Lo and Behold 2016 directed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is a truly great, f not unique film director and his documentary work stands out for its presentation and subject matter. Into the Abyss and From One Second to the Next are two more recent of his documentaries that show how powerful that medium can be. Lo and Behold, sadly is not in that league or even close to it. It rambles, but goes nowhere and it shows, to me at least that Herzog has little to know understanding of the subject matter.

That is not to say it doesn't have it's moments. It does. I particularly liked the interview with Lawrence Krauss who comes across as reasonable person while some of the other experts, like the guy giving the tour of the birthplace of the Internet come across as total crackpots. Elon Musk makes his points well and a couple others refute some of his ideas in ways that I think show there is more than one way to think about the subjects discussed.

My biggest problems are two parts I find offensive or irresponsible, respectively.  The first is the interview with the family who lost a daughter in an accident and then started getting emails of her decapitated body in emails with truly horrible statements about her. That situation is bad enough but Herzog lets the interview include a clip of the mother going all "the Internet is real the Antichrist" and it makes her look foolish and not like the grieving parent she is. I also don't see how they can blame the Internet for what happened... it didn't cause the crash and even the emails are not something new... people would sent horrifying photos and letters to people in the mail before it could be electronically. People have always been inhumane to each others in ways that are hard to understand. I find her being used in a way that is unfeeling and unnecessary.  The second is the group who live in an area where the placement of radio telescopes forbids electronic devices, and all wifi signals. Some are there for work but he concentrates on a few that talks about their sensitivity to wifi... it's not a real thing. Humans have no ways to sense that sort of low level radiation and they HAVE been tested to see if there is an affect they can somehow sense something somehow and they never have, not even once. I think it's pretty obvious these people are suffering but giving them a made up answer just prevents them from finding a real one. That is harmful to them and it continues one of the most basic misconceptions about how these things work and encourages being willfully ignorant of real world physics.

So with a heavy heart, I have to put this Herzog film as one of his few disappointments for me.

The Witch 2015 directed by Robert Eggers

SPOILERS

An overly devout family, in 1630s New England is too extreme, even for their Puriton town, and are banished to the woods where they build a small farm and live as they see fit. One day youngest child, a baby, suddenly disappears and it is revealed pretty much right away that it is killed and ground up for use by a witch in the woods. This sets in motion a series of accusations, spiritual doubts and strange occult events that end in violence and destruction for all but one member of the clan. 

Made for only 4 million dollars, this movie proves that budget is not everything when it comes to making a great film. Horror movies in general are masters of small budgets but this takes it to another level. The performances are dead on, the cinematography is amazing and the shots are lit entirely with natural light and candlelight. It is slow moving but never dull and relies on creeping you out and disturbing ideas over gore and jump scares. It uses the language of the era it takes place in, which, to be fair, might be hard to understand for many people, and it also goes DEEP into actual witch lore from that period. That was a detail I personally appreciated as someone who finds actual folklore much more fascinating than the water downed versions of tales we have to suffer through at Halloween every year. The use of animals in this film is pretty horrifying. I never though a bunny rabbit woudl be the stuff nightmares by simply looking into the camera. 

While the fact of witches existing or not is never a question in the film, who they are is left mysterious and also why they are attacking the family is up for debate. My take was it was the father's pride that got them banished and starving that attracted evil and doomed his own family. The lead character, Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy is the soul survivor - but only because she surrenders to Satan in a scene that is too wonderfully disturbing, subtle and visual to describe here. 

Do you want to live deliciously? See this movie. 

Isle of Dogs 2018 directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's animated film is more than a little odd. It is also more than a little amusing, intriguing and daring in its presentation.  It is visually stunning as one might expect from any of his films at this point but it also takes some risks by having some of the dialog in Japanese and remain untranslated, letting non-speakers having the figure out what is going on visually.  While some people seemed to think this was "cultural appropriation" a term with no specific meaning anyone can seem to define these days, I would argue it might be the opposite as it puts the target audience (English speakers) in the position of the foreigner having to parse out what is being in said in a place they do not understand the language.

The story is simple enough. A mean dictator type mayor is holding on to power by making dogs the enemy of the people, sending them to a trash island and demonizing them at every turn. His young ward, however, has flown himself to the island to search for the dog who was charged with protecting him and much of the film is concerned with the search for the dog by the boy and the search for the boy by the government. Little plot details liekthe young girl who is trying to prove the dogs are not dangerous and in the process falls in love with the young boy and the lives of the dogs move the film along at a good pace and keep it lively. The animation is great and unique in its application. The voice actors are pretty good, including Yoko Ono! There are many twists and turns and revelations along the way.

One thing to note: this is not a children's film by any means. There is violence they might find a little shocking and the plot gets pretty dense in parts, not to mention people and dogs get killed and die, throughout.

So while not for everyone, I highly recommend at least giving this movie a try.

The Zero Theorem 2013 directed by Terry Gilliam

WARNING: SPOILERS

Cohen, a man working for "mamagement" in a distopian future who always refers to himself in the plural is requesting a disability status so he can work from home. The reason for this is he thinks he will recieve a telephone call that will tell hime what his meaning in life is.

He does eventaully get to work from home where he is joined by another programmer, Bob, who is ill and  his somewhat of a love interest, Bainsley who he shares a VR fantasy with.

In the end Cohen discovers that "Management" wants to prove there is no meaning of life. Choen destroys the machine and jumps inot the black hole within it, ending up back in the VR simulation, seemingly content despite management's biting statement that he has basicalling destroyed any meaning life did have for him by waiting for a phone call to tell him wha tthey meaning may have been.

Terry Gilliam is a brilliant dirextor. It's hard to deny that wiht his incredible body of work and he often returns to the same well for inspriation and ideas. This film, however, it pretty terrible. Despite some great actors, set peices and wonder Gilliam imagery, the movie comes off as a cheap copy of a Gilliam fim done by a much lesser filmmaker. The lead is good enough but the overall lavk of sympathy generated for him, or anyone else drags the story down. In Brazil the protagonist is relateable  and we care what happens to him. The world is a knockoff of the world of Brazil or maybe 12 Monkeys and never quite seems liek a real or interesting place. I do like that we see it in braod daylight so it doesn't fall into the distopian trope of "always raining and night".

Overall, a disspointing entry into the director's mostly great catalog of work.

The Raven 2019 directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

Based on the poem by Edgar Allen Poe, this was my longest single animation to date at 9 minutes. Michael Z. Keamy did the narration and it was a solid 5 months of full time work to get it done. 

This time out with the addition of simple sub-titling tools added to Final Cut X, I was able to add French and English captioning so more people can watch and understand it. I tried for a sombre but realistic tone to present to poem. I have seen a few animations that go wild with abstract shots and ideas but I wanted this to keep grounded. It was a challenge to make something that is basically some depressed dude yelling at a bird in one room for nine minutes until he passes out! I started with longer, lingering shots and then made them shorter and shorter as it progressed to give it a faster pace while keeping the ideas of grief and depression to the forefront. 

Comments, etc with Blogger not working

If you have tried to leave a comment on this site, or my home page... or any blogger site it seems, you likely were prevented from doing so over the last few months at least. I have tried to contact google but no response and while there are rumours of improvements coming, I would not hold my breath. It seem likely blogger will cease to exist at some point and this version of the blog will dissappear.

If you want to comment still, please do, just send it to
nomi02118@gmail.com

If you have suggestions for free blog sites like blogger to switch to, I'm all ears!

Sons of Star trek

For the Love of Spock (2016) directed by Adam Nimoy
Trek Nation (2011) ditected by Scott Colthorp

Eugene "Rod" Rodenberry and Adam Nimoy were the sons of gene Rodenberry and, the creator of Star Trek and Lenord Nimoy who played the iconic alien Mr. Spock in the franchise. Both got through not only the history and accomplishments of famous fathers but also the cost thier familys paid by having such well known and publically well loved figures as dads.

I can reccoemnd both documentaries highly. I will say, for the Love of Spock has better production values overall, which is not a surprise as Adam Nimoy is a film director. Trek Nation is not badly made either and tackles a much thornier subjects such as his dad's womanizing over the years with a very open interview with Majel Barrett, Gene Rodenberry's wife and Star Trek icon in her own right.

Oddly two films with strong connections to the history of Star Trek, a show that has been written about, discussed, parodied to infinity at this point, should be expected to have lots of repetative information and spill over from countless other projects about the subject, but they both are fresh takes on a juggernaugt franchise that only the sons of men who many consider to be giants can give us.

King Kong (1976) directs by John Guillermin

The 1976 remake of King Kong was a BIG deal. Firstly there were two version set to come to the big screen, this one and another that was to use new stop motion animation techniques to update the classic film as opposed to the guy in suit this one used.  Secondly, once this version as set to go, the ad campaign for it was enormous. Posters, bubble gum cards, you name it. They pulled out all the stops to make sure everyone on earth near a movie house knew this film was coming.

Since it follows more or less (mostly less) the original classic film script, there is no real need to recap it here. It is an updated telling however and the adventurer film maker Carl Dedham is replaced by Fred S. Wilson, his 70s evil petrol magnate version ( now plated by Charles Grodin) who wants to exploit Skull Island for oil, but when that doesn't work out, he decides to kidnap the giant gorilla living there and show him off to reduce his losses. Ann Darrow is now called Dwan (seriously, she is) played by Jessica Lang in her first role and she is, in a word, terrible. Funny, but terrible. She made good use of her 3 year work hiatus after this movie to really learn her craft and become the great actress we know now. Her lover, Jack (Jeff Bridges) is now a palaeontologist who stowed away on the boat going to Skull Island just in case there was giant monkey there. The Empire State building was replaced by the ill-fated Twin Towers that had recently been completed.



For reasons I cannot fathom, reviews for this movie were pretty good all around and the praise for its effects were almost universal. The script by Lorenzo Semple Jr, who is one of my favourite writers from the time he wrote the Batman TV show to his amazing campy update of Flash Gordon, is uneven at best and totally inappropriate and plain wrong at worst. It is really funny at times, but this flies in the face of how everyone else in the production saw the project. He seems the only one to get the joke. Because of that humour, I find it hard to just trash this film for the pretentiousness Dino DeLaurentis had to take on this big budget update of the RKO classic and still find it enjoyable in that "bad film" way.

To be clear: This film does not hold up. I liked it well enough at the time, there were few effects movies to compare it too until Star Wars came along,  but the effects are all pretty dismal. I don't know where the high praise for them came from. Bad matte work, and a monkey suit that was disappointing even to its creator, the very talents Rick Baker. The biggest issue is the lack of scale. Kong never looks any larger than a guy in suit walking around miniature scenery. He has a range of facial expressions from angry to rape-y pervert eyes when Kong looks at Dwan - which is uncomfortable to watch to say the very least. The updated touches are ridiculous as well. Kong is rolled out in New York City in a giant gas pump. For about 2 seconds the suited actor is replaced by a full sized robot (with 2 left arms) that was made solely for the purposes of giving the impression before the film was released that the monster would be the giant robot throughout. The end scene is totally banal and meaningless. There is no "Twas beauty that killed the beast" in this film.

And...good god, there was a sequel. King Kong Lives that was MUCH worse.

INSTEAD SEE THIS:



Mighty Joe Young (1998) directed by Ron Underwood

While this film is not a classic either, it does satisfy the giant ape desires you might have much better than the Kong remake. The story is serviceable, light and fun. Made by Disney for 90 Million Dollars, it only grossed 50 million. I can't explain why it flopped while Kong was box office gold. Rick Baker returned to try again to make a believable ape suit and this time it works in spades. Mixed with a digital version of Joe, it is impossible to tell which is which and the scale and believability of the giant ape is worth watching the film for. Charlize Theron also gives a great performance as does Bill Paxton.

Obit: Nicolas Roeg ( 15 August 1928 - 23 November 2018)

Nicolas Roeg has worked on many films and Tv projects but his output as director is relatively small, only 14 films total. Starting out as a cinematographer on films like Lawrence of Arabia and Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451,  he earned a reputation for excellence - and eccentricity.

As a director he developed a style all of his own and hard to describe. He was able though editing, to pass the limits of space and time with a seamless cut or fade. many of his cuts would take you into the past or mind of the character and then back again with ease that only Roeg has ever accomplished in my opinion. It makes for fascinating, complex and sometimes confusing works of art.

He also broke the mold by hiring musicians as actors, rock musicians in particular. He saw in them the ability to project an image on stage that, while not traditionally acting, was nevertheless engaging and presented characters in a way trained actors had not done before.

Despite his acclaim and influence, not many, if any, of his movies were considered financial successes. Even his adaption of Roald Dhal's The Witches which boasted an over the op performance by Angelica Huston and puppetry by Jim Hensen's studio never made a splash a the box office that it should have. Even so, Roeg films had star power behind them. Actors like Donald Sutherland and his ex-wife Theresa Russel appeared in a several projects as did Christopher Loyd and Gary Oldman.

While the movie studios and theatre chains might not have given him the respect his work deserved, a couple generations of actors, film goers and critics (me included) mark him as one of the great filmmakers of all time.

There is nothing like a Nicolas Roeg film. 

Documentary: Men for Sale 2008 directed by Rodrigue Jean

11 male sex orders are followed over the course of one year and open up about their lives, past and present. As you might imagine, it's pretty hard to watch and you won't feel sympathy for all the men presented I'm guessing. Though if you don't, you have some self reflection to do.

Simply filmed, the interviews are non-judgemental and very intimate. Needless to say, by the end of just one year, many of the subjects have slid downwards in every way possible, a couple seem to have  a have maybe changed their lives.

While started as a film about sex workers, it is more about drug addicts who have become sex workers, the sex work is  part of everything else they do to get drugs which includes robbery, etc.

I was left thinking how far we still have to go with getting people the mental health care they need sooner and with less stigma.

Many of the comments below the film wanted a follow-up and that would be amazing and heart breaking. I doubt it's possible to find these lost men after 10 years. I live where it was filmed and don't recognize any of them.

A hard watch but important.