The futureworld of The Zero Theorem is so chaotic, gaudy, aggressively high-tech, and lonely—and not much of a stretch from where we’re heading—that it’s no wonder Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) wants to stay indoors permanently. The Gollum-like Qohen (that’s Co-hen)—all neuroses and no hair, and even prone to referring to himself as “we”—is a corporate number cruncher so skilled that he is granted permission to work from home, a cavernous former church he shares with pigeons, rats, and many layers of dust, tasked with solving the unsolvable title equation, pertaining to the meaning of life.
But, as it turns out, there’s not much peace to be had in Qohen’s hideaway either. This empty, socially inept man’s world—both real and virtual—is regularly disrupted by a collection of amusing weirdos, including, most notably, his weaselly superior (David Thewlis) and the big boss’s obnoxious yet ultra-likeable genius teenage son (Lucas Hedges) who’s sent in to assist Qohen. (The considerable screen chemistry between Waltz and Hedges makes for some of the film’s best scenes.) The women, however, don’t fare quite so well: Mélanie Thierry as the “love interest” is relegated to looking like a human sex doll, while Tilda Swinton, playing “odd” yet again, is cringe-worthy as Qohen’s invasive digital psychiatrist.
The Zero Theorem is very much a Terry Gilliam film: fantastical, kooky, occasionally sloppy, but with a big brain and a beating heart. And like most of his work, it won’t appeal to all, but its unmistakable passion makes it well worth the while.
It’s taken me exactly a year to go from Dark Star to Starman in my survey of John Carpenter’s career. At this rate, I’ll be at Escape From L.A.by this time in 2018. The timing works out on this one, however. There’s no “winter holiday” Carpenter movie — no, The Thing doesn’t count, that’s a “winter” movie — but Starman is as cheerful and uplifting a science-fiction tale as Carpenter has ever turned out, so it feels right for December.
Starman has quite the long history behind it. The script was in development at Columbia back in 1980 and went through a round-robin of writers. Columbia had the opportunity to do the Spielberg project that would eventually turn into E.T., but turned it down in favor of Starman — a decision the studio would come to regret when E.T. became the highest-grossing movie in history during the Summer of 1982 (when it squashed a certain other alien visitor movie).
The mega success of E.T. caused director John Badham to abandon Starman because he thought it was too similar to Spielberg’s movie. (Badham went on to direct WarGames, so that worked out.) Many other directors were on the film at one time or another — Adrian Lynne, Mark Rydell, Tony Scott, Peter Hyams — but John Carpenter had the pitch that stood out: film it as a love story/road movie in the classic Hollywood vein. Like It Happened One Night, but with an alien. Carpenter wanted to show he had the directing chops to tackle a different type of material. He was also still wounded over the poor reception of The Thing and wanted to deliver a hit for a big studio.
And thus we have a John Carpenter film for the whole family! Which is odd enough on its own.
The Story
Advanced extraterrestrials discover space probe Voyager II and choose to answer humanity’s invitation to “come and see us sometime,” as inscribed on the probe’s audio-visual disc. An alien observation ship heads to Earth, but the U.S. Air Force knocks it from its planned course so it crashes in rural Wisconsin. The disembodied alien aboard takes on the human shape of Scott Hayden (Jeff Bridges), the recently deceased husband of lonely Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen), by using DNA from a lock of Scott’s hair.
Jenny’s reaction to the physical resurrection of her husband with an extraterrestrial’s mind is… complex. She agrees to drive Starman-Scott to Arizona for a rendezvous with a ship from his homeworld. At first she acts out of fear, but later because she’s genuinely falling in love with the being in Scott’s shape — and she knows his body will die unless he makes the rendezvous. Their cross-country trip must stay ahead of pursuit by the police, a curious SETI scientist (Charles Martin Smith), and an aggressive National Security Agency director (Richard Jaeckel) who isn’t interested in giving the alien the “friendly reception” promised on Voyager 2’s golden disc.
The Positives
Starman is a sweet, lyrical movie that has aged beautifully. It’s Carpenter’s most humanist film, the opposite of the invasion paranoia and frigid horror of The Thing. But Starman isn’t Carpenter attempting to do a karaoke E.T. or imitate Spielberg, even considering the background of the project. No one else could’ve made Starman the way Carpenter did. E.T. is a science-fiction fable about childhood. Starman is a science-fiction fable about adulthood, realized as a road movie. It’s also a beautiful and complex romance about love rediscovered and hope overcoming morbidity and the human tendency to cynicism. Yes, overcoming cynicism in a John Carpenter film!
In short, this is probably the only John Carpenter film you can show to your Great Aunt Betty. Or to any other relatives who just don’t get out to movies that often. It’s a four-quadrant film — the only one in the director’s career.
It’s astonishing/aggravating how the 1980s shrugged off the brilliance of Jeff Bridges. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the entertainment world stopped taking him for granted as merely a handsome actor who had an almost proverbial trouble landing roles in hit movies. Starman is a perfect case of this: although he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor that year, Bridges not only didn’t win, he didn’t experience a major career boost from the nomination. Starman was only a moderate success in 1984, which didn’t help, and people seem to have forgotten Bridges was even nominated for the movie.
Bridges’s Best Actor nomination is the only time any Carpenter film got an Oscar nod. (“What, The Thing wasn’t nominated for special effects?” you’re shouting. Nope, it wasn’t. Don’t shoot the messenger.) Bridges lost to F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus. I can’t complain much about this because Jeff Bridges eventually won an Oscar for Crazy Heart in 2009, Abraham was superb in Amadeus, and Bridges has never been anything but thankful for the career he’s had. (“I couldn’t of dreamed it being any cooler than it is,” he said in a 2009 interview.) But given all that, if I were an Academy voter in 1984, I’d definitely cast my vote for Jeff Bridges. Because he’s just amazing in Starman.
Bridges as Starman-Scott is immediately impressive for the unusual physicality the actor invests in the part. Viewers are continually reminded through even the smallest gestures (oh, that nutty smile!) that this is an alien creature trying to figure out the most basic workings of the human body and human communication. Just watching Starman attempt to navigate eating Dutch apple pie feels like a full acting course. There’s also tons of great humor from the character quirks, with gags that Terminator 2: Judgment Day would later recycle as Starman-Scott fumbles with colloquialisms and gestures like “Take it easy,” and “Up yours.” My favorite of these comedy bits is when Starman-Scott nearly gets him and Jenny killed on a railroad track because he learned the wrong lesson about driving from watching her: “Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.”
But what Bridges achieves with the role is bigger than odd tics and a physical sense of the alien. He shows Starman-Scott evolve over a few days from an entity that terrifies Jenny into a person she loves deeply, and not only because he resembles her deceased husband. Starman is an alien moving toward human — but also toward something better than human and better than his species, as he indicates his and Jenny’s son will be. His wordless resurrection of Jenny inside the trailer is a powerhouse moment for Bridges where he shows the key point of alien and human merging. (He never tells Jenny that he brought her back from death, a subtle but wonderful addition to the character.)
It takes two to make a romance story work, of course. Thankfully, Karen Allen delivers her career-best performance as Jenny Hayden. (Sorry, Raiders of the Lost Ark.) Starman-Scott may be the flashiest part, but Jenny is the main character who goes through the change from a woman burnt-out early in life by the loss of a loved one to a woman reborn with hope for the future. The role is an incredibly challenging one, putting the strain of a constant tug-of-war of emotions on Allen as she reacts to the bizarre actions and potential danger from an alien wearing the form of the recently deceased love of her life. That’s plenty for an actor to unpack in each scene, and Allen goes on an incredible emotional road trip along with the physical one. Trying to explain the meaning of love to Starman-Scott in the diner, right as she’s making another plan to escape from him, is one of the tear-jerking highlights. But it’s the scene aboard the train, where Starman-Scott tells her she will have his baby, that contains Allen’s finest moments. It’s also the best scene in the film, lovingly crafted in a way I’d wager most people in Hollywood would never have expected from John Carpenter.
Although still missing photographer Dean Cundey (Donald M. Morgan repeats from Christine), Carpenter lenses some amazing outdoor sequences using the open spaces of Middle America as a canvas. It’s the most visually wide-open film he ever shot. I’m used to complimenting Carpenter and his cinematographers for doing impressive work with the widescreen format in enclosed and dark spaces. Here’s the opposite: Carpenter having the opportunity to shoot a movie like a John Ford epic Western. He even gets to use Monument Valley!
Starman is my pick for the best score to a John Carpenter film not composed or co-composed by John Carpenter. Producer Michael Douglas convinced Carpenter to let Jack Nitzsche score the film, based on Douglas’s previous work with Nitzsche on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Nitzsche’s all-electronic score has some striking similarities to Carpenter’s own work (I think he paid close attention to the director’s musical style) but it develops enough of a separate identity. The main theme, a soaring love piece, is an exemplar of how mid-1980s composers were discovering ways to create vast electronic soundscapes. (See also: Vangelis.)
The only Carpenter Acting Company regular to pop up is Buck Flower, who plays a short-order cook who gives Starman-Scott a ride after the alien feels he’s putting Jenny in too much danger. It’s one of the funniest scenes, as the cook finds its surprisingly easy to chat with Starman-Scott’s odd handling of conversations:
Cook: What’s your line?
Starman-Scott: Line?
Cook: Work. Whaddya do when you’re not hitching rides?
Starman-Scott: Oh, I make maps.
Cook: Make any money?
Starman-Scott: [pause] I make maps.
Cook: Well, you don’t get rich cookin’ either!
At one hour and fifty-five minutes, Starman is John Carpenter’s longest movie. Think about that: nineteen movies on his resumé and none even reached the two-hour mark. That’s incredible, and it says plenty about what an efficient filmmaker and tight storyteller Carpenter is.
The Negatives
I don’t have much to say against Starman. As a gentle science-fiction romance, it’s nearly perfect. Yet … it’s never my first choice when I’m looking to rewatch a John Carpenter film. There’s so much to love about it, but it doesn’t engage me on the same level that even some ostensibly lesser entries in the Carpenter filmography do.
As I talked about above, this isn’t a sell-out movie or Carpenter trying to imitate a recent hit. This is no work-for-hire paycheck gig like Memoirs of an Invisible Man. But it feels like something Carpenter needed to do at least once so he could get back to the suspense, cynicism, and violent weirdness that are his specialty; the films of his that are endlessly rewatchable. Starman is an interesting detour for Carpenter, as well as a good film to share with non-fans and family members who don’t want to watch gang members murder a little girl, an “action adventure comedy Kung-Fu ghost story monster movie,” or a satirical/political allegory about alien invaders that also contains a prolonged wrestling scene. Just writing those descriptions explains a lot about why I love John Carpenter’s movies — and why I feel a touch removed from Starman.
One actual criticism I have is that the government/science sections of the story with scientist Mark Shermin and military blowhard George Fox are less developed than the road trip romance sections. The seamless split between these similar halves of the narrative that Spielberg achieved in Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Roy Neary’s collapsing family on one side and Lacombe’s quest on the other doesn’t occur here. The movie loses a bit of its momentum whenever it shifts away from its central couple.
Charles Martin Smith gives Mark Shermin personality, but there’s not much to the character on the page and his impact on events is minimal. The trimming down of the military, political, and SF aspects of the story to center more on the romance only really inflict damage to the movie in this case: it seems as if Shermin should have a larger role and much more to say about who and what the alien visitor is. His only encounter with Starman-Scott is a short one; I would’ve enjoyed a few additional minutes of exchange between them to learn more about Starman’s view of humanity and what drives Shermin.
The Pessimistic Carpenter Ending
Not applicable! This is as optimistic as Carpenter films come, leaving Jenny Hayden on Earth with her life renewed and the gift of a child from both her husband and the Starman — a child who shall become a teacher. You won’t find as optimistic a quote in the Carpenter canon as Starman’s observation on humanity: “Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? You are at your very best when things are worst.”
Like every young anime fan, you relied on Reddit, Tumblr, or YouTube as your source of information when looking for new anime to watch; in particular, I was a fan of the ultraviolent Wicked City-type films. No one in my sphere of influence watched anime like that, but as a person who was raised young on 80s ultraviolent action flicks and cheesy slasher flicks. Most anime I watched did not scratch that itch I had. One day, while browsing YouTube, I saw a recommendation from my favorite anime reviewer. He just made a review on a little film named Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade, a hidden late 90s gem that almost nobody talked about.
Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade was released in Japan on June 3rd, 2000, and did not hit America until it was licensed by Bandai Entertainment and Viz Media for an English release, hitting theaters on May 25th, 2001. The Film chronologically is the third film in Mamoru Oshiis Kerberos Saga beginning in 1987. The Kerberos Saga ranges through various installments, such as live-action films, radio dramas, an original manga run, and a feature-animated film.
When I first experienced the film for myself, I was upset that something this beautiful felt hidden and almost forgotten by mainstream anime fans nowadays. However, my opinion changed when I showed my friends the film; rewatching it with new viewers fresh for the experience made me realize why Jin Roh is such an underrated gem in the first place.
Based on Mamoru Oshii’s original manga Kerberos Panzer Cop. Jin Roh takes place in an alternate timeline. Set in an alternate 1950s Japan, where after World War 2, Germany won the war, occupied Japan, and eventually denazified, leaving the country in economic and political ruin. The film follows Kazuki Fuse. A member of the Capital Police menacing paramilitary unit nicknamed Kerberos equipped with MG-42 machine guns and specialized nightmare-inducing Protect Gear that looks straight from a sci-fi movie.
We follow Fuse as he is embroiled in a web of political intrigue and personal turbulence after failing to stop a member of the terrorist group known as The Sect from detonating satchel charges that cause a blackout. The incident damages Kerberos’ reputation. Fuse, deeply haunted by guilt, is reprimanded for failing to stop the bomber and sent back to basic training for re-evaluation. Fuse, still remorseful, visits the courier’s grave, meets Kei Amemiya, a woman who claims to be the courier’s older sister, and develops a friendship. However, Kei is eventually revealed not to be the suicide bomber’s sister but a former member of the Sect who is being used as a pawn by the Capital Police to discredit Kerberos and disband the unit once and for all.
Jin Roh is unlike other anime like Akira or Ghost in the Shell, but it is as influential as the two. However, the film does not bombard the senses with a visual feast for the viewer. Even though many animators, including the director, worked on anime such as Paranoia Agent, Evangelion, Patlabor 2, and so on, the real magic comes in its sound design and soundtrack.
It is something you’ll quickly come to appreciate. The film’s attention to realism and subtlety in its sound design helps create a realistic environment; it’s purposeful and not distracting. Things sound squishy when they should; Fuze reassembling his MG-42 sounds real and so damn crisp to the ear; even the sound of a Molotov hitting the ground shows the care and level of detail that went into making every sound heard realistic.
I’m not discrediting the visuals because what you see visually is also curated and adds to the experience. Characters are distinct, and the world is visually stunning; on my second viewing, I realized I never noticed most of the weapons, uniforms, and vehicles seen are German or German-influenced. The Mauser C96 is the Kerberos standard sidearm. Capitol Police are seen carrying MP40s, and when Fuse is sent back to basic for training, we see members of the unit training with Sturmgewehr 44 rifles. It is what makes this film so distinct. There’s noticeable love and attention to detail carefully considered when developing the movie. I never understood why it was so underrated until I rewatched it with my friends. Watching the emotional roller coaster, my friends went on made me realize something. Jin Roh is meant to be a rainy-day film.
It should be a hidden gem. It’s a cozy watch, especially with the soundtrack composed by Hajime Mizoguchi in collaboration with Yoko Kanno. Even though the soundtrack is used sparsely compared to other films, it hits. There’s not a punch pulled when it comes to composing the soundtrack. It is orgasmic. It is why even though the film may not be as acclaimed as Akira, it’s memorable. And that’s what the legacy of this movie is supposed to be. Jin Roh is a memorable viewing experience.
While scenes can feel like they drag, they serve a purpose. The movie doesn’t care about your expectations as a viewer; hell, within the opening scene and throughout the film, it makes it a matter of fact. Surprisingly going as far as spoiling how the film will end with visual clues and off-screen exposition. It’s something sprinkled throughout with imagery of wolves or that Fuse figuratively and almost literally being a wolf.
The scene in the sewers with the wolf brigade still gives me chills. It is revealed the wolf brigade has been fully aware of the Public Security plan and used it as an opportunity to flush out those trying to eliminate the unit. Fuse himself is a deep-cover operative. Well aware of what’s going on. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is even more heartbreaking in the end. Just like the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf devoured Little Red Riding Hood. Fuse, distraught, realizes he has no other choice and kills Kei, cleaning up all loose ends.
Jin Roh on the surface, may be boring to some, or the use of the wolf and little red riding hood may be pretentious to others. Except, it is safe to say that is purely personal bias. Jin Roh is a stunning film. I encourage any anime fan who has not graced their screens with the movie, should. It should be watched and celebrated with other great pieces of animation. As the sea of new anime rises. Gems like Jin Roh are bound to be forgotten or passed over. The next time you are looking for a visually stunning; masterfully made; and well-curated film, watch Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade. You won’t regret it.
To call “Santa Sangre” (1989) a horror film would be unjust to a film that exists outside all categories. But in addition to its deeper qualities, it is a horror film, one of the greatest, and after waiting patiently through countless Dead Teenager Movies, I am reminded by Alejandro Jodorowsky that true psychic horror is possible on the screen–horror, poetry, surrealism, psychological pain and wicked humor, all at once.
The movie involves the perverse emotional and physical enslavement of a son by his mother–a control all the more macabre when we learn, late in the film, the secret of its actual nature. It is also about an instinctive hatred between characters representing lust and chastity, which are both seen as perversions in a world without a sane middle way. This bold subject matter is orchestrated by Jodorowsky in a film that inspires critics to make lists, calling it Jungian, surrealistic, Felliniesque, Bunuelian, sadomasochistic, expressionist and strongly flavored by such horror classics as “The Beast With Five Fingers,” “The Hands of Orlac” and the film that guides the hero’s fantasies, “The Invisible Man.”
The story involves Fenix, the boy magician at the Circus Gringo, a shabby touring show in Mexico. Played by two of Jodorowsky’s sons (Adan at about 8, Axel at about 20), Fenix is the child of the beautiful trapeze artist Concha (Blanca Guerra) and the bloated circus owner and knife-thrower Orgo (Guy Stockwell). Always at Fenix’s side is the dwarf Aladin (Jesus Juarez), who acts as his assistant and moral support.
The little magician’s best friend is Alma (Faviola Elenka Tapia and, when older, Sabrina Dennison). She is a deaf-mute mime, the daughter of the carnal Tattooed Woman (Thelma Tixou), who works as the target for Orgo’s knives. One night when Concha is suspended above the circus ring by her hair, she sees Orgo caressing the Tattooed Lady and screams to be brought back to earth. In a rage, she surprises them in bed and throws acid on Orgo’s genitals. Bellowing with pain, he severs her arms with mighty thrusts of two knives. Then he kills himself, the acid having rendered him uninteresting to women tattooed and otherwise.
Concha’s mutilation is a cruel irony: She is the leader of a cult of women who worship a saint whose arms were cut off by rapists. Their church contains a pool of blood, no doubt suggesting menstrual fluid (Concha’s name is Mexican slang for the vagina); its members wear tunics with crossed, severed arms. When authorities arrive to bulldoze the church, there is a clash between the women and the police, and then a shouting match between Concha and the local monsignor, she screaming that the pool contains holy blood, he replying that it is red paint.
The bulldozing reveals the shabby construction of the church, mostly made of corrugated iron and possibly reflecting the film’s limited budget. If Jodorowsky’s funds were limited, however, his imagery and imagination are boundless, and this movie thrums with erotic and diabolical energy. Consider the scene where the circus elephant dies after hemorrhaging from its trunk. In a funeral both sad and funny, the beast’s great coffin is hauled by truck to a ravine and tipped over the edge–to the delight of wretched shanty-dwellers, who rip open the casket and throw bloody elephant meat to the crowd. An image like this is one of the reasons we go to the movies: It is logical, illogical, absurd, pathetic, and sublimely original. For Alejandro Jodorowsky, all in a day’s work.
Now 74 and at work on his first film in 14 years, Jodorowsky is a legendary man of many trades. Born in Chile, living mostly in Mexico and Paris, he works here in English, which has been imperfectly dubbed; oddly enough, the oddness of the dubbing adds to the film’s eerie quality.
Jodorowsky has occupied the edges of the arts. He was a clown and puppeteer, studied under the mime Marcel Marceau, filmed a mime version of Thomas Mann’s play “The Transposed Heads,” was a friend of the surrealist Arrabal, and is, in his own words, a “very famous comic-strip artist,” the author of graphic novels that have become legendary.
He is also the author of the legendary cult film “El Topo” (1970), which was both saved and doomed by John Lennon. Saved, because Lennon admired it so much, he asked his manager, Allen Klein, to buy and distribute it. Doomed, because after the film became a worldwide sensation (Jodorowsky told me in 1989) “Klein made it disappear. He says, ‘I am waiting until you die, and then I am going to have a fortune.’ He thinks he’s immortal. If he dies first, I get the film back.” So far, both men are still alive and “El Topo” is not available on video.
Jodorowsky’s visionary world owes much to the surrealists, but even more to the quirky films that Luis Bunuel made during his Mexican exile, films showing men quietly obsessed with the details of their fetishes. Fenix, his hero, is literally a man whose world is defined by his obsessions. The witness to his mother’s mutilation and his father’s suicide, he is in an insane asylum when the film opens, perched atop a tree trunk. When he returns to the world, it is to play the role of his mother’s arms and hands. He walks behind her, slips his arms through the sleeves of her garments and feeds her, plays the piano, gestures, and even caresses her body as if it is his own. Axel Jodorowsky and Blanca Guerra do this with such perfect timing that the hands seem to sense the next thought of the mother. But Fenix has no identity except as her instrument, which is why “The Invisible Man” appeals so strongly.
The first half of the film is filled with Felliniesque exuberance, celebrating the circus with its tawdry charms and sad clowns. The second half is somber and creepy, as in a scene where Fenix and four young men with Down syndrome are taken on a movie outing that ends (not unhappily) with cocaine and a visit to the red-light district.
Fenix eventually moves with his mother into a house where timbers lean everywhere at crazy angles for no apparent reason, except to evoke expressionism. And here he begins his revolt. As his mother jealously uses his hands to kill one woman after another, he recruits a muscular giantess who will be able, he thinks, to fight off any attack.
This giantess is pretty clearly a man in drag, but the movie makes no notice of that fact, and indeed many oddities pass unremarked, including the omnipresent doves and the ability of the Tattooed Lady, the dwarf and the deaf-mute girl to materialize in Fenix’s life when and how he needs them. All is finally made clear at the end, revealing how fearlessly Jodorowsky has married magic realism to Freud, in a film that is like a shriek against Momism.
Of course the movie is rated NC-17. I believe more horror films should be made for adults, so that they are free to deal with true malevolence in the world, instead of retailing the pornography of violence without consequences. A generation is growing up that equates violence with action, instead of with harm. Not long ago “The Exorcist” was re-released and some young moviegoers laughed all the way through it. A society that laughs at evil eventually laughs at good, and then it loses its way.
The quality that Jodorowsky has above all is passionate sincerity. Apart from his wildly creative style, apart from his images, apart from his story inventions, he has strong moral feelings. He has an instinctive sympathy for Fenix, who was born into a world of fanaticism and cruelty, and has tried, with the help of a deaf girl and a dwarf, to get back the soul that was warped by his father and trapped by his mother. Maybe one difference between great horror films and all the others is that the great ones do not celebrate evil, but challenge it.
After the Crash 