Category Archives: Film

Saturday Matinee: Fast Food Nation

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By MaryAnn Johanson

Source: flick filosopher

You think it’s a simple hamburger. You think it’s merely a matter of personal choice: You eat the hamburger, or you don’t, and if you don’t eat the hamburger, it’s got nothing to do with you. The blight of candy-colored fast-food joints blotting the landscape may be unfortunate, but what are you gonna do?

Eric Schlosser’s horrifying muckracking book Fast Food Nation showed us that there’s nothing simple about that burger, that we are all impacted by the hegemony of the McDonald’ses and the Burger Kings (and the Pizza Huts and the Wendy’ses…), and that disparate threads of modern life that seem to have nothing to do with one another actually are intertwined: we do indeed live in a nation transformed by the fast-food corps. And now Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly, Before Sunset) has boiled the book down into a just-barely fictional narrative that hits all of Schlosser’s high points through a series of loosely connected characters involving in bringing you those 99-cent hamburgers. To say that Fast Food Nation the movie is less horrifying than the book is accurate, but not fair to the movie, which is plenty horrifying enough. To Linklater’s credit — he directs and wrote the script with Schlosser — he does not attempt to show us all the many greedy tentacles that the fast-food monster sends out at us; that would have made for an unwieldy movie. Instead, by giving us characters to focus on, Linklater puts a human face on a situation that is so huge that it just about paralyzes you.
It’s like this: “This isn’t about good people versus bad people,” says a cattle rancher played by Kris Kristofferson (Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Blade: Trinity) here. “It’s about the machine that’s taken over this country. It’s like something out of science fiction.” And it is: we have characters like Greg Kinnear’s (Invincible, Little Miss Sunshine) marketing exec for fast-food chain Mickey’s (any resemblance to an actual corporation is entirely deliberate), who starts off to investigate why Mickey burgers are, in laboratory tests, setting off alarms for their high fecal-coliform count, which is exactly what it sounds like: there’s shit in the meat. And — not to reveal too much about where things go, because you really must see this for yourself to believe it, must revel in the real-life nightmare of it — he discovers that he is on a hamster wheel he can’t get off without entirely ruining his own life. (A mortgage supported by his fat paycheck is, in the end, a powerful incentive to shut up and keep his head down.) We have the employees at the Colorado meatpacking plant that supplies Mickey’s with the gazillion frozen burgers it needs every day. They’re mostly illegal immigrants — as one bitter Mickey’s employee says, “there’s a reason why it only costs 99 cents” — and their employee handbook might as well be Catch-22, for many reasons I won’t reveal: it would spoil the finely tuned self-perpetuating machine of irony that Schlosser showed us exists in this industry and that Linklater depicts so perfectly. One of those meatpackers is played by the sublime Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) — her character gets caught up as a tiny cog in that irony machine by the film’s end, and her lovely performance is that bitter smack that makes you realize how deeply the fast-food nation has its claw in all of us: it is enabled by good, decent people just trying to make a living. It might be easy to condemn the Kinnear character for trading his integrity for a nice house, but it’s a lot harder to say the same about a woman struggling to simply survive.

And then there’s the Mickey’s counter employee played by Ashley Johnson (King of the Corner), who does get brave enough to take a stand and try to effect some kind of change for the better. All she gets for her trouble is rude wakeup call that — again, you must see to appreciate the clever metaphors that the script deploys in order to make its case — depresses her… and us. It’s not just that Fast Food Nation may make you want to never, ever eat at a McDonald’s or a Burger King ever again: that goes without saying. It’s that the film, depressingly but honestly, wonders if there’s anything we can do that will make everyone realize that there’s a cost to those burgers that goes way beyond 99 cents, even way beyond anything that can be quantified in dollars and sense.

Watch Fast Food Nation here: https://m.ok.ru/video/7259947731596

Saturday Matinee: Stroszek

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Classic Film Review: Herzog’s take on Germany-and-America-in-the-70s — “Stroszek”

By Roger Moore

Source: Roger’s Movie Nation

Long before he became the German filmmaker whose somber, ironic narrations and bleakly beautiful and humanistic documentaries turned Werner Herzog into a pop culture icon, he was a cult figure among international cinema fans.

In his early years of fame, Herzog’s movies could be dark, naturalistic poetry, or ambitious, cast-and-crew-testing living nightmares. His alter ego in the latter films was the bug-eyed maniac Klaus Kinski (“Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” “Nosferatu the Vampire, “”Woyzeck,” Fitzcarraldo”). Herzog later made a documentary tribute to their difficult working relationship, “My Best Fiend.”

But his co-conspirator/muse for the strange, personal and very human character studies “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and “Stroszek” was the eccentric, troubled forklift driver and self-taught street musician Bruno Schleinstein, known in Herzog’s films and to the film world as simply “Bruno S.”

“Stroszek” is a tone poem of a shattered life that comes to cling to one last broken dream. It’s a statement on the disconnect between 1977 Europe and America, particularly rural America, as seen through a delusional and alcoholic street musician with no visible means of support who moves from Berlin to BFE, Wisconsin in a country where “everybody gets rich” and The American Dream, at least as Cold War-weary Germans saw it, could come true.

It’s bleak and tragic, and funny in the darkest ways. It’s the sort of film that seemed very much of its time in its time, but that inspired generations of indie filmmakers to seek out the unheralded inhabitants of whatever underbelly of life was close at hand, and the sort of eccentrics who might be living in it.

Bruno is a theatrical goofball of inmate who loudly jokes through his entire paroling out of a Berlin jail. Some of his warders want to know, after all the time he’s served, if he’s been “dropped on the head?” The warden hectors him over his “beer” and goes on and on (in German with English subtitles) about how he should “never touch another drop” and “never set foot in a pub.”

Garrulous Bruno seems to agree, right up to the moment he rolls into his neighborhood watering hole on his way home.

A couple of brutish pimps are berating and knocking around Eva (Eva Mattes), whom Bruno sees as his “girl.” He doesn’t even try to defend her. But he invites her to live with him, with hopes of taking care of her. It’s just that his cluttered flat full of musical instruments which he’s taught himself to play, from the piano and accordion to the mellotron and glockenspiel, seems to defy that expecation.

And Eva’s lot gets worse when her pimps drag her out and back to work, and then bring her back, beating Bruno and humiliating him in front of her as they do. Their only way out may be accompanying their elderly neighbor (Clemens Scheitz) to stay with his nephew in Railroad Flats, Wisconsin.

So that’s what they do, losing Bruno’s mynah bird in U.S. customs, buying a used station wagon and trekking cross country to this place they can barely find on a map.

Clayton (Clayton Szalpinski) is a simple Air Force veteran running a garage in a one-stoplight town on the Northern Plains. He scrapes out a living, adds Bruno to his garage staff (Ely Rodriguez already works there) and shows them around a tiny, dead town where “murders” happen, where farmers feuding over a tiny parcel of land between their adjoining farms ride their tractors with a rifle in their spare hand.

But at least there’s a local truck stop where Eva can wait tables. As Bruno and Eva set up housekeeping, buying a new single-wide and a ruinously-expensive Sylvania TV, Eva is almost certain to have to resume her old career if they’re to make ends meet.

“Stroszek” is a leisurely, contemplative character study with music, as Herzog gives Bruno S. room to let us see into his soul through his musicianship, his fondness for playing and singing to no audience in big, echoey, empty courtyards and such. The Country Muzak of guitarist Chet Atkins’ instrumentals underscores many of the North American scenes.

One evokes memories of the Old World, where the buildings and people seem ancient and set on life’s path by their circumstances. Bruno S., playing a version of himself, is an orphan whose prostitute mother didn’t want him. Life in both worlds has its tests but the nature of the struggles are different, with the promise of America, a land of plenty undercut by the never-ending quest and need for money, which the “proletarian” Bruno starts to see as a “conspiracy.”

In its day, “Stroszek” was celebrated as a soulful bolt out of the blue in an American film landscape just turning itself over to the blockbuster. Lore grew up around the film and the seat-of-the-pants way Herzog filmed it (driving scenes with no camera truck/trailer) and scripted it, working around his screwy leading man’s moods, filming much of it Nekoosa and Plainfield, Wisconsin, with a conjured up tourist-trap-in-winter-finale filmed in Cherokee, N.C.

Viewed today, its whimsical charms stand out more than its tragic overtones. Even back then, critics and culture observers were pondering why American cinema made so little effort to find and celebrate the Brunos in our midst.

But documentary filmmakers Errol Morris and Les Blank, early disciples of Herzog and credited in “Stroszek,” are Americans who achieved their first fame for finding and lauding the quirkiness in the vast United States between the coasts.

And then the indie cinema of the ’80s and ’90s came along and amplified queer lives and rural despair, urban struggle and generational angst. By that time, their acknowledged or unacknowledged icon, the pioneering Herzog, had shifted more to the documentary side (“Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”) and become an actor and personality far more famous than the movies that first made him.

But quaint as it sometimes seems now, “Stroszek” remains one of the touchstone films of an era whose very look on screen — grey and gritty and forboding — is as instantly identifiable as its often more sober-minded and cynical subject matter and the inimatable characters inhabiting it.

Watch Stroszek on Tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/268904/stroszek

Saturday Matinee: Wizards

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By Ian Cullen

Source: Scifi Pulse

The animation in this film is a weird psychedelic hodgepodge of various styles. It seems both very cool and experimental at the same time.

Synopsis: In Wizards After the death of his mother. An evil mutant wizard Blackwolf discovers some long-lost military technologies. Blackwolf claims his mother’s throne, assembles an army, and sets out to brainwash and conquer Earth. Meanwhile, Blackwolf’s gentle twin brother, the bearded and sage Avatar calls upon his own magical abilities to foil Blackwolf’s plans for world domination — even if it means destroying his own flesh and blood.

The Story

Wizards begins with the destruction of the earth via a nuclear explosion. After several thousand years. The few survivors of humanity have become mutants and hide in the shadows. But from the ashes the fae folk of long-forgotten earth is reborn. They live in peace and tranquility for many thousands of years until their Queen gives birth to twin Wizards. Avatar a goodly and kind Wizard and his evil brother Blackwolf.

When their mother the Queen dies. The two brothers fight and Blackwolf is defeated by Avatar and journeys to form his new kingdom of Scorch. While in exile for 3000 years. Blackwolf sends his demonic forces out to search the earth for old technologies that he can use to defeat the forces of good and ultimately defeat his brother.

Meanwhile, in Montagar Avatar and his girlfriend, Elinore are blissfully unaware of Blackwolf’s plans until one of his soldiers Necron 99 attacks and kills their President.

Voice Acting

The acting throughout this films is really solid. Bob Holt is excellent as the kindly Wizard Avatar who justs wants to live a peaceful and hassle-free life. His interactions with Elinore (Jesse Welles) are a lot of fun and full of innuendo, which is something the film features a lot of. Richard Romanus puts the swashbuckler in Weehawk the soldier Elf who will fight to the death to defend his lands.

We also get Mark Hamill in perhaps his shortest animated role ever as Sean the ill-fated king of the Fairie folk. No sooner as he introduces himself. He gets wasted by one of Blackwolf’s soldiers.

Finally, special mention must go to Steve Gravers who puts in a great performance as the evil Wizard Blackwolf.

Animation

Directed and produced by Ralph Bakshi who is better known for his more adult-orientated animated films and series such as ‘Fritz The Cat’. ‘Wizards’ was supposed to be Bakshi’s first attempt at doing something for a family audience. Although we’d have to agree to differ on that front given that within the first five minutes we meet three fairy prostitutes. And Then we get Elinore sporting curves that would make most glamour models jealous.

The animation in this film is a weird psychedelic hodgepodge of various styles. It seems both very cool and experimental at the same time. I particularly loved the Rotoscoping effects that are used fairly heavily in the film. Especially when it came to the use of it with old world war 2 footage of tanks and planes. For its time, which was the late 70s. The animation in this movie was likely cutting edge. And I think it holds up pretty well considering.

Overall

Some of the themes and storylines within this film are probably more for the older kids than for younger viewers. How Bakshi managed to get a PG rating for this film will forever be a mystery. Especially given how little Elinore is wearing. Added to which the debate about Technology versus Nature and Magic while fun would probably go over the heads of younger viewers.

The film was made in a time where things like duck and cover were still fresh in the minds of most adults that saw the film at the time. If anything it was a film warning about the threat of nuclear war and it was very on the nose in that respect. I was about 12 when I first saw this movie as a video rental back in around 1982 and it stuck in my memory because this review is based on only my second viewing of the movie since back then.

That said though. The more mature version of me did spot a few contradictions in the film. The ones that stand out are to do with Avatar and his land of Montagar where technology is supposed to be outlawed. In the scene that establishes Avatar, we see him conjure up a jukebox. And later on as we get to the final battle. He uses a gun. Now back when I was 12 I wasn’t to bothered by this. But the grown-up me thinks Avatar is a hypocrite and a cheat for breaking his own rules.

Overall though. Despite those two issues I spotted. It is still quite an enjoyable film with some killer 70s funk and prog-rock guitar licks making up a killer soundtrack.

Watch Wizards at Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/y2mate.combernievstrumprzlyugsut7q360p

Saturday Matinee: The Visitor

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Witney Seibold Reviews ‘The Visitor’ (1979)

By Witney Seibold

Source: Critically Acclaimed

I first encountered Michael J. Paradise’s “The Visitor” at an after-hours, by-invite-only screening curated by my local video store. 

You see: The managers of said video store would, on a weekly basis, acquire whatever 35mm prints they could get a hold of for cheap and/or free. These prints consisted of obscure German comedies, weird sex films, lost genre oddities, sci-fi epics with missing reels, and, in one baffling bout of programming, “My Giant.” Then, in conjunction with a helpful projectionist at the movie theater next door (where I worked at the time), the store managers would invite over employees and friends of employees to view said films, eager to talk aloud in the theater and openly discuss the insanity on screen. These were magical nights of baffling cinematic exploration, and I’m glad to have been invited on several occasions.

It was in this milieu that I was introduced to Michael J. Paradise’s 1979 sci-fi epic “The Visitor,” perhaps one of the most baffling films ever produced. It was such a moving experience that I rushed to my (now long-neglected) criticism blog to review it. That was in 2007. The time has now come to re-visit “The Visitor” and see what new lessons can be learned. Luckily, the film is just as brain-melting as it always was.

Michael J. Paradise is the nom de cinéma of director Giulio Paradisi, an Italian character actor and assistant director who only made four features in his career (one of which was a crime comedy called “Spaghetti House”). “The Visitor” was his second feature, and, from the looks of it, the most ambitious. Tapping into many of the “2001”-inspired sci-fi trends of the time, Paradisi made a film that sought to tie together the cosmos with spirituality, Jesus with space aliens, and apocalyptic genre tropes with an all-star cast. 

“The Visitor” sets its sights on the entire universe, the nature of good and evil, and how humanity is the plaything of warring ancient space deities. The “big questions,” however, are mixed into a psychedelic bouillabaisse of confounding imagery, bad plotting, and weird-ass performances, at least one of which was done entirely under the influence of alcohol. “The Visitor” is insane.

The plot of the film centers on a young girl named Katy (Paige Connor) who is poised to be the next Christ or the next Antichrist, depending on which timeless deity can influence her fastest. On the light side is John Huston and Franco Nero, who oversee an ultra-futuristic space lounge populated by bald children. Nero dispenses Christ-like wisdom while Huston does the legwork; Huston sets up shop on modern-day Earth atop a Los Angeles skyscraper with a cadre of performing space cultists. Many of Huston’s scenes involve his direction of their performance art and his manipulating the stars with his very mind. He wants Katy to become a vessel for – who else? – Yahweh.

On the dark side, we have Lance Henricksen, owner of the Atlanta basketball team, who regularly attends creepy board meetings in a modern high-rise to discuss apocalyptic details with a shadowy cabal of high-powered executives. Henricksen is urged by this cabal (headed by Mel Ferrer) to magically influence young Katy into becoming a vessel for Zatteen, a.k.a. Satan. Katy, meanwhile, has already displayed a propensity for evil: Not only does she have telekinetic powers, but at her birthday party, Katy received a gun as a present (!) and shoots her aunt.

Shelley Winters also appears as a recently-hired nanny for Katy, but I was unsure if she was in the employ of the Huston cult or the Henricksen cult. At the film’s conclusion, she does give a tearful farewell to the Huston character, but that adds no rhyme nor reason. To add a much-needed human element to “The Visitor,” much of the film is seen through the eyes of Katy’s mother Barbara (Joanne Nail), who serves as our protagonist. She will eventually be felled by a gunshot and will spend much of “The Visitor” in a wheelchair.

The above synopsis only emerged in my mind after several viewings of “The Visitor.” While in the midst of actually viewing this Frankensteinian monstrosity, however, one may find themselves totally lost. “The Visitor” takes very long intermissions wherein portentous music pounds at the soundtrack but not much of ultimate consequence happens. The star-manipulating scene mentioned above is neat, I suppose, but it has no influence on the characters or the story as far as I can tell. There is another sequence wherein Katy is particularly at risk at an ice-skating rink, and the film’s poor sense of spatial continuity might have one believing that John Huston is scurrying down 3000 flights of stairs to stop it. At the end of that fateful descent, nothing notable happens.

The most mind-blowing celebrity cameo is provided by Sam Peckinpah who, in 1979, was in dire straits. In 1978, he directed “Convoy,” often seen as the least of his films, and it’s been posited that he accepted make “Convoy” only due to his addictions to booze and cocaine. He appears in one scene of “The Visitor” as Barbara’s ex-husband and Katy’s biological father. Peckinpah’s dialogue appears to have been dubbed, and, as we posited at that midnight screening so many years ago, it may have been because he was too drunk to remember his lines. He certainly seems tipsy and unhappy in his scenes.

In 2007, I was happy to let “The Visitor” melt my brain without much in the way of analysis. It was instantly classified by the midnight audience as a “Holy Fucking Shit” movie, and it still, to this day, enjoys a coveted spot on the “Holy Fucking Shit” shelf at CineFile Video. 

In 2018, having now seen more bonkers, psychedelic 1970s sci-fi epics, I have a better context for it. Thanks to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” audiences enjoyed nearly a decade of incredibly ambitious sci-fi movies that sought to unlock the deepest philosophical questions about eternity, humankind’s place in the cosmos, and how our consciousnesses may be a vital piece to a vast, astral puzzle. If one is swallowing tabs of acid while watching Carl Sagan interviews, one could easily conceive of something like “The Visitor.” 

I can’t say that the bulk of 1970s psychedelia was necessarily successful – they were big on histrionics but short on actual logic, character, historical theology, filmmaking acumen, or even basic entertainment value – but one can at least admire them for being willing to tip into the surreal to reach something higher. The movies often suck, but I can see why someone might have written something like, say, “God Told Me To” or “Zardoz.” I just couldn’t say how they did.

“The Visitor” will ever remain an oddity, but wow, what a rush! This is one of the crown jewels in baffling psychedelic 1970s freakout cinema and should be shared immediately. Drafhouse Films put out a handsome Blu-ray of it a few years back, and I encourage the purchase of it, sight unseen. I have my copy.  

Watch The Visitor on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/kcls/video/13448350

Saturday Matinee: Possession

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By Abby Brenker

Source: Lunatics Project

This article will certainly contain spoilers. You have been warned.

There is so much to say about Possession (1981). It was written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski. First of all, this film is difficult (but not impossible) to find. It’s worth the effort though. It’s currently showing at Metrograph theaters, and may be available on their streaming platform. I have not seen it on a big screen but I think that would be the ideal way to see it, if you aren’t susceptible to panic attacks.

Possession doesn’t fit cleanly into any specific genre. It’s equal parts drama, thriller and horror…maybe with a sprinkle of sci-fi. If you haven’t seen this movie, it starts out with a husband and wife who are dealing with infidelity and separation. But it devolves into something nightmarish, feverish and horrifying.

Right off the bat, we have to discuss Isabelle Adjani’s performance. It’s intense and exhausting and a performance that will stick with me for a while. Adjani has many memorable scenes, but one that comes to mind is when her character, Anna, enters a subway. Her continuous panting and heavy breathing (reminiscent of Midsommer), slowly erupt into screaming, laughter and blood and…so much more. The physical toll that this roll must have taken on Adjani is immense. There is no reprieve for the actors.

Everything about Possession is exaggerated, which makes some of the scenes hard to watch. But at its core, the allegory is quite clear. The monster which we are introduced to about halfway through the film represents the resentment and growing agony of divoce. Zulawski turns this common experience into grotesque body horror and upsetting desire. Though, I am sure you could watch this film over and over again and find new meanings and layers.

The film also stars Sam Neill in the role of the husband. Adjani plays her own doppelganger, as does Neill. The doppelganger element creates a circular, never ending pattern. A fairly unfavorable take on romantic relationships. Essentially, as one attraction wanes, another waxes. Side note: Zulawski did go through a divorce before he made Possession. Not very surprising.

It’s a film that’s meant to invoke a very specific emotional reaction from the audience. In a lot of ways it reminded me of how I felt watching Aronofsky’s Mother!. Both Mother! and Possession are films that I like and respect, but do not necessarily enjoy watching. But these films aren’t meant to be entertaining, they’re meant to take you on a very specific, guided emotional journey.

Beyond the plot and acting, the filmmaking is stunning. The cinematography is dizzying, in a good way. Often the camera moves freely around the actors, bringing additional elements to the drama that’s unfolding, One of the final scenes is filmed in dramatic vignette. Other shots are stark and clinical, until they are blood soaked. The filmmakers use sound here in a unique way. The actors breathing or moans or over the top noises add another layer to the soundtrack and rhythm of Possession.

In one of the final moments of the film, the husband and wife’s bloody pre-death kiss, was one of the hardest to watch for me. Not to mention the way Anna bends her arms backwards to try to end them both. A tragically horrifying yet somehow fitting end.

From a filmmaking perspective, Possession (1981) should be on everyone’s must-watch list. But it will soon also be on your what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch list. Possession is like being in a bad dream. From the start, the way the actors move is slightly off. They always seem to be wearing the same outfits day to day, or very similar colors. The way the plot unfolds is familiar but surprising. It lures us in under the false-pretense of a drama and whacks us over the head with body horror and tentacle fueled sex scenes. Only to leave us with a cynical feeling about love and modern relationships.

Possession was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1981. Though it didn’t win, Isabelle Adjani won best actress that year at Cannes for her role. Andrzej Zulawski has said that he makes films about “what is torturing” him. I think Possession is an excellent example of a highly successful exploration of one’s person torture. So be warned, what you’re feeling at the time you watch this film will undoubtedly impact how you perceive it.

Possession begs us to ask the question, who really is the bad guy?

Watch Possession on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/kcls/video/14014934

Saturday Matinee: From Hell

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“From Hell” – Plakatmotiv

By Roger Ebert

Source: RogerEbert.com

One day men will say I gave birth to the 20th century. — Dialogue by Jack the Ripper I’ d like to think Darwin has a better case, but I see what he means. The century was indeed a stage for the dark impulses of the soul, and recently I’ve begun to wonder if Jack didn’t give birth to the 21st century, too. Twins. During 10 weeks in autumn 1888, a serial killer murdered five prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London. The murders were linked because the Ripper left a trademark, surgically assaulting the corpses in a particularly gruesome way. “I look for someone with a thorough knowledge of human anatomy,” says Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard. An elementary knowledge would have been sufficient.

The story of Jack the Ripper has been fodder for countless movies and books, and even periodic reports that the mystery has been “solved” have failed to end our curiosity. Now comes “From Hell,” a rich, atmospheric film by the Hughes Brothers (“Menace II Society“), who call it a “ghetto film,” although knowledge of film, not the ghetto, is what qualifies them.

Johnny Depp stars as Inspector Frederick Abberline, an opium addict whose smoke-fueled dreams produce psychic insights into crime. The echo of Sherlock Holmes, another devotee of the pipe, is unmistakable, and “From Hell” supplies its hero with a Watsonoid sidekick in Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane), a policeman assigned to haul Abberline out of the dens, gently remind him of his duty, protect him from harm, and marvel at his insights. Depp plays his role as very, very subtle comedy–so droll he hopes we think he’s serious.

The movie feels dark, clammy and exhilarating–it’s like belonging to a secret club where you can have a lot of fun but might get into trouble. There’s one extraordinary shot that begins with the London skyline, pans down past towers and steam trains, and plunges into a subterranean crypt where a Masonic lodge is sitting in judgment on one of its members. You get the notion of the robust physical progress of Victoria’s metropolis, and the secret workings of the Establishment. At a time when public morality was strict and unbending, private misbehavior was a boom industry. Many, perhaps most, rich and pious men engaged in private debauchery.

The Hughes Brothers plunge into this world, so far from their native Detroit, with the joy of tourists who have been reading up for years. Their source is a 500-page graphic novel (i.e., transcendent comic book) by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, and some of their compositions look influenced by comic art, with its sharp obliques and exaggerated perspectives. The movie was shot on location with the medieval streets of Prague doubling for London, and production designer Martin Childs goes for lurid settings, saturated colors, deep shadows, a city of secret places protected by power and corruption.

We meet some of the prostitutes, particularly Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), who is trying to help her sisters escape from the dominance of the pimps. We see Abberline and Kelly begin a romance that probably would have been a lot more direct and uncomplicated at that time than it is in this movie. We see members of Victoria’s immediate family implicated in whoring and venereal mishaps, and we meet the Queen’s Surgeon, a precise and, by his own admission, brilliant man named Sir William Gull (Ian Holm). The investigation is interrupted from time to time by more murders, graphically indicated, and by forms of official murder, like lobotomy. Sir William is an especially enthusiastic advocate of that procedure, reinforcing my notion that every surgeon of any intelligence who practiced lobotomy did so with certain doubts about its wisdom, and certain stirrings of curious satisfaction.

Watching the film, I was surprised how consistently it surprised me. It’s a movie “catering to no clear demographic,” Variety reports in its review, as if catering to a demographic would be a good thing for a movie to do. Despite its gothic look, “From Hell” is not in the Hammer horror genre. Despite its Sherlockian hero, it’s not a Holmes and Watson story. Despite its murders, it’s not a slasher film. What it is, I think, is a Guignol about a cross-section of a thoroughly rotten society, corrupted from the top down. The Ripper murders cut through layers of social class designed to insulate the sinners from the results of their sins.

Saturday Matinee: Brainstorm

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By Moe

Source: Cup of Moe

The 1983 sci-fi thriller “Brainstorm” stars Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood. This forward-thinking science fiction romp presents virtual reality (VR) in its early stages and evolution. Although the Douglas Trumbull-directed film isn’t perfect, it’s a neat look at VR with superb acting, a magnificent score, and excellent effects.

A scientific group led by Michael Brace (Walken) and his estranged wife Karen (Natalie Wood), along with Michael’s colleague Lillian (Louise Fletcher) invents the computer and brain interfacing device. Their creation not only allows for virtual reality experiences but allows feelings and sensations to be recorded on tape. In this way, others may experience those as well.

After their initial success, CEO Alex Terson (Cliff Robertson) instructs Brace et al to offer a demo of their device with the intent to secure financial backing. It’s during this exhibition that the group realizes the true power of their device: its ability to record human emotions. Michael uses the device to record memories with emotions, and thereby influence the real world. But whereas Michael employs this as the utility to reconnect with his estranged wife, previous colleague Landan Marks (Donald Hotton) aspires to use it for military applications.

When Lillian suffers a heart attack, she puts on the headset and records her death. Michael later discovers her recorded memories. Eventually, Michael realizes the insidious intent to use his creation for warfare when he uncovers “Project Brainstorm.” As such, Michael and Karen team up to thwart efforts to use their technology to perpetuate the military industrial complex.

“Brainstorm” offers an intriguing and groundbreaking look at VR. There’s an exploration of not only virtual reality experiences but the effects on the user. This manifests in the ability to record emotions as well as memories. I like the way “Brainstorm” touches on humanity’s influence of tech, and the means through which tech shapes humanity. Moreover, “Brainstorm” presents an accurate portrayal of tech advancement. Early in the film, Terson instructs his team to make a smaller version of their helmet. Similarly, a trend in real-world technology is constant innovation in creating smaller devices.

I quite enjoy the helmet design and the effects are top-notch. The 1983 movie has aged pretty well with its fish-eye lens shots and well-crafted animation sequences.Trumbull worked on effects for films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Silent Running,” and “Blade Runner.” It’s evident that Trumbull understood the genre and he infuses mesmerizing special effects, particularly at the end.

Cinematography is fantastic. The film is set in North Carolina and uses several NC scenes as prominent backdrops. Notably, the Wright Brothers National Memorial plays an important role. Plus, there’s a neat shot of Duke Chapel. Locations even appear futuristic. The Burroughs Wellcome building offers its then high-tech looks as the main office for Michael, Karen, and Lillian. A gorgeous Chapel Hill, NC home with its parallelogram angles and solar panels was used as well.

Acting is phenomenal. Walken lends an inspired performance, and Natalie Wood is captivating in her final cinematic appearance. But it’s Louise Fletcher as Lillian who completely steals the show with a tour de force acting job.

It would be remiss to discuss “Brainstorm” without touching on its superb score. Renowned composer James Horner provides the musical backing which is replete with the timpani Horner became best known for. Horner’s “Brainstorm” soundtrack features elements from his “Wolfen” score. Later, in the 1986 sci-fi hit “Aliens,” Horner continued this trend. But it’s a formula that works.

Unfortunately, “Brainstorm” doesn’t quite end as well as it starts. The finale is admittedly a muddled moment which will leave you wondering “what?” as the credits roll. Michael plays back Lillian’s tape and watches the afterlife playing out, even glimpsing hell for a moment. Departed souls in the form of bioluminescent butterflies flow peacefully into heaven. Though the effects hold up fine, this sequence falls flat in lacking the poetry of similar scenes like the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Still, it’s tough to hold the abrupt and admittedly cheesy, ending against the movie. Wood’s tragic and mysterious death led production to halt. Eventually, Trumbull rewrote the script and used Wood’s younger sister as a stand-in for her remaining shots.

I especially enjoy how “Brainstorm” probes the relationship between tech and humanity, presenting complex concepts like computer-brain transference. “Brainstorm” may not carry the legacy of sci-fi flicks like “Blade Runner,” “Alien,” and “The Matrix.” However, its stellar cinematography, acting, score, and effects plus forward-thinking portrayal of tech make this 1983 movie a smart, lasting thriller.