Why Death Proof is a 21st Century Masterpiece in Feminism

Death Proof (2007)

Director: Quentin Tarantino 

Cast: Kurt Russel, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Poitier  

Death Proof is largely considered Tarantino's worst movie. The director said so himself back in 2012, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Here's his quote:

"I don't know about the tuning fork idea. We can all cite examples of where it's not the case.     But it's age, it's absolutely age. I'm really well versed on a lot of directors' careers, you know, and when you look at those last five films when they were past it, when they were too old, and they're really out of touch with the times, whether it be William Wyler and The Liberation of L.B. Jones or Billy Wilder with Fedora and then Buddy Buddy or whatever the hell. To me, it's all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific filmography. [2007's] Death Proof has got to be the worst movie I ever make. And for a left-handed movie, that wasn't so bad, all right? -- so if that's the worst I ever get, I'm good. But I do think one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies costs you three good movies as far as your rating is concerned."

Basically Tarantino, then 49 and midway through his career, expresses worry about becoming a "too old" director who makes movies out of touch with the times. He cites Death Proof as an example of this concern in regards to "one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies"... in other words, his worst film. 

First of all, a poignant choice of words, don't you think? Associating a limp, flaccid penis with a movie primarily about women, almost entirely concerning women's lives and their relationships with one another, consisting almost entirely of dialogue between women. To ask whether Death Proof passes the Bechdel Test would be pointless. It passed with flying colors years before the mainstream media was discussing under representation of women in film, before I (21 years old when Death Proof came out) had even heard the word Bechdel, despite taking film theory courses at Sarah Lawrence College (or maybe I was partying too much and not paying attention in class, but you get the point). 

t is notable that Tarantino uses male impotence as an analogy to describe his pro-feminist empowerment film distinctly about violence and sexuality, and that he brings up Death Proof in the context of directors getting old and out of touch. It is almost as if he feels he wasn't in the right making this movie, that he was mislead in making it, or maybe, as a man, he wasn't the one who should have made it. "It has got to be the worst film I ever make". Does it? This makes me wonder: Did he think Death Proof was not his best film when he saw the final product, or when the reviews started pouring in about the "pointless dialogue"? No one complained about the pointless dialogue in Reservoir Dogs. See where I'm going with this? 

To sum up, he was being way too hard on himself. We see an artist perhaps not fully confident yet in his unique and masterful visions, which is ironic, of course. Because everyone thinks of Tarantino as a pompous asshole.

Death Proof is one of Tarantino's best movies, a strange, genre-breaking and undefinable masterpiece. It has a one-of-a-kind in premise and discombobulated pacing, and oddly features a detestable yet charismatic serial killer who comes in and out of the lives of two groups of analogous yet distinctly complex female characters, all of whom are victimized and ultimately avenged in a "you have to see it to believe it" finale. 

In 2017, Death Proof is more prescient, inspiring, and thrilling than ever. Even better, it marks Tarantino's transition from the brilliant nerd fanboy responsible for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill I and II, to the contemplative and historically conscious visionary of Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. 

"Where are you getting this shit?", you may ask. If you saw Death Proof a few years back and think you know the movie well, you should take a break from reading this and watch it again. It's on STARZ, if you have STARZ streaming. When you watch it, make sure it's NOT GRINDHOUSE. I mean you can watch Grindhouse if you want, but in the dual feature (the first half is Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, speaking of outdated films) Death Proof is cut by nearly half an hour. Imagine how bummed I was to learn, having begrudged my way through the waaaaay too long Planet Terror, to find several of Tarantino's all-time best scenes entirely cut out. Yes, I am talking about the lap dance scene as well as the Tennessee convenience store scene, so watch Death Proof in its entirety, separate from Grindhouse, and thank me in the morning. 

Now that you have seen it, follow along. The film is broken into two distinct halves. The first half takes place in Austin, Texas and centers around Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier) a radio jockey, and her friends, Butterfly (Vanessa Ferlito) and Shanna (Jordan Ladd). They drive around, shoot the shit, and spend most of their screen time at two bars (Guero's and Texas Chili Parlor, for all you Austinites like me excited to see classic Tarantino at local watering holes). Their conversations cover the sort of topics women have with their friends (dating, for instance) but also topics that men have with their friends; who will buy the pot, music groups, sex. 

Stuntman Mike (the iconic Kurt Russel) seems like the main character, and he is in so far that he appears in both segments. But his character remains undefined throughout, enigmatic and one-dimensional with a singular goal of preying on young women and killing them with his death proof stunt car. We never learn much about Stuntman Mike's backstory or the genesis of his perverted motives. His character only changes in the last twenty minutes, when he loses control of his car and position of power (terrorizing girls) and completely loses his shit, reduced to a bloodied and pleading coward, shrieking like hunted down prey.

The first half of Death Proof ends with one of the best scenes I've seen in any movie, probably the most visceral and horrifying car crash scene in the history of film. After this, all our girls are dead. We are left with no one to follow for the remainder of the movie, no one except Stuntman Mike. But unlike Norman Bates cleaning up the bathroom in Psycho (we somewhat sympathize with Norman, especially because we have yet to learn that he's the one who murdered our heroine), we have no allegiance for Stuntman Mike. In fact, after an absurdly long diatribe in a hospital corridor between a completely unrealistic cowboy Sheriff played by Michael Parks (RIP) and his cowboy son, we feel injustice. It's not fair Stuntman Mike escaped his homicidal crash with a broken collar bone and smashed index finger (intentionally mild injuries on the writer's part) . We loved our girls, and we got to know them well. They were vibrant and young, beautiful and strong, infectiously charming, innocent, and real. Here the audience feels the tragedy; they had their whole lives ahead of them and Stuntman ripped them off the planet in an instant. We want him to pay.

This is why holistically the movie feels off and lagging in the second half. At this point we have already passed the climax, the car crash (to be honest it's the best scene in the movie and no subsequent scene trumps it), not to mention the slasher-esque Rose McGowan death scene. Our main characters are dead and gone, and we are thrown into Tennessee 14 months later with Stuntman Mike in his car and his creepy black-and-white POV shot. We immediately learn that the second part is analogous in structure to the first; we have to start over again and hear similarly drawn-out dialogue (not that that's a bad thing) between four different female characters and we have to get to know them all over again. 

This is the precise reason why Death Proof is so brilliant. It toys with audience perception of how movies should operate, how their plots should unfold, and who should be their protagonists. It's hard for me to think of any other movie that feels so strongly like two separate films. 

Which makes it easy to miss the most important distinction between the two parts: The women in the second part work in the film industry, and two of them are stunt performers like Stuntman Mike. Is this the reason they give him a run for his money and quickly end him in the final twenty minutes? 

Perhaps. But I would go so far as to argue that Tarantino is making a statement about female oppression and empowerment (whether he means to or not). The audience gets to know the female characters personally in a way Stuntman Mike never does. They are real people to us, but to Stuntman Mike they are weak, sexualized victims, ripe for stalking and terrorizing. Stuntman Mike is the epitome of masculine violence with his decked out car serving as his weapon of choice. Typical of slasher, horror, and exploitation films, the director deliberately sexualizes the female characters with his camera, except here they are given ample dialogue and screen time to become realistic and complex individuals. This is the significance of the aforementioned lap dance, and also why Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character is dressed like a cheerleader: the director is fully aware of male filmmakers' tendency to reduce women to caricatures defined solely on their sexuality. What we see in Death Proof is a farce on the stupidity of male predatory instincts and audience expectations of how women ought to be portrayed in film. 

Zoe Bell (playing herself) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) are film. The reason they defeat Stuntman Mike in the end isn't because they are able to outmaneuver his stunt car; they outmaneuver the movie itself. They break the rules of typical female roles in film (sex objects and victims) to make their own stunts. In turn, they become something we haven't seen before. Not quite heroes (they are too merciless and vindictive for that), but something new all together. If their transformation into vengeful attackers feels abrupt it's not because Tarantino has randomly turned the plot on us; it's because his female characters snatch the movie away from the director and take matters into their own hands. 

In 2007, Death Proof was so strange and ahead of its time viewers had trouble making sense of it. But if we consider it two years before Inglorious Basterds, and ten years before campus sexual assault disclosures, Sexual Predator Trump, and the massive Women's March, it starts making sense. A storm was coming, we just didn't see it.

More often than not, Tarantino's films feature strong, badass female protagonists. But with Death Proof  we see the director graduating from the realism-grounded plots of the first half of his career in the 1990s. His early films broke the fourth wall by overtly emulating or alluding to other films the director loved, but they all involved realistic gangsters sharing realistic dialogue in realistic situations. 

Death Proof and the 21st century films that followed also break the fourth wall, but in a far more complex way. Rather than a metaphorical wink at the camera or simple homage, Tarantino's later work challenges viewers' knowledge and assumptions of societal violence and historical fact. Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are fantasies, alternate histories in which the good guys defeat human evil and end up on top in the end. A precursor to these, Death Proof is a fantasy of women evading male sexual violence to command the reversal of roles of predator vs. victim. 

In these latter films, Tarantino gives us, the audience, what we want in the end: justice. Sadly, justice is rarely achieved in reality. But this is what cinema truly is, after all. In essence all cinema is illusion.  

A+

Queen of Earth

Queen of Earth (2015)

Director: Alex Ross Perry

Cast: Elizabeth Moss, Katherine Waterston, Patrick Fugit



Last night, I watched Queen of Earth. This morning, the most surprising thing about Queen of Earth is how little online commentary I could find on it. For a movie that consciously refuses to offer concrete backstory and context and certainly doesn't offer a definitive climax or ending, there remains a dearth of summary and analysis on up-and-coming indie director Alex Ross Perry's "psychological thriller" about two female friends claustrophobi-sizing in a lake house outside New York City. One of my favorite activities after watching a movie is reading about it the next day, so I was disappointed to find little-to-nothing on this very strange film. And I wasn't about to waste my time perusing IMDB message boards.

So here we are. As Heath Ledger's Joker says: "You can't rely on anyone these days, you got to do everything yourself, DON'T we?"

Either Queen of Earth has very little to say, or a great deal, but either way it presents itself as constructed to evade interpretation. I worry that Elizabeth Moss's highly praised performance is the only thing people will remember this film by. I initially heard of Queen of Earth from publications praising Moss for her role as Catherine, a depressed, possessive, and possibly horror story-esque psychotically dangerous individual. I urge everyone to watch the trailer now. Watch it, and then ask yourself if this movie doesn't seem to be about an (insane) woman, Catherine, threatening and terrorizing her (sane) friend Virginia (Katherine Waterston) in a series of creepy and vitriolic phrases and gestures. Moss is a very excellent actor indeed; she's always been good. But I worry that the actress's intense "madness", displayed by frenetic, bug-eyed outbursts and little-girl giggles, actually inhibits the character of Catherine significantly.  In other words, are we viewing a somewhat reductive portrayal of a female character who is in fact quite nuanced and complex?

Alas, I am jumping ahead. Let's backtrack. For most of its duration, Queen of Earth is all about Catherine, even though its ending contradictorily suggests that both women are main characters. The entire opening scene features an uncut, close-up of Catherine's eye make-up streaked face as she mourns, realistically, as her boyfriend dumps her despite the fact that her father has just recently died. Immediately after this, we are transported to a remote lake house belonging to her close friend Virginia. As the two women make their way from the car to inside the house to Catherine's room, etc., Perry establishes a very obvious distance and distrust in the manner in which they interact with each other, not only through the actresses' brilliant tight-lipped reticence and mad-dogging stares, but also through a deliberately ominous,  Kubrickian one-key piano soundtrack. 

Most importantly, the distrust between Catherine and Virginia is demonstrated by filming them at odd angles in relation to one another. For example, one woman will look in one direction, while another will look in a completely different one, neither looking at the other nor following her gaze (see picture above for a prime example). Or, in a total Bergman Persona rip-off scene (I'll get back to that), the camera hovers over the two women from the top left as they sit in bed, rehashing stories of ex-loves, staring straight ahead the entire time in one, uncut eight minute-long scene. In other scenes, when they do look directly at one another while speaking, it's strange and intense, as if they are overanalyzing every minute detail and phrase with skeptical caution and resentment (as couples are wont to do). 

Adding to this distance and discombobulation, the story flips back and forth in time, and I suppose if Queen of Earth succeeds at anything it's that the director manages to continuously transport his audience back to one year prior, in the same lake house with the same characters looking the same (minus Moss's red lipstick), and not once are these flashbacks confusing. 

What we get from the flashbacks-- and here I am speculating-- is that Catherine used to be a lot happier a year ago most likely because she was still with her boyfriend and her father was still alive. HOWEVER, it's not as if everything was all honky-dory back then; in fact, the flashbacks reveal that the relationship between Catherine and Virginia was just as strained and dysfunctional as it is now, if not worse. Even though Catherine wasn't certifiably depressed back then, she was still a neurotic, uptight mess, indulging in heated, high-school-caliber arguments with Virginia in front of their boyfriends and freaking out when they leave a bunch of beer bottles behind. And I think this is the point: in the past, the presence of her boyfriend and the acknowledgement of her still-living father's success and legacy brought out the worst in Catherine in a different way from how it's brought out in the present, now that she is single and fatherless. 

Oh boy. That sounds a bit sexist doesn't it? Hey, I love calling out sexism in movies as much as the next guy, but I think it would prove counterproductive to dismiss Queen of Earth as some indie NYC hipster filmmaker's warped and male-skewed perspective of female anxiety. I do think it's a wee bit more intelligent than that.

INSTEAD, I'd rather call out Perry for blatantly ripping off Roman Polanski and others and  fooling 92% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes into thinking his movie's most unnerving scenes are entirely his own. Do I have to mention that the rotting salad is the rotting rabbit from Repulsion, serving as a symbol for the day-by-day disintegration of one woman's psyche as she's cooped up in a precarious dwelling unit? Or must I mention the upward-camera POV of a mob of monstrous assholes clawing and grabbing at the protagonist as he/she curls into a ball and screams, like at the end of The Tenant? 

I'm not saying that I'm the only person who has ever seen these movies and therefore the only person to have recognized Perry's source material; A.V Club and Slant Magazine both mention Bergman and Polanski in their reviews. Also, yes, I get it: the aesthetic of the film and opening/closing credits is modeled after these kinds of films from the 60's. What I am saying that where other critics refer to this as an "homage", I prefer to call it like I see it: A lazy cinematic attempt at a gradual, claustrophobic psychological thriller with supposed feminist commentary that is not thrilling at all and has absolutely nothing insightful to say about women whatsoever.

Also, what's the point of having title cards informing us of what day of the week it is, if the story is not progressing towards some inevitable conclusion?

One of the reasons Repulsion was brilliant is that the entire story built up to a "reveal" in the final frame: Catherine Deneuve's psychosis and subsequent murderous acts (that's right, at least there was legitimate murder in Polanski's movie!) was the result of her being sexual abused as a child by an older male figure, shown eerily in a photograph that was in the audience's view the whole time (You see the metaphor here? The audience neglected to acknowledge the obvious truth behind her fear of sex and overall psychosis just as the people in her life refused to acknowledge it).  

Queen of Earth provides no such answer as to why Catherine is the way she is, except for the fact she just is; no surprises, no jolts, no explanation. Here and there, Catherine's feelings of self-worth and delusions are limply attributed to her famous father's success and suicide, but the film refuses to take it one step further; the dead father plot contributes nothing to the character's torment or to the characters' lives in general. In fact, it most likely derives from the filmmaker's own experiences.

In other words, what is the point? Whoever suggested that ambiguous endings in movies are worthwhile clearly didn't know how to write a fucking ending.

That being said, Queen of Earth is worth watching for the hell of it, if only because the dialogue and acting is really quite good. It's not a terrible movie; it's just not worthy of 92% on Rotten.

Two final observations:
1) These women put new meaning to the word frienemy. As in, most depressing frienemies ever! The trick to having a frienemy is to never share living quarters with them, duh.

2) Nothing good ever happens at a lake house. I dare you to list one movie featuring a lake house in which things turn out great.

B-

Gone Girl

Gone Girl (2014)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry

About a year ago, everyone lost their minds when Gone Girl came out. Do you remember? It felt like the most widely watched and discussed movie of the post-summer season had appeared out of no where,  prematurely hailed by critics and plebeians alike as the best movie of the year. To this day, I don't fully understand the hype of Gone Girl, except for three indisputable facts:

Fact #1: It is eminently watchable. Something about its dialogue and pacing doesn't get old. I've seen it maybe four times. I like to put it on while cleaning the house.

Fact #2: David Fincher directed it and its extremely Fincheresque.

Fact #3: We discovered after his divorce that Ben Affleck basically plays himself.* 

(*ok, fine, the last fact doesn't relate to Gone Girl 's popularity but I never miss an opportunity to rip on Ben Affleck.)

I think the principle goal in discussing Gone Girl should be to pick the story apart and determine what's really going on here. Because a lot is going on, and much of it is culturally relevant and topical, yes, but a lot of it is also misogynistic and superficially post-modern in the most nefarious way (yes, I know a woman wrote the book, so shut your mouth). 

The structure of Gone Girl is awkward, but there are three parts. 

The first part begins with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coming home on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary to find that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) has disappeared in an apparent murder/kidnapping.  Police uncover evidence of the perpetrator having tried to mask a struggle, and they also learn that Amy was pregnant. We learn from diary entries and flashbacks that Amy met her husband Nick at a party in New York City (there's one weirdly unsexy scene involving sugar-fog) and after that, they fall hard for one another, get married and live happily ever after, until... BAM!, insert the Recession. After losing their jobs and enduring the tragedy of Nick playing video games on the couch all day, the couple leaves New York and moves into a mansion in a small town in Missouri to care for Nick's ailing mother. He purchases a bar with his wife's trustfund money because that's obviously such a good idea.

At this point we have't officially "met" Amy, except through her voice-over from her diary entries, and so we are stuck with POV's from Nick, his sister, the police, and the sort of small-town America in which pictures of a missing blond woman are blasted on billboards. We gradually begin to suspect Nick of being responsible for Amy's death and we also learn he's been sleeping with one of his young students, which looks very bad for him indeed. The first part of the movie ends with the police's discovery of a sexy playful scavenger hunt anniversary game that reveals more proof that Nick killed her, and then, the film cuts to the BIG (and only) REVEAL. Ready for it? Gasp: Amy staged her own murder.

What follows is a frenetic, confessional voice-over explaining everything in what is arguably the best scene of the whole film. Amy's voice-over changes its tone from soft and inquisitive to assertive and conniving. She explains scenario by scenario, intricately and brilliantly, how she was able to dupe everyone and frame her husband for her own murder. I don't have time to get into the deets, but it involved drawing her own blood by the liters, stealing her pregnant fake-friend's urine, and taking god knows how many months to pen a fake diary. Turns out Amy knew about the affair and was obviously miserable after leaving New York. What's cool about this-- in a series of rapid, "cool" Fincherian shots of Amy on the run-- is her totally believable and convincing explanation for her motivations: "Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder." The dialogue is well-written and impressive. There's also a great line about her being "the cool girl" and doing everything that Nick liked, maintaining a size 2 while cold eating pizza and drinking canned beer. We can relate.

The movie could have-should have ended here, because after this, it appears to have no clue what to do with itself. In other words, it becomes a boring post-modern novel. Part II:

Amy befriends some rednecks at a motel and they rob her. Desperate, she contacts her crazy, rich ex-boyfriend, Desi (Neil Patrick Harris) whom she manipulates and deceives into taking her in, despite the entire country looking for her on national television. We see that Nick has hired a lawyer (Tyler Perry) and tries to clear his name or something (it's hard to remember because it's so inconsequential). Then... sigh. The most memorable scene. Amy has sex and kills Neil Patrick Harris as he bleeds all over her naked body, and then returns home to Nick, still all bloody (see pic above) and convinces everyone that her ex abducted her and she managed to escaped. She also realizes through Nick's TV-name-clearing performance that she actually does love him after all. She goes so far as to impregnate herself with his sperm from the sperm bank. Even though he's super pissed off and doesn't love her at all, he stays with her and THE END.

Whew. Do you see how exhausting this is? Do you see how its the narrative equivalent of googling an antonym for the word taut? First of all, the presence of the redneck motel robbers and Amy's obsessive ex-boyfriend is completely arbitrary and entirely forced. It is very clear that Gillian Flynn had no idea what to do with the story after revealing that Amy faked her own death. Desi becomes one of the most important characters in the movie, yet his importance is an afterthought, and the only reason the movie didn't completely fall out of the minds of its viewers is most likely because of his outrageously graphic sex-throat-cut death scene.

Secondly, who is Amy anyway? I have rarely seen such a poorly developed character in the history of anything, and therefore, it's intensely problematic that she's a female. Here me out. 

Let's say we believe in her character up to the end of the BIG REVEAL. I believed it! She becomes tragically unhappy after leaving her home city for a small boring town, is financially and fidelity-wise betrayed by her frankly idiotic husband, becomes dangerously resentful, and she's amazingly intelligent, so we root for her when she manages to successfully frame him and get away. But then things go downhill for her. I envision a different second half of this story in which Nick is left behind to rot in prison, and Amy never achieves anything in her life and is slowly reeled into a life of destitution and probably prostitution, even though she did everything right in life. OR, the story could have transformed into a pseudo-horror story in that Amy, having made the tragic mistake of committing a singular immoral and deceptive act, endures a series of violent and horrific misfortunes and outcomes because somehow, she cosmically deserves them. In other words, all the characters are bad and get theirs in the end.

Alas, no such luck. Instead, we get nothing that satisfies our sense of solid storytelling, as the plot betrays its own set-up. By the end, Amy is shown to be quite the little sociopath. And then she falls back in love with Nick. And even knocks herself up with his sperm. So she's either a sociopath or a bright, indecisive, yet scorned woman. Which one is it? She can't be both. Why would she go through hell and high water to ruin a man only to get back with him? Why does her character have to be so ambiguous? Oh right, because the book is post-modern drivel.

Speaking of which, my final point: what is the lesson here? What are we supposed to take away from this supposedly meaningful and culturally relevant film? Some possibilities:

1) Marriage sucks and is a sham.

2)The media sucks and is a sham.

3) Men suck and ruin women's lives. They are either lazy cheaters or obsessive and dangerous sex-maniacs. Therefore a woman should totally take revenge on them and become "independent" when the time calls for it. However, ultimately men are worth sticking with because, you know, love and babies.

4) Women are unpredictable and totally and utterly conniving and diabolical. 

Do you see the problem here? If the lesson involves the first two, Gone Girl says nothing new or original about two topics we have long known to be true. If its lesson is the third possibility, then its super sexist and doesn't hold together. 

No, I believe that what most people took from Gone Girl is the last lesson. This "psychological mystery thriller" encompasses every typical American man's worst fears: 

-You don't really know how to please your wife and will never satisfy her financially.

-She will become demanding and nag the shit out of you. 

-If you cheat, you will get caught and punished. 

-She will convince everyone you are physically abusive when you are not.

-Your wife is smarter than you and will "trap" you in the end, so you can never escape.

-If your ultimate sexual fantasy with your dream girl comes true, she will slaughter you mid-ecstasy.

-The baby is not yours.

This is what Gone Girl is really about, and I can't for the life of me tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is it a satire? Is it just a fun movie to watch over and over again because Ben Affleck sucks in general and stands there stupidly and helplessly throughout? I know one thing for sure: it is not empowering for women from a female standpoint. But when has that ever stopped the masses from popularizing shitty and offensive art?

C+

Whiplash

Whiplash (2014)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Miles Teller, J.K Simmons, Paul Reiser






Whiplash is one of those perfect movies. It's a perfect allegory for artistry, becoming an adult, and giving one's entire life--body, love, and mind-- to one's craft. It brings up important questions about the mentor/protege relationship and whether unapologetically demoralizing training does indeed result in higher elevated art, contributing to humanity's overall progress. What makes this topic even more fascinating is that it's centered on an esoteric and therefore highly specialized and rigorous genre of music.

Whiplash is deep and complicated, obviously, but at its heart is a rather simple tale of failure and perseverance. We are constantly surprised. Even going in knowing the plot of the movie, we are continuously thrown for a loop.  We never really understand the full intentions or nefarious nature of famous composer Terence Fletcher (J.K Simmons) until the very end of the movie. When our young hero Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) first trains with Fletcher--after Fletcher manages to fuck with him by telling him to show up an hour early  for class--Andrew foolhardily discloses his parents' divorce and his father's (Paul Reiser) failure as a playwright. Fletcher reacts as if he's one of those genuinely caring and supportive teachers, until, moments later, he pulls a Mr. Hyde, humiliating Andrew in front of the entire class (One of my favorite lines: "You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn't Eugene fucking-O'Neil!")

From that point on, we know Fletcher as the bad guy, continuously working our hero to literal near death and chipping away at his sense of self-worth. However, certain scenes demonstrate Fletcher's humanity and passion for what he does, preventing him from coming off as completely ruthless, such as when he cries in front of his own class after learning of the suicide of a former student, or when he soulfully plays a piano solo in a packed jazz bar.

In order to be the truly great musician Fletcher demands, Andrew must sacrifice everything in pursuit of that greatness, like breaking things off with a potential girlfriend to focus on his training. The physical toll of his work is amplified by the camera's calculating emphasis on his bloodied hands and sweat-soaked body, close ups of drops of blood and perspiration splattering on the floor. Andrew's overall physical degradation reaches its inevitable climax in a shocking and brilliant car crash sequence as Andrew rushes manically to attend Fletcher's performance on time,  calling to mind the climax of Scorsese's Goodfellas, when Ray Liotta's Henry drives around the city, paranoid and determined, in a cocaine binged panic, barreling straight for disaster.

However, not once do we doubt Andrew's relentless determination. Despite all his sacrifices, we understand that quitting is not an option for our hero. In one of the film's most brilliant scenes, Andrew adeptly and humorously shuts down his relatives for downplaying his craft during a dinner scene reminiscent of an Aaron Sorkin dialogue. 

The result of all of this is in a final scene that makes Andrew's defeat by Fletcher utterly devastating and heartbreaking. When Andrew finally realizes he has been duped by the vengeful Fletcher, he exits the stage and walks mournfully into his loving father's arms. This ending would have been sufficient, completely self-consciousness in its own tragedy, except it's not the ending. Andrew, in a stroke of capricious deliberation, returns back to the stage, playing over Fletcher's address to the audience, playing over everyone in fact, and ultimately proving himself one of the greats in what culminates in one of the finest cinematic music sequences and film conclusions of all time. 

Whiplash is extremely entertaining to the upmost degree; so entertaining it's nearly impossible to look away, look at your phone, get up to use the bathroom, even upon multiple viewings. It has one of the best soundtracks in recent movie memory, and its editing is so exemplary that surely it will be referenced in film school classes. 

At the end, we are left with a single unanswered question: Is Andrew's perseverance and subsequent success a result of his own determination, or a result of the cruel tutelage of Fletcher? Was Fletcher correct when he claims that the two most harmful words in the English language are "good job," and that our current culture's "everyone is great" teaching style deprives the world of the next Charlie Parker? 

The answer, I believe, lies in Fletcher's response to Andrew asking whether it's possible to go too far, and discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker. Fletcher replies, "No, man, no. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged."

Much like its subject matter, Whiplash is one of the greats.

A+

In Bruges

In Bruges (2008)

Director: Martin McDonagh

Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

You are either someone who loves In Bruges, or someone who hates it, which explains the split, cut-and-dry reviews of Martin McDonagh's first feature-length directorial film. McDonagh's writing, especially his dialogue and situational humor, is characteristically Irish. And the Irish have a unique brand of irony mixed with cheery morbidity and gloom along with a recognition of nationalistic and cultural stereotypes and norms. 

In Bruges tells the story of two British assassins cast away to the beautiful Belgium city of Bruges after the more reckless of the two,  Ray, played by Colin Farrell, accidentally kills a little boy in a church while whacking a priest in a confession booth. We learn this later, of course; in the interim we find Ray gloomily following his partner, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) around like a depressed puppy who knows he's been bad. As Ken uses their assigned hiding place as a chance to "sightsee" and take in the medieval scenery, Ray inexplicably shits on everything, repeatedly referring to Bruges as the worst place on earth to be trapped in. It's a sentiment that doesn't make any sense and therefore comes off as unbelievable; that is, until you realize that Ray is one cocaine binge hangover away from blowing his brains out. The result of all this is a movie that feels surprisingly claustrophobic and a bit self-conscious and hackneyed, in the most wonderful way.

Part emotional drama/part comedy/part crime film, In Bruges comes off as odd and undefinable, which is exactly what makes it great. It's truly original, and the stellar, top-notch acting only helps elevate its seeming simplicity into complicated heights. 

Take, for example, the scene in which Ken and Ray peruse a medieval art museum. Ray is visibly horrified by one painting of a man being flayed. Why? An ostensible simpleton most of the time, perhaps Ray sees the gruesomeness of the procedure and is shocked as anyone would be. More likely, however, he recognizes the futility of certain people causing other people to suffer in completely arbitrary ways. This point is supported by Ray's appreciation of Bosch's painting of  the Christian Judgement Day ("All the others are rubbish, but this one is quite good," he says). The chaos, randomness, and demonstration of many malformed individuals hard at work, engrossed in their own individual tasks appeals to Ray because it's the only thing that makes sense to him: Our world is an amalgamation of individuals and events occurring all at once, oblivious to one another. In that regard, Ray finds comfort in the idea that his own sin continues to go unrecognized by billions of people on earth, alive and dead.

In addition to an obvious and hilariously offensive display of anti-Americanism, In Bruges displays horrific gruesomeness which permeates one's consciousness and can't be washed off.  It contains one of the most horrific suicide-by-jumping scenes in the history of film (I dare you to find a more gory and stomach-churning one), and I still haven't had the guts to actually fully watch Ralph Fiennes's Harry blow his own head off. 

But if you've read any of McDonagh's plays or watched any of his other films, you will find that the insanely over-the-top violence exists as an absurdist inevitability for his emotionally vulnerable characters. Even the toughest guys have a heart, and even the most intoxicated ones can't numb themselves enough from their own acknowledgement of a certain, destiny-ordained call to action.  

In McDonagh's world, violence is a given; it's what we chose to do around it, to self-actualize, that really matters.  In the end, it's the only thing that transcends human suffering and folly. Therefore, the deliberate and obvious interplay between violence and hilarity, McDonagh's trademark, is what makes In Bruges a one of a kind in 21st century cinema. 

A-

Kill List

Kill List (2012)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Cast: Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, Myanna Burning

Firstly, let me begin by saying that my film watching has been off the hook. Perhaps that's why I haven't posted in awhile? It's gotten to the point where I've watched three films a day. How do I have the time to do this? Beats me. Could it be I don't have a life? Unlikely (my dwindling bank account can attest to that). Watching movies is simply my favorite thing to do in the whole world.

Here's a list of the best films from 2012-13 viewed in the past month:

Passion (Brian de Palma): A
It's a Disaster (Todd Berger ): A-
Mud (Jeff Nichols): A+
The Conjuring (James Wan): A-
The Purge (James DeMonaco): A
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami): A
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair): B+ 
VHS 2 (assorted): A
Maniac (Franck Khalfoun): A
Kill List (Ben Wheatley): A+

Onto Kill List. The British horror/crime/thriller flick (which is impressive already for so adeptly blending genres) is tied with Mud for my favorite this year. Whereas Mud is a fantastic movie about the human capacity for love, second chances, and emerging from the grueling American frontier unscathed, Kill List is the opposite side of the spectrum. It's about the human capacity for beastliness. 

Few horror movies have impressed me to the degree that this movie has. I knew from the first few frames and eerie soundtrack that I was about to be thrown into a shit-show ride with enough gore and twists to sufficiently disturb my sleep. 

Why would anyone want to be so disturbed you might ask? To me, horror movies are like spicy food. You keep searching for that one dish that actually manages to make your mouth burn.

Kill List is about a contract killer named Jay (Neil Maskell) who was once a British solider in Kiev. He's returned to his family in Northern England (Sheffield) with some pretty glaringly obvious hang ups. Namely, he enjoys pummeling his targets to death any chance he gets. He works alongside his best friend Gal (Michael Smiley), who serves as ying to Neil's yang. Where Neil is erratic, explosive, and often maniacal, Gal is pacifying and level-headed. They agree to work a set of three hits for a creepy old millionaire whom they know little about (isn't that how these things work?). Along the way, Jay's rage and temper flares violently, and he enjoys torturing his targets instead of just shooting them in the head like he's supposed to. Gal gets fed up with his psycho ways, and all along Jay's wife Shel (Myanna Burning) and young son are thrown into the mix-- a combination of familial grounding and lurking tragedy just around the bend.

Once the final (and utterly shocking) frame of Kill List has passed, you begin to piece everything together in a most spectacular way. Not one element of this hybrid crime/horror film is irrelevant or superfluous. Moreover, at the film's foundation, an important and unique juxtaposition presents itself: "modern" killing equipped with automatic weapons and computer technology, with "primitive" killing equipped with makeshift stabbing devices and pagan overtones. 

As the title intimates, Wheatley's use of placards with the name of each of Jay and Gal's kill targets is clever and haunting. The final horrible scene leaves so many moral and thematic questions answered and unanswered at the same time. How much of our literal and metaphysical selves do we give up by uninhibitedly unleashing the killer within us? The film's answer is clear: all of it. 

Summation: Can't wait for Ben Wheatley's newest film, A Field in England.

A+

Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer

I'm not a big fan of Sam Raimi's movies, even though Drag Me to Hell is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. It's the sort of movie I recommend to friends and family members, even ones who don't necessarily like horror,  and when I recommend it, I usually spout out Sam Raimi's name to establish their trust that a well-regarded filmmaker is behind it.

The other night, I returned home very late after attending a 4-hour opera at the Met (I know) with little time to kill before I managed 5 hours of sleep before work the next morning. I opened my browser to Hulu, since Hulu always delivers something engaging (I could go on and on about Hulu's excellent Criterion collection). I guess Hule was helping promote the release of the new Evil Dead remake because the first suggestion on the screen was Raimi's original. 

Now, I saw the original Evil Dead in college about a thousand years ago, most likely among a big group of people, as co-eds often do. I don't remember much about it except that everyone at the time considered it "campy fun", almost like something you have to watch for the hell of it. But when I watched Evil Dead again the other night, I absolutely detested it. So over-hyped! So slow to get going and so exploitative and silly once it's on the right track. The tree raping scene is horrendous and gross, and it's neither scary nor provocative; it exists solely for the sake of existing, which is a quality of cinema I hate more than anything.  The only good thing about Evil Dead is 1) it made me ponder the nature of horror remakes and 2) it reminded me of Cabin in the Woods, which is an awesome movie. Watching the Evil Dead became so tedious that I decided to clean my kitchen before bed (I'm cool like that).

But Drag Me to Hell is a different story. I first saw Drag Me to Hell while introducing my partner to my Uncle and Aunt who live very far away in San Antonio, along with their daughter and her new husband. You'd think this would be an awkward film choice for a long-distance family reunion, but on the contrary, it was the perfect choice. There is something very family-friendly and benign about this bloody horror morality tale; shockingly, something that perhaps all of us can enjoy. 

Christina Brown (a wonderful Alison Lohman, where are you now?) lives a normal, run of the mill life as a young woman trying to create her own piece of happiness and success as a loan officer at a run-of-the-mill bank. Her male boss (Davd Paymer) and kiss-ass co-worker boss her around, and like most of us, she sucks it up in hopes that it will pay off with a big promotion and subsequent respect. She is dating a super nice guy (Justin Long, who I loved in Jeepers Creepers), but his parents are bitches, and she overhears him on the phone with his mom, who criticizes her, only adding fuel to her desire to excel at work.  

So one day this old gypsy-esque woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes in requesting an extended loan to keep her house. If she isn't granted the loan, she will have no place to live, and she pleads with Christina to grant her an extension. Christina consults with her boss, who tells her "you make the call". Christina knows the morally right thing to do is give the old woman the loan, but in a single, split-minute decision (not unlike the many we take for granted day to day) she rejects the woman, who falls to her knees begging, and ultimately gets security to kick the old hag out of the office. 

It's not like the Ganush is some benevolent granny-figure; in fact, she's a ruthless bitch who violently attacks Christina in her car, steals a button off her coat, and curses her to a demon who will torment the poor girl for days until she is dragged off to hell. In this respect, Christina is an innocent woman who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But that's not quite the truth either. Ultimately, it was her decision to not do the charitable, morally right thing, something she acknowledges later. But for every bad decision, we must pay a price, in one way or another.

At the heart of Drag Me to Hell is the recognition that hidden beneath our mundane lives (and her life is certainly very mundane) is the possibility of grave and eternal consequences. Christina begins experiencing horrible demonic visions which increase in severity, including a grotesque nose-bleed at work, and culminating in her being thrashed around her house like a rag doll. She consults in an non-cliched psychic figure (the sleep-expert guy from Inception, played by a slightly miscast Dileep Rao) who informs her that the nature of the curse is in the form of a super-powerful and especially evil demon called the Lamia. At one point, Christina capriciously decides to stab her beloved kitten to death as a sacrifice, anything to keep the terrifying demon at bay. 

The film's best scene involves a dangerous seance held by a highly skilled medium, who dies in the process. We learn that the Lamia will not quit until Christina is dead. Her only choice (why didn't anyone tell her this to begin with?) is to transfer the cursed button to another person, damning them to hell in her place. Unfortunately for her, this is another moral dilemma. Who should she give it to? She almost gives it to her ass-kissing co-worker, until her conscience gets the best of her. In the end, she decides to visit the old gypsy woman's grave-site , and shoves the button in her corpse's mouth. She has made her decision, and its apparent benefit is two-fold: save her own soul and damn the soul that cursed her.

In the end, this fails as well, in a most clever manner (be careful on train platforms, folks) leaving the viewer with two blatant lessons to take away from this cautionary saga. Lesson One: we can not escape the consequences of our actions. In fact we can't even repent! Nothing can save us once we have chosen the wrong path. Lesson Two: Choosing revenge, like the revenge Christina chooses to enact against the Mrs. Ganush, never pays off. In fact, it only leads to false hope. Christina would have been better off just accepting her fate in the first place. She should have just hollered "Drag me to hell!" and been done with it.

And that my friends, is how you make a good horror film. 

A