Man Bites Dog

C’est arrivé près de chez vous; satire / mockumentary / crime, Belgium, 1992, D: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, S: Benoît Poelvoorde, Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Valérie Parent, Jean-Marc Chenut 

A documentary film crew led by director Remy follows the routine of serial killer Ben. He introduces his parents in a store, his girlfriend Valerie, but then goes into the streets to demonstrate how he kills people. Ben claims that killing older people is more profitable, since they accumulated wealth over the years, than young people who are poor. While persecuting a victim in an abandoned factory, a sound man is accidentally killed in the shootout. The stolen money from the victims is divided for the crew to finance their documentary. Ben dumps the corpses into a lake, but when it dries out, the crew has to help dig up and hide the bodies. Ben is arrested, but escapes. He finds his parents and Valerie killed by family members of the victims as a revenge. On camera, Ben, Remy and the others are shot from an unknown assassin.  

The most controversial Belgian movie of the 20th century, “Man Bites Dog” demonstrates that films with a high shock value do not necessarily also have a high quality value. Filmmed in black and white, with a hand held camera to simulate the ostensibly documentary-realistic feel of the topic of a serial killer, the film seems almost like one of those ‘found footage’ films, and by depicting an abnormal man who tries to present all of this as normal, it poses some thought-provoking, uncomfortable questions about aiding and abetting in general: it may not only apply to the voyeuristic nature of the masses fascinated by violence in media, but also to people passively accepting a war criminal or a dictator among them as something normal. The film has a lot of black humor: Ben looks into the camera and brags about his murders (“I once buried two Arabs in a wall over there, facing Mecca, of course”), while he even decides to pull the pants down on a murdered African man, to find out if the rumor is true that Black people have a large penis. In a montage of his murders, fake teeth fall out of the mouth of an old lady strangled by Ben; in an apartment invasion, Ben kills the man in the bathroom by hitting the latter’s head onto the mirror wall, and then turns around to compare that murder to the one from the film “The Old Gun” with P. Noiret. But when he chases after a little boy in the house, and then suffocates him with a pillow, the movie becomes sick itself. And that is “Man Bites Dog’s” biggest problem: it is not always able to distance itself from Ben. Its message is poignant, though: if you appease evil, do not be surprised if it turns against you, as well. Accepting violence and murder only leads to a dead end when no one is safe anymore, and even the nihilistic Ben has a small impulse of realizing the value of life when he finds his girlfriend killed by others as a revenge. Weird and bizarre, the film does not work completely, yet it is a clever contemplation on the limits of "neutrality under any cost". 

Grade:++

Terror in Resonance

Zankyo no Teroru; animated crime series, Japan, 2014; D: Shinichiro Watanabe, S: Kaito Ishikawa, Soma Saito, Atsumi Tanezaki, Shunsuke Sakuya, Megumi Han  

Tokyo. Two teenage boys, Nine and Twelve, post riddles on the Internet posing as the group “Sphinx”, and claim that the solutions are clues as to where their bombs are going to blow up. Detective Shibazaki is brought on the case and helps solve the riddles, yet bombs detonate in a subway and a shopping mall. Classmate Lisa is blackmailed by Nine and Twelve into helping them. It turns out that Nine and Twelve are only doing this to raise awareness of the secret government project called Athena, which gave 5-year old orphans a drug that would turn them into super-soldiers, but all the kids died except Nine, Twelve and Five. When they detonate an atomic bomb in a balloon in the stratosphere, the army helicopter kills Twelve, while Nine also dies. However, the media uncovers project Athena.  

In the anime “Terror in Resonance” (sometimes also translated as “Terror in Tokyo”), the director and screenwriter Shinichiro Watanabe delivered an analysis of people resorting to terrorism, trying to understand, but not justify or accept the two (anti)heroes who want to use the said method to achieve their goal. Unlike other groups who use terror to impose or spread their ideology, the two teenage guys Nine and Twelve actually have a more selfless goal, to uncover a scandal of which they themselves were victims of, giving an observation that injustice will cause a rebellion in search for justice—though such a motive is kind of far-fetched and unconvincing: instead of planting bombs to gain media attention, why not simply contact the media or the Internet and directly tell the world what they know? Why go through all these riddles and code words when they have journalists? That is a rather big flaw of the storyline. However, one has to hand it to them: despite several bomb explosions, the final death toll is surprising—not a single person was killed, zero, since the two guys took meticulous care to evacuate people or postpone their plan. Those are professionals. One of the highlights is the great episode at the Haneda airport, crafted and executed with a lot of passion, especially in the scene where Five is in the control room, observing a guy on the airport via dozens of cameras, until she spots a clock and realizes the events on the screen are presented in a 5 minute delay, and that she is late on their ploy. Another great moment is when Detective Shibazaki and his associate inquire about the secret military project at the home of an old former official, who tells them that they should leave now “if they ever want to feel safe on the streets at night”. The animation is stunning, especially in the sequence of the Shibuya crossing, where so many people and details can be seen in just one frame, yet the characters never truly engage to the fullest and seem kind of grey and stiff, which hinders the story.  

Grade:++

The Cocoanuts

The Cocoanuts; comedy, USA, 1929, D: Robert Florey, Joseph Santley, S: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Mary Eaton, Margaret Dumont, Oscar Shaw

Cocoanut is an empty hotel in Florida run by Mr. Hammer. Things change when the rich Mrs. Potter and her daugher Polly decide to stay at the hotel, which Hammer sees as an golden opportunity. The two clumsy guys, Chico and Harpo, also arrive at the hotel. Hammer, Chico and Harpo help to stop Harvey from stealing Mrs. Potter’s diamond necklace and allow Polly to get her mother’s permission to marry the poor, but honest architect Bob.  

“The Cocoanuts” are the first Marx brothers film, and unsurprisingly one of their weaker efforts, a clumsy comedy where nobody was yet sure which path to take, whereas their jokes are also not that inspired to be the high example of their skills. Aggravating the situation further is the boring subplot about a stolen necklace, as well as too much empty walk in the form of superfluous musical and dance numbers, and even one overlong, 3-minute scene of Harpo playing a harp. Nonetheless, Groucho Marx still has some good jokes that save the film. One of the better ones is when Groucho tells Chico to bid higher anonymously at an auction, in order to create hype for the worthless land very few want to buy, but Chico takes this too literally, and just starts bidding with himself: “200 $! 300! 400! 500!” Harpo is also at times funny as the notorious pickpocket: he leans his head onto the cleavage of a lady, only to pull out her silk handkerchief with his teeth; in another moment, Harpo sneaks up and stands right behind a man, who then intends to put the key behind in his pocket, but inadvertently puts it into Harpo’s pocket instead, which is creative. Groucho’s wisecracks are still funny, especially in the scene where the giant Mrs. Potter sneaks up behind Groucho, towering over him, just says: “How do you do?”, but Groucho is so surprised and scared, as he turns around, he says: “Why don’t you whistle at the crossing?” A fun little flawed comedy, but it attests that the Marx brothers crossed into greatness only on two films, “Duck Soup” and “Animal Crackers”.  

Grade:++

American Movie

American Movie; documentary, USA, 1999; D: Chris Smith, S: Mark Borchardt, Mike Schank, Tom Schimmels, Monica Borchardt, Ken Keen, Bill Borchardt  

Milwaukee. A chronicle of how Mark Borchardt, a movie enthusiast, is trying to shoot and complete his short horror film, “Coven”, using only his friends and volunteers, including the often drunk Mike. Numerous problems plague the production, including a lack of financing and Mark’s broken relationship with his ex-girlfriend, with whom he has three kids. Intermittently, Mark works in a cemetary, a toilet, etc. After three years, “Coven” premiers at a local independent cinema, and attracts a solid crowd.  

For every director that makes it, there are hundreds that don’t. This excellent documentary follows Mark Borchardt who tries to make it by completing his independent short film, and the events are both funny and tragic at the same time: at first, you laugh at all the absurd obstacles preventing a man from achieving his dream; and then you feel saddened by all the absurd obstacles preventing a man from achieving his dream. As “Ed Wood” and “Living in Oblivion” demonstrated, sometimes the process of making a movie is more fascinating than the sole movie in question, and watching “American Movie” is an inexplicably cozy experience: a great deal for this probably lies in Mark himself, who is such an energetic and unique character to watch, since he has a clear vision of what he wants, it is just that the limitations of fatalism are always his hurdle. He is like a General without an army.  

The movie is an educational essay on small people trying to do great things, and its characters sometimes say the wackiest things, whether it is an extra filming outside during the winter (“Can you please put my soda on the tart so that it’s not frozen when we’re done? Cause I would like to drink it, please”), through uncle Bill reciting a poem (“...I’ll visit your grave everyday... Not every day. I’ll visit it sometime if I ever find it”, upon which Mark chuckles), Mark giving Bill instructions while trying to record the latter’s voice (“You got to watch your teeth, too, because they clack a little bit when they loosen up in the mouth”), up to the bizarre excuse in which some guy took their flyers when he picked up old newspapers and replaced them, upon Mark and Mike have this exchange: “But dude, that doesn’t make any sense!” - “It made sense to him.” Through these people, the story ends up both wise and somber, depicting real, bitter life outside the Hollywood dream, yet it is at the same time uplifting and witty. In the Sisyphus myth, the said man is doomed to constantly try to roll a giant boulder over a hill, but it always rolls back down, to represent how futile people are when trapped by forces of destiny. If Mark Borchardt were Sisyphus, he would have carved up a smaller rock from the big boulder, and then managed to at least roll this smaller piece across the hill.  

Grade:+++

Deadly Weapons

Deadly Weapons; erotic crime, USA, 1974; D: Doris Wishman, S: Chesty Morgan, Harry Reemes, Greg Reynolds

Larry steals a valuable mafia list and wants to use it to blackmail people. But a mafia boss orders harsh retribution, so his henchmen, Captain Hook and Tony, kill Larry in his own apartment. The murder is overheard by Larry's buxom wife, Crystal, over the phone. Crystal decides to track down the two killers and take revenge. She takes a job as a striper, seduces Captain Hook, goes to his room, tranquilizes him with a drink—and then suffocates him with her giant breasts. Crystal tracks down the second killer in a hotel, Tony, and suffocates him with her breasts, as well. Back home, Crystal finds out her dad is the mafia boss, so the two shoot each other.

One of the those 'guilty pleasure' cult films, "Deadly Weapons" has an incredible concept that someone actually dared to put down on script—a woman kills two men with her large breasts—and is even more surprising that it was directed by a woman, Doris Wishman, yet, predictably, it does not have much more to offer save for that idea, whereas the ending is bad. Unfortunately, the film is really slow and never as exciting as its initial premise might suggest, since it is kind of boring to wait for 75 minutes to see the two minutes in which the heroine kills just those two men with her cup size. It is very straight-forward, humorless, lax and clumsily edited. Today it lost a lot of its luster—but the beauty of the leading actress, Chesty Morgan, still seems timeless, and at least it has that going for it. Sadly, her accent was allegedly so thick that she was dubbed, and thus it seems as if the camera avoids showing her face whenever she speaks, which seems awkward. Even when she speaks with her father, the camera only shows his face while her voice is only heard off-screen, even though she is sitting next to him. In another scene, her face is hidden behind the guy kissing her, so that her dubbing will again be less apparent. There is one funny moment: Chesty enters a striptease club to apply for a job, but the boss is reading a newspaper and rejects her without even looking at her because she has no "experience". So she just unzips her vest and shows her breasts, and the boss simply lifts his head up and says: "You got the job". If at least there were more of such scenes which show Chesty's charm and control, since in many others, she is just a passive character, save for the two said "pleasant assassinations". Great it is not, but it sure is hot.

Grade:+

Dunkirk

Dunkirk; war film, UK / USA / France / Netherlands, 2017; D: Christopher Nolan, S: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance 

During the Battle of France in World War II, the Nazi soldiers surround 350,000 British soldiers around Dunkirk, a coastal city in northern France. The British Army sends thousands of civilian boats to evacuate these people to the UK before being captured by the Nazi soldiers. British Army planes fly around the area to deter German war planes from striking the beach. Among the people who sail from the UK to France to pick up Allied soldiers is also sailor Dawson. Ultimately, the soldiers are evacuated in time and saved by crossing the la Manche.

"Dunkirk" is Christopher Nolan's most consistent film—it is based on a true story, and thus plays out simple, without Nolan's "muddling" with physics or plot twists. This depiction of a rarely mentioned episode from the World War II, the Dunkirk evacuation of 350,000 British soldiers before the Nazi occupation of France, is at times a fascinating film that defies the cliches of the war genre: "Dunkirk" is presented with very little dialogue, told mostly visually, where the enemy is never shown (except in one scene in the end) while the Allied soldiers are just nameless people, a face in the crowd since it constitutes a sort of "collective perspective" of the event, whereas the death is ever present, though only a few people die in the entire story. The opening has sharp details (a soldier pulls his pants down to defecate on the beach; a passanger observes an underwater torpedo approaching the ship, which then strikes, and a blackout covers a deck in darkness, causing panic among the people when the sea water starts filling the room) whereas the cinematography is exquisite. The first half is very good, but in the second half, it all becomes a bit routine, standard for a war film, apropos there are not that many surprises or inspiration to keep the interest of the viewers on a higher level. It is undeniably a good film, yet it lacks a more versatile approach. 

Grade:++

Love Exposure

Ai no mukidashi; drama / comedy / romance / thriller, Japan, 2008, D: Sion Sono, S: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando, Makiko Watanabe 

Teenager Yu grew up with his widowed Catholic father who became a priest and pressured him into confessing sins. Since Yu has no sins, he decides to create some, and thus joins a delinquent gang that snaps photos of women’s underwear. Losing a bet, Yu dresses up as Miss Scorpio, and falls in love with teenage girl Yoko while saving her from bullies, declaring her his “Holy Maria”. Yoko falls in love in Miss Scorpio, since she hates men ever since her father sexually harassed her. When Yu’s father and Yoko’s adoptive mother marry, Yu and Yoko become siblings. Koike is the local leader of a sect, Zero Church, and disguises herself into Miss Scorpio to recruit Yoko and the parents as new members. Yu dresses up as Miss Scorpio, storms the building of the Zero Church, detonates a bomb there and saves Yoko who leaves the cult. Yu lands in a mental asylum, but regains his memory when Yoko visits him, and they fall in love.  

You have to hand it to Japanese cinema—they simply have audacity. “Love Exposure” is the darnedest thing: it is a weird patchwork of disparate subplots, unnecessarily overlong with its running time of 4 hours when it could have told the entire story in only 2.5 hours, but you have to see it—just for its sheer audacity. By its tone, it can be compared to Demme’s “Something Wild”, since it changes to new genres and story directions almost every half an hour, starting at first as a variation of “Yes, God, Yes” (a repressed Catholic discovering sexuality), to then change to “Lady Georgie” (a brother infatuated with his adoptive sister), “Tootsie” (Yu is disguised as Miss Scorpio, but Yoko is unaware of his identity), “Tie Me Up!” all through even a little dash of “Oldboy” in the bloody finale. It seems as if the director and writer Sion Sono wanted to cram 5-6 films in one, or that this was intended as an animated series, but was then converted into a live action film. 

In spite of this overburdened storyline, the film has some amazing scenes. For example, in the opening act, a timer is set up, since the intermittently inserted titles are saying “365 days until miracle”, “165 days until miracle”, “3 minutes until miracle”... creating a sense of anticipation until the announced event, in this case how Yu and Yoko first meet. The title card appears 58 minutes into the film, also staying true to the film’s weird and untrammeled style. However, there are also some extreme monents in here, such as the one where Koike takes revenge on her violent, abusive father by cutting off his penis while he had a stroke, equipped with a “fountain of blood” coming from the man’s cut genitalia. On the other hand, Koike is presented in a different light by always carrying her green budgerigar parrot on her hand: at the beginning, her father beat her, leaving her lying on the floor with the dead parrot in her hand; in the finale, Koike is dead, and the parrot is alive—making the bird a symbol of her innocent soul contaminated and broken by the cruel world. “Love Exposure” is a cult film because it showed the protagonist’s sexual awakening and escape from any kind of regulation under (religious) ideology, adding crazy ideas, jokes (“I am a pervert with dignity”), puns and allegories, but too many characters do not play a role later on (Yu’s new stepmother, for instance), and this overload without a sense for better editing or focus took a certain toll on this energetic film.    

Grade:++

Wonder Woman 1984

Wonder Woman 1984; fantasy, USA, 2020, D: Patty Jenkins, S: Gal Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Chris Pine, Amr Waked, Oliver Cotton, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, Lynda Carter  

Amazon superheroine Diana Prince now lives in Washington in 1984. During the day, she works in a museum, but when crime strikes, she fights as Wonder Woman. The museum obtains a magical mineral which can grant wishes. Unpopular geek Barbara wishes to become popular and attractive, and achieves it. Diana wishes for the deceased Steve to be alive again, and he appears in some other guy’s body. When the fraudulent oil businessman Lord absorbs the mineral, he gets the ability to fullfil other people’s wishes, and uses it to demand favors and gain profits. When it is revealed that the wishes by the mineral are unstable, and that Wonder Woman is losing her powers, she renounces her wish, and helps the world do the same to stop Lord.  

While weaker than the 1st film, the director Patty Jenkins managed to assemble a surprisingly good film, with some scenes that even top the original, when one considers the ludicrous, far-fetched concept she had to work with: it is a pity the audiences were reluctant towards it, since “Wonder Woman 1984” is at times almost an experimental superhero film without real villains, a product of its time, the Trump administration. Jenkins even said it herself: "Who is the supervillain, now? Who’s the bad guy? It’s all of us, we’re destroying our world. We’re letting ourselves support every villain in every passive way by buying their stuff." As outlandish as the story is, it is a contemplation on the ethical challenges of a Faustian bargain, based on rotten foundations, a one in which the quest for success is such a drug that people don’t even register the price for it, i.e. that their selfish interests are exploitative and actually cause more harm than good, whereas it also blends in the philosophy of “Fullmetal Alchemist”, namely that for every gain there must be an equal loss. The prologue serves as a nice foreshadowing: Diana as a kid cheats to get ahead in a contest, but is stopped before the finish line by her mentor, leading to this exchange: “But I almost won!” - “No, you did not win because you are not ready to be a winner.” Gal Gadot shines again and is excellent as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, who is an irresistibly innocent and pure character. Her first entrance in the film as the superheroine stirs some sense of awe and wonder: a burglar threatens to throw a little girl from a balcony of a shopping mall, but Wonder Woman uses her golden lasso to catch the girl and descend her gently on a toy pony, appropriately. 

After that, there are no more action sequences for almost an hour, to allow Diana to reconnect with Steve. The movie is beautiful to look at, as it boasts with stunning cinematography. One sequence in this first half is badly directed, though: the one where Barbara is harassed by a man, and then takes revenge by killing him, seems more like a ridiculous extreme-feminist caricature than a real, objective presentation of the issue of sexual harassment. Maybe if the stranger was Barbara’s alcoholic ex-boyfriend, it might have seemed more plausible. The second action sequence, the Egyptian truck chase, is the action highlight of the film, a ‘tour-de-force’ set-up where each piece of dominoes falls in its place, and even shows Wonder Woman in a flawed edition. Some of these fantasy ideas are a tad too audacious, but we are glad the authors were bold to try them out, anyway. The third best sequence is right after Wonder Woman renounces her wish, runs away, saddened by what she lost, and suddenly lassoes a plane to catapult herself in the sky. This is illogical, since she even at one point just lassoes clouds to remain gliding in the sky, and yet, it works as some sort of intimate dream-sequence for her, as if the movie grants her a fantasy break within the fantasy, to give her time to absorb the event and heal herself. The final 20 minutes fall apart, unfortunately: it seems the movie itself doesn’t know what is going on, since this wish-fulfillment business prolifirated over the entire world, and the authors lost oversight of where this is heading. This chaotic ending was inevitable giving the weird story flow. Nonetheless, even in this edition, Wonder Woman still has that elegance and esprit to lasso the viewers into her side.  

Grade:++

King of Knives

King of Knives; black comedy / drama, USA, 2020; D: Jon Delgado, S: Gene Pope, Roxi Pope, Mel Harris, Emily Bennet, Kara Young, Emma Myles, Teo Rapp-Olsson, Alyssa Kempinski

New York. Frank, an amployee in an advertising agency, is nearing 60 and is about to reluctantly celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife Kathy, and their two grown up daughters, Kaitlin and Sadie. The neurotic family is chaotic: Kaitlin is dumped by her lesbian girlfriend Darla, while Sadie dumps her boyfriend Patrick. Frank is both plagued by his midlife crisis and his remorse for his son Danny who committed suicide. After a wild party, he finally admits to his family that he had an affair and that he only married Kathy because he was afraid of staying alone. Kathy decides to break-up with Frank, but he unexpectedly bonds again with Kaitlin.

Jon Delgado's feature length debut film is another refreshing entry in the often used concept of drama-comedies about a dysfunctional family: "King of Knives" unravels like a more serious, 'grounded' edition of "The Royal Tenenbaums", featuring both real-life problems (suicide of a son; midlife crisis; people who are not satisfied with their life) and daft characters, and works more thanks to the latter, whereas it has some delicious writing at times. These two virtues blend in the excellent character of Kaitlin, who is cynical and wise-cracking in the first half (when her mother gives a heart-warming speech, Kaitlin tells her: "Don't go all Hallmark on me"), but becomes more emotional and humble in the finale, and tries to actively understand and accept that her father Frank is imperfect, but not deliberately harmful. The "unusual" moments are where this film works the best: for instance, the sequence where Frank is flirting with the younger woman Cassie, but she suddenly interupts him ("I have to pee, I'll be back in a sec!") is much more interesting than the grey dramatic moments. Several funny lines spice up the storyline ("I am thinking of buying a sports car", says the mother. This leads to an exchange with Frank: "Having a midlife crisis?" - "No, just trying to keep up with yours"; "She used all the kleenex in the house"). Frank does not undergo a character arc; rather, he just accepts his ageing and resorts to honesty. This culminates in the high point sequence in which he admits to the family that he had an affair and married out of fear, not out of love. You do not see such brutally honest, and direct characters that often. He even gives surprising words of wisdom to Betsy: "All relationships have about as much hate as they do love. And without the former, you cannot appreciate the latter." Real-life father and daughter Gene Pope and Roxi Pope deliver fine performances, and are sympathetic characters. Despite some minor flaws and limitations, this independent film has enough wit to cause a higher amplitude of events than your usual film.

Grade:+++

The Wake of Light

The Wake of Light; drama, USA, 2019; D: Renji Philip, S: Rome Brooks, Matt Bush, William Lige Morton

Mary lives in a small rural town, selling natural water from her farm well to local people. She is taking care of her father, who is weak after suffering a stroke years ago. Her ordinary life is interrupted by Cole, a guest whose car broke down while he was on his way to visit the Grand Salt Falts. Cole and Mary become friends, and he falls in love with her, but she is torn by her loyalty to care care for her sick father. Eventually, Cole returns to his ex-girlfriend and their son, while Mary walks down the beach.

"The Wake of Light" is a touching and honest, albeit conventional and overstretched independent little film about people at the crossroads in life. The maximum was achieved out of the two leading actors, Rome Brooks as Mary and Matt Bush as Cole, since their characters are refreshingly simple and kind people, and you enjoy being in their cozy company—actually, you like these characters so much that you wish they had more to do to shine in the movie, and had better written lines. The thing is, the storyline could have used a better written treatment, for a more versatile viewing experience, since the relationship between the two leading protagonists is thin, especially in the last 30 minutes which seem like one giant 'empty walk'. The loneliness of Mary is depicted neatly visually, by showing her often alone, such as the sequence where she sits in an empty church or rarely interacts with anybody else in the small town; the same was done with Cole in the wide shot where he is all alone in the countryside, observing the sunset over a hill, symbolically depicting also the slow ending of his hopes for a new chance. Despite the feeling that this could have worked much better as a short film, "The Wake of Light" has a wonderful mood and great cinematography which captivate the viewers.

Grade:++