31. Ghost Writer (Polanski)
The director in his paranoid thriller mode. Set on the Vineyard as duplicated somewhere in Germany, so that’s fun. Suspense by GPS is an interesting device and it’s full of odd, quirky dry moments like that. I don’t think it’s so much that the plot points are confusing, as they are laid out to be discovered, and possibly not even noticed on a first viewing. Details may be McGuffins, or they maybe significant. It’s kind of a network of paranoid situations and moments, like the Tenant as a conspiracy drama. Of course in Polanski-land paranoia is actual and merciless.

30. Memories of Murder (2003 Korean: 살인의 추억)
At the Harvard Film Archives with director Bong Joon-hoat in attendance. To be continued…

29. The Cove
James Bond meets Flipper meets Greenpeace. This is really good, and will probably win the Academy Award. Interesting, disturbing, exciting, really well told, and beautifully shot. The last moments are alarming, literally. I joined their Tweet campaign then and there.

28. Mid-August Dinner (Pranzo di ferragosto)
To help pay some debts, Gianni, an unemployed, single, middle aged man, agrees to look after four very old women for a night. Antics DO NOT ensue, as you might expect, but friendship food, and joy. The director, Gianni Di Gregorio, wrote it, acted in it, used his own apartment, based it on an incident in his own life, and then and cast the women from hundreds of non-professionals. The result is a unique and brilliant short story of a film.
It was pointed out, by Britt Smith, that August 15 is Feast of the Assumption, and that in religious mythology Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”. The old women in this movie are also ascending to heaven without death, and the movie glories in the blessings and quirks of old age. If you love your mother, Italy, or Italian movies – see it!

27. A Lake (Philippe Grandrieux)
Even though he claims not to be an experimental filmmaker, Grandrieux creates film where sound and touch are equal to visual sense with alternately shimmering, frightening cinematography and a claustrophobic hand-held camera. He is considered one of the great new French directors from whom there are really interesting films being made (Francois Ozon, Gaspar Noe, Catherine Breillat, Bruno Dumont) so it is worth investigating. Grandrieux is the most challenging for me. He also has influences from Robert Bresson, Fassbinder, Stan Brakhage, and painters as well.
He claims narrative is unimportant. “I understand the wonderful Hollywood movies where you know everything that will happen, so why bother” is his attitude. He is in search of something deeper, more mystical, more physical. It will either fascinate you or give you a headache. There are about 20 lines of dialogue, not including screams and shouts. The story is something about an isolated family in a family living in the frozen Alps, with an epileptic logger brother and his sister who are coming of age in inappropriate ways.

26. Sombre (Philippe Grandrieux) The director’s earlier, more violent and disturbing film. The film does apply the following ideas from Gilles Deleuze. Here’s primer on that (gleaned from Wikipedia and embellished). It actually helps start to understand what Grandrieux is doing:
Perception-Image
This resembles the point of view shot of film theory, but that shot can sometimes be the point of view of characters, sometime floating free, the anonymous, unidentified viewpoint of the camera. He calls this camera consciousness.
Three different types of perception:
solid perception (normal human perception),
liquid perception (where images flow together) and
gaseous perception (the pure vision of the non-human eye). This is objective vision of the world before man. Dziga Vertov’s images aspire to pure machine vision. Experimental cinema also reaches for this pure perception.
The affection-image
“The affection-image is the close-up, and the close-up is the face…”
Closeup = Face. A face can be a real face or not. All faces are affection-images.
The action-image
Large Form and the Small Form.
Large Form is defined as “there are gaps waiting to be filled (documentary film, Film Noir, the Western,the historical film). Deleuze attributes the large form to Method Acting where the audiences fills in the psychology of the character because that character has been has been embodied by the performer.
Small Form defined “the actions create the situation”.

I have seen a lot of Sam Shepard in venues in Boston, Providence, NY, small theaters, big productions. In the 70’s, La Tourista at the Boston Center for the Arts the actor walked naked into a white light at the end of the play delivering an amazing and incoherent Peyote driven monologue. In Inman Square 30 years ago Cowboy Mouth (written with Patty Smith) had the drum set on stage the whole time, like a Beat poetry recital. The really difficult Tooth of the Crime in NYC in 1995, with Vincent D’Onofrio and music by T-Bone Burnett was transcendent due to the amazing Kirk Acevedo (from Fringe) as Crow. David Wheeler, who always thoroughly understands the work he directs created an almost ritualistic event for the audience with Angel City. Granted I was in an altered state myself when I saw it.

Nevertheless, there is a way to direct and act his plays that creates a hypnotic state with the audience. If everyone is on pitch, it is a dizzying experience that leaves you shaken, thoughtful, and feeling as though you’ve experienced something special that only happens in live theater.
So when a production is mounted where all the elements of language, music, set design are in harmony, conducted a director who recognizes how to bring from every actor that heightened sense of performance is needed for Shepard, it is total joy. Directed by Ethan Hawke, this is one of those productions. The original production in 1985 featured Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Page, Will Patton, Amanda Plummer, Aidan Quinn, Ann Wedgeworth, and Karen Young. I bought tickets well ahead, drove down to NY, only to find one of the cast members was ill and the play was canceled that night only. Geraldine Page played two parts the next night! I waited 25 to see another production!!

I finally feel redeemed. Since I didn’t know these actors they created for me from scratch, personalities that shook me to the core. (However, if you check their collective credits they’re pretty hefty – Keith Carradine, Josh Hamilton, Marin Ireland, Laurie Metcalf, Alessandro Nivola, Maggie Siff, Frank Whaley and Karen Young)

It’s hard to qualify any one performance over the next because every actor is completely, boldly and imaginatively invested in creating characters that are frightening and spellbinding. Somewhere deep in the heart of all the dysfunction of the play, inside the increasingly disorienting story and brilliant interplay of images and motifs, is a lot of American family history. It may not be an easy journey, but it’s the best kind of theater.

IN 2000, when I first got a Handspring Visor (rival PDA to the Palm) I started keeping a log of all the films I saw because obviously I do frequent the movie house. With 2010, I took Steve Stone’s advice to say something about each in a few words. (not the Steve Stone who was major league pitcher and the uncredited sports announcer in Ferris Bueller. The other Steve Stone.)
I gave in to netflix this year, but on the one at a time plan. A theater is still much preferred.
Log for 2010
25. Shutter Island
In a word “Portentous”. Let’s break that down to synonyms. Exciting shots; Foreboding events. Alarming plot twists. Apocalyptic acting. Augural forshadowing devices. Doomed characters. Exhilarating Hitchcock moments. Haunting mood. And so forth. But I sometimes wish Scorsese would get back to the grit and spontaneity of his early films. Everything is in place, lots of in & out cameos, Leo getting his snarl on, Ruffalo laying back, a cold creepy doctor played by (who else?) Sir Ben, and (thank goodness) Max von Sydow. But as a horror flick, B-Movie, or Shock Corridor/Snake PIt/Vertigo mash-up, it feels forced. The found music soundtrack is fascinating, but along with all the thunder, the creepy characters, flickering lights, and the lapses in continuity it tips into comically melodramatic. I say all this prostrating myself before the king of modern directors. I sure he MEANT to do all this. And it doesn’t matter anyway what I say, you will see it. And should.
24. The Unknown Woman (Giuseppe Tornatore 2008)
This is a lively rental, the acting is good, the plot engaging. Like his overrated “Cinema Paradiso” (I know, I’m in the minority on that), credibility takes a back seat to cool and sensuous visuals, and overly orchestrated emotion. In the end you can enjoy it, but I just feel a little taken advantage of.
23. Transsiberian (Brad Anderson 2008)
I missed this when it was released, but was really surprised. It uses our paranoia of creepy, cold-hearted, sadistic, amoral, drug dealing, irrational, Eastern European mobster types (Hostel, Eastern Promises, etc.) to put together a rattling paced movie across the trans-siberian railway. Emily Mortimer is a great choice, Ben Kingsley does another variation on his inscrutable and creepy bad guy, and we get the “aw, shucks” Woody Harrelson, not the nuts Woody. The plot just keeps chugging along, churning out suspense. Whatd’ya know? Just Iike a train! Boston’s Brad Anderson continues to satisfy. (rent Next Stop Wonderland!)
22. The Yellow Handkerchief (Udayan Prasad)
A carefully detailed film about forgiveness, atonement, relationships, love, and New Orleans. Kristin Thomas’ youthful skill and energy as an actress bumps up against William Hurts minimalist tendency to stare a lot. But he’s a wonderful physical actor, and she’s enchanting to watch. The conclusion may feel too plotted, but it’s an engaging and honest road movie and coming of age story.
21. Fish Tank
A really unmoored 15 year old girl with a clueless and fed up single mom attempts to come of age in the projects in Essex, UK. It’s amazing that these are first time actors. Starts slow and builds and builds never really letting you off the hook. I found myself surprised the abundant credits, because the film felt so intimate and natural throughout, like one person with a camera. Full of keen details, insinuations of behavior. Unfolds casually, but you gotta watch carefully as the plot patiently accumulates in power and devastation. A real surprise. I thought the ballon at the end was a nice touch (you’ll have to see it)
20. Avatar
I guess it has to be seen. I don’t think 3-D changes the game of movie making, but it’s fun being back in the 50’s. It’s also fun to look at your watch exactly at the half way point where Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves morphs into GI Joe. Like Madonna and Watchman and Good Will Hunting, it’s a pop product you can pick over for significance without too much effort.
19. The White Ribbon –
A great Heneke film, creepy and in ferocious black and white, like Berman’s best. It’s an interesting context with which to implicate the contemporary audience, and look at the roots of fascism through some questionable adult behavior, and in the horrid way children were raised in this vision of pre-industrial rural Germany. This was to be the new Germany? There are crimes, but as usual, the point isn’t whodunit. Discussing the possibilities of guilt and culpability is what makes it intriguing, discussable, and haunting.
18. The Last Station -
Interesting piece of history even if some details had to be fabricated to keep the story inspirational. Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are hammy, but appropriately so for the likes of Mr and Mrs Toylstoy, so it makes for good fun, and a good lesson in how to create a spirited but authentic characterization.
17. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1943)
Really corny and unlikely with tons of holes in the plot, but watching Basil Rathbone singing and dancing in disguise in one particular scene, and snapping “Hello?” at each new discovery is worth the 70 minutes.
16. I’m Gonna Explode
Mexican with great great teen actors. Another film (like Fish Tank) where the behavior of the kids is disturbing, but you kind of like them and understand the problem, though here we’re in the upper class, and now that’s the problem. The depiction of these two alienated teens is ambivalent and unsettling. It seems Latin films are beginning to confront their teenagers. It leaves you needing a conversation with somebody. I saw it alone.
15. Julie and Julia
I met Julia Child several times and once outside of a Dunkin Donuts in Cambridge, I commented on her indulging on these chain donuts. “Well, they are rather good aren’t they” she squawked in her best Meryl Streep voice. I liked this movie, but do think Rich Little, David Frye, and even Robert Morse as Capote were good, too. I suppose impersonation is the way to go, and the gimmick of the movie. Stanley Tucci knows how to get out of the way, but it’s Amy Adams who gives it real heart.
14. Halloween (’09 Rob Zombie)
Cheesy psychology and lacking real suspense, but, man, Jason really wackes his victims good, and loudly, and to rock music! I guess somebody has to make movies like this. Boo. (as in scared ya)
13. Northface (German)
I guess people really do get vertigo and have trouble with this film which concerns really extreme repelling and the first attempt to ascend the Eiger north face in 1935. Another cheeseball love story services the audience, but the rest is exciting and convincing filmmaking.
12. Whip it!
I love Drew and her whole history and her crooked smile and sense of fun, but boy does this suck. Ellen Page is miles beyond this good time had by all.
11. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda) Pure poetry.
10. Valkyrie (Bryan Singer)
The (your) problem is I LIKE Tom Cruise. My expectations are noncombatant, and I assume he’ll be good, and if his church and he have approved of the project, I may even get a good yarn. That was the case.
9. I Stand Alone (Gasper Noe)
Expect it to be severe and you’ll be fine. Toward the end he has a ten second “countdown” so you can leave the theater if you don’t want to experience what comes next. Clever, but the isolated framing, the disquieting narration of the unemployed butcher at the story’s center, and the puzzling lack of a moral point of view serve to bury you deep into the mind of one very fucked up Frenchmen.
8. Waiting for Hockney Way more interesting and complex than you would imagine. It takes subjects of art, talent, delusion, creativity, gift, ambition, life, family and blends them seamlessly into a story that unfolds naturally with great suspense and a good payoff. You end up liking everybody here, even the unseen and gracious Hockney. For anyone who appreciates the creative process, you will understand the attitudes the film imparts about art.
7. Fantastic Mr FoxNever imagined I like it so much. I finally have found my inner Wes Anderson.
6. La DanseMessier than you’d imagine, but you really live in this world for three hours, as only Frederick Weisman can do it. Patient and compelling.
5. My Son the Fanatic Udayan Prasad)
4. The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes VardaYou start in confusion and finish in tears. She’s amazing, and so is her life, from which Varda creates another poem
3. 5×2 (w/ Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) (dir.by François Ozon -Criminal Lovers (1999),Swimming Pool (2003) Under the Sand (2000)
I loved this. Ozon is always a surprise. He chooses 5 scenes from a marriage and depicts them in reverse order. There is lots of room for viewers to discuss the psychology and behavior of the characters, which is fun. Tedeschi is just fascinating to look at, and a bold actress.
2. The Apartment (1960)
1. Die Die My Darling (Tallulah Bankhead 1965)
Dreadful, but not boring dreadful.

I put the last two years separately. Film Log continued…
The total number of films over 10 or so years , I believe is 1165.
2009 Log
1. Sorcerer (Friedkin)
2. Black Balloon
3. Paris 36
4..The Great Buck Howard
5. Gomorrah
6. The Class
7. Mock Up On Mu
8.Anywhere USA
9. Lo
10.Shall We Kiss?
11. Watchman
12. Duplicity
13. Reader
14. Revolutionary Road
15, Doubt
16. Cleo From 9 to 5 (Agnes Varda)
17. Lion’s Den (Agnes Varda)
18. Serbis (2008) dir Brillante Mendoza Read more…

Mostly these were viewed in theaters, at screenings, and public venues.
The big question is who cares? Who cares who cares? Somehow it validates the time spent. I guess.
And Rental ideas!! I remember them all. Sort of.

The first seven years: Log for 2000
1. Passion (Godard)
2. Messiah
3. Erin Brochovitch (Soderberg)
4. Black and White (Toback)
5. Titus (Taymore)
6. Andre Rublev (Tarkovsky)
7. Sans Soliel (Chris Marker) (french)
8. La Jetee Chris Marker (french)bb
9. Joe Gould’s Secret
10. East is East
11. The City
12. Light Keeps Me Company
13. Sawdust and Tinsel
14. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
15. Tumbleweeds
16. Sex Annabella Chong Story
17. Virgin Suicides
18. Gladiator
19. High Fidelity
20. Filth and the Fury
21. Judy Berlin
22. Timecode
23. Small Time Crooks
24. Mi3
25. Restoration
26. Flawless
27. Chutney Popcorn
28. Criminal Lovers (french)
29. Children of the Century (french)
30. Keep it Quiet (french)
31. Color of Lies (Chabrol)
32. Girl on the Bridge (Patrice LeCompt)
33. X Men
34. Sunshine
35. 3 Women
36. Funny Bones
37. Pecker
38. The Opportunists
39. Tao of Dave
40. Aimee & Jaguar
41. Chicken Run
42. Shadow of the Vampire
43. Perfect Storm (wolfgang peterson)
44. Nurse Betty (Niel LaBute)
45. Harry, He’s Here to Help (French)
46. Two Family House
47. The Yards
52. The Contender
53. L’Ennui
54. Hype
55. Joe the King
56. Almost Famous
57. What Lies Beneath
58. Cafe Vendome
59. West Beruit
60. Beaver Trilogies
61. Time Regained
62. Venus Beauty Institute
63. Billy Elliot
64. Enlightnment Guarenteed
65. What’s Cooking?
66. Bamboozled
67. This is What America Looks Like (Seattle Protests)
68. Dancer in the Dark
69. Requium for a Dream
70. Goerge Washington
71. The Wind Will Carry Us
72. You Can Count on Me
73. Red River (Hawks)
74, Meet the Parents
75. Quills (Phillip Kaufman)
76. Pola X (Leos Carrax)
77. House of Mirth (Terrence Davies)
78. Ratcatcher
79. The Tourist (bio-document)
80. Solas (”Alone” – Spanish)
81. American History X
82.The Big Kahuna
Movies 2001 – Log
1. Traffic
2. State & Main
3. YiYi
4. Privilege
5. Punishment Park
6. The Pledge (Penn/Nicholson)
7. Castaway
8. Crouching Tiger Read more…

Log for 2010

The Yellow Handkerchief (Udayan Prasad)
A carefully detailed film about forgiveness, atonement, relationships, and love. Kristin Thomas’ youthful skill and energy as an actress bumps up against William Hurts minimalist tendency to stare a lot. But he’s a wonderful physical actor, and though the conclusion may feel too plotted, it’s an engaging and honest road and coming of age story.
Fish Tank
Starts slow and builds and builds never really letting you off the hook. I found myself surprised the abundant credits because the film felt so intimate and natural throughout, like one person with a camera. Full of keen details, insinuations of behavior. Unfolds casually, but you gotta watch carefully. A real surprise.
Avatar
I guess it has to be seen. I don’t think 3-d changes the game of movie making, but it’s fun being back in the 50’s. It’s also fun to look at your watch exactly at the half way point where Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves morphs into GI Joe.
The White Ribbon –
Great Heneke. A really creepy and an interesting context with which to implicate the contemporary audience, and look at the roots of fascism through some questionable adult behavior, and in horrid way children were raised in this pre-industrial rural Germany scenerio. This was to be the new Germany? There are crimes, but as usual, the point isn’t whodunit. Discussing the possibility answers to everything is what makes it endlessly discussable and haunting..
The Last Station -
Interesting piece of history even if some details had to be fabricated to keep the story inspirational. The two leads are hammy, but its right for these the figures of Mr and Mrs Toylstoy, so it makes for good fun.
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1943)
Really corny and unlikely with tons of holes in the plot, but watching Basil Rathbone in one scene singing and dancing in disguise, and say “Hello” at each new discovery is worth the 70 minutes.
7. I’m Gonna Explode
Mexican with great great teen actors. Another film where the behavior of the characters is disturbing and the depiction of these two alienated teens ambivalent. It leaves unsettled, and ready for a conversation with somebody. I saw it alone.
8. Julie and Julia
I met Julia Child several times and once outside of a Dunkin Donuts in Cambridge, I commented on her indulging on these chain donuts. “Well, they are rather good aren’t they” she squawked in her best Meryl Streep voice. I liked this movie, but do think Rich Little, David Frye, and even Robert Morse as Capote were good, too. I suppose impersonation is the way to go, and the gimmick of the movie. Stanley Tucci knows how to get out of the way, but it’s Amy Adams who gives it real heart.
9. Halloween (’09 Rob Zombie)
Cheesy psychology and lacking real suspense, but, man, Jason really wackes his victims good, and loudly, and to rock music! I guess somebody has to make movies like this. Boo. (as in scared ya)
10. Northface (German)
I guess people really get vertigo in the movies and can’t take this movie about really extreme repelling during the Nazi error. Another cheeseball love story services the audience, but the rest is exciting and convincing.
11. Whip it!
I love Drew and her whole history and her crooked smile and sense of fun, but boy does this suck. Ellen Page is miles beyond this good time had by all.
12. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda)
13. Valkyrie (Bryan Singer)
The (your) problem is I LIKE Tom Cruise. My expectations are noncombatant, and I assume he’ll be good, and if his church and he have approved of the project, I may even get a good yarn. That was the case.
14. I Stand Alone (Gasper Noe)
Expect it to be severe and you’ll be fine. Toward the end he has a ten second “countdown” so you can leave the theater if you don’t want to experience what comes next. Clever, but the isolated framing, the disquieting narration of the unemployed butcher at the story’s center, and the puzzling lack of a moral point of view serve to bury you deep into the mind of one very fucked up Frenchmen.
15. Waiting for Hockney
16. Fantastic Mr Fox
27. La Danse
28. My Son the Fanatic< small>(Udayan Prasad)
29. The Beaches of Agnes
30. 5×2 (w/ Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) (dir.by François Ozon -Criminal Lovers (1999),Swimming Pool (2003) Under the Sand (2000)
I loved this. Ozon is always a surprise. He chooses 5 scenes from a marriage and depicts them in reverse order. There is lots of room for viewers to discuss the psychology and behavior of the characters, which is fun. Tedeschi is just fascinating to look at, and a bold actress.
31. The Apartment (1960)
32. Die Die My Darling (Tallulah Bankhead 1965)
Dreadful, but not boring dreadful.

Also screening at BUFF was New England Institute of Art professor/musician/actor Tim Jackson’s feature documentary Radical Jesters, which Feder described as a look at “outsider, prankster artists… people who use humor and shocking tactics to put their point across.” They’re also called “culture jammers.”

Radical Jesters investigates the media hoaxing and culture jamming of artists such as Alan Abel, who convinced HBO that he had the smallest penis in the world; the Surveillance Camera Players, who put on full plays in front of public surveillance equipment; Boston-based art activist Milan Kohout; Improv Everywhere; artist Ron English, and comedian John Hargrave, among others.

Even the screening of Radical Jesters brought unexpected surprises. Before the film began, a “Mr. Cockburn” representing “Fox Searchlight Distribution” stood before the audience in a full suit to warn against the use of recording devices. When Mr. Cockburn finished his speech, he made his way up the side aisle and forcibly ejected a “patron” with a video camera. As the film began, there were several camera flashes from the back of the theater, adding to the crowd’s amusement.

Director/producer Jackson was on hand to answer questions after the screening, and two of the jammers profiled in his film joined him at the front of the theater.

Jackson explained his hope for the film: “I wanted to do something that would be interesting for art students so that they could see what sort of work was being done outside of galleries. I also wanted people to be amused and also a bit angry while at the same time raising questions about media credibility and public gullibility. The short profiles serve to keep people entertained, curious, and inquisitive in the hopes that they find out more on their own.”

Given the recent exhibition of artist Shepard Fairey’s work at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, public interest in raising awareness via guerilla tactics is high, and it was high the day of the screening, when discussion heated up regarding when culture jamming becomes commercialized. Does the selling of hats and t-shirts change Fairey’s message? How does the culture jammer who unexpectedly finds commercial success/acceptance continue to define his or her own legitimacy as an artist against the establishment?

“A lot of it is becoming more mainstream as marketing agencies step up their own guerilla efforts,” observed Jackson. “I’m surprised by how few people in general are aware of interventionist practices, where you intervene on the streets, in the media, or in the general spectacle of things. The shorts that preceded my film dealt with graffiti and stenciling, and they’re definitely in the same vein. But those are also definitely illegal, while the practices I document are not necessarily so. They’re on the edge.”

As for future plans, Jackson has one front and center. “I’m making a documentary on the life of singer-songwriter Robin Lane. I wanted to do something about art and struggle and women. Robin and I worked together in the group Robin Lane and the Chartbusters. We were the 11th song ever aired on MTV back in 1981, and were at the top of the heap of the new wave punk scene. She’s working now with women trauma survivors doing songwriting. She’s very gifted, and that hasn’t gone away. There’s going to be a great soundtrack.”

In terms of how he will get this film made while teaching full-time Jackson said, “I’m just a do-it-yourself guy,” joking that his first career as a musician made little money and adding, “I worked as an actor for little to no money, I worked as a teacher in which you never make what you want to make, so I decided to try something in which I could actually lose money. You put them all together, that’s how you make a life.”

RE: Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology
A readily available picture like this forces into high relief the deep visceral prejudice at the base of discussions on race in this country. I have heard stories of figures in high authority referring to the First Lady as an ape. I am offended, but not surprised, that reactions on racial difference are reduced to merely the physical. The body politic in America’s talk about race is covered with boils and here is one more we have to lance, dress, and from which we will move on. Ms. Obama’s intelligence, graciousness, power, influence and beauty makes white men jump. I doubt it is worth a passing glance by the first lady herself. Whatever someone can do in photo shop will be done. Everyone can look laugh, gasp, gag, shudder, and create their own. George Bush as a limp phallus? Dick Cheney as a…, well the name says it. Would we be slightly amused if the same treatment were aimed at Clarence Thomas? We’ll survive this latest ubiquitous improper global internet moment. No need to shoot the messenger.

If asked, “Did you like it?” careful how you respond. You could be accused of taking pleasure in watching delicate body parts compromised with household items and garden tools. And maybe you’ve never even seen the Saw or Hostel series. But with chapters labeled grief, pain, and despair the word “like” becomes relative. Anti Christ is audacious film-making filled with arresting and poetic images and provocative questions about the politics of power and sexuality. It imagines whether grief, pain, and despair are states of mind or whether they exist in nature itself – a question that supports Lars Von Trier’s own peculiar romanticism.

The inciting incident is a beautiful set piece: an artfully photographed and very graphic, black and white, slow motion, lovemaking scene during which the couple’s child escapes from a crib, clears from a table three statuettes – labeled grief, pain, and despair – and climbs up on the table and over to a window. Then, in exquisite slow motion, like an angel ascending to heaven, – the child falls to its death.

“He” (Willem Dafoe) is a psychologist whose dominating and inappropriate counseling of his own wife “she” (Charlotte Gainsbourough) ) Dafoe leads her to the place where she is suppose to confront the thing she fears most – the deep, dark forest. “Nature is the devil’s playground” she says. She ought to know. She’s written a thesis on witchcraft in ancient times with a collection of prints depicting inquisitional torture – mostly of women. She has come to the interesting conclusion that perhaps women actually can be truly evil, that women with their carnal desires and potentially wild natures are inherently dangerous creatures. Thank you Lars Von Trier!

From Breaking the Waves to Dancer in the Dark to Dogville and Mandalay, statements about Von Trier’s own misogyny are old hat. He also doesn’t like America much. It’s not a place that embraces his eccentricity and provocations. America also doesn’t like to be criticized. Is it possible he is actually protesting demeaning and oppressive attitudes toward women, maybe with particular emphasis on American patriarchal values? It’s not Von Trier who abusive, but the social circumstances in which his women find themselves.

At one point early in the film the wife, as if suddenly possessed, no longer fears the woods. She becomes liberated and healed. But “he” and his psychotherapy won’t let her go. His “scientific” approach has to dominate. Big mistake. Horror ensues.

Being America, the story is a lot more reminiscent of Hester Prynne and Pearl than it is simple misogyny. I remember being told in college that when Hawthorne’s wife finished reading A Scarlet Letter she went out and threw up. This liberation, this nature business was all too much! Women’s “nature” begins in Wicken (Hester Prynne), which is defined as evil by society (the Puritans, Inquisitions), and descends into madness and delusion (the suppression of their nature). Von Trier who converted to Catholicism says “Perhaps I only turned Catholic to piss off a few of my countrymen”. But if the Anti Christ does exist then there are horror movie consequences, complete with mortification of the flesh, redemption, souls released from purgatiory. Checkout the amazing final unexpected image.

Von Trier has moved from the theatrical sparseness of Dogville and Mandalay to real woods replete with portentous talking animals, hideous nature, hailstones, constellations, heavy fog, and a reappearing fox, deer, and crow that I assume might represent man, woman and death. They echo a statement about children’s stories made earlier n the film. It’s a huge stylistic change and with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire)he has created some fabulous images. They swing between fairy tale and the fantastic, between Shelley Duvall’s Fairy Tale Theater and Saw.

In a particularly horrific/child-like moment, the ‘fox’ intones:” Chaos Reigns”. Perhaps – but “Anti Christ” churns chaos into poetry.

Occasionally a movie comes along from Hollywood that sweeps you away with the breadth and scope of its sheer awfulness.
True story – a hank of hair at the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland thought to be Amelia Earhart’s was recently discovered to be, in fact, just thread. This movie is the cinematic equivalent. This movie, thought to be about Amelia Earhart is, in fact, a threaded bundle of cliches and overwrought soap opera moments. If Hilary Swank gave one more brave toothy grin, I would have gagged on a kernel. But I stuck it out to see which was worse, the unconvincing acting, the poor casting, Richard Gere, the costumey looking costumes, or the dreadful Peter Pan soundtrack. But the winner, I think, is the screenplay, which rattles off one maudlin insight after another alternating with scenes of stunning mediocrity played without conviction or chemistry.
If some of this is based on Earhart’s real words, then maybe she’s just not that interesting a subject for film. My guess is that the forever overly earnest Hillary Swank, as executive producer, buoyed by research and good intentions, convinced Mira Nair that her poetic approach to film-making would be perfect against the pilot’s own words of inspiration. The result is a disaster. When you’re sitting in the theater having shelled out your ten bucks and you can’t wait for Amelia Earhart to die, you know you’ve gone to the wrong movie.