List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: PEPPERMINTA [2009]

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DIRECTED BY: Pipilotti Rist

FEATURING: Ewelina Guzik, Sven Pippig, Sabine Timoteo, Elisabeth Orth
Still from Pepperminta (2009)

PLOT: A whimsical young woman brimming with optimism moves breezily through her hometown in Switzerland, picking up new friends Werwen (Sven Pippig)—a sickly momma’s boy—and Edna (Sabine Timoteo)—a cross-dressing gardener—along the way.  The trio’s mission is to teach others to live without fear through experimental color hypnosis.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Pepperminta is a creative, experimental, singular film that defies standard classification.  It is at once funny, thought-provoking, insightful, fanciful, sexual, and wistful; it contains memorable visuals, bizarre characters, impromptu musical numbers, and flashes of complete fantasy.  It’s wonderfully weird, to be sure, but its sentimentality and naive perspective can be cloying and alienating for some audiences.

COMMENTS: Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is known for saturated colors and themes of harmony and sensuality in her short works.  Pepperminta marks her first foray into feature-length narrative film, allowing her to expand upon these concepts in a more accessible manner.  Inspired by Pippi Longstocking, the story is a fantastical urban adventure set in a magical realist universe that’s open to Utopian ideas, and the central character is unflappable in her quest to bring joy, beauty, and strength to everyone she meets.  Pepperminta transforms the souls of those she chooses to be a part of her mission, healing them with flowers, touch, music, and contagious confidence.  She believes that through certain combinations of color a person’s outlook can be altered, and demonstrates this in several wacky encounters.

Pepperminta is primarily driven by its mysterious but likable characters.  The title character is quick-to-smile, red-haired, freckled, and feels completely at ease in her own body.  She wins others over to her side with unshakable kindness, even if her weirdness confuses most people at first.  Werwen is shy,  middle-aged, and allergic to everything; he easily falls in love with Pepperminta, most likely because she’s the first girl with whom he’s interacted.  With her help he conquers his fear of the outside world bred by his overprotective mother.  Edna is taciturn and serious-minded, slowly released from her hard outer shell as she opens herself up to her new friends, even tapping into the magical aspects of Pepperminta’s personality. Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: PEPPERMINTA [2009] →

Capsules

CAPSULE: MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Werner Herzog

FEATURING: Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, , Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier,

PLOT: The story of a young man’s mental breakdown is told in flashbacks as friends and family are interviewed by a detective outside the home where the killer is holed up with a couple of hostages.

Still from My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s twice as weird as Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog’s other 2009 offering, but only half as entertaining.

COMMENTS:  No movie in the world that could live up to the promise of the credit, “David Lynch Presents a Werner Herzog Film.”  My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is among those movies.  Based on a real-life case with the details changed drastically, the film begins with a gruesome murder then proceeds to explain the mystery through flashbacks and trips inside the diseased mind of the killer.  The main problem with the movie is that the answer we get for the slayer’s motivation amounts to little more than “because he’s nuts.”  There’s a top-notch weird cast here, but the performances are uneven.  With his intense eyes under a lowering brow and odd non-sequiturs, Michael Shannon (last seen ’round these parts as the paranoid insectophobe in Bug) is credibly crazed.  In fact, Shannon’s been acting so off-kilter since returning from a kayaking trip to Peru that fiancée Chloë Sevigny and pal Udo Kier don’t appear at all shocked to find themselves being interviewed by homicide detective Willem Dafoe outside the flamingo-pink home where the madman has holed up with two hostages.  Kier, who’s just replaced Shannon in his avant-garde production of the Oresteia because the actor was getting too excitable when asked to play the scene where he murders his mother, is more an outside observer of the man’s madness than a participant, so his cool, politely dismayed reaction to the tragedy is understandable and even a little amusing. On the other hand, it’s hard to figure out why Sevigny is going full steam ahead with honeymoon plans after Shannon tells her he sees Continue reading CAPSULE: MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: MIRRORMASK (2005)

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DIRECTED BY: Dave McKean

FEATURING: Stephanie Leonidas, Jason Barry, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon

PLOT: A bratty teenager who works as a juggler in her parents’ circus is transported to a devious world of her own imagination after her mother falls ill.  With the help of a cowardly juggler, she navigates a crumbling surrealistic city where everyone wears masks in search of a charm that will help bring her back to her own life.
Still from MirrorMask (2005)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While Dave McKean’s impressively out-there creature and set design certainly gives MirrorMask some memorable visuals, the story and characters are lifted right out of typical fantasy stock, resulting in a beautiful but ultimately conventional movie.  366weirdmovies adds: I agree that MirrorMask shouldn’t go on the List; but, I will admit that when the androids popped out of their pods and gave the heroine a “bad girl” makeover while singing a weirdly harmonized version of the Carpenters’ “Close to You,” I was strongly tempted to nominate it as a Candidate.

COMMENTS: Popular fantasy author Neil Gaiman teamed up Dave McKean, the cover artist for his “Sandman” comics, delivering a script that revisits themes from his young adult book Coraline (which itself draws on archetypes found in The Wizard of Oz and “Alice in Wonderland“) for a movie that recalls the wild, inventive imagery of “Sandman” and his Neverwhere BBC miniseries.  MirrorMask is an allegorical adventure about a girl who grows up quickly, redeeming her past selfish actions through new-found respect for her parents and her own talents.  It’s a family film, and is at times bogged down by patronizing, simplistic dialogue and obvious symbolism, including a world literally divided by “Light” and “Shadow.”  There’s even a girl whose clear displays of “evilness” are fishnet stockings, cigarettes, and (gasp!) kissing a boy.

For all its narrative flaws, the film still charms with the help of a talented cast.  Stephanie Leonidas is excellent as Helena, effectively capturing the many moods of a teenage girl while still creating a sympathetic character.  Jason Barry works well with his chatty, comic-relief sidekick character, despite the inherent cliches in his personality.  But it’s Gina McKee in her triple role as Helena’s mother, the “Queen of Light”, and the “Queen of Darkness” who really Continue reading CAPSULE: MIRRORMASK (2005) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN (1972)

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DIRECTED BY: Robert Fuest

FEATURING: Vincent Price, Robert Quarry, Peter Jeffrey, , Valli Kemp, Hugh Griffith

PLOT: Dr. Phibes rises from suspended animation and travels to Egypt seeking waters of immortality to resurrect his beloved wife; but another man seeks the waters as well, and Scotland Yard is once again on Phibes’ trail.

Still from Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The original was just weird enough to make it a candidate for the List, but this nearly redundant sequel adds nothing new that would justify considering giving it its own separate spot.

COMMENTS: If you liked the original The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Rises Again tries hard to give you more of the same—campy black comedy mixed with bizarre characters, sets and (now gorier) murders—except this time there’s no logic or sense in the script whatsoever.  All the beloved characters are back, including all the ones that died in the first movie.  Mysterious silent assistant Vulnavia (played by a new actress, Australian beauty queen Valli Kemp) returns from the original, as do the clockwork musicians (Phibes packs them up in a steamer and ships them to Egypt with him). The sets and art design echo the original, with an Egyptian slant replacing the Art Deco look; there are some fun new sights like Price dressed as a sheik and an octagonal mirrored hallway. The half-serious campy tone from the first effort carries over, as does the black humor (watch as Phibes drinks champagne and eats fish through a hole in the back of his neck at a picnic with Vulnavia). A very few things have changed.  Whereas Phibes was nearly silent in the first film, speaking rarely and painfully through audio cables that ran from his neck to a gramophone horn, once he Rises Again you can’t shut him up.  For this outing he brought along an extra-long audio cable so he can wander about the sets, cursing all who would dare oppose them and plotting their fiendish demise without being limited to a five-foot radius around the phonograph.  (He often speaks without a hookup at all; maybe we’re just privy to his inner monologues).  And three years in suspended animation has sharpened his supervillain abilities: whereas in the first film, the Abominable doctor spent years plotting elaborate fetishistic schemes to kill his enemies based around Biblical plagues, now whenever he needs to he can simply whip up a spiked scorpion chair filled with creepy crawlies out of spit, bailing wire and whatever odds and ends he has lying around his pyramid.  In the sequel, Phibes is pitted against another villain (a megalomaniac Robert Quarry, who makes it clear he doesn’t appreciate the inconvenience when the doctor keeps killing off his henchmen) rather than against the forces of law and order: Inspector Trout and his Scotland Yard superintendent are relegated to comic relief (they hesitate searching Phibes’ pyramid because they don’t have a warrant). So this time out we’re explicitly encouraged to root for Vincent Price (not that we wouldn’t anyway, but the lack of noble opponent makes it easier to get on his side).  As mentioned before, the deaths are more gruesome in this sequel; the scene where Phibes’ pet falcon eats an interloper, pulling wads of flesh off his bloody corpse and swallowing them, pushes the limits of the movie’s PG rating.  Lack of a sensible script aside, Fuest does a good job of giving Phibes fans more of what they loved about Abominable, but the one thing he can’t reproduce is the original’s originality.

Due to bungled rights issues, TV broadcasts and the original home video releases of Dr. Phibes Rises Again did not include Price’s rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” replacing the sound in that key scene with generic instrumental film cues. MGM’s latest DVD releases (sold in a single disc edition, as a double feature with Abominable, and as part of a seven-movie Vincent Price box set) restore the soundtrack of the original.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Vincent Price usually came across as barking mad at the best of times, but add a daft wig, the inability to talk and some truly weird costumes, and you are taken into Salvador Dali territory by this performance…  If you saw it a while ago and tend to think of it as a gaudy example of psychedelic kitsch, it’s time for a major re-evaluation.”–Chris Wood, BritishHorrorFilms.com (DVD)

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