Too Many Movies Tuesdays: A Lot More Than The Menu

This week, McCulloch carved off a slice of Dante's Inferno, Witzke marathoned Up In The Air, Stalker & Snow Angels, leaving Stone to navigate the waters of some Herzog shorts & Exit Wounds

Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic
Directed by the rich tradition of world animation, 2010
Review by Joe McCulloch

I haven’t played the new Dante’s Inferno console game yet, nor do I even own any of the consoles it’s compatible with, but I can only presume it’s completely fucking awesome. Like, Limbo has to be filled with thinly-veiled equivalents of virtuous Japanese gaming icons that hadn’t accepted Christ as savior, right? Then a nice arcade-style sequence shooting and slicing down swarms of unbaptized infants… it practically designs itself! Unfortunately, this is a movie post, so here’s the official tie-in animation dvd, a la 2008’s Dead Space: Downfall, also from game publisher Electronic Arts and animation studio Film Roman.

Except: the Dead Space cartoon was a side-story, while this thing appears to be a straight-up adaptation of the game’s scenario, thus scrubbing any of that nasty ‘doing stuff’ as Dante Alighieri, re-imagined as a muscle-bound Crusader apt to throwing himself screaming at any given obstacle, storms the Gates of Hell after his beloved Beatrice falls out of her dress and is brutally murdered, and then gets soul-napped by groom-to-be Lucifer, all thanks to Our Hero’s miscellaneous wartime atrocities. The literature of the day might not have been known for its steadfast respect for gender equality, no, but at least the Beatrice of Inferno takes it upon herself to send Virgil off to lead Dante unto the path of the righteous, as opposed to dying because her guy did stuff and subsequently needing to be saved after death from scantly-clad onscreen torture and going evil as Satan’s bride, signified by wearing a sexy outfit. So congratulations, team perdition - you’ve actually managed to out-paternalism a 14th century religious allegory. But enough of this ‘classics’ shit - since the task of animating the Epic was split six ways among American, Japanese and South Korean studios and directors (under the supervision of Disney vet Mike Disa, from a script by Brandon Auman), the most appropriate structural comparison is with an American media tie-in comic book series where something went awry with the scheduling so that different artists are handling all six issues. Film Roman is, of course, the nondescript issue #1 artist that nonetheless sets the tone and provides every issue’s cover art to tie the thing up, in that they seem to have performed overall post-production duties, although they also appear to have farmed out their segment’s actual animation -- as opposed to visual designs & storyboards -- to a nondescript trio of Korean studios, resulting in a visual approach alarmingly not unlike that HBO Spawn cartoon from the late ‘90s.

The anime studios thus serve as dedicated, perhaps over-qualified good soldier fill-in artists, apparently willing to subsume their idiosyncrasies for consistency’s sake; fan-favorite house Production I.G. gets hold of the entire climax of the film, practically howling “we got paid for this.” And the director is no less than Yasuomi Umetsu, irrepressible ‘80s animator turned defining ‘90s character designer turned spectacularly irregular director of the action-porno style bombs Kite and Mezzo Forte, and their yet further uneven non-porn spin-offs. If I hadn’t read the credits going in, I’d have had literally no idea Umetsu had directed this; it’s purely anonymous work-for-hire, and I think his first-ever directorial outing for which he didn’t seem to draw anything.

In contrast, Ergo Proxy director Shukou Murase looks to have thrown himself into Manglobe, Inc.’s segment, storyboarding everything solo and personally laying down some of the key animation, mostly to gloss up the preceding Studio Roman section’s look with more detailed character art and clashy texture work and atmosphere atmosphere atmosphere. But while he gets scores some easy points with a chase scene featuring (yes!) a vicious swarm of unbaptized babies, even such good-not-great production effort seems wasted on a Christian rock anthem advocating back-to-basics faith as an apologia for martial abuses of foreign peoples and their objectively wrong fake religions. With a subplot re: Dante’s abusive father, voiced by Mark Hamill.

This leaves three Korean-directed segments -- not to be confused with the three Korean studios that look to have worked on Film Roman’s segment -- which mercifully seem aware of exactly the caliber of project they’re involved with, marshalling all effort toward crazy fluid trashy fight cuts. Indeed, Lee Seung-Gyu and Kim Sang-Jin, both of JM Animation, seem intent on paying homage to the most muscular illustrative stylings animation can handle, with designs evoking Joe Madureira and Bart Sears on top of your sleeping memories of 17-year old anime OVA - they are the hungry supplementary artists, with everything to gain from playing visceral, gifted with a keen sense of play for the opportunity set before them. The hero of this group is Dongwoo Animation’s Jong-Sik Nam, best known for director of “Additional Animation Services” on that one segment of Batman: Gotham Knight where everyone at Madhouse had their named removed. Completely ignoring Dante’s model design and rendering him as a longhaired extra from Æon Flux, the segment culminates in a gross and funny extended fight that pays pointed homage to Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s blissful cartoon bloodbath Ninja Scroll, even pausing for a freeze-frame worthy ‘history of world violence’ segment rendered in a wonderfully handmade leaping marks style. It’s only a few seconds, but let’s never pass over such rays from Heaven down in the pit.

Up In The Air
Directed by someone who would have never made it past directing Las Vegas midseason episodes if it weren't for his daddy (actually well deserved) rep, 2009
Review by Sean Witzke

You get the feeling that Jason Reitman has literally nothing to say as a filmmaker with his movies. That's why Juno was such a Diablo Cody love/hate-fest, because there was no directorial voice. It looked like a tv show director who saw the Royal Tenenbaums and Election and then started thinking above his fucking station (that's one of the things about bad movie directors - even when they're awful they're still movie directors. McG is a waste of life but Charlie's Angels feels more like a legitimate movie than Juno does). But all the choices - the use of montage, the real-fired-people-as-actors thing, the title cards, the casting of great actors in two-second parts, the inoffensive indie-music soundtrack, even Clooney - are Reitman mimicking other directors. The overall tone and message is what? That being alone is bad? That we as a people are isolated? Corporate culture is unforgiving? Young people are hydrocephalic republican monsters? No one needs a fucking movie to tell them that. Clooney is on autopilot here, he's just cashing a paycheck in between him and Soderbergh's production jobs. After Michael Clayton, Clooney taking a job like this is kind of shameful - the whole point was that when that super-charismatic guy gets old, he also gets bitter and lonely and yeah, intimidating. Not here. Danny McBride is pretty good in his one scene, showing Clooney up without trying. Anna Kendrick is such a terrible actress I actually turned the movie off at one point when she started crying. I guess she's in the Twilight movies? I bet she's bad in those too. Her weird, large head-sharp-features-high-voice act screams "toyetic" in that creepy, "this girls gonna be a star" way. Anna Kendrick makes my jaw clench. She ruins an already bad movie. That's almost admirable.

Snow Angels
Directed by David Gordon Green, 2007
Review by Sean Witzke

David Gordon Green was going to be the next Malick when George Washington came out (anointed by the man himself, who produced for him), and now he's doing really brutal, specific comedies with East Bound and Down and Pineapple Express. But in between he made this movie, which is Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale after they have a kid and split up, living in a small town. Kate Beckinsale works in a chinese resturaunt with Amy Sedaris, and fucks around. Sam Rockwell sells carpet remnants, gets completely fucked up, talks about God a lot. It's kind of a kitchen sink small town drama until the kid dies accidentally and then it's a harrowing, Cassavettes-style portrait of these two people going to their terminal point. It's a tearjerker, only not in the good-cry, now-I-feel-better, I-love-you kinda way. More in the jesus-fucking-christ-why-didn't-they-stop-when-they-could way.

Exit Wounds
Never Forget, 2001
Review by Tucker Stone

Here's a collection of the movies that Andrzej Bartkowiak has directed.

• Doom, featuring the Rock & Karl Urban
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-LI
• Romeo Must Die
• Exit Wounds

Here's some of the movies that Andrezj Bartkowiak was the cinematographer on.

• Prince of the City, which is fucking great
• Falling Down
• Speed
• U.S. Marshals, which has the best last line of any 90's action flick
• Species, which features Tom Sizemore, boobs

Here's some of the people that star in Exit Wounds.

• Steven Seagal
• DMX
• Anthony Anderson, who improvs all his lines
• Tom Arnold, who also improvs all his lines
• Isaiah Washington, but he doesn't get to be the bad guy
• Michael Jai White, who made a shitty Mike Tyson
• Bill Fucking Duke, who was in Predator
• Eva Mendes, for a total of two minutes
• Jill Hennessy, who was on Law & Order for a long ass time and dies in this the same way she did on Law & Order
• Bruce McGill, who you probably remember as the "Wipe that smirk off your face" guy from Michael Mann's Insider
• Some guy who was arrested and charged with sexual assault during filming
• One of those gigantic white dudes who always show up in Jet Li movies
• Two career soft-core porn actors (both male) playing Secret Service agents
• Danny McBride's Christian sister-in-law from Eastbound & Down

Here's some of the film's most memorable scenes.

• It opens with a long speech about gun control. Is the movie about gun control? No, it's about corrupt cops stealing heroin so that DMX can pretend to buy it from them, all so that he can then post a bunch of videos of these events on the internet because this might get his brother released from jail.
• In one scene, Steven Seagal is attacked by a gang. After he beats up the entire gang for the enjoyment of Tom Arnold (who he met in anger management class), he handcuffs one of the gang members by the ankle, but then he doesn't use the other cuff. He just puts one cuff on the guy's ankle and drives away. The guy can go anywhere, do anything, he just will have to do it dangling a pair of handcuffs off of his ankle. The other six people are left alone, because they are sleepy.
• When Steven Steagal shows up to check on the evidence locker--which is in an office building, nowhere near the police station--he finds the night janitor tied up on the floor, because that's where the corrupt cops left him. But is the night janitor alone? No, of course not. He brought his entire family to work with him, so most of them are tied up too. (The daughter is hiding in a nearby office.)
• It shouldn't really count, because this is the sort of movie where reality doesn't matter, but all of the handguns in this movie contain anywhere between 10 to 300 bullets, except when it's necessary for Isaiah Washinton's gun to be empty so that he can't shoot DMX in the face. Since Washington had never fired his gun in the first place, that means that he is the sort of police officer who forgets to load his gun before going on duty.
• There's a couple of scenes set in a locker room, scenes that feature shirtless men showing off their cut physiques. Except for Seagal, all of these scenes are played as homoerotically as is possible, with Michael Jai White coming in for extra praise by spinning on the balls of his feet whenever he has to make a turn, flexing his buttocks and cracking his impressive biceps in time with his lines, all of which are delivered in a bizarre syrup-enriched sing-song fashion. Since Seagal can't "act" in the normally understood definition of the word, and as his body had deteriorated to the point of farcical grotesquerie by 2001, he participates in these scenes mostly as Greek chorus. Thankfully, he never takes off his shirt.  
• Actually, Seagal's clothing choices throughout the film are kind of fascinating, as he seems to be the one actor the filmmakers refused to costume. Except for when he's wearing an ill-fitting police uniform, he wears cheap looking clothes, all of which look like they were purchased at an Old Navy sometime in the mid 90's. Dirty fleece tops, "Relaxed Fit" jeans and stretched out rugby shirts.
• Not one, but two of the bad guys in this film are killed by some manner of impalement. By itself, this wouldn't necessarily be a disappointment, but the impalement follows the single greatest action move in the entire film, which is when Michael Jai White jumps straight up into the air into a full split, just so he can avoid getting chopped in half by Steven Seagal. (The two men are having a duel with gigantic steel fabric cutters.) 
• There's also this scene, which has some pretty dicey racial stuff. The best part of the scene is the way the white guy keeps adjusting his tie and making eyes at DMX.

Portrait Werner Herzog
Kinski Included, 1986
Review by Tucker Stone

If gaining an insight into Herzog's process interests you, you're probably going to find a book more rewarding than this half-hour adventure. It's mostly made up of clips, few of which are discussed in detail, and one of which (the segment on Fitzcarraldo) will just make you want to watch Burden of Dreams, which is one of those documentaries they should put in a time capsule so that future alien visitors will know that this planet actually did have some artists with functioning spinal columns. Portrait can't really be called a disappointment--it's too short to be considered a waste of one's time, and the slow-motion footage from the Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner never fails to astonish--but it's placement in the For Obsessive Fans Only column is accurate.

Nosferatu
Directed by Werner Herzog who should know better, 1979
Review by Sean Witzke

Boooooooring.

Stalker
Directed by... Starring... who cares they're all dead anyway. Don't shoot your movie near a chemical plant, kids! 1979
Review by Sean Witzke

It's Tarkovsky shooting outside, so of course it's gorgeous. The first half (and these are legitimate halves with title cards and everything) is about escape from the black and white city out into the lush green world of the Zone, that's the half that got me. It's slow and silent, long takes, real-life destroyed civilization being overtaken by nature, elliptical debate about purpose and religion. The second half, which ten minutes in starts quoting the book of revelation, was less interesting. Maybe because there's more talking. This is like Alphaville, THX-1138, Repo Man, and The Trial, a science fiction film that was made without building any sets; and as a viewer I never had a moment where the scenery drew me out of the story. The slow nature of Tarkovsky's approach draws you in rather than boring you, but the ideas-over-emotions thing he's known for undermines the "what if it doesn't work" payoff. But who cares, look at it.

La Soufrière
Featuring The Ultimate In Guys Who Don't Give A Fuck, 1977
Review by Tucker Stone

At the end of this short, Herzog points out that he isn't really sure whether he had a movie to make. The live volcano he'd come to film didn't explode, you see.

He's joking, obviously.

The tactic Herzog uses with a lot of these short documentaries becomes obvious after you've plowed through a few of them. The beginning of the film is always whatever Herzog thought the film was going to be about--in this case, it was going to be about a small town that had been evacuated due to the impending explosion of a nearby volcano. He and his crew--two other men--sneak around some roadblocks, reveling in their excitement over the absence of police presence: "It was a comfort for us not having the law hanging around". They wander closer and closer to the fatal gases leaking out of the boiling volcano, eventually scurrying away in a bit of panic when the wind changes. It's at this point when Herzog's curiosity takes over, because he discovers three other men who have refused to evacuate, and with that, boom: he's got a movie. 

None of the men are staying in hopes of protecting personal property--they just didn't want to leave, and they don't care if they die or not. Herzog's obsessed with them, even though he and his crew really need to get the hell out of town. His conversations with the men--one of whom seems to be impatient with the volcano, one of whom slowly seems to be grasping he probably should have followed his children out of town, and the other who seems to have been born with no feelings whatsoever--end up forming the crux of the entire film. None of the men want to die, they aren't suicidal, they just absolutely, resolutely, do not care what happens to them. Although it's not explicitly depicted on film, it seems clear that Herzog offers the men a space in his car, a seat on the helicopter he will eventually use to shoot what he believes will be the final photographs of the ghost town that the thousands of evacuees have left behind. He never tells you if they took him up on it. Instead, he leaves you with their words ringing in your ear--it's God's will, they say. No choices are necessary.

-Joe McCulloch, Sean Witzke, Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Mario M.]

I love that a DMX song plays diegetically in movie starring DMX.

[Chris Jones]

"Boooooooring."

Oh my God, THANK YOU.

Also, don't play Dante's Inferno. It's literally exactly the same as God of War but just worse in every single way.

[John Pontoon]

Prince of the City is a real prince of a movie! Treat Williams' performance is a real Treat! God, how I wish I was Gene Shallit.

Best part: When Jerry Orbach knees the IAD guy from Top Gun in the balls. Where? IN THE CORNER!

[seth hurley]

did anybody see the JUMBLE this morning?

it spells Armond White any way you solve it!

[Tim O'Neil]

Nosferatu is not boring!

But then, I sat through Fata Morgana without falling asleep, so I believe I have an inhumanly high tolerance for Herzog.

[sean witzke]

Maybe it was because it was so close to the original and I expected something more radical from him. And all the cool Kinski shit was one-upped/ripped-off by Oldman so that didn't help.

[jeffk]

Gah, Up in the Air. What an awful, pointless movie. Did you happen to watch the deleted scene where Clooney goes through an entire day in an astronaut suit and floats up the side of a building? That was kind of genius. It's like Reitman was half awake one day and he saw a few seconds of the Big Lebowski dream sequence and said "Hey, when I make a dull shitty movie out of the first ten minutes of Fight Club, I should put this in too!"

[mateo]

re: evac movies

I stayed in new orleans through katrina because i just didn't want to deal with the traffic. when i got 14 feet of water, i swam to a neighboring parish. No Herzog, but the BBC wanted me on camera. told them no way, I don't believe in strangers or acquaintances knowing what i am up to.