Superman Returns

Having to work at 9 tomorrow morning, I'll make this brief. I just saw Superman Returns and pretty much loved it. It was a joy to watch. I don't want to get really nitpicky about stuff. Like how the end is a little anti-climactic and drags a little, or shit about how Clark Kent's absence is never explained when Superman is around. It's a MOVIE for Christ's sake, and a fun one at that. And a jaw droppingly beautiful one at that...well, at least to look at. "How did they do that?" I wonder, as Superman saves a crashing plane, or flies into outerspace to hover above earth. It's surreal and magnificent. And I don't even like Superman! Not really, I think it's kind of cheap that he is indestructable except for Kryptonite. I mean, what's the point? Superman saves humanity from some super villain every time. I want to see Superman in trouble, and that's what I got. There's actually this wonderful Citizen Kane reference in regards to a couple of newspapers near the end of the film. I don't wanna spoil it, but let's just say that I saw Superman taken to a place that I've never seen him taken before. And even though Lex Luthor isn't as hardcore as he could be, Kevin Spacey fits the role perfectly.

And now, for my absolute favorite part of the movie, which is, you'll never believe it, James Marsden's portrayal of Lois Lane's fiance Richard White. Not ONLY did Marsden blow me away (who the hell knew this guy could act!) but the way he is handled as a character is just bloody brilliant. In a formula movie, you'd expect him to be Superman's rival, someone that we're designed to hate because we wanna see Superman and Lois hook up in the end. What we see in this film is a man who loves his wife and son (yeah, Lois had a kid...) and the lengths he goes to to save them from Lex Luthor are nothing short of heroic. It's this human heroism that really makes the movie for it, especially when it works together with Superman's superheroism, and we get to see them face to face. And it's not jealousy or anger, it's a mutual respect. And who would have thought Superman would ever need to get his ass saved? I wasn't expecting it, and I was oh so pleasantly surprised.

On another note, I think that Kate Bosworth was completely miscast as Lois Lane. I didn't buy it, and that is really the only thing that bothered me throughout the whole movie. Maybe Brandon Routh is just too much for her to be up against, seeing as he knocks this one out of the park, I mean, he is Superman. But why Kate Bosworth? Sure, she needs to be young and all but how hard is it to find a young woman to play Lois Lane! There are so many! And they are NATURAL brunettes, too. Her performance is just so flimsy, and when she's not getting knocked around (which is about half of the movie), she's...not...really doing anything for me.

But anyway, I need to sleep. Regardless of Kate Bosworth, I still had a very, very, very enjoyable moviegoing experience.

The Vanishing

After watching an hour and twenty minutes of this film, I began to wonder why this was being billed as one of the best horror movies around. Ever since my friend Jimmy (Darrah, a brilliant filmmaker in his own right) showed me Eli Roth's film Hostel, I have been absolutely obsessed with finding movies that make me feel nervous, uncomfortable, and just plain fucking scared! I want that reaction I get when I watch a Takashi Miike movie. I don't necessarily have to be scared, but I want to squirm in my seat. Like in his film Imprint, which he did for Shotime's "Masters of Horror" series. His episode was deemed "too extreme for television." After downloading it and watching it, I could see why. I squirmed, I turned away, I screamed and let out noises of disgust. There's just something about seeing needles going into that space between the fingernail and the skin, and then seeing the area beneath the nail fill with blood, that makes me have those reactions. In short, I feel like I'm in a rut. Watching art films and classics is nice, and it's a necessary part of my life...a part of my life that I have been dilluting with trash movies, just to offset the way I see movies. And now, the new sensation is horror.

So, watching George Sluizer's original 1988 version of The Vanishing, I couldn't figure out how it was a horror film. What I was watching was a superbly crafted and atmospheric mystery/thriller. The set-up goes like this. Rex and his girlfriend Saskia are going on summer holiday. They have left their home in Amsterdam to go cycling in France. After seeing the happy couple driving together, we see Saskia getting nervous about the fuel meter. Rex assures her that they are fine, and then they run out of gas right in the middle of a long tunnel. Saskia starts freaking out, trying to find the flashlight that she packed, and Rex refuses to put up with her fussing and leaves to get gas. He returns with a gas can, and Saskia is missing from the car. He drives out of the tunnel to find Saskia standing on the side of the road, clutching the flashlight. She makes him promise that he will never abandon her again, and he promises. The two come to a gas station to fill the car up, and this is where the film took an interesting turn, or at least I thought. I had expected to see a movie that focused on a guy trying to figure out who kidnapped his wife, but as soon as they get to the gas station, we see a man putting on a fake cast and sling, and we know that he is going to be responsible for the vanishing that the film's title suggests. Saskia goes into the station to use the restroom, and we see the man with the cast follow her in. Saskia returns, another false alarm. She and Rex sit in the grass, and Saskia stresses that he needs to never abandon her again. They get ready to leave, but she wants to go buy a couple of cold drinks for the road, and she never returns. We see some backstory of how the man with the cast, Raymond Lemorne, came to the gas station and then the film cuts to a poster being put up on a light post. On it is a picture of Saskia and it says that she has been missing for three years.

The rest of the film is spent equally following the lives of Rex, who is desperately trying to find out what happened to Saskia, and Lemorne, who sends Rex postcards telling him to meet him, never to show up. Rex has a new girlfriend, but just won't let go. He needs to know what happened to his girlfriend, or his friend, as he refers to her for the rest of the film. He has hundreds and thousands of dollars in debts, money that he has spent trying to unsolve this mystery. We learn that Lemorne is a claustrophobic professor in chemistry, has a wife and two daughters, and a seemingly normal life. After seeing Rex giving his plea on television, he decides to confront him. Rex, desperate for answers, goes with Lemorne to France. On the way, we learn Lemorne's motives. As a boy, while standing on the balcony of his house which overlooked the street, he tells how he fought the normal impulse to not jump and jumped, breaking his arm. He is, as medical textbooks would later state, an example of a "sociopath." He then tells of how, while on vacation with his family, he saved a young girl from drowning and was seen as a hero and idolized by his younget daughter. It was then that he decided he needed to commit the most evil act possible to counter this. To prove something to himself.

We learn more and more about Lemorne, and are given subtle clues and references to fate that will play into the absolutely CHILLING finale. I swear, like The Wicker Man and Hostel, this is a film that slowly builds and builds and finally, pulls the rug out from under you. THAT is the kind of stuff that I crave. Lemorne drives Rex to the gas station where Saskia disappeared, and tells him to drink some drugged coffee if he wants to find out what happened to her. He says that he will experience exactly what she went through, which he calls the worst thing that he could do to somebody. It could be anything, and she could still be alive for all we know. It's everything that a climax should be, and making the decision proves to be the hardest decision that Rex has ever had to make. How far will his need to know take him? I'll post the secret invisibly, so here we go:

Rex drinks the coffee and they leave the station. He awakens in a coffin, underground...buried alive. To Lemorne, a claustrophobic, the worst thing that could ever happen to him would be being buried alive. But holy shit, that is the worst thing that could happen to ANYONE and while we are in the box with Rex, who uses a lighter to see inside, this scares the living hell out of me. I flinched and shivered. It was an extremely uncomfortable place and that shift in tone, when a mystery becomes a horror film shook me up. And then we see Lemorne, sitting at his home, his family playing in the yard, staring coldly out into the world.

I didn't see the ending coming, and that is what makes this a really great mystery/thriller/horror. The clues are all there, and they all come together at the end. And speaking of the end, the director remade his own movie five years later...for American audiences...with Keifer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, and Jeff Bridges. And guess what, he botched his own ending, copped out, and adapted it for Hollywood with the rest of the film. It made me sick just reading it, because it takes away everything that makes this movie so great. It's an inevitible ending, the film HAS to end the way it does. If not, well, you blew it. BUT, the first time around was a rousing success! Granted, I pretty much hated the score, which sounded like it was composed with effects on a cheap Casio keyboard, but that's just personal taste I'm sure. Other than that, this is a great film. You don't know it until the end, but the whole film is based not only in Lemorne's sociopathic behavior of NEEDING to do what he does, but it is based on fate as well. Simply put, that is how the film turns out the way it does. Little instances that we don't notice, or little character quirks and things like your love and selflessness for somebody else ultimately being what tears your apart.

Mysterious Skin

I only use Netflix to get movies that are either A.) New releases, B.) Impossible to get at the library within a reasonable amout of time or C." The library just doesn't have it. And while the library did have Gregg Araki's latest film, Mysterious Skin, there were about fifty people ahead of me on the waiting list. So I decided to put it at the coveted number one spot on my Netflix queue. I almost went to see this film when it was playing in Lawrence at Liberty Hall last fall. I don't know why I didn't go, I usually do. But for some reason I passed it up. Yesterday the DVD came from Netflix and I decided to watch it right away.

I couldn't believe that this film was made by the same guy who had made The Doom Generation. I remember watching that last semester and having my roommate and one of his friends walk in at the climactic finale... you know, the one with the flashing lights, castrations, and that guy with the swastika painted on his chest and holding an American flag. Not to say that I didn't like the movie, it was just violently strange and I was so pleasantly surprised to find that Gregg Araki was capable of making something as profoundly beautiful as Mysterious Skin.

Essentially, Mysterious Skin shifts between the stories of young men, Neil, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brian, played by Brady Corbet. These two characters are incredibly different from one another, yet as the film progresses, we learn that they have a lot more in common than is percieved. Neil is a seemingly morally deprived hustler who claims to have slept with every guy in the small town where the film takes place (Hutchinson, Kansas). His character seems to have been forged from being sexually molested by his little league baseball coach when he was 8. Brian believes that when he was 8 he was abducted by aliens when it started to rain at his little league game and, based on a number of black outs and lost time over the years, believes he has been abducted more than once. This theme of abduction is shown in different ways for Brian and Neil. Where Brian believes to have been physically abducted and taken away to be "experimented on," Neil's sense of abduction is on an unconscious level, as he was essentially abducted by his coach and, subsequently, had his childhood abducted as well.

It feels like Neil's current lifestyle is based on his experiences as a child. I think we're led to believe that Neil was born gay, but the way he treats his relationships with the people around him and, most importantly, sex, as an adult is based on this abuse. He has no respect for himself and is emotionally distant from even his closest friends, Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Eric (Jeffrey Licon). "He's like a planet, say Saturn for examples, and we're like little moons orbiting around him," Eric tells Brian, after they strangely bond later in the movie.

Brian, on the other hand, is completely sheltered and obsessed with UFO's and aliens. On TV he sees a show about alien abductions that has interviews with people who claim to have been abducted. One of them is a woman named Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub) who lives in a town not to far away from his. As they bond, and begin to share stories and dreams, Brian begins to uncover more about himself. All of the unconscious memories, the blackouts, the lost time, it all starts coming back to him. He sees another boy in his dream, one of the boys from his baseball team. Neil.

After Wendy moves to New York, Neil goes to visit her. While he is away, his friend Eric, who is madly in love with Neil, befriends Brian after he turns up at Neil's house, looking for him. Looking for answers. As Brian and Eric bond, Eric sends postcards to Neil, telling him about Brian, and how Brian believes that they were both abducted by aliens. "He's not even gay I don't think - in fact, his vibe is kinda weirdly asexual," Eric writes about Brian. We see this asexuality in the flesh when Avalyn tries to have sex with him and Brian freaks out. When Neil returns to Hutchinson for Christmas, he and Brian finally meet and, on Christmas Eve, Neil helps Brian to uncover the past.

***Spoilers...maybe***

While Brian's "alien abduction" is clearly a cover for his own sexual molestation, I let myself fall into the movie, and honestly, if I had read the synopsis on the DVD sleeve, I would have figured it out. But watching the film, watching all of it unfold and then come together, it was so throughly rewarding. The ending itself is masterful. Neil takes Brian to the coach's house where they sneak in through an open window. The coach's bedroom has changed, and is now a nursery full of toys, but the ceiling is still the same. Neil remarks about how he used to stare at the ceiling for hours and get lost in it. I guess we are to presume that the coach no longer lives there, but regardless, they make their way through the house and, once in the living room, settle onto the couch. All secrets are revealed and all mysteries are solved. The sexual abuse by his coach traumatized him so much he created a story to cover up every detail.

***Spoilers end***

The ending is what is sticking in my mind the most. Brian and Neil, two broken boys, sitting on a couch, Brian resting his head in Neil's lap and crying. Christmas Carolers come to the door and begin singing silent night. Neil speaks in voice over as the camera moves above them, "As we sat there listening to the carolers, I wanted to tell Brian that it was over now and that everything would be okay. But that was a lie, plus I couldn't speak anyway. I wish there was some way to go back and undo the past. But there wasn't. There was nothing we could do. So I just stayed silent and tried to telepathically communicate how sorry I was about what happened. And I thought of all the grief and suffering and fucked up stuff in the world, and it made me want to escape. I wished with all my heart we could just leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically disappear," he says, the camera drifting higher and higher. "Untitled #3" by Sigur Ros is playing, and adding the finishing touches on the emotional impact of the scene. These two, sad boys coming to terms with the past, but there is still hope. It's one of those perfect endings, one of those things that ties the whole film together and makes it a masterpiece.

Without a doubt, Mysterious Skin is Gregg Araki's masterpiece. He visually captures the abrupt and horrible loss of innocence that ruins these two boy's lives, however, the way he shoots it, this awful emotional impact isn't felt until later on in the film. I was surprised by how I felt when the coach was luring Neil into his bed with video games and junk food. Usually I would feel uneasy and nervous (like in The Woodsman where Kevin Bacon's character is considering abducting and molesting the little girl in the park, even though he has turned his life around), but the way Neil was behaving put me at ease a little. Earlier on, he tells us that he's "queer," and I saw it as him pursuing this love (as if he even knew what love was) for the coach. At the end, it becomes apparent as to how monstrous the coach really is (The Five Dollar game, for example). The shots Araki sets up, as well, are so telling. For instance, when the coach has layed Neil down on the kitchen floor covered in cereal, the shot of Neil's jeans, his uneasiness, and the coache's hands trying to unbutton his pants is mirrored later when Avalyn puts the moves on Brian. The same shot, actually. The film is full of symbolism, but it is all subtle enough and completely woven into the narrative (I bring this up because the other day, I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose and the symbolism is so blatant it made me want to die).

The acting is incredible, too, but honestly, I didn't really notice, which is a sign of great acting. All of the actors were so perfectly ingrained into their roles that I didn't question them for one second. The characters are really well written and believable, and the actors really get that across. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is determined to smash the child star stereotype. I cannot believe that this is the same kid who was in Angels in the Outfield. Today, I think he is one of the most exciting young actors around, and I can't wait to see what he does next. It's funny, I thought the same thing when I saw him in Brick, another outstanding performance that made that film. If he had faltered at all, it would have belly flopped into a pool of self-parody. But he played that role for keeps and knocked it out of the park. I don't remember seeing Brady Corbet in anything, but looking at IMDB, I guess I remember him as the kid from the Thunderbirds trailer I had to see a million times when I was working at the movie theater. So THAT'S who that annoying kid was! And wow, I can't believe it, because he is great in this film as well. On the same plane as Levitt, both of these actors took on a couple of really challenging roles, and turned them into solid gold.

This is an outstanding film and it hit all of the buttons that I want to have hit when I see a film. You owe it to yourself to see it.