You know what's great?: Hostel

You know what's great? Hostel: Eli Roth's 2005 paean to the exploitative impulses inherent in the ignorant and entitled American male mind scape. A lot of 80's obsessed, torture porn hating online scribes and personalities will try to convince you it's a pointless wallow in dim witted frat boy antics devoid of style, purpose or merit. These are the same people who thought Piranha 3-D was a watershed of self aware brilliance and they couldn't be more wrong or more blind to the converse actuality. Hostel is about a great many things: the rise of anti-Americanism in the wake of the 2nd Iraq invasion, the preponderance of online avenues for snuff entertainment and the barbarous nature of the male youth of our country, incapable of empathy or reflection, raised on a steady diet of casual misogyny and pervasive pornography. Above all else though, it's a film about these characters slow realization that despite their delusions of proprietary dominion over all they encounter, they are nothing more than commodified meat to be bought, sold and exploited, precisely as they had done earlier with prostitutes in the red light district.

The construction of the narrative and the manner in which the plot unfolds is nothing short of masterful. We don't neccesarily like our thrill seeking protagonists, but we don't need to. This isn't a romantic comedy or redemptive drama. This is a harsh light being cast on the callous, bougoise dickheads who tag team hookers and spit nasty invective at any woman that doesn't meet their impossibly high double standards of physical perfection and unquestioning willingness to be "railed". When prince Paxton refers to bestiality cause a larger (actually realistic) woman he sees is "a fucking hog", it's not supposed to tickle our funnybone. It's an insight into a character who expects every female he encounters to be a toned, flawless plastic fuck doll. These men stomp off wherever their unquenchable libido leads them and seem to find exactly what they wanted. Assiduously, Roth strips the situation of its glamour. From one triumph to the next, foreboding details slip into sharper relief until the disappearance of two of his comrades forces Paxton to contemplate the severity of his predicament. He pleads his case to a dismissive policeman, who after learning he is an American quietly intones with knowing empathy, "You are so far from home". It's positively chilling.

To me, the greatest moment is when Paxton, alone and beyond frustrated by his fruitless search for his friends tracks down the two gorgeous locals who had attached themselves to his group at the hostel. There is no techno music now, no strobe lights, no dolled up beauties out in their dancing clothes. Just two disinterested working girls, barely recognizable without makeup and accompanied by a sinister brute in a smoky dive bar. The veneer of bar hopping and sport fucking is shorn as if with a razor, leaving bare and exposed the visage of the ultimate morning after. This is the point of Hostel and its penultimate moment, not the fantasia of lust and flesh that precedes it or the horrific dungeon hell it descends into following it. It's that crystalline realization this carefree party boy has that the party is over and he has no more friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love the inner workings of the Hostel and the Slavic behemoths in black jackets that serve as its security force. I love the gore and glimpsed atrocities Paxton witnesses while being dragged to his private hell. But Roth is wise in never showing too much of what goes on in these rooms, the mind fills in the blanks beautifully. His cinematography is impeccable, particularly that long shot of Paxton being led into the abandoned refinery that evokes Frye's introduction to Lugosi in Browning's Dracula. The Nathan Barr score is fascinating in how it teeters between lush strings and bombastic, energetic camp. The performances are uniformly excellent and the KNB gore beyond reproach. Why do people hate it so? I suspect because they hate Roth and begrudge him his success. Or perhaps they are unwilling to gaze too deeply into the unflattering mirror it holds up to the ugly and cynical modern American male we've all more or less devolved into. Whatever the reason, it's a film that will outlive its detractors because it is well made, clever and has a point. It touches on the problems, fears and reprehensible desires of our times with more potency, force and conviction than any of the last decades best picture Oscar winners could ever dream of.

You know what's great? The Passion of the Christ

You know what's great? The Passion of the Christ. I'm sure people would imagine I'm being ironic with that statement, but I assure all 3 of you reading this that I couldn't be more serious. I mean, I hate organized religion and am an atheist as much as the next sane, rational person is, but goddamn if I don't love me the story of Jesus Christ. I first became aware of my affinity for it when my parents took me, a 15 year old metal head and Slayer devotee, kicking and screaming to a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This wasn't some crap dinner theater go 'round mind you. This was at the historic Orpheum theater in downtown Mpls. with Carl Andersen and Ted Neely reprising their respective roles of Judas and Jesus from the Norman Jewison film adaptation. I enjoyed the outdated hippie/funk score in an slightly cynical fashion, but the Tim Rice lyrics blew me away with their heady mixture of winking, knowing sarcasm and tortured, dark poetry. Ted Neely hitting the high note "whyyyyyyyyyy!!!" during the apex of The Garden of Gethsemane was then, and is still to this day the most overwhelming and profoundly moving live musical moment I've experienced, and I've seen Sunny Day Real Estate, Dimmu Borgir AND Ice-T.

It doesn't bother me that Mel glosses over the teachings and philosophy of Jesus to focus primarily on those last torturous hours of his existence. I know the story of Jesus (better than most Christians I've met I might add), so I have no need for yet another origin story. Most importantly though, The Passion of the Christ is a deeply personal artistic and spiritual statement from Mel Gibson. It is what he feels his religion to be about and watching it the other night on bluray, it struck me just how ballsy the film is and what a catastrophic failure it could have been. This is a film seemingly designed to sicken the non-believing segment of the populace while challenging the sincerity of the supposedly devout. It is a complex assault on the mind, heart, ears and eyes that clearly comes from a film maker as interested in punishing himself for his transgressions as he is in castigating his audience for either their disbelief or (perhaps in his eyes even worse) middling, lukewarm devotion. Before tumbling down a theological rabbit hole that will inevitably lead to confronting the sticky anti-Semitism questions and salacious tabloid shenanigans Heir Direktor has found himself mired in for the last 5 years, I will now detour back to the road I'm most comfortable travelling: appraising the film as a piece of art and its effect on me over the course of multiple viewings spread across several years.

It opens in the garden of Gethsemane on Jesus wrestling with his fear of impending imprisonment, torture and death. He pleads skyward with his silent father to let this unfortunate task pass from him, all the while sweating blood and being coldly questioned and taunted by what is unquestioningly my favorite cinematic interpretation of Satan. This opening is pure Universal horror with moonlit skies and oppressive mist drifting over the proceedings like a funeral shroud. From the first frame, Mel isn't fucking around here. This is going to be dark, scary and decidedly serious. It's filmed like a slow motion nightmare, the characters move as if through glue, inexorably toward their predetermined fate. Of the many brilliant decisions Mel makes, the choice to present it in Aramaic and Latin is perhaps the most fortuitous. It lends credence to the ancient world he's created and bathes the dialog in a mysterious, menacing musicality.

The horrific tone doesn't let up as we witness Judas hounded to suicide by bestial phantoms and demonic, deformed children. The familiar chords are struck as Simon denies him 3 times, Caiaphas takes Jesus to Pilate, Pilate sends him to Herod, then Herod back to Pilate. Jesus' stoic acceptance of his purposeful fate is inspiring and heartbreaking to watch as he's transported back and forth, beaten and shackled to answer meaningless questions from powerless public servants. Pilate, in an attempt to appease the bloodthirsty mob, sentences Jesus to a whipping, that escalates into a scourging that can only be described as the most effective portrayal of mans inhumanity to man ever put to film. As I previously stated, I'm a non-believer, but I openly wept during this sequence in the theater, seated next to a matronly septuagenarian similarly overcome by pity and shocked sadness. As the scene begins, you can feel your stomach drop, as if having reached the precipice of a roller-coaster, about to descend into the bowels of hellish atrocity. Yes, it is pornographic in its depiction of violence, but it serves the story. Hell, it IS the point of the story.

A word on Caviezel here: His portrayal of Christ is definitive. It's a staggering work of control, charisma, athleticism and power. He exudes both otherworldly magnetism and earthy reality. He is someone who, with a look, you would gladly follow into hell. His face fills the frame with beseeching authority, daring you to look and daring you to look away. That he wasn't even nominated shows the Oscars for the shallow, image based scam that they are.

As we move onto the stations of the cross, the film heads to what I believe to be its defining moment and certainly one of the most indelible images ever captured by a camera. Mary, who has thus far been grim and desultory on the periphery of this filial holocaust is now trying to reach her son as he carries his cross to Golgotha. She can not bear to see him this way, but then he falls in slow motion and we cut to a flashback of him falling as a child and her running to his aid. She runs to him and the two time frames are juxtaposed. A mother's love is forever. She's by his side now, her son hideously destroyed by the hatred of his fellow man. He touches her face and reassures her with the line, "See mother, I make all things new.". He embraces his burden and RISES in the most devastating image of Christ I've ever seen in any medium. Every time I see the film, I am flattened by this scene. It absolutely destroys me. The subsequent journey and ultimately, crucifixion, is like falling into oblivion as the torture and indignity of it all finally gives way to his expiration and our release from this arduous, yet rewarding ordeal.

This is a film of great beauty and great horror, usually working in tandem. The camera work is fluid and gorgeous, the actors perfectly cast and impeccably directed to superlative performances. The score, a tonally fluctuating masterwork and the images a display of endlessly inventive creativity and painterly perfection. I mean sure, nobody ever wants to watch it with me, but it isn't the first time I've been alone on my devotional appreciation of a film. Maybe I'm just a closet Christian as my wife suggests or I simply have an abiding love for martyrs and the poetry of brutality. Either way, The Passion of the Christ is a marvelous film that I will be watching, studying and being emotionally exhausted by for the rest of my life.

2010: through the eyes of a child

I saw a metric shit ton of films in the theater this year. I've always felt a deep reverence for the theater going experience that was no doubt instilled in me by my father. He took me to films like Predator, Robocop, Dune, Legend, Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Clash of the Titans and Gremlins to name but a few. He took me to not just all the Arnold movies, but the Seagal and even the VanDamme ones as well. We walked out of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy together and laughed knowingly at the pure awesomeness of Brad Dourif's performance in Graveyard Shift. The point is, my formative years were filled with wonder for the spectacle of cinema and that blossomed into a full blown obsession with devouring all of it that I could and comprehending the craft that went into producing it.


My son turned 9 this year and I completed the cinematic circle of life by taking him to everything he was interested in (and some that he wasn't) and imparting some of my knowledge of film in our car ride home discussions. I rediscovered a large part of my wonder and naivete for the magic of film this last year by seeing so many movies through my sons eyes. I think a lot of Internet film nerds who write 4 page dissertations on why Tron:Legacy is such a piece of insulting shit should perhaps attempt to procreate so as to gain a window into what magnetically drew them to movies in the first place. I became painfully aware of what's wrong and what's right with the Internet in regards to the "online film community" this year. There's not much right really. It's great that you can order any film you want at the drop of a hat and there are some intelligent writers out there, but there were intelligent writers before the Internet (arguably a great deal more) and there's something to be said about putting in the effort to track down the film makers you're interested in through painstaking research as opposed to simply perusing online lists and clicking provided links.


I had a hell of a lot of fun at flicks like Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, Tangled, Megamind, Prince of Persia and Shrek Forever After. Admittedly the "through the eyes of a child" whimsy couldn't be called upon to salvage abominations like Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver's Travels, whimsy can only take you so far, folks. I think my favorite film going experience this year was actually Devil. I took my son to see it because I'm trying to find a way to get him interested in horror and this PG-13 flick piqued his curiosity somewhat through televised trailers he'd seen. The short story is it wholly terrified him. He had a remarkably visceral reaction that infected me to the point where the film began to really work on me. I wasn't holding my hands in front of my eyes during the tense parts, but the fact that my son was next to me made the horror much more palpable. The weekday screening we attended was sparsely populated and for the hour and a half it lasted, it felt like we were dislocated from our daily lives and set adrift in outer space with an omniscient vantage point into the events of another world. THAT is what I love about seeing films in the theater. That's why I enjoy seeing films by myself so much. It's far easier to leave thoughts of your dull and crushingly average existence at the door when alone in a darkened auditorium.

That was the highlight of my cinematic year. I saw a lot of great films though. Inception was brilliant of course, but I'm having a hell of a time sitting through it at home on bluray for some reason. I suppose the intellectual exercise of it having been completed robs it of most of its impact. Toy Story 3 was to my mind, the most well made and executed film with the most powerful emotional moments. Scott Pilgrim was kinetic perfection, solidifying Wright's position as a master of the sublimely entertaining and imminently watchable popcorn flick. The Social Network was eerily perfect film making and a prescient snapshot of the disconnected coldness that gave birth to this modern world of disingenuous online relationships and meaningless, unrelenting status updates. To round out the year, Black Swan was a familiar tale well told and True Grit gave us our yearly dose of rascally Coen Brothers goodness.

The Expendables and Piranha 3-D exemplified everything wrong with film and its relationship to online film culture. These films seemed not so much created by artists as brought into existence by an unholy confluence of cynical executives and crass, mouth breathing nerds who are fine with films being merely feature length trailers. Reading the litany of literally and figuratively masturbatory reviews for these lazy highlight reels masquerading as movies made me feel old. It was like in Idiocracy when Luke Wilson longed for a time when "we knew whose ass it was and why it was farting!". Hey kids, flip through your Maxim magazines, wish you grew up in the 80's a little more and take a cold shower. I want no part in this regressive, celebratory dance of self aware irrelevance. I'll hold my films to the standard of containing style, content and story thank you very much.

As for horror, we are entering into another 90's. The fear of external terror, revulsion at torture and paranoia toward the rest of the world that 9/11 and its resultant conflagrations engendered is largely wearing off in the American psyche and the lack of potent meaning and subtext in genre film is lamentably evident. Sure, there were a lot of remakes in the 2000's, but they bore the irrefutable stamp of the time from whence they came. If future generations want to know where the dark, unspoken part of our brains were at, they need but watch 28 Weeks Later, The Hills Have Eyes remake and The Mist. Daybreakers was fun I guess, but I'm not interested in revisiting it. The Crazies was solid, but excruciatingly generic. The Wolfman was beautiful, but flaccid. The Elm Street remake was about as boring, lifeless and pointless as it gets and that's all that needs to be said or written about that film ever again. Predators was a pleasant surprise and Machete flat out fucking ruled with its righteous anger, likable characters and inventive action (all of which Piranha lacked), so thanks for delivering the goods this year Rodriguez. The Last Exorcism could be lauded for its singular approach were it not for the camcorder conceit which I've loathed since Blair Witch. I wouldn't even deign to see Paranormal Activity 2 for this fact and how much I despised the first one. Resident Evil Afterlife was most impressive in Imax 3-D, but at home looks like a polished turd. My beloved Saw series ended with a grimly satisfying but ultimately lackluster entry and Let Me In? No thanks. So yeah, a dull year for horror at best and it doesn't look to be improving in the near future. Even the foreign stuff is drying up.

Oh well, it's all meaningless in any case I suppose. Here we are at the precipice of another year of celebrity deaths, shocking sex crimes, political bickering, ironic Internet memes, reality TV and economic instability. Until all our petrochemical resources run out and we begin a harrowing Mad Max existence, I'll keep on pointlessly expressing my "opinions" and "feelings" toward film and pop culture in this here blog. Happy New Year all!