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MOVIES Y'ALL with Cole Hutchison
Posted by: Necci – May 04, 2011
White Material (2010)
dir: Claire Denis
I get high, ya’ll. On drugs. I wouldn’t consider myself to be one of those “smoke weed every day” types but if I have some weed, I like to smoke it. Every day. I was high when I watched this movie, but I wasn’t high when I bought it without ever having seen it. That’s because, high or no, I’m pretty well-versed in the cinematic world of Claire Denis and I know it’s one that I really like. Her 2001 cannibal ballad Trouble Every Day remains one of the most simultaneously erotic and disturbing films that I’ve ever seen, so it only makes sense that she would eventually team up with the fire-crotched French inferno Isabelle Huppert. Huppert is an astounding actress who has always possessed an undeniable yet perplexing sexual presence on film, which posits her as inarguably worth the sisyphean effort it would require to seduce her, even though by the end of the evening she’d probably just want to cut herself with your steak knife and pee all over you. Peeing on me is fine if you are a 19-23 year-old track runner who only ever drinks cranberry juice and the purest of spring water, but I’d be willing to bet some serious coin that Huppert drinks a TON of red wine with names that I can’t pronounce and prices that I can’t comprehend. Luckily enough for me, then, this film contains none of Denis’s somewhat trademarked sexual tension or deviance, save for the always-hovering spectre of possible rape (bummer). We are still treated to her usual degree of near-uncomfortable filmic intimacy, as she tends to direct an unwavering eye on the flesh of her characters with as much care and obsession as she dedicates to the striking landscapes which they inhabit. This particular landscape is an unnamed African nation in the throes of tumult as the colonialists pull out, a rebel army takes up arms against the ruling powers, and the previously suppressed but eternally brooding resentment of the common people begins to take violent form. It could be easy (for an idiot) to misread the film as a portrayal of one woman’s resiliency and determination against terrifying odds to uphold the life that she has come to see as her own. On the contrary, this is an expertly-crafted attack on the lunacy of colonialist entitlement and the stubborn naivety of once-rich white people self-assuredly planted in a world that they simply cannot understand. As with other Denis films, the violence is sparse and unexpected and all the more horrific because of it. Bonus points for the casting of Christopher Lambert (that’s right, motherfuckers; HIGHLANDER).
More movies after the jump...
Insidious (2011)
dir: James Wan
I used to live in a haunted house. I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t believe that such a thing is possible, and I’m certainly not going to make any attempt to change their minds. They are more than welcome to spend a year living in that very same house and then attempt to convince me that I was wrong about it. I know there are also people who not only believe in the possibility of hauntings but who openly thrive on the idea and spend most of their days wishing that that shit would happen to them. I also invite those people to spend a year in my former residence and then try to convince me that it wasn’t a bad idea. That place was fucked, and had I not been drunk for 75% of the time that I received my mail there it very well could have ruined one of the proverbially lauded “best years of my life.” Due to my perpetual state of inebriation and my tendency to wake up elsewhere, however, the experience was little more than a constant nuisance that would occasionally mature into a full-blown scarefest. The type that could turn your hair white. Or make your roommate grab his dog and leave the house for hours, terrified to return home. Insidious, at times, does a good job of capturing that feeling. James Wan is a talented, if unsteady, filmmaker with a good eye and a developed knack for storytelling, who often allows himself to be derailed by his own annoying juvenilia and borderline hack gimmicks. But dude knows how to scare you, which he does very well for the surprisingly classy first half of this entertaining spook film. The tension builds at a great pace and the scares, when they come, are appropriately jolting. Things tend to come apart at the seams a little bit once we’re forced to suffer through unnecessary amounts of exposition, and the film takes a turn for the almost goofy territory so expertly tread by better films, such as the Tobe Hooper by way of Steven Spielberg classic Poltergeist (1982), which Wan so obviously adores. Still, he is able to sneak in a few decent scares in the latter half--mostly achieved by some truly impressive visual effects--despite the depressing fact that the climactic showdown with the previously bone-chilling evil entity looks like a shitty music video for Tori Amos’s middle school mall-goth sister. I was lucky enough to see this in a theatre full of teenage black couples (hey, that’s racist!), so the heckles were constant and almost always on point. It may lose some of its charm in any other setting.
Source Code (2011)
dir: Duncan Jones
Duncan Jones is apparently the son of David Bowie. This is a random fact that was completely unnoticed by me when I first saw—and loved—his debut feature Moon (2009). That film was an essentially flawless haiku, brave in its simplicity and undeniable in its delivery. His new film boasts a larger budget, a bigger star and a much more oppressive advertisement campaign. Yet for some reason I now find myself hearing/reading more and more about the guy’s rock star dad factor. Who cares? Moon was more than enough to solidify his name on its own solid ground, completely independent of whose glittery sperm from whence he came (weird pun). I was nervous about this second film, primarily due to its perplexing pre-release hype and also because I loved his first one so much. My fears were essentially assuaged, however. This one is good, too. Maybe not as good, but two for two is an extremely impressive streak for a newcomer, especially someone dealing in a genre that is so easy to get absolutely and horrendously wrong. Jones’s sci-fi is cerebral without being condescending and exciting without being stupid. Source Code is especially commendable for its stubborn refusal to allow the viewer any overall sense of comfort; the film throws us into the character’s situation with the same lack of preparation that he himself receives, and keeps us guessing for the rest of its running time. The less said about it the better, but I will fess up to one gripe: it went on just a bit too long and made too much of a silly effort to clean things up for the traditional happy ending. Jones is better than that. Of course, I also think that Vanilla Sky (2001) should have ended with a freaked-out, mangle-faced Tom Cruise shouting “tech support” instead of holding my hand and explaining to me what I had just sat through. Some people like things tidy, I guess.
By Cole Hutchison
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