Tag Archives: 2007

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS (2007)

エクステ

AKA Ekusute; AKA Exte; AKA Hair Extensions

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DIRECTED BY: Sion Sono

FEATURING: , Miku Satô, , Ken Mitsuishi

PLOT: A woman’s corpse found in a human-hair-filled shipping container spews forth beautiful black hair, inflicting grisly fates upon those who use it as hair extensions.

Still from Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA:  Paranormal hair attacks alternate with domestic drama, making a strange weave of narrative that slides the viewer ever more tightly between its strands as it braids into a frightening, heartwarming climax.

COMMENTS: You may note that the word “hair” appears three times in the plot description. This is not enough times. The hair in Exte is ubiquitous, vexing its victims in increasingly strange ways. An extension harvested from an organ-harvest victim poises itself ominously at the ear canal of its wearer; a stylist is bombarded with harrowing recollections of illegal surgery. The hair tips jab into her brain, and she jabs her scissors into the side of her customer’s head. Later, the victim’s daughter views a violent, bloody thrashing through a hair-cut gash in door of the cupboard where she hides. An apartment window smashes outward as copious human hair bursts through the living space. And those are just small snips of the sinister proceedings.

Simultaneously, we hear the story of Mizushima Yoku, an up-and-coming young stylist who cheerily bombards an unseen audience with exposition—a habit that she and a co-worker picked up from a crummy television show. At work, Yoku cheerfully goes about her styling under the firm, but kind, tutelage of the master stylist. She has a jerk-bag sister, Kiyomi, who abandons her submissive daughter at Yoku’s house for a few days while Kiyomi goes out to party with her scum boyfriend. This mix of filial tension and sober depiction of child abuse exists as its own story universe while, on the other side of the narrative, a creepy coroner with a hair fetish steals the body of a mystically charged woman who grows hair at a furious pace in response to the wrongs she endured. When paths cross, as they must do, things get… hairy.

Exte juggles its tones so deftly that it’s only upon reflection that it dawns that Sion Sono is up to something very strange. To be sure, the hair-murder set pieces made me want to cheer Exte on. But the fusion of that strand with small gauge melo-tragedy is simultaneously incongruent and perfectly blended—like a cunning weave of ever so slightly off-colored hair done at the hands of a master stylist. And this tangle of a reaction has barely even mentioned Ren Ôsugi as the manic-pixie-psycho-coroner, all creepiness, whimsy, and song in his seaside shack-cum-shrine to beautiful human hair.

Sono proves once again a master stylist, lovingly curling this absurd story together from its disparate strands (in case this all was coming across as too simple, there’s also “police procedural” thrown into the mix, as detectives investigate the increasing body count). The perfect pacing, balance of soft and terror lighting, and the finessed performances calibrated to a scissor-edge between high drama and silly splatter are a sheer delight.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Even by the standards of Japanese horror movies, Exte is a very weird film. This is a movie all about hair, not just tangentially but intrinsically. Hair isn’t the McGuffin, it’s not the setting, it’s everything.” — M.J. Simpson, MJ Simpson Films (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Chris Thurlow, who describes it as “a possibly weird film about a man obsessed with hair who, while working in a police morgue, discovers a woman’s body that continues to grow copious amounts of hair despite the fact that she is dead.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Werner Herzog

PLOT: A profile of the scientists and adventurers who spend months at a time in Antarctica exploring the mysteries found there.

Still from encounters at the End of the World (2007)

COMMENTS: Somehow, Werner Herzog has emerged in the past several years to become the most unlikely of pop culture celebrities. His voice, chronically pessimistic but tempered by an exhausted Teutonic restraint, has become the stuff of legendary parody. This distinctive delivery has inspired an unexpected career as an actor in projects as diverse as a Tom Cruise thriller, a Star Wars TV series, a sitcom, and even an animated jokefest starring penguins. If you had predicted that the man behind Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God would become a participant in postmodern ironic comedy, then I hope you also invested heavily in lottery tickets.

It’s that last item I mentioned—the voice cameo in Penguins of Madagascar—that is surprisingly relevant here, because the minds behind that film must surely have screened this one, in which Herzog brings his cameras to Antarctica with no intention of filming, in his words, “fluffy penguins.” Herzog’s Earth is a harsh, cruel place governed by the unforgiving vicissitudes of nature, and a bunch of goofy flightless birds aren’t going to change that.

Herzog is very much on brand here. His general distaste for the bulk of humanity is triggered by the sight of McMurdo Station, the busy port-of-call that has dragged the most distasteful elements of civilization to this once-pristine wasteland; he calls out the presence of an ATM with particular scorn. But he seems captivated by the strange rituals that have sprung up as part of survival in such an inhospitable climate, such as a training exercise in which a platoon of newcomers simulate finding a lost colleague in the midst of a snowstorm by putting plastic buckets on their heads.

Herzog is a crank, of course. “I loathe the sun both on my celluloid and my skin,” he intones, as if trying to prove that he’s nothing like you. But the people he encounters challenge Herzog at his own game. They are willing to endure harsh climates to pursue their passions, and yet they bring along their own personal whims and amusements, such as talent shows, electric guitars, and monster movies. One such scientist—a penguin researcher, naturally—seems just as disgusted by other humans as Herzog professes to be, and the filmmaker seems so cowed by being judged pedestrian by this man that his questions end up justifying the assessment.

Part of what’s so strange about Encounters at the End of the World is that there’s a traditional nature documentary peeking out from under Herzog’s misanthropy. Footage from beneath the Antarctic ice reveals a stunningly unfamiliar world that James Cameron should be tripping over himself to capture. Underwater canyons are populated by string-legged crabs who gambol over frozen stalagmites. Seals make sounds straight out of science fiction. And a remarkable collection of scientists have assembled to catalog these wonders, often with the South Pole being just the latest stop in an unexpected series of mileposts around the globe, such as the lawyer who now drives McMurdo’s bus, or the pipefitter who claims ancient royalty as ancestors. Herzog may hold out little hope for the human race, but even he must admit that no one here is leading a life of quiet desperation.

Ultimately, even Werner Herzog can’t escape the gravitational pull of the penguins. But of course, he captures them in the most Herzogian manner imaginable: we watch as a lone member of the species becomes separated from his compatriots and—either by confusion or madness—sets off on a trek to nowhere. Humans are proscribed from interfering, so they can only watch the hopeless march from the sidelines. As the camera pulls back to reveal the vast nothingness that surrounds the lost bird, it appears that Herzog has finally found someone who reinforces his worldview: we are all doomed, but strangely determined to be ourselves to the bitter end.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“But I make the movie sound like a travelogue or an exhibit of eccentrics, and it is a poem of oddness and beauty. Herzog is like no other filmmaker, and to return to him is to be welcomed into a world vastly larger and more peculiar than the one around us.”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous; Herzog dedicated the film to the critic)

(This movie was nominated for review by Marcella, who wondered, “is it really a documentary? or found footage used by a human actor claiming to be an alien…” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola

FEATURING: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke, Alexandra Pirici

PLOT: In 1938 Bucharest, 70-year-old Dominic Matei is struck by lightning, becomes decades younger and develops psychic powers.

Still from Youth without Youth (2007)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Every now and then, Francis Ford Coppola gets to make a movie his way, unconstrained by the demands of capitalism or the limitations of collaboration. Think of the studio-destroying One From the Heart, the self-indulgently autobiographical Tucker: The Man and His Dream, or the demented epic Apocalypse Now. With big ideas, gloriously pretentious dialogue, radical shifts in tone, and a determination to Speak His Truth, Youth Without Youth is cut from a similar cloth: pure Coppola, raw and unfiltered.

COMMENTS: Francis Ford Coppola is currently in post-production on what he says will be the capstone to his career, a final epic called Megalopolis. He has cashed in his winemaking fortune to produce the film with a nine-figure budget and own it outright. He enlisted an all-star cast to bring his script, which has been camera-ready for years, to life. Beyond the vaguest of plot descriptions, little is yet known about the work that could be the great filmmaker’s final cinematic statement. But I have some suspicions about what to expect from Megalopolis. Because, you see, I’ve watched Youth Without Youth.

After the old-style credits with sweeping theme, we meet Dominic, who is old, hopeless, and suicidal. His book about the origin of human language will never be finished, his dreams are plagued by memories of Laura, the woman who pushed him away because he gave more attention to his intellectual passions than to her, and the world is rushing towards cataclysm. It’s pure happenstance that a final trip back to Bucharest leads to his fateful encounter with a bolt of lightning. (Some wild dialogue suggests divine intervention, but Coppola’s not down for anything as mundane as that.)

Once he’s hospitalized, it takes a while to get back to Dominic, because the movie is intensely interested in the accident itself: the strange process of re-growth, complete with new teeth. The snarky hospital attendants. The tedium of confirming his true identity and crafting a new one. That’s part of Youth Without Youth’s methodology. It’s not metaphorical, symbolic, or satirical. Coppola really is interested in the fundamentals of what would happen to this guy who was hit by lightning and made 30 years younger.

Roughly halfway through the film, Youth Without Youth begins to resemble nothing so much as a superhero origin story, with Dominic using his powers to escape the Nazis’ designs on the ability to extend life. It’s almost comically literal; we suspect a woman staying at the clinic might have ulterior motives once we see that she has a Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (2007)

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM (2007)

DIRECTED BY: Zach Helm

FEATURING: Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Jason Bateman, Zach Mills

PLOT: Mr. Magorium, who has run his magical toy store for nearly three centuries, prepares for his imminent departure from the earthly realm, but his plans to hand the reins over to store clerk and aspiring composer Mahoney are endangered by her ambivalence, the suggestions of a straight-laced accountant, and the protests of the store itself.

Still from Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (1993)

COMMENTS: From Dictionary.com:

whim·​sy [ˈ(h)wim-zee] n. 1: capricious humor or disposition; extravagant, fanciful, or excessively playful expression: “a play with lots of whimsy.” 2: an odd or fanciful notion. 3: anything odd or fanciful; a product of playful or capricious fancy: “a whimsy from an otherwise thoughtful writer.”

Zach Helm has an undisguised interest in finding joy amidst the frustrations of life. His screenplay for Stranger Than Fiction focused on a person who has spent his whole life in the grey and comes late to discovering the beauty of leading a more colorful existence. Here, making his directorial debut, he presents a world drenched in color and offers us a character who revels in it, until she doesn’t, and has to find her way back. The former film looked wistfully at the joyful world that was lost. This time around, we need to be right in the heart of that joy, and Helm’s weapon of choice is whimsy. Truckloads of it.

Our setting, identified in the title, is a sort of mad mashup of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. It’s a hyperactive place, perpetually bustling with children who have somehow pried themselves away from their PlayStations so that they can indulge in the unexpected surprises of the toyshop. The toys come to life. Any plaything you desire can be found in a great big book. Bouncy balls are always on the lookout for an escape opportunity. There is always something going on, so much so that the movie is its own Easter egg generator. It’s the kind of a place where dinosaur skeletons peek out the window, Playmobil figures do actual construction, and Kermit the Frog does his weekly shopping. (That’s Kermit himself, looking strangely embarrassed to be stared at, or maybe just to be in the movie.) It’s fun, and then it’s fun, and ultimately it’s FUN, DAMMIT. 

All this is overseen by an enormously affected Hoffman. With eyebrows to rival Thufir Hawat and an Ed Wynn-style lisp that would be mincing under any other circumstances, he’s carefully constructed to be eccentric. Sometimes that’s refreshing, best exemplified by his equanimous attitude toward the impending end of his life. He’s not at all cynical, but eager to indulge in pleasures large and small right to the very end. On the other hand, he’s liberally draped with quirks: wearing loud patterns, bantering with his zebra roommate, and obsessed with hot dog buns. This can have mixed results: I groaned Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM (2007)