Meta-Film and Heads Exploding

(Click image for trailer.)

Rubber (2011), by Quentin Dupieux                           Rating: 3/10

     Ah, indie films. How weird and unique you can be.

     I have said in previous post how I love to watch indie films for the most part, because it is in those films where most times one can see films that are significantly different from mainstream Hollywood films. It is in indie films where filmmakers feel more free to break the rules of films in order to show something different. In many ways, indie films are all about style. And in these and many other ways, Rubber is the best example. However, the exploitation of all of these concepts also mark the films demise.

     Allow me to explain. Rubber is fully and completely driven by its meta-film concept. That is to say when a film turns conscious of itself as a film, or a film about film. The best example in popular culture of this is the Scream franchise by Wes Craven. In Scream, the characters are for the most part conscious that they are in a horror movie, or at least they know they need to know and follow the rules of the genre to survive from the killer, Ghostface, all while talking and commenting in small talk and short dialogue about what a horror movie should be. In this way, the result is a horror movie director talking about what a horror movie should or should not be through his horror film.

(“What’s your favorite scary movie?”)

     If Rubber had pores, they would be conscious that they are tiny little holes on somebody’s skin that ooze sweat once in a while when that person exercises or it’s really hot outside. The plot revolves around a group of people who are watching a “film” happen before their eyes in the middle of the desert about a tire with free will and telekinetic powers and a very bad sense of humor and big urge to explode things, especially human heads and harmless animals, with its… mind? Anyways, that is all. It’s only 87 minutes long and it gets tiring in fifteen minutes into the movie, or less. But see, the movie does not have a point and that’s the point of it. The movie focuses on the “no reason” in the everyday life, and, most importantly, in the film industry. The film is a direct insult to Hollywood in the most explicit ways possible. There is nothing subtle about their commentaries on film against Hollywood standards and rules. Which is understandable, and it fits pretty well in the “no reason” concept.

     But the joke is on itself, because nothing about the movie really works. An absurd movie with the only purpose but to be absurd for the sake of an artistic commentary… I felt on an Andy Warhol exhibit, or maybe I was experiencing the resurrection of Marcel Duchamp.

(I present to you a work of art.)

The film is not terrifying, it is not funny, it is not fun to watch, it is extremely simplistic in its “complexity,” and to put it simply, it makes no sense to make a movie about not making sense because people do not want to see film to get bored or insulted. We want to see film that entertain us and/or that it is meaningful in one way or the other.

     The problem with this movie, and maybe what could blur the opinion of people on it, is that this movie is directed to a specific audience, and that audience is Hollywood. The problem is that they know that Hollywood is not going to like it at all, and they do not care, and they should care. If they want to break the rules and do something different, by all means do it, but you have to put some effort in it. You can still insult Hollywood and make a surreal film and make it weird and different and still manage to make a good movie, Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé, for example. Take any successful indie film director and study their movies. Most of them do meta-film all the time…

… like Quentin Tarantino, who, while overrated and a douche-bag is still a filmmaking genius. I mean, Inglorious Basterds was all about meta-film, using film as a weapon and breaking all kinds of filmmaking rules, including going against history itself suffocating Adolf Hitler with burning film and blowing his face with a hundred bullets.

     I can keep giving examples, but that will only be a continuous rant. So all I am going to add is that this film is not only extremely and unnecessarily conscious of itself ALL the time, it also intends to be conscious of what the audience is thinking while watching the film, which is honestly annoying and not funny at all in this case. And worst of all, it gives itself WAY too much credit. (Sighs.) 3/10.

     Until next time, This is Freddy Lizardz with Words on Film. Peace.

Thanks for sharing and commenting!

 

Comics, Surrealism and Schizofrenia

(Click image for trailer.)

Super, by James Gunn                               Rating: 6/10

     The world of comic books has seen an incredible rise in audiences ever since the first installments of X-Men and Spiderman were released in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. More and more comic book adaptations are made each day and approximately twenty comic book adaptations will be released by the beginning of 2013 from today. As a result, comic books still prove to be an important influence in film as well as vice versa. People did not use to think much of comics, and most people still don’t, yet they do not say the same thing about their adaptations into film, for the most part people take them seriously. Comics have always influenced popular culture the same way that film has and they always will.

     However, as a result of the new “rise of the superhero” in film, and especially because of the era in which we live in, where technology is so advanced it’s finally become overrated, people get more and more fussy about their movies and their little adaptations. Society has grown so visually unaffected and morbid that we demand reality even in the most fantastical and unrealistic of films. We want realistic, more empathetic characters in our comics and cartoons and we want graphic violence realistic effects in our movies. And most importantly, we want to see superheroes that are just like us, human, no powers; we want to feel that being a superhero might actually be possible.

                                                    

     Contrary to last year’s hit comic book adaptation Kick-Ass (2010), Super is the most violent, most senseless and misleading film that has come out this year. Yes, Kick-Ass was overly controversial and violent, but the violence in Kick-Ass, while it appeared to be real, it also made clear that it was classic, unrealistic comic book action. Was it received as a film as well as it might have been received as a comic book? No. Was it still successful? Did people like it?They loved it, including myself. Because, regardless of the controversy of seeing a ten year old girl killing unmercifully and as skillfully in such an exaggerated and graphic manner, people accepted it as comic book action for a mature audience. However, Super is not a comic book adaptation and it makes absolutely no attempt in imitating one, which is not necessarily bad, but in this case it did not work as well as it appeared it would.

     The story of Super  revolves around Frank (Rainn Wilson, AKA Dwight in The Office) life-long loser who considers the day of his wedding with his alcoholic and drug-addict in rehabilitation wife, Sara (Liv Tyler) the best day of his life. Sara leaves him for an annoying drug dealer named Jock (Kevin Bacon), and Frank’s attempts to “save” his wife are all failures, his wife wants the drugs, and does not want anything to do with poor Frank. So, Frank turns to God, who “tells him” in a hallucination that includes Japanese Hentai tentacle pornography, cranium removal and the “touch of God” that he should make a costume and fight evildoers, such as drug dealers, like Jock, douche-bags, pedophiles, line-cutters, and others.

(I wasn’t kidding about the tentacle porn.)

When Frank realizes he is useless without powers or weapons, he chooses a wrench as his iconic weapon of “The Crimson Bolt,” his superhero name, and after he beats people halfway to death he would yell at them his catchphrase “Shut Up Crime!” Meanwhile, a psychotic, man-raping, blood-and-guts loving young woman who works in a comic book store, Libby (Ellen Page), recognizes Frank as the Crimson Bolt from the news and decides to become his “sexy sidekick,” Boltie, on his quest to save his estranged crack-head of a wife from the evil bad man who took her away.

     What’s misleading about this movie is the fact that it is supposed to be a dark comedy full of comic book references and lots of violence in between. But it turned out to be so dark that it was hardly ever funny, and the jokes that are more emphasized seem awkward and out of place. Literally, take any joke you might have seen Dwight pull of in The Office, insert it in Kick-Ass or some other movie of the sort, and there you have the jokes you will see in Super.

(Seriously.)

Also as a result, there is absolutely no attempt in showing any good morals that are so significant even in the most violent and catastrophic of comic books. In the end, both Frank and Libby are simply psychotic maniacs with a severe case of schizophrenia living in their own little world where they can kill and beat the soul out of pedestrians for no valid reason and get away with it. Because the cops don’t really seem to exist in this movie, and the ones that are actually present in the movie don’t even seem to know what’s going on, even though the Crimson Bolt is all over the news. It’s in this way that the “reality” of the film is completely contradictory, the only thing “real” about this film is how realistic the violence and gore of the movie is. Everything else might be the director’s dream-adventure in the land of Oz.

     I must admit I was expecting a lot more from this film, but I didn’t get it. It was still interesting to watch, and let me tell you, to see the magnificently quirky and adorable Ellen Page laughing as maniacally as Freddy Kruger as she killed and man-raped Rainn Wilson was probably one of the most fun experiences in a movie, while it lasted… If you want to see a very good movie about superheroes with no powers with complicated and paradoxical plots that will resemble and/or represent our own society and the social issues we are facing today, DO NOT see this movie.  Go see Batman, or Watchmen or something. If you want to see Liv Tyler doing drugs, Dwight from The Office being Dwight from The Office, Kevin Bacon being a douche-bag and Ellen Page dressed like a gay thirteen year old sidekick in the 50s killing and screaming like a maniac, then go see Super.

(This is as funny as it gets. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

      I’ll rate it 6/10 just because it wasn’t a completely bad experience in the movies, it was still fun to watch, but don’t go looking for a deeper, more intellectual approach to it because you will only get what you see. This film would have definitely worked better as an action/drama, the comedy just makes it awkward because you can clearly see that the movie is trying to be funny among all the obscurity of the plot and the characters. And the moral of the film at the end does not follow any logic at all, making it even harder take the movie seriously. The only logic and reality this movie follows is that of a very geeky Patrick Bateman.

     Until next time, I am Freddy Lizardz with Words on Film. Peace.

Thanks for sharing and commenting!