Once a character becomes a protagonist, they tend to cease being a human. Flaws are sacrificed to maximize appeal for an audience, rendering the behavior of a character unrecognizable to someone from planet Earth. That this is dull beyond belief goes without saying. Having flawed, stupid, offensive, or otherwise shitheaded characters make stories far more involving since we can recognize a bit of ourselves in them. This is borne in mind in Chronicle, which posits a creation story for three kids who acquire telekinesis from an unidentified source. Most superheroes in pop culture got their powers at random, yet the powers are invariably held by principled individuals. Either one is an altruistic guardian or an epic villain. Well, powers can be exercised by nitwits, too. This theme was explored poorly in Jumper, where a teleporting dullard used his godlike powers to gather a little cash and eat a sandwich on the Sphinx. Well, this movie executes its task quite well, and declares its first-time director as a surprising talent.

In Chronicle, three average high school kids acquire great power from a Somethingorother, and find they can move objects with their mind, and with time can move themselves, and greater objects. Rather than proceeding to heroic actions, the characters actually act like high school kids, which is not only refreshing, but more interesting than the standard storyline. They are not especially bright, imaginative, or introspective, and despite one of their number regularly trying to quote Jung or whatever, the dialogue is almost entirely idiotic rearrangements of “Dude! Bro! We got to do something!” Annoying to listen to, but this is how people generally speak, rarely with any threat of proper grammar or profundity. They have no imagination, so the time is spent pegging each other with rocks, lifting up skirts with leafblowers, or committing pranks on others. Really, these are kids being kids, and without much thought beyond the next minute. With time, their strength increases, their abilities open doors that they recklessly explore, and anger allows the story to take an inevitable trip into violence. One is a popular Dude who is none too ambitious and hence unlikely to cause harm; one is an extremely popular jock who would probably have become a superhero if he weren’t the black guy; and the last is the socially inept loner with a video camera.

The loner (Andrew) is the best-written character, meaning he turns out to be the most flawed. One thing Chronicle does well is capture the psychosis factory that is high school. As taxpayer-subsidized babysitting, it functions as a prison where the strong torture the weak in training for adult life where pretty much the same thing happens except the upper classes and cops replace the jocks. At least that is how it appears to the socially backward. Rather than the sort of fiction where the misfit becomes a champion when given power, in Chronicle the misfit remains so, except able to wreak havoc on those who were cruel to him. In a way, these beatings become a way to figure out one’s place in the world, and a chance to learn how to counter the attacks of the strong. Andrew only becomes the strong, and exerts as much cruelty as he can muster. The Dude is a cipher who is interested more in safety than telekinesis.  It is notable that his cool guy character suggests that the socially inward types are best sequestered by rigid social structures or else workplace shootings would become commonplace – you don’t often see calls for a garrison of the nerdpen.

I should mention this is a found-footage film, meaning lots of shaky-cam and migraines, but it is skillfully done. The power to move stuff enables the camera to float around, so the shots are more steady and cinematic at times. The special effects are pretty good considering the budget is modest, and it makes great use of an increasingly large sandbox for the three to play in. The bulk of the film is given to discovery of these powers, which is vicarious fun, and the story is allowed to find its own way. Ultimately, Chronicle rests on some superhero movie cliches to close out the film, but for the most part this is entertaining and interesting. The film announces Josh Trank as a name to watch, capable of crafting something unique and thoughtful with no budget in a crowded marketplace.

The Hollywood Knights has been labeled a virtual copy of American Graffitti, which is a fair accusation in that it is a nostalgia trip through the early sixties with a constant soundtrack seemingly lifted whole from AG. There are important differences, however, as AG is a shallow exercise in milking Boomers for cash (a task Lucas would perfect over the next few decades) that reaches awkwardly for profundity as the young protagonists stumble towards adulthood. Hollywood Knights, on the other hand, uses nostalgia as a frame on which to hang dumb jokes, clever pranks, and a welcome helping of T&A as the Eisenhower 50s yields to the rebellion of the 60s. It never claims to be profound, beyond arrested adolescence screaming its last; maybe you relate to it, or maybe you are one of the fuckheads who despised the idea of peace without honor. Either way, it is more entertaining than its predecessor and is a greater movie by virtue of having better racks, a funner subtext, and a strangely hot Fran Drescher.

On Halloween night in 1965, Tubby’s drive-in is to be torn down solely due to the menace of the gang Hollywood Knights, who terrorize the moral guardians with flaming bags of dogshit on front steps or drive-by moonings. The clear and present danger from this malevolent force is like an amorphous hydra, ever present and ready to retaliate with eggs to the windshield should a compatriat fall. They are everywhere and nowhere at once. The pillars of this society consist of Jack and Jacqueline Friedman who meet with community movers and shakers in Beverly Hills. Their goal is to take down the miscreants in their midst, and they are sure of success as God is on their side. Ms. Friedman is a bit distracted from her mission from God by constantly groping and copulating with her friend Nevans in whatever hallway or car is available. Jack is also the high school prinicpal (or something) who is a source of sputtering rage whenever the Knights intrude on his wholesome plans for the school. When the pep rally is interrupted by gang leader Newbomb Turk’s transcendant version of Volare, or the talent contest is bested by a Knight portraying a one-armed violinist, Jack is apoplectic with helpless rage.

The first and last line of defense against the Knights are police officers Bimbeau and Clark, who are quick to anger and kick ass, usually of the wrong people, and using force for the sake of.  They mirror pretty much any cop you run into who got into the job as an outlet for impulse and anger control problems. More importantly, they represent the face of Nixon’s Law and Order ideology that backs the Silent Majority of the Friedmans. Together they are all-powerful yet impotent, having all the money and enough political connections to demolish a private business for personal reasons. And yet they must stand helplessly and watch as their imagined ideal society falls to pieces despite their zealotry, signified by an offending ass hanging out a window.

Newbomb Turk, as played by Robert Wuhl in the greatest performance of his career (take that however you will) is the spiritual leader of the Knights and his passion for reducing the moral majority to its proper level is equaled only by his imagination for some fucked up gags. It isn’t enough to block the public toilet at the drive-in that Officer Bimbeau is about to use; Newbomb also locks the door, detaches the doorknob, piles the doorway two feet deep with garbage, and plugs the police car’s exhaust to ensure that the cops are at boiling point when they extract themselves from the pile of rotting shit they fell into. Now, that’s being thorough. They anticipate every opportunity to spoil the well-constructed facade that decent society has crafted, all in the name of fun, and to revel in bringing everyone to the same level. As Ms. Friedman gets rogered by her buddy, the Knights are there to ensure it becomes a public event. When high society has a party, the punch is spiked by that most precious of fluids. And the caterers are carefully instructed to drive right across the garden because it will be demolished the next day anyway to make space for the Newbomb Turk Memorial Library.

There are a couple of subplots that seem tossaway until they fit into the larger picture of a nation in transition. Four pledges to the Knights are dropped off naked in the middle of Watts with instructions to 1. carry a spare tire all the way back to Tubby’s, and 2. request in person a song on their favorite radio station. On the way, these honkys manage to bond with some black dudes and score some weed on the way to accomplishing their goal. The hippie generation thus was born. Sort of. The other subplot has Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer reflecting on their imminent divide. She is aspires to be a nude double for actresses who sound less bubbleheaded than her, and he is a drunken bum. This doesn’t go very far, other than highlighting the long term of being a Hollywood Knight, in that old age does not bode well for those talented only in faffing about. Danza’s friend is about to ship out to Vietnam, which is ‘nothing’ to those in the know. As California Dreamin blares from the speakers, he is coming to know fear for the first time. All these things, including the recklessness of youth and the enjoyment of time wasted, is coming to an end.

Theirs is an example of the panic inevitable when one comes to realize that upon growing up, there will be nobody to catch you when you fall. The fucking around and showing up the prudes are victories, but are bittersweet at best. On one hand, it is satisfying to watch the ridiculous policemen fail in spectacular fashion to assert their authority, and the moral guardians get caught mid adulterous coitus in a humiliating spectacle. On the other, even in defeat, these twits still rule the world, and will continue making life miserable for the rest of us. And we either become them, or rebel pointlessly at the bottom of society. Not much of a choice, but we all must make it.

The Slithis is a strange creature, indeed; borne of unchecked seepage from a Venice Beach nuclear power plant and the inbred hillbilly cousin of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, he emerges from a drainage canal early in the A.M. to feast on local denizens. But the charming humanoid monstrosity, who is the most sympathetic character in sight, never fully comes into focus until the third act of Spawn of the Slithis. The masticated dog corpse, discovered by a pair of tykes playing a hilarious game ultra-slow-motion frisbee catch, is but an appetizer for the beast’s man course of derilict homo sapiens. This is a film that is perfectly content to plant its tranquilized ass on the couch and sloooooowly tell the tale of Wayne Connors, a high school journalism teacher, and his profound disillusionment with the current generation of students, who produce the “worst high school newspaper in the nation” under his ever more jaded aegis. Yes, it’s a sad state of affairs for the Baby Boomers reared during the ultra-conservative Eisenhower Era, who have their optimism dashed against the rocks time and time again by the hippie generation. “Teaching’s beginning to be a big turn-off,” he laments to his wife, who is a woman named Jeff, as they leave his sorry campus for their humble Love Shack and a night full of red wine and Quaaludes.

Sporadic Slithis attacks give Wayne a grim new lease on life, giving him the opportunity to use his Los Angeles press card and finagle his way into a string of murder investigations(!?). Since the LA County Coroner must have been stoned on elephant tranquilizers, the Overacting Police Chief declares that the Slithis meals are merely the work of a Mansonian “Satanic Death Cult”. If you’re willing to accept that plot contrivance, you may be functionally retarded. For those who aren’t suffering from severe cognitive impairment, there happens to be a bottled solution that comes in many flavors to suit your particular pleasure. All the actors seem to be drunk or stoned or flying eight miles high, and what’s more, director Steven Traxler’s skewed vision of LA is populated mostly by drunken transients who specifically drink economy-priced red wine. You should probably do the same.

There is an “investigation” carried out by Wayne the high school newspaper editor, wherein he illegally lifts evidence from multiple crime scenes, conveniently left open and unguarded for anyone to walk in, and sends them to his pal “Doctor John” for analysis. Since none of the characters seem to have any sort of background or history, it’s unclear whether the hippie-bearded Doc is a high school science teacher, or just some rogue biologist who spends his free time getting stoned and poring over conspiracy theories.

After a brief period of befuddlement, mandated by the script, the good doctor shows up at Wayne and Jeff’s house one night, unannounced and most likely blitzed out of his hairy gourd, and begins an incredibly insane tale of nuclear waste, stagnant marshes, and radioactive dirt. The Man is trying to play God with his unstable nuclear power plants, nature is becoming polluted, Mother Earth is bleeding, blah blah blah… but then John builds to a kicker:

“It’s one of the most important discoveries in scientific history, and they called this radioactive silt…”

…

“…Slithis.”

How and why Doctor John decided to bombard us with this info overload is a question best left unanswered. What’s more important is the actor’s hilarious, intoxicated delivery of the exposition, and the fact that said info-dump serves no purpose in Wayne’s investigation whatsoever. Sure, it sets up an unexplained scene where Wayne and Jeff go to the igloo-shaped house of a former nuclear scientist, but what comes out of that is just more crap about how Man Shouldn’t Play God. Oh, and a hilarious close-up of the scientist’s “radiation-scarred” visage.

Put as simply as possible, Spawn of the Slithis is about a monster mutated by radioactive silt that comes out at night to feast on society’s undesirables. When it finally decides to become a poor ripoff of Jaws, complete with a hardscrabble crew scraped together and placed on a lonely wooden boat, the narrative is already lying dead in the water and stinking like carp left out in the sun. The film would barely qualify for feature-length if the editing was tighter, and Traxler’s infatuation with his high-speed slow motion camera slows things down even more. There’s one fact that makes it stand out in the overcrowded pool of horrible monster movies, and that’s the basic level of competence behind the scenes, coupled with an earnest desire to make a significant work of art. While there’s no doubt that it fails to achieve any sort of depth, the attempt at subtext is as fascinating as a slow motion train derailment.

Feasting on drunken hobos by night, swimming in irradiated ocean water by day, the Slithis leads a lonesome yet unpretentious lifestyle. His choice of victims leaves plenty up to interpretation: from slum inhabitants to transients to the sexually uninhibited swingers of the Me Generation. The attack scenes are surprisingly gruesome and drawn out, complete with a subjective Slithis-Cam for terrifying split-diopter POV shots. Yet there is a gaping hole in the middle of the story: the monster drops out of sight for a half-hour lacuna while Wayne wanders the city interrogating homeless drunks and charters a boat from a black man named Christopher Columbus, who uses the word “mother” as an all-purpose noun and is obsessed with handshake etiquette. His hobo interrogations lead to a dead end, but Columbus is all too happy to aid Wayne in his thrilling quest to gather specimens from the ocean floor for thorough radiation analysis. There is little to do but bide our time by drinking or otherwise putting yourself in the same mindset as the cast and crew, waiting for the real protagonist to crawl out of the ocean once more.

Once our hero makes his triumphant return, it’s a real doozy. First, a disorienting jump cut puts us in the middle of a bizarre nightclub where patrons make drunken bets on turtle races as an MC provides moronic running commentary. It is in this hideous milieu where libidinous swinger Doug sets sights on virginal vacationer Jennifer, who is 18 but “could pass for 20″. Spirited away by this mustachioed Lothario in his blue Volkswagen Beetle, she all too easily surrenders her humble life story: a lifelong resident of backwoods Suska, North Dakota, Jennifer was just waiting for the day when she would be old enough to jump ship and immerse herself in the bright lights, spinning disco balls, Free Love and free-flowing cocaine of the Big City. And along came her knight in bell-bottoms and leisure suit and dress shirt unbuttoned down to his navel.

Once aboard Doug’s houseboat, the Casanova of Venice Beach lights a couple of candles flanking a B&W framed picture of himself and doles out the obligatory red wine. For the sake of your sanity, please follow suit. As Doug reaches behind the love seat for a switch, our minds are left racing. What hideous contraption could he possibly have hidden in this den of horrors? Lamely, it’s just a power switch for some red lights to provide the “romantic ambience” of a nuclear meltdown. Poor, poor naive little Jennifer thinks she’s reeled in a catch. The awkward, PG rated foreplay commences.

But what’s that? A knocking on the door? Surely it’s just Rex, the friendly neighborhood peeping tom, doing his daily run on Doug’s well-stocked liquor cabinet? Surely nothing could be more important than stealing third base before diving headfirst into the home plate? And yet, and yet… there always remains the possibility of a former hook-up coming to call, and after all, what could be sweeter than parlaying this successful pickup into a threesome? Hoping against hope, Doug ascends the stairs, with Traxler fetishizing his every move with Hitchcockian intensity, then crosses the cabin while bathed in sanguine light, then slicks back his hair, then sloooowly moving for the doorknob, and then

GWAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHNNNNNN

A familiar scaly hand pulls Doug from his haven of moral iniquity and into the harsh realities of life. There is much rejoicing, much spilling of stage blood, and much red-tinted Slithis action. The beast is back, and hungrier than ever! Would it be redundant to highlight, again, how satisfying this sequence becomes?

What ho? The sounds of a lass crying for her dear departed beau, in spite of all the inhuman groaning, bone snapping and flesh rending! What could be sweeter than a virginal North Dakotan for dessert? And yet… we have come to know this couple better than some of us know ourselves, shared their hopes and dreams and lusts and perversions. Paradoxically, we share the beast’s bloodlust and we want to see Jennifer obey Doug’s softly cooed command to “get naked”, which prove to be his last words uttered as a sentient being. Were it not for Jennifer’s promiscuity, she would not even be in this debacle, and were it not for her naivete in crying for a dead lover, the Slithis would not mosey on board Doug’s Love Boat for his second helping.

This is easily the most drawn out monster attack in the film, a tour de force of conflicting moralities, tragically wasted youth, nature’s inhumanity to man, and copious red lighting. As we’re immersed in the color of sin, Traxler further implicates the audience with multiple cuts to the split-diopter Slithis-Cam, lingering on Jennifer’s mortal terror and fragile, writhing form. Then the attack, inevitably, turns into a molestation, recalling the poster depicting our lovely monster with a scantily clad bride cradled in his loving arms: another paradoxical image that recalls the inner torment of the eponymous 40 foot ape of King Kong. The agonizingly drawn out attack is like some first-year film student’s tribute to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom filtered through The Horror of Party Beach. Was the monster once human, or did humans unknowingly create the monster with their unchecked nuclear power plants? Is this sequence brilliant or idiotic? Have I really gone through an entire 12 pack of Schlitz?

We end with a shot that practically oozes depth and meaning and subtext, etc.

The hilarity doesn’t let up at all, when in the next scene Wayne makes a visit to the police station to check in on the mentally unbalanced Stupid Chief, whose acting style recalls Vincent Price on bath salts. Even when he’s serving as the meat in the middle of a Bad Actor Sandwich, doing his business in the background, this nutcase chews scenery with all the gusto of a failed classically trained Shakespearean actor. The hilarity remains on a constant high pretty much throughout the rest of the film.

Now we’re on board the humble S.S. Creation piloted by the one and only Christopher Columbus, as Traxler shamelessly rips off Jaws with all the weird fever-dream logic of Jaws the Revenge. It’s kind of refreshing that nobody discovers some simple household chemical that reduces the Slithis back to his radioactive silt stage, so instead Wayne and Chris must engage the creature in a mano a mano streetfight involving a shotgun and numerous improvised weapons. For those of us rooting for the monster, the ultimate outcome is kind of refreshing; the heroes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by abiding in the Order of Mother Nature. In other words, Christopher Columbus babbles some jibba-jabba about the infinite possibilities of the ocean, the order of chaos, and the Dismal Tide. And then… well, it’s insane. And the screen goes negative. If you have any theories as to what the last shot signifies, please let us know. If you can make it through without dousing your brain with alcohol, you are either very brave or very stupid.

“Nowhere are Misery, Desperation, and Crime more welcome than here. You, my most loyal subjects, as Louis XIV, my uncle, left you to me, I shall leave you, more numerous still, to Louis XV and his successor. For misery, desperation, and crime are fecund. Enter, and let joy reign supreme!”

If you want to examine the decadent insanity possible in the abuse of a monarch’s absolute power, you could craft a thoughtful and brutal treatise on the subject, or you could revel in the insanity and have as much fun as the monarch. The director can be as mercurial as a king, and in that sense, Bertrand Tavernier has the best of both worlds in his luminously batshit Let Joy Reign Supreme. France in 1719 was in decline after the successful rule of Louis XIV, with the largest population in Europe in the midst of unrest, rising poverty, and widespread violence with frequent conscription of commoners to colonize Louisiana. Phillipe d’Orleans is the Regent, having denied the ascendancy of the king after annulling the will of the mouldering Louis XIV. He was famously an atheist and a libertine, concerned with living the high life over the affairs of state. He denounced censorship and decreased taxation, promoting public schooling while reveling in the arts. The ashes of this spoiled kingdom, as well as that of Louis XV, concealed the smoldering coals of the coming Revolution. Though Let Joy Reign Supreme does traffic in philosophy, it is content with being as bugnuts as it is brilliant.

With the sumptuous portrayal of the Regent’s court of excess, it is cynical, anarchic, and darkly hilarious. Surreal elements abound with a sardonic sense of humor, one feels an attitude that nothing in life or death is of any worth; except to feel alive. Politics is stripped bare to its grounding in parasitism and avarice, while the opposition is made up of the most pathetic revolutionary this side of Life of Brian. There may be no central point to be gleaned from this work apart from gaining a sense of how chaotic the march of history can be, even in retrospect. This movie is not to be understood, but rather experienced. It washes over you, and afterwards you wonder what the fuck happened as you straighten up the room. To set the pace in the opening scene, a priest performs a ceremony wherein field mice are excommunicated, while a nearby pedophile attempts to kidnap two little girls. Then things get strange.

Phillipe is depressed, having witnessed the death of his favored daughter, who was as mad as she was promiscuous. The autopsy examines the body noting significant brain damage and a pregnancy (multiple births likely caused her demise), and the physicians present declare she died of gluttony. Phillipe felt that shitty doctors were the cause, but never mind. Thus distracted, the Marquis de Pontcallec hatched a conspiracy with his fellow nobles to topple the Regent by inviting Spain to use its coast to land an invading army. His land of Brittany was wracked by starvation, and so he had little funding for visiting brothels, let alone gathering an army. Boasting a regular force of thousands (in actuality only three), he failed to get support from anyone other than the Spanish army, mostly because they were kind of expecting to support an army. Instead, it was only Pontcallec, proudly armed with his fearsome weapon, the mistoufle. This was a pistol tied to a pitchfork, and was as effective as it sounds. Jean-Pierre Marielle plays Pontcallec as an amiable oaf, defiantly inscribing letter after letter to the Regent, often with subsequent corrections following a failed threat.

Phillipe Noiret plays the Regent as oddly detached, only distantly concerned with the future of his seat while surrounded by enemies. He despises the church and its hypocrisies, of the clergy’s enthusiastic culling of Prostestants, and of its profligate corruption. As one priest claims the Church is apolitical, Phillipe dryly notes that their sales of arms to Native Americans who convert to Christianity is inherently political. Still, he is no angel, and gleefully takes part in the corruption. His primary aspiration is to secure another underage girl to his harem, preferably if they are into menage a quinze.

His chief advisor is Abbe Dubois, a fellow atheist and pimp who aspires to be mitered an Archbishop. It is a practical desire – “I am a born pagan, but an Archbishop is untouchable.” He has no care for the Regent, hoping only to get the appointment before his boss dies mid-orgy, and is the source of most of the court intrigues. Fortunately, no time spent in exposition is wasted – DuBois explains his ambitions to a whore with her ankles wrapped around his head. He is a cackling twit who is too bent to be labeled a madman – who would want to appear principled in this mess? In any case, the Church endorses his mitre, and in exchange the Regent will not force the Church to sell land to the poor at a price they can afford. A plan more pernicious even than public schools. Everything about the court is rotten, from royal family who extort Phillipe for bribes to the local enforcers who round up the whores and homeless for deportation to the Americas. In one scene that amuses the fetid souls among us, a priest performs marriage rites for a crowd of scores of such people, so any fucking on board the ship has the consent of God. Soldiers and officials alike are either bribed or duped easily; this is anarchy with a bureaucracy.

The real entertainment here are the bizarre setpieces that serve to highlight ignorance and decadence in the most hilarious possible way.

- Phillipe is too busy to discuss the conspiracy against him because porn slide show.
- Pontcallec hides in a convent, leading him to hide in a tub with a hot nude lady of the cloth while soldiers storm the building knocking nuns over like bowling pins.
- The vaunted military of France demonstrates its new cannon by missing a carriage with shots at point blank range while Phillipe gropes one of his hoes. The future King Louis XV whines for the carriage to contain a condemned man, else this is no fun.
- There is a Piss Boy. One of the attendants at the court walks around with a pail.  I thought that bit from History of the World was a joke.
- Check out the banquet centerpiece.

The denouement is as bizarre as the rest, as a commoner is killed in an act of negligence, sparking an event that heralds the coming Revolution. A simmering anger from the misrule of the Regent is given release, and though the anger is directed at the elite, it is unfocused and not necessarily purposeful. This is how political change occurs, uncontrollable, amorphous, impossible to predict and driven by unseen factors. Though the masses can be manipulated, they cannot be denied when they hunger. Perhaps that illuminating exchange seems tacked on, as just about anything would when attached to a story this fucked. It does lend a feel of consequence, a word utterly alien to anyone holding power. The masses will rise against tyranny, though not necessarily in the name of justice, or in the name of anything other than anger and the driving force of the herd. In the meantime, enjoy the delirium as history marches past us, occasionally clothed, usually indifferent, and without a shred of decency or mercy.

Note: above is not taken from the film. The search for images stopped here.

The Satanic obsidian eyes of Gina Carano are like twin voids reflecting only the tiniest glimmers of light, revealing nothing within but somehow peering back into us like a Nietzchean abyss. She’s indistinguishable from the character she portrays in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, which is an unusual hybrid of his experimental films featuring non-actors (such as Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience) and his star-studded mainstream blockbusters. Here, the guise of a duplicity-wrought espionage yarn riddled with requisite double-crosses and globetrotting is used to examine gender roles in the cinema, with an excess of glib detachment and audience-alienating genre deconstruction.

We are dropped in medias res into a tense yet deceptively mundane encounter in a coffee shop: two former lovers and colleagues in a government-contracted wet works company are reunited after a mission goes pear-shaped. References to previous operations are bandied about where niceties would be normally; oblique mentions of “Barcelona”, “Dublin” and “Paul” hint at the convoluted plot to come, and not a single naturalistic sentence springs from the lips of either Carano (whose robotic line readings are reminiscent of those dreaded automated menus one must navigate over the phone) or sentient beef slab Channing Tatum (who looks Brando-esque in comparison). It’s a strange choice to have a cold opening like this, with mystifying dialogue reminiscent of the train conversation in The Manchurian Candidate and allusions to stuff that only makes sense after the entire convoluted plot has been processed.

More blatant, and involving, is the fluctuating power dynamic: Fridge Largemeat demands Carano “get in [his] car” less than 10 seconds after sitting down at her booth; even after being repeatedly rebuffed he repeats his order, even though he knows that she knows to accept the offer would be nothing short of a death sentence. After failing to intimidate the lady, Splint Chesthair abandons his attempts at dialectic resolution and throws a steaming cup of joe into her face and launches into his very best impression of Ike Turner in the middle of the restaurant. Only when a nearby twerp intervenes is she able to mount Blast Hardcheese, emasculate him by taking away his bulky 9mm automatic, and break his arm for good measure.

The fight scenes in Haywire are down-and-dirty brawls, with every damaging punch, every kick, grapple, head butt, and gouging or bashing with improvised weapons filmed with clinical precision. Not only are these scenes refreshingly brutal (and comprehensible to boot) but they’re also overtly sexual, with entwined limbs, gasping, grunting and thrusting in confined areas with no regard for decorum whatsoever. Carano’s specialty in the Octagon is in submission holds, which proves beneficial during one of several intimate struggles in the film, where she manages to wriggle and twist around to achieve dominant positions with the ease of a serpent and choke her male adversary almost to death with nought save her tree-trunk-like thighs. Xenia Onatopp would be proud.

Said scene occurs after a debasing mission where she is forced to “wear the dress” as one half of a “power couple” attending a social function in Dublin. The other half is the enigmatic “Paul”, played by critical golden boy Michael Fassbender, providing as extreme a dichotomy of acting ability as one could ever hope for, though one should never be confused as to which half of the couple truly possesses the “power”. There’s a meaningless tete-a-tete with Mathieu Kassovitz (who really should act more instead of directing horseshit like Babylon A.D. and Gothika) and a surprise discovery of a corpse (where Carano expresses surprise by biting her lip) before heading back to the hotel for some sweaty sex/combat.

Before their sham relationship goes sour, their brief stay in the hotel ventures into Last Tango in Paris territory when, during their respective cleaning-up times in the bathroom, each party takes time to rummage through the other’s personal belongings: he in her vaginal purse and she by plugging his short, stubby cellular device into her laptop. Alas, there’s no time to experiment with butter (though, lest we not consider Fassbender to be one of the Best Actors of His Generation, a deeper flashback features the notorious real-life pussyhound uttering with utmost conviction, “I’ve never done a woman before”) before the ginger lad is thwarted in his struggle for a blunt, blocky automatic pistol stowed beneath their unused queen-sized bed, choked with thighs after getting his face rammed into Carano’s crotch, and executed with merciless brevity through a pillow.

The remainder of the movie consists of Carano/Kane tracking down an assortment of high-profile actors who have wronged her through their involvement, however tangential, in this hopelessly tangled web of deceit, duplicity, deception, despair, and dumbassery. We have Antonio Banderas with a full-on Unabomber beard, Michael Douglas at his most weasel-like, Kassovitz, and the insufferably bland Ewan McGregor, who insists on using the same non-regional American accent in every fucking thing he does as if this will make us forget that his natural Scottish accent is hilarious. Those watching Haywire expecting Novelty Deaths or a high Corpse Count will be sorely let down; two of these treacherous men are killed off-screen and the other two manage to weasel their way out of any sort of punishment.

Strangely enough, Soderbergh has time to kill two condescending police officers, who don’t believe Carano’s elaborate tales of espionage, government wet work and double-crosses, have the tenacity to refer to her as “Wonder Woman”, and are promptly picked off by snipers during a weird, lethargic, tension-free shootout and escape. The 90-odd minutes of Haywire are filled with long, deadly stretches of plot between the handful of expertly mounted action sequences, as if Soderbergh didn’t think that the gender dynamics and bone-crushing were enough to hold our interest; he wastes interminable gobs of molasses-paced time telling a well-worn story of treachery and countless backstabs that no one who isn’t armed with a notebook and a few tabs of Adderall down the hatch could ever hope to decipher.

Even the appearance of Bill Paxton, as the one sympathetic masculine character, and the inevitable demise of Biff Rockgroin, cannot compensate for this fatal flaw. Perhaps if Paxton were screaming out poetic lines of hick profanity a la Hudson in Aliens, we could be distracted from how the climactic sequence in his snowbound New Mexico chalet doesn’t resolve any plot threads save for the liquidation of Gristle McThornbody. Then it’ s a bit more globetrotting before the movie just sort of peters out like a night of bad drunken sex. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the conclusion is that Soderbergh seems to have decided that, with all his demonstrated proficiency in directing brutality, he has decided that he’s above doing such a thing when it comes to providing plot resolution. Perhaps he might direct a great action film someday. Perhaps even a genuinely great film. But first, he should work on extracting his head from his own nether regions.

Ultimately, each and every one of Carano’s adversaries goes down like a bitch and her personal safety is never once questioned, even as she goes on the lam as a wanted fugitive and does her own stunts, bounding across rooftops and falling into alleys and manhandling a dozen aggressive dudes. She is a predator righting all the misdeeds against wronged women not only in the cinematic landscape but also the real world; every duplicitous man, no matter how well-protected, is but easy prey thanks to her limitless resourcefulness and raw brute strength. It’s telling that there are no other female characters in Haywire: to distract from Carano’s overpowering presence would be to undermine the message of the entire film. Whether or not this message will resonate with its audience remains to be seen.

“Take that, foolish African!”
-  Line from the film or Lucas to his new audience?

During the Second World War, 450 black men were sent into aerial combat, running more than 200 bomber escort missions, and during Red Tails, we feel as though we have seen all 200 in real-time. George Lucas is executive producer, and he has announced that this is his last (except not really) popcorn film. Apparently, it attracted so little interest that Twentieth Century Fox distributed only if Lucas paid for everything. If he were working a corner, that’s like paying the clients for the right to call yourself a hooker. Still, Lucas has been chipper about this foray into attracting a Black audience and their dollars, boasting about a mostly Black cast, director, producer (not himself, although if he claimed to be Black, that would have been awesome), and writers, with a score by Terence Blanchard. The deck has been stacked. At an advance screening, Al Sharpton exclaimed “It’s probably one of the best movies I’ve ever seen!” Ever the voice of measured calm. Why Tyler Perry wasn’t tapped to direct is beyond me, but that would have made Red Tails a hilarious smear of histrionic twaddle. I suppose this cast was in part to enable the tower defense of RACIST against any attacks on its shitty quality, but if Red Tails is representative of the Black Community, then its production team is guilty of hate crimes. The story of the Tuskegee airmen is pretty good, but you would have no idea from this dull piece of fuck.

The acting is terrible, listless, and occasionally sounds like the words are being read off cue cards by someone at gunpoint. Terence Howard plays a Colonel who needs to give periodic triumphant rah rah speeches, except he couldn’t express real emotion if his shoes were on fire. Cuba Gooding has not been a mark of quality since maybe Boat Trip, and he chews on a pipe like a five year old went into Dad’s drawer and found a new toy. His attempt to do a ‘grim’ face is more pathetic than a worm on a hook trying to escape. The dialogue is bad enough to make the Nazi characters sympathetic. Lucas bragged that there is an hour of combat scenes, and I think that is probably true. But that means over an hour of quiet scenes of chatting and bonding where the screenwriters futilely attempt to simulate what humans call ‘conversation’. Some of these include white people who bandy about epithets to remind us idiots that there is this thing called racism, and, against all we once thought, it is indeed bad.

The characters are stock from stem to stern; the leader with self-doubt, the aggressive hotshot, the Jesus freak. The whites are all kind of the same person. There is one German character who is skilled, and hunts American pilots because he is evil, not because it is his duty as a soldier. He uses the line above, which just made my day. The rest is dull exchanges with such bon mots as “Let’s give the newspapers something to write about”, or “How do you like  that, Mr. Hitler?” During the opening credits, American bombers are shot to shit because the escort fighters ran off to shoot down enemy fighters instead of protecting the bombers. One pilot exclaims “Damn those glory grabbing bastards!” Now if only there was a group of pilots that would be proper escorts… I wonder if the film will fill that need at some point with some scrappy underdogs. And I wonder if some of these honkys would eventually have a change of heart, or if the leader develops self-confidence or the hotshot gets shot down after doing something inadvisable. Red Tails is unpredictable like LA weather. The death of the hot shot is especially funny, as a whole subplot is set up where he romances an Italian woman and they are all set to be married. It resembles that scene from, well, Hot Shots!, where one pilot is about to go on a mission and tells his wife he loves her while black cats cross his path, he walks under a ladder, she breaks a mirror, and expresses just how perfect life is. When you reiterate a storyline from a spoof in your dramatic film, there is a serious failure at the screenplay stage.

Meanwhile, the combat video game scenes are okay, but the breaking planes are as interesting as so much balsa wood, and the deeply boring execution makes the action even more listless and pointless. The sound quality also sucks, going in and out in the wrong places. I know the actions of the Tuskegee airmen were actually important during the War, but if the filmmakers don’t give a shit, I don’t see why I should. The scenes of BANTER and the love story via translator dictionary, the pointless subplot about a POW camp that barely exists and passes like a fart in a blizzard, oh god, make it stop. Even the remarks about race fail to arouse, as other films have rendered the subject with a sense of history and scope.

Lucas admitted that the legions of fanboys have worn him down about his aggressive milking of Star Wars. Who knew the random and pointless anger of the internet could accomplish something great? Still, he is planning to pursue small art films, so we will get to see CGI clouds add texture to small personal dramas or something. Well, small art films and the next, hotly anticipated Indiana Jones movie where Indy fights Nazi exiles in Brazil to establish a public health care system.

It is difficult to tell whether Donald Wolfe’s lysergic Savage Intruder is trying to say something meaningful about the surreal culture of the Los Angeles film industry, or whether it’s merely exploiting old Hollywood washouts, has-beens, and never-weres. Perhaps in its own cynical way it’s expressing deeper truths that it could never hope to approach were one to take the film at face value; it’s a derivative ripoff of Psycho through and through, down to its primal Freudian tropes and triumph of its nebbish male antagonist over the ineffectual forces of Good, but Wolfe’s stunt casting proves to be his greatest strength, which is regrettably not saying much. We have not one but three remnants of Old Hollywood violently colliding against the emerging forces of Exploitation: first and foremost, there is old stalwart Miriam Hopkins essentially playing herself, Blacklisted actress Gale Sondegaard giving her thankless role as much gravitas as can be wrung from an underwritten script, and the son of the late lamented John Garfield embodying the titular Intruder with as much smarm as humanly possible.

After a flurry of footage stolen from Singin’ in the Rain (look for the marquee advertising “The Dancing Cavalier”) and various MGM newsreels, there’s a rather effective credit sequence that segues from jazzy pomp and circumstance to a ruined Hollywood sign, with a profoundly creepy silence broken only by the creaking of wooden panels in flagrant disrepair. Beneath wooden panels flapping in the merciless wind, with twisted nails jutting forth in search of soft material to puncture, a shallow grave lies half-assedly dug with the dismembered mannequin-like remains of an old woman exposed to harsh daylight. Cut to a news reporter breathlessly describing the exploits of the anonymous Hollywood Slasher, whose identity is baffling the LAPD and holding the community in a grip of blah blah blah.

We see an old drunken lady being followed to her apartment by a menacing pair of bell-bottomed ankles. Soon, Garfield enters her ramshackle abode through an unlocked window and we see his full fearsome form: a pair of reflective Aviator glasses, a brown fedora that clashes violently with his black trench coat and a red velour mailbag that clashes violently with common decency and good taste. After knocking out the frumpy old maid with a lead pipe and dragging her into the bathroom, he removes a fearsome array of phallic instruments from a suitcase within the mailbag. Opting for an electronic filleting knife, he attempts to remove her hand without anesthesia yet she wakes up with a scream and the whole thing ends rather messily via the business end of a meat cleaver. Small wonder Garfield Jr. found his greatest success as an editor before dying an untimely death of a congenital heart defect exactly like his father; he’s most effective in this opening sequence when he’s totally mute.

Although, to be fair, it’s quite possible that it was a key grip or a rigging technician dressed in the bizarre costume and this little episode was haphazardly shoehorned in during reshooting to inject a bit of tension into the proceedings, as it doesn’t serve any purpose other than establishing the killer’s M.O., which is promptly discarded in favor of a bolder technique. The dismembered body beneath the Hollywood sign was some other old woman, this particular lady’s remains are never discovered (in addition to her lacking a family, friends, or basic social network outside the bar and tobacconist’s shop), and the identity of the killer is obvious from the very first second Garfield appears on screen without his disguise. Since this was filmed in 1969, his laughable hippie getup might have allowed him to blend in, but with the benefit of hindsight, an already creepy looking motherfucker looks the part even more. Hitching a ride to Miriam Hopkins’ pretentious abode on a hill, he hops off a Celebrity Home Tour tram driven by Shemp Howard (!) in a pitiful cameo role shortly before a little girl aboard the same tour bus disembarks with her mother and explosively vomits a few feet away from him. The tone thus established, he scales the monstrous fence with absurd ease and sets off on his mission.

Since he somehow knows that Hopkins drank a bit too much of her “liquid personality” during one of her frequent hallucinated parties, tumbled down the stairs and broke her tibia on the hard marble floor of her foyer, and is consequently in need of someone to carry her around her cavernous mansion, Garfield neatly converts his Jimi Hendrix headband into a tie (with a smart Windsor knot) and offers his unsolicited services as a live-in caregiver (with no extra charge for hand-removal service). Gale Sondegaard’s head maid, who resembles the psychotic Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca both in appearance and general temperament; she is known simply as Lez (!!) and she absolutely will not abide this slimy looking man tainting the sanctity of the household, and most certainly has no affection whatsoever for her elderly employer. But, alas, Hopkins decides that a man’s brute strength is necessary (never mind that wiry, shrimpy Garfield looks like he can barely heft a sack of potatoes), and there is no way at all she’s lusting after some much younger cock, and the flirtatious glances she’s getting from the dude do not indicate a weird Oedipal complex ripped from the pages of dime-store psychology books … not at all.

Not only had Hopkins been divorced for almost 20 years prior to shooting the film, and genuinely seems to love spending long stretches of time in intimate situations with Garfield Jr., (likewise, Junior’s smarm fades away during one of the countless scenes of pushing her around in a wheelchair, replaced by something resembling genuine emotion) she doesn’t even seem to be acting when her character eventually falls in love with her caretaker. Meanwhile, Lez and the delectable Asian housekeeper (with the incongruous name of Greta) witness this creepy love story unfolding with some combination of dread and horrified curiosity. Soon, Greta’s awkward flirtations with the new caretaker are stiffly reciprocated, a midnight garden rendezvous is planned, but when she shows up expecting a little action from Junior she is instead “mysteriously” dispatched by an unseen, “anonymous” slasher in a syrupy geyser of candy-apple-red stage blood. Then all the nutty psychedelic hallucination dreams/flashbacks start flying ad infinitum and illuminate very little save for the fact that Donald Wolfe seems to have purchased several sheets of the infamous brown acid. More “mysterious” deaths transpire, and several long out-of-work actors show up in brief cameo scenes before we go back to Hopkins in her pink boa, sniping at Junior for more interminable lengths of time.

Savage Intruder can’t decide whether it wants to be a murder mystery, a character study of a Freudian nutcase, a character study of a delusional alcoholic former silent-film star, a romance between these two characters, a commentary on the film industry chewing up and spitting out its former sweethearts, or a systematic dissection of Old Hollywood using Hitchcockian tropes through hyperstylized Italian giallo sensibilities. Instead of choosing one paradigm and going with it, the film tries to do all six things at once with the finesse of a blinded cerebral palsy victim attempting to juggle chainsaws. Not to say that the film is a complete failure: there’s a great deal of subtext in a story about wooden, psychopathic beefcake passive-aggressively softening up a bunch of old women played by washed-up actresses (and one bright-eyed Asian ingénue) before dicing them up with his compensatory phallus collection in some cavernous mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Also unremarked upon is the back story of this colossal manor. The lavish palace was a monument to excess commissioned by Norma Talmadge* at the height of her popularity in the 1920s; upon the advent of the “talkies”, her gratingly nasal voice cut short a meteoric rise to fame, her career ended in 1930 and she spent the rest of her days holed up in this mansion in complete ignominy.

Not only does the former Talmadge estate provide a perfect setting for the story, as muddled as it is, but also supplies an even more surrealistic background for a sequence where the mansion is besieged by a small army of drug-addled hippies. One memorable exchange occurs where a turned-on midget offers Miriam Hopkins a snifter of cocaine, to which she haughtily replies “The only trips I take are to Europe!” Sure, it’s a far cry from her work with Ernst Lubitsch, but Hopkins has no problem with devouring every inch of scenery around her, and ultimately, the movie itself. It’s probably not the kind of swan song the former beauty must have envisioned for herself but she goes out in high style, even working in a gratuitous topless shot (at the ripe old age of 66) before giving a final, horrified look at the camera and literally disappearing into the filmic aether.

No, the clapper was not supposed to be in the movie. Yes, they left it in there.

Perhaps the proto-slasher trappings, with the unseen maniac dispatching helpless women in a methodical fashion with an array of sharp objects and abrasive musical stings, are but a distraction from the most meaningful bit of subtext. The villain isn’t Junior and his hippie buddies, or the oh-so-mysterious Slasher in his ridiculous costume, looking like a cross between The Alchemist in The Holy Mountain and one of Torquemada’s scarlet-clad Inquisitors, or even the oppressively Lesbotronic housekeeper holding the house in a Draconian grip of terror. No, the industry itself is to blame for everyone’s woes; the brutal attrition of show business elevating mere mortals to the status of Demigods before violently ejecting them to a life of delusion and seclusion, and rejecting thousands of fresh-faced hopefuls daily like an infernal machine separating so much chaff from the wheat. It’s nothing that was said much more eloquently in Day of the Locust, but give Wolfe some points for accomplishing quite a bit on such a microscopic budget. To no one’s surprise, he never directed another film again.

Satanic Panic – a phenomenon characterized by widespread fear about the presence of satanic ritual abuse in one’s community, state or country.

Bullshit – trivial, insincere, untruthful talk, writing, or nonsense made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy.

During the 1980s and early 90s, God-fearing Americans were in the grip of a moral panic brought about by charlatans peddling the unfounded dangers of subliminal messages in rock and roll and satanic ritual abuse. Across the country, millions of records and stereo systems were destroyed in an attempt to play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards to hear Robert Plant’s message of evil and seemingly normal citizens embraced the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in day-care centers, schools, and quiet communities raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, conducting orgies, and drinking blood, all under the noses of unsuspecting parents and incompetent authorities. The apex of this complete loss of collective sanity was the McMartin pre-school trial in California that began in 1984. This trial, which remains the longest and most expensive trial in U.S. history, attempted to convince multiple juries that Virginia McMartin and her grandson, Ray Buckey, sexually abused over 360 children in a series of bizarre satanic rituals involving carwash orgies, secret underground lairs, levitation, hot air balloons, Chuck Norris, and animal sacrifice. These allegations were based solely on the statements of an alcoholic schizophrenic mother with a history of institutionalization, the perjured testimony of a repeat jailhouse felon, the highly suggestive interviewing and therapy techniques of the now defunct and widely discredited Children’s Institute International, and a growing national fear in Reagan’s America that if the Soviets did not get us, then Satan would. This seven-year, $15 million trial ended in 1993 with no convictions, no evidence of satanic influence, and no evidence of Chuck Norris’ involvement.

In 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys—Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers—were found dead, naked, mutilated, and hogtied in a muddy ditch. In a move that pre-dated Giorgio Tsoukalos’ conclusion that it must be aliens, police officials decided that the crime had “occult” overtones and immediately suspected the black clothes wearing, heavy metal loving, obviously evil named Damien Echols of committing the crime. Their suspicions were further confirmed after the interrogation of Jessie Misskelley, a minor with an IQ of 72, who was brought in by the police to discuss his knowledge of occult activities in the area. After a twelve hour interrogation, of which only forty-one minutes were ever recorded, Misskelley “confessed” (and quickly recanted) that he, Damien, and another friend, Jason Baldwin, committed the murders. Armed with the confession of a barely intellectual functioning minor that contained multiple factual inconsistencies and the zealousness of a televangelist, police arrested and charged all three teenagers with the crime. In the ensuing trials, all three were hastily convicted on the basis of a questionable confession, mishandled and untested evidence, and the testimony of a self-proclaimed occult expert with a mail-order Ph.D. Misskelley and Baldwin were given life sentences while Echols was sentenced to death.

Documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky brought their cameras to Arkansas to document the trial in 1994 for HBO, and their resulting film, “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,” became a cause celeb and created a national movement that called into question the guilt of the three teenagers and accused the Bible Belt community of West Memphis, including its police and assorted white trash citizens, of rushing to judgment. The film aptly described the level of community panic and frustration within the days of the murder. A rumored history of Devil worship, occult graffiti along the railroad tracks, and whispers of trailer park Satanic rituals coupled with the shocking nature of the crime, no immediate arrests, a Mayberry-esque police force, and extensive press coverage all led to the inevitable conclusion that it must have been teenagers under the influence of heavy metal and the Devil. Authorities quickly zeroed in on Damien Echols. Why Damien? Well, besides his name, he looked weird, had a history of run ins with the law, had Latin sayings written on notebooks along with drawings of snakes, and was rumored (according to his classmates and a youth minister) to have killed and eaten animals and to have sold his soul to Lucifer himself. Baldwin, due to his close friendship with Damien was assumed guilty by association, while Misskelley tightened the noose around his own neck through his own lack of mental agility.

Berlinger’s and Sinofsky’s 2000 follow-up HBO film, “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations,” further probed inconsistencies behind the prosecution’s case and offered up an additional suspect in the form of one Mark David Byers, father of one of the victims. Byers proves to be the most interesting character that we meet along this journey. He’s a scripture spewing hillbilly with a penchant for prescription drugs, arson, and Old Testament style vengeance – in sum, the ideal West Memphis resident. It is also discovered that a knife he gave to a member of the film crew during the first film contains traces of blood that matches that of his son and is similar to the type of blade that was allegedly used in the crime. Additional evidence of what appears to be bite marks (according to the defense attorneys but those of a belt buckle according to the prosecution) on the face of one of the victims turns out to not match any of the defendants. However, we also learn that Byers had all of his teeth extracted in 1997, making any additional comparisons impossible and further cementing his status as the model Arkansas citizen. He may have also murdered his wife according to a rather ill-timed Freudian slip during a one-on-one interview with the filmmakers. The second film ends with Byers passing a polygraph while under the influence of multiple mood altering drugs.

The 2012 “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” summarizes the first two films and picks up the case in late 2009 during a series of last ditch appeals. New evidence uncovered and presented by the appellate defense teams include:

• DNA evidence – items tested at lab chosen by prosecution showed no presence of DNA from the defendants on any of the victims
• The wounds on the victims which the prosecution claimed to be that of a serrated knife were actually post-mortem animal bites, which also explains the presence of animal hairs found at the crime scene
• A human hair found on the ligatures used to tie up one of the boys was from Terry Hobbs, one of the victim’s stepfather’s (more on him in a moment)
• Juror misconduct on the part of the original Echols and Baldwin jury foreman, who contacted an attorney during the trial asking for ways to convince other jurors to convict and violated the court’s instructions by discussing the Misskelley confession that was excluded from Echols and Baldwin’s trial

In this third installment, we become reacquainted with Mark David Byers, who has transformed from a frothing at the mouth, walking southern stereotype into a calmer, walking southern stereotype. Byers, who once led the charge of Satanic ritual accusations now believes that Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley are innocent and turns his accusatory lazy eye toward Terry Hobbs. In what has to be the film’s most awkwardly painful moment, Byers pulls a homemade placard outlining what he believes establishes Hobbs’ guilt from the back of his truck and gives the audience a riveting legal argument. Hobbs, who was never considered as a suspect (nor were any of the victims’ parents), had made the near fatal mistake of suing the Dixie Chicks for defamation based on comments made by Natalie Maines regarding the hair discovered on the ligatures. During the taped depositions, Hobbs is questioned about the crime, the mounting inconsistencies in his own alibi for the night of the murders, and his violent, wife-beating, brother-in-law shooting past. However, this is but a temporary detour into further reasonable doubt about the original convictions.

Flush with the new evidence, defense attorneys argue for a new hearing in front of the same judge who presided in the first trials and subsequent appeals. Not surprisingly, the judge refuses their request to present new evidence and the case is appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. In what has to be one of the most illogical legal arguments ever presented in a court of law, the state attorney general’s office tries to convince the court that the word, “all,” in a recently passed DNA rehearing statute only applies to evidence of guilt, not innocence, citing that the intent of the statute is not to provide relief for defendants but to ensure the integrity of a flawed criminal justice system. If I had more space, I could devote another 10 pages to just how moronic and unconstitutional this argument truly is. The Arkansas Supreme Court overrules the lower court decision and remands the case for an evidentiary hearing. But before the case can be heard, the prosecution and the defense agree to a plea. In exchange for the defendants conceding that there is enough evidence to convict and entering what is known as an Alford plea (pleading guilty but allowed to maintain their innocence) they are sentenced to time served and released from prison, walking free in 2011 after spending seventeen years behind bars.

However, the larger question of who killed the three boys is never answered. Was it Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley? Was it Mark David Byers? Was it Terry Hobbs? Or was it the mysterious black man who was seen in a Mr. Bojangles restaurant bathroom the night of the murders covered in blood and mud? The answer may never be known, but what is apparent is that the evidence linking Echols, Baldwin, Misskelley, Byers, and Hobbs to the crime is shoddy enough, circumstantial enough, and lacking enough to rise to the level of reasonable doubt. Are they innocent? Possibly…possibly not, but that’s the beauty, bane, and burden of our system or any system that relies on and can be taken down by human error, zealousness, and hubris. Taken together, the only true insights these three films provides us with are the terrible toll that murder and grief can take on a family and community, the dangerous influence that fanaticism and superstition can have on the fearful and the weak-minded, and the reminder that if one seeks justice, go to a whorehouse; if one seeks to get fucked, go to court.

In case you’re pretending to not be a nerd, DS9 stands for “draw out the opening credits as long as possible so we can save nine minutes worth of show production costs per episode.” ť What, are Trek fans going to complain about something being ponderous and dull? Yes.

The show is set aboard a space station that is also named Deep Space Nine. The station is partially a Benthamian hellhole, modeled on the utilitarian’s insane plans for building “panopticon” prisons because of his belief that the greatest possible aggregate utility would occur if he could stand in one place and watch dozens of people going to the bathroom at once. Also, it was critical that inmates know that they might be observed at anytime, but never know when they are being observed. True, the walls on DS9 are not transparent from the outside, but they might as well be. Anybody on the station at any time can just be like, “computer, locate Matt Cale.” And the computer will be like, “Lieutenant Cale is in the holsuite, sir. Heart rate is elevated though he seems to be laying still on his back. Probably because he is masturbating.” Nobody ever knocks because it would be a mostly empty gesture. Oh, also there is only one cop, but he can turn into anything and hide anywhere. Like, for example, a piece of furniture in your room or a glass of water in a restaurant could turn out to be a cop at any time. The authorities throw people in jail whenever they want for as long as they want and that jail cell is completely transparent and constantly under intimate observation unless the plot requires otherwise.

Somehow, DS9 is simultaneously an intergalactic bazaar where trafficking in both human beings and weapons of mass destruction is commonplace. There’s lots of drinking, gambling and fighting. Everyone acts like there’s a lot more sex than there really is. Overall it reminds me of the place where one of my favorite movies (Casino) is set, and where about 150 of my least favorite movies are set: Las Vegas. Controlled depravity under total surveillance. I would definitely go there for the holosuites and I would say that I was going to take the opportunity to fire a phaser off into space but then I’d never get around to it and then I would want to go home. In any case, I think it makes for the best premise of the franchise because the action comes to them more organically. Especially because DS9 is a point of strategic importance to various conflicts, so it saves them from having to be like, “for the 89th time, we’ve discovered a planet with a population of less advanced humanoids. The only question remaining is, will some sort of predicament arise where we have to decide if we should aid them with our technology, or will it turn out that they were actually super advanced god like creatures who will never be heard from again?”

Shatner and Mulgrew: Confrontational Sexism from Pudge, Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Captain:
We know what we like in our Star Trek Captains: grandiloquent, swashbuckling geniuses who are overly good at everything and never wrong, played by the most preposterous hams thespianry has to offer. Avery Brooks’ Commander/Captain/Emissary/The Sisko, whose side jobs include heading earth defense and Cajun and Southern cookin’ fits the bill. He’s not the intergalactic booty destroyer that Kirk was, but he does attract some of the finest sisters in the galaxy, all of whom have good hair. And when he’s not doing that, he is creating the entire universe and much of history with his imagination.

Really! At least two episodes put forward the theory that the universe of Star Trek is the story told by the Sisko’s counterpart, also played by Brooks, a frustrated black writer in the 1950s named Benny Russell who dreams of space ships and equality between races. For this, he is thrown into the nuthouse, but he completes the story on the walls of his rubber room, granting life to billions. The evidence for this theory extends beyond the those episodes that posit it. It would also explain why Sisko has a fascination with the long forgotten sport of baseball. Also, the writer in the story is kind of a hack, which explains the show’s dialog and stuff like that and it makes sense that he would think up a protagonist’s name by doing something like, “Well, he’s a master soul food chef… Crisco… Cisco. Better make it Sisko.” Plus, if Benny was wrong, how do you explain his knowledge of the scientific trends of the future? And if the world of DS9 is imagined into existence by by Benny Russell in the 1950s that would mean he also correctly imagined all of the historical events mentioned between the time he lived and the time DS9 is set. Especially those that actually occurred between the time of Benny and the the time the fictional TV show DS9 was filmed, which probably means he even imagined your birth into existence from inside the TV. Therefore, I recommend believing the Benny Russell scenario because there’s kind of a Pascal’s wager thing going on where if he is wrong maybe you would cease to exist. Further discussion of the issue can be seen here, but if I have learned anything at all, it is this: The path of The Sisko is one of madness.

Back to the racial thing. I’m sure that at the time, Fox News types were like “Oh they just HAD to have a black captain!” But to those of us who live in the realm of sanity, Sisko’s blackness isn’t really a big thing. Like, of course a Star Trek captain could be black. We rational, progressive folk reserve our “political corectness gone mad” spiels for Janeway (see video above). However, when you watch episode after episode, while Sisko being black is rarely a major plot point, you can see that a great deal of thought went into presenting Sisko as a role model for Star Trek’s millions of African American fans. His favorite baseball player–Robinson being too on the nose–is Willie Mays. And as a hero, Sisko is of a similar template, representing the best of Afro American culture, but long having shed the aspects that were vestiges of racist oppression. Star Bleks are never proud of ignorance or how many different women they’ve had kids with. If cross walks existed, they would walk through them more quickly if they saw you trying to make a right turn. But they honor the memory of the civil rights struggle and their own formidable cultural achievements. For example, Sisko is reluctant to go to Vic’s Las Vegas Lounge because the holosuite program sanitizes the discrimination of the era it portrays. But Sisko doesn’t name his kid L’Janthony or BMW, but Jake. In short, in a few hundred years everybody will conclude that the truth lies somewhere between Bill Cosby and Chris Rock. Just in case you can’t see through all of the stoned glibness and rambling, a really do believe that all of the racial stuff was handled admirably.

Sisko certainly equals or exceeds his forerunners in terms of bombast, courage, and pretension somehow coexisting with near omniscience and totally unrealistic combat skills for a middle aged administrator. I’m going to reiterate what I said before. Sisko is: 1)A Starfleet Captain 2) Promoted to Commander 3) The Emissary, which is to say the intermediary between man and God and 4) Promoted to just being God, at least insofar as being creator of the entire post-1950′s universe. Also, there’s a side story where they travel back in time and accidentally get a Gandhi-like figure in the 21st centrury killed, so Sisko just fills in for him and takes his pivotal place in history. Because creating the universe was not a big enough feather in his cap. Because of all of this, the worm whole aliens refer to him simply as The Sisko. It’s almost as bad as Jesus.

So, in terms of over the top macho awesomeness, Sisko can stand with any other captain. But what about the acting? Obviously, nobody wants to see great, naturalistic acting here. This is a question of who devours the most scenery. Patrick Stewart might be a famous, old, British, Shakespearean actor but those guys are always gigantic hams who get too much deference because SIR LORD SHAKESPEARE OF ENGLAND. So he was a fine choice for Picard. And in any other franchise, he would be cock of the ham walk. But let’s get real. This is a two ham race, between Shatner and Brooks. I’m not going to argue that Brooks is a grander ham than Shatner because that is a hell of an argument to make. I will suggest, however, that if you view both performances with an open mind, the subject is at least open to discussion. Plus, the Siskos give us three generations of hams. For a kid, Cirroc Lofton is a pretty impresive ham as Jake, the most disappointing son since the retarded Manning brother, while Sisko’s father is played by Brock Peters with every once of the hammyness one would expect from an actor named Brock Peters.

As an aside, one way to differentiate Trek captains is whether they constantly defy logic and jeopardize thousands of lives on the basis of gut or principle. Kirk is all gut, while Picard is more of a principle guy. Archer (the one played by Scott Bacula) is almost all principle. Janeway is… well, honestly I usually kind of tuned out whenever she was talking. For me, Sisko strikes the right balance. He is the Star Trek Captain I would most fear at a poker table. Kirk’s luck would run out at some point because he couldn’t just keep guessing right forever. Picard would be tough, but he would have certain limits that could be tested. Archer would be predictable and kind of an ABC player, though a good one. Janeway is a woman with babies and hormones (see her video above). Sisko is capable of anything at any time. His repertoire of decisions includes all of the good ones and very few bad ones. He is a mad man tethered by reason. The fact that gods whisper into his ear could be a problem too. I bet Avery Brooks really had to reach deep to create this persona:

Shatner and Brooks: Legitimate Mental Illness from Pudge, Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Do not skip that video.

Lamest Alien Race:

The lamest alien race on DS9 is The Dosi, who appear in the episode “The Rules Of Acquisition.” They would be horrible enough looking if they were some race of hapless peasants, but this species is meant to be tough and intimidating. The implication of this is that somebody thought “you know what springs to mind when I think ‘intimidating?’ Well mimes, of course. And LARPers. Wait, wait…. what if I combined mimes AND LARPers into a single entitiy of pure fearsomeness? I’ll even throw in some Umpa Lumpa. Look out Giger!”

Best Alien Race:

The Ferengi. For one thing, they are one of the only races humanity can look down on from a cultural perspective and would also beat at most sports. This exchange sums it up pretty well:

Kira: I don’t understand your attitude about the Ferengi

Jadzia: That’s because you don’t socialize with them like I do. Looking back over seven lifetimes, I can’t think of a single race I’ve enjoyed more….

Kira: They are greedy, untrustworthy misogynistic little trolls and I wouldn’t turn my back on one of them for a second!

Jadzia: Neither would I but once you accept that, you’ll find they can be a lot of fun.

What could be a more powerful endorsement than Jadzia liking them and Kira hating them? That is like if a new movie came out and Gloria Allred was suing the producers while Kreayshawn got baked and attended the premiere. We’re meant to think of the Ferengi as still battling the limitations that humanity outgrows as part of the federation: ignorance, discrimination and lust for money. As those values clash with those of The Federation, we see the first cracks in the Ferengi cultural dam, which will eventually give way to Reason.. This is dangerous territory because the defining element of the “outdated” Ferengi culture is totally unfettered capitalism. In the Ferengi afterlife, you have to bribe your way into heaven. I think a pretty sizable part of the Star Trek audience are power nerd Libertarians and you can’t risk alienating them. So the Ferengi have to make up for everything with spunk, odd charm and guile, much like the humans had to do relative to the Vulcans and this best/worst dynamic makes them the most entertaining race.

Quark is the owner of the station’s bar and casino and the show’s primary Ferengi. In the first couple of seasons they were using pretty broad stokes and about every third or fourth episode, Quark would be involved in some scheme that had implications that were far bigger than they needed to be for any dramatic purpose. When he was found out, Sisko or Odo would chew him out for, say, smuggling biological weapons for use in a genocide and say “if I ever catch you doing that again…”

As the show develops, Quark becomes the center point of clash between Federation and Ferengi cultures and they scale back on the angle of him being a soulless merchant of WMDs, slaves, drugs, child pornography and Axe Body Spray. We learn that Quark underchargered starving Bajorans in the past, and he is riven by unspoken tendencies towards compassion and justice, his adherence to Ferengi values and his personal virtues and failings. His mother is the vanguard, advocating for everything from fair trade to women being allowed to do business. Rom, (below) is the labor progressive. Liquidator Brunt is the reactionary force that initially has some sway with Quark. But his extremism and refusal to compromise ultimately makes Brunt into centrist Quark’s chief nemesis, thereby nudging him towards progress. Like many hard reactionary factions, say the KKK, Brunt eventually becomes an out of control TIE fighter (sorry for crossing streams) of craziness, spinning off into the dark space of irrelevance and compelling everyone else to move in the opposite direction. Wallace Shawn steals the show every time as Grand Negus Zek who obviously represents the elites. All of them. He’s like a business guru/king/religious figure/president, except when the story requires him to answer to some other political apparatus. He too is eventually persuaded towards progress, but that sort of seems like it could have gone either way. If Zek didn’t end up Delonte Westing Quark’s mom, maybe he would have thrown his hat in with Brunt and Ferengi progress would have been more tumultuous.

Rom:

Rom is Quark’s brother and Nog’s father. Early on, he is just sort of a groveling idiot who lets Quark walk all over him, but then it turns out that he is good at fixing stuff and he works with O’Brein, fixing stuff for Starfleet. At first, I thought this was inconsistent because Rom never seemed very smart and now here he is fixing quantum flux fantabulators all of the sudden. Then I realized that it is the future, so fixing a matter transporter then is like some guy fixing an engine now and that Nog really just has what they call “bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.” Because the Ferengi only value wealth, Quark feels like Rom being a skilled laborer makes him useless and Rom feels compelled to go along with him. Contrast that with humans, where you think the guy who fixes your car is an idiot because he religiously listens to Mancow’s Morning Madhouse and he thinks you’re an idiot because you don’t know how to change your own oil. Maybe that is why, after being exposed to Federation culture, Rom winds up being a general progressive, crucial to the movement to make Quark’s a union shop and moderately sympathetic to Ferengi feminism. What can we take away from all this? The working man is only a friend to progressive causes when he has his employer’s boot on his neck. I think this is why Democratic presidents rarely do anything to actually help workers, like quintupling the size of OSHA the minute they take office. Because of Rom.

Nog:

Nog is somewhat disturbing because while Jake sprouts from a tween into UConn recruit, the actor who plays Nog undergoes no physical changes during the show’s seven year run. I wonder if he was one of those child actors whose parents gave him female hormones so that he would have a better chance to get roles and then everyone involved turns a blind eye to this horrible act of child abuse.

As the first Ferengi to enter Star Fleet, and before that, one of the first Ferengi to receive a liberal education in an earth style school, Nog represents the nerdy kid from a backwards culture who is the first in his family to go to college but his family is kind of ambivalent about it rather than proud because they are resentful rubes and then the kid comes home insisting that the earth can not possibly be 6,000 years old, just as his parents had feared. If the show ran longer, they could have further developed Nog to the point where he overcompensated and became a complete knob. Like the kind of kid who decides to stand up and louldy declare his vegetarianism at Thanksgiving Dinner and who gets mad at his dad for liking Larry Bird. So Nog is the one you identify with if you are one of the only smart kids in some hick town or if you are an Antwon Fisher. Look at this scene between Nog and Jake and pretend that instead of being a Ferengi, Nog comes from white trash, but Jake remains a black kid.

Jake: I guess humans and Ferengi don’t have a lot to talk about.

Nog: That’s what my father says

Jake: Yeah, mine too.

Jake (hesitating, but then with conviction): That doesn’t mean they’re right. We always had stuff to talk about before! So what do you say, you still want to be friends?

Nog: Yes. But when my father finds out, he won’t be happy.

It is as if DS9 is reaching out, offering that first ray of light to trapped young minds. Not just by giving them something to relate to, but by forcing them to face the tension of relating to a character that is an amalgamation of extreme stereotypes about Jews and stereotypes about the kind rednecks who believe that extreme stereotypes about Jews are true and whom I believe stereotypes about. Money grubbers/teeth that look like a candy cane you accidentally left in your back pocket; see greed as a virtue/abusive towards women; good with money/love to gamble; manipulate politicians to their interests/manipulated by politicians against their interests, eat disgusting food/eat disgusting food. And in the same way that tube grubs look like spam and mayo sandwiches on wonder bread to us, through the eyes of someone traped in West Memphis, Arkansas they look like Chinese food. And/or Jake and Nog are gay.

Viva Riva!
Djo Munga crafted a gritty urban crime drama with energy to spare, and it benefits from strong performances and the uncommon setting of Kinshasa. The unique aspect, though, is its uncompromising honesty. The story has no apologies for its lurid subject matter, graphic violence, sex, lesbian action, and the utterly corrupt characters that make up the heart of Viva Riva. Ridiculously entertaining, while having neither sympathy nor mercy for the characters held in thrall to the relentless Congolese beat. This is in some ways an exercise in style, but it never drifts too far from the central theme of the gravitational center of money, and how it drives and destroys everything we see. Sure, the men and women kill for money, but without cash flow, like the gasoline Riva brings to the city, nothing shall move.

Tree of Life
One of the most ambitious films of this decade, or indeed any decade, Tree of Life grapples with the most basic and unanswerable of questions. Ostensibly about a father raising his children, it becomes a meditation on how we relate to the processes that created life around us; or maybe it is about how we deal with a distant deity and make sense of religion; or using vast perspective to understand where we fit in the struggle for life and how we find our way. There are as many interpretations as there were viewers of this transcendent film. I considered it through the perspective of the father; falsely confident about how the world is around him, he feels his way through the process of rearing his kids, never able to know the wisdom of his actions until long afterwards. You tell me.

Melancholia
Crippling depression isn’t so bad in the end of days – if Earth is about to collide with another planet, then having an apocalyptic view is a positive boon. While a fascinating consideration of how different personalities deal with the yawning precipice of oblivion, it allows the audience to understand and perhaps internalize the power of depression. That being said, Melancholia is uncommonly entertaining, with shockingly beautiful compositions. The end is nothing to be worried about, after all.

The Artist
A minute or so into The Artist, I had forgotten I was watching a silent film. The surprise here is the extraordinary skill Hazanavicius brings to telling a story with spare dialogue, scrupulously constructed visuals, and the faces of two of the best performances of the year. A star-making turn by Berenice Bejo is matched by a pitch-perfect Jean Dujardin (who already is a star via the OSS films). As far as bittersweet films go, this ode to the glory of old Hollywood is as bitter as it gets. But that is the central theme – the Artist, if they truly believe in their art, wish only to entertain, and that for a brief time. The crowd, adoring though it may be, will move on, never to return. ‘That is life’, as one character says. So why is one of the best films of the year in a dead medium?

Princess of Montpensier
Passion destroys all it touches in this sumptuous costume drama from a master of the craft. Against the backdrop of the pointlessly bloody yet enthusiastically fought war between Huguenots and Catholics, a similarly aimless love triangle reveals the destructive force of passion amongst shallow people who have yet to learn that life is not to be taken too seriously. At least not if it is to be understood. Populated by mostly narrow-minded characters driven by emotion to destructive ends, we get to view the awkward dance of human nature as people labor against their best interests. All in the name of love, pride, honor, and faith – all variants of foolish passion. Seldom has the cataract of human conflict been viewed with such thoughtful reserve.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
This odd meditation on our history and how we interpret those frozen moments in time captured in ancient objects fascinates beyond reasonable comprehension. The rare experience of the Chauvet Cave becomes the centerpiece for a review of prehistoric peoples, or at least our guess as to who they were based on what was left behind. This sets up the amazing sequence of slow shots of the oldest cave paintings of the world, preserved for tens of thousands of years. Primitive, yet sophisticated in use of contrast and medium, and in the creative use of the contours of the cave; possibly the greatest works of art in human history.

The Red Chapel
A thoughtful commentary on the slippery nature of truth in documentaries, all masquerading as a sublime practical joke on North Korea. A group of comics seek to show the creepy and self-destructive culture of the world’s most isolated country using the dumbest imaginable stage comedy show. Meanwhile, a simple and goofy expose becomes something else entirely. As it turns out, propaganda goes both ways, and The Red Chapel becomes not only wickedly funny, but also ends up burying the guerilla documentary as a fundamentally dishonest genre.

Meek’s Cutoff
A small band of settlers strike west in search of a new life, and in Oregon circa 1845, they find themselves utterly lost, without water or food. Guided by one of the better-constructed unreliable narrators in cinema, their guide Meek has a shortcut in mind. As they press forward into nothingness, we are lost with them in this wilderness. Lacking in traditional narrative structure or any sense of closure, Meek’s Cutoff is a unsettlingly immersive experience as we join the characters in not knowing whether salvation or death can be found beyond the next hill. Perhaps they will make it, as it is always just a bit further. We must do without a hero or any real guide, just as they do, and have no idea who is speaking the truth. Metaphorically rich and thematically dense, one could see it as a simple treatise on the nature of risk while in the midst; the risk of trusting to fate, the gamble inherent in retaining one’s humanity at the cost of safety, and the payment demanded by ill fortune. In more concrete terms, it is a cry from a nation, once emboldened by Manifest Destiny, that has completely lost its way.

Certified Copy
There are no immutable truths in art, as in life or love – subjective in all ways especially regarding perspective. Straying across subjects about art, authenticity, and how these could apply to men and women, courting and married, now and long into the future, Certified Copy is a brilliant work that does not fit any conventional narrative mold. Part of the way into this feature, an antique dealer and a writer appear to be discussing the inherent value of copies against the original – and then the goalposts are moved in a way that shifts the subject, bringing subtext to the surface, and telescoping time in dramatic fashion. Bold and meditative, and benefits from repeat viewings as the person we are changes with time – as would one’s view of this film.

Life, Above All
A blistering indictment of South Africa’s response on the level of health ministry, government, and society, Life, Above All is a deeply intimate look at the effects of a pandemic that has crippled an entire continent. But never mind the mind-boggling statistics of HIV – this focuses on one family that is being devastated by the disease, but even more so by the malignant actions of the community around them. Belief in magic and curse rules the land, and provides a protective curtain behind which the plague spreads unchallenged. This film deftly addresses the war between fact and superstition, and the proxies that fight on their behalf. There is no other way to deal with adversity of any kind other than head-on, and it can be said that AIDS has been less damaging to Africa than the ignorance that nurtures it.

The Muppets
The visionary creation of Jim Henson is now regarded with nostalgia – but The Muppets make it clear that the show is not over yet. The consummate entertainers unite in a knowing and clever film that is a tribute to entertainment and entertainers. Equally turns touching and hilarious, The Muppets is a fitting way to reinvigorate the stage show and reestablish Kermit and Company. Welcome back, guys.