Movies I Love: WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (2013).

 

 

 

 

Over the past two weeks I’ve been covering the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival for Daily Grindhouse. This festival is so well-curated that one doesn’t even need to be local to find use for it; their schedule is like a ready-made Netflix queue. One of the films that ran this week was the deceptively-named WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?, which has a great title for a horror movie but which quickly turns out to be something very different. I was lucky enough to see it last year and this is what I wrote about it for my year-end top-ten:

 

 

WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? is maybe, probably, most likely the most jubilant movie about movies ever made. Almost every prominent director seems to end up making a movie directly or indirectly about making movies — from Paul Thomas Anderson (BOOGIE NIGHTS) to John Carpenter (IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS), from Clint Eastwood (BRONCO BILLY) to Spike Lee (SHE HATE ME), from George Romero (KNIGHTRIDERS) to Martin Scorsese (THE AVIATOR) — and now here comes the one by Japan’s Sion Sono.

 

 

The story centers around a long-running feud between two factions of violent gangsters. Aside from war in the streets, the head of one mob is dedicated to making his daughter (the very young, hugely appealing Fumi Nikaido) a movie star. Towards that end, he recruits a group of would-be filmmakers calling themselves “the Fuck Bombers” to make it happen. One of them falls in love with the leading lady, which is problem enough, but the gang war is escalating, although ultimately, it provides the perfect setting for a very realistically bloody movie. WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? runs over two hours but every single minute is full of boistrous energy. It’s as wildly funny as any teen sex comedy and as gruesomely violent as any horror movie — usually at the same exact time. The point, it seems, is that film-going and filmmaking becomes an obsession and a delirium, like love itself. Makes perfect sense to me.

 

 

– Jon Abrams.

 

Now In Paperback!: ANGEL BABY by @RichardLange.

 

“You’ve got to be ready for moments like these, ready to drown your ruined heart as soon as it starts beating again.”  — from ANGEL BABY.

 

In 2013, Elmore Leonard left us, and I took that pretty hard. If there is any silver lining to that loss, it’s that his influence reverberates through the work of several younger writers. I’ve read plenty and as much as it counts, my vote for the best of all of them is Richard Lange, whose book of short stories DEAD BOYS and first novel THIS WICKED WORLD I snapped up and can’t recommend any more highly.

 

  

 

 

This new novel, ANGEL BABY, is about Luz, the beautiful wife of Rolando, a.k.a. El Principe, an abusive drug kingpin in Mexico who escapes across the border to California, helped by Malone, a doomed man who isn’t much of a lifeline. They’re pursued by a man named Jerónimo, a deadly assassin who won’t ever relent, because Rolando has his family’s lives under the trigger. There’s also a crooked American cop looking to get the money Luz swiped from Rolando, because there are a lot of different breeds of bad people in this world and therefore in this book also. Luz will walk right through the crossfire, because she has a daughter on the other side, the subject of the story’s title. 

Now, that’s not a far cry from an Elmore Leonard plot, though I’d halt the [favorable] comparisons there and emphasize the uniqueness of Richard Lange’s writing, which has a flavor and a legitimacy and a sadness all its own. Lange is more of a street-level poet.  His prose and dialogue feel real and believable, yet they resound with fatalistic import. There are lines in this book that can break your heart and the heartbreak aftershocks last long after the speedy read is done.

In a slight return to comparisons, Lange’s depictions of California and Mexico have a verisimilitude I’d venture to liken to John Fante, though Lange’s work is more readily cinematic. An Edward Hopper painting sprung to life, maybe. If there is a movie, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility, Michael Mann would knock it out of the park. The gut-punching romanticism of ANGEL BABY is right up that alley. Read if you like. Or if you don’t! It’s good enough to stand on its own merits, a unique blend of border noir, hard-boiled crime, and corrido music.

ANGEL BABY is everything you could want in a crime novel: protagonists who can frustrate and move you, villains who are scary as all hell, action that feels alive, and emotional impact that lingers. Richard Lange’s work is bruising and vital. I can’t wait for his next book.

 

 

This piece was expanded a little from my article on the best books of 2013. Find out more about ANGEL BABY on the book’s official site and on Richard Lange’s author page.

 

 

@jonnyabomb

 

 

SCREENING IN NYC: AFTER LIFE (1998)

AFTER LIFE is the second feature film from Japanese writer and director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Before features, he worked in documentaries, and that experience, that interest in real human beings and their thoughts and feelings, shows in this film. AFTER LIFE is set in a kind of business-like purgatory, where people who have recently died are asked to choose their happiest memory from life. Then, the people running the place put together a dramatic re-creation of that memory, and after watching the result, the dead are able to head on into eternity, taking that memory with them. The story focuses equally on the dead and the ones who work to their benefit.

Obviously, what’s most striking about AFTER LIFE, considering its subject matter, is its humility, its small scale, its lack of high drama. There are no angels flying around on feathery wings, no demons or hellfire. Everyone in this movie looks like a person you could meet. Almost every story told is one you could relate to. AFTER LIFE has a rare sweetness, a genuine spirituality. Sure, we’re talking about notions of Heaven here, but you don’t have to buy into one ethos or another to appreciate this film. This is the kind of spirituality that could and maybe should be universal. For the more philosophically minded, there’s plenty for you also. As the trailer asks, “What is the one memory you would take with you?” What a lovely question for a film to consider, and to ask its audience to consider.

AFTER LIFE is almost unique in its lack of conflict; its primary mode is reflective. There aren’t galvanic performances or sweeping visual flourishes here. The modest look of the film suits it well. A lot can be said with a little. Many movies want to shake the ground you stand on, to make your eyes widen and make your mind melt. This one has the feeling of sitting on a park bench by a duck pond in the spring, a loved one by your side, or in your thoughts. There is serenity here.

The Japan Society is screening AFTER LIFE tonight. I recommend attending, if you’re able.

@jonnyabomb

Movies Well Worth Your Time: THE SPECTACULAR NOW (2013)

Stories about alcoholism, if they’re being honest, have no heroes and no villains.  There are protagonists, and occasionally antagonists, but the antagonists are peripheral, really.  Authentic stories about alcoholism must ultimately focus around the protagonists and their loved ones.  A protagonist of such a story can be a hero at heart, but he’s living with an addiction, so his actions are rarely heroic.  They’re tainted, polluted.  It’s the addiction that is the story’s villain, and it’s an inescapable enemy.  It’s always there, with no safe haven to be found.

Addiction turns a hero into his own worst villain.  An addiction narrative is a suspense thriller, where the lead character is in a life-or-death battle to prevent himself from destroying his own life, and the lives of his friends and family.  Any other dramatic conflict, and there will be many, still remains strictly secondary in comparison.  Every tale of addiction is different, but every one of them can have only two potential endings.  The protagonist manages to stop, and that is no easy thing; or the protagonist dies.  Period.  Well, there may be a third option, of sorts.  It’s possible the story ends with the protagonist still alive, and embracing his addiction, but understand that this is a kind of death.  It’s a death of the spirit.

In the most generalized spoiler ever, let’s say that THE SPECTACULAR NOW, in its final moments, rejects the death of the spirit.  This is a movie with life in it.

And please take no offense at the fact that the opening paragraphs emphasized the male conjugation — they were written that way because this particular addiction story happens to be about a “him.”  Miles Teller plays the main character, Sutter Keely, an extroverted young man whose profound problems sneak up on the movie.  By leading with talk of addiction, this review of THE SPECTACULAR NOW robs the film of some of its shock — the movie was sold as a lyrical, regional romance, which it is, but primarily it’s the story of an addict, which isn’t immediately apparent as things play at the outset.  Sutter is outgoing and likable, with a stunning girlfriend (the luminous Brie Larson), a successful older sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, endearing and deep), and a single mother who cares about him in her seemingly brusque way (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in a rope-a-dope of a performance). Miles Teller has a kind of Cusack-meets-Belushi soulfulness and affability which keeps you on his side, even as Sutter’s screw-ups multiply as the story continues.  His philosophy, as captured in the movie’s love-it-or-sneer-at-it title, is to live in the “now” as opposed to so many people who fixate on the pain of the past and the worries of the future.  It’s an agreeable philosophy, but it’s flawed.  

Sutter is a high school senior.  He’s at that exact moment in life where people are most concerned with both their pasts and their futures at once.  High school seniors are at an emotional precipice — with yearbooks and parties, they celebrate and reflect upon the end of childhood, while on their computers sit college applications, resumes, and job applications, the entry tickets to the chaotic carnival of adulthood.  Sutter’s fixation on the “now” seems at first like a way of framing the present in a positive light, of appreciating the moment, but in fact it’s a dodge.  Sutter wants to prolong a moment that by nature must pass.

It starts with the soda cup.  The first clue to how substantial a problem Sutter has is the soda cup.  He’s never without it, in the car, at his job — practiced and committed drinkers know what’s in the cup.  He’s mixing booze in there, using the soda cup as a front to hide his crutch.  The acceleration is rapid.  After a whirlwind night of partying, Sutter wakes up one morning on a classmate’s lawn.  She’s Aimee Finecky, a sweetheart to whom Sutter never gave a second thought at school.  Next to Cassidy, his girlfriend, Aimee would be considered plain.  There’s a warmth and a decency to Aimee, though, as there is to Sutter, when he’s conscious.  Cassidy has been distancing herself (she sees the warning signs before he does) so Sutter starts spending more time with the attentive Aimee.  If this were the John Hughes movie one may have had reason to expect, the lawn incident would be played for broad comedy, a meet-cute.  Here it’s perfectly pitched, humorous but subtle, and the kids quickly move on from it.  Aimee, an introvert by nature, isn’t used to spending time with Sutter, an indefatigable extrovert.  She’s entranced.  She’s co-dependent.  She’s in trouble.  By the time she or the audience realize that, we’re all already in too deep with Sutter.

THE SPECTACULAR NOW has an impact you don’t see coming, even if you do know what’s in that cup right away.  Not to oversell such a delicate and genuine film, but it’s one of the best American movies to be released in 2013.   Credit is due all around.  Tim Tharp wrote the novel upon which the movie was based.  Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber ((500) DAYS OF SUMMER) wrote the adaptation for screen.  James Ponsoldt (SMASHED) directed the movie.  Jess Hall was the cinematographer.  Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, as the two main characters, play their roles with uncommon maturity and sophistication.  They are surrounded by an extremely talented supporting cast, including the aforementioned Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the strong women in Sutter’s life.  Kyle Chandler appears later in the film, as a character who only existed as rumor beforehand, and he makes the maximum impact in a few scenes with a perfect, knowing performance.  Comedian Bob Odenkirk, in a relatively small role as Sutter’s boss who recognizes a problem employee and tries to hang onto him as long as possible, is positively heart-breaking.  This is a movie where Bob Odenkirk, a monster talent who’s only ever made me laugh, broke my heart.  Wow.  This is a special kind of movie.

Making a good movie is a collaborative effort, done by small armies of craftsmen who have varying degrees of personal investment in the art.  Whether all were deeply moved to make it or only some, THE SPECTACULAR NOW feels eminently personal.  It’s told with quiet, relaxed authority.  There is a keenly-observed realness going on, just as there was in James Ponsoldt’s previous film, 2012’s SMASHED, and in his debut feature, 2006’s OFF THE BLACK.  Those films, though, were about young adults and middle-aged people grappling with addiction.  As terrific an achievement as SMASHED in particular was, Ponsoldt has found more unique, tender material in THE SPECTACULAR NOW.  The novelty of this plot is that it’s been de-aged.  Movies about drunks are almost always cast with characters gone to seed, nearing the ends of their lives rather than finding them at the very start. There’s still plenty of hope for Sutter. He caught this thing early.  Millions have been less fortunate. THE SPECTACULAR NOW ends on a question mark. Where will Sutter end up? Nothing is certain. But there’s reason to hope. This movie gives you hope.

Visit me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

From The Archives: (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (2009).

 

 

 

 

I didn’t expect to like this movie, not even a little bit.  I figured, by all appearances, that it was going to be cutesy.  Normally, I’m revolted by cutesy.

Horrible.

 

Guess what?  (500) DAYS OF SUMMER was totally cutesy, and still somehow I dug it.  There is an aspect of recognition at work – I can relate to some of the experiences enacted here, and the locations are very familiar to me.  There is also an ace pair of lead performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, and some nice supporting comic balance from the underrated Geoffrey Arend.

 

 

Most of all, the moral of this story (which, as is promised early on, is about a boy and a girl but is not a love story) is one I needed to hear at the time I heard it.  It’s something I’ve understood and internalized over the last few years but it was nice to hear it said.  You can have your heart broken – more than once! – but you can not allow your broken heart to turn black.  It doesn’t do you any good to be embittered towards a girl who doesn’t love you (back/anymore/at all) – feel grateful for the experience and be always ready for the next one, which can easily be right around the corner.  Even if it comes complete with a cutesy name.

 

@jonnyabomb

Movies Well Worth Your Time: SMASHED (2012)

In retrospect, it kills me that I didn’t manage to see SMASHED anytime last year.  It absolutely would have clinched for my year-end top ten.  I even know which movie it would have supplanted:  FLIGHT, a movie which covers similar territory.

Like FLIGHT, SMASHED deals with the topic of alcoholism with unusual potency and attention to detail, with an astounding central performance and with harrowing scenes of hitting bottom and going even lower.

Unlike FLIGHT, SMASHED has an unsubtle, lovely soundtrack that doesn’t threaten to undermine everything else good about the movie.

Director James Ponsoldt, between SMASHED and this year’s THE SPECTACULAR NOW, has cornered the market on low-fi and true pictures that deal with addiction in surprising, disarming, and sneakily affecting ways.  He wrote SMASHED with Susan Burke, and assembled a tremendous cast that includes never-fail ringers like Aaron Paul (“Jesse Pinkman” on Breaking Bad), Octavia Spencer (FRUITVALE STATION), Bree Turner, Mary Kay Place, Megan Mullally, and Nick Offerman.

Those last two, by the way, I am now officially willing to follow to the ends of the earth, due to the fact that everything they do together (Parks & Recreation, Axe Cop, THE KINGS OF SUMMER) is so resolutely charming.  Her role, as a sympathetic school principal dealing with a young teacher who lies and comes to work drunk, is probably smaller than his, as a fellow teacher who helps that troubled co-worker find her way into a support network but has his own weird issues going on.   But both are indelible in this film, as is the entire cast.  Everyone in the movie is funny, sad, and disarming.

But SMASHED is Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s victory most of all.  Already beloved by genre fans for her roles in horror and action movies, she proves definitively that she is one of the most under-utilized great actresses of her generation with her role as Kate, a schoolteacher who decides to get sober despite the fact that her husband and main running buddy (Aaron Paul’s Charlie) isn’t ultimately willing to do the same.  Winstead’s performance isn’t showy or grandiose, which is a sacrifice.  You don’t get fancy awards for underplaying.  Instead, she plays it like a real person.  Kate is a person you could know.  She’s a person you quickly come to care about.  She’s a person you worry about.  She’s a person you can hope for.  That’s more noble.  That’s true acting; playing a part with honesty, without underlining everything for the cheap seats.

I feel so fondly towards this small, sweet, special movie, but I’m not sure I could express myself anywhere near as well as the late, great Roger Ebert did in his review.  Please seek it out – it’s one of the most beautiful pieces he ever wrote, and it will convince you, if I haven’t, that SMASHED is a film well worth the attention you give it.

@jonnyabomb

An American Original: MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED (1976).

You may have noticed that I’ve talked about MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED a lot.  I wrote about it only once, for my friend’s spotlight on Underrated Comedies.  As I wrote then, this isn’t only an underrated comedy in my eyes.  In my opinion, this may just be the most underrated American film of all time.  Am I exaggerating?  Read on, amigos.

MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED was written by Tom Mankiewicz, who worked on SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, DRAGNET, and three James Bond movies.  It was directed by Peter Yates, best known for classic tough-guy movies such as BULLITT and THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.  One of the producers on MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED is Joseph Barbera — that’s right — one half of the insanely prolific Hanna-Barbera cartoon team.

All of the above credits may begin to hint at the unique atmosphere of MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED — I could call it “cartoonish realism” if I thought the term might ever take off.  The story concerns an independent ambulance company competing against rival services in addition to the proper channels. They’re barely-legal L.A. outlaws, riding into life or death situations. Most of them do it for the kicks.

The veteran driver is nicknamed “Mother” and that’s the only name he’s known by. He’s a man of simple pleasures: He likes getting massages from pretty ladies, keeping a fully-stocked cooler in the rig, and “buzzing” gaggles of nuns with his siren as they’re crossing the street.

That’s Bill Cosby.

The new guy is Tony Malatesta, a former police detective nicknamed “Speed” due to the bogus drug allegations that recently got him shitcanned from the LAPD.

That’s Harvey Keitel.

And the knockout receptionist with larger ambitions is nicknamed “Jugs” (which she hates, by the way.)

That’s Raquel Welch.

Those are three very different stars, which means that the movie is a collection of very different tones. This movie brims with raucous comedy and sober tragedy, on a scene-to-scene basis.  Somehow it all hangs together cohesively – credit to the sure hand of Peter Yates.  But even with that said, it’s probably still not what you’re expecting.  Cosby’s got a potty-mouth, for one thing!  Your Cosby Show memories will be forever changed once you hear him say “Bambi’s mom had great tits.”  But even as he’s doing that, he’s rocking some real pathos too.  His performance here is way more HICKEY & BOGGS (see that too, please) than GHOST DAD or LEONARD PART SIX.  There’s a real depth to his acting that could be frankly shocking even to longtime fans of his comedy.

Meanwhile, Keitel was best known at the time  for his work with Scorsese – he appeared in TAXI DRIVER the same year – but even though he’s cast as the straight man here, he’s totally down to play. And Raquel Welch, a sexual revolution in human form, is easily their equal and frequently their better. It’s one of her best-ever roles.

Add to that a supporting cast that includes L.Q. Jones, Bruce Davison, Dick Butkus, Larry Hagman in brilliantly gross & bastardy form, and the sorely-underappreciated character-actor great Allen Garfield (THE STUNT MAN) as the low-rent boss of the gang, and you have one of the most fun movies of the 1970s, and arguably one of the most unheralded.  Name another great movie from that year – ROCKY, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, NETWORK – and then ask me if I’d rather watch MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED.  Apologies to Stallone, Hoffman, Redford, and Duvall, but I think you already know my answer.

Ride with me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

And check out this fun photo-article on the film’s shooting locations.

For My Grandma On Christmas Day.

For my family, December 25^th isn’t only Christmas.  It’s also Grandma’s birthday.  A double holiday.  From this day forward, the occasion will be bitter sweet.  While I had a surprisingly nice Christmas (my family celebrates this tradition as well as the Jewish tradition earlier in December), this is mainly where my thoughts are today.

My maternal grandmother, Eleanor Charms Seifter, died in May of 2012.  We were extraordinarily close.  The loss is tremendous but it’s hardly mine alone.  If you knew her, you adored her.  If you didn’t know her, trust me:  She would have loved you. 

This is what I said about her on May 6^th of this year. I wanted to share it here because, if I in any way managed to capture her in words, you will see that she was a person well worth knowing.

 

 

My grandma Eleanor was the single most decent, positive, and purely good person I’ve ever met in my life.  To everyone who knew her, she was absolute light.

She transcended adjectives, because there haven’t been enough complimentary descriptive invented to encapsulate just how good she was.

She transcended tenses, because I now and will always struggle to use the past tense, with words like “was” and “did”, when she still feels so present, even now.

I could write a tribute to her once a year, once a month, once a day, and I’d still be able to tell you different things about my grandma every single time.  For today, it’s only a question of which laudatory comments I happen to settle upon in this moment.  There truly are that many good things to say about my grandma Eleanor, because that’s a measure of how much goodness she put out into the world.

Honestly, with no forced humility, I have to say that I don’t think I’m personally equipped to eulogize a person this special, this unique, this wonderful, this lovely.  A job like that should really be part of the presidential package, or else it should fall to one of the great poets, composers, or painters.  I may be a decent writer, but I am not up to this task.  It is, however, safe to say that my grandma wouldn’t have minded me saying a few words.  My grandma enjoyed and supported my writing – although she definitely wished I’d write less about monsters and aliens and such, and also that I’d stop enlisting so many naughty words.

For that reason, I’m maybe not the one who’s most ideally suited to the task of summing up such a rare person and such a beautiful life.  But I am someone who benefited dramatically from proximity to her, so I can say a little about how much she meant to me.

At the graveside ceremony last week, I talked about my grandmother’s endlessly inspiring bond with my grandfather, and how much the two of them meant to me in tandem.  My grandfather was the only hero I’ll ever need.  He was a brilliant mind, a generous spirit, and a formidable humanitarian.  He was a truly great man.  I idolized my grandfather.  But I needed my grandmother.

She was a beacon of warmth and kindness, really an impossible creature.  Even my grandpa lost his temper once in a while.  Can you imagine a human being knowing me for thirty-four years and never once losing their temper?  I have trouble imagining it myself, despite the fact I knew one.  Can you imagine a human being whose eyes lit up and whose smile broke wide every single time you walked in the room?  I can’t, but yet again, I knew one.

This is someone whose entire essence was the definition of goodness.  She managed this incredible feat of symbolizing all things sweet and kind – she was a symbol! – while remaining the most fun, most down-to-earth person you could ever meet.

I know, right?  Sounds like I’m describing the Pope?  No offense, but my grandma has most popes beat.  She never judged anybody.

I know that grandchildren have the tendency to idealize their grandparents, at least all the ones who are worth a damn – sorry: darn – but with my grandma, all that work was done already for me.  She was the ideal person.  Truly.

I didn’t mean to bring up the subject of religion and faith in such a flippant manner just now, because those avenues are where many people understandably choose to turn at a moment like this one, when we’ve lost such an irreplaceable human being.  The moment my grandma died, standing there in that emergency room with the doctors and emergency personnel filing out the door, the single thing I was able to say to my mother was, “A whole lot of goodness is gone from the world.”  I still feel that way.  Those words are true for many of us.  It’s an enormous loss, on multiple layers of my existence and maybe yours.

My grandma wasn’t famous – she doesn’t have the tribute on the front page of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section which she’d have if our society quantified decency the way we quantify celebrity.  She wasn’t built that way.  She was humble.  She was as humble as she was monumental.  She was an elementary school music teacher, a writer, a lifetime learner and a lifelong educator.  She was good to every single person she met.  She was better than good:  She treated everybody the way most people treat family.  She treated friends and strangers alike.  She met all people with love.

She was kind, she was generous, she was welcoming, she was loyal, she was encouraging she was funny, she was creative.  (Now I’m getting into exhausting that adjective supply, which I promised I wouldn’t do.) The bottom line is that my grandma behaved in this world exactly the way we learn from a young age that we are supposed to behave in this world.  When I met with the rabbi earlier this week to tell him about my grandma, I told him that exactly.  I am honored to have studied with the rabbi in my youth, but as I told him the other day, I grew up with the exemplifications of Jewish teachings – not to mention Christian teachings, Catholic teachings, you name it – right down the block.  Repeatedly, in America, we go to temple or church and we are given models of how to behave, and repeatedly, we fall short – myself as much as anyone.  But my grandmother embodied morality and decency, with very little external guidance that I could see.

She was good by nature, and acted that way on instinct.  But doing so, she amazed everyone.  My grandma amazed me.   She made me believe in impossible things.  What I’m telling you really, in no uncertain terms, is that my grandma gave me my faith.  Whatever faith I do have, please understand, I have it because I knew my grandmother so well and observed how she operated.  I know the best way to be on this Earth because I saw how she was.  Can there be a higher tribute any one person can give another than that?

Of course, my grandma had some help.  This is the part where I’d start listing all the people who kept my grandma going through tough times, but if you’re within a mile of these words right now, you’re among that number.  My grandma loved you all so much.  But if you’re a celestial being on earth, as I seem to be (aptly) describing her, then you could have no better advocate than my mother, Madeleine, whose love for my grandmother made her a relentless champion to keep my grandma alive longer than any doctor would have allowed.  My mom ensured that my grandma’s house was hallowed ground, full of remarkable ladies, including all of the devoted staff who were by the bedside in the past years.  You don’t have to go to the movies this summer – those are the Avengers sitting over there.

Most incredibly, we had four generations together for four whole years – Grandma, my mom, my sister, and my niece.  I can’t tell you what a profound thing that has been to witness.  If there are words, I don’t have them.  Maybe my part in it was to be a witness, to record it and to be able to share it through these words and whichever words I write in the future.  Because unlike my mom, my sister, my niece, my uncle, my aunt, my cousins, and all the various and sundry Seifters and Charms’s, all of whom resemble or represent my grandmother in apparent ways – I sometimes struggle to see my grandma in myself.  My temperament is far more tempestuous, with tendencies towards the morose and the isolating.  These are some of the adjectives that never ended up anywhere close to my grandma, no matter how much she went through.

I was there the day she found out she lost her beloved brother Bernie and her beloved sister Glady in the same morning.  I was there when she lost my grandpa, her inseparable husband of over six decades.  I was there when they took her voice away and confined her to that bed.  Any one of those things, or their equivalents, would have broken me.  I would have given up.  My grandmother never even considered such a notion.  The last time I saw her alive, she was exactly as she always was; eyes lit up, smile broke wide, nodding at me in an expression of love.  “Go home.  Get some rest.”

And as I contemplate that image, I remember one day, not too long ago, when I looked into the mirror and saw my own eyes and noticed something modestly revelatory:  I have my grandma’s eyes.  Not her facial structure, and certainly not her irreplaceable spirit, but if you’ve spent as much time as I have staring into her eyes, and then looked into mine, you might see it.  It’s the same shade of bluish-green bordering on hazel, the same shade, right down to the specks of brown in the irises.  It’s the only physical attribute of hers I feel I’ve been blessed with, but if you’re into symbolism, it’s a big one.

Because then I think, if she could experience everything she experienced, if she could look at this world that is so imperfect and so brutal and which makes us all so sad at times, if she could look upon all that with those eyes and still manage to remain as positive and optimistic and loving as she was, then couldn’t I try to look at life the same way?

Couldn’t anyone?

Couldn’t everyone?

 

 

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR!: POSSESSION (1981).

POSSESSION would be one of the rawest, most vicious, most harrowing films ever made about love and marriage and the awful dissolution of both, even if there weren’t an oozing Lovecraft-style tentacle demon sitting squarely and evilly in the middle of it.  Polish director and co-writer Andrzej Żuławski reportedly made the film in reaction to a painful divorce, and it shows.  This movie had to have been made by someone who knows what it’s like to be in love, and then out of it.  (The internet tells me that Żuławski has since been with and NOT with Sophie Marceau, so his highs and lows may be higher and lower than most.)

Dashing genre legend Sam Neill plays Mark, the husband going through hell on earth, and the fierce and striking Isabelle Adjani plays Anna, the wife whose mysterious personality-flip drives him to madness.  Mark returns from a trip and is immediately welcomed by Anna with a divorce request.  He feels totally bushwhacked.  They have a young son, who it seems Anna has totally abandoned, both emotionally and literally.  Anna has taken up with a new lover (Heinz Bennent) — who isn’t that new, actually, as he’s almost twice her age.  But despite the brutal slugfest that ensues between Mark and Heinrich, the new guy isn’t half the problem, really.  Something confusingly supernatural seems to be at work — Mark meets his son’s teacher, Helen, who is a dead ringer for Anna (Isabelle Adjani plays a dual role), while Anna is acting more and more unhinged, animalistic, and self-destructive, and oh yeah, that incredibly vile monster mentioned up top is starting to make house visits.  If all of this is sounding crazy, you need to see the movie because it plays seven-hundred times crazier than it sounds.  You’ve never seen anything like it.

POSSESSION has an odd, frenzied, almost jumbled energy right from the outset, for many reasons, one of which being that this is an international production.  The film’s director is from Poland, its leading man from New Zealand, its leading lady from France, and its setting and filming location is in Germany.  This makes it interesting and vibrant, while lending it a personality clash that probably serves the narrative well.  The cinematography by Bruno Nuytten (who, maybe not for nothing, had a relationship with Isabelle Adjani) is fascinating — though it has the look of most British film at the time, and the film for long stretches wouldn’t look out of place on PBS, it picks up a whirling momentum that adds greatly to the disorienting effect of the events onscreen.  The unusual score by Andrzej Korzynski has a similar effect.  There’s nothing safe or reassuring about POSSESSION once it gets going, least of which its perfomances. 

Sam Neill is a phenomenal actor whose ability to project sly intelligence has seen him cast equally as heroes and villains.  He was once screen-tested for the role of James Bond and I see no reason why that wouldn’t have worked, except that it may have kept him away from many of the other interesting roles he’s played.  In POSSESSION he’s playing something closer to an everyman, though if you read “hero” when you look at him early in the film it certainly helps, as does later on his capacity to suggest darkness. 

But it’s Isabelle Adjani who rips the film away and threatens to disembowel the very machinery that is projecting it.  When critics call a performance “fearless”, they really have no barometer with which to judge that virtue if they haven’t seen Isabelle Adjani in POSSESSION.  This is without a doubt one of the bravest, least self-conscious, most go-for-broke frightening performances ever committed to film, regardless of gender.   Gender does matter, though.  This role captures all the allure, the awe, and the fear that feminine sexuality instills in men.  Mark cannot comprehend the changes that Anna is going through, and it scares the hell out of him. 

The dedicated physicality that Isabelle Adjani brings to bear is far more formidable than any monster could ever be, even though this film has a creepier monster than most — brought to life by Carlo Rambaldi, the effects genius who designed E.T.!  Rambaldi also had a hand in the creation of the title character in ALIEN, another film that generates horror by evoking sexual imagery — though that one is far more subtle than this one.

POSSESSION is incomparably bold, personal filmmaking.  Some of those who have seen it have balked at classifying it in the horror genre, since it is so unusual and resistant to classification, and because it is possible (I think wrongly) to read the supernatural elements as metaphorical.  But again, even if there were no tentacle-beast pulling the strings, this film would still have nearly as visceral an impact, due to its incredible lead performances and the concerted efforts of its crew.  POSSESSION is bruising and unforgettable and most of all shocking, long before anyone walks into that room and sees the unholy thing writhing on the ground.  The only reason that more people don’t know about this movie is because most people probably couldn’t handle it.

POSSESSION is tonight’s midnight screening at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, as part of their month-long Video Nasties celebration.  LA, you are so lucky. 

Me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Stone Classics: BERRY GORDY’S THE LAST DRAGON (1985).

R.I.P. Leo O’Brien.  He played “Richie Green” in THE LAST DRAGON, maybe the best character in the movie.  Definitely the one with all the best lines.

I don’t do irony well.  I tend to take the movies I like in the spirit they were intended.  If a movie feels genuine to me, then my affection for it is genuine.  THE LAST DRAGON is a kid’s movie, but one of the few I will still watch from time to time because it’s guaranteed to lift my mood.  If I’m being completely honest, I love this movie way more than I love most conventionally accepted “classic films.”  Given the choice, I’d opt without hesitation to watch this movie over CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, and even THE GODFATHER. There, it’s out.  I said it.

I accept that no one will ever let me call this a good movie, but the rest of the world is going to have to accept my insistence that this is a one-of-a- kind genre occurrence, and for that alone it deserves respect.  There aren’t two like it.  As the story of young Leroy “Bruce Leroy” Green (Taimak) and his mission to defend popular VJ Laura Charles (Vanity) against evil arcade owner Eddie Arkadian (Chris Murney) and local bully The Shogun Of Harlem (Julius J. Carry III), THE LAST DRAGON stands alone in its genre — it’s the first, last, and only Motown-kung fu-action-romantic-comedy musical.  There’s so much genuine goodness about THE LAST DRAGON.  It encourages the mild-mannered to stand up for themselves.  It teaches kids about Eastern philosophy.  It teaches kids about Bruce Lee.  It gave early-career employment to legendary character-actors Mike Starr, Chazz Palminteri, and William H. Macy.  It has music from Willie Hutch, Stevie Wonder, and Vanity.  It has a kid (Leo O’Brien) who’s been tied up by bad guys escaping capture by break-dancing out of the ropes.

This movie is a positive force for the universe.  I watch it and I smile.  It’s one of my few nostalgic indulgences – but it’s still fun to watch as an adult.  I fear the potential remake, despite the involvement of Sam Jackson and the RZA and despite the personal assurance I’ve received from Taimak himself (!).  THE LAST DRAGON was lightning in a bottle, and let’s face it, it’s not actually possible to catch lightning in a bottle… unless a genuine miracle is involved.

This post originally appeared on Rupert Pupkin Speaks.  Give ’em a visit!

Follow Taimak on Twitter:  @iamtaimak