Hard to be human again: Kill List (2011).

Kill List is a messy movie, literally and figuratively. There's a lot going on within its lean 95 minutes, and more than a few viewers did not hesitate to call foul. Roger Ebert—a brilliant critic whose prose style nonetheless usually leaves something to be desired—struck the bullseye in his review, delivering an appropriately jumbled verdict: "It's baffling and goofy, blood-soaked and not boring. That it's well-made adds to the confusion; it feels like a better film than it turns out to be." 

But what's really maddening is the fact that, well, it is a better film than it turns out to be. Part kitchen-sink crime story, part jagged suburban nightmare, and part Wicker Man homage, Kill List is ambitious, brutal, and mesmerizing—but it's also murky, asymmetrical, and hard to like. It's reminiscent of the work of Michael Haneke (Funny Games) and Gaspar Noé (Irreversible) in that it combines precise, expert craftsmanship with decisions that seem designed to purposefully alienate the viewer. It's the kind of movie you can't stop rolling around in your head after watching it—partly because you're probably trying to settle on whether you actually liked it or not.

It's definitely a horror movie, but in a very particular way. There's nothing supernatural or otherworldly on tap here, only the sordid ugliness of man. The film revolves around Jay (Neil Maskell) and Gal (Michael Smiley), a pair of soldiers-turned-contract killers who go to work for a mysterious, sinister "Client." Despite their grim vocation, Jay and Gal are wisely depicted as ordinary, likable men who happen to kill people for a living. Gal is the archetypal charming Irish rogue, while Jay is a high-strung but loving family man whose tumultuous relationship with his wife (MyAnna Buring) is one of the film's focal points; the film opens with a domestic screaming match over their vanishing bank account.

A tense dinner party scene early in the film is as absorbing as any of the murders seen later, perfectly capturing the kind of casual cruelties and simmering resentments that mark a marriage balanced on a razor's edge over financial ruin. Before we come to know the central duo as killers, we come to know them as people.

As it happens, Gal is also a Catholic (albeit more culturally than anything) while Jay and his wife are unrepentant atheists (reminder #2 that you're not watching an American movie, after the acccents), and the first target on their list turns out to be a priest. But this fact proves to be little more than a speed bump, as Gal casually notes that they should be thankful that their quarry isn't a little kid; unlike a lot of movies with the familiar "no women, no kids" hitman's code of honor, you get the sense that working class anti-heroes Jay and Gal probably would take a job targeting women and children—but they would do so reluctantly, and they certainly wouldn't be happy about it. There is little moralizing in Kill List, and what we do get is agreeably warped, like when one of our anti-heroes makes the hilariously qualified claim that "I've hardly done any terrible shit."

The relationship between Jay and Gal is the best part of Kill List, and in their rough-edged gallows humor and back-slapping camaraderie we can recognize our own friends, brothers, fathers and sons. But their separation from us is also total, because, after all, they kill people people for a living. And they do so very dispassionately: while plotting how to attack the priest, Jay makes a joke about how they should probably surveil him for a while rather than just shooting him down on the street in a hail of bullets, and his affect is akin to an office worker discussing a broken copier.

And indeed, the violence in Kill List is sudden, drained of glamor, and almost casual. It's also sometimes quite hard to watch, even for a seasoned veteran of horror film gross-outs like myself. There's a scene with a hammer that puts even Drive's to shame in terms of sheer visceral impact; it's in the same category as the stomach-churning opening scene from Frayed, although I don't know if it quite outstrips that one.

You may not be surprised to discover that as the film goes on, things get worse. Maskell's performance proves to be one of the film's greatest assets as Jay becomes increasingly unglued, a simmering cauldron of post-traumatic anger and violence. Again, there are no overt horror histrionics on display, and that's part of what makes the film so strangely successful: Kill List positively seethes with menace, and it does so without falling back on stale cliches. A big contribution comes from Jim Williams' music and Martin Pavey's sound design, filling everyday shots of suburban streets and neatly trimmed lawns with baleful, ominous dissonance.

[Warning: spoilers ahead.]

It all leads up to the ending, which is the point where you decide whether your accounts of the movie to friends will be filled with cursing. All along the way the film has been scattering breadcrumbs suggesting that there's something even more ominous at work beyond casual brutality and murder for hire; you get the sense that "the Client" may have enlisted Jay and Gal in service to some kind of dark pagan lord or tentacled elder god, slouching towards Sheffield to be born.

The film's climax is interesting for how on the nose it is, considering that Kill List is a film that seems to delight in vagueness and questions left unanswered (e.g. what happened to Jay and Gal in Kiev). But it also works, almost in spite of itself; the finale is full of eerie visual details and assaulting sonics that seem like the logical culmination of the whole film's patient, boiling sense of dread.

The biggest problem with the film's last moments is sort of an accident of timing: they are remarkably similar to the ending of A Serbian Film, Srđan Spasojević's controversial 2010 shocker, and both movies seem to share nearly identical story arcs. But these movies are awfully close to each other chronologically for Kill List to be consciously emulating A Serbian Film, which makes me think they arrived at their respective twists of the knife independently. 

And if you ask me, Kill List works better than its more notorious counterpart on every level. When I finally got around to seeing A Serbian Film, the latest entry in the "most transgressive film ever made" sweepstakes, I was a little surprised and disappointed at how cartoonish it was—a judgment that seems borne out by Spasojević and writer Aleksandar Radivojević's comments that the film was apparently intended as a parody of political correctness (a message that may or may not be supported by the end product).

As shock cinema's latest enfant terrible, A Serbian Film is certainly disturbing—but it's also so gleefully over-the-top that its final dark revelation seems painfully obvious, and as a result lacks the revolting horror it should properly have. The vibe of Kill List is entirely different: it's The Jesus Lizard to A Serbian Film's Cannibal Corpse ("Hammer Smashed Face" allusion entirely intentional), eschewing rote signifiers of brutality in favor of something rawer and more genuinely disorienting. There's a brilliant moment right after the film's final reveal, when the frame freezes and a grating feedback tone sweeps up to nearly deafening volume—and for a second, I really didn't know what would happen next. Would we cut to the credits? Would Jay's head suddenly explode? Would my TV? Would Satan, laughing, spread his wings?

Some movies are easy to like. It's virtually impossible to honestly hate on something like, say, Shaun of the Dead. But Kill List is not such a movie. It never seems like it cares about winning you over, but it also doesn't seem like it's trying to piss you off; it's never sophomoric or exploitative. It just is—and as such, it's very much in the native British tradition of "kitchen sink" filmmaking. It's messy, difficult, harsh, and overwhelming. But somehow, almost in spite of itself, it's also very good.

Horror noise goody bag: unpacking the new Blue Sabbath Black Cheer.

I'm not usually one to wig out over new vinyl. This is because

(1) Literally everyone is a record collector now;

(2) Most new vinyl releases these days are reissues of records that sucked the first time, cynically repressed by those hoping to cash in on the bubble before it bursts; and most importantly,

(3) I am a contrarian asshole.

That said, I was blown away by the insanely lavish new Blue Sabbath Black Cheer release, The Boundary Between the Living and the Deceased Dissolved, on Equation Records. This is the fanciest physical release I've seen since the Floor box set, and frankly it makes that fine product look like a 10th generation mix tape caked in vomit.

But shitty pictures are worth the proverbial thousand words:

Here's the cover, complete with glare obscuring the awesome artwork. That neat sticker lets you know all about the cornucopia of goodies you're about to crack open, like a sugar-addled child busting up a piñata.

The two LP sleeves are held together with MAGNETS! (Hold your ICP jokes please.) I thought this was pretty ingenious. I hate gatefold sleeves though.

Okay, so here's what's on tap in the first sleeve. You get a one-sided etched 7 inch which is dedicated to The Cherry Point, and--surprise!--features crunchy, HNW style rumble. Honestly I probably won't ever listen to it again (7 inches, especially one-sided ones, really aren't the ideal HNW format if you ask me), but it does come with a  bunch of neat little art cards. And you also  get a boatload of stickers (featuring uplifting messages like "FUCK YOUR SCENE" and "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHEN YOU ARE DEAD"), plus a giant, '80s-style 2" button with a little piece of the cover artwork! And wait, is that a fucking slipmat in there?

Yep. Pretty sick! (Also, the 7" is red, a fact sure to please all the dorks who still think colored vinyl is the most revolutionary invention since movable type. You also get the label from the etched side, so that you can glue it onto some other 7 inch and confuse yourself later.)

So what's in sleeve number two? Well, you get the album itself, which is also one-sided and features a beautiful silkscreen on the flip side (see below). There's more gorgeous inserts, a numbered certificate (out of 235) and even a kind of BSBC sampler CD with rare and unreleased stuff! I really appreciated this last, as most labels would've been content to throw in a download code or just neglect digital altogether--but I still love CDs, and it's cool to get extra songs on top of the LP.

Here's the gnarly silkscreen. The LP itself shreds too: it's more in the vein of "classic" BSBC than the 7 inch, starting off with ominous chiming cymbals and gradually snowballing into a blizzard of graveyard noise.

There's also a special message ("READ ME FIRST" at the top) detailing an unfortunate printing/shipping mishap where the ink was still wet when it got put in the white inner sleeve. 

"We apologize for this faux pas. But, on the plus side, extricating this record will involve a little wanton vandalism: ripping, tearing, and injury to the sleeve - which is condoned by the band and heartily encouraged; especially while listening to the other audio contents of this package." 

The message says nearly every copy was affected, but actually I don't think mine was, as the 12" slid out of the sleeve with no problems. I like to think some collector nerd out there is stewing in anguish over this, while I feel a little cheated that I didn't get to rip my record out of its sleeve like a Kali-worshipping witch doctor tearing out some Christian missionary's heart.

What's inside the CD sleeve? More stickers! Again, with most releases you'd count yourself lucky to get a single sticker, but Equation and BSBC throw enough at you to wallpaper your mini-fridge with grim propaganda.

 

I forgot to mention you also get a sweet 12" x 24" poster of the cover art! Here's a better worse different picture, taken after I threw it into a spare frame I had lying around for that letterboxed effect:

So, all in all, pretty awesome. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this is one of the coolest releases I've ever seen. It costs $36 and is apparently being sold at cost, a claim which I totally believe. I think it's definitely worth the scratch if you're even a casual fan of BSBC; if Corrupted releases were packed with this much cool stuff I'd feel a lot better about paying $30+ for them. (Of course, if Corrupted ever makes the complete archival box set I've dreamed of, it will probably make this look like an RRRecords release and cost approximately $10,000.)

Like I said, it's limited to 235 copies and I don't know how many are left, but check it out at http://www.chronoglide.com/Equation_releases.html.

Tweets ahead: Detention (2011).

Before we proceed, it should also be noted that Detention is a movie that, on paper, I thought I would absolutely hate. Everything I read described it as a fast-paced, disorienting paean to the mash-up age, a kind of Scream for the Twitter era. And while this description is apt, it also fails to do justice to what makes this movie so special: namely, its middle-finger intelligence (pictured), kinetic visual style, and a boundless enthusiasm that manages to break through its own Kevlar vest of referential irony to deliver something surprisingly thoughtful, and even touching.

But Detention is very much a love-it-or-hate-it movie. The algorithmic magic of Rotten Tomatoes suggests that coin-flip figure should be revised upward: I was honestly a little surprised to find that the film has a lowly 31% rating. But the user reviews tell a different story, with Detention earning a solid 66%.

Is this evidence of the yawning generation gap between a stodgy cadre of baby boomer film critics and a younger viewership of smartphone-wielding teenage hooligans? Or is it the same old critical snobbery towards anything even resembling horror that we've seen hundreds of times before?

Sony Pictures gamely attempts to summarize Detention as an "apocalyptic fantasy, horror, science fiction, action-thriller, body swapping, time-traveling teen romantic comedy", but even this mouthful falls short of capturing the film's dizzying sweep. Put simply, Detention is the teen movie to end all teen movies.

It's a 500 MPH live-action comic book gene-splice, with dominant and recessive traits from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Skins, John Hughes, Shaun of the Dead, Degrassi (if upgraded to a hard R), Heathers, Mark Millar, Buckaroo Banzai, Clueless, and about a thousand other reference points that whiz by like bullets fired from a pop culture AK-47.

In the growing pantheon of self-aware horror films, Detention occupies a unique niche: it may not be quite as charming as Shaun of the Dead or as artfully composed as Behind the Mask, but it has so much youthful zeal and raw energy that it nonetheless shoots straight to the head of the pack. And compared to, say, Shaun of the Dead's expert mix of horror and humor—a balance which could probably be confirmed by an electron microscope—Detention leans much further towards comedy, with the horror usually arriving as a welcome, bloody surprise.

I really think the closest point of comparison for Detention's singular style is Dan Harmon's brilliant and beloved sitcom Community, which seems to win critical esteem in direct proportion to how fast Detention loses it. Grizzly Lake and Greendale CC feel like they come from the same universe: the "schmitty"-spouting teen twerps that torment Jeff and Britta in one episode could have escaped from Riley's science class, and a slightly younger Abed would blend seamlessly into the film's cast (where he would instantly recognize Riley's Angela Chase costume at Sander's party).

Yet Community earns endless (and well-deserved!) critical accolades while Detention languishes, far from earning even a "Fresh" rating. Why? Again, blame the generation gap: while Community often culls material from fare like My Dinner With Andre or John Woo's The Killer, Detention's more masscult sensibility alludes to decidedly gauche sources like Steven Seagal or Saw.

But one piece of Detention's technicolor pop mosaic stands out to me as evidence of the subtle taste and sophistication that makes it so special: despite very ample opportunity, filmmaker Joseph Kahn resists the impulse to make his Breakfast Club references anything but oblique. Like fireworks prior to child safety regulations, postmodernism is a dangerous toy: witness the cloying, candy-binge preciousness of Juno, or the painfully try-hard pyrotechnics of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. But Detention is the movie that these and many other entries of the past few years were supposed to be.

Sometimes Detention admittedly feels more like a series of vignettes than a movie, and towards the end the quantum whipcracks of the plot do become a little vertigo-inducing. But that's all part of the fun, and also part of the point in a movie which features at least half a dozen kitchen sinks. 

Plus, it's hard to complain when there are so many loopy highlights: a hilariously left-field, Spider-Man style digression regarding the origins of "TV Hand"; a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie; a deadpan tour through 19 years of pop fashion courtesty of "the silent enigma" Elliot Fink (Detention's equivalent of Pulp Fiction's dance contest); and the alien abduction of an extraterrestrial, time-traveling bear. (Yes, really.)

So, watch Detention. Realize that there's a good chance you'll hate it—but if you do, you can at least take comfort in the fact that you're not alone. 

Then again, maybe you're just old.

A terrible beauty is born: Prometheus.

In our media-drunk era, Prometheus has already earned plenty of vituperative bashing online.  This is, I think, entirely predictable: it had tons of hype, and represented a renowned creator returning to a beloved, longstanding IP which is cherished closely by a sizable subset of the population. (A subset to which, it should be noted, I myself belong.) 

For a sample, visit the IMDB user reviews page. Most of this "criticism" is delivered in the lingua franca of the internet, that familiar idiom of hyperbolic, childish tirade: "ruined forever", "pure vomit in film form", "written by a 10 year old", etc. It's a bit ironic that this dipshit dialect would be used to denounce the supposed watering down of a classic piece of popular art. Such is the culture consumption of late capitalism: see the movie, and either "like" it on Facebook or post a steaming, apoplectic denunciation using tenth generation, recycled "Comic Book Guy" tropes.

This is a clear instance where the traditional media, sputtering from its deathbed, still plays a valuable role. Newspaper critics have been much more balanced: Slate's razor-sharp reviewer Dana Stevens skewers the film's lapses in logic and explanation, while still lauding the film's dazzling visuals and sheer craft; Kenneth Turan and A.O. Scott deliver many of the same judgments but offer a stronger view of the film overall; and Roger Ebert doesn't hesitate or hedge in calling it "magnificent" and awarding it four stars.

The truth? Prometheus is flawed, but brilliant. It sometimes underwhelms, but it frequently overwhelms. It is narrow and mythic at the same time, and often a sense of skin-deep shallowness hides a surprising, almost Romantic depth. It is a film that leaves much unsaid, which is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. In the end, it is a towering achievement, a lofty vision that is wholly unconcerned with the insects nibbling at its heels.

If you're as fanatical about the Alien movies as I am, then take it from me: you really, really owe it to yourself to go see Prometheus without having anything spoiled for you. Having seen it, I can better appreciate the shell game played by Ridley Scott in the months leading up to release: is it an Alien movie, or isn't it? If you love the series, don't let anyone tell you the answer.

That said, I can't imagine trying to talk about the movie without heavy spoilers (for reasons I'll get into), so consider this fair warning.

SPOILERS AHEAD! DON'T READ UNTIL YOU SEE IT!

Prometheus takes place in the late 21st century, and concerns the eponymous science vessel's search for the origins of mankind in the far reaches of space. Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered a recurring pictogram in a wide range of ancient human civilizations, which provides a map to a distant solar system capable of sustaining life. 

With generous financial backing from Weyland Industries (and let me tell you what a treat it is to hear a smooth, computerized voice chirp "building better worlds"), the Prometheus sets out on a journey to find these interstellar benefactors, whom Shaw and Holloway call "Engineers."

The ship is crewed by a motley assortment of scientists and spacefarers that more or less fall into a generic template. Among others, there's Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a ball-busting ice queen overseeing the mission for Weyland; the ship's captain (Idris Elba), who suggests Al Matthews' gruff-but-good-hearted Sgt. Apone from Aliens; a pair of wisecracking pilots who recall Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto's grease monkeys in Scott's 1979 masterpiece (down to their concern about "shares"); a prickly, tattooed geologist who is clearly earmarked for doom; and, of course, there's Shaw, who is this film's Ripley. (Which is not to say that the character is much like the iconic Warrant Officer.) Perhaps most notably, there is also David (Michael Fassbender), an android progenitor of Ash and Bishop from the Alien films.

Prometheus is utterly, shockingly beautiful. Shot in a cold, Gigerian color palette tempered with bursts of shipboard, electronic warmth (sound familiar?), it's the kind of movie where every few seconds there's a shot suitable for framing. I found the opening scene—which chronicles a mysterious suicide, and its consequences—absolutely riveting, and a captivating blend of the Romantic (the tiny individual literally swallowed up by nature) and spectacular sci-fi. This sense of wonder didn't ever really flag until the credits.

For me, part of this may be due to the fact that Prometheus is intensely, overwhelmingly reminiscent of Alien. This is most immediately noticeable with our first glimpses of the Prometheus, where the deserted bridge, sterile compartments, and hypersleep chambers seem very much like a deliberate homage to the Nostromo. It also, somewhat surprisingly, takes more than a few pages from James Cameron's Aliens (which is my favorite movie of all time)—most notably with the obligatory hangar bay briefing scene, and a violent homage later in the film.

At this point, I should note that the performances are a mixed bag. Logan Marshall-Green, as Holloway, is woefully out-of-place and almost instantly annoying, and for me he was one of the film's real weak points; I found myself wishing that Guy Pearce had taken his role, instead of being buried beneath a thick layer of makeup for a two-scene cameo as Peter Weyland. Theron and Elba are satisfyingly workmanlike, and though they don't really have much to do they are—as usual—endlessly watchable. 

Rapace really delivers, and though her protestations of not aping Ripley are fully justified, her combination of vulnerability and toughness (the "cesarean" scene is a great example of wordless, physical acting) is very much in the tradition of Sigourney Weaver. As many critics have noted, the most compelling performance comes from rising star Fassbender, whose David is a studied, coldly aloof and childlike creation; appropriately, he makes later models like Bishop (or even Ash!) seem much more human.

Okay, so let's just cut to the chase. Far from a George Lucas style retcon (or an unrelated property cashing in on franchise association), it's surprising how much of the bedrock of Prometheus' mythology is held over from the original Alien. The Engineers that the crew of the Prometheus are seeking happen to be the same race as the "Space Jockey" discovered in the first Alien (and who Scott originally envisioned using the xenomorphs as bioweapons), and LV-223 is discovered to be a kind of military installation, housing numerous ships like the one fatefully explored by Kane, Dallas, and Lambert. It is also a kind of weapons storage facility, housing thousands of small "vases" (which may remind you of something) containing a mysterious black substance, which is quickly revealed to dramatically mutate life forms it comes into contact with.

Although it's purtportedly a military installation, the eerie murals and artful decoration of the alien outpost suggested something else to me. All through the latter part of the film, I kept thinking of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult infamous for releasing sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. I couldn't help seeing the Space Jockeys as a splinter sect from the Engineers, a kind of alien death cult who have their own form of bioweapon to release on humanity (or the galaxy), bringing about the apocalypse. And that maybe, in the end, Shaw would find the answers she was seeking.

Of course, this is all just speculation. Which brings up the film's biggest weakness: the script. Penned by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, it has a sense of generic vagueness and frequently backslides into cliche. Where Lost had a long-form format to string out its mysteries and deepen its initially stock characters (e.g. rock star junkie, haunted soldier, con man with a heart of gold), Prometheus has just two hours. As as a result, the characters (even the good ones) gain little dimension, and often serve as little more than plot devices. One of the biggest examples, for me, was the snap decision by the two pilots to go down with the ship at the end: up to that point, we had no reason to think of them as self-sacrificing.

But this basic lack of depth and explanation is largely overshadowed by the broader mythos and mystique of the incredible world Scott and company create. The Engineers, their civilization, the black goo—it all provides an irresistible desire to know and to understand in the same way that Lost did at its best. (A theme which also happens to be exactly what the film is about.) For every forehead-slapping piece of dialogue, there's another picturesque scene beckoning the viewer with a grand sense of otherworldly strangeness.

Along the way, there are more and more tantalizing allusions to Alien, from the look of the alien vases to a number of very facehugger-like mutated creatures. It all culminates in the revelation of the cockpit that the film's Space Jockey was originally found in—and in the film's final minutes, the suggestive link between the films teased by Scott is made very explicit. Perhaps the most remarkable of these moments for me was a brief glimpse of an engraving in one of the Engineer outpost's chambers: the camera lingers on an abstract, silvery image that could be a Rorschach blot, but which looks unmistakably like an alien queen.

In the end, Prometheus is a staggering visual feast, and a smorgasbord for Alien obsessives. It's worlds away from, say, Avatar, and I much prefer Prometheus' grand, mythic sweep to that film's reheated, space-born Dances With Wolves. Even if the characterization and detail doesn't always cohere, Prometheus more than compensates by providing a brand of dark, existential sci-fi that has been sorely lacking at the box office.

Upstairs, upstairs: The Descendants.

The Descendants opens with an overture to the vicissitudes of life in contemporary urban Hawaii, where over shots of obese natives trundling through crosswalks George Clooney laments that living in a picturesque vacation spot doesn't make him "immune to life." This brief, salty monologue culminates in a bitter middle-finger to our prejudices about this island getaway: "Paradise? Paradise can go fuck itself."

This opening sequence does an admirable job of tweaking our expectations, which the rest of the movie shamelessly and systematically rebuilds. The Descendants, which is shot like it was commissioned by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, is a movie about how we're supposed to feel sorry for Matt King (Clooney), a suddenly single father of two who also happens to be a millionaire descended from royalty, and who owns 25,000 acres of unspoiled Hawaiian land. The Descendants is an odious piece of propaganda for the credit default swap era, and a bitter pill made even more indigestible by the fact that, even if you can somehow bracket its ideological assumptions, it still totally fucking sucks.

During filming, this Hawaiian tent city for the homeless was bulldozed to make way for a catering tent.

The film attempts to paper over King's privileged status by subjecting him to the tragedy of having his wife Elizabeth fall into an irreversible coma. As King prepares for her removal from life support, he tries to rebuild a flickering connection with his daughters--caused largely by the fact that he works hard as an attorney, rather than relying on his inherited fortune. King discovers that his wife had cheated on him with a real estate agent (Matthew Lillard) poised to gain a windfall from the sale of his inherited land, which King is preparing to authorize. The film counts down to these two events--Elizabeth's death and the sale of the land--depicting how King tries to prepare for both.

This movie reminded me a lot of the equally overvalued Little Miss Sunshine, in that both seem to pack all of the tedious, spoiled self-importance of contemporary "serious" fiction into a film catering to critics who are incapable of critical thinking. The action here is quintessentially low stakes, as Elizabeth's forthcoming demise is revealed early on and King's assorted anguishes are almost entirely unconvincing. His daughters are rendered in Hollywood high cliche: the rebellious teenager (we know she's rebellious because she swears) and the precious, quirky young thing whose innocence is unspoiled by the weighty goings-on occurring around her. Along for the ride is a doltish and insufferable "surfer dude" buddy long past his 1997 expiration date. (Remember how this movie insisted that it wouldn't deal in cliches at the beginning?)

But the real way that The Descendants tries to get us to care about its dramatically inert storyline is by casting George Clooney as King, which is sort of like casting Ryan Gosling as the lead in a biopic of Lloyd Blankfein. In this way, it's a lot like Juno: try to imagine just about anyone but the chosen actors in the central role, and it quickly becomes apparent how truly awful these movies are. (Picture a Juno starring, say, Meghan Fox, or a Descendants headlined by Ryan Reynolds; no one has the stomach for such a picture.) But Clooney's charisma is also a double-edged sword: even given King's unavailability, it's kind of tough to believe that his wife would cheat on him with Matthew Lillard.

From a deleted scene where Lillard's uptight real estate agent goes rollerblading.

All of this bullshit is designed to camouflage the fact that this is a movie about the trials and tribulations of the upper class, and how they really aren't that different from you and me. Sure, King is a millionaire who owns enough land to shanghai you and everyone you've ever met into slave labor on his sugar plantation, but he just can't connect with his children! And his wife is dying! Surely, such tragedies prove that differences of wealth and class don't divide us as much as we imagine?

There's a couple problems with this picture. Despite the revelation that people in King's tax bracket are not actually immune to death (yet), the fact that his wife fell into a coma thanks to a freak speedboat accident hardly puts her on the same level as people who can't afford treatment when they break their fingers working a double shift at the chicken rendering plant. (Or those who have to give up food in order to fill prescriptions.) The idea that such an unexpected emergency might impose significant financial hardship is, obviously, never even mentioned here; mere mortals may struggle to pay for a visit to the dentist's office, but King naturally can bankroll an extended hospital stay while taking several days off in order to chase Matthew Lillard around Hawaii like a small child in search of Pokemon.

And King's supposed estrangement from his children is similarly muted; the lip service paid to the teenage hellion prone to "drugs and older men" is not really borne out by the sassy-but-supportive waif who follows King around the islands with a harmless, platonic pothead in tow. Along the way, director Alexander Payne's camera roams over the scenery like Larry Clark's over a gaggle of naked teenagers, constantly re-inscribing the idea of Hawaii as a pristine island utopia, despite all assurances to the contrary. There are plenty of Hawaiians for whom this stereotype is glaringly false--but they are conveniently airbrushed out of The Descendants.

Larry Clark's version of The Descendants would've consisted entirely of scenes like this.

I'm sure that there are people out there who will find The Descendants hits close to home; if you've ever worn an ascot or had to fumigate your poolhouse, this movie will no doubt speak to you. But frankly, given George Clooney's apparent passion for social justice, it's disappointing he'd sign on for such a transparent apologia for the 1%. But what is Hollywood really about, if not glaringly obvious lies?

Secretly Great Movies: Die Hard With a Vengeance.

The story you know: 

After a five year hiatus, Bruce Willis reprised his role as embattled NYPD cop John McClane, rejoining original director John McTiernan. With Samuel L. Jackson along for the ride, McClane becomes caught up in a sadistic game of "Simon Says" as the duo pinball across New York defusing bombs and trying to catch the bad guys. The film got mixed reviews, with even the positive ones being typically patronizing: Roger Ebert, giving the movie three stars, described it as a wind-up toy.

The shocking truth:

Die Hard With a Vengeance is actually the best Die Hard movie.

From the standpoint of auteur theory, it's the only true sequel. The lackluster second installment (which most people only remember for the part where McClane talks about the Glock 7, a fictional gun made out of porcelain which can bypass airport metal detectors) was directed by Renny Harlin, the mastermind behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (a huge letdown after the awesome Dream Warriors) and the epic pirate flop Cutthroat Island. The fun but regrettably neutered Live Free or Die Hard was directed by the guy behind the Underworld series, i.e. those tedious vampire movies you never bothered to see. McTiernan, meanwhile, directed Die Hard and Predator, two achievements that eclipse any latter-day sins you might care to charge him with, including lying to the FBI.

But better than the original? Go back watch McTiernan's 1988 action masterpiece, the greatness of which I am not disputing, and notice how the film's otherwise faultless marathon of walking over broken glass and killing terrorists screeches to a halt whenever the characters of Sgt. Powell and Argyle, McClane's hapless sidekicks, enter the frame. This is during the height of Reginald Vel Johnson's career of playing likable supporting cops, but he's just not really up to the task here; the maudlin sequence where he outlines his tragic fall from grace due to an accidental shooting is time that could be much better spent cracking wise and dispatching smarmy eurotrash terrorists. (De'voreaux White, who played the totally superfluous limo driver Argyle, was more or less never heard from again.)

"I can rebuild him. I have the technology."

With a Vengeance, based on a non-Die Hard script called "Simon Says", rectifies these mistakes by introducing the most memorable character in the entire series: Zeus Carver, the hard-nosed electrician from Harlem who provides the perfect counterpart to McClane's one-man army in a soiled wifebeater. Jackson and Willis' chemistry is enviable, and only magnifies the disappointment at seeing McClane paired with the weiner from the computer commercials in Live Free or Die Hard.

It would've been easy for a tone-deaf actor to turn With a Vengeance into a very uncomfortable 2 hours, but Jackson's Carver steadily resists easy stereotypes of Farrakhan-style black nationalism: he is unafraid to call McClane on his shit, delivering most of the film's sharpest dialogue without ever becoming tokenized or irritating, and bringing dignity and depth to what could've easily been a one-note character. Where Die Hard With a Vengeance falters in comparison the first one--most notably in the disappointingly anticlimactic finale, and the fact that Jeremy Irons' perfectly enjoyable turn as Simon still can't eclipse Allan Rickman's note-perfect Hans Gruber--Zeus ably fills in the gaps.

There's another huge thing that With a Vengeance has going for it, and which the fourth movie ruthlessly redacts: a welcome re-imagining of McClane himself. The indestructible average Joe of the first movie is delightfully muddied here, turned into a kind of alcoholic lowlife as counter-terrorist, charmingly disheveled and solving Simon's riddles through the haze of a hangover, instantly filling police vans with the stink of cheap whiskey. I much prefer this McClane to the scrubbed-down, hairless, post-AA action figure of Live Free or Die Hard.

"This is for The Bonfire of the Vanities, motherfucker."

With the best McClane, the best sidekick, and action sequences that match the first movie's easily, the only thing working against With a Vengeance is a lack of novelty--which, for a lot of critics, is sadly the only vital ingredient in a film. But this is hands down the funniest, most sharply written and effortlessly enjoyable of the Die Hard movies. Even with two more entries reportedly planned, I'm skeptical that the series can be redeemed without the presence of McTiernan--although if the rumors of Patrick Stewart as the villain pan out, I'm there on opening day regardless.

Footnote: parts of The Dark Knight also bear a striking resemblance to Die Hard With a Vengeance, most notably the sequence where hero-taunting villain Simon the Joker threatens to blow up a school hospital, using the ensuing panic as a cover to advance his own elaborate schemes. (Of course, Joker being the Joker, he actually does blow up the hospital, in a stunning scene that reminds you of the days when movies used real explosives instead of computers--in other words, when giants like John McTiernan walked the earth.)

Secretly Great Movies: The Shape of Things.

The story you know (or don't):

Neil LaBute gained some critical notoriety at the 1997 Cannes festival for his debut film In the Company of Men, a jet-black "comedy" (it's not "ha ha" funny) about the war of the sexes, featuring a wonderfully warped debut performance by Aaron Eckhart. LaBute, originally a playwright, followed up with the similarly dark-hearted Your Friends & Neighbors, which didn't fare quite as well with critics. The Shape of Things can be seen as the third in a kind of trilogy with these movies, and like In the Company of Men it's basically a filmed version of one of LaBute's plays. It concerns a schlubby geek (Paul Rudd) who catches the eye of a tempestuous artist (Rachel Weisz).

The shocking truth:

Shocking is right: The Shape of Things doesn't have any of the bloodletting or dismemberment of a good slasher film, but it's still brutal enough to qualify for honorary horror status. LaBute's films (by which I really mean these three) basically do a demolition job on human relationships, revealing the inherent cruelty, sadism, and self-serving sociopathy underneath all the anniversary presents and self-help books. There are still good guys in his universe, but they're nearly always victims. LaBute's writing is like what Jim Thompson's books might look like if you removed all the bullets and beatings, leaving just the hideous, hideous lies.

Much has been made in recent years of the "manic pixie dream girl" archetype, as exemplified by cardboard hipster Zooey Deschanel in tripe like (500) Days of Summer. Part of what's made The Shape of Things age so well is how devilishly it subverts this trope, which hadn't even been codified yet when LaBute's film was released. Weisz's volatile character does for the MPDG what John Jarratt's murderous Aussie predator from Wolf Creek did for Crocodile Dundee, turning the cliche inside out and giving it a set of flesh-ripping teeth. That's not a knife, this is a knife.

If Zooey is Morrissey, Evelyn is Sakevi from GISM.

As Evelyn (who we first meet defacing a piece in a museum), Weisz seems to promise adventure, danger, sensuality and all that to mild-mannered Adam, who we know instantly is the kind of nice guy who has probably never had a real girlfriend, and certainly never one as comely as Weisz. When Evelyn seems genuinely interested in him, Adam can't believe his luck. The rest of the movie plays out with the fine grain of real life: Evelyn convinces Adam to get in shape and take better care of himself, and his best friends (Frederick Weller and erstwhile love interest Gretchen Mol) are initially thrilled for their singleton buddy. But as time goes by, they suspect that Evelyn is exerting too much influence over an increasingly pliable Adam, and the tension mounts.

Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, do it. Don't read any further--just watch!

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

In the film's "shower scene", it is revealed that Evelyn has been using Adam for her MFA thesis, treating him as clay to be sculpted into a more attractive human being by encouraging him to lose weight, wear contacts, and even get plastic surgery. In order to "work" on this raw material, she had to feign a wide range of emotions, above all her attraction to and romantic interest in him--and for the project, she has even videotaped the two of them in bed. (Ecce homo, indeed.) In her presentation, she announces that she will not be accepting Paul's marriage proposal--instead, the engagement ring will become part of the exhibition.

Well?

The Shape of Things gets incredible mileage out of this twist, which is a classic "should've seen this coming" moment. Except that nothing Evelyn does up to that point is especially egregious or beyond the pale in terms of what really goes on in everyday relationships; the idea is that this could happen to anyone. Or at least, anyone dating an art student working on a mysterious project which Adam never asks too many questions about--perhaps out of respect for a cliche (and entirely MPDG) mystical process of communion with the muses, which must remain absolutely secret until it's finished. As we find out, the truth is anything but. In its reptilian bloodlessness, the end of The Shape of Things makes the sadistic climax of Audition seem almost touching by comparison: at least Asami cares for the man she's mutilating. (The two movies would make for a great double feature.)

As Evelyn betrays Adam, so the film betrays us. As viewers, we're nearly as shocked and hurt as Paul, which is a common enough response when a film reveals that everything you've been suspending your disbelief for was, in fact, a spurious fiction. But instead of "it was just a dream", Evelyn offers the excuse that "it was just art"--in her words, "I am an artist; only that"--and our knee-jerk response is to deny her. But can we? The film manages to put us in the shoes of stodgy old art patrons confronted with modern art's bizarre innovations: is the scandal of paint dripped on a canvas really art? Or a urinal, renamed as a fountain? Or Adam?

Tracey Emin, O(MPD)G.

The film also holds out the possibility that there was a quantum of truth in Evelyn's elaborate lie: a whisper to Adam early in their courtship, which we see but don't hear. When Adam asks her about it in the film's final moments, she says that she meant it--whatever it was. The lacuna at the heart of the story lets us wonder, and fill in the blanks with free-associations from our own lives and relationships. What's authentic, and what's artifice? Are our efforts to "improve" our mates really benevolent, or coercive? Is ignorance bliss? When it comes to love, what, if anything, is real? And what do we mean by "real", anyways? The rabbit hole beckons.

[END SPOILERS]

The Shape of Things is the best kind of "smart" film: it never revels in its ability to confuse you, and it still manages to feel like a punch in the stomach while dealing entirely in ideas. And, it does it all without cheating. It's a little-seen film, and one that I imagine a lot of viewers--maybe even most of them--will finish watching in anger. But that's kind of the point, isn't it?

Mind-fudging end note:

What did LaBute do after crafting this complex and sophisticated human drama? He directed the remake of The Wicker Man. Yes, the one with Nicolas Cage. As a friend of mine so elegantly put it: "Neil LaBute's gotta eat."

"So I'm thinking, like, bigger and more hysterical." "Yeah, that sounds great."

Secretly Great Movies: Rounders.

The story you know:

Matt Damon, fresh off Good Will Hunting, teams with an up-and-coming Edward Norton (Rounders came out a month before American History X) for a largely overlooked little movie about the cutthroat world of high-stakes poker, which got mixed reviews and failed to make a huge splash at the box office. At the time of its release, most viewers had probably never heard of the game that the whole movie is built around: a quaint variation of poker called "Texas Hold 'Em."

The shocking truth:

Obviously, times have changed. Rounders has aged extremely well, which is what usually happens when you  successfully predict the future. Since it left the multiplex, Hold 'Em has lassoed the public imagination thanks to increased TV coverage of tournaments, the growing popularity of online poker, scintillating depictions in books like James McManus' Positively Fifth Street, and movies like, well, Rounders. By 2006, Hold 'Em was so popular that it became James Bond's game of choice in the series reboot Casino Royale (as opposed to the much more passé Baccarat, the high-stakes game that Bond plays in the novel).

Texas Hold 'Em now saturates the media landscape, but Rounders has a crackling, card table authenticity that still resonates. The film is littered with sharp, card-savvy dialogue, peppered with quotes from poker legends like Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim--and it even features a guest appearance by World Series of Poker champion Johnny Chan.

Orange sold separately. 

But Rounders would be a great movie even if it was about crossword puzzles or Boggle. It features the kind of cast you rarely see assembled outside of superhero movies: in addition to Damon and Norton, you get John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, John Malkovich, and Martin Landau (here playing a sage jurist and looking more than ever like political philosopher John Rawls). Ebert, in his review, claimed that Rounders (which is directed by noir revivalist John Dahl) is less a noir than a sports picture, but he's just slightly off the mark: it's a western.

Rounders is basically Unforgiven with cards instead of guns, featuring a main character in denial about his innate talent for killing people winning huge pots, who in the end accepts his destiny just in time for a climactic showdown. But Damon's character here is a genuine white hat, coming across like an agreeably toned-down version of Will Hunting: instead of a prickly, supergenius janitor, he's an eminently likable working stiff with a natural gift for fleecing suckers. And Norton gives one of his best performances as the Lando Calrissian to Damon's Han Solo.

For some critics, the film's weak link is Malkovich, as the scenery-chomping Russian mobster KGB. As Peter Travers puts it, "Malkovich soars so far over the top, he's passing Pluto." But the actual history of high-stakes poker is littered with such eccentrics, and given that he displays the kind of sly cunning usually associated with survival in the darkest corners of the Soviet Union (as well as table success), isn't it possible that the KGB we see is actually something of a put-on by the character himself, designed to catch his opponents off-guard and trick them into making a mistake? Stranger things have happened. (And besides, lines like "Lays down a monster...the fuck did you lay that down?!" practically demand Malkovich's chewy delivery.) By way of contrast, Turturro here is a model of restraint, perfectly deadpanning one of the best lines in the movie during a meeting with Damon: "Long time, Knish. How are you?" "The same."

"Pey dis myan hyis mahney."

I've often argued that Rounders is the rare movie that actually cries out for a sequel, which would more or less write itself. We catch up with Mikey years later, now an internationally renowned WSOP champion, beloved for his balance of no-nonsense humility and at-the-table ruthlessness. He's preparing to compete with a cocky, hotshot favorite (choose your own actor)--when all of a sudden Worm turns up to ask for Mikey's help, and time is running out...Miramax, get in touch for a full treatment.

Secretly Great Movies: Freddy Got Fingered.

Part one of an ongoing series examining movies that are often dismissed, marginalized, or ignored, but are actually awesome. Being a born contrarian, these are often my favorite kinds of movies.

The story you know:

Released near the height of Tom Green's brief moment of mega-stardom, Freddy Got Fingered garnered almost universally negative reviews, with a notable exception from New York Times scribe A.O. Scott. The film chronicles the misadventures of an aspiring animator named Gord (Green), and his fraught relationship with his disapproving father (Rip Torn). In a mostly negative review, Roger Ebert conceded that maybe he just doesn't get it, and that one day the film would be viewed as a "milestone of neo-surrealism." Freddy Got Fingered won 5 Razzies, and when onstage at the awards ceremony "Green began to play the harmonica and did not stop until he was physically dragged off."

The shocking truth:

The day Ebert prophesied has come. The Wikipedia page for Freddy Got Fingered now has a section for "Resurgence", and refers to how this initially reviled film has attained a cult status thanks to a sensibility that some consider "avant garde" or "akin to performance art." Chris Rock is a confirmed fan, and no doubt others will eventually come out of the closet. Kind of reminds you of another strange, offbeat movie that was initially reviled by critics and later gained a considerable cult following, prompting a revision of its initial judgement: The Big Lebowski.

But you don't have to go online to find evidence of Freddy's influence; the heirs to its deranged brand of humor are everywhere. It could be argued that Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Wonder Showzen, and just about the entire lineup of Adult Swim original content since Freddy owes a significant debt to Green's over-the-top, absurdist aesthetic.

And even if you hate all of those shows (as plenty of people do), the fact is that Freddy was always a great film. Beneath the film's shocking surface lies a universal story about growing up and struggling for parental approval. Or maybe all the horse dicks are cover for an even more disturbing subtext, as this article from Cinema de Merde indicates. Either way, there's a lot more to the film than the juvenile gross-outs that many viewers dismiss it for: it's like Breaking Away as directed by Luis Buñuel, with funnier jokes and doodles instead of bikes.

"I'm sick of symmetry."

In a featurette on the film's DVD, Rip Torn--with an absolutely straight face--even calls Green the best director he's ever worked with. And Torn is not exactly an actor known for his easygoing manner with directors; when outraged by his direction on the set of Maidstone, he hit Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer, while Mailer's children screamed for mercy. (Perhaps this was karmic retribution for Mailer headbutting Gore Vidal.)

Angels and demons: three early Mifunes.

Toshiro Mifune is one of the most famous Japanese actors of all time, and one who endeared himself to western viewers in his iconic roles in films like The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. And although Mifune is best known for his samurai characters, three incredible performances from the beginning of his career suggest an actor of greater range than he sometimes gets credit for.

In Drunken Angel, his inaugural collaboration with Akira Kurosawa, Mifune plays Matsunaga, a stinking-drunk yakuza lowlife who is diagnosed with tuberculosis by a slum doctor (Takashi Shimura, Kurosawa's other great actor, and often underrated due to the long shadow cast by Mifune). Despite his brutishness, Matsunaga is a far cry from the vulgar swordsmen Mifune would become famous for, exuding an understated gangster cool. The only person that seems able to penetrate his facade is the good doctor, who routinely sends him into a rage; the first several times they meet, Matsunaga inevitably roughs up the jaded physician, and the core of the film's story is one of reluctant friendship between the not-yet-entirely-hopeless yakuza and the cynical but good-hearted doctor trying to save him.

Mifune here gives one of the most convincing performances of drunkenness ever seen on film; Matsunaga is so believably blacked out throughout the majority of Drunken Angel that you cannot help but wonder if Kurosawa (who became notorious for his insistence on realism down to the most minute details) was handing Mifune cups of sake in between takes. But the movie's greatest moment comes when the stony gangster suddenly explodes to life in a frenzied dance hall sequence, and the positively demonic expressions on Mifune's face during this scene suggest the desperate circumstances of the film's setting, as well as the ferocity that Mifune would later become synonymous with.

"Call the precinct. Tell them to bring extra pocket squares for my forehead."

Kurosawa's stylish noir Stray Dog sees Mifune playing Murakami, a rookie detective struggling to atone for the grievous error of losing his sidearm (a plot conceit notably borrowed by P.T. Anderson in Magnolia), now being used by a thief in a series of killings. While his role in Drunken Angel had key similarities with his later samurai parts, Murakami is something else altogether: here we see Mifune as a very straitlaced character, shameful but doggedly determined to make up for his mistake.

It's a treat to watch this in conjunction with Drunken Angel, as the combative relationship between Shimura and Mifune is transformed here into one between kōhai and senpai, as the elder Shimura tutors the junior detective not just in the art of crime-stopping, but in the discipline of living with a job that brings him into contact with humanity's darkest impulses. Mifune's performance is a delicate and precisely understated one: Murakami is humiliated and ashamed, but also exudes strength, determination, and a quiet dignity.

When Murakami is forced to descend into the depths of a battered, postwar Tokyo in order to redeem himself, he finds himself confronted with a telling twist of fate: he and the gun thief are both former soldiers who were robbed on the train back home. But Murakami rejects the social context of crime which Kurosawa so carefully demonstrates in an 8+ minute tour of Tokyo's slums (filmed secretly in actual black markets and flophouses!), insisting that the killer chose his path in life, just as Murakami chose his. It's the old (then new) argument between structuralism and existentialism, but played out in a hothouse Tokyo noir.

Although Magnolia borrowed Stray Dog's narrative frame, the most direct descendant of the film may actually be David Fincher's Seven, which also depicts a seasoned detective and a young, untested one teaming up to catch a brutal killer. There is also an echo of Murakami's denial of crime's social context in Seven: when Somerset gives an account of the myriad horrors in the perpetually rain-soaked city (Fincher's version of Kurosawa's blistering heatwave), Mills dismisses the offenders as "fucking crazies"—to which Somerset responds, "you can't afford to be this naive."

"Rolex watches and colorful swatches / I'm digging in pockets, motherfuckers can't stop it."

Following another collaboration in the low-key tabloid drama Scandal, the stormy existential questions at the heart of of Stray Dog would come to the fore in Kurosawa and Mifune's breakout film: Rashomon. The engine driving the film is Mifune's immortal performance as Tajōmaru, the barbarous bandit at the center of the film's cubist murder mystery.

This is classic Mifune in full bloom, playing a character so bestial and untamed it's hard to believe this is the same actor that played the tormented detective in Stray Dog or the frosty, besotted yakuza in Drunken Angel. Tajōmaru, a notorious bandit, comes across more like a force of nature: a leering, feral Pan, constantly scratching at bugs and bursting into piercing shrieks of laughter. A creature of pure id unencumbered by socialization or morality, Tajōmaru is a cruel, sensual beast, and one of the most unforgettable characters in Kurosawa and Mifune's oeuvre.

The three films form something of a trilogy, however unlikely, as all three also conclude with memorable fight sequences involving Mifune that subvert the glamorous, stylized violence that is the hallmark of most cinema. In Drunken Angel, Mifune's gangster, now ravaged by tuberculosis, confronts the abusive Okada, and the resulting fight is a concerto of awkward, messy human violence, with both combatants becoming soaked with spilled white paint. At the conclusion of Stray Dog, Mifune's detective chases his frantic quarry through the underbrush, in a similarly clumsy struggle that reduces both men to panting animals. And in Rashomon, the dramatic duel seen in Tajōmaru's own account is belied by the version of the story told by Shimura's woodcutter, where the vicious bandit and the stoic samurai tremble with terror and desperation, horrified at the prospect of their own death and at the thought of taking the other's life.

Rashomon is a recognized classic of world cinema; Stray Dog and Drunken Angel are beloved by many Kurosawa fans, but less familiar to most viewers. But all three films form a tapestry of the great director's nascent development of voice, style, and thematic fixation. And although Kurosawa would've no doubt become a cornerstone of film history regardless, it's impossible to imagine his films without the kinetic and furiously lived-in performances of Toshiro Mifune.