Snowpiercer (2014): The Faults in the System

Snowpiercer (2014)
dir: Bong Joon-Ho

The capitalist system has faults. It's a fact. Every pure ideological system has faults in it, especially when you take the human factor into account. The human urge for tribalism, as well as the human urge for natural selection both factor heavily into the capitalist system's faults.

As such, Snowpiercer isn't just an allegory for capitalism, so much as it is an allegory for every caste system that has ever been set up.

The set-up for Snowpiercer comes from modern times. There is an extremely long train that was built to continuously moves around a series of interconnected railways on an annual circuit around the Eurasian hemisphere. After it was built, the corporations decided to try to combat climate change by launching a chemical into the atmosphere, sending the Earth into an Ice Age, where the only thing that seems to have survived is this train.

The train is set up as a caste system. The rear of the train are the poor people, who have to eat protein bars that look like black Jell-O bricks. They live in squalor and tight quarters with bunk beds and poor lighting. The front of the train are the rich people, who are, according to the poor people, getting to eat steaks and live like kings. At the very front is the engine, where the leader rules the whole train from front to back.

The train runs on a perpetual motion engine, and so there is little to do but sit and wait. The poor people have sex and children, and wait around until the guards come in to give them their food. Now and then, the guards will take two children up front, and periodically scour the back for people to work with the front people. One such resident is a violinist, who is forcibly separated from his wife to live life in the front to play violin for the rich people. Two children are forcibly taken from their parents at the beginning of the film, for reasons not explained to anybody. When the poor start to revolt, the guards take one of the passengers and freezes his arm by setting it outside the window and then shattering it off.

Even though the poor don't work, and didn't pay to be on the train, the conditions are so insufferable that a revolt would always be bound to happen. Spurred on by Gilliam (John Hurt), Curtis (Chris Evans) and his side kick Edgar (Jamie Bell) lead a revolt to take over the engine, going through the various trains that get increasingly classier and more decadent as they get closer to the engine. Along the way, they fight guards and big bosses on several occasions, much like a video game.

Which brings us to the first problem of Snowpiercer. The fighting sequences are not that good. I know I've been a bit spoiled by The Raid, but the fighting sequences start out afflicted with shaky cam, and with an inability to discern who was fighting who, or where anybody was. Joon-Ho, who previously directed the suspenseful The Host, has very little grasp on how to direct a fighting sequence when there are too many people involved in the fight. The camera is all over the place, the editing is strange, and the people are indiscernible. Plus, the timing of the scenes are off. As the movie goes on, and there are fewer and fewer people to deal with, Joon-Ho's direction gets slightly better, but the initial rebellion, the axe sequence, and even a little bit of the classroom sequence are all fraught with problems that seem to dissipate by the sauna sequence.

The set-up for Snowpiercer isn't subtle in its intentions. Anybody paying attention to politics anywhere should be able to parse out Joon-Ho's political statements with a flinch of the eye. But, Snowpiercer is far more nuanced than one might give it credit for. It asks questions about food supply in closed systems. It asks questions about overpopulation, and slave labor. It asks questions about political indoctrination and obedience. Most of all, it asks questions about idealism and intent.

To say that Snowpiercer is a gung-ho radical "take over the system" movie is to deny it the whole final act it has been working towards. In the final act of Snowpiercer, Boon-Ho decimates all the ideology that he has been building up for the first 100 minutes of the film. For 100 minutes, Boon-Ho gives the microphone to the Occupy movement, essentially. The poor. The ones who have been oppressed. But, in the last 20, he gives it to the leader. The 1%. The owner of the train. The builder. And the controller of the engine. And in the final 3, he ends with the most radical note in an already very radical movie.

There are flaws in Snowpiercer. A lot of them, in fact. The fighting is the most major one, in my opinion. The score swings between not bad to HAAAAAANS ZIMMMMMER boring. The elements in the allegory don't always hold up to real world equivalents, or do so in much more minute/subtler ways. A simultaneous flaw and also benefit is that Snowpiercer doesn't answer all the questions it raises. The emotional climax is played too earnestly. And, there are a lot of weird techniques that seem to draw attention to themselves for illogical reasons.

Much like the ice formations that build on the tracks, the flaws in Snowpiercer present merely elements that jar the movie, but never completely derail it. The pacing and visuals of Snowpiercer outside the fight sequences are spectacular, the tension is top notch, and the acting is completely aces. Tilda Swinton practically steals the show with her imitation of Margaret Thatcher, and Evans is perfectly capable of most of the scenes in Snowpiercer, with one major exception towards the end.

Snowpiercer gives both action movie thrills, and intelligent fodder to chew on for days. Modern caste systems, constant rebellion, the justification on either side, and how it could be applicable or not to modern society are all topics that aren't left with answers, and the most dangerous answer is still in the movie, which ends with a note of hope and promise. The allegorical fodder makes Snowpiercer a Required Viewing, even though it has some deep flaws throughout the film.

The Midnight After (2013): The Best Philip K Dick Adaptation that Wasn't

The Midnight After (2013)
(aka Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo)
dir: Fruit Chan

SIFF 2014: Film 2

This is the second film I’ve seen that came from a web story/novel, the first being the rather insane John Dies at the End, which was a novel originally published as a web serial. The Midnight After is based on a web novel by Mr. Pizza on the internet forum HKGolden. And, yes, it’s as insane and episodic as John Dies at the End.

The Midnight After is a Hong Kong take on Philip K Dick’s book Ubik, with a lot of changes. A group of 17 people on a minibus go through a tunnel late at night and end up in a world totally devoid of humans except themselves. As they realize something might be amiss, suddenly they start dying strange deaths. A lot of spoilery things happen, including a spectacular musical number set to a famous David Bowie song. But, I don’t want to give away much more than that.

Half of the fun of The Midnight After is trying to figure everything out.  But, ironically, if you find it fun, you’ll also find the final scenes incredibly frustrating. The other half of the fun is the batshit insanity that is in The Midnight After. The characters include a spiritual psychic who sells insurance, a constantly bickering married couple, a couple of young punks named Airplane and Crazy Glue, and a druggie who is constantly on cocaine. They ping off each other, come back together, and gather to meet.

I found The Midnight After to be a helluva ride. I wanted more. The ending leaves you wanting more, in fact. It’s drama and science fiction and comedy and horror and musical and everything you could ever want in a movie all thrown in for a single experience. At 120 minutes, it almost runs a little long, and to be fair the movie could have a couple of minor edits where about 5 minutes might be removable. But, to niggle on 5 minutes when the rest of the movie is just a powerhouse rocket where the pacing ebbs and flows with a psychotic mastery seems petty at best.

The Midnight After doesn’t say anything deeper about life other than “Life can move pretty fast sometimes, and if you don’t appreciate it, you might miss it” and “Be good to each other.” But, that doesn’t matter because the film is all about the experience. It’s a blast, it’s fun, it’s something rather interesting, and gives you some stuff to chew on as you’re watching, so you won’t be bored. Puzzled, sure…but who doesn’t like a good puzzle?

+1 (2013): The Insanity of Unchecked Sci-Fi

+1 (2013)
dir: Dennis Iliadis

The phenomenon of Deja Vu is always fascinating. But, what if you actually have been there before? And, what if you got a second chance to fix the things you have wanted to fix? +1, the horrifically titled new movie from IFC Midnight, asks us some of these questions, but doesn't really care about the answers.

The concept of +1 is an original one. As an alien meteor crosses overhead, it disrupts the circuits of the Earth causing phase shifts in the fourth dimension. Whenever there's an electrical outage, suddenly there appears another copy of you in the place you were at a set distance in time. At one point, it's about 30-45 minutes in the past. And, with each turn, the phase shift gets shorter and shorter.

All of this is set at a rich kid's rave party at the start of summer vacation. David has just screwed up his relationship with Melanie because he misidentified another girl with the same fencing braid and Melanie found him kissing her. David, Teddy, and Allison all go to the rave thrown by their mutual friend, as does Melanie and a new boy toy. After Teddy hooks up with a girl, and David screws up his chances with Melanie, the first phase shift occurs putting a copy of everybody 30 minutes in the past.

Which leads to questions. What do you do when you find a copy of yourself? Can you fix the past? Can you get the girl back? What do these copies want? What the hell is this movie about?

+1 never really answers any of these questions with any amount of satisfaction. In fact, +1 is really intent on playing with your expectations for a solid explanation and any sense of moral justice. Instead of presenting a story with strong moral grounds and a cohesive conclusion, Iladis merely is presenting us a night where the answers aren't given, morals aren't learned, and nobody is any better or worse by the end of the night. Well, unless they're dead.

+1 has a sort of nihilistic take no prisoners attitude that is so refreshing and maddening in equal measures. Isn't a movie better when nobody changes? Is it more realistic, even though it is a movie about phase shifting? +1 highlights humanities worst tendencies when confronted with fear and an other. And, it goes batshit crazy as well.

I do mean batshit crazy. And, no I'm not spoiling it. But, to say that +1 flies off the rails early and often is understatement. As Joe Bob Briggs would have said, "Anything can happen at any time."

What makes +1 worth watching is that Iliadis handles the crazy with a master's hand at pacing. Once the movie hits the party, the movie knows exactly what the pacing should be for the specific hits to let the audience process, even if it is processing nothing but air. The pacing builds and builds until a rip roaring climax that is amazing.

Iliadis is heavily assisted by Mihai Malaimare Jr, a cinematographer who started as a Francis Ford Coppola protege who worked on each of Coppola's previous three films and most recently was the 70mm director of photography for P.T. Anderson's The Master. If you've seen The Master, you know how gorgeous Malaimare's work is, but here the camera is alive and electric.

Malaimare doesn't let the image go less than full bore saturation for one second. The screen is almost oversaturated in a way that makes you feel like you've taken a tab of LSD or Ecstasy. Everything is bright, electric and lush, all hitting your eyeballs in ways that you've not experienced before, appropriate for a rave party movie. Iliadis opens the movie with a camera pan over lush red roses, and they're redder than red. But, while it is oversaturated, it's never garish as Showgirls tended to be. This is a full spectrum movie which will blow your mind.

While +1 is a rather empty headed calling card of a sci-fi film, the actual craziness within combine with amazing pacing and visuals to create a toxic heady concoction that is far better than it deserves to be. It's imminently rewatchable because of the human story. The acting is good enough, though rarely anything to write home about. +1 an imminently weird and brilliant film that feels as filling as the techno song you were just dancing to for 8 minutes while high at that rave that one time, that sort of goes doof doof.

Dead End Drive-In (1986): The Punk Trap

Dead End Drive-In (1986)
dir: Brian Trenchard-Smith

In 1986, Australia was in the beginnings of an economic reform that included many libertarian ideals, but were bolstered by the trade unions of the country. The 1980s had a bit of a depression, that resulted in a lot of economic deregulation and union-aided wage restraints to help reduce inflation. At the time, the wage restraints were supposed to be for the whole country. Anybody who has looked at American economics can start laughing because that holds true universally.

Watching Dead End Drive-In post-2009 and post-America's depression, one begins to realize that Dead End Drive-In wasn't just a silly movie of post-apocalyptic proportions, it was a satire of society based in libertarian ideology. The opening credits crawl says that American Wall Street crashes, sending the world into a global economic tailspin, resulting in a commodity meltdown.

The society that results includes food scarcity as well as employment scarcity. There are jobs as ambulance drivers, and the morgue. Also, the government authority jobs. But, the main job that Dead End Drive-In shows is car salvager, which finds cars in a wreck to tow to somewhere for parts to sell. Because car parts are a hot commodity in post-apocalyptia. The salvager has to fight off carboys, who always arrive on the spot to strip the car before it gets towed, and the cops don't care about them for some reason. They're apparently enough part of the economy that they're allowed to exist.

In this society, our hapless hero, Crabs, an unemployed brother of a car salvager, borrows his brother's car and goes, with his girlfriend, to the drive in, buying a ticket priced at being unemployed. But, it's all a set-up as the police steal his wheels, and the drive in is a concentration camp of sorts for the unemployed wasted youth of society. The punks, stoners, and foreigners who can't get a job. Most of them also don't want to work, and treat the time like it's a Burning Man style vacation. The government feeds them but otherwise keeps them rounded up to attempt to reduce crime outside the walls. Which is weird because the cops outside the walls don't care too much about rounding up the carboys.

Crabs realizes that this is all a set up, and wants out. But, the manager of the drive in gets money/drugs for number of rejects that he keeps in the drive in. The fence is electrocuted, and the only road out is a security road which one can't walk on. The gangs end up becoming racist and turning on the Arabs and Asians that are let in, and start holding white power meetings of idiocy. But, Crabs is determined to escape, and the whole thing is set up as a Coming of Age story.

Dead End Drive-In occasionally makes some poignant points throughout the film. The gang leader that Crabs frequently runs into criticizes Crabs' desire to return to the completely corrupt society outside. He laments that he was unemployed for four years, and was down to one meal a day. At least in the camp, they feed him. There is also a bit of interesting commentary on privatized prisons and how they tend to desire criminalizing people in order to make a profit.

The whole thing is otherwise based in libertarian stereotypes. Criminals and social rejects are unemployed and worthless because they can be, due to sucking off the government's teat. The government is overblown because they want to have as many people imprisoned as they can in order to save their crime resources. It's cheaper to trap and feed the people junk food and shitty movies than it is to enforce laws in a destitute society.

The consistency of the politics and basis in real life theory makes Dead End Drive-In far more compelling and entertaining than it should be. It also helps that Ned Manning (Crabs) looks like an Australian cross between DJ Qualls and David Duchovny, and actually has some onscreen charisma. At times, the movie delves into Z-movie cheesiness and low-budget considerations, but otherwise Trenchard worked hard to stretch his budget. My favorite compromise is an early scene where Crabs and his brother are driving to a wreck, and the city background is a bunch of black cardboard buildings with oversized lit window squares. It's so simple but completely effective and doesn't look totally cheap and chintz given the way it was filmed.

Overall, Dead End Drive-In is far better than you expect, and one of the underrated gems of Ozploitation. It's not the most gorgeous piece of work ever made, given that it is sort of a slacker edition of Escape From New York combined with The Road Warrior stylings. But, it's political presence and prescience plus a charismatic actor makes Dead End Drive-In a successful little gem of a film.

Mr Nobody (2009): When Amalgamation is a Joke

Mr. Nobody (2009)
dir: Jaco Van Dormael

Wading through the esoteric science fiction of the late 90s and 00s, one picks up a thread of emotional and personal narratives that connect the tissues. One of the primary narratives that has happened is that of choice and effect, and the possibility of multiple worlds existing at the same time. This is an outgrowth of one segment of string theory that was posited in the 60s and still hangs on today, if only for some cool ass shit.

Another narrative that runs through a lot of sci-fi is the idea of memory and whether or not your brain pattern is what makes you you. Are we just bags of meat that is powered by this grey matter in our heads? Are we something more? Could this be replicated?

A final narrative questions whether life is just a function of the brain, and whether or not this could be replicated in various fashions without the body. Could one keep the brain activated, and the person it is supposed to be attached to would still be living even though the body would be inanimate? Could the brain have different stimuli attached to it?

All of these come to a head in Mr. Nobody, a movie which takes its cues from a ton of random science fiction sources of the late 90s and 00s. The most easily notable ones are 1998's Sliding Doors, 1998's Run Lola Run, 2001's Waking Life, 2001's Amelie, and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There are also influences from 1890's story An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, which influenced both the final story in Hermann Hesse's 1931 novel The Glass Bead Game and 1997's The Devil's Advocate. Plus, there are influences from 2004's novel Cloud Atlas, which would become a movie in 2012. There's also scenes which feel like Alien meets 2001 meets Blade Runner. One section feels like a stylistic antecedent of 2004's Garden State. There's also Back to the Future II in there.

That's a HELL of a lot of different influences, and it would have to be a crazy movie to include all of them. And, it is.

The titular Mr. Nobody is celebrating his 118th birthday as the last living mortal in 2093. The secret of immortality has been discovered, and Mr. Nobody is now a hit news item, though nobody can identify him nor figure out where he came from...and neither can he. Through hypnosis and regression, he tells the story of his folks meeting, and his creation. But, that's about the only thing that comes out normal.

When he was 9, his parents divorced, with his mother moving from their quaint European small town to a big city to be with her new boyfriend. He is given the option of going with his mother or staying with his father. And, the movie begins breaking off into its different realities.

With his mother, he has a litany of options such as a love affair with his step sister that breaks off when their parents divorce, and he has to find her. With his father, there are three girls he could end up with, and each of those girls have different choices at different times with different consequences.

All of these options are given completely different feelings and emotions, giving the movie a feeling of chaos and jarring emotional juxtapositions. Not unlike the movie of Cloud Atlas, where 6 different stories of 6 different eras wrap around each other for three hours, Mr. Nobody allows its 4 different important time periods (9 years old, 15 years old, 34 years old, and 118 years old) to wrap around each other, and has Jared Leto pop in and out of the different time periods and different realities within the different time periods. If you can't keep up, that's the effect that Van Dormael was going for.

The finale of Mr. Nobody wraps up with a gotcha series of events that makes the whole movie seem like it was intended as a prank on the viewer. Mr. Nobody ends with the 118-year-old man laughing out loud, either in joy or in prankish mischief, but it almost seems targeted at the audience given the content of the epilogue.

The problem with reviewing this movie is that it might actually be good, if you haven't seen any of the films or read any of the other source material. Almost everything in the movie feels lifted from another movie, which sometimes felt like amalgamations themselves. The style of childhood totally feels like that refreshingly clean and comic feeling from Amelie. There are times it feels like a neo-realist film, or a Bertolucci film (like The Dreamers), or a Bret Easton Ellis novel (like Less Than Zero). Whether that's consciously or unconsciously, the whole movie feels like somebody just hit random on a multi-disc DVD carousel.

The second biggest problem is the movie's sheer vacuousness, which extends to Jared Leto. Because the movie is supposed to be about a no man and an everyman, Leto doesn't change much emotionally from scene to scene. Given his various life choices, one would suspect that his personality would develop more than his wardrobe.

But, it's a gorgeous piece of filmmaking whose various cribbed styles are executed beautifully, even if it is a bit ridiculous at times. Christophe Beaucarne's camerawork truly emphasizes the great detail that went into the set design and visual effects. If nothing else, the movie is a wide variety of eye candy. But, it's all candy I've seen before, and it's starting to feel like reheated leftovers.

Maybe in another 10 or 20 years, when all of the movie start to form into a single cohesive statement with the passage of time, Mr. Nobody will start to look less derivative and more as a singular outstanding piece of work (with the exception of some truly unfortunate old man make up and Leto's performance of an old man is right on par with Tom Hanks' performances in Cloud Atlas for laughability). But right now, with the audience this attracts who have seen a majority of the movies mentioned above, this movie comes off as a work of a really talented rip-off artist.

Upside Down (2012): When good ideas go nowhere

Upside Down (2012)
dir: Juan Diego Solanas

Upside Down is the most innovative, dazzling, crazy, daring movie that is just so vapid, vacant and facile. This is a recipe for disaster of epic proportions.

I don't pull the Showgirls comparison often, but I think that Upside Down suffers from many of the same problems that Showgirls suffers from, and is actually almost as terrible because of it.

Juan Diego Solanas, the writer and director of Upside Down, had a lot of intelligent ideas that he wanted to cram into one epic easy-to-swallow allegory. He created a world of two planets in perpetual synchronization, about 60 stories from each other, or less. The planets each have their own gravity. One planet has developed into a richer, high-income, planet generally referred to as "Up There." The other planet has developed into a slum that is exploited by the businesses from "Up Above." The poor planet is generally called "Down Below."

This is all fine and dandy, being a full on easy allegory making a metaphor for right and wrong side of the tracks. Then, Solanas wanted to further the allegory about the immobility of people among socio-economic statuses. The poor can't become rich, and the rich can't become poor. The metaphor he uses comes in the form of the three rules of the dual planet. This is where it starts getting silly:

1. All matter and people are pulled from their planet of origin. So, a person born Up Above is beholden to the gravity of Up Above, even as they dally in the world of Down Below.
2. An object's weight can be offset by using matter of the opposite origin (inverse matter)
3. After a few hours of contact, matter in contact with inverse matter (and vice versa) burns.

The movie destroyed the laws of physics in order for Juan Diego Solanas to create an comically allegorical world. He wanted to create a world in which the rich do not communicate with the poor except as exploiter/exploited, or management/worker. In the process he also created a system of rules which lead to stunning visuals, such as the "0" floor of the Transworld tower, which bridges the two planets, which has desks on both the floor and the ceiling for their respective employees.

We're still in the world of Gulliver's Travels style allegory. Rules are actually thinly veiled pointed metaphors for socio-political realities. If we had stayed here, it may have been more sensible. But, Solanas wasn't satisfied yet. 

The story of Upside Down is two young romantic leads from either world trysting on two mountains where the worlds are only about 30 ft away. Adam is the poor boy from Down Below, and Eden is the rich girl from Up Above. But, due to the rules, the government and Transworld (the universe's corporation) won't let the two societies fraternize. Eden is injured during a raid, and Adam's aunt's house is burned down with his Aunt Becky killed in the raid for Adam's discretions.

Aunt Becky had been teaching Adam about a special powder/honey that is created by bees in the field near this mountain. This powder is developed by bees that don't really belong to either world, and use material from both worlds. So, the pink powder also belongs to both worlds, and can be used to create illegal tasty floating pancakes.

Yeah, you read that right. A plot point is actually floating pancakes.

As adults, Eden becomes a graphic designer executive for Transworld, while Adam is working to create a facelifting cream to eliminate aging made from the special powder of the floating pancakes. See, Aunt Becky knew what she was doing. Adam, seeing Eden on a television show which used a game show to hire a new graphic designer (making a metaphor of how big a role luck and timing can play in getting hired by big corporations), gets hired by Transworld, and then conspires to see Eden even though it is forbidden.

That's just Act 1. It's a mixture of highly intelligent and highly inane, but all in a dedicated batshit crazy manner. But, really, that's where all the intelligence stops. All of this highly intelligent metaphorical setup is mainly to create a world full of flashy visuals and grand ideas, such as the rich taking a cable car to a restaurant called Paradise built on Down Below, so they can drink from upside down glasses, and dance on the ceiling. Apparently fluids that originated on Down Below actually are pushed down the gullet by an Up Above person, even though one would think that the fluid would rise up in their throat. But, its still an amazing visual.

We're told at the beginning of the movie that through the romance of these two people, the dichotomy of the worlds is destroyed by the romance of Adam and Eden. And, the change from their romance to the equilibrious finale is extremely rushed, not to mention inane and completely idealistic. It doesn't stem from any sort of rioting or overthrow. Instead, its all about that powder. And, so, everybody becomes equal. Or, something. It's really bad.

Which brings us back to the Showgirls comparison. Both Verhoeven and Solanas believed that they were creating Important works that pointed out the harshest truths of society. And, both believed they were creating highly intelligent works. Both show a high level of dedication to their movie, and both have an amazing visual flair that is both stunning and daring. 

But both Showgirls and Upside Down ultimately fall flat in their intention of showing the world as it is. Both scripts suffer from a severe lack of point or intelligence. The acting is mediocre at best in both movies. And, they both strain credulity and believability. 

Unfortunately, Upside Down isn't nearly as offensive and quotable as Showgirls, lacking in verbal one liners to endlessly quote and guffaw at. But, the visuals are breathtaking, and practically their own one-liners. Such as a meeting between Adam and his new boss, where he sits in a solo chair that has to be extended from the ceiling to have an upside down meeting face to face. Or, an image of running with shoes on fire from the burning that happens due to inverse matter and matter contacting each other.

Upside Down is remarkably visual, with stunning special effects. It is breathtakingly original, and has a lot on its mind. Ultimately, however, it loses sight of its goal, and becomes an inane romance with little on its mind besides getting the couple to meet in the final reel. The final result is a singularly insane romance which is a definite social satire and allegory that does nothing with any of the story elements it creates. It's highly recommended simply due to unbelievability and ridiculousness. 

Southland Tales (2007): The Revolution will be satirized

Southland Tales (2007)
dir: Richard Kelly

Is it too soon to start the Southland Tales redemption movement?  Because, this movie is the messiest mind explosion that has ever exploded in pure form on screen.

The original form of Southland Tales shown at Cannes was an unfinished film that ran 160 minutes, and ended up with disastrous results including critics booing the screen. But the time it reached theaters, it was shrunk down to 144 minutes, but the final version of Kelly's movie is still border incomprehensible, tonally uneven, and just a big brains-on-the-wall splatter criticism of everything.

Southland Tales is a savage indictment of everything that existed in 2006. This is just a partial list of the topics Richard Kelly directly references: war, military, oil, energy, pollution, pop culture, porn, celebrity worship, commercialism, government, surveillance states, Republicans, class warfare, anarchists, Marxists, drugs, television, marketing, police, armageddon, and slam poets. Kelly is weaving a tale so sprawling, and so huge, that he didn't even keep it contained to the movie on screen. The movie starts with chapter 4, with the first three chapters being designated to a series of graphic novels which were released just before the movie. The problem is that the first three chapters do not provide a key to what Kelly is saying.

The closest experience to Southland Tales is the sprawling jungle of Infinite Jest, which took on many of the same subjects in an even more incomprehensible, sprawling, and lengthy take. Southland Tales is, in my opinion, far more successful than Infinite Jest, and I believe that Southland Tales is one of the most unfairly maligned films of the 00s.

To try to unravel the story of Southland Tales is an exercise in futility. The Rock is an action star who had been lost in the desert and comes back with amnesia. He had been married to the daughter of a prominent Republican politician, who is also in the pockets of big business, and also the biggest pusher of the surveillance state which has the politician's wife at the head. The big business in question is Treer, who is developing a new energy source pulled from the waves in the ocean to create a wireless energy field. Treer also has discovered another energy source from beneath the mantle of the Earth. Both are named Fluid or Liquid Karma. The liquid form is also a drug which was tested and given to people, and it causes them to bleed into the past and the future. Treer is also a mega-airship company who has created the largest airship.

Meanwhile, The Rock, with amnesia, is dating a porn star who is also psychic and created a script which is a metaphorical version of the end of times, which is a hilarious commercialized version of Southland Tales. She is also tied, by another porn director, to a neo-Marxist movement which is trying to rebel against, and overthrow, the fascist government mentioned in the earlier paragraph. They plan to do this by creating controversy around the amnesiac The Rock, and also using an ex-military officer who had been partying with the porn star before the movie.

The ex-military officer also has a second form, who is actually the true form, and is a guilt-ridden aggressive racist. He had been serving with another military officer who is overseeing the Los Angeles area, and also dealing Liquid Karma to those who need it. The two forms of the military officer meet up in the end on a floating ice cream truck to bring about the end of the current times, and bring about a new world under Christianity.

And, that's just the basics. This doesn't include the pre-movie graphic novels, in which The Rock and the military officer had been partying with the porn star, did Karma, and jumped through a time rift where both of their versions came out separated by 69 minutes. A car explosion killed one version of The Rock, but left the second version alive. Or, the subplot of the arms dealer who is suppplying everybody with their weapons. Or, the side character of the racist cop. Or the porn star's attempts to commercialize herself as a pop culture artist.

This is also all founded in the Book of Revelations, where Treer is the anti-christ, the government is the false prophet, the porn star is the whore of Babylon, there are two witnesses, and the re-connection brings about the second coming of Christ.

This actually all exists in Southland Tales, and it really is no wonder why this was savaged by critics and given up by the audiences. I don't think that most people are ready for sprawling messy headtrips that are also angry sci-fi twinged dark comedies which have the effect of listening to 2.5 hours of some guy ranting about everything under the sun. That being said, Southland Tales will never have the mass audience that it so badly wants. It's completely cerebral head-candy for those willing to take the trip.

But, what it is is nothing short of amazing. I mean, this movie is near perfect. It reflects the chaotic and distracted times that we live in. It's multi-media. It uses books and advertising and screen scrolls and scripts. There are groups upon groups warring with each other. It's about everything under the sun. It's raging against the system that surrounds us. And, when unweaved, the movie is an embarrassment of riches.

Southland Tales has a shitton of actors, all playing fucked up versions of themselves, if not against type. Jon Lovitz is a serious racist cop. Justin Timberlake is a pop star whose career was derailed by WWIII. Sean William Scott is a military guy who is amnesiac and innocent. Cheri Oteri, Wood Harris, and Amy Poehler all play self-important artists who are also anarchic Marxists. The Rock plays an action star married to the government but who really doesn't have any action sequences. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a porn star who is trying to market herself as a news icon. This brings a layer to the movie that will be lost in 20 years, as all of these stars start fading into the silence of the past.

But, really, Southland Tales is just constantly pushing. It is more aggressive than Moulin Rouge in its constant assault of the senses. In that, it is reflecting the world we live in. We are constantly bombarded by advertisements, music, news, commercialization, and information. We have groups constantly warring for our attention and our dollar. Even in the current, incomplete form we have now (where Janeane Garofalo was completely dropped, as was the motivations of a sorceress who has a key role in the movie), Southland Tales constantly reminds us that we're never meant to get the full story all at once. It's only on repeated viewings that Southland Tales fully reveals itself as a snarling full-plotted movie.

This isn't a movie of little heart, either. This is a combination of cerebral calculation, emotional rage, and faith. Richard Kelly cares about this movie, perhaps more than he did for Donnie Darko. This is his version of a primal scream. We're struggling out here. And, the thing is, with primal screams, it will resonate with those who share it, but also reflect by those who don't want it. It is more like a wolf howling, where it will probably be amplified by other wolves.

It is about time for a re-evaluation of Southland Tales, especially with it available on home video and in need of rewind and repeat viewings. In theaters, it flies by. You have no idea what brick you were just hit with, but you have an idea that it was amazing. It's not an obvious movie either. Southland Tales will not take your hand to walk you through its themes. It throws them at you and sees what sticks. In a world where everything seems to be spelled out for people, this is a needed novelty.

Highly highly recommended, and required viewing.

P.S. This review doesn't even mention that the movie poster used the 2004 Presidential cartogram as it's logo. Nor the musical number of The Killers' All The Things That I've Done. Nor, the amazingly bizarre dialogue like "I'm a pimp, and pimps don't commit suicide." Nor "Nobody rocks the cock like Krysta Now." There is so so much detail in Southland Tales that to make reference to everything that the movie is would be a multi-post, book version of an undertaking.

Branded (2012): Marketing is Brainwashing and other revolutionary ideas

Branded (2012)

dir: Jamie Bradshaw, Aleksandr Dulerayn

What. The. Fuck?!

This is a movie that opens with our main character being struck with a lightning bolt. The middle has a bloody ritual sacrifice. And it ends with a constellation cow.

I am completely sure that, based on those three scenes, my reader has no idea that this is actually about the damage that advertising does to society. Thus is the insanity of Branded.

Branded primarily intends to use existential absurdity as a primal scream against the cultural domination and omnipresence of marketing and advertising filling in every space that we look. Branded wants to be a crisis moment against the use advertising in EVERYTHING, like children's films as in yesterday's Foodfight!

On the other hand, Branded also frequently seems like a movie made by a paranoid schizophrenic. Or, at least that seems to be its intent. As a result, of this split personality, Branded is singularly batshit insane.

The first half of Branded is about a guy who had been struck by lightning to become a marketing executive. He is controlled by a council of high level people (including Max Von Sydow from The Virgin Spring) who want to make Fat People popular due to flagging interest in fast food. So, the marketing guru's show about extreme plastic surgery actually ends with a fat chick dying under the knife, sparking a reactionary fat phenomenon, and the guru goes into exile.

In exile, the guru crafts an ancient bloody sacrifice, which allows him to see the effects marketing has on people...by seeing the brands as large scary inflatable creatures growing out of people. Then, he makes a large business by creating stronger brands, and having real world Transformers-level fights between icons and brands, waiting for the last brand to survive. And, it has all been controlled by a giant constellation cow.

No, I am not hallucinating this. And, yeah, I'm actually removing some of the even crazier details of the movie to make it seem at least semi-sane. Where Foodfight! is a terrible misanthropic acid-trip nightmare of ugly nonsense, Branded is a crazy misanthropic acid-trip nightmare of well-rendered nonsense. Foodfight! wants to hook kids on branding and iconography. Branded is warning people about how they're being controlled. Foodfight! is aimed straight towards the people who are easily duped, and it fails miserably. Branded is warning anybody who will listen, and fails spectacularly.

Branded is required viewing in the world of insanity gone wild. And, it is also a star-studded affair. The main guy is Ed Stoppard, son of Tom Stoppard. It also stars Leelee Sobieski, Jeffrey Tambor, and Max Von Sydow. It has visual interest beyond most low-budget means. It is a product of love and determination, and it's goals are admirable. If only it wasn't so fucking crazy.

Also, I'm not saying "if only it weren't so fucking crazy" lightly. This movie is fucking batshit. It takes left turns every 5 minutes, and I didn't even add in the forbidden love story between Stoppard and Sobieski. It's just one left turn followed by another, and by the end, you're left holding your head just wondering what it all means.

In that sense, Branded fails at being a warning siren against marketing. It's too crazy to take seriously, though it is trying to have a serious point. I think. Maybe it is being a satire of people who say that marketing is a conspiracy theory. But, it doesn't work on that level as it seems almost earnest about it. Maybe it is trying to be an ironic Foodfight! by saying that anybody who thinks marketing is evil and controls the world is this fucking nuts.

In any of the ways to watch this movie, Branded is pure mind-bending semi-irony awesome. 

Gravity (2013): Video Games as cinema

Gravity (2013)
dir: Alfonso Cuaron

Why would The Other Films review a movie that has an $80m budget, and stars both Sandra Bullock and George Clooney?  Well, this movie is science fiction (we have a certain love for that), and it is, weirdly, a big budget movie that is slated to be released in the no man's land of October.  Unfortunately, though not entirely unexpectedly, I hope this movie stays delegated to remaining outside the mainstream.  Because Gravity, while having a lot of style, panache, and technical achievement, is essentially an empty-headed video game of a movie.

In the '90s, there was a series of adventure games that were point and click adventure games that really were interactive movies, or interactive movies that really were adventure games.  Among these games are The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, the Tex Murphy series, and the Phantasmagoria series.  Most notoriously was Tex Murphy: Overseer (the 5th in his series) where he retold the story of Mean Streets (the first in the series) and reformatted it as a pre-destined movie in which you had to solve a bunch of puzzles, but ultimately your character couldn't die nor have any conclusion outside of the foregone ending.  Sometimes you had to answer a series of action trees to get out of danger, and get to the conclusion.

Gravity feels like that. Worse, it feels like you're watching somebody else, namely Alfonso Cuaron, play that video game. The challenges are all pre-determined. You need to make sure you grab that fire extinguisher to try to battle the upcoming fire. Make sure you press that series of buttons. And, don't forget to release the chute.  You have a feeling that you're going to be watching these characters for the length of the movie. And, the tension starts to stagnate by the end.

What makes it more lifeless is that it is a bottle movie, with 1.5 characters.  At certain points in the film Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are separated, and Ms Bullock is left to carry a movie on her own, which she, thus far, has not been able to do.  Even in the highly overrated The Blind Side, Ms Bullock couldn't carry the movie.  Unfortunately for Ms Bullock, Mr Cuaron, and the audience, Sandy has to pretty much carry this movie all by herself.  To carry this movie, Ms Bullock utilized her usual array of high pitched hyperventilating and histrionics that I think she trademarked in Speed.

The story of Gravity is a bunch of space degree from the Russians shooting a satellite careens around the planet, and destroys everything it its path.  In its path are a bunch of satellites, including some station that people are getting data from, the ISS and some Chinese station.  Apparently, all of these are in geo-synchronous orbit, and all on the same linear path.  And, apparently, all of the space debris is only going in one direction along one path.  But, leaving those physics out of it, the space debris is The Ticking Clock.  You have to get out of its path before it comes back again, in 90 minutes (keep in mind that the 90 minutes in the film is not 90 minutes of the film).

Anyways, this Russian debris takes out the first satellite where George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are working.  And, Bullock goes careening off into space, hyperventilating on cue.  Clooney has to rescue her and they have to get to the ISS and then to the Chinese station in order to fly the escape pod down to earth.

That's the whole movie.  There are minor character details that could trigger something deeper.  An early conversation shows Bullock having lost her son, and the movie is empty enough that it could be about the stages of grief.  Or, the debris was caused by a rash action by the Russians, and wham its a political allegory.  But, ultimately, the movie is none of these.  It's a simplistic vacuous video game about trying to get from place to place and trying to rescue your avatar.

Is it well made?  Yes.  It has some really fine cinematography. There is a 13 minute opening shot that is spectacular.  The visuals are far more sumptuous and fulfilling than anything else in this bobblehead of a movie.  However, the score is god-awful and in your face, and very intrusive to the movie during the action scenes.  In the pre-film requisite literary reference card, the soundtrack starts quiet, and amps up to deafening volumes before it cuts out completely into silence.  This motif is repeated over and over and over and over.  It's more annoying than tense.  It's more self-aware than invisible.  You're aware this is a movie score, and dammit...it will be heard!  And it will be silent!

Gravity is ultimately lacking that extra something that makes it worth seeing.  It's not deep, or interesting, or even all that new.  It isn't being released in the summer as a good movie for escaping from the oppressive heat into the coolness of space for some vacuous enjoyment.  It is an October release, and its very vacuous even for that. And, though the visuals are grandiose, the movie is ultimately a loss due to a terrible score and a dull as dishwater script.  Skip it.

War of the Worlds (2005): 9/11's not so subtle metaphor!

The Other Films Classic

War of the Worlds (2005)

dir: Steven Spielberg

THUD! Did you hear that? THUD THUD!! OW! That hurt? What was that? 

That was the anvil hitting you across the head in the form of Spielberg's latest blunt object, War of the Worlds. A message movie where he tries to cram every single little bit of message as he can into one movie. Here's a list of messages:


1) The World Trade Center Bombings was horrible.
2) War is horrible.
3) If you can escape your father's clutches, you can survive a giant explosion without injury.
4) If you can trust your kids, they will be safe.
5) Charleton Heston is a great inspiration to psychos everywhere.
6) John Williams is as subtle as...well...as Steven Spielberg.
7) Boston has extremely strong windows!
8) Video cameras can survive EMPs, especially in the service of "cool" camera shots.


Before I go bitching about the movie much more, I should state two things. I rather enjoyed myself through half the movie, and that will be coming up later. And, I have a bias against Spielberg, so this isn't an unbiased review.

Yes, my friends, War of the Worlds was Spielberg's 9/11 movie as a metaphor. When giant alien machines unearth themselves, they wreak havoc on Jersey, NYC, and various other places around the world. Of course, Tom Cruise, the movie's heroine, is a self-centered, divorced, father who is charge of his two kids, a 10-year-old know-it-all girl, Brilliance, and a 15-year-old surly boy, Sulk. Well, Brilliance and Sulk aren't really their names, but they'll do for now.

Tom's ex-wife has gone with Tim to visit her parents up in Boston, and felt that Brill and Sulk should stay in Jersey with their father. Tom, however, doesn't have food in the house, and doesn't have much time for the kids until they're under attack, at which point he starts becoming a protective Father Knows Best, who doesn't trust his kids to make a decision of their own if they tried.

Meanwhile, the Aliens land and use their machines to exterminate the human race, namely because they're...envious? Ah well, it doesn't matter as the initial and final explanation are all short, and to some throw-away point. Why? It doesn't matter because this is Spielberg's WTC movie!

Yes, folks, as soon as the Aliens attack, we see people taking pictures of the machines, getting vaporized, and other sorts of awesome effects laden imagery. It is in the initial attack scenes (save the usage of the fucking video camera not 20 seconds after the EMP happened), that Spielberg almost shines. He mixes his obvious imagery with a semi-knowledge of B-movies to achieve fun and exciting imagery mach 2.0. And, then, it all starts to go haywire.

Tom and his kids steal a van (which was recently repaired with a new solenoid), and go through many journeys to get to Boston so the family could be together. 

There aren't any real impressive scenes, and some are so stubbornly blindingly bad that I have to go through them. Tom and his kids reach their mother's Jersey home, where they hide in the basement during an attack. The aliens are about ready to blow more shit up with Tom and the kids are in the cellar. Sulk then pulls Tom and Brilliance into a lower cellar...which still has windows! The windows in the main cellar burst out with a huge explosion, but the windows on the side of the house are relatively undamaged, and the cellar is pitch black while the flames are all around. OK, then.

People are posting signs looking for their loved ones *THUD*, just like on 9/11. Except...everybody is leaving their home! How will they be contacting you? If you see my daughter, Please call my non-working cell phone/land line/mail me. *roll eyes* Ah well, we needed to be hit on the head.

Sulk decides he wants to be all he can be and joint he army to fight back. Tom leaves Brilliance by a tree to go chasing after Sulk and bring him along. As Tom and Sulk argue over whether Sulk is a man or not, Brilliance starts getting almost abducted by a helpful crazy couple. Tom sees Brilliance get almost taken, but still has the time for a long-ass good-bye, farewell, you're-a-man-now, scene. And, then, Sulk blows up, as obviated by the big explosion.

Tom and Brilliance go through a forest, which didn't look too destroyed, but clothes start falling from the sky. From where? I dunno, as there were no people to explode. Then, Tom Cruise made his potatoes into a forest and said, "This means something."

Charelton Tim Robbins makes a cameo as silly crazy person who wants to fight back. He is cleaning his gun in a motion that strongly looks like jacking somebody off during one of the heartwrenching scenes. I think it was heartwrenching. I was too busy laughing my ass off through it. Seriously, I was in tears I was laughing so hard. And, then, as the laughing fit from the jacking off motion dies down, Tom sings Deuce Coupe to Brilliance, with much owed to Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend's Wedding. My sides hurt after that.

At this point, we really start doing stuff just so the camera could look cool. Charleton Tim and Tom start running through CharletonTim's basement frenetically, removing blocks from the window so the camera could look through, then replacing the blocks. And, the dumbest aliens in the galaxy use their camera to go searching for the inhabitants of this domicile, and are foiled by a mirror. We think that the aliens are a bit narcissistic and watched their camera in the mirror. As if mirrors weren't invented by that race.

Soon, the cute ewoksaliens come exploring around the basement, and playing with things,

Tom eventually arrives in Boston with the kid, after he exploded an alien (bad pie), where all the windows are still intact. Even in buildings with much destruction by passed out alien machines, the windows were still in tact. However, it is all a dream because Sulk didn't really die, but Tim, not CharletonTim, did. Or at least he wasn't shown much because it is all about Tom and his ex-wife and their kids, including not-burnt-up Sulk and Brilliance. In a quick 10 second wrap-up by Morgan Freeman, we find out that the aliens were killed by single-celled organisms, viruses or bacteria of some sort. Way to go Morgan! (Didn't the narration remind you of the narration to BASEketball by CHARLETON HESTON!!)

So, other than the initial destruction, and a couple of the other scenes, the movie is pretty Spielbergian. And, very Spielberg from 25 years ago. Without the total and utter destruction, the movie would have sucked. 

BTW, The Aliens were made of people

Dr. Caligari (1989): Where Satire, Arthouse and New Wave collide

Dr. Caligari (1989)
dir: Stephen Sayadian

"I have beauty inside me. But, oh, when beauty is trapped, it gets ugly."

Picture this.  Burning Man.  2000.  Wandering around the festival, my friend and I stop in at a tent that was something like Bad Movie Camp. They were showing terrible movies all night.  Wandering around, half crazed because you've just been fried all day, and are now freezing your ass off, you stumble upon this tent, showing a movie you've never heard of, or seen a trailer for. This movie is surreal and bizarre and hilarious and fascinating.  It is in a grotesque toxic dayglo neon color scheme, with stilted, dramatic acting. Suddenly, they bring out a cake, and cut into it, and it has a pulsing blood thing.  Next thing you know, out comes Fox Harris in a Marilyn Monroe wig demanding to be called Babs.  And...yeah...I was hooked.  This totally-blitzed-out-of-your-mind, not-knowing-what-you're-watching mode is the best way to see this movie.

Go.

Rent it now.  Buy it from the porn website Excalibur films (which is the only way to buy the DVD).  Watch it before you  read the next sentence.  This may excite you in ways you have no idea you have ever had.

But, since you're here, I might as well tell you why this movie is so good, and why you should look into it.

Yes, this was my first venture into the world of Stephen Sayadian and his pseudonym Rinse Dream. And, also my first venture into the world of Jerry Stahl (you know, other than ALF).  Stephen Sayadian, as Rinse Dream, was a hit in the world of hardcore Gonzo porn.  Gonzo porn?!  Yes, gonzo porn.  His most successful film, including Dr. Caligari, was a sci-fi porn apocalypse flick called Cafe Flesh.  Unlike more porns, this actually had acting and a semblance of a thought out plot.  The titular Cafe was the result of a deadly accident that had severely hobbled the world, and made sex fatal for 95% of the population.  The remaining 5% were instructed to put on elaborate sex shows for an audience.  And, the elaborate sex shows include a guy dressed as a #2 pencil having sex with a woman while another naked woman is using a steno writing machine while repeating "Do you want me to type a memo?"  A different sex scene was sampled by White Zombie for the opening of More Human Than Human.

Sayadian and Stahl had first started working together on the gonzo porno Nightdreams, which had a woman who was oversexualized being locked up in a mental institution and having her dreams monitored.  This led to all kinds of weird surrealistic scenes which include a talking fish, and phallic masks.  The movie is best remembered for the scene where a woman fellates a box of Cream of Wheat while a piece of toasted Wonder Bread plays the saxaphone in the background.  No, it exists and is on the internet (NSFW, but not a porn blog).

But, I didn't know any of this at the time.  All I knew was this movie, which I found out was called Dr Caligari, was amazing.  I had to see it on my own.  And, I found it.  And, it was good.

Dr Caligari, like Nightdreams, is about a woman, Mrs. Van Houten, who is oversexualized and is forced into an institution for having an overstimulated libido which leads her to have overly symbolic hallucinations.  These hallucinations include making out with a giant flesh wall, baby masked guys in bubble baths with razors, or pulsating, bleeding sores that sprout up on her body.  She is committed to Caligari's Insane Asylum by her politician husband, who isn't even trying to have sex with her.

The CIA is filled with other freaky sex types, most notably John Durbin as a child molesting murderer.  Dr Caligari, the granddaughter of the Dr Caligari from the German expressionist classic, is doing weird experiments on her patients.  The other doctors, a family headed by Fox Harris, are planning a coup because of it.  But, before they can overthrow Caligari, she instutes a variety of brain transplants, which leave Fox Harris as a sex pot wanting to be called Babs, John Durbin as an effeminate bitch, and Mrs Van Houten as an oversexed criminal.

All of this is almost secondary to the experience of just plain watching Dr Caligari, which is like a surreal nightmare dreamed up at some intersection of Forbidden Zone, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Eraserhead, and 1980's New Wave love of neon and sex.  The sets are all German experessionist pointy and shadowed and representational. The acting is straight out of some weird sleazy European art film. The reality is as surreal as Dali or Lynch.  And, the plot is as political as it can get without being overt.

No, really.  Political?  A movie which has a woman getting her hand melted by a scarecrow's pants, and then anally raping her husband is political?  I mean just that sentence is political.

In American society, women are supposed to be asexual.  Women aren't supposed to have overstrung libidos.  They get called sluts and whores.  Even today, promiscuous women are still punished for their desire to have sex. And, in the world of Dr. Caligari, women are locked up by men for their overt desire for sex. Les Van Houten, Mrs. Van Houten's wife (who doesn't even get a first name in the credits), is a politician who worries she is having an episode, when all she wants is a bit of shagging. And, when he first calls Dr Caligari, she first starts drilling him on the sex that Mrs. Van Houten is actually getting, asking for number of orgasms and whether they're "clitoral or vag."  But, Dr Caligari accedes to the commitment anyways.

Later, Mrs. Van Houten's libido is transplanted with a murderer's impulses, because to be violent is better than to be horny. And, Dr Caligari is also playing with identity and agency in her own self.  She's wearing a yellow dress with giant metal balls as cups.  I'm sure it isn't a coincidence that this look would kind of be appropriated by Peaches in Peaches Does Herself.  It's a take on the tits as bullets, and almost as a warrior statement. Dr. Caligari is a woman who is ruling her sex and her life.  She's also seen getting cunnilingus from a patient.

The world of Dr. Caligari is completely against the sex negative culture of the United States. It mocks the point that we're restricting sex to those who are in control of it.  We don't know why Les Van Houten isn't giving Mrs. Van Houten the ol' in-out, but in the world at large, nobody cares.  Wanting sex is bad, and it is his wife that's at fault. But, luckily, Sayadian gives Les his just desserts in the end, by way of his wife.

The movie is Cult.  And, I mean Cult.  The only reason I found it on DVD was because I discovered somewhere that the producer was an owner of Excalibur Films, which does hardcore porno, and was distributing it on the DL exclusively through there.  They were also putting out Nightdreams, which I also highly recommend pairing as a two-set.  You won't find them that erotic, so don't prepare for a night of unable to control yourself handsiness.  But, they are intriguing in their satire of the world they were made in.

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986): High School and Nuclear Waste

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)
dir: Lloyd Kaufman

"One day they're a bunch of clean cut preppies, and the next they're a bunch of violent, perverted cretins!" - Class of Nuke 'em High

Class of Nuke 'Em High isn't the first film to talk about punk rock, high school, and youth.  It is the first to wrap it in nuclear fears.

OK, as you probably know, this is a Troma film, and one of its early classics.  It's a comic book posing as a movie that is basically an excuse for grotesque special effects and rampant sex, drugs, and violence.  It's whole message is an ironic The Kids Are All Right., even as it poses the kids as mutated cretins from another planet.  Sure, these may be morphing balls of hormones one doesn't even recognize as their own, but they're a-OK.  Class of Nuke 'em High is actually a little headier than it lets on, and it is kind of a sly subversive take on the high school gross out film that had been set up by Porky's and would later be refreshed by American Pie.

Just to put this movie into a time/culture context, Hollywood was going through a High School glut.  1985 brought us The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Just One of the Guys, Mischief, and Secret Admirer.  1986 brought us Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Lucas, Hoosiers, and Pretty in Pink. I think it's telling that not one of these featured mutation, punks, or rampant and random violence. Things had changed a lot since the 1982 films of Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and The Last American Virgin.  The closer is the ass tape humiliation story you only hear about in The Breakfast Club.

The era of the punk was in the process of morphing from its early 80s incarnation of hardcore into its late 80s of provoking extremism on its way to the 90s ska and pop punk.  GG Allin was just starting up, with his performances of extreme offensiveness, anti-authoritarianism, and extreme offensiveness.  It is no mere coincidence that Troma movies reflected this underground current of grand guignol mixed with a fuck you attitude towards everything.

Class of Nuke 'Em High concerns a high school in Tromaville, the setting for all early Troma classics, that is situated near an unsafe nuclear power plant.  The nuclear power plant has started leaking waste and some of the student members - most notably the honor society - consume it or touch it, and turn into a local gang of waster youth punks, goths, and new wavers called The Cretins.

Semi-outcasts Warren, Eddie and Chrissy (Warren's girlfriend) go partying, and smoke some nuclear waste tainted weed from The Cretins.  Chrissy gets preggers with a monster that she orally miscarries by throwing up the mutated spermy into a school toilet, which gets flushed into the system.  Meanwhile, Warren gets super strength and starts killing people.  Eventually, the spermy turns into a monster, and it all leads to the destruction of the high school.

Intriguing to Class of Nuke 'Em High, but not unique, is the acknowledgement of of a clique system, but without setting up a caste system of "cool."  Everybody makes everybody else's life hell. Warren is a goody-two-shoes footballer.  Eddie is a weird arty dropout (sort of a stoner cross between Ducky and Heather's Veronica).  Chrissy is a cheerleader.  The Cretins were once the honor students. They pick on everybody, including old ladies on the street. In the '80s, high school was presented more as 1000 cuts of pain, rather than people who ruled the school.  Even in Fast Times, everybody was still rather cordial to each other, even if they weren't in each others' cliques.

These 80s cliques more closely resembles the way I remember high school.  We were all cliques of fucked up groups, but no one group dominated the school.  My high school experience was definitely closer to this representation than that of Heathers, Jawbreaker, or G,B.F. which all had high schools with "ruling cliques." Or, maybe I just ignored the "rulers."  Maybe I just dismissed my the caste system.

In addition to this look at the caste systems, Class of Nuke 'Em High is an exaggerated look at the fears adults have toward high school students. When parents were just starting to get over their fear of punks (which had already been starting to implode), and getting back to their worry about drugs and bullying, Class of Nuke 'Em High ridicules these fears by heightening them to ridiculous levels.  Kids are going to rebel, but at least they're not like these cartoon caricatures, right?  *nudge nudge*

At the same time, it also is a sort of proto-Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which all of the fears are made supernatural, by way of nuclear contamination.  Sure, it doesn't tackle any serious issues in any serious ways, but there is something to be said for the in your faceness of the sperm vomit posing as warning against teen pregnancy and drugs.  It has its cake and eats it too by monsterizing a normal concern while also satirizing through extremity.

In any case, Class of Nuke 'Em High is a silly movie from our friends at Troma.  It's one of Troma's original greats, when it seemed to have nothing but entertaining on its mind, but actually had something to say underneath it all.  Required viewing.