Tag Archives: Mary needs a drink

#50- Funny Games

Quick recap:  Two psychotic men hold a wealthy family hostage and then torture them for several hours until they are all dead. In retrospect, watching this movie late at night wasn’t one of my smarter ideas but you live and learn, right? WRONG.

just about the only scene in the film that doesn't make me want to curl up into a ball.

just about the only scene in the film that doesn’t make me want to curl up into a ball.

Fun (?) Fact: Director Michael Haneke has stated that ‘Funny Games’ was not meant to be a horror film, but instead a message about violence in media. Message received, thank you very much. I’m curling back into my ball now.

My thoughts: It’s not often that a movie makes me really reflect on my life choices and what has lead me to this point to have to sit through something as awful as ‘Funny Games’. Before I begin my (I predict) rambling observation, I’ll preface by saying that I have no qualms spoiling the movie because I believe in sharing misery.

grumpy-cat-8141_preview_zps9177ab07

 

From the moment Peter enters Anna’s house, a knot in my stomach grew. I had already read the synopsis of the film beforehand and I knew the ending but I think waiting for it to happen made it so much worse. I found myself relieved once it was revealed that Paul, the other psycho, had murdered the family dog. Not a normal thing to be relieved about, but I was grateful that I didn’t have to watch the death. That turned out to be the absolute worse thing because I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of the young boy crumpled up in the corner after being shot to death, his blood splattered everywhere. Somehow, not watching the murder but seeing the aftermath made the situation so much worse and more horrifying. Looking back, very little of the torture scenes were shown. Most of the horror came from discovering what evil thing would be next. An example of this was when the young boy, George, discovers that Peter and Paul have also murdered a family living next to his. No bodies are shown, but as George looks down a staircase, he can see a little girl’s sock covered foot.

I think it was at that scene that I really had to stop and question if i should continue watching the movie or not. I knew the young son would be murdered as well as the rest of the family eventually and I had already had enough suspense for one night. I made the decision to keep watching because I knew that if I didn’t, it might haunt me forever. I found myself hoping that the family would be murdered quickly so I wouldn’t have to sit through anymore sadistic games, and that brings me to another example of psychological torture for the audience: Paul talks directly to the audience watching the movie. In the beginning of the end, he bets the family that they won’t survive past 9 in the morning and then turns to the camera and says that he thinks we will be rooting for the family to survive. In another scene, Anna escapes right before she is about to be murdered and manages to shoot Peter. Paul screams and looks for the tv remote to rewind the scene and bring Peter back to life. It works and both men continue their games. Paul also turns around and winks at the camera a few times, like he is letting us in on a secret and after awhile, I felt personally involved. It wasn’t like I felt like I was committing the murders, but I somehow felt responsible for what was happening and yet helpless to do anything.

The movie ends with Peter and Paul throwing Anna into the water and I once again felt relief that it was finally over. But then they docked the boat and showed up at a neighbor’s house, presumably to continue their spree. Thankfully, the audience is set free and we don’t have to witness anything else.

Final Review: 1/5. The director supposedly said that if this movie was successful in any way, it was because the audience didn’t understand his message. Just in case Haneke is reading this blog, I’d like to let him know that I’d give this a negative score if I could.

Nightmares?: Oh,yes. It wasn’t the fear that someone would break into the house, but just nightmares about death in general and STILL being unable of getting that image of the dead boy out of my head.

One of those times I really wish 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind' had been real

One of those times I really wish ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind’ had been real

Up Next: this movie broke me. I may need to watch something lighthearted and abandon HorrorFest for now. Way to go, Haneke. This is why we can’t have nice things.

11 Comments

#41- El Topo

405_20120507203651_every_word-2

 

Quick recap: Oh, boy. So there’s this cowboy, called El Topo, who is sort of like God? And he travels around with his naked son as they go around the country killing bad guys. Simple enough, right? But then this girl shows up and El Topo calls her Mara and they do crazy stuff and she convinces him to fight 4 gun masters, as if that won’t end badly. And he does because he wants to keep having sex with her. Being the badass that he is, he indeed conquers all gun masters but does so by trickery and feels guilty about it because he is God. Or something. And then to top it off, Mara runs away with some chick with a man’s voice who shoots him all stigmata style before they run away together. End scene. The second part is even weirder and it involves little people and disabled people and El Topo getting involved in a cultist village and knocking up some girl. My brain exploded at this point.

Fun (?) Trivia: Alejandro Jodorowsky, who played El Topo, cast his young son in the movie to play the naked kid running around in the desert. That’s sort of a messed up thing to do and apparently Jodorowsky felt bad about it at some point and invited the boy to the backyard to dig up a toy and picture of his mother, just like the beginning scene. He then said ‘Now you are 8 and you have permission to be a kid’. Still doesn’t quite make up for your dad showing the world your junk at 6 but it’s something, I suppose.

el_topo

 

 My thoughts: 5 minutes into the film and I think I literally yelled out, ‘WTF!’ as El Topo guides his naked son among the bloody dead villagers. They come across a man who is dying and being the good father that he is, hands the gun to the boy to put the man out of his misery. After that there is some crazy nonsense with the bandits doing all sorts of sadistic stuff to a group of monks and I think at one point I just shrugged my shoulders and told myself to just stop thinking because it wasn’t worth it.

This is the sort of movie that screams, ‘art house’. Jodorowsky is some sort of crazy intellectual guy and put a ton of references to religion into this film of which I caught maybe 10%. It was only after reading the Wikipedia page for this movie that I realized the 4 gun masters represented different Eastern religions. I still don’t know what they are and as I have mentioned, my mind exploded at some point so I don’t care to look it up.

As a whole, El Topo is disturbing. Everything from the nudity to buckets of blood, to the exploitation of the disabled and little people. I knew at some level I was supposed to watch this all the while stroking my fake goatee and taking long puffs of my cigar and every few minutes leaning back and saying, ‘ah,yes. Clever fellow, this Jodorowsky’. But there were too many scenes that I just couldn’t get past. El Topo reeks of pretentiousness, and to find out John Lennon financed its release makes all the more sense.

In order to find some sort of positive in this movie, I will admit that I thought the ending was rather fitting, as El Topo set himself on fire and his son donned the black suit and became the new El Topo. I also liked that last scene because it meant the movie was OVER.

I'm just going to leave this here and let it haunt your dreams.

I’m just going to leave this here and let it haunt your dreams.

 

Final review:  1/5. I understand why this film was included on the list but I’ll be damned if I have to sit through it again.

Up next: Batman

at least he can play a mean flute

at least he can play a mean flute

3 Comments

#33- The Ascent

 Quick recap: The movie centers around two Soviet Partisans who go off in search of food for their group. Along the way, they are captured by Nazis and interrogated. And then everyone dies, except one guy who tries to kill himself but is unsuccessful. I’m not a fan of spoiling movies, but if you are looking for a good war movie where everyone is saved at the last second by their troop, this ain’t it.

happy-cat-is-happy-3667

 

Fun (?) Fact:    Depressing fact: The director of this film, Larisa Shepitko, died in a car accident a couple of years after ‘The Ascent’ was released, so this was her last movie.

basket1

 

My thoughts: In case the hint hasn’t been picked up yet, I’ll just go ahead and say that this was a DEPRESSING movie. Depressing in the sense that after it finally ended, I curled up in a ball and regretted ever doing this list, but then I looked at cat pictures and felt a little better. I’m still going to need a few years of therapy.

As I have stated before, I don’t like to look up information about the movie before watching it ,so all I had to go on was that 1) this is a war movie and in the war movies I have seen, everything is gritty but then people get rescued and the Americans always come out on top. GO USA. and 2) the movie is called ‘The Ascent’, which I took to mean that the Soviets would climb out of their situation and everything would be ok. Boy, was I wrong. The film is in black and white and most of the scenery consists of snow and trees. There is barely any music, except when someone is about to be tortured or about to die. That alone would be depressing enough but then there are the characters. Besides the partisans, the Nazis capture an old man who has been working for them but who they no longer trust, a woman who helped hide the two men and who has young children to care for by herself, and a child. One of the partisans decides to step up and admit that he orchestrated everything but of course that does no good. The other partisan begs for his life and is allowed to join the Nazi police. He is immediately told to help walk the prisoners, his friends, to the gallows where he puts a noose around everyone’s neck and helps them to be executed. Seeing his terrible choice, he attempts to hang himself several times but is unable to die. He considers escaping but knows he would be shot dead on the spot so he is left to endure staying at this camp.

carrot_cat_smile1

 

I think what got under my skin the most was the lack of violence and torture shown. At one point, one of the partisans has a star branded into his chest. I was thankful to not have to watch that but instead the camera focused on his face which was so much worse. In the scene at the gallows as everyone is hung, the camera focuses on a young child forced to witness the deaths. As he sees everyone hanging, he sheds a tear and it’s just awful. I don’t claim to know much about war movies but this different perspective combined with the saddest ending ever, makes for me, a more realistic view of war. Nowadays, directors try to top each other with the goriness but this movie, made in 1977 does the opposite and creates scenes I can’t get out of my head.

The most poignant part of the film was the scene in which the interrogator kept trying to get information and the partisan only answered in response, ‘What were you before the war?’ It was a question I had never thought about before, that the Nazis were, at some point, regular people with regular jobs and families, not the monsters that they eventually became. War is hell, y’all.

zenktty

 

Final review: 5/5. I really wanted to give ‘The Ascent’ a 1 because it bothered me so much, but that’s precisely why it needs a 5. Schindler’s List is seen as the go to ‘World War 2’ movie, but my vote is for this one as essential viewing.

Up next: Metropolis

4 Comments

#25- Written on the Wind

Quick Recap: The characters in this movie are the WORST. Marylee Hadley is an alcoholic nymphomaniac who loves jazz and her brother Kyle is no better. He marries a woman he barely knows and then when he finds out he probably can’t have kids, starts drinking heavily again. When his wife tells him that she is in fact pregnant, he punches her and refuses to believe it is his. There’s also a scene where Marylee is dancing around TO JAZZ  after slutting it up at the motel and her father goes up to talk to her. Somehow her dancing causes her father to lose his balance and he falls down the stairs and dies.

oh oil derrick, you're the only one that truly gets me

oh oil derrick, you’re the only one that truly gets me

Fun (?) Fact: someone actually won an OSCAR for this movie. (Dorothy Malone who plays Marylee)

In this scene Marylee is staring out into the water and imagining all the times she came here as a child. It just looked like she was going nuts and hearing voices and I laughed more than I should have.

In this scene Marylee is staring out into the water and imagining all the times she came here as a child. It just looked like she was going nuts and hearing voices and I laughed more than I should have.

My thoughts: The movie starts with a song about how everything is ‘written on the wind’ and I knew at this moment I was screwed. And just in case the audience was confused, there is an actual wind that blows through the house as Kyle Hadley runs in with a gun. Oy.

This movie does an excellent job cramming as much melodrama as can possibly fit in a two hour time frame. Everyone has issues and everyone’s issues intersect with each other. Marylee Hadley, for example, is in love with Mitch, a family friend, who is in turn in love with Lucy, who is married to his best friend Kyle Hadley, Marylee’s brother. And the reason everyone is awful is never really explained except that the Hadley’s are rich and that breeds evilness? I do love how this movie serves as entertainment but is also a morality tale about the dangers of alcohol and dancing and jazz. Everything comes to a head when Kyle Hadley finds out his wife is pregnant and blames his best friend for knocking her up. He has been drinking too much and so punches her, which in turn causes a miscarriage. At times I felt like I was watching one of those PSAs from a long time ago- ‘One sip of liquor and you’ll end up shooting yourself!’.

The character of Mitch (played by Rock Hudson) was an especially odd addition. He served as the moral compass throughout the film which also made him incredibly DULL. Most of the time he just stood there, mouth slightly ajar and pouting that he couldn’t get what he wanted. The only time he showed true emotion was when he confessed his love for Lucy but then when she revealed she was pregnant, went back to being the ‘aw,shucks’ guy who never has any luck.

I was also put off by Kyle Hadley being played by Robert Stack because I immediately recognized his voice from the show, ‘Unsolved Mysteries’. I kept expecting a subplot about aliens or ghosts. In all honesty, it would’ve made this movie much more bearable.

Final review: 1/5. In reading up on this film, lots of people apparently hated this movie when it came out but then rediscovered it in the 70s and suddenly ‘got it’. I don’t know what there is to get. You’d be better off marathoning a season of Degrassi, if you are looking for some good melodrama.

It's always a party with Craig!

It’s always a party with Craig!

Where/How I watched it: Netflix, with a bomber sized bottle of Leprechaun Cider. It was much needed to survive this movie.

Up next: Reversal of Fortune

 

 

 

5 Comments