...Oh, that bad? Well that sucks.
Anyway, let’s ignore all that and talk about movies. I've been tweeting lists every month for awhile now about the five to ten best movies I had recently seen for the first time. I figure, since I'm not currently writing much of anything else, I should make it a whole feature. So here's a run-down the cinematic joys of March for me.
Also, lately I've been getting into Theme Months. This is an exercise in forcing myself to watch more movies. By setting up themes, I organize my massive backlog and give myself a motivation to get through it, chunk by chunk. In February I did Weird SciFi to finally watch things like Stalker and Upstream Color. I have literally thousands of movies I want to see at some point, and this process makes it less overwhelming.
March’s theme was Korean Movies. Once upon a time the biggest film story was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite sweeping the Oscars. (Which was only a few weeks ago, even if it seems like a different century now. The Oscars are like a relic of a medieval culture we've lost.) To celebrate Joon-ho’s win, I thought, I'd watch all his movies that I haven’t seen before. And in the process go watch like eight other Korean movies I've been meaning to get to. I found some real gems in there, even if, as you'll see, I'm a bit unhappy with my selections.
Anyway, here's ten movies I feel like talking about today:
10. The Lawnmower Man (1992), dir. Brett Leonard
The Lawnmower Man is a terrible movie. Its effects are hilariously dated, to the point they couldn’t have looked good even in 1992. This is based on a Stephen King short story from 1975, which I’ve either never read or more likely, have read and then completely forgotten. The movie so ignored the content of the story that King successfully sued to get his name taken off the title. But you’d never guess watching The Lawnmower Man that it has nothing to do with King. It has all the kinks of Stephen King’s work, including some of his most problematic baggage. There’s a man with an intellectual disability with magic powers, a government conspiracy, and a crazy Christian zealot whose faith seems to be connected to a violent sexual fetish.
What really cemented The Lawnmower Man’s place in history is its depiction of Virtual Reality. It was in the early 90s that Hollywood discovered this thing called “cyberpunk”. Needless to say, it didn't go well at first. They didn't understand the technology or the culture and were painfully out of touch. Hollywood was as comfortable with the digital age as Brian Wilson was with hip hop. These days VR still hasn’t quite caught on, but its common enough. Like, I've done VR gaming a few times. The Lawnmower Man wasn't exactly accurate to my experience. Nobody turned into goo-like blobs of primitive CG effects. Nobody was having VR sex by having their barely humanoid bodies fusing together in seas of random frenetic colors and patterns.
Maybe that’s where Oculus has gone wrong. Who knows?
The Lawnmower Man is a mistake. Jeff Fahey as the titular Lawnmower Man is wearing a bright blonde wig and looks all the world like Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder. VR becomes the catalyst for a Flowers for Algernon plot. But then, Jeff Fahey’s brain grows so large he can bring the terrible CG effects into the real world (somehow). The movie just gets wackier and wackier from there. It goes off the rails and solidly stays there. There’s something charming about how utterly wrong-headed this movie is about every decision.
9. Mother (2009), dir. Bong Joon-ho
No, not the horror movie about Jennifer Lawrence trapped in an allegorical house. That’s Mother! Remove the exclamation mark, please.
I did my theme this month specifically to celebrate Bong Joon-ho. Unfortunately, he probably came out of this experience the worst for me. Turns out the Joon-ho movies I had already seen such as The Host, Snowpiercer, and of course, Parasite, did not fully represent his entire work. The three movies I hadn’t seen included a reprehensible comedy about murdering dogs, and two really depressing thrillers. Mother is the best of Joon-ho’s backlog, for sure. Still, I wish I were able to talk about The Host or honestly even Okja instead of this.
Mother is another one of Joon-ho’s classic genre blenders. It starts as a comedy. A child-like young man with a memory problem, Yoon Do-joon (Won Bin) gets into trouble with some minor scuffles at a golf course. His adorable elderly mother (Kim Hye-ja) worries about him and struggles to pay her bills. Then Yoon Do-joon becomes the primary suspect in a grisly murder. So, it is up to his little frail mother to try to solve the case and save her son. Still, this isn’t so dark. You have this grandmotherly figure out playing detective and doing about as well at it as you’d think. There’s something almost slapstick about it.
Then the third act hits, and Mother turns extremely dark. The entire film seems based off a subplot in an earlier Joon-ho movie, Memories of Murder. That featured another young man with disabilities being tortured by incompetent cops trying to frame him for murder. (I don’t know why handicapped men kept showing up this month, it became like a theme within a theme.) Mother is as if Joon-ho expanded on that one idea into a full film. And Mother is definitely the superior work. Just… don’t expect to feel good about much of anything when the movie is over.
At least the old lady dances a few times.
8. Phase IV (1974), dir. Saul Bass
Phase IV is the only movie Saul Bass ever directed. Obviously, it wasn’t very successful since odds are you have never heard of it. This disappeared into total obscurity and I would like to do my part to fix that
Phase IV feels like it was adapted from a Michael Crichton novel Michael Crichton never wrote. After a strange celestial event, the ants of the world suddenly begin working together. They create a a tiny civilization within the desert of a small Arizona valley. It’s up to two scientists to try to out-smart the insects before they evolve so powerful they will conquer the world. This is like classic B-movie SciFi, where most of the film takes place inside a lab. Usually the handsome scientists come up with some brilliant solution involving gamma rays or nuclear fusion to defeat the giant monster that’s as big as a battleship. Not so in Phase IV. The most clever tricks come from the ants.
Of our scientists, Dr. Lesko (Michael Murphy) is a chaos theorist who is able to model with some precision exactly how fucked the human race is. He's like a Seventies Ian Malcolm. The other hero is Dr. Hubbs (Nigel Davenport), an arrogant older man whose confidence against the bugs is really masking a crazy obsession to beat them no matter what. Then there’s a local farm girl, Kendra (Lynne Frederick) who stumbles into the lab. The plot sadly never finds a good use for her. The ants though, might be able to use her in some plans...
The coolest parts of this movie though are the visuals. There’s some wildlife photography of ants at the beginning of the movie. They're just ants walking around but the tone of the movie wants the little creatures legitimately menacing. Saul Bass creates a stunning opening title sequence, which is fitting since Saul Bass was the master of striking opening credits. Finally, the ants build their own 'towers' in the desert, which are an unforgettably creepy image.
7. I Saw the Devil (2010), dir. Kim Jee-woon
A lot of Korea Month turned out to be depressing murder thrillers. Based on my experiences between this, and movies like Mother, Burning, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, South Korea is a very unhappy place. Everybody is in debt, the rich are oblivious, the authorities are idiots, and every other person is a serial killer. I think this is a problem of imports. We in the West just don’t ever see the happier movies. I'm not saying capitalism isn't a problem in Korea, just it can't be this bad, can it? I'm not Korean, I've never been there, I don't really know. But I'm guessing there isn't this much mayhem based on their crime statistics. We mostly get the sullen artsier takes on exploitation genre films. And I’ll definitely admit as a genre fan, I’m just wired to pay more attention to an Oldboy or a Parasite than whatever Korean romantic comedy is out there. This is partially my fault.
In fact, Kim Jee-woon is one of the more fun Korean directors out there making arthouse horror. I Saw the Devil is an extremely dark movie. But where something like Burning is two morose hours of hopelessness, I Saw the Devil is so excessive with its violence that it swings over the line from misery to campy fun. It starts as a revenge thriller. Super cop Kim Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) hunts down the maniac, Jang Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik, the star of Oldboy) who murdered his girlfriend. This actually goes rather well at first. But you may notice that not even an hour has passed and already our hero has found and beaten the bad guy. Jang is let go and allowed to run away, because Kim’s vengeance is not finished.
The rest of the movie is an increasingly insane cat and mouse game between these two men. I Saw the Devil seemingly takes place in some alternate reality where every other person in Korea is a murderer. Jang, while on the run, just randomly runs into some psychos in a taxi, then shacks up with cannibal buddies he has. The movie’s morale is a appreciable “he who hunts monsters, etc.” but the way it gets there is through utter absurdity. Yeah, turns out you really should just killed Jang when you had the chance, dude. I won’t call I Saw the Devil exactly a purely fun time – there’s quite a lot of rape here that I didn’t quite need. But the darkness is matched enough silliness to keep it watchable.
6. Stop Making Sense (1984), dir. Jonathan Demme
Suddenly real life concerts and music acts are very hard to find. You probably have a guess as to why. So, if you want to see a concert, you’re going to need to watch recordings. Luckily there’s an entire genre of film with a long storied history called Concert Movies. Usually I don't cover that kind of thing. I'm more interested in fiction and especially narrative. But with these times, I can try something different.
This past week I’ve slowly been falling into a Talking Heads mood. Turns out I was a Talking Heads fan already and just don’t know it. I really love six or seven of their songs and simply didn’t know who made them. David Byrne has gone from that dude who looks like Bill Nye in a music video to close to a personal hero of mine in just the span of days. He’s such a weird guy. His fashion sense was apologetically nerdy decades before that was hip. His dancing is just spastic nonsense. And I don’t even know what genre the Talking Heads can be called. Is this like pre-REM proto-alternative rock? New Wave? That's the other reason I don't talk about music much here. I don't really have the vocabulary for it.
Stop Making Sense is a classic of the Concert Movie genre. I can see why. This is the Talking Heads at the very peak of their powers just killing it song after song The stage production also fits right into everything that’s so utterly unique about this band. This is the 80s, the time when image and flashy costuming was how you got noticed. So instead, the Talking Heads put out this minimalist concert. We open on a bare stage with just David Byrne alone dancing to "Psycho Killer". The band comes out one at a time, all wearing gray suits. The lighting stays dark to keep your eye only on the band. Finally it builds to a goddamn rocking version of “Burning Down the House”. The flashiest the movie ever gets is when Byrne walks out in a suit that’s about three times wider than anything a human should ever wear. He also dances with a lamp to the song "This Must Be the Place", which is my favorite song of all time this week.
Stop Making Sense is worth it just for the live version of “Once in a Lifetime” which is about six times better than the radio cut. The Talking Heads were a band you had to see live. I was born like a decade after this concert, so I'm glad I'm able to see any version of it.
5. A Tale of Two Sisters (2002), dir. Kim Jee-woon
A Tale of Two Sisters is based on a medieval Korean folktale which has been adapted into film seven times (damn). That includes the attempt by some Americans in 2009 with predictably terrible results. The original story is a ghost story where a wicked step-mother gets whats coming to her after abusing her step-daughters. Kim Jee-woon turned that into a mixture of a twisty Hitchcockian thriller and a damn solid haunted house movie.
This is the kind of movie that’s maddening to watch. Nothing fits together in a way that leaves you uncomfortable the entire runtime. All four of the principle characters in the house seem to all be living in different realities. The older sister, Su-mi (Im Soo-jung) has just been released from a mental hospital and keeps insisting that something terrible is happening. The younger sister, Su-yeon (Moon Geun-young) is too traumatized to talk for herself. The wicked stepmother, Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah) desperately tries to keep up appearances that all is well, but even her behavior is erratic and random. During a dinner party she laughs loudly at stories nobody else remembers, and the dinner guests stare death at her. Then the father (Kim Kap-soo) is too emotionally exhausted to interact with anybody. Oh, also there’s a ghost. And everybody is getting their period at the same time.
What the fuck is even going on here?? Even the typical twist ending scenarios don’t explain this behavior. Is Su-mi crazy? Is the step-mother crazy? Is *everybody* crazy? Am I crazy? Who is the ghost? Is there a ghost?
I love a movie that can be this unpredictable. A Tale of Two Sisters is again, also a really scary movie. The ghost doesn’t show up much, but her few appearances are unforgettable. Don't look under your sink for awhile.
4. Bacurau (2020), dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
In better times, Bacurau would be the kind of movie I would happily pay a small fortune to go see. This is the kind of thing I would make an event. Movies like this usually only play in the small independent theaters in Manhattan or Brooklyn. So, I’d drive out there, pay a small fortune in tolls, take a half hour to find street parking, pay too much for dinner, and enjoy my nonsense for a night. In February I saw The Lodge at the Alamo Drafthouse and it was wonderful. My burger was overpriced but I loved it anyway. But well, I can’t do that anymore. Life has to wait.
Luckily Bacurau has been released to streaming in collaboration with the Lincoln Center Film Society. So if you’re in the mood for a Brazilian movie that’s something like a cross between 100 Years of Solitude and The Purge series, go to Kino Now and pay $20. Hopefully this kind of agreement can keep happening, so that 1) my favorite indie theaters can stay open, and 2) I can see St. Maud and The Green Knight before 2021.
Anyway, as for Bacurau itself, it’s special. It all takes place in the titular village of Bacurau in the more remote parts of Brazil, the parts the corrupt government has mostly forgotten. This town full of strange characters live out a unique culture only vaguely connected to the rest of the world. However, after the death of the town’s matriarch, strange things begin to occur. A flying saucer appears over the road. People begin to disappear. And then there's Udo Kier.
As a picture of the cultural and even racial divisions of South America, Bacurau is excellent. I love this little world it builds with these people. Unfortunately, the movie is less good when it introduces English-speaking characters. Clearly the directors are a bit more comfortable working in Portuguese. But I don’t think Bacurau is at all ruined. Plus, this is film where, small spoilers, Marxists are the good guys. And really fuck capitalism lately, especially right goddamn now.
3. The Housemaid (1960), dir. Kim Ki-young
You may have guessed this by now, but I’m a bit unhappy with how Korea Month went. Besides the genre problem, another issue I had is my limited knowledge of Korean film history. The West only really started paying attention to Korean movies in the last twenty years. Oldboy, The Host, and a small K-horror moment that followed the J-horror fad of the early 2000s helped Korea get Western attention for the first time. This means for most Americans, including myself, Korean film history starts in about 2002. My problem with my own project is that I ended up with a very limited view of the country. Korean cinema has survived World Wars, civil wars, dictators, and Hollywood domination. But a lot of it has been lost and what survives is often unknown and unavailable in English.
This is why I’m very glad to have found The Housemaid. This was recently remastered in 2008 and is available through the Criterion Collection. It got my attention because this is a movie specifically referenced by Bong Joon-ho as an inspiration for Parasite. The Wikipedia page also notes this movie has been listed as one of the Top 3 Greatest Korean Movies of All Time.
The plot here is your erotic thriller, the kind of wicked homewrecker movie that was very popular in America in the 90s. Think The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Poison Ivy. Younger servant from the lower classes enters a nice conventional family’s life, then her evil sexuality threatens to destroy everything. The Housemaid's femme fatale isn't just threatening to take over, she actually does it. The titular maid, Myung-sook (Lee Eun-shim) is one of the greatest villains of the black and white era. She’s so much more than she seems, going from a seemingly dimwitted ditz to pure evil just with that one smile. This movie's morals are solidly traditional and you're supposed to root for the family. But even they're not blameless in this. They give her plenty of rope with which to hang themselves.
The Housemaid is absolutely a masterpiece. This makes me wonder if maybe I need to come back to Korea sometime in the future and find more of whats hiding out there.
2. The Boxer’s Omen (1983), Kuei Chih-Hung
First off, this is not Korean. Korea Month is over now. This is a Hong Kong movie coming right during its golden age. So far everything I’ve described has been through the lens of Western genres. There is no genre that can really describe The Boxer's Omen. Nobody in the West has ever made a movie like this. I've never seen anything like this.
I only found The Boxer's Omen thanks to a film podcast I listen to, GenreVision, who are doing a series on what they're calling "Global Gonzo" movies. ‘Gonzo’ as a word really does not do justice to the sheer batshit nature of The Boxer’s Omen. This is the first Buddhist horror movie I’ve come across. I’m not sure if the things that go on in this movie are based on actual Buddhist monsters or just local Chinese folk demons or something the movie made up entirely. There is a lot going on here. Most of this madness cannot be augmented by description. I just need to tell you what happens in the movie and there is nothing I can say that would make it sound any more incredible than it already is.
Our hero is a boxer, Chan Hung (Phillip Ko Fei) who has traveled to Thailand. He starts getting visions from a dead abbot that lead him to a temple. The abbot ran afoul of some disgusting witches after the monk defeated their adorable felt-bat puppet which I suppose some kind of demonic familiar. Chan must then become a monk himself and do spiritual battle with the witches. I really wish I could find a credit as to who plays the main witch, since he’s putting in this amazingly campy performance. Nothing in this movie is held back. The witch’s magic usually involves eating raw food, and regurgitates, or breaking open skulls to mash the brains. When that doesn’t work, he summons an alien. Then there’s plan C, which is cutting his own head off and floating over to Chan to use his dangling entrails down as tentacles. Plan D involves cutting open an alligator, resurrecting a naked chick, who will then give birth to bugs or something. Did I mention the dude whose flesh boils? I cannot believe the stuff that goes on in this movie.
The Boxer’s Omen is a gooey mess that the movie chews up and spits out. Often very literally. The plot is incomprehensible nonsense in the greatest of ways. The world needs to know about this thing.
1. Emma. (2020), Autumn de Wilde
Emma (I’ll leave out the period since it will just annoy my spellcheck) is the last movie I saw in theaters. That was a month ago. This is as long as I've gone in my adult life without visiting a movie theater. I saw something like 65 to 70 movies last year in theaters. This year I’m stuck at ten. So Emma gets some points out of sheer nostalgia for my own life. But, Emma is also the really bright, happy, fun movie that I needed this month. I want to live a life where the biggest problem anybody might have is which handsome gentleman should sweep them off their feet.
I haven’t read a single word of Jane Austen, so halfway through Emma it suddenly hit me. “Oh fuck, this is Clueless!” Just Anya Taylor-Joy is Cher, Mia Goth is Tai, and Johnny Flynn is Josh. The only society in human history that could ever match the savage politics and class snobbery of an American high school is 18th century England, so this works perfectly. Obviously Clueless is a timeless classic that defines its decade, so Emma has not topped it so far. But I think Emma is a really handsome movie that is all charm. You can predict that Emma and Mr. Knightley will end up together, but their first dance still is electricity as these two realize what's been obvious to everybody else.
The English countryside never has anything less than a beautiful sunny day, nobody’s dress is anything less than fabulous, and the cast is full of great character actors. Anya Taylor-Joy is as always great, but this whole ensemble is stacked. Mia Goth, by the way, is just waiting for her inevitable breakout role. Even minor characters like Mrs. Elton (Tanya Reynolds) had me laughing with her every movie just because of the haughty way she holds up her long neck. This movie can turn a minor social faux pas over lunch into a devastating body blow that feel in the pit of your stomach. How could you be so thoughtless, Emma?? I mean, really. And what do you see in that awful Mr. Churchill? He's the worst.
Emma is right now my favorite movie of 2020. There’s a good chance it stays there. Maybe it only wins by default. But in a year like this, this is the movie that we all need a bit more of. Something to feel happy about.
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Next month's theme: MUSICALS!!! If the world is ending, I want some goddamned music. Let's have fun.
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