Action Replay

Why Have Action Films Lost Confidence in ACTION?

By A.J. Detisch

I’ve read that nostalgia runs in cycles, usually twenty years, where age groups will bring back into relevance those immortal, fuzzy things from their childhood's cultures.

I'm waiting for that to kick in with my generation of action film directors. I don’t like the direction action movies have been taken because they just don't seem as glorious anymore. As I sit through movies like Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity or Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, I find myself wondering if I had just watched an action film at all. Don’t get me wrong, Bourne’s is enjoyable, but there was something about the action that made it seem as though Liman was trying to hide the fact that he made an action movie at all.



Those who agree might say it is the way in which the film was cut. The editing rhythms in Bourne try to keep pace with the slick fight choreography- the jabs, kicks, punches. If you have a minute, check out the film’s first fight scene: Let’s analyze:

1. The scene starts out with shaky, uncertain handheld camera. Jason and Marie exchange glances and a man DIVES through the window – it’s a gunman.
2. Jason KICKS the gunman’s feet from under him and thrusts his arm up to offset the bullets flying out of his gun.
3. They wrestle around a little bit, they cut back generously to Marie who’s scared, and Jason wrestles the gun out of his hand. The shot lingers on the gun and then-
4. The fight breaks out.
5. Cuts are sporatic (milliseconds long), the two fight. The gunman flicks out a concealed knife.

Keep in mind, Liman OPENLY is loose with story boards and sometimes shoots on the fly.

At this point in the scene I scratched my head and thought “is it the editing rhythms that are throwing it off, or is it the way Liman does coverage in general? I noticed that in this fight scene, Liman implements a highly inductive method of showing close ups of exactly what is necessary to move on to the next shot. We see the knife, Marie screams, they go back at it. Before this, at fifty seconds into the clip, a low angle shows Jason KICK at the gunman, but the audience has NO IDEA whether or not he actually kicks him, we just assume he did because of the sound effect.

To me, this is not action in the action film sense of the word. In reaction, I always feel very nostalgic for the way the action directors of my childhood did action coverage. What would James Cameron have done with this scene, or John McTierrnan? Neither have been very prolific in the 2000’s and it is going to be fascinating to see how Cameron’s Avatar is going to handle its action sequences in the post-Bourne era. I regard Terminator 2 and True Lies to be very satisfying action films because you see the action play out; every blow dealt is seen.

Take this classic scene from True Lies (“the toilet shootout”). The scene is fluid -- the cameras are fluid, probably on a crane or GOOD steadicam, confidently floating around the action. The cuts are quick, but the action is never “avoided.” When I say avoided, I mean Cameron keep his cuts in the same general spatial area (he’s not cutting back and forth from wide angle to close up) to keep it feeling like a long take, even though it’s far from it.

I would argue this allows the viewer to enjoy the action more because the coverage keeps things connected. At the 38 second marker, Arnie kicks the handgun and the viewer can watch it glide down the wet floor. Then it cuts to a minimally wider angle to see the fight continue. I would assume someone like Liman or Paul Greengrass would do this inductively, with a close up of the gun that gets kicked away, and then instantly back into a wider angle of the fighting, breaking the spatial continuity of the action completely.

It feels like an “economy of action” is a tool being wielded by modern action directors, most probably to keep their stories moving. This attitude, however, labels long action sequences (which are nuanced and take their time) as excess. I feel that is what these scenes are subconsciously saying.

Perfect example: Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. The first film clocks in at two hours and fifteen minutes, the second over two and a half hours. The scripts are bursting at the seams with plot and action. How did Nolan handle this? He TRIMMED DOWN THE ACTION SEQUENCES.

Let’s compare the Batman’s infiltration of the Ritz from Batman Forever to the Boss Maroni takedown scene from The Dark Knight. In Forever Batman jumps through the glass roof into a mini pool area, then jumps from it again to take down a slew of henchmen. The scene has a sprawling effect, moving from the pool to the floor, ending up in an underground trap Two Face set up.

In The Dark Knight, a significantly longer movie, the Maroni takedown is quick. Maroni (Eric Roberts) notices him, Batman punches a few guards, and then interrogates him. This was a perfect set-up for an action scene-- balconies, strobe lights, henchmen-- and even though I enjoyed the scene, I missed that “sprawling” effect.

The whole Batman film franchise has successfully transcended the superhero genre and is seen by most critics as a serious crime-drama. The cost of this, unfortunately, meant cutting any action that wasn’t relevant to the plot. The two and a half hours moved quickly, but I sure did miss those henchmen takedowns.

Il Deserto Rosso (1964)

Michelangelo Antonioni's "alienation Trilogy" of "L'Avventura," "La Notte" and "L'Eclisse" didn't seem to exhaust his artistic flair for questioning humanity's relationship to its increasingly mechanized world. He followed the trilogy with "Il Deserto Rosso" ("Red Desert") a work that serves as both a companion piece to it and a bridge connecting it to his later, more detailed and less abstract English-language films. With the introduction of color to his advantage, he reworks the same themes of the "alienation trilogy" but enhances them with a stylized color palette of greys, reds, greens and browns. It makes for a pristine and unforgettable visual experience that takes Antonioni's body of work into a fascinating new direction.

The opening credit sequence establishes two of the most prevalent and effective motifs explored in "Il Deserto Rosso": the manipulation of focus and sound. First is a single shot of a treeline, which is set against a gray sky, completely out of focus. The shot pans over to a power plant, clouded in smoke, then cuts to an assemblage of ugly exterior shots to the point where one hopes the shots stay out of focus. Throughout the sequence Antonioni uses a droning soundscape of industrial noises which are blended with a haunting female voice, strangely provoking either lament or hope.

A few loud bursts of fire shooting from a rig announce the story's beginning. The lovely Monica Vitti is once again Antionioni's socially disconnected protagonist, this time Giuliana, who is introduced guiding her young son amongst the backdrop of a worker's strike at the plant. Her behavior instantly seems odd as she approaches a man and asks to buy his sandwich, which he is in the process of eating. She seems desperate and confused, but her well-groomed beauty and opulent, green pea coat show her obvious wealth.



One learns through dialogue that she is a psychologically troubled woman whose everyday consciousness has become seriously effected by a traumatic car accident. Despite being treated in a psychiatric hospital, she is far from recovered - seen through her constantly jittery and disoriented behavior. She eventually meets with her husband Ugo, who has either a striking lack of sympathy for his wife's condition or a complete ignorance of the existential angst that it has led her to.

Afraid to be alone, she confides in his partner Corrado (Richard Harris) instead. He's a warmer man, but still very much a product of his endlessly busy environment. As she joins him on a trip to recruit workers for a project overseas, she sees that he is trapped in a meaningless cycle of work. This cycle is externalized in a conversation Corrado has with one of the potential workers' wives, who asserts that he will have trouble recruiting her husband because the separation between them would be too troubling. Such a separation seems to be at the core of each of the characters' wounds, and the relationship Giuliana forms with Corrado is as cyclical as anything else within the film's world.

The film breaks free of its stylistic and thematic limbo in only one scene, when Giuliana tells her son a story to comfort him when he is apparently suffering from an apparent neurological problem. The story is about a young girl on a deserted beach who seeks isolation, until she is disturbed by ships approaching the shore in the distance. Antonioni recreates the tale, allowing his color palette to break down, contrasting Giuliana's reality with a varying amount of shimmering color. The scene is a counterpoint to the rest of the film, ironically using the device of storytelling to "escape" the reality created on screen.

"Red Desert" is an uncomfortable movie to say the least. It subjects the viewer to such dreadful, existential coldness which is more unrelenting than any of Antonioni's previous works. There is a constant onslaught of eerie, disquieting sound design creeping throughout the scenes slowly destroying objectivity. The surreal ugliness of the primary color pallete is equally effective in creating this atmosphere. Antonioni uses these objective elements to completely convey Giuliana's psychological torment and the effect is undeniably haunting.

Mister Foe

Mister Foe/ Hallam Foe (2007)

Review by AJ Detisch

Directed by David Mackenzie
Written by David Mackenzie and Ed Whitmore, based on a novel by Peter Jinks
Cinematography by Giles Nuttgens



David Mackenzie’s follow-up to the brilliant Young Adam wants to be a feel-good underdog story of a lonely voyeur who is trying to confront some psycho-sexual issues with his dead mother. It wants to be gritty, realistic, and mysterious. At the same time, it wants to be funny and nonjudgmental of its disturbed lead as he establishes himself as an adult.


To meet this end, the film tries hard to be youthful. Its poster has hand-drawn letters looking like that of Juno. Its original soundtrack is comprised of fast-paced indie rock which tries to convince the audience that Hallam is OK; just a little misguided. But strangely the film is anything but youthful.


Like Young Adam this film’s central mystery concerns a drowned woman- in this case Hallam’s mother. Young Adam keeps its mystery quiet, contemplative, and paced well enough to hit you with the truths as they come. Hallam Foe does the opposite. It foregrounds its character’s psychosis so clearly and so early that he never really does anything outside his expected parameters. The opening scene is Hallam in his treehouse watching his sister fooling around with her boyfriend. Hallam swiftly interrupts, asserting his presence in the household. Here we see everything that Hallam will do for the rest of the movie.


The mystery surrounding his mother’s drowning is whether it was suicide or murder by his father’s girlfriend. The audience can never really trust Hallam because, besides being creepy, we think his obsession has led him close to insanity. This hindered the mystery element for me because Hallam is too sporadic to be relatable. Right when he's found some clues that would support his claim he runs away from home, at first it appearing to be looking for the police. Then he gets extremely sidetracked by a girl who resembles his mother, which frustratingly leads the story away from the mystery element.

While Jamie Bell does bring out some very endearing traits in his lost character, he was limited by the obviousness of his psychological needs. This movie is in no way mysterious, yet it is not blunt either. It tries to be realistic in dealing with such issues, but it adds a very self-conscious spunk which registers itself as quite the opposite. It goes for a soundtrack-heavy, Trainspotting attitude to help the audience root for a protagonist who scales buildings, picks locks, and camps out for the sake of voyeurism. These urban peeping tom adventures Hallam engages in are way too difficult for an inward-drawn country boy to engage in and they are not sexy, giddy, or pleasant. They are more neutral than anything; not propelling the character or story. Mackenzie makes you understand Hallam, yet he fails to build common ground.


He expects you to enjoy Hallam’s trials and tribulations without much ideological justification. The film hinges on its audience’s perspective on voyeurism/the kind of person who engages in it. Obviously, most people would be disgusted by it. And Hallam Foe realizes that, but it does not let us see Hallam weigh the morality of his decisions. He goes from person to person, trying to fill his deep void. There is a particularly disturbing line from Hallam’s love interest Kate where she drunkenly says “I love creepy boys,” perhaps asking the audience to do the same. The line tries to foreshadow her understanding of him (her motivation remains vague throughout) and tries to further us from judging him. It’s not hard to like Hallam, but it is very hard to participate in his adventure- if it is even an adventure at all. All the while, the film tries to use its flamboyant soundtrack to mask its indecisive mood.

Great performances are weighed down by a film with a weak third act, muddy development, and needlessly ambiguous direction from Mackenzie. Recently this film was re-named for a US release, and for what reason? Not only is it more unappealing, but the hard truth is that the Hallam character never earns the title 'mister.'

Doomsday (2008)

One thing that makes "Doomsday" an interesting entry into the neo-post-apocalyptic genre is its blatant recognition of the "Mad Max" era the movement owes itself to. Unlike the gritty realism of the "28 Days Later" movies and the "Private Ryan"-indebted "Children of Men," "Doomsday" takes the ultra-seriousness of its own kind and reaches back to the Eighties to create a sense of comedic contrast. Not that the film is exhilarating or side-splittingly funny, but it finds a new voice for familiar material and manages to be cheaply amusing from beginning to end.

The film starts with a Malcom McDowell voice over that tells us of a wicked virus that has isolated Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. A large wall is built around the area to quarantine the virus and annhialate the infected people. In London, order is barely maintained from a series of Orwellian lies being fed to the media. Here, we meet sexy English police officer Catherine Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) and her government-affiliated ally Bill (Bob Hoskins). Bill is told about a community of survivors beyond the wall including a power-hungry scientist Kane (McDowell) who might hold the cure. Little do they know of a band of rebels, who are spiky-haired, cannibalistic savages with a taste for S&M chic. Sinclair is sent with a few fortune soldiers on a suicide mission to find the cure and somehow make it back to the wall alive.

The video game-like plot itself is really nothing special. The zombie lore of microvirus holocausts proved itself tired beyond belief in "28 Weeks Later," and post-apocalyptic imagery in general is starting to become banal. However, Neil Marshall seemed to keep himself inspired throughout the production - even as he pretty much recreated scenes and tones from other movies and hoped to bind the film with his own flourishes of originality. He is occasionally successful of this hope, giving the movie moments of shocking bravado when you think it's taking a turn for generic. My favorite scene is a communal blood feast seemingly inspired by the flesh fare in "A.I.," where eighties New Wave music is played over a spectacle of brutality. The scene serves as the film's dynamic centerpiece, allowing the retrogressive style to completely unfold and the movie takes self-indulgent pleasure in its grab bag of influences. The grace of Neil Marshall in that scene, and in the movie as a whole, is that he allows the audience to have as much fun in watching as he obviously did making it.

In the third act, Kane is finally revealed in a tribute to the great revelation of Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now." His megalomania is established in a familiar monlogue, and the scene carries on with a "Gladiator"-like fight sequence which throws in the sword and sandle epic to the many hats the film tries on. It all feels a bit underwhelming at this point, and Malcom McDowell's latter years status as a B-movie icon seems all the more appropriate. The conclusion shifts back to "Mad Max" mode with an old school car chase and by the end, it definitely feels like a tad too much. Then again, that is precisely the film's unique charm is its celebration of the sci-fi/fantasy days of old that have been all but forgotten in this ultra-serious age. A lot of critics complained that "Doomsday" was laughable in comparison to Marshall's previous breakthrough hit "The Descent." Yes, of course it is. And that's why it's more fun.

Modern Vampires (1998)

Probably seen by most on the after-dark Cinemax circuit of the late 90's, (most likely wedged between an "Emmanuelle in Space" episode and something starring Gary Daniels) the 1998 direct-to-video flick "Modern Vampires" surely amassed some sort of cult following. Directed by Danny Elfman's brother Richard, ("Forbidden Zone") and honing an eclectic cast featuring Casper Van Dien, Craig Ferguson, Kim Cattrall, and the legendary Rod Steiger, this is definitely a unique film in its blend of wild comedy, pop culture, horror and spoof.

Talented screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Freeway," "Gun Crazy") continues his themes of troubled urban youth and the moral perversion of mainstream America with a story about a band of vampires living in L.A., who are carefully trying to protect the secrecy and dignity of their breed. They hunt down reckless prostitute Nico, (Natasha Gregson-Wagner) who has been using her profession to wantonly lure nightly blood feasts, and is consequently calling dangerous attention to the vampire community. The gang is led by the youthfully handsome Dallas, (Van Dien) who falls for Nico and tries to protect her from his contemporaries.

Things get interesting when Rod Steiger's Dr. Van Hellsing comes to town to find Count Dracula among the city's growing vamp population. The best scenes of the movie rise from a sub-plot where Hellsing hires South-Central Crips to help him with the vampire slaying. The comedic contrast between the stubborn, culture-clashed Steiger and the joint-sucking, gangsta-rap blasting thugs is a stroke of genius, and Elfman uses enough restraint to keep the running gag amusing throughout the entire movie.

In similar ways, Richard Elfman allows the campiness of his own direction, and the natural disparity of the cast, to keep each scene entertaining with an appropriately silly tone. Think of the carefully balanced spoofery of "Fright Night," the teenage wit of "Scream," and the schlock of 90's B-movies like "Jack Frost" and you have "Modern Vampires," a send-up of vampire lore that doesn't take a frame seriously. The fun of this movie is that it feels completely aware of its own badness, and seems to string many of its laughs around the kitschy acting and production values.

However, one of the problems Elfman has with balancing spoof and horror is that he mistakenly allows a certain amount of laziness to be taken towards the material. To fully make fun of something, a director needs to have complete control over the things s/he is spoofing. "Modern Vampires" has very little establishment of its own mythological rules, its action sequences are dull, the special effects are half-baked, and the flashy, frequently used editing trick of inserting quick B-roll shots for dramatic effect is annoying. It's too easy to make a slapdash spoof with the excuse that it's "supposed to be bad." Great send-ups know how to poke fun at the subject matter, but give you what you want out of the genre anyway - like what Spielberg did with adventure serials in"Raiders" or what Tarantino did with kung fu movies in "Kill Bill," etc. This film is just a contentedly bad one, with a few laughs scattered around the camp.

The problems don't end there, either. There seem to be whole expositional scenes missing, the cinematography is bland and the sound design consists of obnoxiously artificial stock effects. There is also some needless, jarringly dramatic material, like when Nico returns to the trailer she grew up in to confront her abusive father. While going along nicely with Bright's body of work, the heaviness is simply unwarranted. The movie is oddly unbalanced, and towards the middle it starts to feel like Elfman didn't have a clue about where to take it.

If one can accept "Modern Vampires," on its own terms, there is still plenty to enjoy. The cast is vibrant and clearly having a good time and there are some genuinely funny moments. The under-appreciated Natasha Gregson-Wagner is a great fit, even making lines like "You're a card that needs to be dealt with" seem purposefully funny. "Modern Vampires" is pure, straight-forward cheap thrills that still deserves a watch - even if you're not just watching it to kill time between Cinemax After Dark flicks.

Chappaqua (Conrad Rooks, 1966)

Who is Conrad Rooks? His only other film credit, besides "Chappaqua," is an early 70's adapatation of "Siddhartha," which was probably more revered for its cinematography by Ingmar Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist than anything else. The question is asked in "Chappaqua," Rooks' autobiographical depiction of the wonderland of narcotics, which attempts to assess the identity of a man who has relied on consciousness-altering substances since his early teens, as well as the identity of a culture which surrounded his addiction. An informative card in the opening credits tells the audience all of the background information, and it is assumed that Rooks is just a former addict with a story to tell.

As "Chappaqua" gets going, one sees that it is not really a story at all, but a pastiche of beautiful and haunting images, themes, and visual ideas. Conrad Rooks apparently stars as himself, veiled as a character named Russell Harwick, and his tale begins in New York city - where debauchery has made a monster out of him. He lies on the floor of a nightclub munching crushed fragments of LSD and avoiding people's dancing feet. Infused around this sequence are various vibrant shots of urban glitter, ferociously edited together using blended opacities and Godardian fast cuts. The film follows Harwick into a rehabilitation clinic, where he is promised a "sleeping cure" for his drug addictions. What follows is a series of unconnected sequences, featuring visions of Native-American, Indian and American cultures.

The clinic immediately seems fashioned after the one in William S. Burroughs' "Junkie," and when Burroghs himself appears as Harwick's doctor it feels all the more appropriate. There is another appearance by Allen Ginsberg, and, considering the bodies of work of the two authors, the story is actually enrichened by their presences throughout the movie. "Chappaqua" is deeply inspired by the stylish, deeply personal works of the beatnik era, and its surreal, Dadaist realism takes on an interesting life of its own, especially considering the surrounding hippie movement of the time.

The film's many elusive, hallucinatory sequences are undoubtedly disjointed, but they quickly perculate into a trippy meditation on drugs and their corresponding cultures. Some of these scenes show drugs as cerominal or transcendental agents, having a spiritual purity in certain rituals. Others are nightmarish, like the unforgettable ode to American horror movies, where Harwick walks around the streets of New York City in a Nosferatu-like cloak. The film's title comes from Rooks' hometown, which is an American-Indian word meaning sacred burial ground. One of the film's prominent themes is purity in itself, whether as being devoid of controlling substances like drugs or of widespread cultural confusion. Rooks seeing 1965 New York City as a place of excess was a rare perspective for its time, but it now feels all the more astute. He explores the cultural roots of drug use to comment on the cultures in themselves, and one of the most important messages of the film is found in its pursuit for clarity of self. Irony is shown in how Native Americans and Indians once used drugs like peyote and marijuana as a means of spiritual identification, contrasted with its use as an instrument of excess in 1960's America.

Rooks seemed to channel the French New Wave in his visual and editing aesthetics, and it's not hard to connect directors like Godard and Truffaut with the visual motifs presented in the film. Rooks uses the liberating new teqhniques of the Nouvelle Vague to convey an unhinged vision of altered consciousness, and in certain ways pushes them forward. The beautiful cinematography by Robert Franks alternates between crisp B&W, washed-out B&W and grainy color in a style that may have never been used before in a feature film, and certainly wasn't used much until Oliver Stone's "JFK". Rooks' experimentation also owes some of its inspiration to a fellow American, Dr. Kenneth Anger. The cross-dissolves and occult-like imagery seem to come straight from "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome," and the teenage motorcycle iconography of Harwick seems to be taken directly from "Scorpio Rising."

While making these connections, it is important not to thoughtlessly rank Rooks with his contemporaries. This being his first film, it is far from a realized vision. Its sequences, while impressive, are sloppily connected with way too wide of an array of themes. The frequent experimentation undermines the film's thematic strength, and the sequences only seem to add up to hopeless ambiguity by the conclusion. The locations of France, India and the the U.K. (even Stonehenge where a wizard in a white cloak waves a wand on top of the world wonder) are impressive for an independently-financed film in any era, but seem like pointless frivolousness in relation to the truly important elements of the film. Nevertheless, the arresting images and counter-cultural observations should make the movie relevant in historical and social contexts and, at very least, make it a terrific watch. Where else are you going to see a dancing wizard on top of the real Stonehenge?

**Thanks Chase for bringing this home!

Cyborg (1989)

Directed by: Albert Pyun
Produced by: Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan
Starring: Jean Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, and Ralf Moeller.
Cinematography by: Phillip Alan Waters




(By Guest Critic/Twin Brother to Nick, A.J. Detisch)

I asked Scott, the guy I rent movies from, what the best Van Damme movie is. Without any hesitation he said Cyborg so I went over to his sci-fi section and picked it up . He said it would be a lot better than the crap I usually rent and after watching the movie with my brother, I could see what he meant. At the time of writing this review, I admit I am not very familiar with Jean Claude's work, but I found Cyborg lacking in storytelling but superfluous with quality action.

I'm a fan of the film's director Albert Pyun (Mean Guns, Nemesis, Captain America). A student of Akira Kurosawa, he incorporated a zen style into his filmmaking in the B-Action genre. He does not storyboard and shoots with a wide array of unpredictable angles and camera maneuvers, which make most of his films very visually stimulating. If Goddard had an influence on action film aesthetics, it is evident through Pyun. This movie incorporates steadicam, good intraframe slow-motion shots, and lots of good kicks and knife throwing by J.C. himself.

As much as I hate to criticize Pyun in such a general way, his films all get pretty scatterbrained at times (see Nick's review for Ticker). The plot is simple enough: Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean Claude) must stop a team of post-apocalyptic cyborg rogues from destroying a team of scientists who may have a cure for a deadly virus. But Pyun has no unity in production design or costumes, which make certain aspects of the film generic. It seems like he's trying to create a backwoods Mad Max without the cars (Van Damme's character's name is Gibson after all), but he undermines the effort by too much genre bending. He tries to incorporate Western, Pirate, Post-Apocalyptic, and Sci-Fi elements into one story that has not the depth to justify it.

However, Pyun creates a very hilarious scene in which he envisions an action-movie alternative to getting crucified. Gibson gets crucified and left on a T-shaped cross for a whole night and instead of shouting "Why have you forsaken me?!" he kicks his way off the cross! What would J.C. do?

The movie is a lot of fun, but I'd like to think Van Damme's glossier work (Time Cop, The Quest) would offer better production values and characters. I'll have to take it up with Scott. Fun fact: Jean Claude Van Damme did some ghost editing on the film.

The Brown Bunny

The infamy surrounding The Brown Bunny is something that will always define it. I remember the dark days surrounding the film’s premiere at Cannes, where actor/writer/director/director of photography/editor Vincent Gallo was criticized as misogynistic, narcissistic, artistically and morally misguided. Roger Ebert slammed the film, having allegedly made audible jokes during the screening (which was eventually booed by its conclusion).

Its controversial sex scene, involving graphic, questionably pornographic fellatio performed by Chloe Sevingy onto Gallo, brought up a debate about decency and art. Gallo’s control over almost every aspect of the movie made it seem like he had an agenda of his own, whether it be chauvinistic or intimately personal. I remember Gallo’s apologetic defense of the film, where he was hurt by the vile negativity of his critics, which made him recall harsh teasing in his youth for being “ugly.” The whole ordeal of the film’s wide panning at Cannes seemed like a nightmare and a day of reckoning for Gallo, who claimed he would never make a movie again.

But then he re-edited the film, got a great distribution deal, got some rave reviews and actually made money from it. Ebert himself gave the movie a “thumbs up.” For all its controversy and negative implications, The Brown Bunny somehow evolved into a legitimate, and even respected, cult film.

A complete contrast to the cinematic, inventive, densely dramatic Buffalo ’66, The Brown Bunny is stark, fragmented and aimless in structure. The movie opens with a long, shaky handheld shot of a motorcycle race which dissolves into the second-place loser Bud Clay (Gallo) recuperating and packing up. The DIY style, which feels like Gallo is the sole crew member behind, is reminiscent of Mario Van Peebles’ authoritative blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadass Song. The ultra-minimalistic production values give the film a raw, truly independent energy like an inspired, experimental thesis student film. Probably half of the film is some kind of an interior car shot, which bridge a barely existing narrative about Bud’s lonely limbo of guilt and disbelief.

Gallo’s performance is strongly subtle, with his quiet voice and mousy presence effectively carrying out his character’s torturous inner existence. Because the film is guiltlessly indulgent, I started wondering how it would have played had Gallo cast another actor as Bud. To Gallo’s defense, he is pitch-perfect in the role to the point where casting anyone else seems pointless.

Although the movie is airy in dramatic substance, it is always compelling and never feels flimsy or gratuitous. For having a comparatively non-existent crew, the movie holds together well as a character study and a meditation on remorse. As far as the notorious ending, it is disturbing and shocking in a way that undoubtedly finalizes the narrative. The incestuous nature of sex in art is troubling in itself, but despite one’s possible moral objection to the material, the impact of the scene is appropriately troubling and consequently powerful.

My Brother's Wedding

After making his vibrant and momentarily celebrated, but ultimately under-recognized, student thesis film at UCLA called "Killer of Sheep," (which wasn't given a proper DVD release until late 2007, when music rights could finally be secured) young director Charles Burnett seemed to have a limitless amount of things to say about lower class marginalization and interpersonal relationships. Unlike his dramatic first feature, "My Brother's Wedding" is told as a lighthearted comedy, despite tackling issues like responsibility, generational disparity and class division.

Stark production values aside, the movie carries itself with an apparently effortless tone. Its hero is a good-hearted, but developmentally-arrested 30 year old man named Pierce, who lives with his parents, works at his family's dry-cleaning shop and feels somewhat betrayed by his lawyer brother when he decides to marry into a wealthy family. His old buddy Soldier is fresh out of prison and raising hell again, which is troubling to Pierce after he promised Soldier's mother to keep him out of trouble. The bittersweet story walks a fine line between its fluffy, heart-warming comedic bits and some very heavy plot elements with so much natural competancy that the film shifts into its dramatic scenes seamlessly.

One of my favorite scenes is indicative of the film's balance of comedy and hard truth, where Pierce's strong-willed mother stands up to two men who seemingly enter the shop to rob her. After they cautiously walk in and nervously eye the store, she impatiently yells, "If you got somethin' to do, you better well do it!" The strength in her voice sends the men sheepishly out of the store, and the scene concludes with both hilarity and poignancy.

Like "Killer of Sheep," the film chronicles its lower-class family over a series of days that are representative of the collective plights and joys of families in similar economic and social statuses. The ordinary home life of the films characters is painted in a realistic, but warm tone - similar to nostalgic works like Gene Saks' adaptation of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" or Robert Mulligan's "Man in the Moon." One falls in love with the characters and sympathizes with their predicaments, even when the low-budget production values and unprofessional acting get in the way.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Winner of the Palme D'Or at Cannes and sweeping many other prestigious festivals worldwide, the Romanian drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" found international attention and almost unanimous acclaim. Its pertinent and timely issue of abortion, and the themes director Cristian Mungiu structures his story around it, may be one of the factors of its recognition. Just as likely could be its setting in Communist-controlled Romania, and the consequences of a strict dictatorship on laypeople.

Or, people could have just responded to the film's unpredictable and quietly intense narrative. Using an observational style similar to the the Dardenne brothers, ("L'Enfant") Mungiu lets effective long shots and ordinary dialogue build the story arc. It's amazing how quickly his realistic visual approach takes a grip on the viewer, thus allowing the heavier plot elements arise naturally and without melodrama.

The handheld cinematography and realistic plotting are nothing innovative, but they are used so perfectly that a better approach to the story seems unimaginable. Everything about the movie feels intensely real, and the objective way Mungiu deals with the subject matter forces the viewer to contemplate the many messages far after the film is over.

The Rapture

Michael Tolkin shone brilliantly with his delirious, insatiably experimental screenplay "The Player," (adapted from his novel of the same name) which used a big name movie producer to exemplify the worst of material excess and Hollywood ego. Robert Altman's film plays as a descent from a high-flying career into the darkest depths of human emotion, then into a sort of failed rebound, but inevitably back into pained realization. It was a unique, fully-immersive show biz satire that was topped only by David Lynch's masterful couplet of "Mulholland Dr." and "Inland Empire."

For his first feature film "The Rapture," Tolkin picked hot-topic religious issues as his springboard for cultural and social criticisms. Right off the bat, he picked a steep hill to climb. Religiously-themed movies, regardless of what they say or how they say it, are almost guarunteed to be contoversial. The title refers to the concept of fundamental Christian ideology that God's second coming is edging closer, and Tolkin's film is a fearless study of the truth of such beliefs in physical and metaphysical planes of existence. Unlike "The Player," which ends its arc at the disintegration of its character's inevitable guilt, "The Rapture" explores the process of redemption and the undoings of our own beliefs.

"The Rapture" starts out with a numb, floating longshot through the dark cubicle of an L.A. telephone operator service - cleverly addressing the theme of modern alienation with haunting, Ballardian coldness. We're introduced to Sharon (Mimi Rogers), who deals with her void of existential emptiness through group sex. In one of her escapades, she meets Randy, (David Duchovony) a carpenter who has less a void to fill as he has guilt to escape. He confides in her about a murder he dumbly committed for a thousand bucks, and that has followed him painfully ever since. After a series of chance encounters with religion, Rapture imagery (including a white pearl tattooed on a member of one of her swinger excersions), and her own demons, she decides to be saved.

My favorite scene in the movie is an argument Sharon has with Randy about her newly found beliefs. Randy believes there is no God but one which confused, pained people create for themselves. He represents a classic argument agaisnt spirituality in saying that "Some people do heroin, others do God" to avoid the inherent darkness of our lives. Sharon's defenses reveal her desperate need to believe in a spiritual identity.

The film uses the conversion of Sharon and, eventually, Randy to explore the functionality of extreme spiritual beliefs in modern society. Sharon delves so deeply into her community of fellow believers that she completely rejects the physical world she once belonged to which led her so far down the wrong path. This is a common occurance in "saved" Christians, who see their conversion as a total rebound from the empty lives they previously led. While not judging this mentality, Tolkin does show how such conversions can be equal parts rejuvenating and dangerous.

But then comes the ending - one so unbelievable and shocking that it almost needs to be watched twice. Tolkin boldly depicts the actual Rapture using conventional imagery (and very poor special effects) to end the film jarringly, but bravely. The film's resolution could have come from a Biblical parable, and it very well might have. The simplicity of the film's conclusion is provacative, but doesn't work very well. However, the movie as a whole is hard to evaluate as good or bad, right or wrong because it is both meditative and explanatory. For that reason, it represents the argument of spirituality in its own flaws.

What Tolkin was trying to say is hard to tell, and he absolutely intended it to be that way. The film is not defense for fundamentalist beliefs, but a statement about acceptance and openness. It opens so many doors of argument only to close them with a seemingly decisive ending. An equally interesting, but more effective film is William Friedkin's "Bug" which presents the similar madness of human emptiness and the possible dangers of our own beliefs. Its conclusion is just as provocative, but less open to interpretation and more direct.

The Happening

M. Night had it hard after "Sixth Sense," because his breakthrough film felt like any director's fifth film. It was a masterful exercise in genre reinvention, using color, sound design, rich themes and inventive scares to weave an unshakable spell of wonder and fright. How could any great director possibly top such anear-perfect work?

It's not easy, but the young director did follow it up with a string of beautifully crafted thrillers, arguably ending at "The Village." "Lady in the Water" wasn't a terrible film, but a very uninvolving and boring one. His effectiveness of tone couldn't save a simply dull story, and the movie was critically maligned on all fronts.

You'd think he learned a thing or two. "The Happening" isn't a disaster movie, it's a disaster. It is a collection of short, poorly-controlled scenes, almost progressively descending into a deeper level of badness and self-parody. His usual control of nuance and classical, sophisticated plotting is curiously gone and the film seems completely unaware of how bad it truly is.

The evil presence lurking in "The Happening" is a neurotoxin that interacts with the environment in unpredictable ways. When humans come in contact with it, they are driven to either apathetic, murderous or self-destructive impulses. The premise could have been used in a kind of neo-zombie way, like the "28 Days Later" movies, but is instead used only to show bizarre acts of random violence. With a darker tone, the idea could have been pretty scary, but in a blandly executed thriller like this, it is just boring.

The film has an eerie opening, but when the real story kicks in, things start crumbling down. Hopeless dialogue results in unfortunately bad performances from a talented cast. Mark Wahlberg is miscast and sadly laughable in most scenes and not much better can be said for John Lequizamo and Zoe Deschannel - who's cutesy presence in most movies is annoying in this one. It doesn't help that the failed marriage of the two main characters really feels more like a failed middle school romance. In this film, M. Night shows no greater insight into human relationships that an unintuitive, inexperienced student filmmaker - which is usually an area he is brilliantly astute with.

There were a few short moments that I remembered the promising auteur M. Night Shamylan once was. There is a scene that takes place in an unsold real estate property, complete with fake TV's, computers and dishes. Needless to say, the irony was clever and almost effective. Within the same scene, Mark Wahlberg's character starts having a conversation with a plant, exemplifying how most scenes in the film are ruined, no matter how promising.

With "Avatar: The Last Airbender" Shamylan will enter commercial territory that could be interesting. Why he fought to make such an uninspired thriller instead is beyond me.

Black Circle Boys

The best scenes of "Black Circle Boys" are of the film's wounded teenagers reacting to their turbulent lives in total isolation. The main character Kyle is a young man with a weak personal identification, mostly likely stemming from the distant relationship he has with his parents. Writer-director Matthew Carnahan allows these revelations to happen periodically and inductively. He directs such scenes in long takes, relying completely on the performances and nuance of the barren surroundings to bring forth the tensions boiling below the story's surface.

These few scenes are peppered in an otherwise flawed film which is melodramatic, implausible and disappointingly underdeveloped - giving the film a mysterious emotional undertone it doesn't follow through on. The opening introduces Kyle and his All-American swimming buddies wreaking antisocial havoc on the top of a building. Carnahan uses the POV of a videocamera, but stages the action awkwardly - rendering the whole approach of the scene useless. One pivotal detail in particular is extremely obscured, and that is the accidental death of one of Kyle's best friend who apparently falls off of the building.

The movie shifts into Kyle's new life in a new town and school. It becomes a traditional juvinile deliquency teen pic, throwing trite plot elements seen in most similar films from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The Craft." Inevitably Kyle falls in with the bad kids, which in this case is a group of headbanging metal thrashers who call themselves the Black Circle Boys. Its leader Shane (Eric Mabius) is uncompromising, sociopathic, and slitheringly persuasive. The Black Circle boys turn out to be more than a fledgling metal band, and Kyle finds himself uncontrollably immersed in dangerous occult rituals and violent antisocial escapades.

The familiarities and annoyances of the film are largely to the fault of the script. While the style could have been glossy and dull like most teen pics of the time, it transcends the disappointing story with an unsettling conjuction of handheld cinematography and gritty art direction. Carnahan's direction is raw in a way few teen films were in 1997, because he meets the material with at least attempted realism and a very serious tone. However. he’s not consistently on his game throughout the film, and some scenes are bogged down from lazy direction.

The film is helped by a consistent and believable performance by Scott Bairstow. He is brooding, but likable and draws understanding to a character who makes progressively bad decisions. This is a weak, but all-around watchable teen drama that was a precursor to the realistic teen dramas of the 2000’s, like “L.I.E.,” “Bully” or “Mean Creek.”

Trash

Paul Morissey, more or less Andy Worhol's liscensed filmmaker, made interesting exploitation/arthouse films in the late 60's and 70's. The complete lack of classical aesthetic give his work an amateur feel, but he uses it to his benefit - exploring the bottom layers of society with fearlessly and boldly minimalistic flair.

His 1970 film "Trash" isn't a professional film by any measure. There is little (possibly zero) attempt at sound mixing, the acting is mostly bland (hacking the nuance of the script) and the editing and pace have no rhythm. However, the subject matter itself has an energy of its own and the film is able to shock and suprise despite being restrained by the production values and acting.

"Trash" is structured around a hustler named Joe (who was in Morrissey's previous film "Flesh") and his various encounters with different women. The first element anyone will notice is the graphic nudity used in the opening sequence. Used throughout the movie, the nudity is both provocative and absurdly comical, adding to and helping to create its tone of equal parts satire and drama. With Joe's aimless conversations, Morrissey is able to aim a critical eye towards Joe and the people he spends his time with. One particularly memorable moment of the film is when Joe stays with a strange couple who are clean of drugs, but not of other social/sexual perversions. We see that drugs are far from the only factor which inhibit and corrode dysfunctional modern lifestyles. Morrissey, supposedly anti-drug himself, does poke fun at and judge substance abuse, but in this film he uses them to show an intoxicated society, fixated on self-serving, shameless pleasure.

"Ticker"

Albert Pyun's films fill me with a weird sort of glee. The typical atrocity of the acting, generic scores, disconnected, usually hard-to-follow narratives, and stock footage are painted over with stylish, sometimes strikingly unique cinematography. The un-storyboarded compositions are sometimes dead on and other times aesthetically inept. He creates confusing, disoriented worlds - albeit in a very distinctive, memorable way. There is so much to look at in Pyun's more ambitious films, if one can bare the lack of substantial narrative quality.

"Nemesis" is my favorite of his films that I've seen. It has a bold visual style that transcends its "Blade Runner" meets "Terminator" script. The dialogue may as well be in a different language - the real treat are the gorgeous action scenes. "Nemesis" is Pyun at his best, staying on track with almost every unit of production. Even the acting is a step above crap, with stone-faced Oliver Gruner and some recognizable faces like Tom Jane and Pyun regular Yuji Fujimoto.

Pyun's 2001 film "Ticker" is him on autopilot, which is a dangerous place for him to be. Some directors make perfectly entertaining films with their hearts clearly not in them (i.e. Spielberg's "Lost World: Jurassic Park"), but most others simply can't afford to fluff their way through a picture. "Ticker" is a mess, a pure paycheck project featuring either talented actors turning in half-assed performances or bad actors doing absolutely nothing for the movie. Dennis Hopper has never proved himself to be a worse actor, this time attempting an Irish accent in some scenes and completely forgetting about it in others. Peter Greene, who was terrific in the classic indie "Clean Shaven," is given little to work with. The rest of the interesting cast include Nas, Tom Sizemore, Jamie Pressley and a weird cameo from Ice-T, who is underused having delivered an impressive performance in Pyun's bizarre "Mean Guns."

Rumor has it that Steven Seagal had considerable control in the final product. His role as a bomb squad leader/zen philosopher is at least an attempt at making his character slightly different from any of those he has tried to play before. No matter what hand he had in this film, or how interesting the writers tried to make his character, he struggles with his performance. This movie has absolutely no effort, and is predictable despite the surprising potential.

For such a large cast and a sprawling story, Pyun does manage to keep things together in a linear fashion. The problem is that there are no memorable scenes or characters or anything. The special effects suck (look for the worst rear projection in movie history at the end, where cheap background video is used for hilarious contrast) and everything else is painfully mediocre.

Most people, no matter what profession, have dry spells of uninspiration and boredom. Every member of this film's cast and crew seem to be simultaneously experiencing such things in "Ticker."

a reflection on independent film

I am a big fan of premium cable movie channels - Cinemax, HBO, Starz, Showtime, Encore, they all have their charms. My favorite is Cinemax. I grew up with it and probably developed my interest in movies because of it. It helped me discover the, at the time, emerging world of independent film. I. film in the early to mid-90's was at its heyday of underground art, before the concept of independent film was commercialized by IFC, Sundance Channel, and eventually Hollywood conglomerations, who somehow found a way to buy out what started out as a counter movement to them. Almost every big studio has an indie production house. Look at last year's Best Pic Oscar nominations. The new American classics seen with PT Anderson's wonderful "There Will Be Blood" and the Cohen Brothers' masterwork "No Country For Old Men" were a product of indie subsidiaries. I can't criticize the fact that such unbelievably great films didn't go overlooked, as would usually happen to films of their nature. But I do think that the "Independent Spirit" seen with 80's and 90's mavericks like Jim Jarmusch has been forgotten about. Brilliant directors like Tom Dicillo are now having difficulty finding an audience for their films possibly because their charm as alternative filmmakers has become lost among mainstream-seeking tastes. The big indie films are all about auteurs and actors. Emerging voices, and truly independent voices of the past, are at a period in film history where content is either commercial or extremely diversified.

What does that say for the current film school generation of the 2000's? Its truly hard to tell. We've grown up watching auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Andersen, PT Anderson and Harmony Korine find large-scale success at very young ages. We all want what they earned, and the competition has never been so fierce. There has never been a period with more content providers and we have created a large mass with a very uncertain future. The technology is at our fingertips and we have never had greater access to influential films, which the advent of DVD and preservation societies like Janus Films are making widely available. As the future of exhibition is so clouded, there is no way to tell what kind of an industry us film students will be working in. All I know, is that it seems to be heading in a quickly rising new wave, putting independent film at ground zero once again.

Human Carcinogen Podcast 1

LISTEN HERE: