Cars

Now that Cars 2 has broken Pixar’s winning streak with the decisiveness with which Ivan Drago broke Apollo Creed, the reputation of Cars (never great) has plummeted. Beyond all else Cars may go down in history as the movie that allowed Cars 2 to happen. Which may be a nigh unforgivable sin for animation fans.

The saving grace of Cars is that for all of the criticism Pixar has taken for mercenarily turning it into a cash and merch machine, there is nothing mercenary about the first movie. Indeed it is a bizarrely personal film, one that sums up what drives John Lassetter as an artist as surely as My Neighbor Totorro does for Hayao Miyaziki, containing his obsession with vanishing Americana, the design elements of the fifties, and his obsession with the passing of time. 

There is little that is inherently commercial about Cars. If you set aside any (and I do mean any) element of the film for more then five seconds it becomes a frankly bizarre. Then there are The Cars themselves, nothing inherently cuddly. I think the fact that they have imprinted on every child under six and are more or less guaranteed to send them into rapturous glee, is nothing more or less then a freakish accident. There’s no getting around that it’s a creepy design, which unlike most character designs get stranger the longer you look at it (Stare at the headlights when any two cars are talking and you’ll see a weird face within a face. Once you see it you can’t unsee it).

So while Cars does have many sins, not least among them the desire to make “Ka-chow” into a national catchphrase, the fact that it does seem like nothing more or less then a mindboggling expensive remake of Doc Hollywood enacted with Cars (which come to think of it sounds like a weird Lars Von Trier experiment) and giving Larry The Cable Guy a platform with which he can communicate directly to and dumb down the nations children. It remains a strangely fascinating film to watch.

For one thing the animation is beautiful. I mean yeah its Pixar that’s to be expected. But the way that Lassetter and crew lay out the landscape of the American Southwest is the type of imagery that makes the term eye candy inadequate. The rich painterly color palette, clean line design, lighting effects, and creative camera work during the racing scenes all combine to make Cars a rich experience even when what is actually happening on screen is less then scintillating.

Then there is of course Paul Newman, in his last performance. There is no such thing as a moment when Paul Newman is on screen that is entirely unenjoyable. But Cars isn’t simply a phoned in performance. Newman lends more gravitas then seems strictly possible to his role of The Hudson Hornet. Though Cars does not have the same amount of emotional intensity as the other Pixar films, Newman’s performance which has a very real streak of bitterness to his performance, which keeps the movie from being empty.

So yes Cars has many flaws, a bizarre world that makes no sense (or at least not the kind of sense that isn’t horrifying. I wouldn’t be the first to wonder if there are not piles of human corpses just off screen) and an under used supporting cast. Cars may be the least of the Pixar films but it is still a Pixar film. Less perhaps then the sum of its better parts, but those better parts on their own are often wonderful.


...

Also New Son Of Danse Macabre up. It's Lovecraftrific.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

If you’re not familiar with All The Boys Love Mandy Lane there’s good reason. Through a series of events that can only be described as “Piss poor luck” All The Boys Love Mandy Lane has ended up being more or less permeantly shelved thanks to a legal quagmire that has already become legendary. In its wake a small cult has built up around Lane, as it tends to do around any lost film.

But is it worth it?

It’s a valid question that one must consider. Is the only reason All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is popular due to the fact that you can’t see it? If there was easy access to it would it languish in 5.00 DVD bins and be lambasted as yet another pale Weinstein company retread? Does Amber Heard have the worst luck in Hollywood?

Well yes and no.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, is a decent enough programmer that manages to be a throwback without being a mere pale imitator and seems to have a real understanding of the subgenre its throwing back to (You might think that this is a prerequisite to making a “throwback” film. I wish I could go back to that kind of innocence.)

Unlike so many modern day Slasher films All The Boys Love Mandy Lane actually feels like a slasher film (Though the term is something of a misnomer as a bladed implement is only used twice and not at all until more than an hour in). It’s surprisingly slow paced for one thing, with the horror not starting until well past the thirty minute mark in a film that barely clocks in at eighty. Thankfully unlike most modern day slasher fodder the characters don’t know they’re in a horror movie, they think they’re in Dazed And Confused. These proud descendents of slasher bait (including the finest jock asshole who deserves to die that I’ve seen in many a moon) are Doobie smoking, horn dogs who stop at isolated gas stations and never once feel the need to comment ironically on their plight. Things wrap up with a nicely done twist, which cleverly plays on the concept of The Final Girl. Add in an appealing ballsy twenty minute daylight horror climax and we’re all good right?

Well not quite, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane manages to make a surprising amount of missteps in its short runtime. Not all of it is the movies fault. The five years on the shelf have not been kind to it. The editing is Tony Scott influenced, the color correction tangerine to an exponential degree, and there are many many superbly uneffective strobes. And there are two moments that are just plain bad creative decisions. The first a kill much more sadistic, nastier and out and out skeezier than the tenor of the movie has earned (I like to call these Aja kills) where a girl who has just performed oral sex is killed by having a gun shoved down her throat.  The other when the film’s one truly fine moment of real fear is promptly spoiled by some of the worst editing and shot sequencing I’ve ever seen in a feature film. Seriously. I would say the editor should be sent back to filmschool, but that’s not enough. Someone should cut off one of their fingers. Just one. So that way when they look down at the stub they willl remember not to fuck up eerie silent long shots of despair, with jokey cutaways and continuity raping transitions.

We’re left with the fact that All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is neither a suppressed masterpiece or a disaster. It’s just a pretty good flick that makes some missteps. Whose creators apparently wished for a green light on the monkey’s paw. Put it on the back half of a double bill with Scream 4 and it will do quite nicely. Then again I liked Scream 4 so your mileage may vary.

(SPOILER)

(Now that it’s mentioned it presages Scream 4 twist quite nicely. If somewhat suspectly. The Weinsteins have been known to recycle before and I wonder…)

It's Alive! ALIVE!!!

Things That Don't Suck hasn't been my only blog on Hiatus as of late. It's younger sibling Son Of Danse Macabre has also been taking a dirt nap. But it arose today to terrorize the torch wielding populace.

So go over there yourself to burn it in a windmill or enjoy a heaping helping of chin stroking. It's up to you really.

Triangle

Triangle is a flawed film and yet there is something nagging about it. Perhaps it’s just the fact that a horror movie whose primary goal is to actually horrify a rare thing that I can’t help but appreciate. Perhaps it’s because that despite all the horror movie tropes that it enthusiastically takes part in there are still images and moments in Triangle that I have legitimately never seen before (if not concepts). Whatever the reason and for all its flaws Triangle remains a genuinely disquieting movie. I can only imagine how well it would work if it actually all held together.

Triangle follows a group of friends who go sailing for a three hour tour. Unfortunately for them their tour doesn’t end with low key sexual innuendo and a Professor with a knack for coconut based technology. When their ship wrecks (in a surprisingly well done scene for the films small budget) they end up stranded in the middle of the ocean, almost certainly doomed. Until a ship passes by.

A GHOOOOOSSSSTTTT SHIP!!!

No not that GHOOOOOOSSSSSTTTT SHIP!!! (Thank God).

Once aboard the Ghost Ship the surviving members of the party are stalked by a masked killer who eliminates them one by one, leaving only the final surviving girl to face the killer down in a bloody fight to the end. So far so rote right?

Good because this is where it gets weird.

I don’t want to go into specifics on just what does happen next in Triangle. For one thing I’m not sure myself. This isn’t because what happens during the film is all that mind blowing or deep. It’s just that, the writer director Chris Smith knows the value of ambiguity. He wisely (very wisely) offers no explanation for the sinister goings on and neatly side steps the cliché I was sure I saw coming (the oh so tiresome autistic children have eerie powers). He plays things here at a Lynchian remove. Creating a great deal of atmosphere and dread as he goes along.

Once again, this is a distinctly double edged sword and in the final account there are a few too many paradoxes that simply don’t add up for Triangle to be fully effective. But the ambiguity works more often in Triangle’s favor than not. Though I don’t know if it was what Chris Smith intended it is an eerie a portrait of the concept of damnation as I’ve ever seen. A rare horror movie that feels genuinely hopeless without it coming off as mere affectation.

The budget for Triangle was obviously limited, but Smith knows how to choose his moments. Making the few big images he’s allowed by the budget really pop, including one that is just, well just incredibly disturbing (purple sweaters). For horror fans tired of films that offer mere safe jump scares as opposed to real ones Triangle for all its flaws is just the ticket. Chris Smith aims to terrify in it. For all the films limitations he succeeds admirably.

The Baby

There are bad movies that you watch and laugh off. Then there are bad movies that open up deep pits of Lovecraftian madness below you and provoke all manner of unsettling questions about what the hell you’ve been doing with your life. Fitting that my first official film as an Austin should be one of those.

Zack Carlson looked visibly apologetic as he introduced the movie. Describing it in his opening spiel as “Dandruffy” and I really can’t think of a better term. But enough beating around the bush. What is it exactly that makes The Baby such a terrible ordeal? How can I explain? This is a movie about an adult baby where the adult baby is not the worst of said movie. And the fact that there are things worse than an adult baby in the movie is also not the worst part of that movie.

But let’s back up half a step because that Adult Baby is pretty bad in and of itself.

The Baby as you’ve probably figured out is about the titular Baby, a man child kept that way not by sexual kink of developmental problems, by his family who act like people Rob Zombie kicked out the auditions for The Firefly Family for being too skeezy. It’s just as bad as it sounds. When a social worker takes an interest in the case and tries to reach said adult baby the family takes to this none too kindly, and all hell (or at least a great many things that you might see in hell) breaks loose. Full frontal nudity, abuse with a cattle prod, roofies and other delightful things to watch ensue (By the way did I mention that this movie was rated PG? Which as Carlson gleefully pointed out gives it the same rating as Shrek 2.)

“Has Bryce gone soft?” I hear you ask, “Sure that’s awful unpleasant but that sounds like standard grindhouse fair to me. And If you ain’t got the yarbles for exploitation cinema then you had best stay out of the kitchen.” (or go mix yourself a few more metaphors)

Granted but here’s the thing. The Baby isn’t really a grindhouse movie. That’s what makes it so soul crushing. Released by a major studio it was directed by Ted Post. The filmmaker behind some of the better second tier Clint Eastwood films and Beneath The Planet Of The Apes. This isn’t a case like Death Bed where low budget filmmaking was used in the service of the inexplicable, this is the studio machine in the service of the inexplicable.

And that makes it all infinitely worse.

Because that means that someone went up to a professional journeyman filmmaker like Ted Post and convinced him to make The Baby. Presumably after pitching their ways through the upper echelon of studio executives. People invested millions of dollars in the baby. Trailers were cut, a promotion campaign mounted to increase awareness for The Baby.

And man it is one thing to rationalize one’s failures, in the face of the absurd. It is quite another to realize that if someone can convince professional adults to make The Baby, then you have no excuse.

We're Back

Welcome to Austin.

Untitled

I feel like I've spent the last two years of my life waiting at that bus stop. Tomorrow I step on.