Change Your Image
xshitz
Reviews
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)
You've gotta be joking!
This film is not entertainment, but unabashed Christian propaganda. Actually, it's just a thin, endlessly hokey, unintentionally hilarious farce where a handful of white American Christians save the world.
Kirk Cameron is particularly loathsome during a scene where a skeptic leaves a church during a religious pep-talk given by a Cosby-Show-preacher. Cameron's character tries to convince the skeptic that he must be saved by quoting the Ten Commandments to him and showing the guy how he is but a gnat in the eyes of God because he's broken a few of the commandments. I'm sure Ralph Reed, and the rest of them, were lapping this stuff up, but it was as stilted and forced a moment as I've ever seen on screen.
Of course the anti-Christ is a foreign person -- no American could fit that bill -- who speaks with a comic Russian accent.
Good for a laugh, this film in its DVD form would also make a great drink coaster -- non-alcoholic, of course -- when you're done viewing it.
This is film-making at its most contrived and forgettable.
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2001)
Fascinating subject matter transcends low budget production value
It's easy to criticize the low budget production value of this documentary, however, that and the quirky, semi-inarticulate interviewees only accentuates the surreal mood that must have pervaded Philip K. Dick's life.
The fact that Philip K. Dick stories have been the basis for immensely popular Hollywood filmsBlade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Reportare the least interesting details discussed in the fascinating, very low budget documentary, The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick. The fact that Dick was married, much less four times during his life, is not even touched upon. For better or worse, the filmmaker, Mark Steensland, focuses on the truly bizarre aspects of Dick's life, and the bizarre aspects were legion.
The first episode of Dick's life examined is the time in 1971 when he returned to his house to find that someone had broken in and blown open his 1,100 pound safe with explosives. The vault contained all of Dick's personal papers, tax returns, as well as an unknown quantity of drugs. One friend suspected those drugs to be heroin. Although a frequent and fervent drug-user, Dick summoned the authorities, even calling the FBI to investigate the matter. It remains vague just how deeply the authorities investigated this break-in and theft, but they did take the time to inform Dick that they felt he was, in fact, responsible for the act. As writer Paul Williamswhose 1975 profile on Dick was partly responsible for launching Dick's modest fame during his lifetimepoints out, Dick was charmed by this notion, and actually spent some time meditating on the possibility that he had breached his own safe with explosives somehow without consciously knowing about it. No conclusions are offered, though one friend and writer speculates that some of the transient youth who crashed and used drugs at Philip K. Dick's home had violated his safe and made off with a quantity of drugs. Not long after the incident, Dick made rapid plans to leave California, heading up to Vancouver, British Columbia where he entered a drug treatment facility.
The next period in Dick's life that's examined in the documentary centers on what Dick referred to "2-3-74", meaning February and March of 1974. Following a period of illness, sporadic drug use, and coming out of a vitamin experiment where Dick's body had been bombarded with mega doses of Vitamin B, Dick answered a knock at his door one day to find a delivery driver from the local pharmacy had arrived with his prescription. As the girl at the door handed Dick the bag containing his prescription, his eye fell upon a Christian fish symbol pendant that hung around the girl's neck. He was then overtaken by an intense flash of light that knocked him unconscious, or at least senseless, for a period of twenty-four hours. The experience was very profound, leaving Dick with the sense that he had had an encountered with God. He referred to the experience as arising from a "pink beam" of light, and spent the next several years of his life writing about the experience in a body of work he titled "Exegesis." This piece of writing ultimately came to span 8,000 pages, and obsessed him until his death.
As a writer, I'm always inspired by seeing documentaries about famous and infamous writers. The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick was an enjoyable surprise, and definitely a quirky piece of popular culture that is worth finding and viewing.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)
Old School Scary
When I was a kid I watched television every day until I was absolutely saturated with popular culture. Although I was an athletic youth, I ran home each day after school to catch the afternoon movie on Detroit's ABC affiliate on Channel 7. I have never forgotten seeing the film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, about a young couple who move into the large rambling home once owned by the woman's grandmother. Something sinister once lurked the basement, but had been sealed within the fireplace by bricks stacked four deep -- the door giving onto the ash bin had been bolted shut. Evil subdued.
However, the first thing that happens when the young couple take over the house, is the wife wants to turn this grungy dank room into her home office. And she just has to have that damned fireplace cleared out and working. An aged handy man warns her against "meddling with things you don't understand," but she doesn't heed him.
Remember, there would be no such thing as horror movies if there weren't stupid people.
Sally, the wife, managed to undo the bolt on the ash bin door. That's all the evil needs to be unleashed through the house in the form of tiny raisin-headed ghouls who look like Smurfs gone bad.
The movie hit me like a piledriver when I was eight years old. It scared the absolute shite out of me. Last night I borrowed this film from a friend, seeking to demystify it. I'm just after watching the film for the first time in twenty five years, and I have to say that this cheesy little horror knock-off still does the job. I don't think it'll keep me up tonight as it had when I was a kid, but the story's simplicity, particularly its makeshift special effects, came off quite effectively.
I've never seen the film on the shelf in a video shop. But if you do come across and are looking for a nostalgic thrill, I think Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is what you're looking for.
Sånger från andra våningen (2000)
"Beloved are those who sit down"
This is the credo of Swedish film Sånger från andra våningen (Songs From the Second Floor). The film is comprised of a minimum of physical action. Each scene is more like a still photograph in which characters talk about the action that has occurred off screen. Sounds like the premise of a deadly boring film, but the story layers itself amid each scene, details are echoed by different characters, and soon the director's intent becomes apparent: "A film poem inspired by the poet Caesar Vallejo. A story about our need for love, our confusion, greatness and smallness and, most of all, our vulnerability. It is a story with many characters, among them a father and his mistress, his youngest son and his girlfriend. It is a film about big lies, abandonment and the eternal longing for companionship and confirmation."
The film is highly visually striking. Many of the characters are physical caricatures. Some have come back from the dead. In one scene a businessman who has burned down his furniture shop visits his son in a sanitarium. The son "wrote poetry until he went nuts," the businessman laments. His other son, a mild mannered taxi driver, kneels by the crazy son and says, "Beloved are those who sit down." To which the businessman begins ranting and is carted off by two sanitarium attendants.
There is also an unexplained all day traffic jam crippling the unnamed city. There are demonstrators moving about in a strange dance protesting the lack of employment in the country.
This is a quirky understated film. I love the idea that it's intended a "film poem" and was inspired by a poet. It takes on that subtle sensibility, and is surely entirely off-putting to anyone seeking something more verbose.
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Tedious experiment
Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film Coffee & Cigarettes is an unbelievable disappointment. Jarmusch is credited as writer as well as director, but it's pretty clear there is no writing in this film. Although he managed to get Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Stephen Wright, Bill Murray and several other noted actors for the film, it's clear they are improvising their lines and situations -- to dismal effect.
I normally love films that boast such casts. Robert Altman's 1993 Shortcuts was an amazing work. The famous cast was a nice touch, but the film would have been great anyway because the stories were all so strong. No such luck with Coffee & Cigarettes.
The premise of Jarmusch's film is showing a dozen vignettes of various pairs of people sitting in some rundown coffee shop, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Their conversations are dismal and uninteresting. Worse, all conversations must contain the actual words "coffee and cigarettes" in them. At best the faux world weariness of these situations and characters seems forced, at worst they are clichéd and stupid.
Jim Jarmusch is an enormously talented director. I can't imagine what he was thinking when he made Coffee & Cigarettes. I can't imagine anyone in a screening room telling him the film works.
Although the cast might tempt you to try this film out, you'd only be wasting your money -- and time -- on it.
Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002)
This pretentious crap is a poor man's Koyaanisqatsi
This bilious garbage is like a high schooler's attempt to recreate "Koyaanisqatsi". Many of the same visual motifs are copied (poorly), right down to the cave drawings in the American southwest. From filming the drug addict buddy smoking a cigar in the dark by a Toronto river, to the endless cliché of filming in Las Vegas, this movie is an empty, ham-handed attempt at philosophical discourse on our culture, times, and humanity. Narrated in a monotone voice that is groping to sound worldly yet detached, enlightened yet skeptical, not cool yet cool, this film is the worst kind of self-indulgence. It strives to be profound at every turn, but it ultimately comes off as profound and sophisticated as a whoopie cushion.
This film apparently won an award as Best Documentary in 2003 in Canada. I cringe to think of the competition it beat out. Leave this windy mess on the video store shelf, and rent CUBE, TREED MURRAY, WAYDOWNTOWN, LAST NIGHT, or BARNONE. Gambling, Gods, and LSD is a vapid waste of time, film, and no doubt Canadian grant money. There are many other films that do a much better job of representing the wonderful cinema being made in Canada. This crap is not.
Double Whammy (2001)
An absolute disgrace
Wow, sometimes renting a film on a whim can lead to utter disaster. DOUBLE WHAMMY attempts to cover the entire emotional spectrum, and misses at every turn. Homicide is used for comic effect, homicide is used for dramatic effect; homophobia is used for comic effect. Dennis Leary is following Eddie Murphy's path of having once been a genuine talent, trapped in a career of schlock and crap. Elizabeth Hurley is Elizabeth Hurley -- she looks good, but just won't stop trying to "act."
Don't let the reasonably decent cast fool you, as it fooled me. Steve Buscemi is terrible in this, Dennis Leary and Chris Noth are awful, Elizabeth Hurley is Elizabeth Hurley, and Luis Guzmán not good. It's not their fault -- they have next to nothing to work with.
Pass this one by.
Big Bad Love (2001)
A wonderful surprise
Big Bad Love achieves what few films even strive for -- that gritty level of believability (laced with wonderful dream sequences throughout) that makes it seem as though the camera was simply dropped into the center of these characters' lives.
There are a number of wonderful lines, and few scenes funnier than when unsuccessful writer, Leon Barlow (played by Howard), sits down to type a response to a letter from a magazine editor, rejecting one of his short stories.
Not to say that the film isn't uneven at times. Howard (who not only stars in the film, but also directs), remains true to his narrative, which does become difficult to watch as Barlow becomes more self-destructive. The dream sequences become muddled after a while, but only because that's how Barlow is experiencing them.
Performances by Paul Le Mat, Debra Winger, Angie Dickinson, and Rosanna Arquette are all very strong. The soundtrack is top-notch.
I highly recommend this film, particularly as an anti-dote to the vapid doggerel Hollywood continues to churn out like link sausages.