Precious

Film review by: Witney Seibold

The full title is “Precious, Based on the Novel Push by: Sapphire.”

Clarise Precious Jones is morbidly obese. She is only 16, and pregnant with her second child. Both children were conceived by her father in a bout of greasy, incestuous rape. She is o.k. with numbers, but hasn’t learned to read or write. She lives with her ghoulish mother who forces her to eat, physically abuses her, and browbeats her at every opportunity. Her mother seems to genuinely hate her. She also lives on welfare, happy to not have to work. Precious, in a detail out of Toni Morrison, has fantasies of being thin and pretty. And white. Oh, Precious is also HIV positive. She is redeemed by a saintly teacher, a caring social worker, and a group of feisty at-risk peers who take her class with her.

When viewed cynically, the story of “Precious” sounds like every Afterschool special rolled into one. It hits all the hot buttons: eating disorders, teen pregnancy, AIDS, sexual abuse, physical abuse, illiteracy. It sounds like the ultimate TV melodrama, and one instantly pictures some weepy climax in which all the characters are simply redeemed through an unbelievable, touchy-feely session of psychobabbling therapy.

“Precious,” though, directed by Lee Daniels, and starring newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, has the fortunate feature of meaning what it says. There is not a whiff of cynicism or cheap melodrama. Daniels directs with a lot of handheld camerawork, lending the film an immediate raw style that overcomes any sense of falseness. What’s more, the acting is superb, and Daniels manages to get striking performances from some unexpected sources.

Sidibe, for instance, is a fat black girl who would ordinarily be ignored by most Hollywood filmmakers. She does not play Precious like a wounded lamb with a good heart. She plays Precious like a hurting human being with fantasies of escape, but no capacity to do so. Precious, we immediately see, is in need of rescue, but she is not a saintly avatar. She is a real person.

Precious’ saintly teacher, Ms. Rain is also not portrayed as a Christ-like redeemer, like in comparable teacher dramas. She is played by the pretty Paula Patton, and sees her own helping of others less as an altruistic imperative, and more as a utilitarian need. Here is a woman who sees damage, who has a limited ability to repair some of it, and does so as a part of her job. The same goes for the social worker Mrs. Weiss, played by, of all people, pop star Mariah Carey. Carey only has a few scenes, but manages to portray a woman with the world’s finest-tuned bullshit detector, and an instinctive need to undo the horrors around her, if not actually commit any acts of over-the-top heroic rescue.

We see, through Mrs. Weiss and Ms. Rain, that “Precious” is actually a drama about how well the system can work. There are, in place, institutions to aid people in the most horrible of situations. There are schools, there are social services, and there is potential for growth. I can think of no worse situation than that of Precious’, and she manages to overcome her personal horrors to escape in the best way possible. There are no miracles. There is just hard work and self-reliance. Sounding American yet?

The most impressive performance of all, though, comes from the least expected place. Comedienne Mo’Nique from “Phat Girlz” and “Soul Plane” plays Precious’ abusive, lazy, hateful mother, Mary. Mary is not a monster of the over-the-top cinematic type, who cackles and schemes, but an everyday monster who berates her child, resents the sexual attention she gets, lies to social workers to exploit the system, and one that is far more terrifying due to its reality. Mo’Nique has previously played broad comic types, and stultifyingly banal romantic comedy heroines. Who could have guessed she had such genuine darkness within her?

Mo'Nique: Human monster.

There are a few fantasy sequences that are a bit too much (Precious has a good-looking boyfriend and a career as a model in these fantasies), and some of the details of Precious’ abuse would have been more powerful if they were a touch less explicit. However, the film still manages to hit you in the gut, and be touching. It’s one of the better films I’ve seen this year.

The Box

Film review by: Witney Seibold

O, that old moral quandary: if you could push a button that would assure you vast personal wealth, but, simultaneously, take the life of a stranger somewhere in the world, would you? Richard Matheson’s original short story (on which “The Box” is based) is, like many of his stories, a mere academic ethical query with a sci-fi twinge. The reader is asked to make a hard decision alongside is protagonists, even though, upon reflection, such a real-life decision could never actually be posited.

Richard Kelly, the mastermind behind the very good “Donnie Darko” and the bugnuts insane “Southland Tales,” has now expanded Matheson’s story into a feature film. Not content to rest with the young couple and their button-pushing dilemma, though, Kelly has greatly expanded his universe to include the motives and identity of the man who offers the button.

It is the 1970s. Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) are living in relative comfort with their 10-year-old son. She is a teacher with six toes between her two feet. He is a NASA engineer with designs for astronautics. Despite taking place at the time and place Kelly was a child, this is not a halcyon world of dreamy idealistic nostalgia, however; Kelly seems to have allowed darkness to creep about in the air in free-floating pockets of paranoia.

Our young couple begins having job woes, which corresponds with the appearance of a mysterious stranger at their door with a wooden box, complete with a jolly, candy-like button on the top. The stranger is named Arlington Steward, and played by the indispensable Frank Langella, only with a large chunk missing from his face. I’m not giving much away to say that Norma pushes the button.

It’s at this point the story abandons its fun academic ethics, and begins to delve into some pretty strange territory. People appear to our young couple, hastily whisper cryptic lines of panicked, conspiracy-laden dialogue, and then collapse into nosebleed. Steward warned the couple not to investigate the nature of the box, but they manage to find books in the local library that explain the science of the thing. Eventually we turn our focus to Steward himself, and why he’s traveling the country offering all this money to couples who may or may not push a button, and how it links to some old experiments that NASA was doing a decade ago, and why the Mars lander has been shrouded in secrecy, and why some people have been lying about their identities, and why they’ve been getting nosebleeds… by the time the phrase “altruism coefficient” is uttered, you’ll be either lost, or incredulous.

This film resembled “Knowing” in that it uses science fiction to explain the divine.

I admire the big thoughts that Kelly seems to have, and appreciate that he’s eager to share them. I just wish he could do so in a more convincing and less insane fashion. “Southland Tales” is weird and unpleasant. “The Box” plays in a smaller field, but is still heavy with the end-of-the-world rigmarole that has been a theme in Kelly’s work. Perhaps in his next film, I hope, he’ll leave the fate of the world alone, and focus on humanity instead.

Black Dynamite

Film review by: Witney Seibold

Here is a satire so savvy that it almost – almost – looks like the real thing. Not content to merely call attention to the tenets and risible details of 1970s blaxploitation movies, director Scott Sanders, and star/screenwriter Michael Jai White (from “Spawn” of all things) have called into being a film largely untouched by time; the exact same level of performing, the exact same ridiculous plotting, the exact same fast-then-slow-then-fast pacing of a ‘70s flick, and, most impressively, the exact same shoddy photography and camerawork have all been invoked.

White plays Black Dynamite, a smooth mother, with unimpeachable skills in kung-fu, gettin’ bad guys, and lovin’ the ladies. He has huge pectoral muscles, an impeccable ‘fro, and a league of jive-talkin’ sidekicks who are ready to hop to. He’s an amalgam of all the familiar blaxploitation heroes (Shaft, Superfly, the Avenging Disco Godfather), and one would be tempted to say that he was exaggerating in his performance, but having seen a few blaxploitation movies in my day, he’s actually pretty spot-on. Indeed, when compared to the inimitable Rudy Ray Moore, white seems to be underplaying the role.

The story deliberately goes all over the place, and all points to a grand conspiracy involving drugs and malt liquor. Involved are a cocky pimp named Cream Corn (Tommy Davidson), a potentially corrupt cop (Kevin Chapman, taking on the John Saxon role), a concerned activist-cum-love interest (Salli Richardson), a Black Panthers-like uprising, and a visit to Kung Fu Island. The place where we eventually arrive, I will not dream of revealing.

Showdown on Kung Fu Island.

Strangely, it’s when “Black Dynamite” is trying to be broad and deliberately funny, that it begins to falter. There are moments of obvious slapstick, and a few lines of dialogue that take us out of the b-movie vibe that the director has tried so hard to establish; it’s a much funnier film when it’s being a solid style exercise. Case in point, there’s a scene early in the film where the boom mic dips into frame. That’s funny enough. Black Dynamite, while ranting, glances at it, making sure we see it. That’s fine too. Then he glances at it again, ensuring we get the joke. I think it would have been funnier to simply let the mic stay in frame without acknowledgement.

Satires work better, I think, when they stick to the subject at hand, and mock the conventions and details of their chosen victim. “Black Dynamite” is very nearly brilliant in its ability to do this. There are some sublime moments of extreme absurdity (Kung Fu Island?) that call to attention some of the brilliant shoddiness of an entire genre of filmmaking.

At the beating heart of the endeavor is Michael Jai White, an actor I had previously dismissed. White’s performance is perfect, his look and knack for genre dialogue is perfect, and his kung fu chops (pun intended) are unmatched. If he chooses to make more comedies in the future, I will be hopeful for them.

He's outta sight.

Jumper & Push

Film reviews by: Witney Seibold

I’m a teetotaler, so I must do things like watch Doug Liman’s “Jumper” (2008) and Paul McGuigan’s “Push” (2009) back-to-back to stretch myself to new extremes. I was hoping for an experience delirious and silly. Indeed that was what I got, but the films’ combined power did not get me as high as I had hoped.

Indeed, when looked at in a certain light, these two films are nearly identical. They both involve a small group of young people with specialized superpowers, and a group of government-sponsored elders trying to kill them. This seems like a flawed dynamic to me, as it flies in the face of most adolescent power fantasies; if you are a teenager who discovers they can read minds or teleport, surely you’d have fantasies of being a superhero, or at least an unstoppable hedonist. I don’t know about you, but my superpower fantasies never involve a shadowy government enclave trying to kill me.

(I have similar problems with “Harry Potter” and other recent children’s fantasy; why introduce this wonderfully wide and fantastical new world of magic and childhood glory, only to divide the characters into opposing sides and have them fight? It seems like a waste.)

But that’s as may be, as both “Jumper” and “Push” seem to trying to invent a new “mythology.” i.e. They want to, I think, begin entirely new franchises. With all the recent remakes and adaptations we’ve been seeing in American cinemas, I can give props to the makers fro trying to start from scratch. I admire that ambition. It’s a pity that neither film is very interesting.

I started with “Jumper.” Written by comic book adapter David S. Goyer (who did all three “Blade” movies, “The Crow: City of Angels,” the two most recent “Batman” films, and the excellent “Dark City”), and directed by Liman (who did the overrated “The Bourne Identity”), “Jumper” is about a teenage boy named David Rice (Max Thieriot at 15, Hayden Christensen at twentysomething) who discovers that he can teleport. He can just concentrate on a certain place and, SWIZ!, he’s there. As a teenager, he thinks to do what most teenagers would probably think: he runs away from his horrible father (Michael Rooker) and becomes a bank thief.

We catch up with David when he’s in his twenties and living the Life of Reilly. Thanks to his teleporting, he’s constantly covered for money. He picks up women in British pubs, goes surfing in Bali, and has lunch on the head of the Sphinx, all in the same morning. Adjustments for time differences aren’t handled too well in this film, but I’m guessing he keeps a close eye on the time. David is very thin and cut and good-looking, which is baffling as he is so lazy that he teleports around the room, and even a few inches away to pick up a remote control rather than move.

David has been having run-ins with a creepy fellow named Roland. Roland is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who turns in one of the weirdest performances I have seen. He seems to be channeling latter-day Nicolas Cage in this film. That his hair is bleached milk white doesn’t help things. Roland is part of a shadowy group called Paladins who, for reasons that are completely obscure, live to hunt down and kill people who can teleport. Yes, there are many people with teleporting powers in this universe, and there are other people who have nifty gadgets to kill them.

Ah kih yew!

Having this “villain” dynamic would be fine, were David anything of a “hero.” David is not a hero. He is seen early in the film watching a new report of people in peril, and I think we’re supposed to note that he does nothing to help them. By the end of the film, he’s still not helping people, choosing to continue his life of hedonism. Why does this guy need “villains” chasing him? Perhaps he’s the villain? Hm… No, the film is not that complex.

David teleports back to his hometown to meet up with his old crush Millie (Rachel Bilson from “The O.C.”), and fly her away to Rome. Yes, they actually get on a plane this time. The Millie character is supposed to introduce an element of risk into the story; we finally learn what David’s vulnerability is. This substory, however, reveals the central weakness of “Jumper” and that is the acting of the two leads. Christiansen is bland and wooden, and seems to have no facial expressions. I said this of his performance in “Star Wars II,” but it’s true here as well: he looks like a model who is acting at gunpoint. Christiansen has given a good performance in “Shattered Glass,” but that was a character that played to his strengths. He shouldn’t play tough guys; he’s more suited to sniveling liars. Give him the Philip Seymour Hoffman role, and we’ll see him shine.

Christiansen’s performance, though shine when set into comparison to Rachel Bilson who has two large, pretty eyes and not a single thought behind them. David seems to be in love with Millie, but I can’t see why anyone would want to be around this whiny, soporific L.A. brat. I’ve not seen any of her work on “The O.C.,” but Bilson is perfectly bland in this film. Her face is like a giant pretty unmoving cookie.

I'm blander than you.

Eventually David also meets up with another teleporter named Griffin (Jamie Bell). Griffin knows all about the Paladins, and is determined to stay hidden, and gets pissed off whenever David shows up. The two eventually form an alliance, but not before having a really spectacular chase scene that involves the entire world. The chase is the best part of the film. There’s then a big fight scene between the jumpers and the paladins and whatever.

This house is clean.

Superhero films rarely deal with the practical applications of superpowers, and “Jumper” goes out of it way to avoid answering any questions. The early scenes are refreshingly direct, in that they show what a young superpowered person would really do with their powers (with great power comes no responsibility, if you will). But I resented their attempts to make me care about a vast conspiratorial story arc. When “Jumper 2” is eventually made, I’ll probably skip it.

Oh, and Diane Lane is in this film as David’s mom. She is in two scenes. I would have rather seen a film about her character, starring Lane.

So yeah, “Jumper” is every bit as shallow and as pretty and and dumb as you would expect it to be. It’s perfectly suited to a certain brand of angry, ignorant nerd who prefers complex mythologies and canon over strong character, original story, or groundbreaking ideas within the genre.

In comparison, “Push” is much better. Which is to say, sadly, it’s still not very good.

Directed by Paul McGuigan, (“Lucky Number Slevin,” “Wicker Park”), “Push” tries to set up a far more complicated mythology than “Jumper,” and while that mythology is baffling, and the story so complex as to be confusing, we at least get a large cast of talented actors in varied roles. We can never be sure at times who is working for what side (and since certain character have the psychic powers to change someone’s intentions, it gets even more confusing), but at least we have actors that make us believe they’re fighting for something.

So here’s the setup: In the ‘60s, the government performed experiments on certain children, enhancing their psychic powers. These children could each do one of the following: intuit locations, see the future, change the intentions of others, move objects with their minds, make people’s heads explode. Each had a respective nickname like pushers, readers, screamers, laughers, jumpers. …Oh wait.

The children of those children have now grown up, and are either operating within the same government institution, or they are hiding from it.

Our main character is hiding in Hong Kong. He is Nick Gant (Chris Evans), and he is a telekinetic. It’s unclear as to why this film takes place in Hong Kong, but it does add some much-needed color to the surroundings. One morning he is visited by a 12-year-old who can see the future. This is Cassie, and she is played by Dakota Fanning, who, despite her scoffed-at “It”-girl status, is a terrific young actress, and only seems to be improving with age. Cassie warns Nick that one Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou) is trying to kill his ex-girlfriend Kira (Camilla Belle sexy). Both Henry and Kira have “pushing” powers, in that they can psychic make people do things.

Kira was given an experimental drug that makes her powers stronger, but kills most psychics. The bulk of “Push” is a race against time to find Kira, and, once they find her, to outwit Henry and take down his institution once and for all. Is the institution evil? Ever seen a film where a shadowy government institution wasn’t? There are some psychic battles that are kind of fun, especially when one can float guns through the air.

Ah kih yew too! (Two evil governemt institutions run by two cool black gys in two different movies? Hm...)

Some of the conceits in this film are very clever. For instance, how do you trick someone who can read minds, see the future, and change your intentions? One sequence involves a cleverly set up series of envelopes and erased memories. The film would have been grand, had it just been a “Memento” style chase of notes left to oneself.

There is also a complicated plot involving the local Triad, and players on all three sides are constantly trying to outwit one another. The psychic powers in this film are so complicated and frustratingly vague, though, that it’s really hard to tell what’s going on most of the time. We are introduced to other characters played by Ming-Na Wen, Neil Jackson, and Cliff Curtis, but I won’t spend more time in this labyrinth explaining what they do.

I did kind of like “Push,” especially in the light of “Jumper,” which was a children’s film in comparison. I liked the acting all around (Fanning especially), and I was fond of the characters, however vague they were at times. I cannot, however, recommend it, as it’s baffling and self-indulgent. It’s fine to have a complex story, and I don’t even object to a setup for a sequel, but it’s obvious when you’re trying to create a “mythology.”

Here’s a tip for all you aspiring screenwriters and authors of fantasy fiction: If you want to create a fantasy “mythology,” start with a human character that we can relate to. Give them a life and a backstory and intentions and human qualities. Let us know how they feel about being superpowered and how they’ve been dealing with it. Don’t bother with complex plotting; a plot is not better just because it has a lot of ins and outs. It can be (See David Mamet), but it rarely works.

Cmailla Belle-Sexy, star of "Push."

Thirst

Film review by: Witney Seibold

Park Chan-Wook begins his new vampire movie “Thirst” with an intense philosophical promise, and then allows it to peter out into a melodramatic grand guignol of twisted domesticity. Taken by themselves, the two separate halves are amazing. Together, the film is a little mismatched and disappointing.

Let me explain: “Thirst” deals with the moral, philosophical and theological implications of a Catholic priest becoming a vampire. How does one drink blood without harming anyone? If one volunteers their blood, is it still wrong to drink it? The priest in question, Hyong (Kang-ho Song) finds a perfect solution in feeding, briefly, off of the comatose patients in the hospital where he volunteers his services as a holy man. If he doesn’t feed, a horrible disease starts to break out all over his skin. Sunlight indeed does burn him.

Hyong did not become a vampire through any attack; he received a transfusion of tainted blood. Here is a good man, indeed a man of the cloth, who, through no fault or flaw of his own, became an unholy, parasitic creature of the night. He was only trying to do good. This seems to be a common theme of Park’s films: people who are visited with the most horrible of wrathful punishments through innocent attempts at virtue and normalcy. Your small attempts at any sort of action, unless enacted with the utmost Nietzschian passion, will be crushed by the iron fist of everyday human cruelty and unforeseeable circumstance. If you haven’t seen Park’s “Oldboy,” I encourage you to.

I digress. A bonus to our priest’s vampirism is that his libido seems to skyrocket, and he begins to attract the intense sexual attention of a childhood friend’s wife (Ok-vin Kim). If you are a vampire, and you already need blood to survive, would breaking a vow of chastity and sleeping with a married woman be permissible? How do the moral rules change if you are not human anymore? Would you turn the woman you have fallen in love with into a vampire as well? Would you both go to Hell? What if she really begged, and seemed elated at the prospect of being a being of sex and death? Can a vampire go to heaven?

The first two thirds of the film are harsh and unflinching and wicked and ask good questions. Sadly, the film does not continue down that path. Indeed, the film seems to tack on an entire extraneous act where the vampire and his new woman are living in horrible sin, and seems to forget all its own fascinating religious setup. Plus, we never learn where the tainted blood came from. Why did a cloistered medical monastery have vampire blood on hand anyway? We never learn.

“Thirst” is still a lot more fascinating, sexy (the second sex scene is one of the more intense in recent memory), and bloody than many recent vampire films. It asks mature and heady questions, even though it never bothers to follow through with them. It’s a good film, but the genre has a new high bar, thanks to “Let the Right One In.”  Park is capable of more, though, and I will continue to see his films.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Film review by: Witney Seibold

While first-time feature director Grant Heslov’s film “The Men Who Stare at Goats” begins with the captioned bit o’ Godardian trickery “More of this is true than you would believe,” the film is not as playful as it could have been. Not as much as, say, Charlie Kaufman could have made it, at any rate. That’s not to say that it’s not a quickly-paced, light-hearted amusing film. Plus it’s loaded with terrifically funny performances by some undeniably talented actors. The subject matter is also quite entertaining, as – wouldn’t you know it? – more of it is true than you would believe.

A small-town reporter named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) has just split with his pretty wife, and is determined to make something of his life. He goes to Iraq, hoping to cover the war, but instead, has a run-in with a mysteriously creepy ex-soldier named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Cassady ends up telling Wilton about a secret mission he’s on, and how it’s connected to his old days in the army.

Those old days? Cassady was the star pupil in a 1980s Cold War program that was training soldiers to hone and employ special psychic powers for use on the enemy. They find that they may be able to levitate, read minds from across the world, and, giving the film its namesake, stare at goats until they die. In flashback, we meet some of the men responsible for this program, most notably, the program’s superhippie founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, not far from his role in “The Big Lebowski”). We see the halcyon developments of various soldiers, as well as some bubbling resentments, mostly held by the bitter Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). Eventually, the program was dismantled.

This doesn’t mean, though, that Cassady has given up on his old skills, and shows off some dubious skills to Wilton as they get more and more lost in the desert.

This is an absurd setup, the direction is breezy, and much of the film is a hoot, inducing a few uncontrollable giggles here and there. Even if this weren’t partially a true story, it would still be fascinating to see such talented actors enacting such a wonderfully silly conceit.

But perhaps that breeziness also works to the film’s detriment. Since it moves so quickly, Heslov seems to have felt the need to include more story than is really necessary. The most amusing parts are all told in flashback, and the modern-day story seems almost like an afterthought. I would have much rather seen the same actors using a similar tone, telling a straightforward biography of the (true-to-life) U.S. Army’s need to include a psychic soldier force.

Plus, if you’re going to have a sad-sack reporter who has lost his wife, and is ready to believe a man who says he has psychic powers (and, what’s more, follow him into the Iraqi desert on a wild goose chase), then you ought to cast someone who can play “defeated” better than Ewan McGregor. I usually admire McGregor’s work, but here, he seems to be playing a dry role for laughs. Plus, he’s broken out again with his familiar American accent, which, in this role, serves as a hindrance; I would have rather seen him as a put-upon Scot (even though his real-life counterpart was American).

I think I will recommend this film, for Clooney, Spacey, and Bridges especially, and all of the old-time psychic training sequences. The films denouement, and entire modern-day storyline is, unfortunately, largely dispensable. As a whole, though, it’s amusing.

Zombieland

Film review by: Witney Seibold

A warning: I will discuss a plot point about this film’s ending. It’s a minor point, but could still be seen as a “spoiler” to some. For the most part, though, I will keep the film’s surprises a secret.

Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland” is one of the best times I’ve had at the movies this year. It is slick, funny, just clever enough, and, most importantly, tasteful.

Let me explain what I mean by “tasteful,” as I’m describing a movie about a zombie apocalypse. In most slasher films of the last decade, and in zombie films in particular, the filmmakers have felt a need to eventually, once they cut through the survivalist stuff, and once they’ve finished telling the jokes, to get “serious.” They usually do this by killing off characters, and making sure we, the audience, still know the stakes are high. This can work, but rarely does. Case in point: I recently saw a rather well-made 2006 comedy/slasher film called “Hatchet.” The film, while bloody and spooky, is played for laughs, and all the characters are broad comic archetypes. All fine so far, but the film, in trying to make itself “edgy,” and “serious,” reaches a point where it begins killing off everyone.

I submit that, as a filmmaker, you cannot kill off everyone unless you’ve gone to the length of having us care about the characters, and making us believe that they may make it out of their situation alive. Only then will your ending be edgy and pessimistic. This is why all those recent horror remakes have been so bad and unnecessary: we already know about the fate of the heroines; we don’t care about them anymore.

“Zombieland” knows it’s a comedy, and keeps its mood light. We care about the characters enough to see them live, and makes sure we do. Yes, the characters all live in “Zombieland,” and thank goodness. Fleischer didn’t feel the need to be “serious.” He let us have our heroes, and let them have their triumphs.

The setup: A onetime reclusive twentysomething (Jesse Eisenberg) is one of the few survivors of a zombie apocalypse. He has a list of rules that has kept him alive, most of which are funny, but refreshingly practical. Rule #1, for instance, is to do plenty of cardio. Zombies, after all, will keep running after you, so you should be in good shape. On the road, he runs into a grizzled survivalist type played by, in a stroke of casting genius, Woody Harrelson. Since forming connections can be dangerous in a survivalist situation, they refer to one another by their hometowns. Eisenberg is called Columbus, and Harrelson is called Tallahassee.

The two eventually become something resembling friends, especially after they are robbed by “Wichita” (Emma Stone from “The House Bunny”) and “Little Rock” (Abigail Breslin). Tallahassee is pissed at being robbed, but when Columbus looks at Wichita, all sees is a potential love interest.

These people are all upbeat and friendly, still obsessed with their cute personal concerns than they are with the burden of being among the final people on Earth. I like to imagine that this aloof, humorous attempt at gallows humor would be the way I would personally stay alive, should I find myself the survivor of a zombie apocalypse. These people are surrounded by death, but the film is kept afloat by the juxtaposed practicalities of their situation. When it comes time to find a place to hide out, our heroes, perfectly logically, decide to drive to a posh mansion in the Hollywood Hills, occupied by a famous movie star. Why not, right? This sequence involves a cameo from a famous movie star whose identity I would not dream of revealing.

Please do see “Zombieland.” I loved it. It is so much damn fun.

Michael Jackson’s This is It

Film review by: Witney Seibold

I felt the same way you did. Surely, I felt, this documentary, compiled of rehearsal footage of Michael Jackson’s announced final tour, would be an exploitation; a cynical way to recoup the losses of Jackson’s untimely death. It would be a way to exploit the celebrity death cult and turn Jackson’s mere lionization into an outright sainthood. Would there be any possible way, I asked myself, to make a film, so soon on the heels of Jackson’s death, the least bit tasteful?

I am happy to report that – despite a few moments of dancers gushing about what a god Jackson was, and a pre-credits memorial still – Kenny Ortega’s film is a tasteful look at a hard-working entertainer. It manages to capture not just the raw talent of a pop legend, but also allows the moments of complaints, the screw-ups, and a few moments of Jackson behaving like a prima donna (“This mic is like a fist in my ear!”), unfold with an unexpected naturalness.

In addition to showing what a spectacular show this concert was to be (it was to incorporate a full-size 3-D movie screen, fireworks, and several dozen dancers and musicians onstage), “This is It” also throws in a lot of  the show’s set list, mixing in completed music videos, and makes tactful pauses for entire musical numbers.

Look at Jackson. He was 50 years old when this film was hot, and still moves like a professional dancer. He says at a few points that he is not singing because he’s trying to “save his voice” for the show, but on more that one occasion, belts out with one of his hits because he can’t help himself. He is seen tirelessly working with his tam of dancers (all of which are, lithe, talented, and utterly amazing) and choreographing down to the last wrist flick. He works with his backup singers, supporting them, and making sure they have the chops to be on stage with him.

And we see him, most entertainingly, bickering with his band, giving some abstruse directions like “play it like you just got out of bed.” His band is a motley crew of incredibly talented individuals, including a buff, porn star-looking guitarist named Tommy Organ, a cutesy 24-year-old Aussie chick with the chops of Steve Vai named Orianthi Panagaris, and a cocky keyboardist credited as Mo Pleasure.

Jackson was a professional. When we think of Michael Jackson, we immediately think of the freaky stories: The lawsuits, the oxygen tank, the bones of The Elephant Man, the strange menagerie of animals, the personal amusement park. “This is It” shows that he was an artist as well, and a consummate performer.

Since “This is It” was a film only of rehearsals, and not of the finished product, we’re not seeing Jacko operating at the height of his talents, which is a pity, as the concert promised to be something amazing. Luckily, seeing the man work, we get a full sense of what kind of performer he was, what kind of man he was, and what a loss it was when he died.

Thanks for the years of entertainment, Michael. Thanks for this classy and unexpected document, Ortega.

Stacy (2001)

Film review by: Witney Seibold

Be sure the read the essay that comes enclosed with your video of Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s “Stacy.” It explains the Japanese concept of “moé.” Moé can be described as the passionate sexual obsession that adult males hold for the ultra-cute, non-existant fantasy schoolgirls often seen in manga and anime. It is moé that has grown men buying used underpants from vending machines. Watch some of the non-porn work of AV idol Sora Aoi, or Satoshi Kon’s brilliant anime “Perfect Blue” to get a more powerful illustration of this.

“Stacy” is a largely typical Japanese zombie film, but has a few unexpected twists, most notably that the zombies are returning from the dead not because they are wrathful or hungry or damned to roam the Earth, but because they are so full of love. That’s why they want to eat people: they love them so much.

In the future, beautiful teenage girls (usually aged 15 or 16), experience a weeks-long period of irrepressible blissful happiness (called NDH or Near-Death Happiness in the film), at the end of which they die for no discernable reason. They then sit back up as zombies, wanting to eat the flesh of the living, and can only be killed by cutting them into 164 separate pieces. Teenage girls the world over make pact with their families to be repeat-killed by someone they care about. For those who can’t kill their zombie daughters, the government has enlisted a new zombie-killing task force. Also around are illegal, underground zombie killers-fro-hire, also made up of teenage girls. The most popular tool for cuttin’ up zombies is a hand-mounted chainsaw cleverly named Bruce Campbell’s Right Hand 2.

The zombies are coated with a blue powder called, if I recall, Magic Butterfly Powder. The powder glows when they are experiencing true love.         A puppeteer is enlisted by a cute schoolgirl to kill her. Her infectious happiness affects his work, and he begins writing a script about a glorious future where all men will have loving teenage lovers. A mad scientist does experiments on corpses, and a cutsey cadre of zombie fighters undermines the government’s efforts of do their own zombie-slaying.

The story is pretty dumb, and it jumps around so much it’s hard to tell what’s going on a lot of the time. Characters are given elaborate introductions, and are them abandoned. Critical character traits are hidden until the last minute, making people’s motivations frustratingly oblique for the length of the film. One actress plays two characters, although I was unclear as to the function of this. And, it turns out in the end, some of the zombies are psychically linked, or something. There is no purpose for this detail.

Most disturbing, though, it the film’s message. Teenage girls are so full of love, that they must eat the older men who love them. Projecting this intense love onto the teenage girl is a tactic I have heard used by real-life pedophiles trying to explain their obsession with underage girls. It is not base lust, but an intense, overwhelming love of beautiful young things that drives them. It’s kind of disturbing to see this thinking put into a movie so unfettered or uncensored. In the film’s epilogue, It is said, in dialogue, that eventually the teen girl zombies will stop attacking people, take lovers, and breed a new master race. The script our puppeteer friend wrote becomes the new Bible, and the world is now populated by happy older men with loving zombie sex slaves. This is presented as halcyon, bright, and utopian. If given any amount of thought, this ending is really icky.

I wonder if Tomomatsu is a pedophile himself. Perhaps. Perhaps the concept of moé is, in Japan, more of a cultural observation than a mode of thinking, and is not one espoused or condoned by the filmmaker. Perhaps I’m overthinking a cheesy zombie flick that was shot on the cheap (on video no less), and is clearly more interested in bizarre images like a girl in a bunny suit wielding a chainsaw.

King Frat (1979)

Film review by: Witney Seibold

In 1979, in the wake of the success of “Animal House,” came a similar frat-boy raunch film that dispensed with John Landis’ cogency, sympathy, decency, and good taste. Gone were Bluto’s witty, Wilde-ian bon mots, and the classy nature of a mature drinking class. Jettisoned were the cosmopolitan characters, the tasteful, mature views of sex, the religious respect for the tenets of education, and the caring we felt for the fat, drunk, and stupid fratboys.

In 1979, the world was treated to Ken Wiederhon’s “King Frat.”

How do I describe “King Frat?” I’m not sure I can. Falling somewhere in the idiom of an “Animal House” ripoff, a limp imitation of a ZAZ spoof, and a Harmony Korine essayic dissection of lower-class criminals, “King Frat” follows a few oily and bloated alcoholic characters who go through revoltingly unconnected trials with no particular story arc, and not climax and no lessons whatsoever. It’s like the highlights reel from a forgotten sitcom where fart jokes, blow-up dolls, occasional nudity were allowed on primetime.

The film takes place at a college called Yellowstream University. Yes, that’s supposed to induce thoughts of urine. We meet the residents of the Pi Kappa Delta fraternity house. The mugging of the actors and the timing of their line delivery would have you believe that they are comic heroes in a comic film, but see the details of their life quickly leads one to see that they are extras from a Marquis de Sade novel. The star of the PiKaps is J.J. Gumbroski, better known as Grossout (played by the 42-year-old actor John DiSanti, clearly standing in for John Belushi). The aptly named Grossout lives in a constant state of inebriation, cooks meals with jockstraps and bug poison, fucks a talking blow-up lovedoll, and is famous for his farting.

The film gets started when it is announced that Yellowstream is hosting a farting contest.

…A farting contest.

The prize is $500. The PiKaps will be able to buy so much beer with that money. Grossout begins training (gulp), and is given horrible concoctions from the PiKaps “brains,” Tommy (Roy Sekoff, who look a lot like R. Crumb), and the frat house’s RA, the decidedly un-Indian Chief Latrine (the decidedly un-Indian Dan Chandler). The Chief character is so offensive, it’s hard to tell if the filmmakers were attempting to be shocking, were insensitive, or were perhaps playing a subtle parody of racist attitudes.

That’s kind of the story: Grossout attend farting contest. The contest itself is judged by volume, and the device used to gauge the loudness of the entrants’ flatulence is built from a Simon game.  Grossout is threatened by the appearance of an ex-girlfriend, whom he knows has the loudest farts this side of the Pecos. Backstage, a dog drinks Grossout’s magic fart juice, and farts so hard it is propelled into the air. The filmmakers actually tossed a real dog into the air for this little gag. Grossout is eventually disqualified for “drawing mud.”

Screw you, movie.

But this is only the first half of the film. The reat of the film follows what I can only assume is an extended epilogue, in which other nonsensical things happen. Some of the PiKaps take an 18-year-old pledge to a brothel to lose his virginity. Another goes to spy on women in a gorilla suit, which leads to a trip to the hospital where a man’s penis gets stuck inside a woman’s vagina (don’t ask). There’s an early scene in which, while stones, some of the PiKaps accidentally steal the corpse of the school’s president. Eventually, the PiKaps are brought to trial for crimes against humanity, but get off because they can blackmail the judge! Triumph of the little guy!

There’s a subplot (?) about the school’s militant new president (Dan Fitzgerald) who is hellbent on taking down the PiKaps. I would have just called the police.

The PiKaps’ home is a rundown horror with holes in the walls, no paint, and, even watching it in the movie, I could smell the stale human fluids wafting from the walls. I always thought people liked these tales of drunken fratboys because it offers them a comfortaing place to be. There is nothing comforting or liberating about the PiKaps’ lifestyle. It’s a fantasy world of horror and debauchery and desperation.

Indeed, the film is so unfunny, it starts to become an object lesson after a while. Here is a comedy with no funny moments. A drama with no suspense, structure, or climax. An ensemble piece with no sympathy for any character. Even the penis jokes fall flat. It’s really quite fascinating.

Previously, director Wiederhorn did the best underwater Nazi zombie film ever made with “Shock Waves.” He went on to make “Night of the Living Dead Part II,” And “Meatballs Part II.”