Silent House, John Carter
[of Mars], A Marine Story, and The Parking Lot Movie
We’ll get to the movie reviews in a moment (two genre
flicks, two flicks dealing with contemporary issues; three “thumbs up,” one
“thumbs down”), but let’s talk about music for a moment.
Due to my recent unemployment, I’ve had some time on my hands, and one thing I did was rearrange a bunch of Mp3s into a nice little playlist.
At first, my playlist was roughly 100
songs/tunes/soundbytes, but it just didn’t feel like enough.
So I went back and scrounged up some more tunage, for
a total of 171 songs, about eight or nine hours of music.
What struck me was that—and here I go, sounding like
an old man—when I was a kid, I could go a whole summer with just one or two mix
tapes, about two-plus hours of music, maybe three if the tapes were the
45-minutes per side kind. (Tapes, right? Like, what’s that?)
Nowadays, 100 songs—approximately 300 minutes, or five hours—just aren’t enough!
Just a result of life in our fast-paced, high-tech
world, and all the information overload that comes with it—along with a
mutation in our attention patterns, too, I suppose.
Which is why I’m always happy to get out of town, and “unplug”
and check out nature. Hey, the leaves are changing color!
Some Films Seen Recently…
Silent House (2011; Chris Kentis and Laura Lau) is a
cruel story hodge-podged from several sources (Gaslight meets Fight Club
meets Hard Candy) that uses child
abuse as the excuse for its quasi-supernatural hijinks.
Stylewise, the “one-take” camerawork is masterful, but
soon becomes mean as well, since it never leaves the main character’s side, and
feels as oppressive and intrusive as her environment and unseen assailants.
This is a relentless film, squarely in the “feel bad”
tradition of Savage Cinema, but one that “gimmicks” the topic of child sexual
abuse for cheap thrills.
Wholesale slaughter is fine with me, but I just can’t
truck with using a genuine psychic pain as the launching point for a genre
B-movie.
If this film had only been, say, 15 or 20 minutes in
length, then that concept overall might not have been as morally reprehensible
as it was.
But stretched out to 90 minutes, Silent House crosses from frightening and eerie to sadistic and
vicious—and repetitive: nasty things just keep happening over and over to this
poor girl—solely for our entertainment.
Had the flick treated the sexual abuse of children
(your own kids, especially) in a metaphorical fashion, Silent House wouldn’t be
as unsavory and repellant.
John Carter [of Mars] (2012; Andrew Stanton) is the
perfect movie to pop in the DVD player on those days when you find yourself
saying, “Gee-whiz, I sure could go for an old-school action fantasy, the type
that George Pal, Walt Disney or Michael Powell used to make in the 1950s!”
While often suffering from Peter Jackson-itis (just
keep the camera motionless sometimes, okay? It doesn’t need to be constantly
swooping, sweeping and flying over what we’re looking at—especially in
establishing shots!), and an uninteresting and forgettable human cast (with the
exception of Lynn Collins as Princess Dejah Thoris: Va-va-voom!), the flick is
very entertaining and rich in details, and a hoot to watch while hung-over.
My favorite character was the cutely grotesque Martian
“dog,” Woola, the best pet/friend a human could ever have.
Personally, I think John Carter was unjustly savaged
upon its initial release.
Fun and cornball (the film is a throwback to an
earlier, much less cynical or “experienced” era; more John Ford than David
Fincher or Michael Bay), the script actually manages to streamline Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ source novel (which was serialized on its first publication, and
means lots of repetition and cliffhangers) and rearrange it effectively.
But why did they even bother to film humans when so
much of the film winds up being either animation of CGI effects? In fact, why
wasn’t John Carter made as an
animated film?
BTW, the film’s end credits list the movie just
watched as “John Carter of Mars,” so that’s the title I’m using. Where
Hollywood got the idea that there’s a “curse” around using “Mars” in a film’s
title is beyond me, but no one ever said there was intelligent life on that
planet.
The Parking Lot Movie (2010; Meghan Eckman) is a
must-see for anyone who has thoughtfully pondered about mankind’s greed and
stupidity—as well as other aspects of the human condition: It’s amazing how
automobiles are such reflections of their owners, especially the more venal and
obdurate.
This is presented via interviews with the philosophers
and anthropologists who earn their rent money working at the parking lot across
the street from the University of Virginia.
This compassionate and literate documentary, with an unobtrusive
visual style is wonderful brain food. Highly recommended.
A Marine Story (2010; Ned Farr) is a familiar tale,
but told in a refreshing and contemporary manner. A combat vet returns home
(but gets no parade), bearing many unseen scars. Corralled into aiding an “at
risk” youth, Major Alexandra Everett tries to get her life in order, all the
while facing prejudice against her sex, sexuality and career. It’s a damn shame
that these brave volunteer warriors have to come home to—and live in—an
atmosphere of paranoia and accusation.
Moving, if very melodramatic, stylistically and
structurally, the film feels like a TV movie, but because the film deals with
homosexuality and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and has an impressive performance by
the athletic and (in my opinion) very sexy Dreya Weber, it overcomes those
faults. An inspiring story, I could see A
Marine Story getting a strong cult following.
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