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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010)

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The second highest-grossing motion picture of all time—the product of a little indie shingle that hit the jackpot, called Avengers: Endgame—is also by fiat the highest-grossing motion picture of all time with the word “endgame” in the title. That’s not as easy a title to grab as you might think; IMDb lists several dozen features, shorts, and TV episodes that have relied upon the handy term for the final moves of a chess match, most of which preceded Marvel’s grand finale. So it’s probably the law of averages that put two different Endgames on our reader-suggested review queue within spitting distance of each other. Aside from their titles, these two films share exactly two common elements: they both use hurtful language with reckless abandon, and they are both shot on film. Beyond that, you couldn’t ask for two similarly titled stories to be further apart in style, tone, and subject matter. What makes them both worthy to bear the standard of games that end? Let’s dig in.

ENDGAME (2000)

DIRECTED BY: Conor McPherson

FEATURING: , , Charles Simon, Jean Anderson

PLOT: In a barren house at the end of the world, a blind and decrepit old man lives with his parents (who occupy a pair of rubbish bins) and his hobbled servant, who is contemplating a departure.

COMMENTS: Let’s give a warm welcome back to Samuel Beckett, previously seen round these parts waiting for a friend. Another entry from Irish television’s epic “Beckett on Film” cycle capturing all the great writer’s stage works on celluloid for posterity, Endgame is here to deliver the author’s vision of a bleak and doomed future for the human race, precisely according to the author’s wishes. The set is an almost-empty room, devoid of any decoration or furnishing that isn’t occupied by an actor for the duration. Beckett was notoriously allergic to anything ornamental (as with Godot, he originally wrote Endgame in French to curb any tendencies toward florid vocabulary), so what we see and hear is not just what matters but all that matters.

What we can see is definitely a surreal nightmare. All four characters are stricken with various invalidities. Hamm, the apparent lord of the manor, doesn’t enter so much as he is unveiled, and when he speaks it is to declare himself the center of the universe. “Can there be misery loftier than mine?” He is immobile, and thus relies upon the assistance of a crippled man who is himself unable to sit down. The apocalypse has obliterated everything outside of this room. (“Nothing on the horizon?” Hamm asks. “What in God’s name could there be on the horizon?” Clov replies.) And then there are the upstage trash cans that Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MAGDALENA VIRAGA (1986)

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DIRECTED BY: Nina Menkes

FEATURING: Tinka Menkes, Claire Aguilar, Nora Bendich

PLOT: A sex worker endures a dreary, repetitive existence soliciting and servicing clients, and then is accused of murdering a trick.

Still from Magdalena Viraga (1986)

COMMENTS: One ever-present danger in reviewing films is that your assessment will miss the boat because you, the reviewer, are not the movie’s intended audience. Yes, cinema is a mass media and no creator can guarantee that their work will be understood as intended by everyone, but issues of language, race, gender, culture, and the like are always out there, hinting that you may not get all the nuance you need to give a movie a fair shake. So my antennae are out for a film whose director describes it as a “hallucinogenic journey through the boundless vortex of unadulterated Female space.” It just may be that this particular film has not been crafted to reach me.

Of course, even I can recognize that the life of Ida (played by the director’s sister, Tinka) is pretty grim. We watch her ply her trade with nearly a dozen different clients, and the scenes of Ida at work are brutal in their length and detachment. Menkes shows nothing explicit, but the drudgery of the experience is awful enough. She employs a steady closeup that never leaves Ida’s deadened, detached expression. Even as we watch her endure the grunts and pants of her john, she evinces no emotion whatsoever, completely removed from the moment. On one occasion, we’re treated to the preamble to the act—two people seated on a bed, tired and unmoving and refusing to make eye contact—which is possibly worse. Another time, her partner bounces atop her so manically that she is forced to enter the moment, pleading, “Slowly!” It is a joyless existence, categorically designed to render her passive and intellectually irrelevant. Not that anyone would be up to the challenge of a conversation. At the end of one such encounter, she tries to engage: “I dream that I often long for water. I dream that when I close my eyes, I see water. When I close my eyes, I do see water. What is water?” Her trick’s vacant response: “I dunno.”

When demonstrating the dehumanizing situation in which Ida finds herself, Magdalena Viraga is potent cinema. Menkes defiantly subverts the decades of entropy that have enshrined the male gaze in the fundamentals of filmmaking. Unfortunately, there’s another layer of story that feels less like a feminist cri de cœur and more like a thumb on the scale. Ida’s tale is told in a nonlinear fashion, so we know from the outset that she has been arrested for murder. As the details of the crime and the case against her are revealed, we’re forced to reckon with a movie that wants to present facts that demonstrate the unfairness of the situation while insisting that we ignore the absurdity of those facts. It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose bargain.

Some explanation: we see the murder itself (a cold act with all the speed, action, and even nudity that the rest of the film steadfastly avoids), and it would seem impossible for the crime to be blamed on Ida, especially since her explanation that the blood covering her is menstrual should be easy to establish. Regardless, there’s no hint of a trial. Instead, we get a scene where the prison warden tells Ida’s friend, hilariously, “I’m sorry, but we must execute murderers. It’s absolute policy,” as though she had been trying to negotiate the return of a faulty product. And then there’s the jail itself, with an interior that resembles a monastery, complete with a cell containing a stained-glass window, a table like an altar, bars composed of ornate metalwork, and a large crucifix on the wall. The fact that everyone in the prison is forced to attend mass in a well-appointed chapel gives the game away; Menkes is also here to call out the Church for its role in the oppression of women. It’s a reasonable charge, but the realism and the allegory mix poorly.

I can imagine a version of Magdalena Viraga where Menkes commits entirely to a presentational, Brechtian style. Tinka Menkes’ delivery of her lines is uniformly flat, a fact the film leans into by staging scenes where she and her fellow sex workers stare directly into the camera and intone resigned koans. Much of the impenetrable dialogue in the film is actually drawn from the poetry of Gertrude Stein, Mary Daly, and Anne Sexton, meaning our characters literally have no words of their own. In this version of the film, Ida isn’t a person at all, but symbol of all the women who quietly suffer the indignities heaped upon their sex. The efforts to make her relatable, to lend credibility to her as a character, only shortchange the message. I guess what I’m saying is, I wish that Magdalena Viraga wasn’t quite so concerned with being crafted to reach me.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…[a] visually appealing but plotless surreal film … It’s an unusual and powerful tale that is filmed in a dreamlike landscape and in a metaphysical world where meaning is not always rationally apparent.” Dennis Schwartz, Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

(This movie was nominated for review by Laurie B. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

MAGDALENA VIRAGA

MAGDALENA VIRAGA
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CONFESSIONS [KOKUHAKU] (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Tetsuya Nakashima

FEATURING: Takako Matsu, Yukito Nishii, Kaoru Fujiwara, Ai Hashimoto, Yoshino Kimura,

PLOT: A schoolteacher informs her class that that two of her students are responsible for the death of her daughter, and she has exacted revenge by secretly exposing them to a fatal disease.

still from confessions (2010)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Confessions offers an unusual mix of styles and goals: a brutal revenge thriller, a screed against the inhumanity of Japanese schoolchildren, a dark and twisted mystery, a gentle teen romance, and a meditative drama paced deliberately enough to make jealous, all living side-by-side within the same film. On their own, none reinvent the wheel, but the resulting bouillabaisse is a creation unto itself.

COMMENTS: The very last word spoken in Confessions is “Kidding.” The word is wielded like a dagger to the heart. There have been no jokes told over the preceding 100+ minutes, and even moments of smiles have been laced with cruelty or cynicism. It’s the final opportunity for the movie to make clear its intentions, and this final utterance establishes once and for all that its blood runs ice cold.

That emotional intelligence is no one’s priority is made clear from the film’s opening gambit, in which nearly the entire first act of the movie is given over to a monologue by Ms. Moriguchi, the class teacher. Her raucous class ignores her announcement that this is her last day, and pays little heed to her mentions of her dead child and her dying husband. It’s only when she happens to mention murder that she finally gets their attention; they are intensely focused as she intimates that the culprits are in the room, and her revelation that she has spiked the class milk supply with AIDS-tainted blood sends them into a complete tizzy. It’s all disrespect until the stakes turn selfish, and Moriguchi stays cool and detached the entire time.

Confessions repeats this theme of heartless self-interest throughout: a mother abandons her child to pursue a career. Another is irritated at having to engage with a new teacher following Moriguchi’s departure: “She only cares about her own child, more than for her students.” Students are jealous of the media attention paid to peers who commit murder. Most tellingly, the two students responsible for the girl’s death react in equally selfish but wildly contrasting ways: one becomes feral and wracked with existential doubt, while the other doubles down on a sociopathic mindset, devising a plan to wipe out the entire school. Of course, there’s a dark irony in the later revelation that this homicidal endeavor is actually central to someone else’s vengeful scheme.

The confessions of the title are ostensibly the admissions by each of the major participants in the story concerning their role in the events depicted. But this is mostly a nod to the story’s origins as a novel, and a means of keeping the tale’s many twists and turns concealed—because confession suggests guilt, and that is something none of the characters feel for very long. In fact, Nakashima luxuriates in both the pain and the fury of his protagonists, frequently lingering in the moment through lovingly detailed slow-motion imagery (often accompanied by Radiohead songs to maximize the drama).

Confessions is an effective piece of cinema, but a grim and nasty work. It’s a cousin to the all-the-kids’-fault nihilism of Battle Royale or the nausea-inducing machinations of Oldboy. (The climactic revelation also brought to mind the notoriously bleak South Park episode “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” which itself has a lofty antecedent in Shakespeare.) It’s a terrifically acted, beautifully rendered world that almost actively discourages revisiting. Not kidding.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Overall, Confessions is a fairly solid, creatively made picture taking a relatively simple narrative, small cast and handful of locations and creating a continuously engaging and interesting film largely through its techniques. That being said, its bloated, confused and downright bizarre plot, coupled by its overextended runtime and curious split, made it somewhat more difficult to fully enjoy.” – William Schofield, Norwich Film Festival       

(This movie was nominated for review by hanul. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Confessions [Blu-ray]

Confessions [Blu-ray]
  • Best Director (Tetsuya Nakashima) of Award of the Japanese Academy 2010
  • Best Film of Award of the Japanese Academy 2010
  • Best Screenplay of Award of the Japanese Academy 2010
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Apocryphally Weird

49*. BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)

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Recommended

“It’s like a Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings,’ but he’s just going to his mom’s house.”― Ari Aster

DIRECTED BY: Ari Aster

FEATURING: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Armen Nahapetian

PLOT: On the anniversary of his father’s death, Beau Wasserman misses his flight to visit his mother; his guilt is magnified by his mother’s surprise death by falling chandelier. He attempts to attend the funeral (to be held immediately in accordance with Jewish tradition), but he is waylaid crime in his anarchic neighborhood, an accident that leaves him in the care of a couple who seem to be using him to replace their dead son, and a wandering theater troupe that spurs thoughts of another possible life. When he finally arrives at his mother’s house, he is surprised by both the appearance of a lost flame from his youth and by a revelation about his mother’s fate that calls into question every aspect of his existence.

Still from beau is afriad (2023)

BACKGROUND:

  • Following his successes in the horror genre with Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster determined that his next project would be a comedy. This is that film.
  • The feature is massively expanded from a short Aster made in 2011.
  • Among Aster’s descriptions of the picture: a “nightmare comedy,” a “Freudian Odyssey,” and “if you pumped a 10-year-old full of Zoloft, and [had] him get your groceries.” Co-star Lane called it “the Jewish Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
  • The animation was created by Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cociña, whose work Aster discovered in their Apocryphally-enshrined film The Wolf House.
  • The logo for Mona’s corporation appears among the vanity production cards at the start of the movie. Some have suggested this means she is controlling the very film you are watching.
  • Winner of two 2023 Weirdcademy Awards, including Weirdest Picture and Weirdest Scene for what we chose to call “Phallic Attic.” Phoenix also grabbed a nomination for Weirdest Actor.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Well, this site’s readers didn’t declare it the year’s weirdest movie for nothing. When Beau’s mother coerces him into her attic, he is confronted with three terrifying visions: an emaciated creature chained in the dark who might be a lost twin or an alternate version of himself, the homicidal mercenary who has been chasing him across the country, and (most shockingly) enormous, grotesque monolithic male genitals that throb and scream and kill like the brain bug in Starship Troopers. Beau has been emotionally neutered his whole life, and this is the moment that suggests where his lost manhood may have been this whole time.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Crossing Hell Street; phallic attic

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Beau’s very existence is a nightmare, from the moment that he is born with a wail-inducing smack, and even dating back to the moment of conception that stopped his father’s weak heart. What unspools here is three hours of the intense and unrelenting discomfort that Beau endures just by virtue of being alive. He manages to be both the most luckless man who ever lived and a person who is thoroughly incapable of coping with misfortune. Aster concocts the most elaborate Jewish-mother joke ever told, and he never relents in demonstrating just how awful things can get, and how they can still manage to get worse.

Original trailer for Beau is Afraid (2023)

COMMENTS: Beau Wasserman’s life is governed by a few simple Continue reading 49*. BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FEAR X (2003)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicolas Winding Refn

FEATURING: John Turturro, James Remar, Deborah Kay Unger

PLOT: A mall security guard travels cross-country in an effort to find the man who killed his pregnant wife.

Still from fear x (2003)

COMMENTS: Mall cops get no respect. And if you’re judging them by the standards of heroic crimefighters, well, they don’t deserve any. As officers without portfolio, the most they can hope to do is serve as glorified hall monitors. But that actually highlights their most essential skill. They are watchers, ever on the lookout for wrongdoing. It’s a talent that is both passive and invasive.

From what we can see, Harry Caine (Turturro) is good at his job. He readily spots small-time crooks on the prowl, he’s got a billfold crammed full of mugshots to help him pick out known miscreants, and a bottomless well of patience. So it’s his peculiar curse that his wife’s murder took place at the very place he works, giving him access to grainy video footage of the crime to obsess over. And it’s an equally striking coincidence that an inspection of the house across the street produces a critical clue that might just lead Harry to the killer. For someone with the ability to look closely, finding the answer is surely just a matter of time.

The first half of Fear X (a meaningless title that might as well be gibberish) is a portrait of obsession at a low-but-steady simmer, and it’s intriguing to watch Turturro play quiet and insular. The milieu is familiar; in a sparse apartment, he pores over a wall of photographs that is only missing red yarn to connect them. But there’s a gutting hollowness to his pain. He’s not interested in revenge, he insists. He just wants to know why.

Act II shifts the action from suburban Wisconsin to rural Montana (the film was shot in and around Winnipeg), but in truth, the location is an entirely different movie. Once he arrives in the small town in the Big Country (with its five-story motel), he enters a world filled with intricate mysteries out of a John Le Carré novel, long red hallways that would be at home in “Twin Peaks”, and images of roiling seas of blood crashing outside an elevator that are positively Kubrickian. It’s as stark a transition as Dorothy’s arrival in Oz, and while Turturro tries to maintain his internal devastation, he’s ultimately forced to confront the progression of strange occurrences, culminating in a circular argument with the likely assailant. That proves to be Fear X’s undoing, because while there’s nothing wrong with a film that leaves its mysteries unexplained, there’s something very unsatisfying about a story that suggests it’s foolish to look for answers in the first place. Turturro gets the exact opposite of what he wants—revenge without understanding—and as he tosses his meticulously accumulated pile of clues into the wind, there’s more than a whiff of condescension about his belief that he could ever hope to figure it all out.

In some respects, Fear X is an embarrassment of riches. In his first film on North American soil, Refn not only benefits from Turturro in the starring role, but he also enlists the services of Brian Eno to contribute to the score, Larry Smith (Stanley Kubrick’s cinematographer for The Shining) behind the camera, and a co-scriptwriter in the form of novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. (of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream notoriety) turning in some of his last work. It’s a lot of talent thrown at a story that doesn’t really add up to much. It begins as a showcase for Turturro, then becomes a platform for Refn to show off his appreciation for the avant-garde masters. And if all you want to do is passively watch, it’s interesting. But we are not all mall cops. Sometimes, audience members are looking for a little more respect.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This is one hell of an interesting film… Refn continually proves he’s got vision, willing each subsequent project to be weirder and wilder than the one it follows…” – C. H. Newell, Father Son Holy Gore

(This movie was nominated for review by burner. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Fear X

Fear X
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