Change Your Image
catharton
Reviews
Dweezil & Lisa (2004)
Want to see famous people getting free holidays and free meals?
Well, there's really no other reason for watching this other than the fame of the two leads, they do and show absolutely nothing of any interest.
The "culinary adventures" consist of things like ordering cakes in a cake shop, watching a chef fry chicken or just eating a free meal in a restaurant that gets free publicity in return. Lisa Loeb (whose later series Number 1 Single mentioned how seriously she took her Jewish religion) somehow integrates bacon into a Judeo-vegetarian diet.
It's just one big beano, with the only conceivable highlight coming from a very brief cameo by Bill Murray in one episode where Dweezil goes to play at a golf tournament.
Dweezil and Lisa don't seem to have any knowledge or passion about food, they're on-screen just to be on-screen.
I don't actually mind celebrities doing documentaries on the basis of their celebrity, but I do mind when they seem to think they can get away without actually working.
Gastineau Girls (2005)
Awful, talentless parasitic trash
Well, the episode I just watched had the older "Gastineau Girl" whining about why people keep mentioning her husband (Mr Gastineau, a famous American Football player apparently). She seems unwilling to accept that he's the only reason she isn't flipping burgers, she married someone famous and that's why she has cameras pointed at her.
When challenged by an interviewer to explain what she actually does, she gave a wonderfully circular reason for why people should pay attention to her: "I work really hard on my reality TV show". Then she said "I'm not a celebrity... I'm a personality."
I'm not quite sure who this series is meant to appeal to, except people who've had all their intelligence removed. It's certainly no role model to anyone except gold-diggers as the two stars do nothing but spend money, and all it tells you about rich people is that they have no money problems.
Dogville (2003)
Interesting themes, terrible film
SPOILER WARNING: Contains a couple of references to the ending of the film.
It's often said by many fans of cinema, rather casually, that most people never go and see genuinely interesting films, they only like to watch trash. With Dogville I can see why this might be the case, as it conforms to almost every cliché of "art" films without actually providing anything that someone new might be able to grab hold of. It's not a problem when a film is difficult, it's a problem when a film is unnecessarily difficult, which is what Dogville makes itself.
Dogville takes a very interesting topic, the right of a person to make a moral judgement about others, and raises some very interesting points about this topic. This lofty aim is what is good about the film, and it succeeds well if you just watch the last ten minutes.
But what's bad about the film is the way these important questions are buried so deeply, and so obscurely, that very few people will have the time or inclination to get far enough through the film to encounter them. At film festivals, maybe, but the vast majority of people nowadays see films at home, usually on television.
The 3 hour running time, often justified in films and plays, isn't justified here. It makes very little difference to the final outcome whether you've seen all the details of the townspeople's life or not, and as films like this are usually shown very late anyway you'd have to either be unemployed or extremely willing to go without sleep to struggle through to the end. There's very little to help you along the way, and its apparent message that all humanity is animal-like scum doesn't exactly help matters.
"You're evil deep down, go on, admit it or you're deluding yourself!" is hardly the way to get people to think about life, and it's not a million miles away from priests bellowing "You're sinners ye all!" at schoolchildren. The mistake made by Grace that the film highlights is similar to the mistake the film itself makes, it assumes an arrogant aloofness from other mass media, and unnecessarily shuts itself off from anyone except dedicated film goers.
I've heard this is supposedly an attack on certain political viewpoints, but to be honest how effective is an attack if the only people who are going to watch it all the way through are likely to be the kind of people who already disagree with that viewpoint? If it is a political attack, it's preaching to the converted, a pointless exercise which only seems to entrench views instead of shaking them up.
It's also inaccurate in the way that so many academic and media reports on life are: it assumes what's true of many is true of all. Most of us will never invent anything, so there will be no inventions, is the kind of logic they employ. The flaw in it is that there WILL be inventions, with total regularity throughout history, even in the least enlightened corners of the world, bright sparks have risen which manage to spread influence far beyond their numbers. Interesting ideas, interesting philosophies, interesting inventions can all pass into popular use as long as we don't deny their existence or usefulness. Yes, most people never come up with them, but who cares? Most people will never write a song but most people want to listen to music. That's not parasitic or hierarchical or anything negative like that, it's purely a reflection of the rarity of good ideas and talent.
In the film, most of the town is animal-like, so the entire town is animal-like. Most of the outsiders are violent gangsters, so all outsiders are violent gangsters. But that's never ever true in real life, there are always exceptions, always freaks, and it's often these freaks who see their society's problems and ways to deal with them.
Slavery was once proclaimed a completely indestructible evil, but it was (mostly) abolished, because certain people dared to take a more optimistic approach to life and follow it through.
The characters in Dogville are clearly symbols of various groups or philosophies, but nowhere is there a symbol of moderation, nowhere is there a character who does not harm anyone. Go anywhere in real life and you'll see these people exist, but because they're not killing or raping anyone, because they're not interesting dramatically, they never get mentioned in Dogville. The two characters even vaguely near the centre ground, Tom and Grace, both end up doing something very nasty to each other and reveal their true mercenary characters when they feel threatened. Not only does Lars Von Trier inevitably kill off almost all the main characters (this is an art film after all, can't have optimism here), he also thoroughly assassinates their characters.
Are absolutely all people like this? No. Does Lars Von Trier care? No.
He wants to paint a picture easily, he wants us to believe the majority represents the entirety. Figureheads become a substitute for populations, individuals simply become part of a greater whole with no value in themselves. The fact that nations and movements can wink into and out of existence, or merge and split, seems ignored in this kind of world view. One exceptional person is always insignificant, essentially, because they're in such a small minority.
But this can never be the case because it is often from some unnoticed minority or unlikely individual that real advancement (moral, political and technical) comes. As long as an individual can make a difference, it's factually incorrect to say they're insignificant. Ignore them at your intellectual (and physical) peril.
Xanadu (1980)
Even if you enjoy camp musicals, Xanadu fails to deliver.
Spoiler Warning: very minor plot details given.
I love camp musicals, I love "so bad it's good" films, I even have an ELO album which I play regularly. So do I enjoy watching Xanadu? No.
Xanadu never decides what it wants to be and ends up a mish-mash that wouldn't make anyone happy.
The film starts out as a musical, then for 10 or 20 minutes becomes a dreary soap opera about a freelance artist, then it's a rollerskating movie, then there's a small snatch of musical again, then it's back to soap... it goes on and on. The effect is of watching TV and changing channels every so often, but with the same actors appearing in every programme you switch to.
The soap opera parts last far too long with far too little happening and the musical parts are far too infrequent. You can't even enjoy this as a "so bad it's good" film because it's just too boring to watch from start to finish. You'll find yourself skipping most of it if you see it on DVD, and the director clearly knows nothing about pacing and everything about padding. For example, there's a scene where the owner of a hot dog van thanks the main character for painting it, tells him "The chicks love it!" (a hot dog van!?), then the camera inexplicably follows the van as it starts up, turns and drives away onto the main road. Does it have any relevance to the film or the scene? Nope, it's just part of a mountain of pointless footage which seems to serve no other purpose than to get the movie nearer to its minimum required running time.
The bottom line about Xanadu is this: There's nowhere near enough musical scenes to make it a musical, and there's nowhere near enough character development to make it a drama. It's baffling as to why the music is so lacking because the trailer for the film bills it as nothing but a musical, and I'm sure the vast majority of the audience, even fans of camp rock musicals, felt very short-changed. Was the budget cut half-way through, did they run out of time, was there an argument between the film-makers over what kind of film it should be? And why did they edit the finale into a compilation of clips, effectively removing most of its songs, when the rest of the film was so devoid of numbers? One thing is for sure, Xanadu only really has enough material to be a 40 minute presentation rather than a full length feature, even as a "so bad it's good" film.
Even in the moments where it is a musical it usually fails to hit the mark, with the absolutely dreadful and faked "marriage" of 1940s and 1980s bands which doesn't work at all. The "1940s" costumes are clearly just 1980s visions of what people wore while they were being bombed and starved. The actual 1980s costumes are revolting, especially the cod-piece one. Other scenes seem to be obsessed with rollerskating, even the romantic song is inexplicably performed with both people on skates despite not suiting the mood at all.
The one bright spot is the high-quality animated sequence by Don Bluth which feels like part of some better film which has strayed into Xanadu by mistake, but as it bears almost no relation to the scenes before or after it there's just no reason for it to be here. It's also very short.
Olivia Newton-John does nothing in this film, her character is utterly one-dimensional who mostly just skates around the lead male character's neighbourhood telling him how clever he is. She's a big name to put on the film's posters and she's eye candy, and isn't used in any other way. It's rather depressing that this is the best the producers thought they could do with her when she clearly has the talent to be so much more.
The saddest part about Xanadu is that Gene Kelly clearly had one more great musical left in him, and he utterly goes to waste too. He was physically up to the job (he actually leads a huge rollerskating procession at the end) and his acting outclasses most of the rest of the cast. He seems to be the only one to understand that musicals ought to be fun and charming, and does the best he can with very weak material. This is NOT how his musical career should have ended.
Baise-moi (2000)
The Emperor has no clothes, Baise-moi has no redeeming features
Spoiler Warning: there's no plot to this film as such, but the following review does mention events that happen during the film.
First of all, Baise-moi is a terrible film. I wouldn't recommend anyone waste 77 minutes of their life viewing this because it's lifeless, pointless and (beyond a certain "yuk" factor) ultimately very boring.
Yes, it's true that it's shocking at a certain level to see the sex and violence that appear in this film, but there's no depth to that shock, there's nothing to provoke an emotional response because it's almost impossible to believe the events are linked to reality. We have no sympathy or even empathy with the characters in the film so at the emotional level we feel nothing.
In a way, this is the art-house cinema world's equivalent of those Hollywood blockbusters which rely entirely on special effects and spend no time at all on plot or characterisations. Baise-moi relies entirely on predictably shocking situations and is plot less and character-free. Who are these people being murdered, and who are these people doing the shooting? And why is this happening? None of these questions are answered, so all you're left with are some uninspired and unoriginal visuals.
Baise-moi does for sexuality and violence what Jurassic Park did for the ethics of cloning: absolutely nothing. It's a cheap ride which exploits serious issues without ever taking those issues seriously. Rape is supposedly central to the film, but the emotional side of rape is ignored because the emotions of everyone involved are ignored. We have no idea what motivates anyone or what affects anyone on a personal level , because the script, acting and directing never address any of these areas. Worst of all, arguably the most horrific impact of rape, its mental scars, are completely glossed over. Rape in this film seems to be an entirely physical act, when in reality the motivation is often more to do with power and instilling a submissive mindset in the victim.
You'll find some people claiming the film is about a rape victim taking the fight to the rapists, but that's just a total lie. This film consists of a series of random murders of absolutely anyone without any pattern however twisted: men, women, rapists, non-rapists, pimps, prostitutes, complete strangers, anyone, almost all with no provocation whatsoever.
You also get the feeling that if this film had been made by an American man instead of a French woman, no film festival or TV channel would have touched this with a barge pole. It's a sad state of affairs where the quality of art is pre-judged not by its contents but by the gender and nationality of its creator. Didn't any of them dare to say The Emperor Has No Clothes when they saw the preview tapes?
In fact it's interesting to note that most of the people defending this film seem to display snobbery towards anyone who didn't like it.
The Snobs imply that anyone who criticises Baise-moi must automatically be against all art films in general. They seem to think an attack on Baise-moi is an attack on art itself.
Not so, and that kind of attitude is identical to and just as misguided as George W. Bush's "You're either with us or against us" philosophy.
Anyone who has ever experienced the poetry of William McGonagall or the cinema of Ed Wood knows that an inflated opinion of one's own artistic abilities is no substitute for actual artistic abilities. McGonagall and Wood both had an absolute belief that they were creating high art which people would take seriously, yet they both failed to ever do this even once in their lifetimes. There is poor quality stuff out there as well as good quality, and it is completely okay to say some art is worthless while still being a fan of art in general.
Baise-moi is worthless not because it's controversial, not because it's explicit, not because it's violent. All those things can and regularly do form part of some of history's greatest films. But not in Baise-moi.
Baise-moi is worthless purely because it doesn't make you think in any way whatsoever. The only possible things you might appreciate are all superficial, and there is no depth to reach by scratching the surface. The surface is all there is, and it's a pretty ugly surface too.
Maybe its worst crime is that it makes it slightly harder for other directors, directors with talent, to tackle similar themes. Baise-moi is a gift to every conservative who thinks art-house films are worthless exploitative trash masquerading as art, because, well, that's exactly what Baise-moi is.
I love art films, and I have zero problem with them using any imagery or any themes whatsoever as long as they manage to make me think. This film doesn't do that at all, it just bored me. I don't want to ban it, I just want to warn people that their money and time will be wasted if they try and view this film. You'll get as much intellectual stimulation from watching a Chuck Norris film.
So what went wrong in Baise-moi? I'm guessing the directors (who have never directed anything before or since) thought that simply showing a series of events was enough to make a good film. In fact good films do more than this, they show a interesting characters, or events, or imagery, or sometimes all of these things. There's always something to get hold of in good films, something to analyse or follow in your mind, but there's absolutely nothing here, nothing at all.
There is no entertainment in Baise-moi, no thought, no emotion, just posturing of the worst kind. If cinema has gotten to the point where controversy alone is equated with intelligence and bravery, then there's no hope for intelligence and bravery in film-making any more, stereotypes will have triumphed over talent.