Videodrome (1983)

If Star Trek is for prepubescent geeks in mom's living room, and Star Wars is for the easily swayed teenage and adult-stuck-in-adolescence variety, then Videodrome is for nerds of a more refined kind, those who love the psychology and philosophy of mind and its allure to the beyond where true transcendence lay.

Max Renn wants a real looking sexual torture show called Videodrome for his sleazy television station, but when he gets hold of the elusive tape, it puts him in an ever mutating dizzy fit of headaches and hallucinations. The more he finds out about it, the more dangerous it sounds, the more he's enticed, so he confronts the people behind it, as Cronenberg adds plumage to the idea of masses of idiots getting subtle programming from the TV in delightfully bleak fashion.

"Watching TV will patch them back into the world's mixing board."

-Bianca Oblivion, Cathode Ray Mission

The first act is a sexual conception of the Videodrome virus, the second a mandatory exposition seeping it into conscious apprehension. Conscious apprehension, where it sits, waiting, as you sit inert, ready to lull you into hallucination? Perhaps, and in this way contributing, if you like, to Baudrilaude's simulacrum in an appropriately meta way: our controllers program us with media, and this film is not far from the same. But Videodrome can at least attest to some form of artistic integrity.

"The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena, the Videodrome."

-Brian Oblivion

Of course, Cronenberg takes it a step further to develop his metaphor of the "new flesh," the sexually initiated fusion of our technology, biology, and ideals; our ultimate destiny (desire?) being disembodied Word.

"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. [...] television is reality, and reality is less than television."
-Brian Oblivion

"[...] public life on television [is] more real than private life in the flesh."

-Bianca Oblivion

Max is now confronted by Videodrome co-op Barry Convex, who manages to invoke the Controllers from Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World (warm, charismatic authority helping you to your quiet, sedated demise). The Videodrome tumour well into malignancy, it takes over as Max's new reality.

"Open up to me, Max."

-Barry Convex

In a memorable scene that converges the prescient running theme of virtual reality with video games itself, the crux of the "Videodrome Problem" is defined: change the program and stop the evil plans of the would-be oligarchs. In its place, the new flesh, "man's next phase as a technological animal," seems to propose little better.

"Don't be afraid to let your body die."

-Nicky Brand

Cronenberg's highpoint may well be The Fly, harrowing in its simplicity, as if a humble Kafkaesque narrative narrowed down the essence of his ideas with a brutal honesty befitting them. With Videodrome though, for a thing of its kind, there are few comparisons, as it's really one of a kind. Its catharsis is a void because it does not exist, instead requiring repeated viewings for any real meaning to be extracted, which will therefore ring intellectually. If anything, it’s a landmark film that predicts the mass hypnosis of the populace as an ever-increasing rate of proclivity toward epileptic visions of sex and violence.

"Long live the new flesh."

-Max Renn, avatar of the new flesh

Death Proof (2007)

This movie is so fucking cool I watched it five times the first week I saw it, but...

Whatever the technical genius Quentin Tarantino brings to his joints, he can't escape the formula of unthinking entertainment to say anything of import or longevity. You realize this every time you detach from the violence and sexiness that pleases your monkey brain and ask yourself what the hell it is you're watching. When the end credits roll to mood heightening music with lyrics suggestive of the slippery slide of the male ego, you can all but applaud at how clever it is, but just as quick you might realize how empty this cleverness is, much like the pop song it employs as a shortcut to preconscious emotion. Your average film buff will have a giggle, but no matter how much I enjoy his stuff, I can't care enough to rate him as more than a "talented shit" with nothing to say.

Suckas!

Ghost World (2001)

Jaded cinephiles and rent-a-movie whores looking back to the classics of the likes of Bergman, Kurosawa, or (God be with us) Tarantino's grindhouse influences, may miss a few gems of the more recent past, none more so than Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, which on first viewing is as close to masterpiece as you can get for a film from this century.

Let's call it "arthouse comedy": be funny, smart, or interesting in some trivial but outlandish way, then be sad or generally dramatic in a twisty middle act, then conclude on some horseshit that either makes everyone feel better about themselves or else offer a falsely (read: dishonestly) ambiguous conclusion that "confuses" the slow kids -- art as a device of egoism to artist and consumer, a self gratifying lie dreamed by the former instructing the latter to agree, and feel clever doing so. In other words, pander to the neurotic complexes of your audience but be artsy about it - be a hipster. Superficially, Ghost World does all of these. In spirit, it does none of these, even if at times it's this close to being hypocritical in its critique of hipsterdom. It's hiply unhip, it's meta, it's art, even. It's brilliant.

When a couple of outsider teens (Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson) graduate from high school, they have to be "different" and not go to college like the other dorks, jocks, losers. What then? Well, lots, mostly jokes and pranks adding up to zilch, but we're young, so fuck it. One of the poor bastards (Steve Buscemi) at the other end of the stick turns out to be not as creepy as first thought (well, he does, but you can't help but like the idiot), leading to the central plot point: impossible and dumb love. If it sounds trite, it really isn't, and give Ghost World credit for handling it with aplomb. Even better, repeatedly, little plot threads meet, sometimes ingeniously, symbiotically, the best being a) the treatment of art as misrepresented in academia therefore high school and b) hidden racism in contemporary culture instructed by America's racist history, with the synergy of a + b causing controversy of the best kind.

Ghost World is masterfully executed, especially thematically. Shot for shot even. Playing out the existential crisis of teenage life in a time where everyone is clueless ("fuck everybody"), it dips in and out of well earned, Honest to Gods Transcendence. When it becomes clear our protagonist should stop pointing the finger and look at herself for a clue, the film draws from a well of the intangible but real wisdom of an artistic consciousness to make out of a lone wolf a humble heroine. It would be flippant to fault it for relying on the holy fool, as he knows best after all: be patient with your dumb ideas, wait for that ticket away from drama, then grab the bus en route to creation anew.

Une femme est un femme (1962)

Award winning Une Femme Est Une Femme has Godard in top form, playing with the novel in the Nouvelle Vague he helped create, by 1962 in its adolescent phase. The film self-proclaims masterpiece status in a jest of untouchable confidence springing from the well of youthful exploration of a new style of cinema, and five(!) decades later, it's hard to argue how different it is from any film you're likely to see. What separates it from the youtubers and MTVers is discipline to a medium that allows for artistic coherence and an intellectual attention span. Yet for all its cleverness, you question its ability to make any serious statement beyond "bitches be crazy."

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Up there with Bunuel's The Milky Way as one of the greatest of all time, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is an ode to immortality, a true filmic equivalent of religious reverence for origins and destinies, even if some details are based on the modernist revisionism traditionalists eventually fall out of favour with, i.e. evolution. In other words, in the context of this film, it doesn't matter, as inherent substance is eternal, and whether we have evolved or not, we return to the source of all life, gaining all the power that comes with such a gigantic step, if we have the courage to step into the unknown.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Knavish big budget foolery that's nonetheless breathtaking in that sci-fi nerd kind of way, Planet of the Apes achieves if nothing else the questioning of prejudice. If often times it all seems a bit dumb, by the end you feel a bit hoaxed. It's a sucker punch, especially to the critic who mulls each detail, looking for weak points to expose the myth, to call out the prophet as a charlatan. Meanwhile, running with the thesis, it should have been obvious all along, and we were gullible enough to be strung along.

A group of astronauts are sent on a deep space expedition, the apparent objective of which is as much to prove the theory of time condensation at near-light speed as it is to explore and conquer outer space, expanding "our" (American) empire. Shit happens and they crash on an unknown or unplanned planet; the female trooper dies along the way, her corpse a prescient ape-like effigy. Soon they discover life, and a species of mute hominids, but are then captured by talking, riding, weapon yielding apes, the kings of the food chain on this "upside down" planet. When the apes in charge of the plainly dumb, backwards religious orthodoxy discover that Taylor (Charlton Heston) is smarter than they are, they persecute him out of fear.

The spine of the narrative is a tired diatribe of a kind of Victorian renunciation of scientific heresies, the stupidity of which is only eclipsed by its sheer audacity as a red herring. The entire thing is in fact a marvellous deception, yet, there's the thing. It makes sense, but only in hindsight, and thus doesn't evoke transcendence, because pulling a trick from up your sleeve - as opposed to directly relating sublime experience - never will.

And then there's the diegetic speeches and monologues, smug at times, used as short cuts to grand ideas, typical of director Schaffner, who is as annoying as ever. While taken as a whole, this thing is a bit of a mainstream farce, the great consolation is that it manages to be auto-critical, what with its ending on a cloud of doubt on the merits of scientific knowledge. Credit it also for at least pledging its nihilism early on, and after much silliness in between, ultimately sticking to it.

Wendigo (2001)

Wendigo - misty spirit of the land

Wendigo is as much an ode to the mythic imagination of ancient times as it is a simple but effective horror flick. Boring as hell for just under an hour, when the shit hits the fan, it sticks, and we're forced to look inward for eternal truths now lost (forgotten) in modern times. Top notch as far as early 2000s indie horror goes, back in the days before the youtube generation exploded onto that scene and turned it into an excuse for masturbating in public.

Suspiria (1977)

As made by seminal giallo maestro Dario Argento, Suspiria will perhaps best be remembered for its unnerving, heart stoppingly gruesome opening sequences, including one of the most logistically stunning set pieces in film history. But throughout, it's a cinematic marvel of thematic aural and visual entanglement, defined de facto by the neon reds, blues and greens of its nightmare probe into the occult.

The naively curious Susie Banyon (Jessica Harper, pedestrian but not terrible) is the overgrown American, clueless ingenue fumbling her way through a series of mysterious events.

The power of suggestion and subconscious projection of fear drives the psychological, subtextual roadmap for the visual narrative of murderous demons, murmuring spectres, and conspiring witches. Apart from a campy, anti-climactic ending, the payoff is always in bucketloads of blood and squeamishness. Cult.

Danger is always off-screen, metaphorically encapsulated, or otherwise obscured from view, creating a consistent negative space which maintains a creepiness that subtly increases tension and apprehension.

The only let down is the self-nullifying resolution out of apathy, and though there is a recognition of absurdity, it's not nearly as terrifying as the buildup would suggest, giving us riddle instead of conflict. Yet even so, Suspiria is a masterpiece of the genre not to be overlooked.

Easy Rider (1969)

Easily misconstrued as merely a sarcastic look at the plight of the counterculture and its ill defined ideas of simple minded freedom, Easy Rider is rather an astounding psychedelic fever dream of hypnotic, intoxicated meditation. Dennis Hopper's one big directorial hit and an inspiration for a generation, it starts as a simple search for freedom, but by the end finds the promised land a waste land of desolation, a paradise lost. It is in fact an anthropomorphic American reverie of another lost generation in mourning for what could have been.

Two chilled, distilled bikers, Wyatt (Peter Fonda's Captain America) and Billy (Hopper), deal drugs with Mexicans and new money brats to fund a cool trip to Mardi Gras (free fracas down South). Along the way they meet a series of morons, sideshows, and sex, culminating in an LSD bad trip, one of the most memorably haunting, _naked_, yet still humorous sequences of dementia and torment in film history.

Initially, their effervescent cool carries them through in a manner only hippies of the era could fashion, but gradually, subtly, it fizzles out. The fun never lasts too long, the highs are repeatedly cut short, muted, and distanced from positive audience indulgence. Instead, the growing disillusion is, perhaps despite itself, painted thick with a remarkable visual flare that somehow captures the subconscious of a people busying themselves with a series of short term thrills as a means of ignoring the decay. What makes this flick great is that these effects serve the overarching tropes of an extra-textual legacy: America -- like an aimless hippie looking for the right things in the wrong places -- as a self destructing organism.

"We blew it."
- Wyatt

We blew it, man, and nothing can make up for the time however wasted, in other words. That it was indeed wasted is generously hinted at with those lingering words. The general idea, granted, is that we (America/The West) fucked up big time somewhere along the line.

While seemingly knocking easy targets of the America of governmental oppression, capitalism, and backwards hicks, the film reaches a point of nihilistic abandon so as to ignore the political and social memes and lose itself in the ride to free oblivion, gazing long enough to see the abyss stare back at the chaos and ruin inside itself, until what's left is a cold shrug at freedom in flames.