.
Of course, given the fact that King Kong IS a Hollywood spectacle film, you'd be left with a very contradictory message if he really held Denham to account; the film would be rejecting the very logic that produces it (Jonathan Rosenbaum, always ready to note these sorts of things, talks about the film's "hypocritical exploitation"). This contradiction is something you find in the first two Jurassic Park films, which reject corporate exploitive entertainment while embodying it, but... it still would have worked better narratively, would, for all its logical inconsistency, still have produced a feeling of closure more satisfying than what we're currently left with.
One of the reasons that one really wants to see Denham "get his" at the end of the film is that what happens to Kong is ultimately pretty painful to behold. Given how much more we are allowed to care about him, and Ann, and their relationship, it's very, very difficult to watch Kong being slowly picked off by airplanes at the top of the Empire State building. Anyone with a heart in the audience is ROOTING FOR KONG, wanting him to pull planes out of the sky, wanting him to escape somehow. Why make us love the big ape if only to kill him for our entertainment? But we're trapped in a story that can't end any other way, and that leaves you feeling pretty helpless, like Kong or Ann; we have no choice but watch a virtuous, beautiful animal being tortured and killed. (By the way, I'm not the only person who reacts that way; reading negative reviews off Rotten Tomatoes, to see if I'm alone in my perceptions, I note that Globe and Mail critic Liam Lacey phrases it thus -- "the finale is less about tragedy than cruelty, a scene about torturing an animal to death against a spectacular setting.") Maybe Jackson, in leaving this crime unavenged, wants us to feel complicit in what we consume, I don't know -- he casts himself as one of the fighter pilots shooting at Kong, just as apparently Mel Gibson provided the hands that nail Christ to the cross in his Jesus movie, but... there's nothing guaranteed to leave you feeling crappy than to see a movie where the bad guys win.
But I guess that's Hollywood. Maybe if Kong had fallen on Denham and crushed him...?
Note: this is all excerpted from my site, Alienated in Vancouver, where I write about the film at greater length, without having to struggle with IMDb's frustrating spell check.
Koroshiya 1 (2001)
for true athletes of perception
Heh. A brilliant film, the more you're interested in THINKING about cinema, the more this film will reward you. It is perverse, audacious, bizarre, and indeed quite... funny? Well, not exactly; I can see why other IMDBers have disagreed about whether it can be called a comedy or not -- there were many times when I laughed aloud when watching the film, but it was more in, uh, shock and awe than amusement (But that's the essence of humour, in a way, isn't it, to prod us in sensitive, taboo pink spots? If so, this IS a comedy -- but it's a cattle prod the director is using on us). I mean, I laughed uproariously when Kakihara grabbed his tongue by the piercing and cut the tip of it off, as a token of sincere apology to his yakuza bosses, who recoil, turn green, faint, etc... A minute later Kakihara has been to the hospital and is proudly displaying the stitches in it, which we get a gleeful little close-up of; it takes a certain TYPE of viewer to appreciate the humour in all this. (The tongue chunk, complete with piercing, is sent in a jar to an aggrieved mob boss -- Kakihara has been torturing him with hot oil while he hangs from hooks through his flesh -- but does nothing to appease the man, who seizes the tongue and crushes it, leaving us to wonder what it FEELS like to squeeze severed tongue... Or maybe that was just me). Miike is superb at foiling -- or, well, let's say subverting and re contextualizing -- audience expectations, torturing us with our own sadism, rewarding us for our masochism -- giving us exactly what we don't want when we don't want it, or better, giving us what we thought we did want, yet in such an excessive way as to cause the jaw to drop -- while being bold enough to slyly comment on the whole process throughout, to ionize it -- a smart ass through and through, at least during this film. I mean, it's hard to do the film justice on one viewing (and of the rated version, at that), but it's smart stuff, tho' indeed, quite twisted. Tsukamoto Shinya is pretty fun, too, in a role that could be a parody of his manipulating/evil characters in his own films (I'm thinking of TETSUO II and A SNAKE OF JUNE, in particular). Highly recommended. (Note: these comments were based on the 117 minute rental copy I located -- sounds like the 129 minute one is my next stop).
Basic (2003)
Unfairly savaged, tho' no great art
It annoys me how certain critics have the power to seriously damage a film's reception; since this film is getting badly abused and one-starred in many quarters, I thought I'd make a few comments here. I just saw it, on day three of its theatrical run, so who knows, maybe I can reassure a few people that it's a reasonably safe and interesting experience.... The film, as anyone reading this probably knows by now, presents us with wheels within wheels; an investigation into a crime is set up, and we keep hearing different, conflicting versions of the truth; almost as soon as there's security established, the filmmakers pull the carpet out from under us, and we're forced to rethink everything that has gone before. Generally I find films that do this somewhat annoying, often because tricking the audience becomes an end in itself; THE USUAL SUSPECTS, for all its craft, seemed pretty empty to me, say, beyond the ha-ha-fooled-you punchline at the end; it wasn't ABOUT anything, other than fooling the audience, demonstrating how gullible we are. BASIC, however, actually has a THEME that it develops; it seems pretty consistently to set up then knock down male authority figures, finding corruption and abuse of power almost everywhere it looks, calling everyone's trustworthiness into question; it's relevant that one of the main investigators is female, allowing us ultimately to look at the world of male power through a woman's eyes. I don't want to spoil the film by saying much more than this; suffice it to say that if DIE HARD was McTiernan's reactionary "husband knows best" film, serving to affirm male power and humiliate its female character and her career ambitions until she runs back to her husband reformed of her independent ways -- then BASIC seems to be a sort of remedy. If you enjoy thinking about films -- if you understood what I just said about DIE HARD, f'rinstance -- then you'll probably find BASIC a passably entertaining piece of cinema; if nothing else, it reveals that the world is almost ready for women to have careers (still a troubled area in most Hollywood fare). It's no big deal; it still isn't a great film, isn't a life-changing experience, but it's theme and form are nicely integrated -- it plays its games with you so that you WILL feel the insecurity of wondering who to trust -- and it plays these games well. It simply isn't the meaningless piece of garbage that people are saying it is. It's still fluff, ultimately, but it'll hold your attention, and if you WANT to goof around with casually deconstructing it, it will provide you with food for thought. Which is all I generally ask for from big budget cinema; who could reasonably expect more, these days?
La mort en direct (1980)
International version different than N. American?
I love this film, and have seen it several times on video and even once at a repertory cinema in Vancouver. I'm in Japan at the moment, and just picked up an old Japanese video release of it here from a second-hand store. Here's a shock -- the version of the film available here has some significant DIFFERENCES from the North American in print. There are some minor scenes that were cut from the North American release -- Keitel announcing a commercial break and shining his shoes, which he tells Stanton are made of ostrich, is a scene I sure don't recall in the N. American version, or Romy Schneider telling Max von Sydow how she loves to see the moon come out during the day. But there's also a significant plot point that differs, too -- conveyed by a few brief scenes and lines that are NOT in the American version (WARNING: spoilers follow). (I mean, it HAS been years since the last time I saw it, so maybe I've just forgotten the film, but I really don't think so). KATHERINE IS NOT ACTUALLY DYING, in the movie; she has been deceived by the doctors and the TV crew. We think she really is sick all along, but in fact she is being tricked, with the plan of "rescuing her" later in the series. The doctors reveal this shortly after Keitel blinds himself -- they have a conversation that goes like, "Do you think he should have been told that she's not really dying?" It's the medicine she's been prescribed; IT is making her sick. When Stanton calls the Mortenhoe residence, and Mortenhoe tells Katherine that "they're on the way," von Sydow has lines about how "it's all a mistake, you're not really sick, it was all a stunt -- you just have to stop taking the medicine!" So when Stanton and the TV crew and such are racing to Mortenhoe's in the helicopters, they're coming, in part, to "rescue" Katherine; and her decision to take all the pills and commit suicide, to ruin them, plays VERY DIFFERENTLY in this context. Maybe it was felt North American audiences couldn't handle it?
If any of you can confirm that I'm not nuts here, and that the film I've just described is quite DIFFERENT from the US version, PLEASE e-mail me. One easy way to test would be to check out the runtime on the video release back there -- the original one, from way back when, I think on Embassy. The runtime is NOT 128 minutes (the version I watched actually is).
All told, the international cut is slower, meanders more, but is ultimately the superior version, carrying Katherine's defiance out more fully. I recommend it, if you can actually find it. If you're curious, no, it isn't in print here anymore.