Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #10: The Cabin in the Woods (2012).

 

Happy Halloween! The Cabin in the Woods (2012) opens in a high-tech underground facility with senior technicians Gary (Richard Jenkins) and Steve (Bradley Whitford), discussing plans for a mysterious ritual, just like a failed one their colleagues in Stockholm have just held. Then, we meet a group of American college students about to leave for a weekend getaway in the forest: virginal Dana (Kristen Connolly); jock Curt (Chris Hemsworth), cheerleader Jules (Anna Hutchison), scholar Holden (Jesse Williams) and stoner Marty (Fran Kranz). When they arrive, they settle in but then after inspecting the cabin, several discoveries inside make feel very uneasy. And for good reason.

But here's the twist: it's all a hoax, at the hands of Gary, Steve and their crew. Now the kids must figure out how to escape this metafictional house of horrors, and why they were thrown into it.

The Cabin in the Woods comes with quite the pedigree: Drew Goddard, making his directorial debut, wrote Cloverfield, and serving as producer and co-writer was Joss Whedon. Their intention with this was to revitalise the horror genre which for them had suffered thanks to the advent of torture porn (and I must overall agree), and the finished product is the perfect satirical riposte: deliberately, consciously contrived and stereotypical and very funny, but nonetheless thoroughly imaginative, gory and relevant to our hyper-technological, media-controlled 21st century. The production design feels perfectly corporate and austere in the facility scenes, atmospheric and subconsciously inhabited in the cabin, and fully realised throughout, and there are flawless visual effects to go with this. Goddard also gets very natural performances out of his whole cast, particularly Fran Kranz who provides plenty of laughs before nicely exposing Marty's more serious side.



But I must say what most tickles my fancy about this movie is what I consider an anti-reality TV allegory in the whole crisis situation. Now, you don't have to share that sentiment or interpretation, but for me reality TV in general (and many of the slasher/torture porn films that inspired this) just never seems to even acknowledge how phony it is. But this, even in its parodic nature, is very much authentic, and as art in general should be, it is open to numerous different interpretations.If you have the stomach for it, The Cabin in the Woods is well worth a stay at.

The right to choose, and to die with dignity.

Firstly, I acknowledge just with the subject of this entry I may anger some people. That's their right, too. And I have no medical experience in a professional context. My stance on this issue does come primarily from personal experience as well, but the specifics there are too emotional for me to discuss here anyway, and I'm trying in earnest to make this entry objective. So here goes.

Euthanasia, just as a word, is unmistakable. For everybody familiar with it, it must conjure up the sights, smells or even the mood of a hospital or nursing home. And when you've experienced any of these sensations, they can be very hard to shake. Even just as a visitor.

Now, I know medical personnel all must take and keep the Hippocratic Oath, for the health and well-being of all their patients. And I'm not saying we should use violent or chemical means for assisted suicide. But life in a vegetative state is simply no life at all. There's no dignity, no freedom, and certainly no comfort or happiness.

Plus, I don't know the exact numbers or statistics here, but Australia spends considerable money annually on caring for people in palliative care, most of whom quite frankly can probably no longer be helped, instead of on care for others who can. Show me the fairness in that. More support should also go to the families and carers, who have to live with heavy burdens of their own.

I wanted to include here a clip from Schindler's List, but I couldn't find it online. While that film is about the Holocaust, this scene shows a group of terminally ill hospital patients being given drugs which will put them to sleep. They are basically saying: "Please, let me go." And they get their wish, thankfully just before the Nazis can kill them far less compassionately, and in a much worse environment.

Euthanasia carries valid arguments on both sides. But I refuse to accept it is murder. Murder comes from hatred, ignorance and misunderstanding. Assisted suicide, though it may technically be killing, comes from compassion, sympathy, and a desire to grant someone new liberty, dignity, and a right to their own choice. If we can value those traits and blessings so highly in life, so we should also in death.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #9: Europa Europa (1990).

  

Polish writer-director Agnieszka Holland's 1990 release Europa Europa is maybe the most unique and whimsical Holocaust film you will ever see. But it is nonetheless powerful, and the story itself is even more remarkable because it's true.

Based on his memoir, it follow young German Jew Salomon "Solly" Perel (Marco Hofschneider), who, after leaping naked out of his bathroom window when the Nazis invade his family's house, travels across southern Europe, assuming various disguises (most notably in a Nazi uniform) in order to survive and be reunited with his brother Isak (Hofschneider's real-life brother Rene, who originallty had the lead before financing fell apart).

Of course, hiding his circumcision often proves hard, especially when Solly wins the attractions of Leni (Julie Delpy), a cute but very anit-Semitic girl, and a gay Nazi officer. But as the war drags on, Solly becomes ever-more resourceful, clever and determined to survive and find Isak.

Agnieszka Holland, who has since directed several Hollywood movies like 1995's The Secret Garden and episodes of House of Cards (U.S.) and The Wire, livens this bleak story with several rather spontaneous fantasy scenes like Hitler and Stalin in a waltz, but these never feel incongruous or trivialising, and she keeps a very controlled track of Solly's psychological progression and the human costs the war amassed, particularly in the former's case with a dinner scene between Solly and Leni's mother (Halina Labonarska). Holland and her crew also flawlessly recreate the ambiances and aesthetic feel of the era, and her nicely layered screenplay was deservedly Oscar-nominated. PLus, Zbigniew Preisner's score is perfectly suspenseful and evocative, and the combat scenes beautifully staged.

Holland also found the ideal star in Marco Hofschneider (where is he now?), who expertly takes Solly from an innocent, slightly cheeky boy to a damaged young man who survives the war with a newfound pride in his Jewishness, and also convinces as each of Solly's fake identities. Then there's Julie Delpy in her first significant role, appropriately cold in Leni's expression of her ideologies but still offering flashes of the naive, vulnerable little girl underneath.

Overall, Europa Europa is a very striking, emotional watch, with a very unusual perspective of the Third Reich. Sadly, that's no less relevant now, either. But maybe what Europa Europa leaves us with most is a reminder of the reality that sometimes, we all must play pretend.

Timelessness.

I've recently bought the DVD box set of The Wonder Years. I'm up to season three, and though I'd seen the show before, re-watching it now has I suppose reminded me about something. You may recall it was made in the '80s and '90s but set in the '60s and '70s; and naturally it explored many issues prevalent then, namely the Vietnam War. But even so, it's in those aspects intentionally dated, but in others it's not dated at all.

Why is it that the more things change, the more they stay the same? New technologies supersede the old, governments and monarchs come and go, laws are made and then repealed, but humanity never quite seems to resolve its conflicts. By that I obviously don't just mean emotions and mental demons either. Too many forms of hatred hang over us still. Many things should and will never go out of style, but just because we still inhabit a very hateful conflicted world doesn't mean we always should.

And then, I guess to take a nihilistic view of everything, each of us has dreams, wishes and of course memories of any nature stemming from childhood, which can strongly influence us throughout life. What comes to mind for me here is tinned fruit. I was a very sickly toddler and whenever hospitalised then, I always had to eat tinned fruit for dessert. Besides stewed apple (which I never got then), to this day the mere sight of it still repulses me. These pet hates from childhood are very subjective, but surely the subsequent feelings have never been. How long can we let them affect us? Or are they automatically entrenched?

I do acknowledge, though, how natural and appropriate it is often to be emotional, scared or angry. Which is another reason why those sensations are permanently encoded in our brains. Just as when every past generation felt compelled to take a stand, so should we, against too many wrongs.

But, back to art and entertainment, in conclusion. All forms of both have not endured for so long because they captured the current zeitgeist (although they can depict that). They have lasted for so long because far more than aesthetic pleasure, we have and still need escapism, nourishment, connection, reassurance, and the chance to choose. That's the epitome of timelessness to me.

Styles and tastes come and go, and sometimes deservedly. But many very old wrongs remain unrighted. If this is read in years to come, I hope by then they will have been.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #8: Au revoir les enfants ("Goodbye, Children") (1987).

 

After breaking through with the French New Wave of the '50s and '60s before heading to Hollywood, Louis Malle returned to his homeland for his last and most autobiographical film, winning the 1987 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion and two Academy Award nominations. It's very easy to see why.

Based on a tragic incident Malle witnessed at age 11 involving a Gestapo raid of his Roman Catholic boarding school, it follows Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) returning to school after Christmas. He assumes a tough, rebellious facade to mask his really being a pampered mother's boy who still wets his bed. Nothing seems to have changed in his classes until the school welcomes three new pupils, namely Jean Bonnett (Raphael Fejto), an awkward, sycophantic boy who Julien immediately despises. But one night Julien wakes to find Jean praying in Hebrew and wearing a kippah. After then rummaging through Jean's locker he learns Jean's real name is Jean Kippelstein, and that he is being kept here because school priest Pére Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud) has agreed to grant hunted Jews asylum in the school. Then, when they get lost together during a treasure hunt, they unexpectedly bond, until the Gestapo pays the school a fateful visit.

Au revoir les enfants is the only Malle movie I've seen, but I'm willing to call him a genius based on it alone. It's obvious how confronting it must have been for him to dramatize such a harrowing childhood memory but just by doing so he shows genuine bravery and remorse for the victims. More importantly, and perhaps thanks to the passage of time, he crafted a screenplay that effectively evokes the era and even how pre-teen boys interact, which he visualises very clearsightedly and delicately throughout. Very wisely also, all the boys (even Jean somewhat) are portrayed as mischievous or disrespectful but vulnerable (especially Francois Negret as Joseph, the school kitchenhand). The list of movies in various genres with child characters portrayed excessively with any of those traits is very long, and the balance here makes all the difference. Malle also gets very moving and sincere performances from Manesse and Fejto, who are now a composer and children's author respectively.

Obviously, this is a movie about childhood, not a children's movie. Subsequently, it is not a typical Holocaust or war (i.e. combat) film either. But it is no less authentic or universal. By revisiting something so unshakable for him at such a young age, Louis Malle not only shows how war and intolerance can shatter youthful innocence, more than any imagined childhood terror: he reminds us how, psychologically, adults are not so different from the children we once were. Au revoir les enfants is a masterpiece in every way.

Art rhymes. It rules all the time!

Everybody gets just one life to live,
And however we use it, it can really give.
But while we can't forsake what sustains that life,
Nor can we forsake what can get us through strife.

An example of this is any communication,
Which crosses the borders of all the world's nations.
And no kind goes deeper than the beating of your heart
Like the tangible creation that is any form of art.

Art may not be "real" per se, but it IS an expression,
And like things planned or common it still leaves an impression.
Especially since it's public and can't be ignored,
And that's still meaningful if somebody's bored.

But any artist can tell you about life in a cage,
Whether with a wall, a page, a screen or a stage.
If you dig deep and find something personal to gauge,
Everybody present will feel your rage.

That could have a cost,
Like feeling lost in a terrible frost.
But before chasing the mental Gingerbread Man becomes torture,
The tunnel light can help you grab him and say "Caught ya!"

That's just one reason why its appeal has never peaked,
Not even that of the tragedies of the Greeks.
And what ever its length, its themes or its flair,
It could even help you form a romantic pair.

Art is like food, in more ways than one.
We will always need it, and it comes from the Sun.
But just like for food we need teeth to bite,
Art needs an audience to stimulate and excite.

So whether or not I've shown artistic might,
Thank you all so much for reading this tonight.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #7: Detention (2011).

   

Joseph Kahn's horror satire Detention (2011) must be one of the most unabashedly weird, warped and garish films of this decade, maybe even of this whole century. Think The Breakfast Club meets Back to the Future meets Scream with a hipster motif applied to all, and you're getting close.

Driving the story are cynical, sarcastic loner scream queen Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell) and Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson who also executive produced the movie), the most popular but dumbest kid at Grizzly Lake High. The day after the release of movie-within-a-movie Cinderhella II: Beauty Scream, the title villain comes to life in Grizzly Lake and goes after the school's student body. Unfortunately for Riley and Clapton, they're stuck in detention under their bitter principal Karl Verge's (Dane Cook) watch. Now they must find a way of getting out, stopping Cinderhella, and saving the world, with their fellow detainees: narcissistic Sander (Aaron David Johnson), airheaded cheerleader Ione (Spencer Locke) naive Toshiba (Jonathan "Dumbfoundead" Park), surly, heavily made-up Mimi (Tiffany Boone) Canadian Gord (Travis Fleetwood), and the very enigmatic Elliot Fink (Walter Perez).

God know what former music video director Kahn and co-writer Mark Palermo were on when they wrote the screenplay for Detention (and Kahn is a reformed addict, which is the subject of one of its hilariously snide in-jokes), but the end result was well worth it. Besides the cinematic and cultural influences I've just mentioned, Detention also has a very whimsical, Dadaist vibe throughout that just feels so genuine and charming. Kahn and Palermo clearly revere all the films this homages, and even while serving up a very clever time travel narrative and satire of high school life, they've still filled it with very familiar, lifelike teenage characters.

The performances are also very natural. Caswell has great comic timing and conveys Riley's fury at the world quite relatably. Hutcherson may be best known as Peeta Mallark but this is his best role for me, and if you think he's not that versatile, just wait 'til you see him copy Patrick Swayze's Dirty Dancing routine to surprisingly enjoyable cover of MMMBop. And Cook is at his grumpy best.

Overall, it is so bizarrely plotted and broad in its influences that it should be truly unwatchable, but because Kahn clearly doesn't care if people hate his work, it is instead euphorically entertaining, and thoroughly cohesive narratively and visually (but mind you, I'm a certified nutcase). This kind of Detention is well worth landing in.

Oh, and did I mention another of the characters is a football quarterback with fly blood?

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #6: The Loved Ones (2009).

   

Welcome home. It's time I looked at a cult Aussie movie, huh? Writer-director Sean Byrne's The Loved Ones (2009) opens with teenagers Brent (Xavier Samuel) killing his father in a car crash, and then plunging into a grief-fuelled guilt trip. Keeping him going is Holly (Victoria Thaine), his girlfriend and date to the upcoming school dance. But as the big day nears, the quietest girl in school, Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy), also asks Brent out, but he declines. BIG mistake.

EFX Magazine described The Loved Ones as Pretty in Pink meets Wolf Creek, and that's quite accurate. This wickedly entertaining slice of Aussie horror is so gleefully tongue-in-cheek and macabre it would give Quentin Tarantino an orgasm. Byrne spent several years financing this as his feature debut and that was fortuitous, as his narrative control, visual cues and embellishments and music selections are all so assured and fitting. He gets strong performances from his whole cast as well, most notably McLeavy, who brings Lola's vindictive violence to life with relish but also lets us see the lonely little girl underneath, and John Brumpton as her equally demented and very protective Daddy. There's also an hilarious subplot with Brent's awkward mate Jamie (Richard Wilson) and his own ice-queen dance date Mia (Jessica McNamee, equally relishing her chance to counter her PC Packed to the Rafters image as a truly horny bitch).

Obviously, The Loved Ones is not a flick for the whole family, and that's even without the very brutal violence. But if you're a horror comedy nut, or you were bullied at school (in both cases like me), it should tickle your fancy endlessly.

And I promise, you will NEVER listen to Kasey Chambers' Not Pretty Enough in the same way ever again.

TIM BURTON TIME!

How many filmmakers have truly cut a lasting, individual swathe through modern cinemas? Tarantino, Scorsese, Campion, Lynch, Allen, Craven and of course Spielberg are among the most notable ones (even if in Lynch's and Allen's cases, admittedly I don't even respect their work). But maybe the most surprising case of all is an oddball genius, born in Burbank, California in 1958, whose films have nourished and inspired emos, Goths and assorted other misfits for nearly 30 years: Timothy Walter Burton.

After a rather lonely, impoverished childhood, Burton's first job in Hollywood was as an animator with Walt Disney Studios, working on The Fox and the Hound (1982) and The Black Cauldron (1985). However, Burton grew to hate working for Disney because his macabre visual style didn't sit well with them, and they refused to theatrically release his second directorial effort, the black-and-white short Frankenweenie (1984, after his '82 short Vincent, a semi-autobiographical tale of a boy who idolises Vincent Price, who even narrated it).

He then quit Disney and landed his first feature directorial job, with Warner Bros.: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), which follows Paul Reubens' man-child title character trekking across America to find his stolen bicycle. It was critically trashed but grossed twenty times its budget, and marked his first collaboration with his usual composer, the remarkable Danny Elfman. Now with a box office hit to his name, he was able to direct Beetlejuice (1988) and Batman (1989), which made him even commercially hotter still.

But then, in 1990, Burton released what remains his favourite and most personal work: Edward Scissorhands. There is no way I can even describe this movie objectively so I won't even bother trying. No movie has ever resonated with me more than this one; just listening to Elfman's magical score makes me dance around and then well up. And of course, this was Tim' first collaboration with star Johnny Depp, who has never given a better performance.

Then, from Batman Returns in '92, to the stop-motion animation holiday classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood (his biopic of notorious director Edward D. Wood, Jr., with an Oscar-winning Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi), the hilarious piss-take of pro-American Hollywood sci-fi movies that is Mars Attacks! and then 1999's breathtaking period horror Sleepy Hollow, he came through the '90s flawlessly.

Entering the new century, though, Burton made his first turkey: 2001's Planet of the Apes (he was hitherto enduring a mid-life crisis and it shows). But that was the film through which he met Helena Bonham Carter, by whom he would have two children (and who starred in all his later films before they split in 2014). Next, however, came the powerful family saga Big Fish (2003) before a double dose of wonderful weirdness in 2005 with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride, and then the spellbinding adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007, and JFTR I usually HATE musicals).

Into the new decade, Burton then brought his own flavour to Alice in Wonderland (2010), and while not as resonant as it could've been, it still brought Lewis Carroll's iconic world leaping back to life. Then in 2012 came two remakes: of the '60s supernatural TV soap Dark Shadows, hilarious and daring; then of his 1984 short Frankenweenie, this time animated and with a very sincere fear-of-the-unknown allegorical side. 2014's Big Eyes found Burton's visuals actually feeling more reminiscent of Jane Campion or Gus Van Sant, but his connection with the narrative is thoroughly evident as he follows the life of artist Margaret Keane (a luminous Amy Adams), whose husband Walter found fame by taking credit for her paintings of large-eyed waifs. And now, his latest film is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and while it falls short of Ransom Riggs' extraordinary novel, that's not by much.

Burton also in 1997 published a stunning children's book titled The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, and 2011 a book called The Art of Tim Burton (he paints and draws literally everywhere he goes). He also has officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, perhaps unsurprisingly. But through channelling his demons into his unashamedly crazy and macabre but resonant directorial style, Tim Burton has helped himself, and moviegoers worldwide who feel marginalised and ignored, to instead feel loved, noticed, and understood. And he will keep working that magic on us for many years to come.