Goemon

Truly great films can be a miraculous thing to behold. They can remind you that the world is a magical place and that we are blessed to be born into its complicated splendor. They can remind you how much you love someone. They can take you to a time and place that has never existed, but is as fully realized as your daily existence. They can reawaken your sense of the seemingly antiquated notions of honor, justice and purpose. I have just witnessed such a film and its name is Goemon. I blind bought this Japanese gem based off a recent bluray review I read that lauded its imagery and stunning technical specifications. I could not be more pleased that I did. I honestly feel emotionally spent in a way that no stateside "epic" has been able to approximate in ages.

It tells the simple tale of a hero's journey. There is romance, comic relief and action like all films of this ilk attempt to bring across, but I haven't been this swept away in forever. I cared deeply about these characters. Despite the language barrier, I legitimately felt each and every one of their presences and was invested in where the story took them. The villains were as multi-layered and believable as the good guys, given real motives and understandable desires. By the end of the film, my vengeful blood lust for their comeuppance was tempered with pitied compassion, forcing me to question the act of revenge and its destructive, hollow nature. This film EARNS it messages through patience and sincerity.

Oh, but there is great humor, charm and charisma as well! The lead is outrageously likable from the first moment we encounter him, even though his only visible feature is his dancing eyes. He kicks ass to be certain, but he has true panache. Imagine Downey's Tony Stark, but not as a rich, entitled American prick. Goemon is a man of the people first and foremost, a rogue in the classic sense. His back story is masterfully meted out through gorgeously composed flashbacks, fleshing him out completely and constructing not only a great lead character, but an archetypal example of how to move beyond adversity in life and become a principled human being who genuinely cares for others, doing what is right at the expense of personal gain. Goemon is the sort of character I would want my son to look toward for inspiration and direction.

A word on the heightened reality of the computer assisted world this film swims in: If you're a slavish devotee of the summer blockbuster style of tripe like Battle LA, Transformers et al, don't even bother. Goemon, like Scott Pilgrim and Sucker Punch, uses computer effects the way they should be used. As a painterly tool to create a mystical netherworld where "looking real" has no meaning. Film is art, and computers are another tool in the artist's arsenal to realize their vision. The reality of this film stems from the strength of its story and writing, the efficacy of its performances, not the verisimilitude of its CGI. It's just plain stunning to look at, a veritable visual feast overflowing with color and beauty. The execution of the concept art through computer graphics is anchored by the pitch perfect sets and jaw dropping costume design, which brings to mind the superlative work of Eiko Ishikawa on Bram Stoker's Dracula. In short, the monumentally satisfying wonder of the film is brought to life by the technology employed in its creation as opposed to overshadowed or hamstrung by it.

Goemon has revitalized my love of Japanese cinema and inspired me to seek out not only the previous film from its director, but other entries in what is apparently a burgeoning movement. Like the Clark Nova in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, it has mythic resonance. It will bring to mind the problems that the world is embroiled in, but far from being an oppressive reminder of the insoluble problems with which we are currently faced, it bestows hope for what humanity could be, given time, effort and a unifying purpose. It is cinema of the highest order my friends, and I wish I could be there with you when you discover it for yourself.

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver has evolved into many different films to me over the 20 years I've been studying it. I first became aware of it from seeing posters of Robert Deniro with that iconic mohawk at used CD stores that doubled as suburban head shops. I was a horror nut from an early age and had a book about the make up legacy of Dick Smith that contained some lurid photos of the work the maestro contributed to Bickle's siege on the whorehouse. I would ask my father about the film and he seemed at a loss as to how to describe its narrative to me, instead choosing to extol the virtues of the remarkably intense Deniro performance. What I've learned in the interim is that there is no way to explain Taxi Driver to a 12 year old and certainly no way a 12 year old could ever understand what the film is saying, yet, my reach has always exceeded my grasp, so in the summer after seventh grade I rented it and decided to see what all the fuss was about.

My first viewing was, unsurprisingly in retrospect, a colossal let down. A crashing bore that seemed to never go anywhere and ended just when it was getting good. The thing about being an American male growing up in the 80's and being addicted to film and television, is that you were taught not only that might makes right, but that the solution to any and every problem is violence. My idols were Schwarzenegger, Stallone, VanDamme and Seagal. These men portrayed simplistic characters with very little shading. They were righteous and just, they were wronged, then they punished those that wronged them. That story structure was an exceedingly palatable through line to an impressionable, ignorant kid entering puberty and I ate it up with my silver spoon. Imagine my consternation and confusion at being presented with a lead character that was scrawny instead of steroidal. A central figure fundamentally incapable of expressing himself verbally instead of a charismatic leader of men who incessantly spouts pithy one-liners. My inability to comprehend the character of Travis Bickle at the time was as indicative of my tender age as it was a judgement made on the general tone of the films I grew up on.

Once I entered my tumultuous teens, I began to understand Bickle's isolation in a more profound, yet still narrow sense. Like Bickle, I also hated the things I saw, the way I saw people treat each other and how they behaved. I was becoming more educated about film and even though Taxi Driver's themes were still beyond me, I was well versed in the Scorsese oeuvre up to that point and could watch the film as a purely cinematic exercise in beautiful art. The shot composition, the blocking, the saturated color scheme and the performances in Taxi Driver are all prime Scorsese, rivalled only by Raging Bull and Goodfellas. So I spent the rest of my teens grooving on Taxi Driver's look and its sounds. I was at least qualified to appreciate the pretty pictures and the grimily seductive Bernard Herrman score. I wore a Taxi Driver shirt, had an over sized wall poster and even sported a Bickle mohawk of my own one summer. I giddily contributed to compounding its cult status despite having nary a clue about its social and psychological significance.

Throughout the first half of my twenties, the film faded into the background as music became my prevailing artistic interest. It was regularly referenced by me and my friends though, mostly through quoting our favorite lines apropos of nothing. A buddy would call and ask what I was up to and I would reply "I don't know nobody named Iris." in Keitel's lilting tone, to which my friend would respond "He called you names! he called you a.... little piece of chicken!" and so on it would go and oh, how we would laugh. But the tail end of the 90's saw a curious cultural shift. And then there is change, to paraphrase Travis Bickle.

The Columbine school shootings seemed to initiate a spate of similar crimes and before long, there was an epidemic of angry, disgruntled men wandering into places both public and domestic, deciding to rectify their considerable qualms with the world through an outburst of automatic weapon assisted assaults on the unsuspecting and the innocent. It seemed this would happen every other month and it had a profound effect on me at the time (still does). This trend coupled with the bizarre DC Sniper case that gripped the Country's imagination with fear and distrust for what seemed like an eternity caused me to recall the plight of one Travis Bickle and occasioned me to begin revisiting the film in earnest. Perhaps through Schrader's prescient characterization, I could begin deciphering some of the root causes of this sickeningly prevalent strain of malignant behavior.

Watching Taxi Driver became a sad, solitary pastime as opposed to the in-joke producing chuckle machine it once was. I started to see how easily one could let loneliness as a defense mechanism dictate the anti-social manner in which they would interact with others, only widening the gulf between them and their fellow man. People have an intense desire for not only companionship, but purpose. I personally believe that the disembodied redundancy of the instantaneous internet age has robbed the comfortable youth of this country of any sense of direction or meaning. Look no further than the crazed mug shot of Jared Lee Loughner or consider the actions of Cho Seung Hui to follow the evolution of God's Lonely Man. Travis Bickle, so cut off from the world he doesn't know what movies its inhabitants go see or what music they listen to or even what positions politicians take on what issues, has evolved into a hyper-aware, overstimulated automaton that is always plugged in and never without something to infuriate them. Any one of the numberless iterations of social media can light any one of a billion fuses at any given time.

Take the scene in which Travis watches an insipid soap opera silently in his apartment while holding his comfort totem, the 44 caliber handgun. He puts his boot on the crate the TV rests atop and begins slowly pushing it away, symbolically pushing away his tenuous connection to the human relationship presented on the screen and indeed the connection to the world that television itself represents. It reaches a tipping point and the tube crashes to the floor, emitting sparks and smoke, utterly destroyed. Travis leans forward in his chair, putting his head in his hands like a soul sickened version of Rodin's The Thinker as Bernard Herrman's score swells and undulates, chillingly approximating Travis' mental collapse. To me, this is the core of the film. It is a man choosing to distance himself from the world and reaching that breaking point where he can't reestablish a connection to it. The same thing is happening today with computer screens, but I doubt anyone out there is capable of severing their connection to it like Bickle did with his pitiful cathode contraption. People filled up past the point of bursting with images, words and ideas they can't handle have their own psychoses amplified by the dissenting views they can't help but seek out. They WANT to be further enraged and closed off from normal human discourse, like Bickle wanted to drive in the worst areas of town and see the venal criminality in action because it justified his world view and the reactionary attitude he chose to take toward it.

I'm sure my understanding of the film will change and mature even more as I grow older and understand people and the world in a larger context. Taxi Driver is a challenging, fascinating film with a brilliant script, directed by one of cinema's living legends at the peak of his powers featuring one of the greatest performances an actor has ever contributed to the medium. The recently released bluray is an indispensable addition to the library of any serious student of film and will be teaching us about the darkness inside us all for generations to come.

You Know What's Great? David Lynch's Dune

My father took me to see David Lynch's Dune in December of 1984 when I was 7 years old. To say that it had a profound impact on me would be both accurate and an understatement. I watched the bluray (which is breathtaking) the other night and I'm frankly astounded I haven't spent the last 27 years suffering recurring nightmares of Kenneth McMillan floating above me and hawking loogie's on my face. There has never been before, nor will there ever be again, a big budget attempt at starting up a tentpole franchise that is as languid, bewildering or stomach churning as Dune. The film starts off with Virginia Madsen dreamily reading cue cards of cobbled together exposition while Lynch inexplicably fades her image in and out against a backdrop of twinkling stars fixed in endless blackness. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking 4 Tylenol PM's after ingesting a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and washing it all down with a sixer of Rolling Rock. He verily dares the audience to stay awake right out of the gate!

Then we're treated to a baffling conversation between Jose Ferrer's Emperor Shaddam the 4th and a laughably lovable Carlo Rambaldi creation called a Third Stage Guild Navigator that is basically a 46 foot long turd with a noxious-gas spewing vagina for a mouth and tiny, adorable T-Rex arms. "I just folded space from Ix" the turd says in a resonant, menacing voice, "many machines on Ix. New Machines. Better than those on Richess." There is a lengthy, pregnant pause before the Emperor responds with a bewildered, "Oh?" And for a couple of seconds there, you begin to imagine that perhaps these two characters have no idea who each other is, why they are talking, or if they are even supposed to be in the same movie. It's a scene so gloriously bizarre and off-putting, it could have only come from David Lynch. As a child though, I was transfixed and my unformed brain gave tacit approval to this ill-explained hooey. To my 7 year old self, this all made perfect sense and I was hanging on the revolting puppet's every word as if he were a trusted family friend. This is what is commonly referred to in the biz as suspension of disbelief and I was far more freely giving of it in my youth.

As the film progresses and we're introduced to character upon character, each with more ridiculous hair and eyebrows than the last, the story begins to take a lumpy, serviceable shape. Something about some sort of royal family made up of an English Mother, a Russian father and a Canadian son taking over mining the all important, yet never adequately explained Spice Melange on a distant planet named Arrakis. There's a bunch of Hare-Krishna-by-way-of-HR Giger looking space nuns searching for the supreme being, also known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who will bring balance, but maybe also destroy everything? The villains of the piece are a disgusting, incestuous family of gingers called The Harkonnen's who are a pre-cog stand-in for the Bush Administration. They are led by an obese, leprous monster who floats around on clearly visible wires screaming and spitting all his dialog and occasionally gifting cats that need to be milked. Did I mention the creepy ass desert people with post production enhanced (but sometimes not) blue eyes who are led by legendary late 20th century creep Everett McGill? They ride around on sand worms the length of a football field and wear stylish suits that turn their crap and urine into food and water? How about the weirding module? It's a weapon that turns, silly, indistinguishable noises into pulse blasts. And Max Von Sydow and Linda Hunt show up for no reason and die 5 minutes later (spoiler alert). You get the idea, it's pretty fucking weird.

Describing the film Dune is like jumping rope with a Honda Civic. It's simply not possible. One must bear witness to it to fully attest to the efficacy of its incomprehensibility. It staggers the mind that with only Eraserhead and The Elephant Man under his belt, Lynch was given the reigns to this sprawling, Sci-Fi epic. The only comparable scenario I can imagine would be if Warner Brothers decided to hand over the Batman Franchise to Lars Von Trier after Nolan completes his troika. You know what, that's not a half bad idea. I'd be acutely interested to see what sort of unexplored thematic and sub textual context could be brought to the surface on the exhausted genre of the summer blockbuster when put in hands that weren't afraid to get dirty. I want Gaspar Noe to direct The Avengers. I want Shinya Tsukamoto given 250 million dollars and put in charge of the third Tron movie. I want Pascal Laugier to helm the next catastrophe-porn or alien invasion movie. I want film makers who can't be trusted to handle the projects usually reserved for bankable craftsmen like Spielberg, Bay and Scott. I'm not the least bit interested in watching no-budget, faux failures from no talent losers like Birdemic and The Room, I want high priced, high minded failures from certifiable madmen. The kind that bankrupt studios and become a warning sign for generations to come. I want movies to be dangerous and interesting again!

Or we can go see Thor in a couple weeks.

Rob Zombie

Rob Zombie is the most important, groundbreaking and visionary film maker working in the horror genre today. He is also the only one (to paraphrase an old Norman Mailer quote concerning William S. Burroughs) to be possessed by genius. Neil Marshall, Eli Roth, James Wan and Darren Lynn Bousman are all competent craftsmen (in varying degrees) and each have a film or two that is quite good, bordering on great. Zombie though, has birthed 4 of the most outrageous, divisive and challenging films of the last decade. I realize that the small cadre of fellow film enthusiasts who wander over to this screed will no doubt be shocked by what I am about to assert and that their estimation of my credibility will be irrevocably diminished. But this is something I feel strongly about and I refuse to hold my tongue on the subject any longer.

When House of 1,000 Corpses was released in April of 2003, I had essentially lost interest in cinema in general and genre film in particular. I went into the theater with meager expectations, having outgrown Zombie's music years prior and letting the man slip completely off my radar once he left White Zombie to form his solo project. In a word, I was devastated. I was completely unprepared for the anarchic mess blasted onto the screen like someones innards blown out their back by a shotgun. To paraphrase Coppola's egotistical assertion ( I love to paraphrase) that Apocalypse Now wasn't about Vietnam, it WAS Vietnam, House of 1,000 Corpses isn't a horror movie, it's EVERY HORROR MOVIE. It contains trace elements of everything from the Gothic angularity of Bride of Frankenstein and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the raw, confrontational power of Last House on the Left and Cannibal Holocaust. Its cinematography is as sweeping in scope as the gulf between Suspiria's primary elegance and the dusty, deserted carnival of Hooper's Funhouse. To put it simply though, it's a retelling of Texas Chainsaw Massacre filtered through the sensibilities of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and that my friends is as sweet a combination to me as the mystical pairing of peanut butter and chocolate.

House of 1,000 Corpses is the film that re-ignited my love of all things horror. I went to see this in the theater by myself Saturday of its opening weekend and I vividly remember being so enthralled and overwhelmed by its audacity that I ran from friend to friend demanding they see it. This resulted in me seeing the film 5 times theatrically and press ganging no small amount of acquaintances into sitting through something they otherwise never would have. Every single time I saw it, without exception, there were walkouts. Usually after the nonsensical non-sequitir's shot in lurid photo negative, such as the "skunk ape" riff, some disgruntled dude would grab his girlfriends hand, stand them both up and loudly proclaim, "That's it, I've had enough of this shit!" and proceed to stomp disgustedly out the door. I found this heady stew of incongruent cryptozoological references, multitudinous horror imagery and audience provocation intoxicating.

My favorite reaction I was privy to during any of my viewings though, was during the scene when Moseley's Otis shoots Walton Goggins' Officer Nash in the face after an uncomfortably protracted crane shot. Zombie forces the rubberneckers out for a simplistic horror flick to silently stare at the image of an authority figure on his knees about to be executed by the apotheosis in degeneracy for what seems like an eternity. "Just fucking shoot him already!" one man exasperatedly howled before standing up and leaving once he had. And that's the point. The film, especially at the time it was released, shortly after the 2nd invasion of Iraq, felt like a transgression. It seemed as if a silent accord had been struck between America's heathen underground and a cult leader artist who aspired to be nothing short of Manson gone Hollywood, espousing the philosophy of killing at will because, "that's the way".

The Devil's Rejects took this moral fearlessness improbably further, but grounded it all in a stunning, singularity of vision and tone that saw Zombie maturing exponentially as a film maker. It's the one film of his most folks can agree to liking, and while not my favorite, it stirs in me a curious reaction of wistful melancholy every time I watch it. I'm no Grindhouse aficionado and certainly no supporter of Southern Radio Rock from the 70's, but the manner in which Zombie paints the wind burnt poetry of these tragic scumbags co-existing with the blood drenched lunacy they embody is truly something to behold. The "Freebird" ending is a perfect encapsulation of the outlaws dawning realization of inescapable obsolescence coupled with an acceptance both knowing and defiant. The soaring steadi-cam credit sequence of desolate, mountainous highways set to Terry Reid's Seed of Memory feels like a blissful elegy draping the film in a funeral shroud. The Devil's Rejects makes one feel nostalgic for a life they never lived in a time that never existed.

Now, the problematic part. Remaking Halloween was never going to be met with any thing but howls of blasphemy and the sort of hand wringing and endless wailing more suited to incensed religious extremists than horror fans. The original film is undeniably important and canonical. The first time I saw Zombie's Halloween (once I got past the excruciating opening dialog at the breakfast table at least) I was extremely impressed. I thought the young Michael stuff was fascinating and surprisingly heartfelt and I thought Tyler Mane's Shape was intimidating and looked cool as fuck. The more I watched it and the more I fell in with the online horror community, the more I began to share in the consensus revulsion toward it. Tempered by time, I consider it a film as spectacularly bold as it is monumentally flawed. If he could have followed through with his vision instead of grafting a regrettably sub par condensed version of Carpenter's classic on to the end of his film, we might have had something. As it stands, greatness exists within it dilapidated, rotten framework, if you care (or can stand) to look. The riotous Big Joe Grizzly scene. Michael's mask obsession further explored. The young Michael slaughtering his family at home and the bully in the woods. These inspired elements however, do not add up to a cohesive or satisfying whole.

Halloween 2 is the moment when Zombie officially stopped caring what anyone thought and committed to his vision 100%. It is the product of a true auteur at the height of his craft. I won't bother defending the narrative choices made except to say I am of the opinion they require no excuse. I love everything about the direction he took the characters, the psychological mumbo-jumbo he attached to Myers and especially how the tone vacillates wildly from exploitative to dramatic to comedic to outright ridiculous, sometimes within the confines of a single scene. No, my friends, I didn't come here to defend Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, I came to praise it. It is jaw droppingly bizarre, unapologetic with its experimentation and brutal beyond belief. I'm frankly shocked this film made it into theaters, but thank god it did as I revelled in its sanguinary passion no less than three times on a gargantuan screen at the local multiplex.

H2 is otherworldly from the first frame to the last, a disjointed nightmare run amok. The first 20 minutes are so beautifully shot and composed it nearly brings a tear to my eye each time I watch it. The murders are so unrepentantly vicious it's almost embarrassing. They serve as a well needed reminder to the calloused horror fan of how awful and ugly taking a life really is. It's a cinematic opera whose movements are comprised primarily of violence and mental sickness. It's everything I want horror to be. Beauty and ugliness in equal measure melting my synapses with irradiated imagery and cacophonous sound. I believe in time it will come to be well regarded for the miraculous oddity it is. It's a film with huge balls backed up by huge talent, and freakshows like that tend to put people off at first.

Zombie is prepping now to begin shooting Lords of Salem in Massachusetts this May. I'm tremulous with anticipation at the prospect of Zombie back in the Director's chair, fashioning his own film from his own story and mythos. The fact that Oren Pelli's production company, fresh off the resounding success of Insidious, is presenting this is a marvelous omen. I sense a reconciliation with the fanboys on the level of Elvis' 68 Comeback Special in the making. However it shakes out, I guarantee I'll be there front and center for multiple viewings, an acolyte awaiting further instruction in the realms of artistically photographed depravity.

Insidious: A Review

I've always been a fan of James Wan and Leigh Whannell. I enjoy the Saw franchise a great deal and have a ton of respect for their first installment with the brash manner it ushered in a new age in horror. Their follow up, Dead Silence, is an enormously entertaining and effective chiller made all the more impressive for how divergent a path it took from the established success of Saw. Death Sentence found them stretching their wings even further with a (perhaps ill-advised) foray into the vigilante genre. Insidious feels like a return to form for the duo, a low budget, no-nonsense presentation of an original story scripted by and co-starring Whannell that finds the diminutive Wan behind the camera and seemingly at the height of his directorial powers.

Let me first say that Insidious is exactly the kind of movie the horror genre needs right now. It's not necessarily breaking a lot of new ground and it certainly isn't serving up hidden subtext concerning the dissolution of the American family or the lamentable state of our faltering economy. No, it strives for a goal no more lofty than providing us with a scary movie that is never boring and on those deceptively simple terms, it is wildly, inventively successful. What a novel concept, a horror film that is actually horrifying. We've been so anesthetized by flaccid remakes and winking, self aware wannabe exploitation garbage, we've forgotten what it feels like to sit in a theater gripped by genuine tension for an hour and a half. There was a palpable discomfort in the audience I saw this with that would periodically give way to waves of cathartic exclamations and nervous laughter. In short, Wan played the audience deftly with his well timed scares, but more than expert editing and staccato bursts of sound were involved in crafting such a profoundly chilling film.

We generally care about the afflicted family thanks to likable, solid performances that ground the characters actions and reactions in the vicinity of believability, thus never straining credulity or grating on the nerves. I liked these people and didn't want harm to befall them, so when they would venture down a darkened corridor, I was on the edge of my seat, whereas a similar scenario in a slasher film chock full of walking stereotypes would illicit yawns. It was strange to find myself watching a horror film where I felt something other than irritable tolerance at best and outright contempt at worst toward the people on the screen. Long time genre stalwart Lin Shaye in particular contributes some very special work in this film. She takes a stock character in these sort of films and imbues it with genuine warmth and humanity, providing invaluable assistance in encouraging the audience to follow along the very interesting journey the second half becomes. Some people are saying the wild card nature of the last third revelation sullies the more traditional build up, but I couldn't disagree more. I think it's a bold and interesting choice that mostly pays off, giving the film its own identity and giving the viewer something new to be afraid of when we put our head down on our pillow at night.

The fact that this film reportedly cost only 800,000 to produce is something that absolutely needs to be recognized and applauded, not to mention a practice that must be adopted by others if the horror genre is to continue flourishing in an independent, creative and profitable fashion. I could clearly see where corners were being cut, but a director with talent and ingenuity can always use that to their advantage. It's PG-13 rating didn't hurt it in the least considering it was infinitely scarier than most all recent films with gratuitous language, nudity and gore. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't single out the pants shittingly brilliant work of Joseph Bishara with his terrifying original music.

Perhaps sometimes I look too deeply into movies for meaning and relevance. I won't get all hyperbolic on this one, folks. It's just a great horror film, nothing more and nothing less. Solid entertainment that does our genre proud and deserves to be patronized early and often so as to send a message that we would like some more along these lines, thank you very much.