enfilmigult Reviews

Significant Others (2004)

Extremely funny.

[9 March 2004]

The big advertising draw to "Significant Others" is that it's entirely improvised. And it's a sitcom. About relationships. That's three strikes against it already, but the show is hilarious.

The show deals with three couples with dysfunctional relationships, their problems ranging from pregnancy to infidelity to histories of promiscuity. Half the show deals with their everyday lives, and the other half straight-to-the-camera chats in the form of therapy sessions (even *these* are funny. Who would have thought?).

The comedy may be improvised, but it's done with incredible skill—and no doubt, hours of rehearsal—with nary a dead spot or muffed joke in the entire thing. Be the couples eating at a restaurant with a parent, inviting friends over for a dinner party, or cheating on one another with in-laws, the show keeps finding the comedy within and milking it mercilessly.

Is it accurate? Kinda. It finds the perfect way to condense realistic situations into minutes without making them thoroughly absurd; everything is just absurd enough to be funny. It would be more than easy for stuff like this to cross the line into ridiculousness in search of a laugh, but so far "Significant Others" hasn't made that mistake. In fact, it hasn't made any.

Total Eclipse (1995)

Sheer idiocy.

[5 October 2001]

I've seen many biographical films, and few of them have been told with the complete witlessness of "Total Eclipse." This is a story about the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine (Leonardo DiCaprio and David Thewlis), two brilliant but tortured artists who had an unhappy but surprisingly long sexual and mental relationship. I'm sure Rimbaud and Verlaine were indeed both brilliant and both artists, but there's barely any evidence of it here. Rimbaud is referred to as a genius repeatedly, but the most intellectual thing we ever see him doing is referring to someone else's work as "authentic sh*t" just before urinating on him. Verlaine is no better; he's a pathetic drunk who has married into money and spends most of his waking moments insulting and abusing his wife and her family (when not providing his wife's gratuitous nude scenes). Rare are the times when we see either of them writing poetry, and rarer still are the times when we hear any of it.

The story begins with Rimbaud arriving at Verlaine's house at the latter's request, after he's read some of his first work. Rimbaud belches, smokes his pipe at the table, and insults everyone seated with him in ways crude enough to make any master poet groan at the wasted opportunities. Verlaine is smitten with him, either because of the looks he throws in between stealing the household items and announcing "I have to p*ss," or because of the classical music score which follows him around. Soon they are having an illicit affair, though Verlaine does visit back home once in a while to set his wife's hair on fire and throw their baby carriage against the wall.

From there the movie breaks down into a pointless, arbitrary series of events that I guess were included because they really happened, but haven't been shaped into any sort of story, and certainly don't do anything to make us care about the characters. Verlaine leaves his wife, goes back to his wife, and then leaves her again. He and Rimbaud move from France, to Belgium, to London, back to Belgium, etc. As they circle Europe endlessly and the movie slows to a a crawl, whatever qualities and talents they had in real life, in real life they remain.

What else. Everyone speaks English in their own accents, although the characters are all supposed to be French (if I remember correctly one character even starts out as an American-accented girl, then grows into a French-accented woman—good luck following the flashbacks). We're given a fairly good look at the proper way to drink absinthe, which I suppose will come in handy now that they've decriminalized it. At some point we notice that the movie is employing its nudity strategically: most every major character is seen naked at some point, but DiCaprio and Romane Bohringer are given shots and lighting clearly designed to highlight their attractiveness, while Thewlis…is not. The movie finally boils down to two horrible people meeting, having a life-changing relationship and ending up as two horrible people who are a few years older.

The Mask (1961)

Ever watched paint dry? You may want to...

[5 July 2001]

No, it's not the Jim Carrey comedy: this is the story of a psychiatrist who is sent a mysterious Aztec mask by a seriously disturbed patient who kills himself right after dropping it in the mail. Compelled to put it on, he is driven further and further to the brink of insanity by strange hallucinations...unfortunately, the premise may sound okay but is just an excuse for the movie's one claim to fame, its 3-D sections.

Essentially, this is a really awful, poorly written "thriller" which looks as though it was made for about $4.50 on a spare weekend, and is sparked only by bizarre 3-D sequences that occur whenever someone puts on the mask. Otherwise, it's dull and idiotic, and sadly bereft even of unintentional laughs. The plot is so scanty that it seems like a 20-minute story stretched out to three times that. It's about as blatant a gimmick movie as has ever been made, because unlike William Castle's films, it doesn't even bother itself to be entertaining outside of its own gimmick. The biggest cheat, then, is that the movie doesn't end with its final 3-D scene, but keeps chugging on as though we would be even slightly interested in what happens to any of the characters or how the story ends (this makes it even more annoying that the ending is as inconsequential as it is; nothing is actually concluded or wrapped up except that the movie itself stops).

The sequences themselves are strange enough to make this worth watching at least once, though; they're certainly more stylish than anything that occurs between them and look, if nothing more than low-budget, not quite as horrendously cheap as everything else in the film. Creepy men with melted faces make sacrifices on altars; women's faces turn into skulls; fire, disembodied eyes, and burnt, pleading hands fly towards us. It's got nothing to do with the story, but there's some glimmer of competence here; it's helped by a strange soundtrack. Too bad it's such a slog to get through the rest of the film.

The "Midnight Madness" video release of the film is slightly entertaining for actually being in 3-D and also for being hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who adds her usual crude, jolly one-liners; she is sorely missed during the movie itself, though. You'll find yourself constantly fast-forwarding just to get to the next 3-D sequence; on TV, in two dimensions, this is totally worthless.

Terror in the Aisles (1984)

Brainless but entertaining clip show

[24 April 2001]

I had a lot of fun watching 'Terror in the Aisles,' despite its shortcomings. This has nothing to say about horror movies; its narration by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen is just patter designed to lead us into the next clip or montage. Unless you're bowled over by revelations like "scary movies tap into your childhood fears," or the news that special effects used to be primitive but are now more advanced, you're going to get nothing out of this as a documentary.

But the way in which various scenes are cut together is entertaining. Sometimes there are extended segments in which two or three films are intercut at length, leading to climaxes in which, for instance, 'Ms. 45' ends up taking out the killer from 'Klute.' You'll get a quick idea of the plots of several films, even enough to get caught up in them a little (it's funny how effective the first twenty-odd minutes of 'When a Stranger Calls' still are, even broken up and spread across an hour and a half). Other parts have no narrative at all, with a dozen different films cut together for a montage of horror-type things happening, but it sure looks neat. Occasionally this remembers it's supposed to be a documentary and we'll see Leatherface, Damien, Bruno Antony and Baby Jane go across the screen as Pleasence notes that great movie villains range in appearance.

What does it add up to? This was made by a company that normally specializes in movie trailers, and they don't seem to have changed their approach at all to make this film: it's a feature-length mashup, all cutting technique and big moments. If you're familiar with most of these movies it will be a snappily edited trip down memory lane; if you're not but wish you were, it'll be a pretty good advertisement (although, maddeningly, it doesn't tell you which clip comes from what). I'm a real horror nut, especially for the 1960s-to-early-1980s period this spends most of its time on, and I enjoyed it.

TV Funhouse (2000–2001)

Sick and subversive

[17 January 2001]

Not since "Meet the Feebles" have puppets been used for such evil purposes. "TV Funhouse" is pure gold: a demented kiddie variety show with some reality skits thrown in (a method taken, I'm guessing, from the hidden-camera end credit shots from "The Upright Citizens Brigade") and a few animated shorts to fill out the rest of the half hour, all three shockingly, hilariously obscene.

The twisted scenes involving the drug-using, cannibalistic, necrophiliac Anipals are jaw-dropping, to say the least; the Christmas special involved them injecting a hypodermic needle into the spine of their good-natured host in order to extract some "Christmas spirit," then cutting the pinkish substance and selling it on the street (not to mention using it heavily themselves). If that's where the episodes starts, imagine the ending.

Robert Smigel's animated sequences are, it seems, what he would have done earlier had "Saturday Night Live" not been on a broadcast channel: the usual use of impersonated celebrities and wacky situations is raised to grotesque new levels, making it much, much funnier.

A show that is nearly impossible to describe, the kind of thing which becomes mind-numbing when described by a breathless, giggling friend, "TV Funhouse" in its undiluted first-hand form is one of the funniest shows Comedy Central has produced in a while, rivaling "Strangers with Candy" and "The Upright Citizens Brigade" in crudeness, giddy hilarity, and sheer ballsiness. Highly recommended for those with strong stomachs and a low tolerance for political correctness.

Go Go Mania (1965)

Surprisingly watchable

[4 July 2000]

Among the plethora of 60's-era chestnuts AMC unearthed for its marathon music-movie weekend, "Pop Gear" actually stands out memorably. It isn't a movie, just a sort of drive-in Top 40 sort of deal, with various bands performing on a soundstage, a dance number or two, and a crooning host whose hair defies gravity. Essentially, it's like American Bandstand without the goofy kids.

Despite its obscurity and potentially snooze-inducing premise (it's hard to believe that the print still exists after a few decades), this is pretty interesting stuff. It's no "Woodstock", to be sure, and all of the performances are lip-synced, but the end result is intriguing. Faced with an almost completely static environment, the cinematographer actually holds interest by framing bands very well in widescreen Techniscope, planning some subtle movements between lead singers and the camera, and also staging the occasional dance numbers very well. The director doesn't push it or seem desperate, and avoids resorting to distractingly strange angles or overlong closeups (though the included closeups are startling). The editing is top-notch, as well. Despite being a set-bound, overextended music video, it's stylishly filmed, if cheesily assembled. A few very good songs work their way in, as well ("House of the Rising Sun" being one standout).

Manhunter (1986)

Imperfect but absorbing

[11 May 2000]

I've read 'Red Dragon' many, many times, and it is one of my favorite novels ever...and, as is, is virtually unfilmable. The centerpiece of the book is a long, detailed flashback detailing the motives (and practically the entire life) of the killer; it's the kind of thing you can get away with in print, but in a movie it'd stop the story dead. And so, alas, it's completely absent here. Too much background material is jettisoned in the translation and too much time is spent on Will Graham, the policeman in pursuit, for this to come close to the brilliant novel it's based on, but it's honestly about as good a movie as could have been made from this material.

The best thing about this is the acting: William Petersen is occasionally a little wooden as Graham (and no one, really, could stand there and talk to himself in lines that were silent thoughts in the book) but appropriately haggard and obsessed. Kim Griest, one of the best near-forgotten actresses of the eighties, captures the character of Graham's wife perfectly, and Tom Noonan is fascinating and frightening in equal measures as the Red Dragon (no mean feat, when we never really find out why he's doing what he's doing). Joan Allen does a good turn as a blind woman he falls in love with, in a relationship so obviously doomed that it causes suspense just by existing. Dennis Farina is his usual solid self as Petersen's superior. Altogether, the cast does its best to convey characterizations with the minimum of information the film actually has, and do very well.

The film itself is about as stylish and eighties-era as you'd expect from Michael Mann, and in the 'Miami Vice' style leans on using songs (rather than a score) for some big moments, but while it's dated it's not gratuitous, and everything fits pretty well. It's a bit low-budget, but at times this makes it harsher and more frightening than it might have been; now that this has been remade as a more expensive, slicker production, it's easier to see that sometimes less is more. Don't look for nearly as compelling or rich a story as in the novel, but if pure atmosphere does it for you, this will do it for you.

Drive, She Said (1997)

Much better than the story itself

[28 February 2000]

Though the script has indeed been done to death already, it's not the script itself so much as the wonderful filter it's put through that makes this worth seeing. The basic outline of the plot is embarrassing just to summarize--a woman is forced to choose between security with her boring bank teller fiancée, and heady but dangerous freedom with the good-looking bank robber who kidnaps her. Seriously. It's clichéd to its very bones, in every detail, at pretty much every moment.

It's kind of amazing that the writer/director of 'Double Happiness' would invest any time or effort in this idea, but give her credit: she really invested time and effort in it. I've been trying to nail down what it is she's doing here, and it's difficult. She tells this story with utter sincerity, but never seems to be pretending that it's anything but absurd. There's no way we would ever buy this setup, so why not make it all look like some sort of fluid, color-saturated dream? There's barely a plot to hang together, so why not just sort of slide through it in a happy, dreamy reverie? And yet the characters are written and performed exactly like people who've never seen a movie in which anything like this ever happened, and are so surprised by each development that they nearly trick us into being surprised ourselves. Search me as to why this is so watchable.

In short, 'Drive, She Said' could have been a boring, listless road movie with a scanty story, and instead it's a dreamlike, beautiful road movie with a scanty story. More profound insights can be had from a movie, without a doubt, but it's hard to begrudge one that's so clearly happy to be alive.