Ten Statements About...CEMETERY MAN a.k.a. DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (1994)

Love means never having to say 'you've got bits of
my cemetery stuck in you.'

“I'm the watchman of the Buffalora Cemetery. I don't know how the epidemic started. All I know is that some people, on the seventh night after their death, come back to life. I call them Returners, but frankly I can't understand why they're so anxious to return. The only way to get rid of them once and for all is to split their heads open. A spade'll do it, but a dum-dum bullet is best. Is this the beginning of an invasion? Does it happen in all cemeteries? Or is Buffalora just an exception? Who knows? And in the end, who cares? I'm just doing my job."

1) This film is built firmly on the back of Rupert Everett, who was born to play Francesco Dellamorte.  All the laughlines, the tone and the exposition is carried by Everett, and his presence is what moves the film forward even as it becomes--consciously or not--more disjointed narratively.  And speaking of the film’s disjointed narrative--

2) A strong argument (one I agree with) can be made that everything supernatural happens in Francesco’s head.  All the zombies, the strangeness, the angel of death, even the metafictional ending are not acknowledged by any of the other characters save Gnaghi, and given how no one understands Gnaghi save for Francesco, there’s a strong chance that he’s reading meaning into the man-child’s grunts.  This could very well be a film about a mentally ill man and not a weird cemetery where the dead rise after a week.

3) I love how Michele Soavi is unafraid to indulge in his humorous side--and not only in the obvious ways (like how the Mayor tries to fire Francesco even after dying).  My favorite bit is how the photo of The Widow’s statements and, ultimately, her lovemaking with Francesco.   It’s an indication from Soavi that this film should not be taken on its face value.

And the scary thing?  This is the closest thing we have to
a normal relationship in this movie.

4) I love Francois Hadji-Lazaro’s performance as Gnaghi.  A mime by profession, Hadji-Lazaro has to use his physicality to carry his performance, and he does so magnificently.  And while he is used primarily as comic relief, he is able to give Gnaghi a level of pathos and joy at time that is infectious.

5) Anna Falchi....hmmmm.  I appreciate that she is capable of giving us three different characters (she’s referred to simply as ‘she’ in the credits,’ but I refer to the three as The Widow, The Secretary and The Student), but more often than not she isn’t very good, and I keep being distracted by the strangely impossible shape of her body.  She’s at her best as The Widow in the first act, playing off Everett extremely well and managing to get off a few darkly funny lines...plus she has the greatest reaction to the weirdest pick-up line in the world.

6) What does it say about this film that the sweetest and healthiest relationship is between Gnaghi and the decapitated undead head of the mayor’s daughter?  Just saying.

He runs a cemetery, she's turned on by old bones...it's a
match made in...well, somewhere.

7) The thing that’s kinda weird about the Buffalora Cemetery that serves as this film’s backdrop is that it seems to go on forever.  It appears far bigger than Buffalora itself is, which seems to be little more than a town square and some side streets.  Granted, this discrepancy allows Soavi to create some beautiful shots, especially the brief tracking shot pulling away from Francesco’s home so we can see the parade of undead making their way to him as the flash from his frequent gunshots illuminate the night.

8) Having seen all of Soavi’s films, I’m willing to bet that the frequent parallels that he evokes throughout the film--the young girl evoking her lover, whose body is now fused with the motorcycle he loved mirrors The Widow emerging from her grave fused with bits of the grounds of the cemetery Francesco tends to; the ignus fatu that surround Francesco and The Widow when they first make love reflect the fate of The Student after Francesco realizes her true nature--are intentional and meant to be noticed, just as the way his composition of Francesco and The Widow’s first kiss evokes Magritte’s ‘The Lovers.’

All this and..BREASTS!

9) I really like Anton Alexander’s Franco, who truly does provide the only touchpoint Francesco has to the real world...although I continue to be puzzled by how he’s handled in the narrative itself.  He takes this strange turn in the third act that doesn’t quite jibe with his portrayal in the first two acts.  Even if we accept that the actions happen in Francesco’s head, there’s a definite disconnect in Fraco’s narrative arc.

10) I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that I would ever go to a doctor’s office like the one of Clive Riche’s Doctor Verseci.  Even if we take into account my ‘this happens in Francesco’s mind’ theory, that place is a dirty, grotesque horror show of a place.

Overall...a strange and peculiar film that is unlike any other zombie film, this is recommended viewing not only for Rupert Everett’s amazing performance but for the sheer oddness of the narrative and the beauty of the compositions.  One of my favorite, if not my favorite, zombie films.

Ten Statements About....BLACK SWAN (2010)

Yes..I'm using this picture to get you to read this review...

1) Gee....give it to Darren Aronofsky to take something beautiful, elegant and eloquent and turn it into something dark, twisted and disturbing.

2) My best friend Derrick Ferguson has been quite outspoken about how cold and robotic he finds Natalie Portman. But here, Portman's admittedly chilly looks and presence works for her...in fact, I'd posit that the film needs someone with that lack of surface work for it to work at all.

3) Even though there are some digital effects utilized to reflect the changes that are being wrought by Portman's Nina, the best effect in the whole movie is her ragged breathing, which acts as a sort of Greek Chorus the deeper the character spirals into a darker place.

4) Aronofsky effectively demonstrates the punishment a ballerina puts herself through in the early part...which gives the later moments of body-horror-esque transformation an air of naturalness.

5) The thing that makes casting Mila Kunis as Lily so genius is that at certain angles she does look very, very similar to Portman, but a much warmer version of her...and it makes the moment where Aronofsky seems to want us to question whether Lily is real or an aspect of Portman's splintery personality truly effective. The same goes for the casting of Barbara Hershey as Nina's mom.

"...wouldn't you like to find out how someone as gross as I
got to bag Monica Belluci?"

6) Boy, does Victor Cassel look like a thorough freak, no matter how many times Kunis purrs about Portman being 'hot for teacher'...but then, he goes home every night to fuck Monica Bellucci, so he's got something going for him.

7) There's something truly disturbing about watching Winona Ryder, whose Beth can be seen as a reflection of her own crazy behavior in the past, screeching at Portman--and later stabbing herself in the cheek repeatedly with a letter opener.

8) I have to wonder if Aronofsky had seen Roman Polanski's Repulsion and The Tenant before writing this script, as there are some faint echoes in the story, and in Portman's performance.

9) The film seems to be shot on a grainier film stock. Hell; I swore some scenes were shot in 16mm. It gives the movie a sombre, groggy feel that emphasizes the weirdness when things go out of control.

I didn't know Gene Simmons was playing the Met...no, wait...

10) It does help greatly that both Portman and Kunis have a dance background, and that they're friends in real life. It makes their interaction, both antagonistic and otherwise, ring true, and the fact that they did many of their own dance scenes add to creating a world that feels right.

In short...this was a really freaky film, one that actually kept me speculating until the end about the nature of the people interacting with Portman. A recommended film for someone interested in psychological horror that doesn't descend into knifeplay.

I saw this at the AMC Kips Bay as a break from finalizing my Christmas shopping--including gift cards for my mom and a pair of navy New Balances for myself. The trailers were mainly of the higher-end stuff, and featured some more creative handling of things. I admit to being somewhat intrigued by Water for Elephants, if only because I can't imagine Robert Pattison and Christoph Waltz existing in the same universe, let alone in the same circus, and The Tree of Life because it's the latest Terrance Malick. Oh, and they led off with another Sucker Punch trailer, which continues to get my blood pumping with its bizarre otaku wet dream feel.

Ten Statements About....INCEPTION (2010)

And this behavior is business as usual in this film

1) Christopher Nolan's entire catalog is about perception--even the Batman films. And this one doesn't break that streak.

2) Some people may be dissatisfied that there isn't a tremendous about of the wacky 'bending space' sort of special effects the film's trailer was full of. But that's because the bending space stuff is not the focus of the film. At its core, it's a caper film that literally never leaves a single room...which oddly makes it part of that trend this year for caper films that also includes The Losers, The A-Team, and The Expendables. Hell, given the situation diCaprio's Cobb is in at the beginning of the film, this movie is a lot closer to those three than you would think.

3) Ellen Page (le sigh)'s Ariadne turns out to be the single most important character in the film--and her name makes it very clear. Just as the mythological Ariadne guided Theseus through a labyrinth, so does this Ariadne serve to guide DiCaprio's Cobb through his character arc.

Know the rules if you want to stay awake...

4) Nolan understands a simple precept far too many directors do not--namely, lay out the ground rules early on for your entropic elements, and stick to them. He spends so much time laying down the rules for the Extraction Method in the first act that when new paramutations are introduced, we can extrapolate the reasons why these things happen very easily.

5) Also, Nolan is able to make his action sequences work without all that caffiene-cam nonsense--even when dealing with actions that occur on several different planes of consciousness (each plane distinctive precisely so we, the viewer, never lose sight of where they are), we comprehend exactly what happens.

6) Nolan confines the bulk of the big special effects sequences to the first act, where Cobb introduces and trains Ariadne in the art of being an 'Architect.' And it's the kind of imagery CGI should be used for--the sort of weird 'what am I seeing?' sort of mind fuck that makes Dark City one of my favorite films. Plus, by hitting us full on with a series of big shouty effects, it makes us much more accepting of later, smaller effects when the caper is actually underway.

 7) The team--because what would a caper film be without a team to pull it off--is well-cast, and does create a certain level of chemistry between them. The real break-out is Tom Hardy's Eames, who has a very subtle sense of humor and whose brogue definitely acts as an aural contrast to the others.

8) I absolutely adore the way the film has absolute mastery of its interior logic--to the point where, when Cobb returns to a place he tells Ariadne he spent time in and abandoned many years ago, it's suffering from disuse and entropy.

9) I like how every level of the setting in which the bulk of this plot occurs gives the person on it a different puzzle to solve. While Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's Arthur is the most compelling, all of the controllers of the levels have something to work out.

10) And best of all--Nolan doesn't feel the need to wrap everything up in a nice little bow. The ending is consciously ambivalent, inviting you to decide whether Cobb was successful or not in his own quest.

In short...I love a movie like this that assumes we're smart, we're willing to follow the story through several literal and metaphorical levels and that we'd be willing to do some of the work ourselves. This is, I suspect, one of those films that will give up new treasures with every viewing.

The trailers were an odd sorting, including The Last Exorcism (Eli Roth wants in on all that Paranormal Activity money, and shows once again that he and subtlety has never met), The Social Network(I like the slightly unconventional approach to the trailer, although I wonder if its montage of people clicking on stuff to a female cover of Radiohead's "Creep" is just covering up that it's got nothing good to show me), the hideous looking Due Date, and the absolutely dire-looking Dinner For Schmucks. But the real question for me is what will I end up seeing first on August 13th--The Expendables or Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World? Which part of me do I feed--the testosterone-laden action fan or the hipster doofus who loves candy-colored storytelling?