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.

Persistent vision: Lake Mungo (2008).

"I am the victim
Of a persistent vision
It tracks me down

With its precision."

- Rites of Spring

Lake Mungo is destined to end up forlorn and forgotten, ghettoized in horror DVD sections and abandoned in clearance bins. Whether it's the schlocky DVD art (compare that silly design to this understated poster for the film) or its retail identity as part of the direct-to-DVD After Dark Horrorfest series, it's not hard to picture the casual viewer dismissing this humble little ghost story and moving on.

That would be a huge mistake, because Lake Mungo is one of the best ghost movies of the past 20 years. It has a purity and realism that makes Paranormal Activity and its ilk seem stagey, an emotional resonance that makes The Ring and Ju-on feel colder and more remote than ever, and a "twist" that's orders of magnitude beyond those found in The Sixth Sense or The Orphanage. And as much as it is a brilliant horror movie, it's also a devastating, human drama about loss, secrecy, and grief. It refuses to fall back on stale cliches, not trying to make you jump so much as trying to draw you in. It's the kind of film that you'll still be turning over in your head long after the credits roll.

Lake Mungo bears a significant David Lynch influence, but maybe not quite in the way you'd expect. This is, after all, a movie about a girl named Laura Alice Palmer who died under mysterious circumstances—but it's a film that seems to take influence less from the style and aesthetic that Lynch is beloved for than from his perennial fascination with dark secrets buried under the facade of normality. Skeptical viewers should know that Lake Mungo is also a film with a drum-tight story to tell, and little interest in surreal digressions. 

It seems like a bit of a red flag when the star goes to the premiere hoping to "learn more" about the film.

Like Twin Peaks in the beginning, Lake Mungo is essentially a mystery: who killed Alice Palmer? The film deserves credit for not structuring the entire movie around the twist, because Lake Mungo would work even without the shocking reveal in the third act. (As with most movies, it's one that's really best to see without any prior knowledge; you've probably read too much already!) So many movies ask you to withhold all questions until the end, putting up with an unbelievable quantity of bullshit in the hopes that the Big Twist will redeem everything—and it so often doesn't. But Lake Mungo is a patient, logical story that will already have you in rapt attention by the time it reaches the moment of revelation, and the surprise it has in store is of an entirely different species than most now making the rounds at the multiplex.

Lake Mungo actually owes less to the typical ghost movie or to David Lynch than it does to a film like Capturing the Friedmans: it's cut to look like a documentary about a family in crisis, and it's extremely convincing. It's actually much more believable than something like 2010's controversial Catfish, a purportedly genuine documentary that presents like a glossy fake. I'd love to show Lake Mungo to someone and tell them it is a real documentary, just to see how they respond. The brilliant editing is one of the film's greatest strengths, because it makes the low-key supernatural proceedings seem that much more authentic—and by extension, that much scarier.

In the post-Paranormal Activity era, we've got more ghost movies than ever to choose from, but what sets Lake Mungo apart is that it's genuinely haunting. Lake Mungo never comes within kilometers of a "cheap" scare, instead emphasizing deep chills and existential dread; there's no cats jumping out of cupboards, no orchestras shoved down the stairs. It's a film less interested in bludgeoning you with the paranormal than nudging you, gently but inexorably, toward an encounter with something that's beyond comprehension. This sense is mirrored by a camera that frequently emulates real-life "spirit photography", showing us a seemingly innocuous shot before slowly and steadily zooming in, Ken Burns style, to reveal the apparent presence of the otherworldly.

Director Joel Anderson nonetheless opted not to adopt Burns' trademark "Lego man" hairstyle.

Late in the film, we see a sequence where two separate sessions with the same psychic (one with central victim Alice Palmer, and one with her mother after her death) are cut together to make it appear as if they're interacting on a plane beyond our understanding. When you stop and think about it, this scene is kind of remarkable: the filmmakers are producing an uncanny effect in us by employing a technique that might be employed by real documentarians to produce the same effect when making a real documentary. At this point, we realize that Lake Mungo is less a horror movie with documentary trappings than an actual documentary about a fictional event.

The scene also encapsulates the film's theme of how the loss of a loved one can make them seem more present in our lives than ever, with our existence rearranged around the fact of their absence. 21st century viewers are so fluent in genre tropes, especially in horror, that movies reflexively commenting on them are now more common that those that treat them with a straight face. (Perhaps you've seen The Cabin in the Woods.) Such self-awareness can be great, especially when it allows a story's inherent unreality to express a basic truth about the way we live: Ringu and its successors spoke to our alienation in a world mediated by technology, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer used ghouls and goblins as metaphors for the painful process of growing up.

Battling the forces of evil, i.e. getting a job where you have to interact with the public.

But Lake Mungo is different, because it's really about us. The characters in the movie feel like real people coping with a real tragedy: not brutal mayhem wrought by a psycho killer, but the tragedy of losing someone in the prime of their life. The psychic in the movie isn't portrayed as the usual mystical seer, confirming the presence of dark forces; instead we get a painfully normal man who is in all likelihood a duplicitous fraud. Even the film's supernatural core is not without ambiguity: nothing in the film is immune to alternative explanation, and the story plays out with a sense of restraint and subtlety that makes the flaming Ouija board scene in Paranormal Activity feel like something out of Transformers.

Naturally, some people will hate it. Some horror fans will probably hate it. But, if you're comfortable with subtlety and ambiguity—and if you don't see the latter as a license to dispense with a good story—you're not likely to find a better ghost story these days.