Hey folks, Harry here to once again introduce you to Anton Sirius and his coverage of the Toronto Film Festival. I know personally, I've been awaiting news on CONFESSIONS OF A TRICK BABY and RIDE WITH THE DEVIL since they both started shooting. And tomorrow... we might be hearing more about what is coming up from Matthew Bright. With a hearty slap on the back, I say... good work my friend... Now I have to get to work writing my coverage of the truly important film festival this weekend... THE CANNIBAL FILM FESTIVAL at the Alamo Drafthouse!
Friday the 10th
Why do all you humans choose to be born in September? Now that everyone knows I'm in town I've been beseiged with messages- you just missed my birthday, come to my birthday party, do you want to get together for my birthday… Goddess! A general happy birthday to the lot of you- now leave me alone! I'm woikin' heah!
Anyway, I got up this morning after my normal three hours sleep and poked through the pile of books Mags left for me to entertain myself with. 120 Days of Sodom, When Rabbit Howls and the Nag Hammadi Library. Magdalena knows me a little too well, I fear. I grab the wee paperback and I'm off.
Booting back and forth between the hotel and the theaters I bump into a few people, and narrowly miss Chris Blackwell, I think. Just in case he spotted me I'll have to make time to see Third World Cop.
The Ride With the Devil Gala was nice, but the highlight of the evening was the audience Q & A with Matthew Bright after Freeway II. He likes girls, you see, and he really really means that in a 'dirty' way. You'd never know it from his films, mind you, but there it is. Other tidbits- his next project is Three Little Pigs-based, and the Canadian government more than lived up to its tight-assed rep during the Vancouver portion of the shoot. Matthew's advice is: shoot in Mexico if you've got an excuse, kids! More from him tomorrow.
Ride With the Devil (USA 1999, directed by Ang Lee)
(Note to self- really clunky expository dialogue actually works if spoken in a Southern accent.)
Ride With the Devil once again has Ang Lee being… well, Ang Lee. Yeah, I can hear you thinking- Nixon-era suburbia is one thing, but the Civil War from the Confederate perspective? Does Lee pull it off? Let me hear an AMEN, brothers and sisters, YAYUS!
Which is not to say Ride is as good as the Ice Storm- it falls a little short. The accents masked some weaknesses in the dialogue but couldn't cover the curious lack of focus in the script. But as per his norm Lee draws jaw-droppingly good performances from his cast- Toby Maguire, Skeet Ulrich and Jim Caviezel in a small role, but especially Jeffrey Wright and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Even Jewel is better than the average rock star (although sticking a song of hers over the closing credits was even more unforgivable than Bizarre Love Triangle showing up over Splendor's- couldn't they have found some Sixteen Horsepower?) And once again Lee's sly sense of humor comes into play- I believe he is first out of the gate with a TPM reference (you'll know it when you see it.)
While the resolution doesn't match the start, for two-thirds of its running time Ride With the Devil establishes itself as one of the best Civil War movies ever made, with Lee showing as much command of battle scenes as anything else he points a camera at. And that, my friends, makes for some mighty fine viewin'.
Rapture (Spain 1979. Directed by Ivan Zulueta)
No, that date is not a typo. History lesson for y'all- Ivan Zulueta was a graphic designer, creating posters for films by filmmakers like Luis Bunuel. He eventually decided to try his hand at his own films, and after making some shorts and a handful of features, and getting almost no attention or recognition, threw in the towel and went into seclusion. But like Charles Laughton, Zulueta wasn't bad but way ahead of his time. And Rapture is as weird a masterpiece as you're likely to ever see.
The Festival bible describes Rapture as a kind of vampire film, and in a way I can see that comparison, but it's a vampire film only metaphorically- it takes the image and transplants it into new soil, producing the kind of plant Thomas Ligotti writes of in some of his stranger passages.
Let me encapsulate the plot: Jose is a horror director with three obsessions- his work, his actress girlfriend, and his monster drug habit. A package arrives at his flat at the same time as the girlfriend returns for another round in their ongoing battle. The package contains a reel of film, a tape and a key from an old acquaintance- Pablo, another filmmaker, one who creates Koyaanisqatsi-esque explorations of 'rhythms'. As the audio tape reminds him of their meeting and subsequent relationship, the story it tells- and the contents of the film- gradually draws Jose into Pablo's strange worldview.
Rapture works for no reason I can put my finger on. Its flashback structure is unsound, its use of sound and score as bizarre as any movie I've ever seen. Yet there is an undeniable power in the story Zulueta lays out, and its final images are truly haunting, comparable only to perhaps La Jette.
I'm not sure what chance any of you out there will have to see Rapture, but if you do jump at the opportunity, and catch a glimpse of yet another path that film could have taken.
Freeway II: Confessions of a Trick Baby (USA 1999. Written & directed by Matthew Bright.)
Remember how audacious you thought Freeway was the first time you saw it? Remember that giddy thrill, that pure WOO-HA that erupted from within you when little Vanessa Lutz went haywire? Well, kiss it good-bye. Freeway II is on the loose, and the first movie is going to look like a pleasant picnic in comparison.
Confessions of a Trick Baby is a dark, dark ride, my friends, far darker than the first. Within the first ten minutes we are assailed with shots of bulemia, masturbation and John Landis, and Matthew Bright never takes his foot off the gas the entire trip. We are talking about a movie that features a Purging Pyjama Party. We are talking about a movie with Vincent Gallo playing Sister Gomez, a Mexican nun. We are talking about the end of Western civilization, folks, in an easy-to-swallow ninety minute format.
You want drugs? Freeway II's got 'em. You want a body count? Yep, got that too. You want deviant sexual behavior (and I'm not just talking lesbian shower scenes with Juliana Hatfield on the soundtrack- but it's got one of those too)? The return of Larry? David Alan Grier as the lawyer with the best job in the world? Projectile vomiting? A FREAKIN' GOAT BOY? It's all here, baby, waiting for you.
Among Matthew Bright's gifts as a filmmaker, one near the top has got to be his rapport with actors. The New Queen of Indie, Natasha Lyonne, gives the best performance of her career to date as Crystal- just as Reese Witherspoon did in the first Freeway playing Vanessa. Vincent Gallo worked with him and apparantly DOESN'T hate his guts. And Maria Celedonio comes from almost nowhere to fill the wacked, scary role of Hansel, er, Cyclonia.
Bright wears his B-movie heart on his sleeve, and Freeway II delivers the goods in spades. I just hope to Goddess that Vanessa and Crystal never meet on screen- I don't think humanity would survive.
History is Made at Night (UK/Finland, 1999. Directed by Ilkka Jarvilaturi)
Comedies about spies and assassins are funny. Why don't people do more of them? OK, sure, Casino Royale sucks (insert favorite saying here) but Spies Like Us and the Big Hit both rate as guilty pleasures, and don't get me started on Hudson Hawk. History is Made at Night is a nifty little model, quite content to just be funny rather than shooting the moon.
Bill Pullman and Irene Jacob (mmm, Irene Jacob) are lovers in Helsinki, working on opposite sides of a conflict grown increasingly irrelevant in this post-everything world. A case of some importance ends up in their corner of the world and they must dance the Paranoia Tango. They get lots of help, too, notably from Bruno Kirby and Udo Kier (who gets ONE good scene before yet another director forgets how funny he can be. Sigh.) It's relatively familiar terrain (in a nifty new Scandinavian locale) but the leads have enough chemistry, and the plot enough elan, to pull the film along quite swimmingly.
Worth a look if it gets a release all up in your area.
Bloody Angels (Norway, 1999, directed by Karin Julsrud)
What is it about Norway that produces such dark, disturbing films? You'd think it was night half the year or something.
Bloody Angels is a film about vigilante justice that pulls no punches- in a small town a young girl with Down's Syndrome is raped and murdered, and the townspeople turn on a family of social pariahs, specifically the two eldest boys. One of them ends up dead, and an investigator, Nicholas, is called up from Oslo. Nicholas doesn't bother to hide his disdain for the country bumpkins, and his prickly sense of humor quickly turns them against him. As the case grows more complex Nicholas finds himself bonding with the family's youngest son Niklas, with whom he finds he shares more than just a name. And all the while the mysterious vigilante 'angels' grow more and more violent…
Part of the power of the film comes from its cinematography, which bleaches most of the color from the image and gives it a stark, uncompromising feel which is diametrically at odds with the moral ambiguity in the plot. But strongest of all is the specter of blood lurking in the background, and the corrosive, contagious effect violence has on a community.
Bloody Angels is not a film for the faint of heart, but is well worth seeking out. Just don't plan any skiing vacations to Norway afterwards- those people are SCARY, man.
