Mr. and Mstrss.
I sometimes use this blog as a little more than just my chance to express what films I love or loathe. Occasionally it serves as a kind of therapy for me. Yes, that does indeed slather me with an air of inflated self importance, and (despite my attempts at clarity) everyone who reads this post will take away a different view of me and my decision to say these things. So be it. What I know above all is that certain people, who may recognise themselves described here, will in all likelihood dislike what I have to say and where I chose to say it…but here it goes:
Infidelity; a very archeic word, and one which (for me) drums up notions of a once more dominant theocratic era where sins of the sexual organs were inked into law and women were termed pure or tainted by men who used them as chattel. The concept of infidelity originates more, I think, from the polygamist sexual enslavement of women than it does from a mutual agreement of faithfulness between two loving partners. That being said, times have somewhat changed. Over the last several hundred years, at least, the synonymy of infidelity has rolled from one side of the bed to the other (and for good reason). Men love to double or triple up, especially us young men, and now the male of the species is more typically associated with promiscuity. It’s not inaccurate, but boy do women cheat too!
Anyway, the reason I’m going on about all this is that I’ve semi-recently became aware of a systematic “fling” that involved someone I know. No details, no gossip. I’ll only declare that the individual I know personally is not the one who two-timed their spouse, they were merely the accomplice (for what that’s worth). Did that make sense? Being vague and accurate at the same time isn’t an easy feat for me.
Regardless; apparently this relationship moved on from an affair to some kind of second stage, although I don’t know what that is, and the offended party has been “let go”. The messy end of an old relationship and the beginning of a new one, right? Nothing more to say about it, right? None of my business…right? Well, no.
Firstly, this affair at times went on in much closer proximity to me for it to be brushed off as “none of my business”, and secondly…
It really bothered me!
See? You can relax “those-of-you-who-shall-remain-nameless-and -just-wish-to-continue-on-with-their-lives”, this piece is about me (as always), and not you.
I tried to figure out why this particular incident so rubbed against my nerve, and this is the best I can come up with:
X number of years ago I had my own personal encounter with infidelity, where I was the “offended party”. I’m not just bringing this up to garner a wave of sympathy. I’m really not…honestly…
It wasn’t a massive thing to an observer; not a particularly long relationship, nor did I lose anything in the process besides a couple tears and a little optimism. To her it meant little, and likely didn’t registered as much more than an awkward overlapping of two relationships. I do not fault her for having a change of heart, I only wish she hadn’t so meticulously and insultingly broken mine.
The thing is…I don’t think I ever got over it. Months and years pass, and over that time you convince yourself that the bitterness has dissolved. For many people it probably would have, but for me it simply ran down the side of the mountain and coalesced elsewhere.
This is one of those places.
I cannot, now or in the future, condone infidelity! This experience punctured my philosophy bubble and poured its contents into every fiber of my being. I simply no longer forgive cheaters.
A cheater may be a perfectly pleasant person and say all the right words, but their actions reveal a rotten core; they fundamentaly care less about their partners than they do about themselves. It it something which brands someone as an unfit spouse, and they are completely unworthy of the love that others generously give them.
To the illicit lover, whom I fully admit bares no direct responsibility to the “cheated upon”, I say only one thing: This person doesn’t care about you! They are abusing you and their position over you! It may feel good to be someone’s escape and momentary passion, but the fact that they are unwilling to let go of the other person and fully commit to you until the coast is completely clear only serves to prove my point. To quote Arthur Miller in the wrong context; “A man is not a piece of fruit”. Weighing two people’s benefits against each other like apples and oranges, enjoying the flesh and discarding the peel, is (shockingly!) not an act of dedication to either companion. It’s nothing more than cowardice and the ultimate example of objectification.
Now, I can foresee a situation where someone in a rocky, or perhaps boring, relationship has a “stupid night”. One moment of passion with a fresh spice that should never have happened and you would happily take it back if you could. One! One is what you get. Maybe with an Obama-esque speech I can be convinced that you accidentally plunged your way into someone else’s genitals twice, but my leniency stops at three. Once you’ve made such a monumental cock out of yourself you can either decide to squash the gossip and return to you’re cherished one like a ninja in the night or you can say goodbye and see where this new boat takes you. You cannot try to have both!
I guarantee that anyone who makes excuses for a cheater has not felt the hurt and embarrassment that one is left with after being scammed by the person they thought cared about them the most!
But hey, enough of me flashing my scars and inconcistently puritan principles. In the face of these events, past and present, I decided to re-watch an old favourite film of mine centred around this topic.
Have I mentioned before how much I’m not usually a Kubrick fan? I’m not joking, I actually can’t remember if I’ve blatantly stated it before and (if so) how often. That goes to show you how long I’ve been away from this keyboard.
Point is, I have never taken very warmly to The Shining, 2001: A Space Osyssey, the second half of Full Metal Jacket, and certainly all of Barry Lyndon. I am, however quite fond of Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, and Eyes Wide Shut.
I first saw Eyes Wide Shut late one night, on television, at age 13, while the rest of my family was asleep (sorry mum!). I snuck downstairs, turned on the little mini-TV in the kitchen, and watched it in near-silence…in the dark. Yeah, see…I’ve been a sexy law-breaking rebel at times in my life as well!
While the film was every bit as tantalising to a pubescent boy as you’d expect (what with the full female nudity and extravagant orgy scenes and all), it was also oddly mesmerising. The film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long…and I watched all of it, even after it was clear that there wasn’t going to be any more pussy on display (again, I’m so so sorry mum!). For those of you who are unfamiliar with the films plot, here you go:
“A New York City doctor, who is married to an art curator, pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him.”
– IMDB
It’s a hard film to describe, so that’s about as good-a-summary as you can get. Indeed, after Cruise’s wife tells him about an older man attempting to seduce her at a recent party, he is called out to run an errand and ends up taking an emotionally intricate journey through the city. He has run-ins with prostitutes, drugged-up girls, and even a scary group of people who…well, I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it. The whole film is a swirl pool of lust, money, humour, terror, and paranoia all circling around the possibility of Cruise being…wait for it…unfaithful to his wife!
Cruise is endlessly presented with wide open legs and lashing finger motions, beckoning to his inner mammal. The real suspense of the film is whether or not Cruise will listen to his conscience or his penis.
No, I’m not going to spoil the ending for you like that, although anyone with a hint of misandry in their system might very well predict this outcome from the beginning. Give the plot a chance, it might just surprise you.
The film has a lot more to say than just “don’t fuck around!”, but if you currently find yourself at some sort of a moral crossroads or crawling in a pit of sexual temptation, then this film is my prescription to you. Despite its raunchy surface, I think at heart it is one of the most monogamy-enforcing movies you could ever watch. That’s not to say that I believe monogamy is entirely natural to our species…but, that’s a can of worms for another day…
– Rant Over!
Carrie on as usual
Long time no read, yeah? Sorry, hi, good to be back. Let’s get right into it…
Around about a year ago I talked about the then upcoming remake of Carrie. At the time we all knew very little about it, and the things we did know were very encouraging; it included an up-and-coming actress with a heretofore impressive résumé, a proven actress with golden credentials, and a character-savy female director with relatable life experiences. To me these three puzzle pieces made for a perfect trifecta of oestrogen that could only help to enrich and liven up this bitchy tale of female-on-female malice.
So, a year has now passed and the movie is no longer upcoming…it has come!
Sorry, I mean Carrie has arrived and is currently playing in cinemas. So how did it turn out?
Well, I have to say…it was disappointingly ordinary. Every plot turn, twist, or even twitch of the original Brian DePalma classic was carbon copied and lazily glossed for a modern audience. Everything, and I mean everything, was the same. The same characters, the same acting (more or less), the same scenes, the same setting, and even many of the same camera angles seemed to be patently cut n’ pasted from the 1976 film. Even the individual deaths were merely reenacted and given some extra “crunch”. I have to to say that as a fan of this project from its announcement to its release…I was disappointed. It isn’t terrible, but it is terribly unnecessary.
But it got me thinking; what would a good, perhaps even great, adaptation of Carrie look like? I shouldn’t just be sitting here and shitting on Kimberly Peirce and Brian DePalma’s attempts. I should be presenting my own suggestions! So, the question is:
Both films have pros and cons. The 1976 version is very artistic and stylish, but dates horribly. The 2013 version has no new original content or aesthetic but looks sleek, crisp, and modern. Where do we start, somewhere in between? No, we start with the actress…
This is clearly something that Brian DePalma understood when he cast the bug-eyed bony Sissy Spacek in the central role. I don’t, as it happens, think that Sissy Spacek is outright ugly. It just doesn’t take much imagination to envision her being bullied at school. Chloe Moretz on the other hand? So long as she looks like a supermodel – no!
I don’t think it would take much to turn her into an outcast, however. She may be gorgeous, but her face still has character. She’s a girl with some exaggerated features and “uneven edges” if you will. With enough courage on the inside and makeup on the outside, she could disfigure her way to the bottom of the barrel and truly become Carrie. You should live and breathe the life of a shunned shy little girl, Chloe! Begin with the skin and work your way in!
I mean, they could at least have given her an unflattering hairstyle of some sort.
Even those don’t do the job. Were it up to me I’d make it some sort of curly-fraggle looking thing. Something patchy, something gross, something she hides behind.
Then, I’d make her pale as a slice of white bread. No tanning bed for you Ms. Moretz! Use makeup to darken the space beneath her eyes as well. Make her look like she hasn’t slept for a year. This girl spends hours a day locked in a closet, how could she resemble anything but a mole? She should be used to burying herself behind glasses, hair, and clothing. Perhaps a modernised Carrie could look something like this:
It’s just an initial idea, but a start none the less. I’m afraid that if you cast someone as pretty as Chloe Grace Moretz, you have to work overtime to make her believably plain. That’s just how it is.
In addition, working her into an ugly duckling makes it all the more delightful for an audience when she cleans up into a beautiful swan – and then is draped over into a vengeful demon…which brings me nicely to my next point…
I think Moretz did a perfectly decent job of “Carrie going apeshit at prom”, but she was given very little to do. It’s not so much her fault as it is the crew’s. I wish the writers and director had taken onboard the last 37 years of horror genre development and actually amplified the film’s one truly bombastic sequence into something that could leave a horror-savy audience impressed. Were it me behind the lens, I’d like to think that I would pull off a three-way combination of the Final Destination franchise, the Evil Dead remake, and The Dark Knight‘s car chase sequence.
Imagine, if you will, a moment of pure outrage where all your high grievances are finally able to be channeled into actual death and destruction. What would you do? How cruel and unusual could you become? Death by earth, wind, and fire isn’t enough anymore, Kimberly! Be creative! Be intense! This film is already R-rated, you may as well earn that label. Up the tension, up the gore, and up the shock value!
I love Julianne Moore and, again, think she did a perfectly fine job as Margaret; Carrie’s wacko religious mother. Yet, it was exactly the performance we all expect from such a character. Margaret is the secondary (although some might say central) villain of the piece. Whilst I found myself concerned for her mental health and wishing I could call the local clinic to report her behaviour, I was never really scared of her.
Since the original Carrie, we’ve seen the rise of the Westboro Baptist Church, and in particular Shirley Phelps-Roper – the real life Margaret White. These people properly scare me! Perhaps it’s because they’re not fictional, but I would have liked to see a bit of that Phelps dedicated craziness inspire Julianne’s performance. Maybe she could have married in a bit of Annie Wilkes‘ unpredictability and Nurse Ratched‘s ridged authority.
Most importantly; Margaret White is a villain, so treat her like one. Her presence in a room should be felt like a sudden drop in temperature. The less she says the better, and the more impactful her words become. Her grip on Carrie should be palpable from the outset. Keep her in the shadows. Make her a watchdog, a disapproving puppeteer hunching in the corner, with more behind the eyes than we dare to dissect. However, when she bursts make it violent and striking. Show us that Carrie is indeed her mothers daughter!
The single greatest sin this remake committed was to have no flavour of its own. It looked like every other film, felt like every other story, and sounded like every other shriek-fest. If someone’s going to remake something as iconic as Carrie, they better bring their own mise-en-scène to the project. Imagine for a moment if Stanley Kubrick had adapted the book.
Picture the ultra wide shots, the long takes, the slow zooms, the eerie stares, and the challenging creepy music. Alright, maybe that wouldn’t have been the best choice for Carrie. What about something more action packed? What about a director with some kinetic energy to his name, some gusto, some…flare?
J. J. Abrams, perhaps?
Hmm, maybe not. Although the Spielberg inspired 80’s vibe he resurrected for Super 8 would fit the original Stephen King setting nicely.
Maybe something more perfected, more fine-tuned and artily crafted. Perhaps if it was helmed by a director with a nostalgic, warm, dreamy tone…
…like David Fincher?
Actually, no, I’m not sure I want Carrie to be all yellow. Nor do I want her to burn my eyeballs out with lens flares or make me squint into the distance in order to see her.
The point I’m trying to make is that Kimberly Pierce had a golden opportunity here to craft Carrie in her own way. To put her own stamp on the material and serve it with reverence. I was so excited to see what she would do with it, and let down when I saw that she did next to nothing. Broad filmmaking of the laziest kind is what we got, not something to be celebrated in my opinion.
The original Stephen King novel, Carrie, has a very different structure from its screen adaptations. It’s told through a collection of first person narrative, third person omniscient narritive, newspaper clippings, police reports, and witness accounts. The tale jumps forward and backward in time, often repeating the same chapters multiple times from different viewpoints. Gradually, the events of “The Black Prom” are pieced together in front of you to form one complete tragic tale. By doing this, King shows the divide between Carrie’s hidden abusive home life and the limited perspective her classmates have of her to be a glaring catalyst in the depressing sequence of acts and accidents that lead to the death of nearly everyone involved, including the titular character. It leaves us with a hopeless and disempowering sense of fate, reinforcing the knowledge in us that we are merely viewers and cannot possibly reach in to save Carrie from her fatal destiny.
So why can the films not follow this example? Both Carrie films have been told in the most typical “A to B” fashion, leaving them as not much more than modern Cinderella stories. Try a new tactic! Maybe tell a story within a story, or have a character narrate, or have Carrie narrate, or follow an investigation in the aftermath. I’m not saying you have to go all “found footage” with it or replace giant chunks of the plot, but a little structural reinvention would be nice.
Personally, I would like to see the story reiterated like a haunting legend. After all, this is the supernatural equivalent of a school shooting. Why not treat it like a real historical event?
Well, that’s about all I can be bothered to suggest. I’m hoping to see another take on Carrie in my lifetime, hopefully helmed by someone with something new to say.
– Rant Over!
Crapathon
I want everyone to know that I really do love movies! I wouldn’t write a uselessly unprofitable and opinionated gray blog about them if I didn’t. I hope every film I see will leave me speechless by the end. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the wrong kind of speechless. Strangely, almost every new film I’ve seen in the last couple weeks has been shockingly terrible. I’m not talking about tiny quibbles here, I’m talking amateur effort and an outrageously failed craft. In addition, someone I know mentioned to me that Cinema-Rant almost always praises movies instead of ripping on them. I guess that’s fair criticism, I have given a lot of “Great” final scores and glowing recommendations in a row. So without further ado, it’s time to introduce you to my recent… 
Unlike other movie marathons, this one is entirely coincidental. Every one of these films is one that I, and others with me, just happened to sequentially watch and subsequently loathe. There is no theme, genre, cast, crew, or franchise to connect them. The only thing they have in common is how despicably disappointing they were. 
Ah, the Millennium trilogy! Universally loved? Well, not as long as I’m around. I liked the first film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (or Men Who Hate Women, which is the original Swedish title), and was certainly interested in seeing the remaining two episodes. The Girl Who Played With Fire has a great main character, a first-rate poster, and all the great setup of the original. So then why is it so terrible?
I’m sorry Noomi Rapace, you were good in it but even you couldn’t save this shitquel (that’s a term I am now patenting, “shitquel”).
I’m sure these books work well as what they originally were…books! As films, however, the sequels leave much to be desired. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo left us with a ‘will-they won’t-they’ question mark after treating us to a tense and complex character-driven whodunnit. This film is just a whole bunch of nothing. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist almost never meet throughout all of it. The acting, outside of the main stars, is horrendous. An uninteresting, un-involving, badly acted, terribly shot, rottenly directed waste of time…and I bothered to watch it on BluRay.
So to help ease the pain of that horrible experience, I and my fellow film watchers popped in the next high definition hopeful.
The quotes on the cover of Warrior compared it to Rocky. “That’s unfair” you’re saying, “Rocky is a classic”. Yes, but they say Warrior is just as good. According to some reviewers it’s “Superb…raw and relentless…mesmerising”. Well, that was their reaction to it. Mine…?
Honestly, it was almost vomit-worthy. This film wants to be deep, real, and gritty, but it fails on all counts. The setup is about as staged as any film I’ve ever seen.
“Two brothers from a broken home both compete in a cage fighting tournament.”
BORING! It’s clear from the beginning that they’re going to fight each other in the final round. Ergo, you already know the outcome of every fight leading up to that. The whole time watching it I was hoping for the plot to twist into some bizarre and interesting place, but alas it remained on course to Predictaville. Sure, the actors did an admirable job of bringing these paper-flat characters to life and making the dialogue believable, but a turgid script that clearly thinks it’s a masterpiece makes for one hell of a failure on screen. It would be less hurtful to engage in the tournament myself than watch this piss again.
At this point I was over home-media. So much to be gutted about, false praise and broken promises. It was time for me to go out and see something big, bright, and epic. I needed something that would deliver what it promised, but was also part of something with a decent track record. I needed an interesting episode of a proven franchise with credible names at the helm. I chose to go see…
I’m speaking to you as a fan of Superman Returns from 2006, so now you know where I’m coming from. I thought Brian Singer’s Superman sequel was a beautiful addition to the series. I didn’t really see a need to go all Batman Begins with it, but I guess that’s what we do with everything nowadays. Christopher Nolan producing it was a good sign, and I’m not someone who completely hates the director; Zack Snyder. Fine, if we have to explore Superman’s origins yet again, we will. Roll it!
Alright, we’re a minute in and I’m already worried. The dialogue is like something out of Thor, but terrible. The style is begging to be taken seriously but flunking right out of the gate. All I want at this point is to leave Krypton and get to earth ASAP!
Oh no, Michael Shannon…what are you doing? What’s with all the emoting? This is so not the role for you. You’re not scary, you’re silly! Please no more, no more! Oh, yes…thank goodness, we’re on earth.
Oh jesus, it’s worse! Superman’s backstory is no different than anything we’ve seen before, but the filmmakers are acting like it should all be a surprise to me. Oh crap, it’s told in the worst kind of flashback form. Oh hell, the effects are awful. Almost none of the actors are committed. The story is ridiculous. The plot is so stupidly convenient. Terrible extras! Corny lines! Useless additional characters I don’t care about! Shaky, blurry green screen effects that give me a headache! Soap opera blocking…
Thank heavens it’s over! That was by far the biggest let down of them all. It turns out that making Superman into a Dark Knight-esque noir story simply doesn’t work. The fact is, Superman is inherently silly. It’s not that you can’t explore his backstory or internal struggles at all…but there’s a wrong and a right way to do it. Man of Steel, for starters, is nothing but exposition. We are shown Superman’s backstory in typical modern-cinema gritty flashback fashion, and then…it’s explained to us by the characters. What? No thanks, I’ve already seen it. In fact it’s worse than that, I already know who Superman is and where he came from. It’s one of the most famous comic book histories, so why do I have to listen to an hour of Russell Crowe telling me about it?
In fact if you miss Man of Steel at your local cinema, you can easily pick up the CD, it’s all in there.
Not only is the dialogue cheesy, flat, and useless, but the plot is ultimately offensive. Thousands of people die! No, scratch that, millions of people die! You know that little thing that happened at the beginning of the millennium, what date was it exactly? Oh yeah, September 11th 2001! Well, I present you with June 10th, 2013; the day Superman had a quarrel with General Zod and slayed a quarter of the worlds population. Superman is supposed to save people, not let a genocide happen while he’s beating up an alien and then say “could’ve been worse”. Then at the end they have the audacity to let Laurence Fishburne deliver the line “he saved us!”. Did he not read the whole script? Did Zack Snyder simply lie to this man on set? Entire cities are levelled, planes crashed, and satellites thrown out of orbit. I sure hope Superman can turn back time like in the first movie.
There is no romantic buildup between Louis Lane and Superman, so when the inevitable kiss happens (don’t you dare try to tell me that was a spoiler) it came off almost as forced as sexual assault. Then there is a “cute and romantic exchange” which is so badly written and unbelievably awkwardly delivered that it made me push my eyeballs slightly into my skull, even if just to remind me that something more painful could happen to them.
Finally, we’re left with the only satisfactory shot of the movie. I won’t give it entirely away, but it’s the clothesline shot you’ve seen it in the trailer. It is a nice little flashback moment that works on account of its simplicity. I really liked it, and if I could cut this movie down from two and a half hours to fifteen seconds, those are the fifteen seconds I would choose. It’s just a shame that I had to sit through so much self-important blockbuster nonsense to get to it.
There is an attempt here to create an identifiable flawed hero character out of something that has previously been played for laughs and corny romance. I will give it a few points for that. Yet, I find its clear desire to cash in from the now-standard Christopher Nolan style to be cynical and cheap. Cheap, if you ask me, is not an aesthetic you want to associate with a 225 million dollar expenditure.
– Rant Over!
Return of the written dead
Hello world! It would seem that Cinema-Rant has risen from the grave after weeks with no internet connection. It’s taken a hard toll on me, can you tell?
What have I done in the mean time? Well, I could bore you with all the responsible day to day activities that I’ve definitely done because I’m such an independent adult…or I could tell you about the money and time I’ve pissed away in the cinema. What a Sophie’s Choice!
Of course we’re gonna stick to the movies, and zombie movies at that, because we just had the world wide release of World War Z!
That’s right, the zombie pandemic has hit globally once again. Keep an eye out for this genre, I think it’s gonna be big one day.
For the first time, however, we have Brad Pitt in the center of it all. Has Brad Pitt ever been in a zombie movie before? My savant-like knowledge of film trivia (in other words a scroll down the pages of IMBD) tells me that…no, he hasn’t. That is, unless you stretch the criteria and count Meet Joe Black or Interview with the Vampire. Beyond that, the pouty blonde has never before faced down swarms of the undead like he does in this film.
There are those who like zombie films, and those who love zombie films. I love zombie films, and as such I have very high standards. I’ve seen all the classics and many of the obscure titles. My favourite is Zack Snyders 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake and my least favourite is George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. Both Romero’s epic original trilogy and the modern reinventions like 28 Days Later offer thrills and chills that heat my blood into a frenzy. I won’t have any slamming statements against the genre as a whole, it’s an entertaining and intelligent reflection on the internal destructive forces of human society. But this film…
…is also a great addition to the zombie lore! (Mwaha! Didn’t see that coming, did you?) Nothing I saw or heard about this movie impressed me beforehand. It looked cheesy, overdone, clichéd, and generally plotless. I won’t tell you to bother watching the trailer, because it’s horrible. Go into this movie completely cold and you’ll have a whale of a time…like I did:
Perhaps that’s overstating it a little, but this movie has a lot of great moments! In fact, the word ‘movie’ is a misnomer here. What you’re given is a continuously escalating series of nail biting “last minute escape” sequences.
There is no real plot to speak of, just a series of struggling locations around the world which Brad Pitt has to visit on his search for “patient zero”; the origin of the zombie virus. Each time Pitt lands in a new country, he’s welcomed by a successfully isolated group of survivors. As zombie lore dictates, however, one bite is all it takes to start the domino effect. With a human-to-zombie turnaround rate of mere seconds, one infection instantly becomes a hundred. If I had to discern a theme from this steroid-fuelled undead free for all…it would have to be “panic”.
The writers attempted to create a central drama by introducing Pitt with his perfect nuclear family, but does anyone care? No! In fact the filmmakers seemed to give up early on anyway. I never felt a great urge to explore his, or anyone else’s, backstory. All I knew was that when a zombie broke into the crowd I sat up and repeated “get out now, get out now, get out now, go, go, go, get out!” followed by a relieving “Jesus, that was close!”. World War Z gives you the same feeling as playing British bulldog with lethal consequences. Bombastic tension and frenzy of the purest kind! Expect little and receive a lot.
– Zombie rant over!
Cinema Rant 