Battle Royale

2000 cult classic

Rating: 15/20 (Mark: 18/20)

Plot: Forty-two students are transported to an island, given a random weapon (firearms, paper fans, nunchucks, tasers, etc.), and instructed to kill each other off. Their old teacher, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, is there, too. I think there's something like this in the "No Child Left Behind" act.

My favorite thing about this movie: I busied my brain trying to guess how a pair of binoculars and/or a pan lid were going to come into play, and then nothing ever materialized. Battle Royale gets some points for effort. People who don't like it will tag it with a violence porn label. People who do like it will talk about it as a satire of the Japanese educational system and how society demands that children compete against their peers. And maybe I'm just desensitized to this sort of thing, but I didn't think it was all that violent. And I didn't think the satire--muddled and missing a few pieces--added up to much. There are a ton of characters in this, but the ratio of interesting characters to uninteresting ones is a problem. I liked the teacher (and Kitano [Zatoichi in the 2004 version of the blind swordsman movie]is always pretty awesome) and the crazy girl (Chiaki Kuriyama--Gogo in Kill Bill Volume One) and maybe the mean kid who doesn't get any lines. The others, including the rest of the forty-two children, aren't really memorable. I'm not sure I'm willing to sacrifice the quantity and variety of violent acts by limiting the amount of characters, but there sure were a lot of characters to keep track of in this. And, as you can probably guess, they all looked almost exactly the same, which made any subplots or connections between the characters kind of confusing. I did like that this movie wasn't afraid to show not only all those scenes of Japanese pop idols dying tragic deaths but also showing it all with a healthy dose of black humor. The action's paced well, and I liked how this explored the varying psychologies of children put in traumatic situations. This definitely lost a point because of the sickeningly melodramatic score. I have no problems watching a kid with an ax sticking out of his head stumble around on a television screen. However, I have no tolerance for bad film music.

Sweet Movie

1974 sweet movie

Rating: 13(?)/20

Plot: Spoilers abound! It's also disturbing, so you probably shouldn't even read it. It's the juxtaposed tales of a pair of women--Miss Canada, the winner of a virginity beauty pageant who, as a grand prize, marries a rich Texan, is urinated on by his golden phallus, attempts to leave, is taken to the inside of a water (milk?) tower by a muscular black man, watches him skipping rope while naked, has intercourse, is shoved in a suitcase, meets a Latino pop singer, has intercourse with him on the Eiffel Tower, flees to a commune where the participants of a vulgar banquet show off an array of bodily functions, and eventually writhes around in a tub of chocolate. The other woman pilots a candy-stuffed boat with a giant Karl Marx head on the front. She picks up a young man, has sex with him, seduces a bunch of children, and then kills them all. The end!

Finally, the movie I've been looking for--something a little bit more disturbing than Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. This is Dusan Makavejev, the same dude who directed Man Is Not a Bird, a pretty dull movie that went over my head during the notorious "man" movie streak. I'm not sure why I keep watching these Eastern European films from the 60s since I'm missing so much of the political context. I was born in a later decade and in another hemisphere and all. But hey, I almost got this one, seeing one of the woman as a representation of capitalism and the other as a symbol of revolution. It's a superficial reading, sure, and I don't know exactly what all the pooping and lip synching Spanish pop singers and Nazi documentary footage of a Russian massacre and grown men acting like babies and the blood/sugar/sex/magic and Battleship Potemkin allusions are all about. Unlike Man Is Not a Bird, this is anything but dull. It's wild and wildly unpredictable, not always in a positive way. It's challenging viewing, and, being the type of film that was banned pretty much everywhere, guaranteed to offend anybody who is even halfway decent. To me, the coprophilia, sexual depravities, and seduction of children is more shocking in this than in Salo because in this, it's all sugar-coated. This, much more than Pasolini's film, looks more like a movie packaged for the masses, more pop art than moody European drama, and your brain is just trained to expect a certain kind of images with colors that bright. It's also called Sweet Movie. I don't know if it was Makavejev's intent or what, but the bombardment of shocking imagery, after a while, started to feel a bit more comfortable. One early golden shower from a golden penis will bring out a "What the hell?" but the blow is lessened by the time you get to a scene where one man urinates into another man's mouth. Oh, who am I kidding? No, it isn't. That banquet stuff with avant-gardist Otto Muehl near the end is just disturbing in any context. But does it have artistic merit? I did like some of the set design, especially that funky boat and the collage work (the revolutionaries and pop icons pasted on the inner walls) inside. But yeah, I just don't know. I'm sure this movie is either a trashy masterpiece and much better than I think or just plain trashy and not nearly as good. Either way, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but it did make me think. About my movie choices.

And I kind of hope you didn't even bother reading this.

Bob Roberts

1992 political satire

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Ultra-conservative folk singer Bob Roberts wants to be a senator. A film crew follows him on his campaign while reporter Bugs Raplin tries to uncover a story of corruption.

As I've here stated ad nauseum, I love the mockumentary format. Generally, you don't 100% buy what's going on in your typical mockumentary, but you forgive them because they're hilarious. Bob Roberts isn't your typical mockumentary. It's not laugh-out-loudly hilarious, but it's got the realism. The cast, including all the extras, is gigantic, but they step on each other's lines like they would in real life and none of their actions seem extraneous or unnatural, helping me buy every inch of what was happening on the screen. That's actually pretty scary when you think about it. Bob Roberts is like a mockumentary that Robert Altman would have made. And although I didn't exactly laugh, the biting satire made me nod in appreciation more than any movie I can remember. It's an impressive achievement for first-time director Tim Robbins who also wrote the thing, starred as the titular right-winger/singer, and co-wrote the songs. It must have been exhausting. After all, tongue-lashing a nation for its hypocrisy, shortsidedness, and naivete is tiring work. This wouldn't click with everybody, and like a lot of great movies, it'll offend some people. Giancarlo Esposito as the reporter, Alan Rickman as an advisor, and Gore Vidal as the incumbent are all very good. I also dug all the Bob Dylan references, some album covers and the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" thing.

The Intruder

1962 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: William Shatner arrives in a small southern town where school integration has just become the law. People of the town don't like it much, but most have decided that there's not much they can do about it. Until The Shat comes along, that is. He pontificates the crowds into a lather, inciting violent acts and threatening behavior against the blacks.

If this movie was better known (it was the only movie Roger Corman made that lost money according to the dvd box), Shatner's villain is the kind of character that could have ruined his career. Just seeing Captain Kirk admire a burning cross or riding (sans white hood) in a convertible with three Ku-Klux-Klan guys made him despicable enough, but he's so slimy in other scenes that have nothing to do with racism, too. I wish I could type with confidence that the character and the actions he ignites in this dumpy town with these dumpy people are exaggerated, but it's an unfortunate and embarrassing part of our American history. At times, it's almost like a Cliff Notes version of the segregation/integration issue, but it's still a ballsy movie, especially for the early 60s. I imagine that if the same exact movie came out today, and I wouldn't be as impressed, but there's just something cool about a movie coming out at this time where the clear line between the good guys and bad guys pretty much separates the white characters from the black ones respectively. Even the white characters who end up doing right things are flawed enough to make them less than heroic. The score's powerful with its driving horns, and there's an intense denouement that, if not entirely satisfying nevertheless works very well, leaving things as open-ended as they probably were at the time. Good movie.

Capitalism: A Love Story

2009 left-wing propaganda

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 14/20)

Plot: Some tubby guy whines about how capitalism only works for people willing to take advantage of the system in evil ways at the expense of the people it won't work for.

I wept seven different times last week for a variety of reasons, and one of those times was during this movie.
Michael Moore manipulates, delivering his messages in cutesy ways and more often than not coming across like a snarky panda. That's what he is actually. He's Propaganda Panda, unprofessional even because he wears that baseball cap. But here, he's nothing but right, and this documentary is an often surprisingly moving experience. Capitalism has the devastation, hope, and humor present in Moore's best work. And there sure is a lot of information packed into this, enough that I could see somebody arguing that it's all unfocused and sloppy. But with the exception of some interviews with priests and some silly shots of cats flushing toilets, all of these parts are important in building the whole, and that whole is something that every American should probably see. And not just the filthy liberals who voted that socialist we've currently got in the White House either as Moore has made a movie for the demos in our democracy. Even if viewers aren't moved to do anything, they're getting a good story. There's good vs. evil and tons of plot twists. There's even a hint of a terrifying unhappy ending at the beginning of Moore's film when he juxtaposes shots from modern times with what looks to be a film strip about the fall of Rome. Solid stuff. Thanks, Propaganda Panda!

I tried to get Jen to write a guest review, and she refused. She did criticize Moore for wasting film time with gimmicks. She wanted more substance and less Propaganda Panda, I guess.

Man of Marble

1976 Polish movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A female film student works on her dissertation, a documentary about Birkut, a Polish bricklayer used in propagandii as a Socialist symbol. It's a swift rise and a painful fall, the filmmaker discovers as she interviews individuals from his past and searches for Birkut himself.

This is really long and as dry as marble, so a lot of patience is required. I suppose this could be a case where the movie is much better than I think it is, but I'm not Polish and I'm not a Communist and I'm not opposed to Socialism and therefore lack the context for this to make complete sense to me. I'm not qualified to write about most of the movies I write about, but I'm even less qualified to write about something like this. It do kind of like the structure, an almost Citizen Kane-esque gradual unveiling of a character. Except there's no sled. The scenes with the director aren't terribly exciting, but I do really like how much fake news footage, propaganda films, and other footage is mixed in. The stuff looks authentic, and the guy who plays the titular man does a really good job. It really gives it a sort of fake-documentary feel and a different flavor. So did the soundtrack, reminiscent of 70's blaxploitation funk. Some of the music is so bad that I'm sure there wouldn't be a lot of people who would oppose removing it and replacing it with something better. I'm far too lazy to look it up, but I do wonder how a movie this critical was even allowed to be created and shown to people.

Special shane-movies trivia: This is easily the least humorous Polish movie I've ever seen.

Fred Tuttle: Man with a Plan

1996 mockumentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Vermont farmer Fred Tuttle, a widower who lives with his sick father, needs money. He comes up with a plan (not the titular plan) to run for congress because congressmen make 80,000 dollars a year doing almost nothing. He starts his campaign against the incumbent, the normally-unopposed Bill Blachly. Despite tremendous odds against him, Fred Tuttle manages to raise thirty dollars and twenty-seven cents and starts to become a serious contender for the seat.

This is down-home goodness, very cheaply produced but full of local flavor and colorful caricatures. I was surprised how much I laughed out loud, but Tuttle himself was funny nearly every time he opened his mouth, and although a lot of the humor didn't work at all (see: the shady newspaper reporter holding up a barn wall), there were more than enough times when this just hits the spot. I love the "plan," an anagram he repeats throughout the campaign--Friendly, Renewable, Extra Terrestrial, and Dinky. He'd have my vote based on Dinky alone! I loved his interactions with a speech coach, his promise to debate Blachly "any time, any place, and in any language," and his promise to put a "chicken in every egg." Writer/Director John O'Brien has a style that grows on you as the movie goes, and I like how he finds humor in the little things. I've never been to the state, but O'Brien uses sneaky sight gags (again, not all of them funny) and several shots of its landscape to make it seem like a bizarrely beautiful and wonderful place. I'm fairly positive there's not a real actor in this thing as O'Brien uses locals at the annual "World's Fair" and demolition derbies. And I'm pretty sure that this was shot sans script, and the freedom given to these normal people to just improvise as themselves went a long way in painting a realistic picture of the place and its political landscape. At times, I wondered if the performers were even aware they were performing as a couple of these scenes make Fred Tuttle look like a 73-year-old Borat. This movie might be tough to find, but it's worth the trouble. Why should you watch Fred Tuttle: Man with a Plan? Same answer the character gave when asked why people should vote for him--Why Not?

Man of the Year

2006 dramedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Comedic talk show host Tom Dobbs (side note: Isn't there a real talk show host named Tom Dobbs?) decides to run for president. He's got no chance although with his hilarious speeches and shooting-from-the-hip approach, his popularity grows and he even gets an invite to a presidential candidate debate. Election day arrives, and to the surprise of everybody, Dobbs wins. However, the computer people running the vote just might be hiding details of a malfunction that gave Dobbs the victory.

Ah, Barry Levinson's movie almost tricked me. I anticipated more of a dumb comedy, but more than half of Man of the Year has more elements of a political thriller or drama than your typical comedy. So I was almost tricked into liking this thing, but the longer it went on and the more I thought about things, the more I realized how empty it was. As satire, it's incomplete. As a drama, it's color-by-numbers. And as I expected before popping it in, the comedy doesn't work either. The comedy comes mostly from conversations with Dobbs and his cohorts or from Dobbs speeches, sound bite after sound bite that I think are supposed to sound politically profound but mostly sound like stuff I've already heard before. There's dialogue where it seems like Robin Williams was given room to improvise, and those are the moments that failed most obviously. I will give credit to Man of the Year for using three of the most distracting actors working today (Robin Williams, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Walken) and somehow keeping the whole thing coherent and tolerable. Watching scene after scene with Robin Williams giving speeches or debating with quick flashes to Walken saying, "Yes!" or "Bring it home!" got pretty old though. The most irritating character is actually played by Laura Linney. Her performance is also irritating, but the biggest problem is that almost everything that happens to her character Eleanor Green is something that could only happen in movies. Even her name is a movie name. I just didn't believe in any of these characters, so I couldn't believe in their stories. This is a film that probably could have said something. But it doesn't and ends up incomplete and unsatisfying.