Ten Statements About....AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)

You know, when we use the phrase 'a hole in the head'...we
don't mean it literally, Christian.

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."

1) This is a strange film for a number of reason, not the least of which is how this is a period piece that....well, doesn’t feel very period-y.  There’s a decided artificiality to the 80‘s details in the film, and I wonder if it would have worked better if the whole Reagan-era wankery was dropped.

2) This is the film where I first saw Christian Bale, and it’s a magnificent introduction.  Of course, the magnificence comes from how Bale is playing two different characters--the real life Patrick, and the dream life Patrick--and we don’t know which one is the one we’re following until the very end.  Bale is able to blend these two characters so well that we don’t realize there are two personas for a very long time.

Plus, he runs around naked with a running chainsaw, which is a braver act to me than any stunt he may have done during the Batman trilogy.

3) Boy, are the two women Patrick has a romantic relationship with--Reese Witherspoon’s Evelyn and Samantha Mathis’ Courtney--cardboard in the extreme.  Okay, we’re supposed to see Evelyn as empty and vapid, especially since director Mary Harron seems to rely on her for some of the more overt comic relief of the film (which is curious given this is supposed to be a satire)...but Mathis’ Courtney is equally without heft, which is odd; something terrible happens to her, and I get the impression we’re supposed to feel something for her, but there’s nothing in her time on screen that gives the necessary emotional heft for that to happen.  To be fair, I can’t tell if that’s Mathis’ choices as an actress, or the script by Harron and Guinevere Turner underwrites her character so much there’s nothing for her to bring to life.

THE EIGHTIES!!!!

4) On the other hand, Chloe Sevigny’s Jean is the one female character who fully comes to life...which makes sense, as she is the one who uncovers the dual nature of Bateman.  Jean is a bit underwritten--a lot of what Easton Ellis did to flesh her out in the novel in the third act of the book has been excised--but Sevigny is able to make Jean live, which makes it logical that she’s the only potential victim in Bateman’s world that he restrains himself from killing.  And it’s Sevigny who gives her final scene, where she discovers what Bateman is really about, a real weight without saying a word.

5) I’m not quite sure how I feel about the way Harron treats the frequent discourses on popular music from Bateman in the film.  Unlike with High Fidelity, which made the pop culture stuffage asides to the audience, this film has Bateman go into these discourses with friends, and they come off as odd and pretentious.  It’s made even more ridiculous by the way Harron uses one of Bateman’s monologues as a signifier that he’s switching into murderous mode.  Even taking into account that this film is supposed to be satire, it comes off as clunky and weird.  And speaking of satire...

6) The problem with this film being satire is that’s a satire of something that, by 2000, had become passe’.  There’s a weird feeling of ‘and...so?’ to all the japes about hollow consumerism and yuppie culture and how hollow the lives of Bateman and his friends are.  Of course, I do wonder how much of my ennui with the satire angle comes from the patomine-y approach Harron takes to the 80‘s setting as a whole.

Yep...this threesome is not gonna end well...

7) Considering how grotesquely gory the book was (and yes, I read it when it was first published), I’m surprised how restrained Harron is in depicting the violence.  Not that I wanted to see Christian Bale torturing a woman’s asshole with a habitrail and a rat, mind you, but most of the bloody stuff happens off screen, with only aftermath seen in really brief shots.  There’s so little actual murderousness that it made me wonder if the only murder we see in most of its glory is one that is separate from the other killings in the film.

8) One of the reasons why Bale--and by extension Harron--is allowed to play the ‘who’s the Real Patrick’ game for as long as they do is because of Willem DaFoe’s Detective Kimball.  DaFoe easily slides into the world of Bateman’s delusion, and brings a certain gravitas to his brief scenes that it reinforces one interpretation of the events depicted within the film.

9) I appreciate the fact that Harron interprets the book the same way I did, but chooses to make this interpretation obverse at the very end.  Oddly enough, this move serves to confirm something Bateman says in one of the monologues he has at the very beginning of the film--he has become invisible to the world around him.

10) I’ll admit it--I had a hard time telling Bateman’s investment banker friends apart...but I think that’s part of the point Harron is trying to make, and one of the reasons that final denouement works.

Overall...yeah, it hasn’t aged well and it’s deeply flawed--but it’s still one hundred percent a worthwhile film due to Christian Bale’s magnificent performance.

(Of course, the weird thing is that I’m now deeply curious about the ill-advised DTV sequel American Psycho II: All-American Girl, which features Mila Kunis and totally invalidates everything Harron carefully built up to....)

Ten Statements About....THE BIG WHITE (2005)

Yep...Holly Hunter bound with electrical tape.  It's a
laugh riot...no, wait, No It Isn't!

"Tastes like a rectal polyp."
"How would she know?"

1) This film is to Fargo and A Simple Plan what Killing Zoe and Romeo Is Bleeding is to Reservoir Dogs. Namely, it's a film where director Mark Mylod and writer Collin Frieson so wanted to be The Coen Brothers and/or Sam Raimi that they took a giant broad jump over the line that separates hommage from slavish imitation....and ended up with a horrid mess.

2) Of course, the film maybe could have been saved if the people involved were actually invested in giving actual performances. With one, maybe two exceptions, this cast--and it's a very strong cast--is more concerned with mugging and broadness and quirkiness rather than making us believe in them as actual characters. This results in us never connecting with the narrative and just staring at this endless freakshow.

3) You know how badly constructed Freison's script is? It's so bad that certain integral character points are totally obscured. I did not get that Holly Hunter's Margaret was suffering from what she claimed was Tourette's until it's mentioned forty-five minutes in. I didn't realize that the two aspiring hit men played by Tim Blake Nelson and W. Earl Brown were supposed to be gay until almost the end of the film. These aspects of the characters are supposed to be the source of major laughs, but those laugh lines fall flat because they're not made clear enough. This movie is so fragmented and sloppily written that it actively sabotages itself.

4) The only actor who seems really invested in making this movie work is Robin Williams' Paul. Williams actually endeavors to make this mess of Coen-isms, quirks and badly constructed narrative points. Willams does his best to give Paul's desperation and sadness a tangible quality, making the action he takes thoroughly understandable. It's a pity no one else takes Williams' approach to this material.

It's Alison Lohman rocking a ski hat and looking cute.
Your arguments are no longer valid.

5) Alison Lohman has a thankless, thankless role as Giovanni Ribisi's girlfriend. Her only job in this film is to look cute, whine about relationships and give her boyfriend a key plot development in a coincidental way. She is wasted in this movie, the biggest sore spot in an entire landscape of soreness.

That being said, I'd love to see in her just that lil' ski hat she wears for most of the film. And nothing else.

6) What happened to Giovanni Ribisi? I know he's a great actor. I've seen him give great performances. Why is he, as the insurance investigator Tim, doing this lame imitation of Matthew Broderick? I can never take him seriously, nor sympathize with him, because he's such an relentless pratt.

That masked man should have beat up the writer and not
Giovanni Ribisi

7) And then there's Holly Hunter....oh, GOD, Holly Hunter. If most everyone in the film can't be bothered to invest themselves in the film, Hunter's Margaret seems to have invested herself in another film entirely. It's almost as if she took her role as an excuse to follow up on any impulse she had, resulting in this flopping, ranting, ludicrous performance where she just behaves in ways I suspect were meant to be cute, but are just repellant.

8) You know, this film is so amazingly sloppy that we're led to believe the movie proper will explain the opening tableau of Hunter skipping down the road in pajamas in a snowstorm, the events of the third act lead you to believe that promise will be paid off on--and then you realize that that first scene was never intended to be a teaser at all.

9) Is there a reason for this film to be set in Alaska (played by Winnipeg) other than to fool us that it's an American production? Didn't think so.

10) I suppose I should think of something else positive to say about this mess....well, it does make some good use of music by The Eels, including making one of my favorite songs of theirs, 'Last Stop This Town' the movie's de facto theme song.

Overall...sometimes there's a really good reason why a film's theatrical release is cancelled and its DVD release is posponed. Sometines, it's just really, really bad, and no singular performance can save it.