crimes of the future

One night, David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future ended up infecting my dreams. The next day, the dream was a muddle, but the remnants of its atmosphere and nightmarish corporeal images remained. Cronenberg's film delves into many intriguing, smart ideas: humans evolving to a plane of painlessness, needing new forms of pleasure (one doesn't even know how to do "the old sex" anymore), and also adapting to the plastic environment around them (doesn't it feel like, in some respects, we are all headed there?). One usually thinks of Cronenberg movies with a lot of flair and panache, which this one has, but it is also interestingly more like a play: very talky and mostly set in small spaces. His actors, too, are blocked in bizarre ways--why is this one standing where they are standing? Or awkwardly hunched over against the wall? It's as if the very sense of natural human positioning is off-kilter. In these environs, the premise of a performance artist couple--Caprice (Léa Seydoux) and Saul (Viggo Mortensen)--making art out of organs--is a clever one, and also a plausible one in an avant-garde field that pushes the boundaries of craft and exhibition. Like ventricles, there are side plots of characters drawn to Caprice and Saul for different reasons: a scruffy father (Scott Speedman) using his deceased son for experimentation and spectacle and a peculiar bureaucratic medical pair (played by Yorgos Pirpassopoulos and Kristen Stewart). All seem to be linked in the idea of pushing things and bodies to its limits--almost addled, drug-like states, fueled by the next. 

The setting that would typically be cinematically associated with this newness and next-ness would be sleek and shiny. But Cronenberg's world here is the polar opposite: gritty, relentlessly grim, shabby old buildings, sometimes riddled with twisted strains of graffiti, and peeling interiors. It's as if the people of this world are so within their own bodies or within the bodies of others, that they could care less of the physical worlds around them. The premise, the dark optics, squishy make-up and visual effects, Howard Shore's gothic electro score and Seydoux's enigmatic performance are the standouts of Cronenberg's film. Through its oft loquacious characters, sometimes the movie talks too much--and says too much--about what it's about, rather than dwelling quietly in its mysterious shadows. Mortensen is a Cronenberg muse of sorts, but his showiness can be distracting, especially against Seydoux's ravishing sense of naturalism. The actorly tics of Stewart work well however, since Stewart's character, Timlin (quite a name--that feels like quirky mix of the words intimate, intimidated and timid) who desires after Saul, is a strong contrast to Caprice. Even if the film, on first viewing, doesn't quite coalesce as powerfully nor potently as it seems to strive to be, it's always a pleasure to be unnerved by what Cronenberg concocts, especially in the vein of morbid science fiction. **1/2

-Jeffery Berg

son of monarchs

After watching French-Venezuelan Writer / Director (and also Biologist!) Alexis Gambis's Son of Monarchs, I wondered the ways it could be pegged as Science Fiction. On paper, the film is a straightforward drama about a biologist Mendel (Tenoch Huerta) who travels back and forth (both physically and in haunted memory) from New York City to his hometown in Mexico to visit his family. In her book Screening Space, a vital work on Sci-Fi cinema, Vivian Sobchack writes, "The SF film is a film genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown." These elements of transcendentalism and science are definitely woven in the fabric of Son of Monarchs, even if it feels like a direct tale of a man torn between and or trying to unite two different worlds. Sometimes this drama is subverted. I definitely felt the first half of the film was going on a familiar, traditional path of self-realization and discovery, but then it flips when Mendel goes back to his work and life in New York. Mendel is a very quiet character, so Huerta has to carry much of his role through expressions of his inner whirring. In some ways, I thought of how Gambis's piece would be a particularly fascinating novel, with interiority and flashback its main crux. 

Visually, the film is appealing to look at (the photography is by Alejandro Mejía) and involving. The movie errs however in its scenes of butterfly-filled forests of Mendel's childhood in Michoacán. The overtly sunlit photography, the smiling children--it feels flimsy, sentimental (perhaps because we are viewing it through the lens of Mendel as a child); I yearned for the imagery there to be more layered as it is in the rest of the movie. Obviously butterfly-filled forests are going to pretty--could it be a more arresting visual if more complex, less gilded, more contrasting? 

Son of Monarchs is at its strongest when it gets weird, when surreal images coalesce with the mundane--such as microscopic shots of butterfly wings, larvae in petri dishes, peeling away layers with a scalpel and with squelchy sounds, a bravura tattoo-making sequence (a permanent, tangible etching within the film). Also intriguing are the human relationships with the animal world--including the idea of spirits of the dead moving within animals ("to continue the life cycle"). There's also a scene in New York where a woman does performance art of "what's it like to live... to embody a tree?"

There is much to appreciate in the ways in which Gambis's movie traces animalistic symbolism in varied manners, from the spiritual to the corporeal (hand shadow animals on the wall) to the political. In Mexico, we see the ramifications of deforestation and copper factory mining (including the death of Mendel's parents): the tensions between the survival of human-life and natural world ("This land belongs to no one," a character says). In America, we see the rectangular buildings, object-filled rooms of New York; a former horrible President is referenced as well, from his immigration policies to him calling Mexicans "animals." All of these elements are intrinsic and compelling in Son of Monarchs, though it can feel a bit weighty for a movie fronted with the quiet, somewhat nondescript Mendel, despite Huerta's strong acting. Still this is a worthwhile film to investigate. ***

-Jeffery Berg

not of this earth

Schlock-auteur Director Jim Wynorski made a bet that he could remake Roger Corman's 1957 flick Not of This Earth on a comparable budget to the original. The result is delirious 80s sleaze with shamelessly objectified adult film star Traci Lords in the lead.  Stilted line readings and goofy special effects galore as Nurse Nadine Story (Lords) is sought after by an alien vampire (Arthur Roberts) to tap the earth's blood supply.

Not of This Earth is full of booby-shots, squiggly bleeps and blips on the soundtrack and sheer goofiness and it wears its B-movie wheedling a bit too obviously on its sleeve. Highlights are probably the busty trio of gum-smacking prostitutes and Lords, obviously knowing what she's in for (it's the last film she's appeared nude in), slinking about in a blue bikini and soft pink Ray Bans (which end up playing a pivotal role later). Funny in the first half, with a ridiculous credit sequence spliced with scenes from other Corman flicks, the movie runs out of steam pretty quickly and it's not as economical and focused as one of my horror faves Chopping Mall, also directed by Wynorski, but it's fairly satisfying nevertheless like an atomic diner cheeseburger. This is pretty much for Lords, Corman or camp aficionados only. **


-Jeffery Berg

it! the terror from beyond space

Hokey and endearing sci-fi monster flick It! The Terror from Beyond Space is very similar to and likely the main inspiration for Ridley Scott's Alien.  A wisecracking group of space explorers are trapped in their rocket ship with a menacing, intelligent alien beast that feasts on bodily fluids.  In It!, the astronauts are checking out Mars (memorable line: "Mars is almost as big as Texas! Maybe it's got monsters."), the year is 1973 though everyone is decked out in full '50s atomic era gear and hairdos (amazing to think while watching this movie what a huge transformation technologically and socially the country would go through in the 1960s)... the two female astronauts even serve coffee to the space-suited males (!).  Directed by Edward L. Cahn on a very minimal budget, It! The Terror from Beyond Space is light, straightforward monster movie entertainment.  The monster is played by Ray Corrigan, who donned many an ape suit in his day, here in a great rubber suit with big, body-grabbing claws.  For Alien fans, this is a must-see for all its cues; there's even an air duct scene.  The shoe string budget allows for some amusing effects, strange edits and wacky sets. *** 

i see blue people

James Cameron has consistently delivered entertaining eye candy films that have pushed the boundaries of technological achievement (The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Titanic among them). His latest Avatar is another immersion into a visual fantasy-land. Yet, there isn't much in the material to separate this mawkish, horribly written sentimental sci-fi from any other films that the 2000s pumped out at the multi-plexes. I kept looking away, down at the plain-looking audience members around me, who were obviously enraptured with the film, but were such a far cry from the expensive, sugary nonsense portrayed on-screen before them.

Sam Worthington plays Jake (not Jack), an injured Marine who travels to the planet Pandora on behalf of the military for a special mission. There he is able to become part of the Na'vi tribe (Navi is interestingly enough Thai for Marine) and begins to fall in love with Neytiri (expressively voiced by Zoe Saldana). The illustrations of the Na'vi people are an unfortunate aspect of an otherwise interesting premise. Smurf-blue, with braids, dreads and six packs, and voiced with stereotypical black inflections, they come off as another Hollywood-ized primitive African tribe. The script doesn't tell us too much about them. The movie dissonantly moves from their lush, too-pretty Pandora surroundings to steely military bases (which to me, were more interesting) by using close-ups on eyes. Once the film decides to side with the Na'vi against the badass crewcutted Americans in fighter planes, it becomes unique social commentary. Is this the first American film in a while where we are rooting against the Americans? There are spunky, too-short appearances by Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez. Otherwise, there isn't much to the plot nor the love story between Neytiri and Jake.

Avatar is a mishmash of Cameron's other works but not nearly as assured. It lacks the grit of Aliens (Avatar is conveniently being marketed by McDonald's with flashy Happy Meal toys), not to mention that film's more exciting technical effects. And it tries to mimic a forbidden love story a la Titanic but without the charisma of strong actors to rise above a bad script. A James Horner hemmed Leona Lewis track tacked on the end credits is a weak attempt at "My Heart Will Go On." And there are plenty of cringe inducing dialogue moments ("I see you.")

Despite its formulaic qualities, Cameron's film is being hailed as breakthrough and a sure-bet Best Picture nominee. Smartly the production team rolled out this in the same anti-climatic way Titanic was released. But there were plenty of better films in the genre this year that worked against the grain on smaller budgets (District 9 among them). I think their rewards should be greater. *1/2

-Jeffery Berg