"Swamp
Thing" (1982) This is not the
first time I have viewed Swamp Thing, but the
newly-released DVD marks the first time I have
actually been able to see it. Written and
directed by Wes Craven, Swamp Thing is based on a
DC Comic book by the same name. Dr. Alec Holland
is hidden away in the swamps of South Carolina
working on recombinant DNA and a way to breed
plants with a survival instinct. The bad guys
attack when he has finally been successful, and
he is accidentally doused with his own formula.
Thus Swamp Thing is born. He has a thing for
government agent Adrianne Barbeau, and devotes
his time to protecting her from the bad guys, who
are still after the formula.
Watching this film when you can actually see
it, rather then seeing nothing but hazy shadows
and swamp gas makes all of the difference in the
world. It is beautifully shot, and has a good
enough plot, and good acting. In other words,
what I had thought of as a badly filmed piece of
schlock with the infamous Barbeau exposure
missing forever turned out to be a nicely done
bit of horror/suspense. Barbeau's nude bathing
scene is long and decently lit, and there is some
nudity from anonymous strippers that I had never
even heard of before this DVD version. This marks
the fourth recent release of an old B movie with
great image quality (see Toxic Avenger, The
Erotic Adventures of Zorro and Bluebeard). I
wonder what they have learned that seems to
escape the major studios with their recent
releases.
Thumbnails
Adrienne Barbeau (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10)
Stripper (1,
2,
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"Breaking
the Waves" (1996) What does a
movie have to have in order to be a great movie?
Are there minimum requirements? For example, how
important is technical achievement? If we filmed
Branagh's Henry V and left the lenscap on, would
it still be a good movie? What if we had the
world's greatest cast in the world's greatest
play and simply filmed it on stage from the front
row with a hidden camera? Would that be a good
movie?
I don't know the answers to these questions,
but they all pertain to this movie. It's a
powerful story, and it's brilliantly acted. But
it couldn't be worse technically. It's filmed
entirely with a hand-held camera and that camera
was held by an unsteady hand which often moved
too fast from face to face. The lighting is poor
and inconsistent. (For example, people's clothes
seem to change in the middle of a scene, because
the uncontrolled lighting changes the colors from
one set-up to the next.) The cuts are done by
simply stopping one scene and abruptly starting
another, the same way that scenes would change if
you edited a movie entirely in the camera. Some
scenes are so bereft of color that they seem to
be in B&W, or rather B&G (black and light
green). In some close-ups, Emily Watson's hair is
the same color as her eyes. (I think they are
supposed to be auburn and blue, respectively).
There are so many squinty-eyed facial close-ups
that I half expected to see Lee van Cleef and Eli
Wallach getting ready to draw. Half of the camera
set-ups are out of focus at one time or another.
The movie is interrupted with chapter headings,
which are syrupy color-saturated scenes with a
top 40 rock hit playing in the background, and
are completely inconsistent with the tone of the
rest of the movie.
Why go on? You get the point. Technically, it
might be the worst movie ever released. Plan Nine
From Outer Space looks like Juraissic Park next
to this thing. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, made
75 years earlier, is much better technically. And
I'm not joking. Reviewers glossed over this
point. People euphemistically called it
"experimental" or "cinema
verite", but the simple truth is that the
emperor has no clothes. You could do better in
your basement with a home camcorder and your
drunken college buds. But could you make a better
movie? Absolutely not. Not that many people have
ever made a better movie.
Which brings us back to the original
questions. Rating technical achievement on a
scale of 1 to 100, Juraissic Park is 90+, and
Breaking the Waves is probably less than 1. Does
that mean Juraissic Park is ipso facto a
better movie? I don't think so. The technical
component is, as I see it, only a means to an
end. The real evaluation point of the film medium
is its ability to involve us in the story and
move us in some way - to laughter, or tears, or
enlightenment, or fright. This movie succeeds for
many people, so the technique didn't get in the
way of a lot of award nominations.
Having said that, let me add that it's too
long and slow for me, and I could have done
without the last 15 seconds, which are cornier
than a drive through Iowa. And I don't think the
odd and pretentiously declasse pseudo-documentary
technique makes it better. Quite the opposite.
But the film still touched many people very
deeply, and is a deeply spiritual movie in its
own way. (Note: many religous people objected to
the content, and many feminists objected to the
exploitation of a simple, submissive woman.)
Is Emily Watson the greatest actress in the
world? I don't know. I've seen her in other
movies and she's been good but never this good.
This is one of the greatest performances I've
ever seen, maybe the best ever by a woman.
Perhaps she will never again equal what she did
here. Maybe she was just born to do this, Brando
playing Stanley Kowalski. But whether the woman
was flying at her natural level or just soaring
on a once in a lifetime gust of wind, she did a
helluva job in a role that required her to do a
great range of emotions and many
pseudo-monologues. In prayer, for example, she
spoke both her own voice and God's imagined
responses. And she had to do all this through the
voice of an off-kilter woman with an outrageous
Northern accent.
The plot: Watson's character is a member of a
reclusive and xenophobic community. She is
perhaps a bit daft, or perhaps a bit slow, or
perhaps just a simple person who wants to do what
she thinks is right. Her community thinks she is
a few bricks shy of a load. She has to plead with
the local church elders to allow her to marry an
outsider. When she does marry her strapping oil
rig worker, this virgin finds absolute and
immediate physical and spiritual delight with her
husband. But their happiness is shattered when
Jan is injured in an industrial accident, and may
never walk again. For reasons not explained to
us, the bedridden Jan decides that his wife needs
to sleep with other men and tell him about it.
Her submissiveness to his will sets up further
tragedy.
A simple summary doesn't really give you a
feel for it. You have to feel the motivations
through the Watson character, and you have to
feel with her that she is always trying to do the
right thing, out of love. She somehow pulls that
off and allows you inside her completely,
becoming achingly vulnerable in every way.
Astounding.
Emily Watson (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
"Breakfast
of Champions" (1999)
A screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's
eponymous novel. It seems to me that Vonnegut is
nearly impossible to adapt to film. His
bittersweet novels are deeply cynical without
nihilism, matter-of-fact about absurdity, and
scathing without condemnation. The word
"wry" was probably created just for
Vonnegut. He also uses a lot of verbal tricks to
carry his tone consistently. So it goes.
How to get this feel in a movie? I don't think
it has been done yet. Slaughterhouse Five and
Mother Night were mediocre movies, and Slapstick
was a complete fuck-up starring Jerry Lewis,
Marty Feldman, and Pat Morita. The latest
attempt, Breakfast of Champions, will not please
Vonnegut fans, who will be disappointed by the
screen realization of such Vonnegut staples as
Kilgore Trout. Neither will this weird film
motivate many people to read Vonnegut, who is
actually not all that weird, but rather just
seems to know more than we humans do. So it goes.
But if you just take it the film on its own,
you may see some positives. The photography is
very clear, colorful, and imaginative. That is
the strongest point. Some moments are funny.
Kinda. In a try-too-hard kinda way. But overall
it is arty, disjointed and eccentric, and won't
please many of you. I'm a big Vonnegut fan, and I
generally like Bruce Willis, but I didn't much
care for this flick, and hit the FF a lot. So it
goes.
IMDb viewers rate it a weak 4.4 out of 10,
while only 19% of reviewers gave it a positive
spin, according to Rotten Tomatoes.Here's
the Rotten Tomatoes summary
The film also bombed at the box office. It
took in $175,000 in a limited run (14 weeks, but
very few screens), and probably disappointed the
investors who covered the $12 million budget.
Here's Glenne
Headly in her underwear. There is no nudity
in the film. So it goes.
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