Tag Archives: 2010

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)

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]
  • 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

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: WOMB (2010)

AKA Clone

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DIRECTED BY: Benedek Fliegauf

FEATURING: Eva Green, Matt Smith, Lesley Manville, Peter Wight, Hannah Murray

PLOT: A woman impregnates herself with a clone of her dead lover and raises the child to adulthood, grappling along the way with the confusing nature of their relationship.

Still from Womb (2010)COMMENTS: “She is the victim of artificial incest,” the snooty mom declares. “Her mother gave birth to her own mother.” In the universe of Womb, the battle lines have been drawn, and the detractors of the ability to bring loved ones back through the science of cloning view the procedure as an abomination. What makes the moment funny is that the prickly parents who are lecturing our heroine on the immorality of the practice would be nearly apoplectic if they had any idea how far she’d taken it. They’ll find out soon enough, and we’ll get to see her go even further.

Its shocking premise powers Womb. To his credit, Fliegauf is never coy about what’s going on here. The main character raises the only man she has ever loved as her own child. The implications are significant, and she experiences urges both maternal and carnal, sometimes simultaneously. The most powerful images in the film are the ones that bring this contradiction to the surface. Many a horror movie has labored to create a moment half as shocking as the scene where 10-year-old Tommy stands up in the bathtub he is sharing with the mother who has cloned him from her lover and proceeds to recite a poem while she stares up at him. Is the look on her face pride? Lust? Both? Womb readily embraces every awkward moment, crafting discomfort out of such scenarios as Rebecca’s meeting with college-age Tommy’s new girlfriend, or a wordless confrontation with the biological mother of Tommy’s genetic material upon seeing her resurrected son for the first time.

Watching Perfect Sense was a terrific reminder of how much I enjoy the work of Eva Green, and it’s great to see her particular brand of repressed passion deployed here. With her icy beauty, her deep and commanding voice, and her uncanny ability to balance outward coolness with an interior fire, she presents a vented steeliness, letting out glimpses of her conflicted soul in careful portions. When her adolescent son falls on top of her in what would be a playful moment under any other circumstances, Green carefully betrays an electric thrill that lies beneath her calm demeanor. It’s easy to see what initially attracts her to the laid-back enthusiasm of Smith, and later what drives her to both impulsively bring him back into the world, and then hide him away from it.

Rebecca is a fascinating character, emotionally immature at best and morally corrupt at worst. (Notably, Tommy is killed while en route to conduct some eco-terrorism against the very cloning plant that will soon give him renewed life.) The film suggests that Tommy’s untimely demise has trapped Rebecca in amber, forcing her to bring him back to the very moment when his life stopped in order for her life to go forward. Some critics have noted that Green never seems to age over two decades, but they often fail to notice that she doesn’t grow in any other way, either. There’s a strong suggestion that Rebecca has retained her virginity over all this time (one scene makes explicit that clone Tommy is delivered via caesarean), which gives context to the concluding scenes that take Womb into a new level of weirdness and discomfort.

Here again, Fliegauf doesn’t shy away from the most interesting questions, no matter how skeevy they might seem. If you’re picking up on some will-they-won’t-they vibes, rest assured that you’ll get an answer, and even if you correctly anticipate exactly what is going to happen in Womb’s final 15 minutes, there’s still genuine shock value in seeing it all play out, and particularly watching Green’s shifting reactions. It’s unusual to encounter a movie that so readily indulges your innate morbid curiosities without itself being grotesque or devoid of morality. Womb is patient but focused, sometimes tedious but rarely dull, transgressive but calmly and soberly so. It anticipates the protests of those like that angry mother, and it responds with a nod and a thin smile.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Yeah, it’s as weird as it sounds, but sadly not as exciting… The upswing is that Fliegauf has created a certain mood for the film through its staging and its cold bleak setting works well with the subject matter. It’s just a shame that the script can’t match it.” – Niall Browne, Movies in Focus

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

Womb [Blu-ray]
  • Factory sealed DVD