By One Line - Issue 3. Movies

OK then, today we have some movies to smear with poo-poo, as could dr. Martin Ssempa say.

Remember, here we have the same scale to check:

- definitely awesome but nothing to say

- matter of taste and controversial

- get the fuck out of here

Welcome to the Cinemarathon:

Altitude (2010)

XXI century brought us into the controversial state comparable with emotional, axiological and theleological tetraplegic paralysis while hanged in weightlessness. People of XXI century saw everything, heard everything and pretend to know everything so it becomes very hard (nearly impossible) to wonder them. The big amount of media also makes a contribution in this actually sad situation, so the chance to see something moreless uncommon and peculiar decreases day by day. So each successful attempt of such case arouses the more pleasure and interest; the dark side is difficulty to mine such film from annually made pile of homogenous cinematographic ore and distinguish it from boring and secondary brood. Of course in such genre you cannot hope to discover a New Guinea, but considering this event of facing moreless uncommon movie as a pleasing surprise could be really wise and useful deed.

“Altitude” is truly independent and maybe this factor has become the reason of its dissimilarity with anything. Because the plot writer has no demands dealing with audience or restrictions, he wrote anything for himself and thus avoided a lot of stamps that could appear here (although he couldn't avoid all of them). Starting as an interestingly (from technical point of view) even though merely low budget short story-about-teenagers-who-decided-to-go-somewhere-and-will-atone-for-that, narration turn things twisted. First, teenagers are going to trip somewhere by a small plane with one of them as a pilot, and second – the very atmosphere that I personally felt only in Stewart Gordon films. And this foretoken was a kind of true – the chthonic horror which is an imprescriptible attribute of Gordon’s films definitely has here a place to live and does its very horrifying deeds. The only drawbacks of this actually interesting attempt is relatively weak performing of actors, especially main; when girl at least tries to dissipate attention using her cute face and advanced mimics, the buddy is emotional as facial nerve paresis victim. Nevertheless, for an ending they have a little more freedom to express themselves and thus almost have drawn the final of movie. Almost. But even with their acting, the ending is still chilly and strong enough to even take a tear or two from an emotional overcharged schoolgirl. LIKE FUCKING ME.

As A Result: an additional proof that crowdfunding is a future of indie filmmaking

Watch It?: better yes, but not necessary

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

You know, it is really rare case when the movie could really break the stub. For last years cinema industry had been choosing technologically intensive way of development, constantly improving shooting technologies, special effects and computer modeling. Since viewer used to consume such kind of product, movie industry changed its direction from acting and interesting films to epopees and blockbusters, and while technical quality of film increases viewer’s indiscriminateness, quality of plots and screenplay accordingly gets lower and lower.

So because of that tendency each movie with story even a bit differs from common is being accepted as a revelation; such movies get awards, their director becomes famous and gets a lot of money and promotion for further films and usually fails on it. The best example is Christopher Nolan, whose triumphal rise with “Memento” turns into complete fuck-up with “The Dark Knight Fails Rises”. Joss Whedon, a corpulent redhead and possibly jew (that is definitely good) is already self-established scenarist, so I hope he will not repeat this sorrowful way. Whedon is an author of gorgeous “Firefly”, mysterious “Doll House”, and many more awesome or just outstanding works, so it was evident to anticipate something special from him.

As every another well-established subgenre of well-established genre, slasher movies have a wide variety of stamps, clichés and traditions. The beginning of the tendency was brought years ago, and it was supported recently by “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” where Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk portrayed all the feelings laying on another side of slasher movie conflict, but those efforts was not enough. Thus the universe still had need in a film that will point dots over “i” about slasher clichés once and for all, and finally this film arose – welcome “The Cabin in the Woods”.

It is almost impossible to tell something about this movie avoiding any kind of spoilers. This obstacle appears on the way because of monolithic unity of movie’s all components, but what should be mentioned is general wit running through the whole movie. Witty is all in this film, from opening and closure titles (especially the latter), from characters and dialogues to plot and screenplay, no need to mention citations, parallels and all homage to slasher movie history. In addition to wit, second weapon (hail Spanish Inquisition) of Cabin is inpredictability that could compete with M. Night Shyamalan best works. Although director and story writer constantly give us clues and hints during the narration development, but you can try to get an idea about what the fuck is going here only near second part of the movie.

The Cabin in the Woods is brand new (without irony or mistake) sight on the slasher movie, sight full of both sarcastic mockery and gentle admiration, and unfortunately this sight declines all the possibilities to genre evolution. This movie points all the dots on all “i"’s, and the biggest dot gets its place at the end. I doubt that sometimes somebody could invent something that could overcome “The Cabin in the Woods” on its field, so do not hesitate to see this movie.

As A Result: brilliant postmodern movie in best meaning of these controversial words

Watch It?: not a matter of discussion

The Quiet (2006)

If we continue the talk about independent movies and stay thrillers aside, indie drama films should definitely take the place in this trend. Among inexperienced directors drama films are even more popular than thrillers because you have no need to invent an interesting storyline rather make the action and narrative more and more weird and deviant. We could call this “tension”, a thing analogous with suspense in thrillers. Thus we obtain hundreds of films about completely odd things and completely odd people, up to disgusting and abomination, and the one question remains: for whom are they fucking filmed?

Often the necessary concentration of tension (like suspense) is maintained and supported by a story background related with a kind of deviation, from sexual to social. Sexual ones are used more often, maybe just because in case of social one (sociopathy - child trauma - family troubles) it is harder to formulate and solve the conflict, leaning on psychology. Sex and its role in human life are lucid by default, intuitively, so, using the words of V. Pelevin, it all is a direct trial to control audition through wow-impulse (preferentially oral).

Background of sexual deviations (from sexual side of relationship in isolated microsociety and up to deep psychiatry like paraphilias) is not a token of profanation in state of art or act that aspires to be one, but usage of such provocative substrate should have strict story foundation and be supported by all (ALL, I said) auxiliary means from actor’s performing to light distribution in a single frame and soundtrack subtleties; otherwise such trial has to be considered as an attempt to have an easy ride without any perspective, in other words, this is a straight road to B type.

Director of “The Quiet” definitely was impressed as fuck with Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”, and with this impression he started to build his own “American Beauty”, with black jack and hookers. Just compare actors representing two of main personalities: Elisha Cuthbert is definitely a reminiscence of Thora Birch, and Michael Donovan is a price-off variant of Kevin Spacey. Moreover, airtight type of action in movie (almost always in the house, close to classicistic unity of time and place), and conflict distributed between the characters of gender and age gap are reminding Mendes’ film more and more.  But, as it was to be expected, this variant became less interesting and a bit secondary, so then director decided to tighten the screws.

First of all, from story of conflict between teenager and adult Babbit transfers the drama into space within the whole family, endowing the action with the huge piece of sickness. Second, transparent and quite expectable main storyline is equipped with merely weird satellite tale of Dot the Deaf yet Cute Girl, whose still gaze drills viewer and whose mute speeches gather chills near the neck. She thoroughly listens: how the guy like to masturbate, how the girlie hates his father, how mother slowly goes nuts due to medications, and all this with ultimate poker face. Cool story, ha? Like a lever?

So, is “The Quiet” just a cheap family drama about silly daughter and naughty father, peppered with some kind of parallel winking sidestory? However not, it is not, because I would like to guess that all aforementioned things was the screen, that should overshadow the real movie sense. Dot, from adornment of originally poor storyline, become the linchpin of it. She isn’t a passive onlooker beholding on true inferno gaping near her, although it seems to be opposite; her inner struggles are not background anymore, and words she pronounced silently with such reluctance are not mere words.

As in “American Beauty”, additional personality placed in the storm’s eye become a catalyst, a spit that gives rise to avalanche, and directly with the help of Dot this anthem of self-destruction went right to the chorus. Moreover, the action is dramatically expanded by the trace Dot leaves on the plot while reacting with another people. Simple alchemy of teenager interrelationships kneaded on sex, sport and pop culture became feeble when stood face to face with her, and only with her severe, self-merciless monologues movie get its wholeness.

And of course, the real pearl of this motion picture is Dot herself performed by peerless Camilla Belle. Her image combines almost touchable fragility and simultaneous utter, ultimated hardness; she is definitely like a string – trembling, thin and seemingly weak, but made of metal and able to bring death, the string that was broken in that grand piano, the string that has become the solution of all. Dot carries emptiness with herself, a kind of shell that constantly surrounds her with the center in her bottomless grey eyes, and all the sounds and intentions are slowly withering approaching this center.

As A Result: movie with false bottom, whole and stylish

Watch It?: yes

The Watch (2008)

Independent movie scene does not reveal a wide spectrum of genres chosen. If we try to observe all the possible scale of diversity this is what we obtain:

a)      Horror film. All variety of different horrors, from zombie thrash to stupid rivers-of-blood-like splatter, from usual slasher to sci-fi horror, is presented here and exploited by independent directors and motion picture studios. Of course, their realization is truly far from ideal, but nevertheless sometimes there are real brilliants in a shit pile (for instance, “Malberry st.” or “Stake Land”). The question about worth of such seek is still open, because obstacles during search could definitely overshadow the pleasure of discovery.

b)      Different odd movies united under the name “art house”. Mostly dramas, usually about strange and unusual people with strange and unusual stories ending with strange and unusual conclusion, art house cinema desirely want to flabbergast the viewer. Sometimes merely provocative and social (“Mysterious Skin” or Larry Clark films for instance), sometimes describing the very especial vision from the side of author (Korean indie movies), sometimes simply weird and incomparable with anything (“Napoleon Dynamite”), art house cinema positions itself as art made by intelligent people to intelligent people, but too often sophicticated psychological Babylon appears the fruit of psychic deviation based on paraphilias and child trauma. So schizophrenia is not like Caps Lock (THAT MAKES EVERYTHING AWESOME, BEEYATCH) does not make plot better if it total sucks .

c)      And the third whale of independent movies is of course thriller. It is necessary to notice that thriller partially overlaps with horror film genre, but it would be a fatal mistake to place the sign of equality between them. Thriller is IMO the peak of cinematographic evolution due to some duality. On the one hand, there is no need in some exorbitant charges and technologies of shooting to make a thriller, and on the other hand, you could make special effects of any complexity and motherfuckingly realistic yet imaginary pictures, but without a good plot your movie will be just piece of crap. Thus thriller is the pure art of cinematography because it depends only on the story (and some demands on its technical execution) and nothing more loose and unstable like acting (which could differ from top to bottom even during 10 minutes) or special effects. So, summing up, good thriller is based on good story, and “The Watch” in spite of undoubtedly appearing DIY style is the very kind of such good thriller. Even having mystical implication, the plot turns more like detective story, and really not bad story. Despite the bareness of visual means, the movie is filmed so good, that the sense of suspense hardly can leave you until the outcome shoots. And special gratefulness for Clea DuVall, who represents a very strict principle that you don’t need to be a beauty to be a good actress. As well as Stockley in “ The Faculty”, Cassie in “The Watch” is definitely not a gorgeous chick (especially against the background of Elisabeth Whitmere with her astounding voice), but she is really sweet and gives rise to sympathy from the viewer. This is what I call “good performing”.

As A Result: indie thriller that really thrills unlike many congeners.

Watch It?: yes, if you like a good thriller