I know Wolf Creek doesn’t seem like an appropriate destination for cultured – and sensible! – people such as you and me, but allow me to make a case for visiting this remote area of the Australian Outback in your cinematic travels.
Werner Herzog uses all the trappings of the story of Count Drac-oooo-lah in Nosferatu the Vampyre but doesn’t approach it as a tale of terror. Instead, he turns Bram Stoker’s basic plot (and F.W. Murnau’s silent classic) into a contemplative study of sacrifice and tragedy.
No good movie in recent memory has made me feel as perfectly awful and unsettled as David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. The movie is beautifully made, engaging, and sometimes even funny, but it’s also repulsive and disturbing, and not just because of the director’s now-standard disfigurement fetish.
Two months before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, four African-American girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Spike Lee’s documentary 4 Little Girls elevates the tragedy to Act of God status.
For its first half, Roberto Benigni’s surprising Oscar winner Life Is Beautiful is a sparkling, nimble romantic comedy – utterly charming and magical. And then it abruptly turns into a Holocaust drama. It’s still charming, and that’s its problem.
Movie studios have been struck with the brilliant realization that predictably bad reviews for self-evident shit such as The Benchwarmers can be silenced by not showing the movie to critics! Here’s another blinding insight: Movies that aren’t released at all never get bad reviews! (Sorry. Wishful thinking on my part.)
You’re in your apartment. Your husband has gone to work. There’s a knock at the door. A genial man says he’s the plumber. You explain that you haven’t called for a plumber. He replies that he’s checking the pipes of all the apartments because of a pressure problem. You let him in; his story seems reasonable, and he’s got the right tools. It’s an act of trust. He says his name is Max.
You’re watching The Plumber. This setup is awfully familiar. You know the plumber’s a violent man, capable of unspeakable deeds. You know the wife, Jill, is in trouble. It’s an act of trust.
In Calendar, writer/director Atom Egoyan offers a film version of musical minimalism, with its emphasis on long shots, repetition, and minor variation, and with just a handful of camera setups. Nothing is superfluous.
If you want a perfect example of how great material can transcend its treatment, watch HBO’s recent two-part mini-series of Angels in America.
There’s a good movie in the seed of There’s Something About Mary – that being a beautiful woman carries with it the burden of a dozen or so stalkers – but the brothers Farrelly use it simply as a vehicle for a handful of sex-related sight gags spread very thinly over nearly two hours.
