Return of the Living SB Movie Experiment: Pontypool

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Halloween Week: Day 7

Teeth

Suggested by thetower52


Ah, vagina dentata. The urban legend about a condition where some women are born with teeth in their vagina. Obviously this concept is ripe for horror and it's kind of surprising that there aren't more horror stories on the subject, especially when you consider the number of monsters clearly designed to resemble the mythical mutation.

But on to the movie which is... heh. A few days ago, I took a look at Ginger Snaps, which tackled the subject of female puberty through the symbolism of werewolves and interestingly enough, this one also aims to be a parable for feminine problems, this time satirizing how negative society can be regarding female sexuality, which is indeed an interesting topic that could lead to a very good movie, but it's not very good at it. For example, early on, we get a scene where Dawn, our main character, is at school, during a biology class where they are studying male genitalia, complete with a detailed drawing of the penis but once they're done with it and move on to the vulva, the picture has a big sticker on it because the school is opposed to depictions of vaginas and the teacher is embarrassed to talk about it.

Now, that would be a clever and all too true scene except, aside from obvious logical problems (why would a clearly sex-negative school even have sex ed classes to begin with?), it comes off as highly hypocritical when this movie itself is afraid to show female nudity. Yeah, for a movie about a fanged vagina that is apparently trying to make the point that female sexuality should not be more taboo than male sexuality, it's pretty conspicuous that they always make sure that we can never see any female genitalia (other than artwork); and just to compound the problem, we do see penises multiple times in this film.

the other problem, and what really brings this movie down is that if you want to use the concept of a toothed vagina and have the woman with said vagina use her power and still be the heroine, that basically means she has to be sexually assaulted because I doubt anyone sane would find gratuitous genital manipulation to be heroic. And so, literally every man she comes across (with the exception of her father) tries (and occasionally succeeds) to rape or take advantage of her, which brings a whole host of unfortunate implications. I don't think it was intentional but it does make it look like the makers of this film are saying that deep down, all men are rapists.
On top of that, it's one thing when she emasculates would-be rapists, but then she also uses her powers on one guys for revealing he only had sex with her to win a bet and on her own brother (yes) for, well, generally being an awful person (but still not a rapist), which kind of make the whole thing go from "over-the-top but ultimately harmless revenge fantasy against rapists" to "glorifying sexual violence against men as a punishment for anything".

Now I know people are going to argue that it's not what they mean to say, that it's just female empowerment fantasy and there's no harm meant but, even if you ignore the disturbing implications of the idea that female empowerment comes hand-in-hand with misandry and emasculation (both psychological and physical in that case)... it really isn't the case. Think about it: she can only use her teeth when she's already being raped. What kind of empowerment fantasy requires the main character to be repeatedly raped for it to work?! Dawn is completely dependent on her attackers' actions for her to use her "weapon" and as such, she is one of the most victimized characters in fiction history I can think of.

Of course, they still wanted her to be a strong and proud heroine so she takes all that in strides, which opens yet another can of worms as for a movie that condemns rape so vehemently, they are awfully casual with it. After she is raped by her kinda-boyfriend early on, she is obviously distraught and goes to take a shower but afterwards, even when a gynaecologist tries to abuse her, she takes it surprisingly well, being apparently more horrified by her vagina working its magic on his fingers than him molesting her, making it her second rape in two days. I mean it's hard to take this revenge fantasy seriously when the main character hardly seems affected by what she's getting revenge against. It's like "rape? Eh, no biggie, just shower that shit right off and you'll be fine in the morning".

That's really this film's major problem: they really don't seem to have thought the implications of the story. Another example: so the rape-y gynaecologist gets his fingers bitten off. Serves him right for what he did to Dawn, right? Except we then see him at the hospital having them stitched back, all for the sake of a joke where the surgeon asks "are you sure you don't want to tell us how it happened?"; so apparently, nobody knows what he did so presumably he's gonna get away with it and do the same thing to more women. Female empowerment!

That's why I also don't think they meant to make it look like rape ain't no biggie, it's why I also don't believe they meant for this film to glorify sexual violence on men. It's not that this film is mean-spirited or amoral, it's just that they plain didn't think things through and so the film ends up diminishing its own message, just like that scene I mentioned earlier where they mock society's negativity toward female sexuality while at the same time doing the exact thing they're criticizing.

It doesn't help that the attempts at comedy are pretty bad, like the aforementioned hospital scene or how Dawn is (at least at first) pictured as a purity-ring-wearing prude who preaches abstinence whereas her step-brother is a hedonistic sex-obsessed fiend with posters of naked chicks all over his room and listening to Heavy metal all day! Ha! That's never been done before!

So all-in-all, it's a film that could have been good (although it's not terrible), with a very noble goal, that of encouraging women to be more positive about their own body and sexuality, but it ultimately falls flat because of a lack of focus that ends up giving it implications it (hopefully) wasn't meant to have.


Well, that's it for Halloween Week. Thank you all for joining me and reading my reviews as it's always nice to see people actually interested in what you have to say. It makes it all worthwhile. I hope you had as much fun reading them as I had writing them and watching these films and yes, even though I obviously didn't like them all, I do enjoy the fact that I watched them as every film is an experience and even those you don't like, you can take something away from them. Anyway, next time we're back to business as usual and we go back to the list in regular order, with Ip Man.

Oh and one last thing that I feel could be interesting, here is how I'd rank the films I have watched for this, from my least favourite to favourite. Although do keep in mind that even the lowest-ranked ones I didn't find downright bad, more just kind of disappointing:

7. Teeth

6. Would You Rather?

5. Dracula

4. Plan 9 From Outer Space

3. The Shining

2. Rosemary's Baby

1. Ginger Snaps

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Ip Man

Suggested by The Spelunker!


Yay, the experiment is back! It's a two days after Christmas miracle! This time, it's Ip Man, the fictionalized story of one of the most famous masters of the Wing Chun style of Kung Fu, who was famously Bruce Lee's mentor.

Most of it takes place in 1938, after Japan invaded China, which of course means the movie has a strongly patriotic feel. In fact, at some points the patriotism aspect occasionally takes over the biopic aspect, which I must admit threw me off a bit (not to mention it feels rather out of place when you know that the real Ip Man was a police officer during the Japanese invasion...). However, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is a very well made film and you probably expect, the martial arts scenes are very impressive and beautifully choreographed.

Story-wise, there isn't much to say. Despite the historical context and of course the China vs Japan theme, it's pretty much the standard story for a Kung Fu movie: defenceless innocent people are attacked by a violent and ruthless group, and in this case we actually get that twice as there is a sub-plot about a mill being racketed by a gang (by the way, that's now three out of three Chinese martial arts films I see that involve a gang of axe-wielding criminals. Is that a thing in China?) and so they beg a local skilful but lonesome martial arts master for help, and we of course get the obligatory scene of him training everymen and everywomen to fight back and he eventually defeats the bad guys' leader in a one-on-man fight. It's not particularly original but it's effective and it's well executed here.

So basically, martial arts fans will definitely love this movie as it features excellent, numerous action scenes and the story is serviceable. Do not watch this as an actual biopic though as it takes a lot of liberties with the fact and as I mentioned already, it definitely focuses moe on patriotism than you'd expect. Just take it as a work of fiction that just si happens to be involving Ip Man. Give it a watch if you have the chance.


Next time, I'll be taking a look at my third Kubrick movie of the experiment with the legendarily brain-f***y 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

I'm about to start watching 2001 but before I do, I'd like to announce something. I've had this idea for a little while and I figure it's as good a time as any to test it out. I thought it could be fun if I tweeted my thought on what I'm watching in real time. Now don't get me wrong: I'll only tweet if there's something I find particularly noteworthy and I probably won't be using it all the time, but I figured it could be a fun way to share my thoughts as they come without spamming this thread. So, starting right now, I'll be using #GSBME to post my immediate reactions. Again, can't guarantee I'll be using it a lot, just know that it's there. Oh and if you're interested, my account is @ J_R_Nehlig.

Edit: goddamn user link system. Just remove the space after the @.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

2001: A Space Odyssey

Suggested by bob

To explain what this movie is about is a difficult task, and in fact still vehemently debated to this day so I think I will give you just the facts when it comes to the story: in the future, mankind discovers a large black monolithic structure, obviously fabricated by an intelligent life form, but it is over 4000 years old and so couldn't have been made by humans. This leads to a team of astronauts being sent to Jupiter, helped in their mission by HAL 9000, a miraculous computer run by an AI so sophisticated it pretty much reaches human levels of thought. This ends up becoming a problem when it decides "human error" is jeopardizing the mission.

The film is famously slow-paced, with many lingering yet beautiful shots. In many cases, this works in the film's favour, creating an atmosphere and making you feel the loneliness of being in Space, but in some cases it feels rather gratuitous and seems to mostly be here to show off the admittedly gorgeous visuals. And this I feel will either make or break the movie for you; I'm a big Kubrick fan so I rather enjoyed seeing him display his style and his vision, but if you're not particularly fond of him, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd get bored or find the amount of lingering scenes obnoxious after a while. Either way though, I feel the atmosphere is well worth it, and it has some of the creepiest moments I've seen on film, let alone in a non-horror work.

But I'm sure what you really want me to talk about is the ending, the infamously bizarre ending, the very reason why people keep talking about this movie: what the Hell is it supposed to mean? Well, I don't think we can really ever find a straightforward answer (unless you read the book, where I hear it's explained much more clearly, i.e. at all; although of course there's always the question of whether what is canon for one version of a work also is for its adaptation into another medium), but here's my interpretation: at the beginning of the film, we see a group of Australopithecus who will eventually go on to become Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but before they encounter the monolith, they act no differently from regular apes and only start to show human-ish behaviour afterwards, so obviously the monoliths can trigger evolution. So the visions Dave has is the knowledge necessary to evolve being transferred to his mind.

What about him meeting his older selves, then? Well, I think it's the monolith offering him a choice: live a mundane but comfortable and safe life, free of the fear of the unknown, or end it now and be reborn as the next step in human evolution. He evidently chooses the second option.


So, that's are my two cents on the subject. I'll leave you to ponder it and I'll be seeing you next time, where we'll be taking a look at Titan A.E.; it's been a while since we've had an animated film in the experiment and hey! This one isn't even an autobiographical account of life during some sort of horrific event! That's a change.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

I'd also very much like to know how many people followed the hashtag. I know at least one person did, so there's that . But seriously, I know I announced it in a bit of a rush just before actually starting it so I wasn't expecting many people to notice or be interested right away, I'm just curious to see how many people were already in. And of course, don't forget that I'll be using it for future movies as well.

[bob]

Jan 3, 2015 6:33:06 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

I'd also very much like to know how many people followed the hashtag. I know at least one person did, so there's that . But seriously, I know I announced it in a bit of a rush just before actually starting it so I wasn't expecting many people to notice or be interested right away, I'm just curious to see how many people were already in. And of course, don't forget that I'll be using it for future movies as well.

this guy did

[J]

I don't know about any hashtag but I think I might start following this after being accidentally tagged.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

I'mma thinking of watching Titan A.E. later tonight so look out for the #GSBME hashtag on Twitter and my account @ J_R_Nehlig (remove the space after the @) for a taste of that sweet, sweet live-tweeting.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Welp, I'm having some trouble with my player so unfortunately, it's just not happening tonight. :/ I will try again tomorrow.

[Deleted]

BOOOOOOO! EVERYBODY LETS BOOOOOOOO SSNAKEBITE

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Alright, ten minutes before giving it another go so if you're interested, look out for that hashtag.

[bob]

Jan 12, 2015 15:28:27 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

Alright, ten minutes before giving it another go so if you're interested, look out for that hashtag.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Titan A.E.

Suggested by J is Justice

Dammit this movie was so nearly good! It's so frustrating! Through the whole thing, you really want to like it because it looks so creative and it's got a lot of clever ideas, but then you keep finding stuff that really prevents you from truly enjoying the movie.

The plot's pretty good. The Earth is unfortunately destroyed, the survivors drifting away into space, their numbers dwindling rapidly without their natural environment. Fortunately, the father of the main character, Cale, had anticipated that and gave him a ring that would allow him to find a ship called Titan which could give humanity a chance to start anew (for Fallout players, think of it as a planet-sized Garden of Eden Creation Kit). However, an extremely powerful race of extraterrestrials known as the Drej doesn't like the sound of that and is trying to stop them.

So yeah, while that's not super original, it's still a solid setup so the problem isn't with the story, but with many little things that end up weighing the movie down and which, added together, really take their toll on your enjoyment of it. I'll start with Cale, the main character. He's probably the least interesting-looking of the characters but I won't hold that against him. What I will hold against him is his attitude. He does get better towards the end but for almost half the movie... I thought he was kind of a dick.

Now, what they tried to do with him, and which I found pretty interesting, is that he's pretty much resigned to the extinction of the Human race and would rather spend the time he has trying to make a living than risk it for a hopeless cause. Alright, fair enough, that's an interesting idea, but unfortunately the way they depict it is with him constantly complaining and snarking at people who are actually trying to do something, at some point saying that if he doesn't like the way the journey is going, he'll just straight-up leave. Yup, our hero seriously threatens to let Humanity die out if he doesn't get his way. On top of that, the voice acting on him is really weird. Matt Damon was his voice and while there's nothing wrong with it from a purely acting perspective, he tends to keep it too monotone compared to the character's facial expressions and body language, creating an odd contrast.

Second is the animation. Now, the designs are great and the actual hand-drawn animation is really nice, but then for some reason they decided to mix it in with CGI elements. And not just a bit either, we're not talking about stuff like in, say, Cowboy bebop where most of it would be traditional animation and every once in a while a detail would be CGI. No, here, you often have entire backgrounds in CGI with only the characters being drawn. It would be one thing if it helped create a style but for the most part it's just jarring, with some weird perspective going on in some of the shots and if I'm honest... the CGI isn't very good most of the time, even for when this film was made.

And finally, if the story is fairly good, the way it's told, which is infinitely more important in any fiction, is the really big problem. Of course we have the hero and Akima, the single female human character end up together, but their romance is one of the most sudden I've ever seen. By the time they start showing actual signs of affection towards one-another, they have had one dialogue together, as in just the two of them. And that wasn't exactly a romantic one either. But then they get separated and when they reunite suddenly, they're in love. Well, that was easy.

The same goes for the villains, aside from the Drej's nebulous motivations for even wanting to stop Cale & co (Akima says something about them being "afraid of what humanity could become" and that's all we get. Hum... do they have any actual reason to fear a dying race might become a threat if they stop dying? Keep in mind it's not even like the remnants of Humanity are fighting them), there is something I must put in a spoiler tag so I'll just say that I couldn't believe they actually went with such a lazy plot device. It was so bad it basically killed the movie for me

SPOILER: Click to show

Turns out the heroes' captain and one of the crewmembers were manipulating them the whole time and they were actually using Cale to give them the Titan in exchange for a reward. How do our cunning heroes figure this out? The captain literally randomly shouts it out while contacting the Drej and not even bothering to close the door to his room.

That's it. That's our reveal for the big twist. The bad guy just explicitly yells the whole thing in absurd detail and the good guys overhear it. It's the kind of stuff you see in heavy-handed parodies! I honestly can't believe they'd play it straight.

Now, looking it up a bit, it appears the movie has spent quite a lot of time in development Hell, with five different people writing different versions without a clear goal for a long time, Bluth being a second choice for director (and being the one who apparently did manage to put a bit of focus on it). TV Tropes goes as far as to say "The movie did not really have a vision for most of its production, until the end". And, well, it shows.

A lot of it feels rushed, as if some ideas where afterthoughts or had large chunks missing, with plot points coming in abruptly and being just as abruptly dropped. It would also explained the uneven tone of the movie. It has too many dark elements (on-screen deaths, blood, a guy gets his freaking neck snapped. One throwaway alien character even splatters into a pile of gore) to be appropriate for kids, even as a dark kids movie, but it has too many cheesy comedic moments to be taken seriously by adults and they almost always feel out of place (That alien that gets splattered? Yeah, it also leaves comedy chattering teeth and even somehow still throws in one last one-liner. Because, you know... it's not disturbing if you play the gore for comedy, I guess?).

As a result, this movie never really finds a style, it never settles into an atmosphere and it doesn't really click with either audience. It's a real damn shame because had it just stuck to one style, it could have been great. It had a lot of potential and again, the designs, be it for the characters, the vehicles, the locations or anything, are all fantastic, but none of it is used to its full potential and t never seems to be sure what it wants to do and doesn't end up really developing any of the admittedly very interesting concepts it presents.


Well, next time we're going for a completely different style and it will in fact be my very first musical, not only for this thread but in general too (well, unless you count disney animated films, although I wouldn't since it's not the focus of those) with Thoroughly Modern Millie.

[BayleyTiffyCodyCenaJudyHopps]

Believe me, Bluth himself was the least pleased with the executive meddling the movie suffered from. Shame, I still really like it even though it's not the peak of his catalog.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

The Princess Bride

[bob]

Blazing Saddles

[Push R Truth]

Dinosaur Island

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Suggested by cageking666

Full disclosure: this is the first musical I've seen in its entirety and as you may have guessed from that fact, I'm not especially fond of the genre. That said, I actually did enjoy the movie more than I expected, although I still don't find it all that great. It is rather bizarre to see the 60's take on the 20's in 2015 and to be honest, it does feel more like the era in which the film was made than the one it is set in, although I can't deny it does give the movie a certain charm as long as you don't mind the campier side of the 60's (if you do... you might want to give this one a pass).

Another thing I find weird is the plot as for most of the movie, it barely seems to be there. You see, Millie and her new friend Dorothy both live in a hotel whose owner kidnaps young White women to sell them to Chinese slavers, but until about three quarters into the movie, the main characters don't seem aware of the movie and it focuses mostly on, well, Millie being "thoroughly modern" and her love story between herself, the happy-go-lucky Jimmy, her boss Trevor and Dorothy, making the movie feel more like a collection of short scenes rather than a story. It makes it rather jarring when things suddenly focus on the White slavery ring, to say nothing of the very odd contrast between the campy cheery mood and the seriousness of the subject.

The film also has a fair amount of humour and while I never laughed out loud, I must admit there were a few bits that I found amusing. I was especially surprised to find so many boob jokes in a movie of that time. With that said though, I can't help but feel that, due to this being a fairly old movie tackling an even older time period, many references went way over my head.

Overall I found it to be alright. I wasn't exactly thrilled by it but I was never bored either, especially since the characters are fun enough to keep you interested through the whole thing. It probably didn't help that, as I mentioned, I am not particularly fond of musicals and I'm sure someone who is more into them than I am would find it far better than I did.


Next time we will leave the sweet camp comfort of musicals and enter a world of gritty darkness with the famously bizarre Memento.

[Mochi Lone Wolf]

The Wrestler

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Memento

Suggested by bob

This is a movie I've been curious about for a while due to its gimmick. The main character, Leonard suffers from a form of amnesia caused by cranial trauma which prevents him from creating new memories. He can remember everything up to the incident just fine but everything afterwards rapidly fades away. And so the story is told to us in reverse order, starting with the end and backtracking until we get the explanation of how we got there, much like how someone who can't make new memories would try to trace back their actions to understand why they're doing what they're doing. And what Leonard is doing is try to find the murderer/rapist of his wife and exact revenge of them, which is why he has tattooed the most important facts of his investigation (as notes can be lost or destroyed) on his body and goes nowhere without his photos and notes.

It's an interesting gimmick and it makes for a pretty novel way to tell a story; and it's fairly well done. However... I do feel it could be a lot better. This is one of those movies where you kind of have to just go with it and not think too hard about the details or else you'll keep finding tiny cracks and pull yourself right out of it. Then again, from the few Nolan movies I've seen, it seems to be a common feature of his works. Guy only cares about telling his story and isn't afraid to brute-force it even if there ends up being plot holes or questionable logic.

So really, that's to be expected. However, another problem I had is that there is almost no-one to root for. Almost everyone but Leonard is an asshole in some way, and not exactly the subtle kind, with several people who seem nice at first end up being exploiting Leonard in some manner, some of them even gloating about it right in his face because they know he won't remember it. And even Leonard, although he's not as bad as everyone else, he still has his moments that make it hard to truly sympathize with him.

But my main problem with the characters is that even though Leonard's motive is to avenge his wife and he gets emotional when talking about her, flashbacks don't really flesh her out much and their relationship doesn't come off as especially passionate and in fact, we see quite a bit of bickering. It's hard to really get invested in this story of a man avenging his wife when what we see of the characters doesn't paint a particularly loving couple.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a good movie but I can't help but feel I was more interested in the story because I wanted to know how everything clicks together than because I really cared about the characters and wanted to see them find closure with their struggles.


Well, after a brief interlude, next time we'll come back to musicals with Les Parapluies de Cherbourgo.