Zola, Janicza Bravo (2020, now playing on Tubi)
A
woman named Zola, in her day job as a waitress, takes an order from a female
customer, Stefani, who commends her on her breasts. The customer is so taken
by her, in fact, that she goes to the kitchen area, where she isn’t allowed, to
continue talking. The women become fast friends. They text. (Zola’s boyfriend
stares at her as she looks down at her phone. “Are you listening to anything
I’m saying?”) They confide in each other. They use the word “bitch” to refer to
each other in a friendly way. By night the two women work as strip club
dancers. One day Stefani calls Zola about driving down to Florida to perform
for a weekend. Amused, Zola asks: “We’re already planning hoe trips together?” She
presses Stefani for more information and at first she’s evasive. But finally
she gives Zola enough to satisfy her. She’s picked up by Stefani, her
boyfriend, and another man, the driver, who doesn’t introduce himself. Eventually
Zola learns that there’s more to the trip than she’d been led to believe,
prompting her to start using the unfriendly (classic?) meaning of bitch.
But
this isn’t strictly a tense crime film. It’s more of a realistic horror comedy,
neither element diminished by the other. It's a frightening situation and Bravo,
in her debut film, doesn’t stint on the uglier aspects of this precarious lifestyle:
racism, intimidation, violence, sexual assault, human trafficking. And yet it’s undoubtedly a
hilarious situation too. It takes an unconventional approach to storytelling,
integrating aspects of modern communication, namely social media. The
screenplay is based on a viral Twitter story. One risk is that it’d come off as
merely anecdotal, with nothing more to say beyond: wasn’t that crazy? To an
extent, it does come off as if someone is recounting everything she can
remember about her long crazy weekend: slightly disjointed, a string of details
and revelations without necessarily careful development, an abrupt close. These
rough parts and a few others are compensated for, however, by the seriousness
with which the director treats her subject, the danger that these women are in
(though only one seems to fully grasp it), the squalor.
The
whole cast deserves applause. Riley Keough, as Stefani, is good enough—superficially
charming, casually manipulative, giving no thought whatsoever to the
consequences of her actions—to overcome one’s sense that she’s a bit too
Hollywood to convince as a woman living this sort of harrowing and
none-too-profitable life, though she doesn’t entirely capture the real woman quoted
in the movie itself. My personal favorite is the star, Taylour Paige, whose
reactions alone are enough for me to think back on and laugh about. Some priceless
alchemical mix of fear and stinkface. Though there’s no fear when the audience
last sees her.
A new addition to my personal movie canon. Needless to say: not for kids or the easily
offended.
Man on
Wire, James Marsh (2008,
now playing on Hulu)
An
example of a life that quite readily lends itself to biographical treatment:
Philippe Petit chose to live it risking death, and in rare fashion, as a
specialist in wire walking. Although Man on Wire isn’t a thorough
account of the whole life. It’s about him up to a certain age and the stunt
that would make his name. In 1974, at 24 years old, Petit walked on a wire he
and his crew strung between the then-unfinished World Trade Center towers.
One
aspect of the richness of biography are the stories within the story, the
savory particularities that are less likely (or less savory for being purely
functional) in a narrowly focused, plot-driven or fictionalized work. He’s 17
when the idea for his grand stunt comes to him, at the dentist’s office,
reading a newspaper piece about the building’s construction. Consumed with it,
he tears the piece out and leaves before receiving treatment. Years later, after
Petit makes it to New York from his native France, he’s secretly inspecting the
tower when he steps on a nail. He’s laid up in bed for three days. Then, getting
around on crutches, he discovers that they make him appear vulnerable and
unsuspicious. Guards hold doors and help him. So he keeps using them even after
he’s healed. One neat directorial decision is a moment of alignment: the music
stops and the story ends on a photograph of Petit, standing on top of the
tower, balancing a crutch on his forehead.
(However,
the documentary falls short of five-stars due to other small decisions.)
Years
ago, I read about a musical group that, as a stunt, parked a truck in the
middle of an LA freeway and performed on it. They were arrested and, as far as
I know, no one protested the injustice. A headline: “Horrible band causes
horrible traffic jam to promote horrible song.” Like that horrible band, Petit
has no official sanction. A notion about our society tickles me: some things
are technically illegal but, in this case, the only person who’s likely to get
hurt is Petit and his accomplices are welcome to back out at any time—so come
on! Don’t be a square bear. Scheming that is in no way dastardly. Exceptions to
the law for imaginative and wondrous and fairly responsible violations.
His ex-girlfriend, in a talking head interview, gets emotional talking about it. His
best friend, in his interview, tears up at the memory and stops speaking. A
guard who was there to stop him becomes transfixed in something he realizes is
like nothing he’d ever seen before and would never see again. As the cops take
him away, reporters breathlessly ask him: Why? I chuckled but I’d been thinking
the same. The planning, the time and money investment, the devotion of his
assistants. To what end, really? A moment? Petit responds: “The beauty of it is
that I didn’t have any ‘why?’” I understood beforehand that this would be an
impressive, awe-inspiring feat. But Man on Wire proves him right about
that and more, showing the beauty of the vision, the process, and the act.
Under
arrest, Petit balances a cop’s hat on his nose.
Terminator
2, James Cameron (1993, available on Netflix)
Subtlety
isn’t generally associated with the action movie genre but, watching possibly
the greatest action movie of all time yet again, I think that’s precisely what
separates James Cameron’s Terminator 2 from most every other I’ve
watched. Others have met, perhaps even exceeded, his standard for the
obvious part: explosions, special effects, gripping vehicular chase sequences.
The difference is what connects them.
A
reminder of the plot: In the future, there’s a cataclysmic war between humans
and killing machines. The leader of the human resistance is John Connor. He
reprograms one of the machines, a Terminator, and sends it to the past to
protect his teenage self. Meanwhile, the machines send an advanced version of
the Terminator, the T-1000, to the past to kill John Connor. In the past, the
teen John Connor (Edward Furlong, in a remarkably assured debut performance) informs a
friend that his mother is in a mental institution. After surviving the first
movie, she’d been training and targeting those responsible for creating the
killing machines that would threaten to destroy humanity when she’s caught.
John believes she’s crazy and nurses hate for her. But when the Terminator
(Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently forced to address sexual misconduct
allegations) arrives and saves his life, he realizes everything she’d been
saying was true.
The
first thing to appreciate in what happens next is quality plot development:
John is hit by guilt. Now he wants to rescue her. A transition to the next
action sequence that makes perfect sense for the future leader of the
resistance. But before the audience is rushed off to that, one of the movie’s
major themes is established when the Terminator says no. Relying purely on
machine logic, John’s sudden demand makes no sense: his mission is to protect
him and he’s willingly making that mission harder. There’s a standoff between
them, marking the line between human and inhuman.
The same scene, in the parking lot, continues. John Connor wants to
check on his foster parents. He walks to a nearby pay phone. But he doesn’t
have a quarter, so the Terminator smashes it, sending the quarters within
streaming out. A lesser movie wouldn’t see the opportunity to do something with
this. Connor could have just taken a quarter and called. Instead, Cameron gets
a laugh, underscores the Terminator’s machine thinking and strength, and builds
the pair’s relationship. Three things where there could have easily been
nothing. These freighted moments are embedded throughout.
So
often I’ve made it to the credits and felt empty even when I’ve been given
precisely what was advertised. The answer: One-dimensional moviemaking. Too
much blank space, weight and emotion an afterthought. Terminator 2 is an
exceedingly rare example of a multiplicity in the action genre.
Brain Damage, Frank Henenlotter (1988, almost gone from the Criterion Collection)
It’s
a comedy horror movie that, along with his earlier Basket Case, makes me
more wary of self-consciously campy cinema. A man wakes up feeling strange. He
discovers blood in his bedsheets. He experiences a euphoric hallucination (gets
super high). When he enters the bathroom, the tub has been filled with water.
He tells the intruder to come out. What responds is a talking penislike
creature. It wishes to make a deal: it’ll excrete the chemical that got him
high if he’ll escort it outdoors from time to time so it can feed. The man agrees.
When high, he doesn’t notice that the creature feeds on human brains. What
makes the movie campy is that it’s low-budget, shlocky, and heavy on wooden
acting and dialogue. Practically the whole movie is a wink to the audience,
which is another way of saying that there’s no serendipity. The ancient
drugpushing penis monster started singing and I wasn’t entertained. But there
are a couple of elements that can be taken at face value: Henenlotter’s use of
visual effects to depict the euphoric high and the drug addiction theme. In the
latter case, it’s not much: the desire for the drug high can override morality.
Digging beneath the camp, thinking it might be cover for a more profound idea,
I’m twice left cold.
The Thing, John Carpenter (1982, available on Tubi)
An
ancient alien creature has been discovered buried in ice and awakened. It
absorbs and imitates other life forms and now it’s hidden among the men in a camp in Antarctica. Awareness of its presence instantly spreads a sense of paranoia, a
perspective that sometimes gets belittled but, in this instance, as in others,
is perfectly defensible. One is in imminent danger but doesn’t know when the
monster will strike, what shape it’ll take, or who can be trusted. Loneliness, unchecked
paranoia, and an overpowering sense of doom lead to panic, baseless accusations,
and impulsive violence that would only be doing the monster’s work for it. Before
chaos and madness engulfs them, however, reason intervenes, setting up the
central conflict: some of the men try to orient themselves with the facts and
devise a plan for identifying and destroying the true threat.
The
movie takes a varied approach, working as much with sustained uncertainty and
dread as repulsive body mutations and blood. It doesn’t continually feed the
audience gory scenes, letting the viewer imagine what happens to certain
members of the crew and providing effective (as opposed to cheap) shocks when
the reveal comes.
From
the director of such movies as Escape from New York and They Live,
I get a strong sense of political commentary, however oblique. Though there are
only men in the film, one is soon put in mind of nations: first the Norwegians,
then the Americans. One way to view it is as a story about the potential breakdown of civilization. With this in mind, the anonymity of the characters works in
its favor, making it easier to imagine oneself in their shoes. Carpenter
preserves pace without a loss.
The
first time I watched the movie, back in college, I guessed, based on the ending,
that it was adapted from fiction (from a short story, to be precise, but it was
actually based on a novella—another form that works on compression, so damn! I
am always, at the very least, partially right). I’m sure
it would leave some viewers dissatisfied but I think it’s shrewdly ambiguous. Despite
the best of efforts, undertaken on the fly, perhaps no one will be saved. Even so, I’m not left paralyzed by despair. It’s a pessimistic but realistic possibility.
Yet every time the monster is stymied and forced to retreat even momentarily, I
inwardly pumped a fist.
To top it off, the score was done by Ennio Morricone.
Jade, William Friedkin (1995, almost
gone from the Criterion Collection)
The
movie, a dreadful erotic thriller, has a little something for every
ridonculous movie fan: Intrusive music that alternates between thunderstorm melodrama
and silky sexy travesty. Gratuitous nudity. Questionable acting choices. Laughable
cuts. Distracting visual allusions to the title. Dangling plot threads. A
headache-inducing degree of incoherence. And one of the greatest lines of
ridonculous dialogue. David Corelli (played by CSI: Miami’s David
Caruso) is inspecting a crime scene, in a bedroom. He opens the mini-fridge,
then turns away, contemplating its contents before solemnly exercising his powers
of deduction: “Cristal, Beluga, Wolfgang Puck: It’s a fuckhouse.” Though I
wondered why he never flashes a badge or a gun, I still had no idea Corelli
isn’t a cop until I read about the movie afterward. (He chases a murder suspect
in a car, conducts what appears to be an interrogation, is always accompanied
by cops, who tend to lead murder investigations….) Parts of it can be singled
out and enjoyed.
But
running through the whole movie is a blatant and rather sickening misogynistic
streak. Three of the four roles played by women (half of which are
insignificant) include one whose screen time is basically reduced to performing
oral sex on a male character out of nowhere. Another woman gets scratches and
bruises on her face that may or may not have been sustained while in police
custody. She’s a prostitute threatened into speaking up without a lawyer
present and treated like a hardened criminal. Not the slightest hint of a moral
qualm about that or anything else. Later, she dies brutally. And the woman in a starring role plays a would-be femme fatale who’s no more than a conveniently
duplicitous sex object passed between male characters and the victim of the
movie’s nasty ending. The attitude behind Jade is too chilling to ignore
or wave away as another product of ineptitude. It’s trash: too trashy to be
wholly fun.
