Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

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DIRECTED BY: Terry Gilliam, 

FEATURING: , , , Terry Jones, , Terry Gilliam, Carol Cleveland

PLOT: King Arthur, along with Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot, Sir Galahad the Pure, Sir Bedevere the Wise, and Arthur’s squire, Patsy, set out to find the Holy Grail, meeting the Black Knight, a killer rabbit, and the knights who say “Ni!” along the way.

Still from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While most of ‘s work flirts with surreal fantasy, this film simply doesn’t plunge as deeply into the genre as most of the other movies directed or co-directed by Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Brothers Grimm).

COMMENTS: As someone who has seen every episode of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (and “Fawlty Towers”), as well as all four of the “Python” feature films, it pains me to say this, but—this picture simply isn’t all that funny. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (along with Monty Python’s The Life of Brian) seems like it would have been more effective as a half-hour episode of “Python”, but, stretched out to feature-length, the seams really start to show. This production has so many indelible moments—“It’s only a flesh wound!”; coconuts used in lieu of the sound of horse’s hooves; “Bring out yer dead!”; etc., etc. etc.—that it seems churlish to say that it doesn’t hang together very well. It sounds like a ridiculous argument, like complaining that the films of Mel Brooks need more plot, but Holy Grail is only hilarious in fits and starts. Some of the funniest bits are the most subtle (“Someday, all this will be yours.” “What, the curtains?”) Otherwise, there is a surprising amount of dead air in this somewhat murky-looking film (it was shot on a very low-budget), which nevertheless has been acclaimed as a deathless classic by generations of nerds. By now, the movie is so immortal that it has been adapted into the hugely successful Broadway musical “Spamalot”, produced by the late Mike Nichols. But the film itself still seems like a huge pile of hit-and-miss gags that don’t actually add up to a real movie. And it is only weird in the way that all Python is weird; the fourth wall is broken repeatedly, but  was doing that 40 years before Python.

The Holy Grail isn’t strange enough to make the List. However, even this nutty farce is a far better exploration of Arthurian myth than the awful film version of Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot (which Chapman’s Arthur dismisses as “a silly place”) or Walt Disney’s exceedingly mediocre animated film The Sword in the Stone.

Because of the eternal popularity of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it has been released and re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray a seemingly endless number of times. Some of the behind-the-scenes-stories (in the DVD Extras), like the one about how Chapman’s alcoholism was totally out of control on the set, are perhaps more interesting than the film itself.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Some inspired lunacy—and a lot of dry stretches; awfully bloody, too.”–Leonard Maltin, “Leonard Maltin’s 2015 Movie Guide: The Modern Era”

“The Python team’s surreal take on the legend of Camelot bursts with inspired lunacy.”–Jamie Graham, Total Film (DVD)

Capsules

TURKEY DAY: MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 MARATHON

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This Thanksgiving, we’re thankful that Shout! Factory has allowed embedding of their 2nd Annual “Turkey Day” MST3K marathon, giving us free fill-in content so we can focus on what’s important this holiday season–stuffing our gullets with dead fowl.

First up is a weird one: The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, which is actually the Russian fairytale Sadko redubbed to make it appear the hero is the more familiar Sinbad. The rest of the episodes are a surprise, so you’ll just have to watch.

Capsules

CAPSULE: A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (2014)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Ana Lily Amirpour

FEATURING: Arash Marandi, , Marshall Manesh

PLOT: A young man romances a mysterious woman in the sparsely-inhabited town known as “Bad City.”

Still from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With no real plot to speak of, Girl is a bit of a tease, although the film’s exotic originality is seductive.

COMMENTS: The town of “Bad City” is so sparsely inhabited it only has one little boy, one junkie, one prostitute, one sexy socialite, one vice lord… and one vampire. The setting is the story in this plot-thin exercise, and it’s to Girl‘s credit that its atmosphere intoxicates even though the film does not have much to say. Leaning against a fence smoking, looking like a Persian James Dean in his shades and wife beater, protagonist Arash (Arash Marandi) begins the movie by rescuing a cat, then walking past a hooker in a headscarf and what looks to be a gully full of corpses. Arash’s dad, we soon learn, single-handedly keeps the local skag dealer in business. At night, the nearly deserted town is haunted by a silent female vampire in a striped shirt and a hijab who rides a skateboard (!) One night, dressed as Dracula and lost in a post-costume party stupor, Arash not only encounters the mysterious woman, but survives; not only survives, but is enthralled by her. The vampiress, who radiates loneliness and may be growing tired of her self-appointed role as Bad City’s judge and executioner, may be tempted by Arash as well.

There are some victims along the way, but that is pretty much the plot. What is fascinating about the movie is its evocation of a nowheresville hellscape: the nearly deserted suburban streets lensed in stark black and white, the long silences broken by ethereal music (everything from faux-Morricone to 80s angst-pop). The fact that the actors speak Persian and the women cover their hair implies that Bad City is located in Iran, but the movie was actually shot in and around Bakersfield, California, and the film’s sensibility is an odd mix of east and west, austerity and decadence. It’s like a second-generation Iranian-American distorted dream of a homeland never seen. The movie’s capacity to blend the bleak and the sensual sets it apart from run of the mill arthouse indies.

Writer/director Amirpour professes admiration for and Sergio Leone, but seems like the heaviest influence here, and not just because Girl would make a perfect languid-fang double feature with Only Lovers Left Alive.  The minimalism (there are some very drawn out sequences in Girl), gift for framing urban decay, and eclectic use of pop music all suggest early Jarmusch. I would usually use “style-over-substance” as a compliment rather than an insult, but in this case I do believe that Girl would benefit from a little more meat on its aesthetic bones, a little more blood in its beautiful veins. It’s not a masterpiece, but it is an exciting movie, one that suggests that its director might have a masterpiece in her somewhere down the line.

The film might not have ever been made without the support of , who signed on as a producer after falling in love with the script.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all… along comes something completely new, or at least something so intriguingly bizarre as to seem completely new.”–Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: BUSHIDO MAN (2013)

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Bushido Man: Seven Deadly Battles

DIRECTED BY: Takanori Tsujimoto

FEATURING: Mitsuki Koga, Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi

PLOT: A martial arts master eats meals based on the diet of his next opponent so he can better understand and defeat them.

Still from Bushido Man (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The fights are good, but it’s annoying that the movie has no hunger to pursue its kung foodie premise, giving us instead six courses of contextless seriocomic battles and a meaningless final boss for desert.

COMMENTS: “Plot” is too strong a word to describe Bushido Man‘s story. The film is just a series of incidents connected by the thinnest noodle of a premise, almost an anthology of fight scenes. The bouts themselves are energetic mini-stories that should entertain fight fans. The comedy, not so much—although the campy English dubbing adds a level of humor that would not be present in the original, and I did like the gag with the Master’s obviously fake mustache. Toramaru, our putative hero, is touring Japan, battling the paragons of six different martial styles: kung fu, stick fighting, nunchaku, swordfighting, yakuza knife fighting, and pistol. According to the movie’s premise, before each battle he eats a meal to better understand his enemy, but this unsustainable idea quickly breaks down: by the second battle, the meal is already nothing but an excuse for a dumb pun (munching on cheesesticks = upcoming stick fight). Why we should care about this unofficial tournament is anyone’s guess; the movie is disinterested in exploring characters’ motivations or generating sympathy for them.

Each of the fights, on the other hand, offers an extra tidbit of interest, whether it’s an interloping turtle or a Zatoichi tribute. Things get weirder after the hero defeats the pistol master (who dresses as a Hollywood cowboy) and a side plot develops. Toramaru decides to go after a legendary weapon: wristbands rigged to fire bullets when you throw a punch. The original footage with the fist-guns, featuring a female fighter who is not one of Toramaru’s opponents, looks like it was taken from a different (unfinished?) movie. Koga wears a Van Dyke in the scenes before and after this one, but he’s mysteriously clean-shaven when he watches her dispatch a gang of generic badies. His customary facial hair returns for the rest of the movie. That’s an indication of the careless way Bushido Man is assembled from leftovers, which might strike you either as insultingly shoddy, or endearingly unpretentious, depending on your mood. The acquisition of these pugilistic firearms sets up a truly crazy, bloody finale, however, which “ends” with a closing credits gag that’s sure to catch you off guard.

Bushido Man lured me in with the promise that it would mix food porn with classic kung fu fights, sort of “Iron Chef” meets The Man with the Iron Fists. The actual experience was more like watching MMA bouts interrupted by Ramen noodle commercials.  Of course, sometimes you’re in the mood for junk food entertainment, and Bushido is heavily salted with absurdity. Just expect that you’ll be hungry for something a little more substantial a few hours after downing this one.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the film as a whole tosses in enough ‘off the wall’ ideas that stick, producing a rousing good time. Inventiveness,  even when the concepts are at their most absurd, add a lot of character to the picture and keeps the viewers constantly guessing what might happen next.”–Edgar Chaput, Sound on Sight (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: MR. JONES (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: Karl Mueller

FEATURING: Jon Foster, Sarah Jones

PLOT: Deep in the woods, a documentary filmmaker stumbles on the residence of “Mr. Jones”, a legendary builder of scarecrows whose works are rumored to cause madness.

Still from Mr. Jones (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Mr. Jones isn’t nearly as bad as you might have heard. It took something of a pummeling because its last act is so weird that it confused and alienated many viewers. That said, although the movie may be worth a rental or Netflix stream for weird horror fans on a slow night, it’s not the kind of game-changer it would need to be to make the List of the Best Weird Movies of All Time.

COMMENTS: The filmmaker has stopped taking his meds and has “no idea what this movie is about in the first place.” That’s not a confession from the director’s statement to Mr. Jones; it refers to the nature-doc movie-within-the-movie that would-be auteur Scott has retired to the country to make. Scott and wife Penny decide to change the focus of their unfocused documentary in midstream when it appears they have stumbled upon the hideout of the celebrated reclusive scarecrow-maker (?!) known only as “Mr. Jones.” That setup covers the first half to two-thirds of Mr. Jones, with Scott and Penny’s descent into madness constituting the film’s final act.

As far as horror icons go, the shambling, hooded Mr. Jones doesn’t do much—oh, except for bring insanity in his wake. The movie’s early scenes are effective at creating unease and tension, from the unexpected appearance of a cloaked figure in the background of certain shots to a nerve-wracking moment when Scott gets lost while exploring a strange labyrinth underneath Mr. Jones’ shack. The final act, which traps the couple in what seems to be an eternal midnight filled with nightmares inside of nightmares, is where the movie tends to lose its audience.

Unlikely as it might seem for a guy who’s setting out to make a nature documentary, Scott films himself and his wife sleeping, and having sex. The “found” footage that composes Mr. Jones is also, at times, heavily edited, including addition of a voiceover and soundtrack song, along with one heavily manipulated travel montage. There are even moments (especially late) when the movie appears to shift viewpoints within a scene, or move from a first-person to a conventional third person point of view. The fact that the film we’re watching has clearly been through extensive post-production breaks the Blair Witch vérité spell. Many people point to the movie’s seemingly inconsistent use of the found-footage format as a flaw, and perhaps it is. Perhaps the perspective shifts are less arbitrary than they appear, however. The question, I suppose, is whether Mr. Jones‘ ramshackle construction is the result of sloppy craftsmanship, or a reflection of an unreliable, unstable narrator. Related question: if sloppy craftsmanship inadvertently conveys a psychotic state of mind that is appropriate to the subject matter, is that a bad thing, or a happy accident?

Mr. Jones got a raw deal with both audiences and critics. I think this is a result of difficult market positioning. The film is too thoughtful, ambitious and surreal—and too PG-13—for the average horror fan. At the same time, it’s not polished enough and too genre-y to make much headway in the arthouse press. In other words, it’s too smart to be a popular success, but not smart enough to be a critical hit.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“You can’t really dip into dream logic if you have nary a single eye-popping visual, and in doing so, Mueller completely wastes a unique, potentially durable concept…”–Gabe Toro, Indiewire (festival screening)