A film blog on My Own Private Idaho:

As a film from the New Queer Cinema movement, My Own Private Idaho explores the idea of what home is and what it can be to the queer youth who are finding their place in a heteronormative world. It follows the story of Mike and Scott, who are both male prostitutes. Mike in particular, as a queer man, is longing for something familiar, whether that be through his unrequited love for Scott, his dreams of his mother, or his search for her. I came into the film dreading the Shakespeare, especially since it sources Shakespears historical plays of Henry IV and Henry V, but I left emotionally compelled because of just how differently the story tells itself with the then-unfamiliar aspects of prostitution, narcolepsy, and of course homosexuality.

I am, however, unsure of how to feel about the visuals of some of the film. It definitely makes some interesting visual choices, such as its use of the color orange (the orange fireplace and the orange sky) somewhat giving a warm, comforting feeling when the scene or situation needs it. At other times, the colors are very gray or bland to look at, enhancing the more depressing parts of the film. If you really think about it though, this was a very visually dark film. Even in scenes of broad daylight, the shots still felt pretty dark to me.

Shots that definitely took me out of the movie would be those that tell us where the next scene is. A blank, solid color screen with white letters of where they are is not exactly the best way to express a change in scenery. I read that there were financing problems when it came to getting the film greenlit, but I would’ve expected something less jarring. Heck, maybe even just a shot on location with text saying where they are could’ve been better!

What also threw me off at times were the visual shots of the open road. As someone who isn’t technically proficient with DP work, it’s difficult for me to say if the strange visuals of the open road, the desert, and the time lapse of the sky were thanks to the technology at the time or if it was an actual stylistic choice.

Despite these complaints, however, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves’ portrayal of Mike and Scott are what definitely sell this film. This is particularly impressive when we remember the context of a less understanding society when it comes to homosexuality and with prostitution.

A film blog on The Endless:

If I’m being completely honest, I still do not know much about what goes on in this film. It starts with brothers Justin and Aaron receiving a cassette from their previous home, Camp Arcadia. Justin remembers Camp Arcadia as a cult and is afraid that their talk about a UFO is a euphemism for mass suicide, while Aaron remembers things completely differently. With evidence of Camp Arcadia still existing, Aaron convinces a reluctant Justin to visit Camp Arcadia. Once there, they strangely discover that the people they remember haven’t aged at all. This piece of information is where the puzzle of the film reveals itself.

This is a movie you cannot watch once just to make sense of the story (hello, Schizopolis!). This doesn’t exactly mean that The Endless is a bad film. It just requires watching out for the relevant details. The first example here would be reconciling the fact that Aaron and Justin left years before, yet the Camp Arcadia residents haven’t aged when they revisited later. At the same time, the Camp Arcadia residents also have their own talents that they’ve said to spend their life perfecting (such as clothing or magic).

Given the fact that we found out that Camp Arcadia is a part of the time loops, the reasonable assumption here would be that Camp Arcadia probably has a long time loop, perhaps even spanning years because Aaron and Justin haven’t been trapped inside of it when they first got to Camp Arcadia.

“The Endless” would be the movie among the bunch that requires the most attention. Not necessarily because it’s the most captivating, but simply because the movie is such a puzzle that you’d need your full attention to make the most sense of it. As a horror movie, it doesn’t help as well that whatever the entity that’s causing the time loops is never shown, so we can’t figure out if it’s an alien, a ghost, or even a merciless God.

Movies with fantasy or Magical Realism type of elements use such elements because its removal from reality allows it to say something deeper about reality. Out of what I’ve been able to gather, and given that horror movies are known to use the medium of horror as a metaphor, I would say that The Endless is perhaps a criticism of the routine, safe life. Aaron, with his dissatisfaction of the real world and its struggles, longs for the familiarity and safety that Camp Arcadia brought him. I understand the usage of time loops as a metaphor for being caught up in the familiar that you can no longer escape. The Camp Arcadians find comfort in the repetition of their life, so much that they remain in the time loop. Those of us on the outside see the horror of living the same life again and again, and I’d think that The Endless positioning itself as a horror movie emphasizes that one must confront the familiar with the unfamiliar, that we must take risks.

Or maybe it doesn’t even have to mean anything. The Endless might refer to some merciless god who enjoys toying with humanity by having them suffer through time loops. The guy in the shack whose time loop is small definitely shows that whatever this entity is is sadistic, yet this entity also keeps the Camp Arcadians somewhat safe and happy.

Outside of the film as a concept, I greatly appreciated the use of special effects the film did despite the infamously low budget they were given. The manipulation of the sky to show a second, and an eventual third full moon, along with the imagery of the crows gathering, helped build up to the overall eerie, creepiness of the film. I’d like to talk specifically about the usage of the moon in a metaphorical sense. In the film, the signal for being trapped in a time loop would be when the third moon appears. The usage of the three moons to signal the beginning, the middle, and the end of the movie was simple, yet effective in creating a sense of urgency and anticipation from the viewers.

I will say though, with full transparency, that the fact that quite a few actors looked like PewDiePie at times really threw me off, but that’s just me though.

Again, I’m still not entirely sure what I’m supposed to think or feel after the movie. What I can appreciate however is that it’s a horror movie that didn’t rely on jump scares or over the top plot lines. It’s a smart horror film that I’d much prefer to mull over and stress over the implications it may have, versus a blockbuster, run-of-the-mill horror movie that’s no longer scary because you watched it.

A film blog on Sorry to Bother You:

The film “Sorry to Bother You” perhaps holds the top spot alongside “Velvet Goldmine” for me as my favorite film of the semester, and that’s mostly because this is a very well thought out and committed film. Out of all the movies we’ve watched, this is easily the most political film given its social justice angle. The director himself, Boots Riley, is also an activist, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he makes socially relevant films.

The surface level of the commentary this film makes would be “CAPITALISM IS BAD,” but I believe this film is much more nuanced than that. I would say that there are two main thematic points the movie explores. The first would be on its skepticism of the narrative of meritocracy. This is best seen with the movie’s motifs of The White Voice and Stick to the Script. Time and time again, the telemarketers at RegalView are told by their bosses to “stick to the script.” It’s even hung on the working space of the telemarketers and is repeated to them quite often. Metaphorically, the “script” would be Meritocracy and the American Dream, the idea that all one needs to do to be successful is to follow a specific path (i.e., sticking to the script). Cassius quickly finds out, however, that sticking to the script gets him nowhere.

Social commentary-wise, it’s easy to see that the American Dream or the narrative of meritocracy is ignorant of the realities of minorities, that it’s naive for people in power to tell minorities to work harder or to follow a certain path when the privileged and those in power had a head start for generations because of their riches, their gender, or the color of their skin. Meritocracy is an ideal system, but it has to account for these social inequalities that threaten its value. That’s why with the current system, minorities in RegalView must use the “White Voice” just to make a sale. Even Detroit, perhaps the most outspoken character in the cast, employs a “White Voice” in her art show to make her more palatable to greater society as a black woman. Additionally, the metaphor of Equisapiens is not lost on viewers as well, where workers in unfettered capitalism, who do work within the meritocratic system, are the ones exploited the most. Just like horses, they are beasts of burden, and the conversion of employees into Equisapiens erases the line between employee and slave.

The second thematic point, though not as on the nose, would be on the Appropriation of Social Change. This is most represented through the meme-ification of Cassius’s getting-hit-on-the-head, which opened up sponsorship deals and inside jokes among the establishment. Instead of becoming the symbol of rebellion it was, the unfettered capitalist system appropriated it for its own gain.

And the reason why these themes are so well explored in-universe is because of the dedication the film has to bring these to light. From the metaphor and the disturbing CGI portrayal of Equisapiens to the creative portrayal of Cassius’s sales pitches both before and after becoming a successful telemarketer (from the obstacle of a desk preventing him from connecting with the customer to the closeness and intimacy he ends up having with customers thanks to his White Voice), to even the pun of Cassius’s name (Cassius Green = Cash is Green). The dedication to explore these themes give the film teeth, while the dedication the director takes to creating his own universe through unnecessary yet still greatly appreciated efforts like Detroit’s great changing earrings and fashion help us see the film as its own work of art, regardless of whether or not the viewer agrees with its politics. The point of the Magical Realism of the film is to remove the viewer from reality so that they are better able to understand reality, which “Sorry to Bother You” masterfully does.

A film blog on Repo Man:

When we were told that Repo Man was a punk-themed film, it was hard for me to believe that when it opened with some scientist in a Chevy Malibu and the vaporization of an officer. Given the fact that I didn’t even know what a “Repo Man” was before the film didn’t help either.

This initial confusion over the marriage of the grungy, rebellious punk (the music used, Otto as a man of no social conventions, Otto’s ex-friends who commit crimes for fun, or the acts Repo Men have to do for their job) and the nerdy science-fiction (aliens, vaporization of bodies, and conspiracy groups) elements of the start made me feel unsettled because these ought not to work together. After viewing, however, the film shows that you do not need to follow the conventions of filmmaking to make a film worth making.

However, this core theme of rebellion is one that is perhaps looked at with skepticism given that the film explores it with one of the most establishment professions in the world – repossession, which aims to sustain the power of the rich and elite.

One of the most interesting points would be the film’s exploration of the Lattice of Coincidences. Miller introduced this to us with a seemingly throwaway scene with Otto. Here, Miller talked about the Cosmic Unconsciousness wherein there is no greater reason for things to happen. There is just coincidence, and we all just so happen to interact with each other. His example was someone thinking about a plate of shrimp, and then a plate or a shrimp, or a plate of shrimp show up. This Lattice of Coincidences is first brought up in the background, interestingly enough, in the background with a restaurant offering a Plate of Shrimp. It was most evident near the end where all these characters converged together in the Helping Hand Acceptance Corp. yard to get to the Chevy Malibu. The Repo Men, the FBI, the United Fruitcake Outlet, and even the televangelist Otto’s parents follow! All of this happens, but the film never explores why aliens are here or why everyone wants the Chevy Malibu. Instead, the Lattice of Coincidence says that there is no real why. There just is a coincidence, and we all just so happen to be.

However, this doesn’t hold up if we looked at the meta of the film. If we took into consideration the premise of the Lattice of Coincidence that there is no greater why, but we consider the fact that the Lattice of Coincidence was deliberately chosen and shown in the Plate of Shrimp and at the Helping Hand Acceptance Corp. yard. It really makes you wonder whether there is or is no cosmic unconsciousness.

Given the juxtaposition of rebellious punk-ness with establishment repo men and the irony of the Lattice of Coincidences playing out in a film, it really makes me wonder if what the film is ridiculing is societal conventions or those that claim to ridicule societal conventions.

A film blog on Velvet Goldmine:

David. Freakin’. Bowie.

As a fan of the theatrical and histrionic, it was easy for me to say that “Velvet Goldmine” is my favorite of all the films the seniors had to watch. This movie follows the rise and fall of Brian Slade, the figurehead of glam rock in-universe, through Arthur Stuart, an investigative journalist, and his assignment to write about his life story for the paper. It’s a story of how trends rise and how they pass on, how those with the trend move on, and how the next generation experiences the past before them.

After the movie, what I wanted to figure out the most was who the heck Jack Fairy is. We are introduced to Jack Fairy in the beginning, but the movie doesn’t really do anything with his character. Given the specter-like nature of his appearances in the background, my guess would be that he’s from a time right before glam rock. It’s as if he haunts the glam rock scene because he was an influential figure to what those in the music industry do now. I would perhaps liken it to how David Bowie has influenced many different artists even up to now. He was from a time of before, but his influence and impact are still definitely with us, evident with the music of today.

This film doesn’t exactly shine when it comes to the conventions of a story or character development. It gets difficult to exactly trace and follow the bigger story of Brian Slade that Arthur Stuart is writing. It is also hard to tell at times, narrative-wise, what goes on (e.g. the unclear story between Curt Wild and Arthur Stuart) because the movie seems to be more concerned with what happens rather than why things happen. This could perhaps be linked to the reported rewrites the film had to undergo because David Bowie was greatly unhappy with the similarities to his life. Such drastic rewrites or changes can really mess with the integrity of a story, which might explain the very erratic story compared to, say, the non-linear structure of “Futureless Things.”

However, I would choose not to view this movie as a cinematic work, but rather as an experience, which is definitely where it soars. Out of all the movies screened in class, this was hands down the best in set design, costume, and soundtrack. That’s because the movie is a tribute to the very experiential glam rock phase of the 1970’s, which involved the visuals of glitter and flashy clothes and even flashier music. The genderbender elements of the 1970’s were front row as well, adding to the authenticity of the experience of glam rock. Adding with the introduction of Curt Wild, the wild, grungy rock star that inspired Brian Slade to search for his own unique taste, then you’ve got a film with music for everyone. To me, this wasn’t a thought-provoking, profound movie. There isn’t some big conclusion that closes the book, but does there really need to be? Instead, I see this movie as a complicated, histrionic music video, which isn’t that hard to do because there are literal music videos and scenes shot with the right music to accompany it. So who cares if the story doesn’t make sense? At least Brian Slade will look fab doing it.

A film blog on Futureless Things:

In the first few minutes of “Futureless Things,” I thought we’d have a simple, lighthearted slice-of-life film that we deserved after the traumatizing “Trainspotting.” What we got was anything but, and I’m still not exactly sure I’ve followed the story right. From what I can tell given the dialogue and situations of the characters, “Futureless Things” follows the seemingly disconnected to tangently related stories of convenience store employees in South Korea. It follows a non-linear narrative structure to explore individual stories of social isolation of North Koreans, crushes, and the difficulty of making ends meet. Tragedy strikes when the store gets held up by armed robbers that destroy the palce. Upon finding out about the condition of the branch, a representative from the parent branch as well as a representative from the tax office both come over to talk to the store’s owner, whose mother earlier discovered his hanged body. The movie ends, however, with an earlier character who was an aspiring author looking for a job at the convenience store. We discover that he was hired by the convenience store after all, which implies that the stories we saw before are highly likely stories he created in his head.

The stories may seem disconnected besides taking place in a convenience store, but through the dialogue of different characters, we find out that they are all stories about both the every day and the great struggles of the working class in an economically challenged South Korea. In particular, their stories revolve around a working class who dreams of a life different from their own, such as the story of an aspiring actor who just wants to do well in his audition, to the life of a North Korea woman who just wants to escape her past, to an innocent clerk who just wanted to test his English at work (presumably to make himself more employable). What this does is show just how extensively problematic the economic situation of South Korea must have been to affect so many people in such different ways.

The non-linear narrative structure is a very tricky manner of storytelling because it can end up confusing audiences, weakening the overall impact of the big reveal these kinds of movies usually have. What “Futureless Things” does to prepare us for this is plant seeds of doubt at different stories that hint at the movie being a story within a story. The magical elements of the Box Girl story and how it concluded would be one, which was a disruptive story that especially broke away from the rest of the slice-of-life stories, which were all believable stories that could happen in real life. Another example would be the inconsistencies between how the aspiring actor guy and his boyfriend’s scene played out, the fact that it was the same set-up and the same lines, yet it took place at night. What I would like to explore or look out for on my second viewing would be further dialogue or events that further confirm the fact that the movie is a non-linear narrative of the underaged convenience store worker who wants to be an author.

What I would most want to watch out for during a second viewing, however, is the clock, because there were many shots of the clock on the wall, but I was unable to keep track of the time. This probably means something given the fact that the film starts off in the morning, specifically during opening hours, and then ends at night, at the literal end of operations. Though it ended firstly on a depressing note, then on a what-the-heck note, “Futureless Things” was still, for the most part, an easy film the average person can pick up and enjoy.

A film blog on Trainspotting:

Stories of addiction must always walk on a tightrope, because there is such a fine line between getting the point across and becoming preachy. While I am unsure of whether or not Danny Boyle, the director, envisioned Trainspotting (1996) to be an anti-drug film, its excellent execution of the lives of British heroin addicts continues to haunt viewers to this day to stay away from drugs. This is most likely because the film chooses to portray the addict life in a bold, daring way that many before it would never.

Let’s start with Mark, the main character. The movie’s use of Mark as a narrator puts us in the mind of a heroin addict, which many films would want to shy away from because it has to give screentime to the justifications addicts tell themselves, e.g. Mark’s monologue on people doing drugs just because it feels good. Despite knowing his motivations and his outlook on life, the film was created in such a way that we don’t root for him 100% of the time, nor anyone to be honest (except for innocent Tommy). But the film’s choice to only use Mark as the film’s narrator allows us to see how his outlooks change or stay the same over time with and without the influence of heroin addiction and its repercussions.

And we see just how disruptive of an influence heroin is on the lives of Mark’s friends as well, particularly with Tommy, who was the last of the bunch to get into heroin yet was the only one who contracted HIV, and with Allison and Sick Boy, whose baby’s death have shocked to the core given that they were shooting up when it happened. These, along with the reactions of characters to these situations (Allison asking for another hit to deal with the death of her baby, for one), viscerally show how addiction changes people.

Speaking of the influence of heroin, the film itself shines not just with the difficult situations the characters have to deal with, but also with its artistic telling of heroin-related scenes. From the rapid visual images whenever Mark and his friends would shoot up to Worst Toilet in Scotland scene wherein Mark imagines himself diving into a body of water to save the suppository he lost, these different scenes help remove ourselves from the sober orientation we naturally live in into the abnormal headspace I’m assuming addicts are in when they come into contact with their addiction (not necessarily just drug addicts).

This is especially most evident in Mark’s iconic withdrawal scene, which was perhaps the most disturbing part of the film because of the demon baby. This scene goes on for about six minutes, by the way. And I believe this decision to make the withdrawal scene go on for so long was deliberate as well, because just like the hallucinations Mark had in this scene, they just go on. He couldn’t control it, and neither could we. They were things we just had to get over together – the physical pain of withdrawal along with the psychological trauma and the guilt Mark had to deal with for disappointing his parents. And when we see all of these come crashing down on someone undergoing a withdrawal, it’s hard to imagine anybody who doesn’t feel the least bit sympathetic for the struggles recovering addicts have to go through.

Sometimes, it really makes you question if the film is disturbing because of what we see before our eyes, or because what we see is what’s out there.

And what I would say really gives these kinds of scenes the power that they have is the inclusion of scenes where the characters don’t feel the high, such as Mark’s depressing “It’s shite to be Scottish” rant or the fact that Tommy, of all people, was the one who contracted HIV and died.

Overall, this movie is powerful because it’s unafraid to do what it wants to do. Though I cannot promise I’ll watch the movie again because of how upsetting it was, I can only applaud Trainspotting for being such a well-done movie to scar me like this.

A blog post on Shin Godzilla:

Shin Godzilla was my very first Godzilla film, and I expected just another disaster film that ends with a cinematic shot of the destruction left behind. And while in essence, that is what we got with this film, to leave it as that would be a gross understatement of what the team was able to bring about given the already bloated lineup of the Godzilla franchise.

What’s perhaps the most notable creative decision in this disaster film is to turn it into a narrative of the ridiculousness of bureaucracy, and the film expresses this through different screen art elements. For example, its use of a shaky, first-person camera as the government officials move from one meeting to the next meeting help visualize the urgency they must feel given the danger of Shin Godzilla. The shots of the government officials moving to different offices for literally any meeting or of any specialist they needed to consult help further show us how much time is being wasted because of bureaucracy. Very early on, we are able to get this idea, which ends up in the back of our minds as the rest of the movie goes on, wondering how much better the situation could’ve been handled if it was addressed sooner.

I find this choice very appealing on the director’s end because when it comes to movies that do have a bureaucratic storyline or events in them, they tend not to show every meeting that goes on because it would waste time (except maybe Suicide Squad with all of Amanda Waller’s meetings, but I digress). The audience intuitively understands boardroom meetings happen, but we don’t necessarily understand what that means in the context of a disaster film. And while we might not have a giant lizard attacking us anytime soon (at least I hope), there is something unsettling about having such developed government systems like that of Shin Godzilla in place.

Critics noted that the timing of the film allowed it to serve as a cinematic metaphor not just with the history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, as many other Godzilla films prior to it have done, but also for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and the  Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that followed directly after. And it’s easy to see this from the visuals of Shin Godzilla itself, who was evolving before our eyes from adolescence into full-on kaiju, from the escalating-with-time physical rampage and the nuclear destruction Shin Godzilla ends with.

If we take this into consideration alongside the understanding that Japan is a very ordered, organized country and with the context of bureaucracy expressed in Shin Godzilla, then the choice of the film to explore Japanese politics at the time of crisis (e.g., the death of many government officials by Shin Godzilla’s nuclear blast) i.e., what society ought to do once the “safety net” of bureaucracy is taken away, dramatizes the story even further. From the perspective of a politician, we see the dialogue about needing to balance priorities and the implications on a politician’s PR when it comes to the aftermath. From the perspective of the average civilian, however, none of this matters. What they need is a solution, and they need it now.

As much as Shin Godzilla would be seen as a criticism of bureaucracy, I see it as well as a humanizing, or at the very least revelatory, effort on the parts of those in power, and how our distance from a situation tends to warp our understandings. The decisions politicians have to make, especially when it comes to balancing many competing interests, are difficult, and it’s easy for us, who see them from a distance, to demand them to do the “right thing.” On the converse, there are lives that are in mortal danger that the system just cannot account for when it should. What I loved about Shin Godzilla the most was that it made a disaster movie into a complex film, allowed for great, fruitful discussions to come about from the viewers.

For further viewing on issues of government red tape, international relations, and civilian casualties, I highly recommend “Eye in the Sky,” which explores the ethics of drone warfare and the civilian casualties it inevitably leaves behind. Watch it also because it’s Alan Rickman’s last live-action film appearance ever haha.

With a title like “Schizopolis,” you would think to expect the film to explore issues on a medicated society, schizophrenia, or anything about mental health. Instead, we got, well, Schizopolis. There really is no other way to describe the film besides using itself, because I’m pretty sure there’s no other film like it.

From its first scene, we can already see that. We see Soderbergh breaking the fourth wall by addressing an empty audience, claiming that Schizopolis is “the most important motion picture you will attend.” From this scene alone, it appears that the film doesn’t take itself particularly seriously. In hindsight, this should have been my first clue to not treat Schizopolis as any other movie because it greatly affected how I watched the film on first viewing. I learned to treat movies on their own terms, and that’s what I hope to do in this blog series throughout the semester.

Schizopolis is unique in its own right. It lives in its own world where it makes its own rules, telling the conventions of movie storytelling to take a hike. For example, Elmo Oxygen’s dialogue with women throughout the movie appears nonsensical to us, yet the characters themselves understand each other.

Another example would be Soderbergh and Brantley playing dual roles of Fletcher Munson & Korchek and Mrs. Munson & Attractive Woman #2, respectively. While dual roles aren’t unheard of (my first example that comes to mind being Cliff de Young playing Brad Majors and Farley Flavors in “Shock Treatment”), you don’t necessarily see them being utilized in such experimental ways such as through Schizopolis’s dialogue. In fact, Schizopolis’s usage of dialogue is quite fascinating because it forces the audience to think beyond what is being said to what is not being said, i.e. the actions and context of the dialogue taking place.

However, as inventive Schizopolis is with its own style, there is still a kind of recognizable structure we can make out. It has a three-act narrative structure which, upon watching act 3, we come to realize follows the lives of their characters from three different perspectives, namely Fletcher Munson, Korchek, and Mrs. Munson. For Munson, for example, we can recognize that his dialogue with his wife (“generic greeting,” “imminent sustenance,” and “semi-innocent query”) illustrate that he feels the mundanity of the routine of his life. As for Mrs. Munson, her dialogue with other men, wherein she speaks in English and they speak Japanese and Italian, is meant to illustrate the point that the men around her “speak different languages,” i.e. that they’re not on the same page.

Perhaps it is through the dialogue wherein the schizophrenic element (if we were to forget Elmo Oxygen’s random assassination attempt) behind the name “Schizopolis” comes into play: its removal from reality in terms of film conventions. And yet, we still (somewhat) understand what is being conveyed at times. You can tell from the way it was constructed that Soderbergh put in the considerable time, effort, and attention to detail to make sure that, while on face value it seems like nonsense, in terms of continuity and narrative structure, it actually does.

Or maybe I’m overthinking it and he just wanted to make a really weird film because he wanted to make a really weird film. Who knows? At least I enjoyed it.