cutting the other edge
Film
Movie Review: “Killing Cars”, 1985 (3/5)
Dec 15th
For Prochnow fans only…
…But if you like the old boy, you’ll enjoy this perhaps more than you might expect.
People who even know who Jürgen Prochnow is tend to already be fans of the character actor. And why not? He’s a talented combination of intense, wry, sexy and slightly nuts. He’ll be genuinely tender with the female characters, in a way that can’t be faked, and then smile mischievously while having another character horribly tortured. He can do more acting with his eyes alone in one film, than the overpaid wads of fluff populating the average DVD collection can do in a whole career.
Too bad he was born in Germany, apparently rendering him unfit to play anything but villains in American films.
I sat down to watch “Killing Cars”, in which Prochnow is the self-absorbed romantic lead, after reading a review elsewhere by a Prochnow fangirl. I wanted to see what was on the other end of the spectrum of his movies from the immortal “Das Boot”, one of my favorite films. I was expecting utter garbage—I mean, a low-budget foreign car movie shot in 1985? I thought I’d be watching it through my fingers. Actually, it was surprisingly entertaining.
The early 80s sleaze factor is turned up to eleven here, especially in the beginning. Porsches, neon, punks, industrial lofts, feathered hair, smoking, spy subplots…it’s utter camp. Prochnow actually puts on sunglasses at night to drive. But the characters—at least the core 3 or 4—become a bit more sympathetic as the movie goes on, largely due to the understated seriousness with which Prochnow approached the role. What is it with that guy?
I thought this would be an interesting case of how a good actor could be dragged down by a bad script, low budget, and subpar supporting actors. In fact, through sheer talent and force of will, Prochnow made the movie gel. Sure, it gels into a barely-comprehensible, badly-lit study in hilarious industrial surrealism…but by the climax of the movie, I actually really gave a damn what happened to that ugly car.
The ability of this movie to make me care about it, despite my plans to mock it, hinged on one obscure German actor. That’s talent.
The most popular movies nowadays are filled with actors dumber than the average viewer, lending a much-needed ego boost to the audience. People seem content to watch what they know is terrible acting disguised with world-class special effects. After all, special effects don’t require emotional engagement, and bad acting presents no mental intimidation.
I guess I just like my actors brilliant and my movies puzzling. If anybody else enjoys feeling their scorn turned to curiosity by intelligent, subtle acting, there are much worse investments of your time than this movie. And if you’re a Prochnow fanatic trying to decide whether this is worth the pain, know that he has a nude scene.
(review at Amazon.com)
“No Man’s Land”, 2001
May 30th
Rarely has a movie knocked me on my ass quite like this one.
Set in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the civil war in 1993, it follows two enemy soldiers, Ciki and Nino, who become trapped together in a trench between battle lines. Ciki’s friend has been booby trapped by Nino’s side, the Serbs: he is laying on a bouncing bomb, which will explode if he moves, and Nino can’t disarm it. The two enemies must watch over him until help comes in the form of UN troops—if it does come.
Branko Djuric, who plays Ciki, was incredibly easy to watch. He has a sort of dangerous innocence, and his mobile facial expressions add almost a second dialogue to his part. I found it difficult to look away from the screen, and not just because the movie’s in subtitles—I didn’t want to miss one moment of the nonverbal interaction of the actors.
“No Man’s Land” won Bosnia an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Director Danis Tanovic takes a well-used plot device—enemies thrown together in unexpected intimacy—and a simple stage-set backdrop, and transcends them both with a vengeance. The film drops violence, humor, satire, horror, and pathos, with no warning, building in the viewer a raw and incredible emotion.
The characters are extremely human in a way that stings. The shots are close up; you feel trapped right there with them. No punches will be pulled; but you’re alive enough to take them.
Many reviewers of this movie focus on its portrayal of the absurdities of war, with the two soldiers as symbols of the entire Yugoslav conflict. It affected me more directly—I saw it as a reflection of the ridiculousness of interpersonal hatreds, of how arbitrary and yet intractable they can be.
But the best aspect of the movie is that it avoids the tendency of a typical war film to either shy away into abstraction and analysis, or numb itself with bloodspill and spectacle. Here, themes take a backseat to reality, just as in life. The bullets are less important than the pain, both emotional and physical, that they cause. Movies like “No Man’s Land” are mirrors, showing us a vital humanity that we all have, dangerously, in common.
Fuck You, Jack
Jul 9th
(originally posted on pajiba.com)
***
Reading the reviews for “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″, it seems there are four camps: the haters of the whole idea of the movie, the people that loved everything about the movie, the people who were disappointed in the movie but liked the special effects, and the people, like me, who were disappointed in the movie for reasons that include the violent effects.
I know that, because of our society’s collective lust for disgusting, graphically rendered monsters, my opinion will always be in the minority; and probably not taken seriously.
I know I’ll come across as a wimp and a prude, even though I love “Evil Dead” and “Apocalypse Now”.
But I have to say it: I’m so utterly sick of CGI being used almost exclusively to horrify or disgust. I am sick to death of computer effects taking over every movie that’s made anymore, crowding out the human actors, distracting from the plot (such as it may be) and the genuinely interesting interactions of the characters. Especially when said effects seem to be nothing but a showcase of ugliness and horror and violence for their own sake, in a movie that I thought was going to be a lighthearted little summer romp. I realized anew why I almost never go to the movies anymore.
I sat through “The Crow” in the theater when I was 15, and I wasn’t shocked or nauseated then like I was today–because I knew I was at a horror film, and I expected it. Nasty, gruesome images like those in “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ have no business in a movie that markets itself as a harmless family film. Anyone who takes their child to see this is making a big mistake–eyeballs get viciously torn out by crows, animals get repeatedly shot, graphic body parts are everywhere, people get beaten by their own father, and there is a nasty, negative vibe hanging over the whole movie. It is nothing like the first. It’s like the cast of the first film wandered onto the set of a horror movie, and have no idea what they’re doing there.
Laugh and feel superior and hipster-cool if you want, but does everything have to be dark and gorily violent to be taken seriously or hold our attention anymore? Does everything have to be either mindless drivel, or ultraviolent nastiness? It feels like that’s all that comes out anymore. Are there no fun, smart alternatives?
I went to this movie expecting to see a funny, loopy, sunshiny picture about pirates and beaches and silly bad guys. What I endured was almost three hours of darkness and slime and horror and pointlessness. I want my fucking Sunday back.