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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: TOYS (1992)

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DIRECTED BY: Barry Levinson

FEATURING: Robin Williams, Joan Cusack, Michael Gambon, Robin Wright, LL Cool J, Donald O’Connor

PLOT: Whimsical toymaker Kenneth Zevo leaves his company to his army general brother Leland, bypassing his head-in-the-clouds son Leslie; when Leland shifts the factory’s production to military weapons controlled by children, Leslie goes into battle with his mad uncle to save the company and the world from violence and mayhem.

Still from toys (1992)

COMMENTS: A while back, on the occasion of my review of the big ball of whimsy that is Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, my colleagues here at 366 HQ took to the comment section to observe that I missed the opportunity to pair it up with a review of a similarly fanciful tale of the life-changing power of toys. I don’t regret passing up that moment, because now I can don my Santa hat and give Toys the chance to stand on its own merits. And now that I’ve done that, I have to say that it makes me think more favorably upon Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

Toys was a notorious bomb at the time of its release, an outcome that surely had something to do with the wild disconnect between the movie audiences were promised and the one they got. Toys was pitched courtesy of a very buzzy teaser that featured star Williams alone in a field riffing without restraint with nary a single frame of the actual movie to distract. If you saw this (or if you had popped into the multiplex auditorium next door to hear Williams similarly unleashed in Aladdin), you were primed for a raucous comedy featuring Robin-off-the-chain. The opening minutes of saccharine Christmas imagery, pastoral nostalgia, and a decidedly un-funky carol from Wendy and Lisa must have been a real cold shower.

It turns out that Toys is a dour film, beginning with a funeral, ending with a war, and delivering a volume’s worth of personality quirks and emotional damage in between. The mere existence of toys is supposed to be a balm of mirth, but even these people who rely upon them seem to derive little joy from them. This is a movie whose idea of showing the jolly, happy world of toymaking is to score it with the warm, sentimental tones of Tori Amos. (When the same song returns to demonstrate the drudgery of toiling under a new regime, the only change is to give it a techno remix.) You want fun? The dying toy magnate has a goofy beanie hat hooked up to a heart monitor. The quirky daughter lives inside an enormous swan that closes like a coffin. The straight-laced nephew converts to the side of light and life only because he discovers that he and his father have been sleeping with the same nurse. I think that delight is supposed to leaven the sadness, but the sadness actually crushes delight under its oppressive weight. No one is having a good time; even the people play-testing fake vomit are obsessive and pedantic, and it’s hard to imagine that the finished product would be much more entertaining, since Zevo’s toys are all throwbacks to the lead wind-up models of Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: TOYS (1992) →

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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.)

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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)

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DIRECTED BY: Wolf Rilla

FEATURING: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, Martin Stephens

PLOT: All the women of child-bearing age in the Midwich  become pregnant after a mysterious period of unconsciousness; their offspring have a distinctive appearance, mature rapidly, and behave in a manner quite unnatural.

Still from village of the damned (1960)

COMMENTS: For two years running, I have celebrated Halloween here with a classic 1950s goofball–monster showcase. So here we are, on the cusp of the 60s, and lots of things look familiar: we’re back in black-and-white, we’re back in England, and something is once more out to get us. But it’s a little different this time. This time, the beasts aren’t strabismus-afflicted giant birds or giddily bouncing brains. They’re children, notable for their platinum hair, their glowing eyes, and their sociopathic behavior. This time, our monster feels earnestly threatening.

We don’t get to them right away, though. The film cleverly serves up its surprises and horrors at a deliberate pace. We must first work through the mystery of the lengthy period of unconsciousness, which the authorities investigate seriously and thoroughly, diligently working through experiments that culminate in a terrible sacrifice. We never get a full explanation for that occurrence, though, because we’re quickly on to the conundrum of the many immaculate conceptions and the havoc they wreak among the populace. In fact, we’re well into Act 2 before we get our first encounter with the enigma of the curious children themselves, who can solve puzzle boxes as toddlers and who get revenge upon their mothers when the feeding bottle is too hot. (The filmmakers were right to forego the original title of John Wyndham’s book; “The Midwich Cuckoos” would have been too much of a giveaway as to the childrens’ origin.) This sense of compounding catastrophes keeps you off-balance like the residents of Midwich, never able to relax before the next dilemma arrives.

The children are appropriately creepy. Lead child David (Stephens, unconvincingly dubbed) does most of the talking, serving up uncomfortable sociopathy by directly confronting the shopkeepers who think them an abomination, or helpfully suggesting to his father that, “If you didn’t suffer from emotions, from feelings… you could be as powerful as we are.” However, the young terrors do most of their intimidation without words. A walk through the town shows the residents in a mixed state of fear and revulsion, responding to the cliquish collection of quiet children as if they were a rowdy biker gang. Luckily, all they need to do is put on their best wish-you-to-the-cornfield look  and the townspeople’s reactions do the rest. They come by their fears honestly, because we’ve seen that the children’s disapproval carries with it the threat of death. This is most evident in Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) →