The original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the best horror films ever made, and one of my favorite films of any genre. It has been ripped off, referenced, appreciated or appropriated over 27 times according to it’s Wikipedia entry, and has inspired many of the best (and worst) horror films that came after it. Even the much-maligned 1986, 1990, and 1994 TCM sequels have inspired today’s horror fims - Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses manages to reference almost all of them, for example - and each still has a group of fans that love the movies for the manic, hi-larious splatterfests that they are. In keeping with the modern trend of remaking EVERY movie that I love (I’m looking at you again, Rob Zombie, and you too, SciFi), in 2003, Marcus Nispel directed a completely awful remake of the original TCM.
I wouldn’t say that I had high hopes for the recently-released prequel TCM: The Beginning, but “Hey!” I said, “This one’s produced by Tobe Hooper! It promises to give insight into the horrific events that led to the terrible crimes of the Sawyer (or, apparently, Hewitt) family! It’s the only damn horror movie out right now!”

Oh, foolish horror fan that I am - when will I learn.

Like the 2003 remake, TCM: The Beginning tries to compete with the 1974 TCM’s wholly original, low-budget inspired combination of really, truly scary visuals (the bones! that shot of leatherface slamming the steel doors! the creepy dark corners of the house with the Texas sun streaming into the windows!) and black humor with 2006 big-studio-budget glossiness and gore.

Instead of being a piss-poor prequel, this movie is content with being yet another piss-poor remake of the original - or maybe, a piss-poor remake of the recent (you guessed it, piss-poor) remake? The mind boggles. Either way, this film does not, repeat, NOT, show you how this family got so damn crazy. As the film starts, we see a gigantic woman give birth on the floor of that famous Texas meatpacking facility. The baby looks weird (but not too weird - harelips can be fixed these days), so they throw it in the trash, where it’s picked up by a CRAZY lady who happens to be dumpster-diving for some delicious spoiled meat. Then, during the opening credits, we learn that

1. as he grew up, baby Leatherface had problems in school
2. he was into self-mutilation (he was a cutter before cutters were cool)
3. he got a job at the meatpacking plant (big shocker, that)
4. he liked to cut animals up (again, big surprise)
5. everybody except his family cleared the hell out of town for some reason

This 3-minute sequence, my friends, is what would have made a halfway decent movie fit to be called Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - but as it is, after the credits, all we learn is that the family has resorted to cannibalism (why? I don’t know, but as R. Lee Ermey repeatedly says, “By God, we’ll never go hungry again!” ) and that young Tommy is 1) huge; 2) already wearing a mask; and 3) TOTALLY CRAZY.

Characters

From an interview with director Jonathan Liebesman:

For Liebesman, it was crucial his characters were more than just fodder for Leatherface. “I think every horror filmmaker tries their best not to do that. It’s at the top of your priorities because the kills mean more, the scares mean more, if you care about the plight of the characters. Everything’s going to mean more and be more frightening because you are going to be in the characters’ skin and frightened for them, and you’re not going to want things to happen to them. That’s important to any filmmaker.”

Sorry, Jonathan - All your hard work was for naught, because I couldn’t have cared less about these awfully written characters. The heroes of the movie are two couples - an older dark-haired brother who is about to return for another tour in the ‘Nam and his brunette tougher-than-she looks girlfriend, and a younger blonde brother who is afraid to tell his older bro that he’s a draft-dodger (with his blonde non-character girlfriend). The less said about them, the better, seriously.

R. Lee Ermey, is - well, he’s goddamn R. Lee Ermey, and just what the hell are you going to do about that? Ermey, as Sherrif Hoyt, was one of the good additions to the 2003 remake, and he’s just as dependable here in the same role (the man is a true genius at playing asshole soldiers, asshole ex-soldiers, asshole cops, and, apparently, asshole ex-soldier fake-cop cannibals). Unfortunately, his character is the only one of the entire bunch that really has a personality, and even R. Lee at his hammiest can’t carry the movie.

How about everybody’s favorite massive freak, Leatherface? Vern from AICN sums it up best:

This “Thomas Hewitt” Leatherface is NOT the same character as the Leatherface/Bubba Sawyer/Junior we know from the original movies. Those Leatherfaces had personality. There’s the frightened, squealing retard of the original, the bashful, girl-crazy one from part 2, the walkman-toting teenage rebel of part 3.

As Vern says, this Leatherface is about as boring as a mute, 7-foot tall, chainsaw-wielding, masked madman can be - and one that ventures way too close to invulnerable super-creep Jason territory. If the director had shown us scenes of young Tommy getting bullied (instead of having brief voiceovers about it in the opening credits), or looking longingly at his aunt’s dresses, or making a dagwood sandwich, or masturbating to McCall’s magazine, or doing ANYTHING besides hulking silently, I would have had some reason to think about his character - why he is who he is, and the cruelty of children or society or whatever. Some attempts are made to make you feel sorry for the guy - he’s referred to a couple of times as an animal - but it’s really hard to feel compassion for a big pouting superman.

Big Complaint Number One:

The Hitchhiker (a character from the original TCM films), was sorely missing from this movie as well as from the 2003 remake. I have to wonder why the filmmakers decided to leave him out of either movie - but especially why he wasn’t in this one? The Hitchhiker’s giggling, apshit brand of insanity would have really added to the boring family’s collective personality, and maybe given back a little of the extremely black humor of the original (or, at the very least, the completely unabandoned wackiness of the original 3 sequels). Also, I always thought of the army-green wearing HH as Hooper’s commentary on the lost, unhinged vets that were streaming back to the states in the 70’s. This could have been used to great effect as a nice contrast to the upright, good-guy Vietnam vet character here, but no dice.

Big Complaint Number Two

The worst sin of this movie, in my opinion, is completely squandering the crazy biker-gang characters it halfheartedly introduces. Look: if we see an entire crazy gang of doped-up bikers menacing our heroes, that entire gang BETTER come looking for their missing leader - if nothing else, this would give a great opportunity for more gore and a lot of extra-creative deaths. Instead, only poor Tobias Beecher comes callin’, and is completely wasted in his tiny role.

Don’t Bother

With a complete absence of the real scares and laughs that I still get from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this prequel completely misses the mark in my book - but it also falls short of the goals that the filmmakers set for themselves. From an R. Lee Ermey interview on the movie:

Let’s put it this way: we did the remake and there were some things in there that needed to be cleared up. There were some questions raised. What happened to Uncle Monty’s legs for instance? Why was he in that old wooden wheelchair? Sheriff Hoyt, how did he lose his front teeth? For that matter, how in the hell did Sheriff Hoyt, such a perverted individual, ever become a sheriff in the first place? Leatherface, how did he come about? Did a crow crap him out on a hot rock and the sun hatch him out? How did he evolve into what he is? We answer those questions. It was fun answering those questions.

All due respect to R., but they answered the questions I really didn’t give a shit about (How did Monty lose his legs? How did Hoyt lose his teeth?), the ones that would have been better left unanswered (How did Hoyt become a sheriff?), but completely failed to answer the question that the movie’s title begs - How did this family begin their descent into madness, and how did they evolve? Sure, it would be better to leave it all ambiguous - that was one of the reasons the original was so damn scary - but if you’re going to make the damn movie, at least deliver what you’re advertising. Or, you know, stop remaking good movies already.

The first film by director Nimród Antal, Kontroll takes place entirely underground, in the tunnels and flourescent light of the Budapest Metro. Bulcsú, the film’s confused hero, works as a ticket inspector (apparently, the Metro works on an honor system - no turnstiles) with his “gang” — narcoleptic Muki, tiny Lecsó, new guy Tibi, and the ancient Professor. They have run-ins with an endless stream of hostile customers, get their asses kicked on a regular basis, feud with a rival gang of inspectors led by the über-asshole Gonzo - basically, it’s a job with few perks. For entertainment, the inspectors play an even crazier version of chicken - racing from platform to platform, down the tracks, in between speeding trains. Meanwhile, it seems like more and more people are jumping to their death in front of trains (”how inconsiderate”, sniff the inspectors), but it might actually be the work of a super-pushy and mysterious hooded killer. So what kind of misfit would do this for a living?

Well, it’s a perfect job for Bulcsú, who never leaves the tunnels, instead sleeping against a pillar after the last train passes and living on food from vending machines. His past is briefly mentioned when he runs into a well-dressed former colleague, who misses Bulcsú and refers to the important work (of some kind) he did in the past. In an American version, there would undoubtedly be long expositions and flashbacks detailing the tragedy that sent Bulcsú underground, but here – thankfully – the details are left to the imagination.

Along the way, Bulcsú tells jokes with Béla, the Metro’s wise, drunk old trainman, gets caught up in the mysterious hooded killer drama, and meets a crazy girl in a …bear costume who might be weird enough to get him back into the real world. Is the mysterious hooded killer just that - a random weirdo - or is he something else? Are the owls what they seem?

The actors actually “look like real people” (thanks, chanchan!), and extra-weird ones at that, and they do a great job at fleshing out these strange-but-loveable characters. Kontroll is well-paced, suspenseful, hilarious, and very, very well-made, and it does a damn good job at being several genres rolled into one.

As someone who is pretty intimately acquainted with the inner workings of art school, I loved the original Art School Confidential, a four page story in Daniel Clowes‘ Eightball #7. It worked because it made fun of the worst of what awaits unsuspecting students - intellectual masturbation disguised as conceptual art, flaky, bitter, and desperate teachers, students trying to “out-weird” each other - all from the point of view of somone who was there (Clowes attended Pratt in the 80s) and still resents the experience.

The team of Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff sounded like a good idea, too - I liked Crumb, Zwigoff’s documentary on the scuzzy father of underground comics; Bad Santa, a filthy christmas comedy; and his earlier Clowes adaptation, Ghost World - pretty well. The fact that he was a member of Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders doesn’t hurt, either. So it was even more disappointing when this one turned out to be too long by half, too repetitive, too disjointed, and too goddamn meandering to hold my attention. When the movie sticks to the subject matter of the original comic, it does okay. Unfortunately, Clowes and Zwigoff added a murder mystery, a love story, and a confused cast of dozens in an attempt tie together all of the scenes about ridiculousness of art school, and drive their point about the pretentious, trend-seeking, bizarro art world home… But all these threads just don’t hold together. Why didn’t they just leave out the script add-ons and make a short? Why didn’t they try to make David Boring, or Like A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, or Ice Haven, or Caricature instead - did they really think that this glued-together, overpadded plot would be a great moneymaker?

THE GOOD:

• The first half hour was pretty okay. The introduction to young Jerome, his entrance to Swarthmore, and the breakdown of the various art-school stereotypes (the Critic, the Kissass, the Mom, the Army-Jacket guy) looked promising.
• Great performances by Malkovich (as a washed-up drawing/painting professor), Jack Ong (as the ceramics professor who really, really doesn’t give a shit anymore), and Jim Broadbent as the drunk, creepy Swarthmore graduate.
• The scene with the successful asshole king-of-the-art-world guy doing a James Lipton-style interview at his alma mater, coming to terms with his inner asshole.
• The actual art used in the movie - some was by Clowes, some was by Mark Mothersbaugh, and all of it was hilarious.
• The exploration of art as a way for skinny, picked-on kids to pick up chicks and become successful assholes - just like the jocks-cum-stockbrokers who used to beat them up, but with KNEADED ERASERS!

THE AWFUL:

• Anjelica Huston’s art history professor, who shows up for about 45 seconds, and then appears to tell Jerome that his quest for love is cute before the film’s end. Why? I guess she was the only character who wasn’t onscreen long enough to be a total asshole.
• Similarly, Steve Buscemi’s small role is completely wasted - if you’re gonna invite Buscemi, give the man something - ANYTHING - to do.
• The multitude of scenes following the cops around - we get that they’re shithead stereotypes, and seeing them (and their families) over and over is the worst kind of unnecessary.
• Jerome’s roommates - an in-the-closet fashion designer (snigger) and a fat, Tarantino/Kevin Smith/Whoever-wannabe film student. Oooh - one of them’s gay (har har) and the other one has no talent - just like EVERY OTHER STUDENT CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE. Maybe the film student was Zwigoff’s inclusion, so he could expel some of his own film-school demons… if that means he won’t do a sequel, awesome - but again, it just makes the movie much, much longer.
• The constant repetition of the one point of the whole damn movie - the art world will crush your spirit. We see Jerome constantly try, get rejected, and accept defeat dozens of times, and it doesn’t make us like the douchebag anymore. We got it, okay?

I guess my feelings about the movie kind of tie into my feelings about Clowes. He’s not really one of my favorites - for each thing he’s done that I like (Ghost World, Like A Velvet Glove…, Caricature), there’s one that I really dislike (David Boring, Ice Haven, Dan Pussey). I think there’s just way too much autobiographical Crumb-ness in the cynical, bitter record snobs, art collectors, and pop-culture hating characters in his work for me. But even at his worst, he’s way better than this movie ended up (and he’s way better than Adrian Tomine, but that’s a topic for another day).

I’d like to end with a quote from twinlesbianlighter (on the IMDB messageboards) that sums this movie up:

I went in expecting greatness and was extremely disappointed. It started out great and got progressively worse and worse and worse and then horrible. It’s like ordering food that you think is going to be great. The first bite is good, so it should get better, right? Then the second bite is ok. By the end of the meal, you feel like puking and you’ve got this disgusting after taste left in your mouth.

Chan-wook Park’s first film in his Vengeance Trilogy (which includes Oldboy and the recent Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) is intense, beautiful, and incredibly disturbing. Ryu, a deaf and mute former art-school student, works long hours at a factory to support his sister. She needs a kidney, and Ryu is the wrong blood type, so he gives all of his money - and one of his kidneys - to a shady trio of organ smugglers. When he wakes up without his money, his kidney, and his clothes (not to mention no kidney for his sister), his anarchist girlfriend convinces him to kidnap the young daughter of his former boss (President Park) to raise the money for the legal transplant that’s become available. From here on out, the plot descends further and further into a spiral of the deepest shit, as Ryu and Park both lose their reason to live and decide to seek vengeance.

As Park and Ryu each lose their reason for living, they become obsessed with getting revenge in increasingly brutal ways. The violence in this movie is hard to take, but is never used lightly - when the camera lingers on the gushing blood generated by Ryu’s attack, it stays long enough to show the pain and to illustrate the effect that this act has on the victim, the attacker, and those around them. When police find the bodies, they are shocked by the brutality of the acts. It’s obvious that Chan-wook Park understands the power of cinematic violence in a different way than Quentin Tarantino, and he has made a revenge movie that is very different from Kill Bill.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino presents a similar bloody tale of vengeance, but with characters that are much more clearly “good vs. bad” and cartoonlike violence. Arms are chopped off in giant gouts of blood - but hey, look at the dozens of acrobatic, masked bodyguards still on the attack! Beatrix Kiddo might have to pay for her righteous quest for vengeance someday, but we’re behind her 100%, and for now she can enjoy her life with her daughter. Although there are a few brief moments of sympathy for the others she kills along the way, hey - they were professional assassins anyway, and they had wronged her in a direct, purposeful way. Bill is a stone-cold killer who deserves everything that he has coming to him (and then some).

The characters in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance aren’t as easy to pigeonhole - we definitely sympathize with Ryu, but at the same time, we know that he has fucked up nearly every decision he’s made along the way. He might have started with the best of intentions, but he made the choices that set all of the movie’s events in motion. My feelings for Ryu got even more vague when he went after the organ-stealers - sure, they were awful people and they did an awful thing to him, but Chan-wook Park makes sure that we’re not only watching ‘just desserts’ - we’re also seeing a mother witness the horrible death of her sons.
Similarly, although President Park is initially shown as a rich asshole who fires his devoted employees with no regard for their lives, he later sees the real effect his callous firings have had - his daughter is kidnapped by one former employee, and another poisons his own entire family in despair. President Park is still presented as a cold, brutal and calculating bastard, but what did we expect? Just like Ryu, he lost the only person he cared about. Both characters feel the effect of their actions, and both characters make a conscious decision to go for vengeance, which means that they can’t be redeemed.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance isn’t all bleak - there are plenty of funny parts, even with (and sometimes during) the many intensely painful moments. The ending combined both - and for as far out of left field as it was, I actually liked it a lot. The cinematography is amazing, all of the actors were great, and Chan-wook’s attention to detail is crazy. I don’t know if I liked it more than Oldboy or not, and it’s kind of a tricky movie to recommend to others, but it’s still a great one.

Murderball is currently playing at artier theaters around the country - and this is definitely a documentary that shouldn’t be missed.

The movie is about a sport originally called “Murderball” by its creators (although it’s now known as the more sponsor-friendly “Quadraplegic Rugby”), in which two teams of quadraplegic men in crazy battering-ram wheelchairs fight for points. The rules, as described in the movie, are that players must pass or dribble every ten seconds to keep possession of the ball, and they have to cross the goal line with the ball in hand and two wheels on the ground to score. Meanwhile, the other team is doing everything they can to stop that score, which mostly means ramming opponents with full wheelchair fury. Even though the movie follows the US Wheelchair Rugby team closely as they train, then compete in the world championships and the Paralympic Games, it’s about a whole lot more than just the sport.

We are introduced to several members of the US team, each of whom reveals the painful story of how they became quadraplegics in a matter-of-fact way that shows how many times they’ve recounted and relived their injuries. We learn about the different amount of limb control that each man has, and about how they pick up chicks, drive cars, and do everything else that everyone else does. The movie starts to focus in on two main subjects - Mark Zupan (at left), a hardass and MVP for the US team, and Joe Soares, an older Murderball player who helped make the game famous, then had a falling out with the US team (and now is spitefully coaching the Canadian national team). As we learn more about these two tough characters - Zupan’s former life as a high school jock, and his relationship with the friend who caused his injury; and Soares’ intensity, grudge-holding, and relationship with his non-sporting son - the movie becomes way more than just a sports documentary.

Murderball has so many scenes that stuck with me, and lots of moments that made me tear up (but not in a cloying, hallmark kind of way). Probably the best movie I’ve seen this summer, and the best sports documentary I’ve ever seen. Check it out.

Over the weekend, chanchan and I saw Night Watch, a Russian film that came out last year, and is scheduled to come out in the US sometime this fall.

Night Watch is an adaptation of the first book of a hugely popular Russian fantasy trilogy. The story opens with the forces of light & dark battling to a stalemate back in the 1600s. When both sides realized that no one could be a winner here, they started the Night Watch and Day Watch to make sure that both sides would be kept in check, and the balance could be preserved. Fast forward to present day - the Night Watch, who operate under the guise of an electric company in modern-day Russia, are still keeping an eye on the dark forces. They issue licenses to dark folks that allow them to be vampires, but if any of the vampires start acting up and going after people (they’re supposed to just chill out and sip on pig’s blood, I guess), the Night Watch comes after them, armed with special flashlights, sunglasses, and… well, that’s pretty much all they have. And there’s a guy named Firefly who drives a super-souped up huge truck that goes really fast. Oh, and some of the night watch folks are actually wizards that transform into animals (including Tiger Cub, Bear, and Olga the Owl), which is pretty sweet. The main character is Anton, a night watch guy that looks kind of like Eugene Mirman, and doesn’t have any cool animal powers. He stops some vampires, killing one in the process, which pisses the rest of the Dark Ones off big-time. Here’s where things get complicated - prophecies are fulfilled, people swordfight with flourescent light tubes, and a creepy baby doll grows spider legs.

The story is pretty interesting, and there are a lot of cool effects in the movie. It was a little tricky to figure out some of the plot points, but I would blame that on the poorly-colored subtitles more than anything else. I haven’t seen any recent Russian films, so this one was a pleasant surprise - it was definitely better than most of the effects-laden, big-budget action films coming from Hollywood. I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of the trilogy when they come out.