My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Bill Pullman should just kill himself for making Zero Effect. That’s really all I have to say right now.

I mentioned in another post how The Strangers is the epitome of ridiculous torture porn. I don’t like the genre, I find empty violence in fiction somewhere between boring and disgusting. Everything Rob Zombie does is both. People say the Saw series is torture porn, but for me, the series has at least tried to say something, which is why I keep going back.

At any rate, after talking about The Strangers someone suggested that I see Funny Games, as it’s been described as complete torture porn. However, after watching it twice, I have to say that such descriptions are completely wrong.

Starring Naomi Watts (Ann) and Tim Roth (George), Funny Games is a well-written and acted film that examines the nature of evil in both fiction and reality. It revolves around a couple and their young son visiting their gorgeous lake-side vacation home. It’s a gated community, everyone with a dock and a boat, everything safe and beautiful. Safe and beautiful, until it’s not.

Enter Peter and Paul, two perfectly polite young men, cleanly dressed in white golf shirts. Oddly, they’re also white-gloved. They visit to borrow eggs, they stay to play a game. The game is simple, after eight hours, they bet that they’ll be alive and the family of three will be dead.

Peter and Paul are absolutely chilling. They’re all “please” and “thank you.” Peter shatters George’s leg with a golf club, after which he offers that George could call an ambulance. Unfortunately, Paul dropped the family’s cellphone in the kitchen sink and the house doesn’t have a land-line. As Paul helps George to rest on the sofa, he kindly inquires as to why the family doesn’t keep a land-line. Peter offers that they’re really white-trash drug addicts, then he explains that they’re really just jaded rich kids who simply like hurting people. He asks George what sort of story he’d like to hear to help him make sense of their actions.

Of course, there is no real answer, sometimes evil can’t be logically explained. This is true in both reality and fiction. Funny Games deftly illustrates that we often ask questions that have no answers. It examines how we look to fiction to explain evil that simply has no explanation. It does these things mainly in dialogue, as most of the violence actually takes place off-camera.

Funny Games isn’t torture porn. It’s really a metaphor for the futility of trying to understand why bad things happen, a metaphor for the futility against death. There will come a point when we are going to die. There won’t be a way out of it, no Deus Ex Machina will save us. We’ll die and it probably won’t make sense, or resemble anything like a film script. That’s the essence of Funny Games, that’s why it’s brilliant.

My being empty aside, Saw V was ridiculously fun to watch.

Maybe my expectations were, but I found it so much better than Saw IV in every possible way. I’m afraid to write too much, Saw kind of hinges on twists, but one scene in particular proved that we all need a trache. Unlike Saw IV, I felt like the violence in Saw V had purpose, which is really all I ask.

Define senseless Torture Porn: The Strangers.

I think the film has ten minutes of boring dialogue, a few mildly “scary” moments and absolutely nothing else. Oh, wait, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman get totally fucked up for no apparent reason. So, there’s that, which isn’t really my scene, but if you dig it, great.

Today I finished reading The Labyrinth by Catherynne M. Valente. I’ve had the book for quite some time, but focus hasn’t been my friend of late. However, once I actually started reading, I couldn’t stop. I went cover-to-cover in two days.

The Labyrinth is very difficult to describe in a little review. It’s a dark and twisted fairy-tale. It’s a bizarre love story of sorts. It’s strange and beautiful. Ultimately, it’s a surreal journey into madness and a fascinating look into the futility of human existence. Valente’s prose are absolutely gorgeous, she perfectly captures the essence of insanity as her heroine walks endlessly through The Labyrinth, not knowing if escape is possible and desperately afraid to hope for such.

It’s a brilliant novel, one of the best I’ve read in awhile.

Tonight I saw Quarantine, a film of zombies and claustrophobia. Now, anyone who hated the way Cloverfield was filmed should quit reading. However, those who enjoy the first-person shaky camera should stay right here.

Quarantine revolves around an L.A. tv reporter and her camera-man as they’re shooting an evening with the L.A. fire-department. The entire film takes place through the lens of said camera. It all begins as a typical and rather dull evening at the firehouse, until a call comes in, at which point things get interesting. It’s supposed to be a routine call, a possible medical emergency at an apartment building, an old woman screaming for no apparent reason. When our reporter and fire-crew arrive on scene, they find the woman disoriented, moaning and bleeding from the mouth. They, of course, try to help her, but she’s not so cooperative. Rather than take a little ride to the hospital, she bites out the throat of the nearest available fireman. From here, things go astonishingly bad, as teams of government agents seal off the entire building without explanation. No one in, no one out.

I haven’t enjoyed a horror movie in a very long time, until Quarantine. It doesn’t tell a brilliant story with rich characters, but that doesn’t matter. The story is solid enough, the characters real enough. Quarantine is really a film of tone, atmosphere, and stylish violence, a film one enjoys on a visceral level. I’m a fan of the first-person shaky camera, to me it adds a certain level of intimacy and intensity. Watching, one can’t help but feel trapped in that building, terrified with its tenants.

Quarantine is such an intimately intense and well-paced zombie movie, I couldn’t have been more pleased with the experience.

So, last night some friends and I went to a late night double-feature, Appaloosa and The Duchess.

While it was definitely nice to see Jeremy Irons in something other than a spectacularly bad fantasy movie, it was unfortunate to see him in an astonishingly dull Western. A Western needs either brilliant dialogue, or amazing violence. Appaloosa had neither. The plot was boring. The characters were uninteresting. Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen gave absolutely flat performances. I don’t feel like it’s worth writing more. Just don’t see it.

The Duchess, however, was stunning. It was visually gorgeous, brilliantly acted and emotionally powerful. An excellent period film.

I know, I’m getting a little lazy about my reviews. I’ll step things up next time.

Last night I went to see Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and honestly, it was a fun movie. Michael Cera pretty much plays the same character as in Juno, but he plays it so well. Overall, I think I liked it better than Juno, the dialogue felt more real. Juno, while good, often seemed over-written. Nobody is that witty, that often. I mean, who the fuck says, “honest to blog,” in conversation?

So, I’ve been really down for a good chunk of time, and it’s very easy to get lost in all that darkness. It happens though, you either deal with it in your way or you don’t. I’ve been doing a lot thinking about life and what I want out of it. I keep hearing, “life is in God’s hands,” and “everything happens for a reason,” and “you just have to leave things to fate,” and “if something is meant to be, it will be.” I thought a lot about those things, and I realized something really important. I don’t buy any of it.

God’s not going to help or hurt me, God’s just watching. God’s not going to make my life work, that is up to me. People make choices and our choices have consequences that create other choices and outcomes. Fate, God, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t rule us. Leaving everything to someone or something else is just a form of inaction. When a person gives up their will to make choices, they’re just allowing other people’s choices to shape their life. A person’s own will is so powerful. Strong-willed people change the world. Choices and actions shape my life, not God or fate. I’m not leaving my life to anyone or anything, it’s all up to my choices and strength of will. Fuck it, I might fail at everything I want, but it won’t be because God or fate made it so. If my will is stronger than those that oppose me, I’ll be fine. I don’t think we should leave anything to God, because I think God leaves everything to us.

Four Rooms sucked when I was 17 and as I’ve just discovered, it totally sucks now. I don’t know what that means, exactly. Is it really bad? Have I not grown up enough, or at all? I don’t rightly know.