Amoeba Music

There will always be films that cater to the loners of society (or at least those who are disappointed by life's inability to provide them with peers and/or a family who compliment their personalities). Looking back on my own childhood, I remembered and recently re-watched one of my favorite movies that deals with such displacement. Matilda, directed and narrated by Danny DeVito, is a touching and colorful little tale about a young girl whose intellect and class does not exactly mesh well with her scheming couch potato family. The author of the book upon which the movie is based, Roald Dahl, is also the author of James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, which would explain the imaginative story.

Matilda’s father, Harry Wormwood (Danny DeVito), is a car salesman who prides himself on the various "lemons" and shabby mechanical restorations he sells to the townspeople. Her mother, Zinnia (Rhea Perlman), is a complete ditz, and her older brother is a chubby tyrant. From birth Matilda was visibly quite spectacular, though her family was too absorbed in their programs and TV dinners to appreciate their new infant who could spell her name before walking. As time goes on, she begins to nurture herself completely and meet her desires for brain food by frequenting the local library. By four, she has learned to dress herself and cook and becomes anxious and upset at the fact that she can’t put any of her talents to good use.

Several works from filmmaker Patrick McGuinn (Sun Kissed, Eulogy for a Vampire) are collected in this delightful DVD. Below are descriptions of the shorts featured, many of them done with 16mm film and Claymation, and later with digital video once the technology became available.

Stella!, 1995—Stella and her puppet boyfriend Vincent are an odd pair, obviously, who both desire Twinkies above all else and play control games with each other using the greasy sponge cake. Evolution, 1982—An impressive and colorful Claymation short about the survival of the fittest and evolution, where reptilian one-eyed monsters and dinosaurs attempt to overtake the land and devour its inhabitants while also destroying its order. Carousel of Death-Satan’s Game, 1985—Hippie culture meets really bad ‘80s fashion and Hip-Hop as Satan plays tricks on unsuspecting victims. This short has some excellent and appropriately trippy washouts that look like faded Polaroids, as well as trashy animation and some brave experimenting that made it one of my favorites in the collection. It also unfolds like a bizarre music video since there is no dialogue and reminds me of some early Spike Jonze videos. Terrence Baum: Intergalactic Assassin, 1986—This short opens with a lot of experimental shots, including layered animation of the cosmic world. It’s shot in black and white with a very paranoid vibe and classic goofiness. The film has the look of a noir and yet the out-of-sync and rushed action of a German expressionist silent film, except there is dialogue. Terrence Baum, a government secret agent, goes on a search and destroy mission for aliens from the planet Saliva. He speaks in what could only be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice (clips taken from other films, I assume) as he uses his only weapon, the Glutonious Maximizer, to sniff out the aliens who have come to earth disguised as bachelors in order to collect single women, who I guess are their only prey. Agnes Keedan’s Secret Plan, 1988—A crotchety and eccentric old woman goes berserk when two neighborhood children, one of whom is her domestic helper, disturb her magic wig, which comes to life and traps the children. She is then exposed as a witch and develops a potion that can transform her only friends (a jar of insects) into enough bugs to fill an entire house. Gran’ma!, 1995—A young man visits his grandmother, exposing yet another group of individuals, including the puppet Vincent, who exercise their right to love Twinkies. Only this one comes in the form of a hilarious sing-a-long with the words on the screen and everything. When the Owling Has Come, 1989—This is a satanic short where a scholar and his apprentice discuss philosophical babble and the scholar confesses that an evil muse is the source of his, and thus his apprentice’s, ethics. Shot in color with some excellent effects and lighting, this is one of the shorts with the most craft and more classic storytelling techniques. SPF 2000, 1997—Two men, Poochie and A.J., attempt to make sexual advances toward a teenage boy while he is on a picnic with his mother. This has the most absurd concept and is therefore a gem among the lot, equipped with sleazy ‘70s music and great close-ups. Oh, and an alien who crashes their party. So Many People!, 1995—A short musical about ....you guessed it, Twinkies, and how so many people love them. Ironically suggestive toward the absurdity of processed foods, this is an enjoyably tart short that is very much like a stylized TV commercial. Say Thankyou, Please,1990—A man, exhausted with the daily grind, gets home from work and receives a call from his friend telling him that he has sent a blind date to his house for dinner, against his will. So…a musical unfolds, using his friend Vincent (the puppet), about how to make pasta, which was he intends to serve.

Dancing Outlaw is the first of two films by director Jacob Young that follow the comical and sometimes endearing daily rituals of Jesco White—a young man with a few different personalities who has followed his father’s footsteps in attempting to become the greatest living mountain dancer in the Appalachians. He lives in Boone County, West Virginia—a place where everyone seems to have either gone mad or suffers from some kind of gentile and permanent cabin fever.

His wife Norma Jean describes him in by far the most amusing and unflinching way, claiming that he is the most beautiful person that she’s ever met, but also the Devil himself. Through fluid interviews, she sort of forewarns the audience of Jesco’s three personalities: there’s Jesse, the son of his father who has a healthy beard and enjoys digging into his hillbilly roots and growing into a stronger tap dancer; Jesco, the man who wears grungy metal clothing, talks simple, and tells stories of sniffing glue and gasoline, among other things; and finally, there’s Elvis—Jesco’s personality at home, where his entire house is literally filled with an overwhelming amount of Elvis memorabilia. Aside from his home being stuffed with everything with “The King’s” face on it, he also slicks back his hair, wears fancy clothes, shaves his beard, sculpts his brows, and records himself singing along to Elvis records in his bedroom.

Feminist theory and the Sexual Revolution explode on screen for this fleshy and colorful vampire tale. It bends the rules quite a bit by allowing for vampires who roam around in daylight, as well as having a female lead and another who plays the vampire in erotic pursuit.

Susan (Maribel Martín) and her husband (Simón Andreu) are two newlyweds who decide to skip a hotel and take their honeymoon at his family's estate. Susan quickly becomes an admirer of his home and family until she realizes their attitude toward women. After noticing that the walls containing portraits of his ancestors only have paintings of men, she discovers that all the ones of the women in the family are hidden in the cellar. One in particular sparks her interest—the portrait of Mircalla Kerstein, a young bride with a blood-stained pearl dagger and a missing face, who murdered her husband on their wedding night, claiming that he requested she do despicable things.

Dracula. Disco. Delusional dufuses. That's right folks, you get the whole package with this ridiculously funny and well-dialogued farce of Dracula.

The year is 1979, and things have certainly changed in 700 years. Count Vladimir Dracula (George Hamilton) and his bug eating servant Renfield (Arte Johnson) are evicted from their castle in Transylvania to make way for government training grounds. Distressed by the notice, he and Renfield try to decide where to live. The only contact that Dracula has had with the modern world is through women's magazines, which he collects to get a glimpse of Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James)—a model whom he believes is his soul mate and a reincarnation of women he was fond of centuries ago. In order to pursue her, they travel to New York where she lives, where he will try to win her heart.

Picture, if you can, a film with the nightmarish quality of a Harmony Korine movie in Japanese, with a bit more focus on the characters and plot, that is deliberately presented as an avant-garde horror film. Late Bloomer is about as close to that combination as you're ever going to get. Not only is it toxic and arresting like the films of Korine, who I'll admit is one of my favorite directors, but the film is extremely off-putting.

As far as craft goes, it is shot in black and white (needed, I assume, for the eerie quality and mass bloodshed), with out-of-date dissolves and overlapping images that I haven't seen in years. The soundtrack is also jarring, mainly consisting of minimal electronic and death metal.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is perhaps one of the best anti-hero films I have ever seen, based on concept alone. Chan-wook Park's Vengeance Trilogy is unlike most others because the plot, actors, and characters are all in no way linked or the same, but each film circulates around revenge. Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) is a young deaf-mute who lives with his sister in a seedy apartment complex. His ambition was formerly focused on art school until his sister fell ill and needed a kidney transplant. He quit school and began working as a manual laborer in a factory in order to save up for her operation. Unable to give her one of his own kidneys because their blood types don't match, Ryu takes a chance and, using all the money that he has saved, tries to purchase a kidney from an illegal organ supply group which offers to give him the kidney he needs in exchange for one of his and 10 million won. But after waking up from the operation, he finds that the group has split with his clothes, money, and kidney.

Disheartened and furious about yet another streak of bad luck in his life, he vows to kill the people who wronged him. While visiting the medial center he frequents to find a donor, he receives the great news that they found a proper donor, which is hard to do in such a sort amount of time. The only problem is that Ryu has just been fired from his job and the operation costs 10 million won. Together, he and his girlfriend Cha-Yeong-mi (Doona Bae) decide to kill two birds with one stone by seeking vengeance on the illegal group and kidnapping his former employer's daughter for ransom in order to pay for his sister's operation.

The ability to suspend disbelief is easiest to do when you're watching films about global conspiracies, justice systems, and especially politics. Having movies like this be shot in a documentary style only aids this experience. After seeing this movie, I can honestly say that I haven't been this motivated to discuss politics and justice in a long time, and I'm glad that a film could have the power to stir the pot. Punishment Park is set in 1970, a year before the film's release. Nixon is president and we are currently occupying Vietnam. Due to the war, America is going through a brutish and frightening phase where even a handful of politicians are resigning from office over their disgust with the nation's actions towards its outspoken citizens and the overall progress of mankind. With new laws and the proposed threat of Russia, there has been a complete re-working of the justice system in which American citizens have lost basic freedoms that were once seen as the staple of American life. These new laws include the "cancellation of immunity," stop and frisk laws, activation of detention camps, the ability to overrule basic amendments of the Constitution during trial, and the McCarran Act—a real law developed in the '50s that called for the ability to investigate Americans who posed a threat to national security, and was later dismissed and "revised."

Individuals seen as a threat to national security include those who start riots or do any sort of activism that carries a violent message; those evading or refusing the draft; those charged with Communism; and even a privileged 19-year old whose pop music is accused of having harmful messages and promoting violence. As a particular group of people are being given a ludicrous trial by a bonkers committee of trustees, a batch of people who have already received their own trials are being transported to Punishment Park—the alternative option to a prison sentence after being found guilty.

The marriage between religion and politics has no known date. To explore this link with films is to visually investigate the times and reasons for which people intertwine the two in order to make sense of their disrupted lives and societies. Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now is the story of two friends whose lives have been torn apart by institutional violence and injustice. At first glance, they appear to be unaffected by their environment until a commitment made years before manifests the horrific day when they are called upon to become martyrs for a cause that they don't fully understand.

The story takes place in modern times with the Muslim dominated Palestine being in a constant state of war with the Zionist/Jewish society of Israel. Said (Kais Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are two childhood friends who agreed as teenagers to carry out a suicide bombing together for an organization which has been plotting its next attack for over two years. Each man, now in their early twenties, is visited separately by their messenger Jamal (Amer Hlehel) and told that the bombing will happen in less than 24 hours. The two begin saying goodbye to their families in order to prepare for their brief training.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is perhaps one of the more neurotic and bizarre philosophers that I’ve read thus far. Seeing any kind of interpretation of his life and measures of reason would be an oddly enjoyable migraine. Thankfully, our good friend Derek Jarman made a sort of homoerotic comedy that attempts to interpret his life and philosophical debates. I took the risk and gave it a try simply because Jarman himself seems to be a bit of a philosopher (perhaps if he had a favorite, it might be Wittgenstein). In what films I have seen of his, all of them tend to be laden with personal unease from his psyche. In that sense, his films are very exclusive and cater to his beliefs and sexuality. Watching Wittgenstein was sort of like sitting in a room with the director debating various issues and it just so happens that his side of the argument is better served through tangible images, rather than words.

To make a long story short, you might not enjoy Wittgenstein if you don’t care for his philosophy (or philosophy in general), much less a farce of it. Aside from the content, the film’s style might also be off-putting. It’s sort of like a stageless play where everything is set against black, similar to Lars von Trier’s Dogville, but even more minimal in terms of props and stage design.