Movies to Remember 2008 By

I’ve written a lot about movies this year, both for Africans and for other sites. I’ve attended film festival after interminable film festival, attended preview upon preview, and that’s apart from renting movies, watching TV series on DVD, and paying to see films on the big screen.

So you’d think I’d have an easy time deciding which films to recommend and which to deride, but the honest truth is that I can’t even remember most of them. Sure, there were some great films on circuit this year (or were there?), but frankly, who gives a shit? When Hollywood churns out innumerable multi-million dollar movies every month, with nary a break or a modicum of sense between them, it devalues the whole enterprise. Only more so if so much of the output is total dreck, like Love Guru or Meet Dave or The Mummy 3.

Instead, each new product begins to flow into itself and into the others, like the colours in a children’s water painting, and soon it all turns to muck. Which, frankly, is the point at which a soulless husk of stupidity like Beverly Hills Chihuahua can make it to the number one spot on the box office – not only Stateside, but also on our shores. My fellow Africans, I ask you: what the fucking fuck?

So rather than combing through the year’s release schedules, trying to find one worthwhile movie, I’ve simply thought long and hard (okay, 15 minutes) about the movie experiences that stick out in my memory.

HorrorFest: Premature Post-Mortem

Having attended most of the HorrorFest so far, on AtraBilious and DocBenway’s recommendation, I’ve come to certain conclusions. Firstly, all horror movies are made on a budget scraped together by selling the director’s furniture in a garage sale, stealing it back from the suckers who paid good money for some asshole’s shit on the side of the road, and then reselling the furniture to a bona fide pawn shop. That’s if the films are any good at all. The higher the budget, the more seriously everybody takes themselves – which makes sense, because there’s so much more to lose. But this also means that everybody immediately forgets that ultimately all horror movies are based on a premise that is incredibly and deeply silly. (For an example of which, see Dark Reel with Lance Henriksen and Edward “Lay Off the Fucking Cocaine” Furlong.)

“Some of us are just wired that way”

An interview with Paul Blom & Sonja Ruppersberg.

by AtraBilious and DocBenway

* * * * *

Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning seems an odd time to meet people who share a love of horror movies and heavy music, but that’s when we arranged to meet Paul Blom and Sonja Ruppersberg. Apart from organizing the annual Horrorfest, South Africa’s only dedicated horror movie festival, they also form the core of the industrial band Terminatryx, who will perform a live soundtrack accompanying the Halloween showing of a silent horror classic, with guests.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

All hail the hellspawn, as once again the fate of the world rests on Hellboy and his friends from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. The inimitable Ron Perlman returns as the demon affectionately known as “Red”, with the indestructible red fist and a penchant for cats and cigars. He’s aided once more by his fiery girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) and an aquatic empath named Abe, plus a vaporous new German agent (Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane). This time they’re up against an elf prince who plans to unleash an army of golden golems to punish humanity for crimes against nature.

Jerusalema review

Gone are the days when local [i.e. South African] movies had to be treated like the special-needs child at the grown-ups’ table. This has something to do with high-profile “souf-êfrican” successes like “onse ‘Monster’ Charlize” and Tsotsi, but also with a growing confidence in the local industry, which has seen a greater willingness to experiment. Local filmmakers’ exposure to higher standards and new ideas, through the influx of international productions to our shores hasn’t much hurt, either.

So it’s encouraging to see this trend continue with Jerusalema, the latest locally-produced film to hit our shores. And the film opens with a bang, or at least the aftermath of one. This clever bit of subterfuge makes for a welcome change from the obviousness that plagues too many local films, and promises good things from its writer/director. We follow Lucky Kunene on an intriguing journey from the grotty flat in a run-down section of Johannesburg, to his youth in Soweto and back again. And it’s a journey that takes in a great deal more of the South African experience than many previous films, from the poverty in the townships, to the affluence of the supposed suburban bliss, to the seedier parts of the city.

Mediocrity blows

Watching The Mummy 3 this week, I realized something: bad movies are easy to review. So are really good ones. The great ones acknowledge their debt to a long cinematic heritage, and they’re willing to make you think. Like great films, terrible films also provoke a specific reaction – usually, irritation or laughter. And if the film is really bad, it’s relatively simple to poke holes in the hilarious plot, or the acting, or the bad casting/costume/continuity mistakes.

The most difficult films to review are the mediocre ones, the ones that aren’t bad enough to enjoy or good enough to remember. Films that are “merely mediocre” don’t give you much to go on, frankly, and more often than not, they’re simply boring. Indifference is hard to write. (Although I’ve done that, too, when I did a review of The Incredible Hulk for my usual writing outlet, africans.co.za. I wrote one for MyChannel24.com too, but god and the admins only know what happened to it.)

The Mummy 3: The O’Connells return, with plot holes galore.

When you knowingly go to see a movie that features mummies – living, breathing, cognizant, undead beings made from sand and the ancient equivalent of duct tape – you are willing to put up with a certain amount of ridiculousness. You go in, as it were, with the dial on your Belief turned to “Max. Suspension”. It’s a contract you enter into with the filmmakers: you will, for the requisite hour and a half, or longer, voluntarily accept the existence of an obvious impossibility; furthermore, you will not only fail to doubt its veracity, you will also invest a great deal of emotional energy in its fate and in those of the people around it.

WALL•E, Or The Ghost of Chaplin Walks.

Okay, so I suppose I have a reputation by now (at least among regular readers of Africans, thus an average of three to six people) of being a somewhat harsh critic of popular culture. (At least I hope so.) Okay, so I hate bad lyrics, and bad movies, and bad remakes of other movies, and pretentious cunts, and so on. But really – am I all that bad? Am I ever unfair? Biased? Opinionated? Upset? Sure. But I am always, always right.

Biased, moi?

Pariah Carey: If she only had a brain.
Thanks to my valiant efforts, nobody would dream of defending Noel Gallagher’s lyrics, or suggest that Tom Hanks’ performance as Forrest Gump is any less ridiculous or patronizing than Steven Seagal’s claim to be the apotheosis of Native American learning, Zen environmentalism, and blues music. No-one would dare to argue that Mariah Carey selects her lyricists with half as much care as she expends on her choice of nail polish. (Incidentally, a recent scientific study reported in the popular media has shown categorically that this is exactly the same amount of effort she expends on choosing her record companies, or her misguided film vanity projects, or the next five words coming out of her mouth.)

If It Ain’t Fucking Broke, Don’t Fucking Fix It.

If you look at my articles on africans.co.za, next to the title, you’ll see that I chose a picture of the Hulk as my avatar. You’ll also notice that it’s taken from Ang Lee’s Hulk. Not the “re-imagining” being released around the world this week – the original. Now, if you don’t know me, or if you’ve never been drinking with me when the subject comes up, you may be surprised to hear this, but when I made that crack about how any scene in Ang Lee’s Hulk is better than Batman Begins I was being deadly serious. Deadly – as in, argue with me, or deign to disagree, and I will personally see to your eternal demise. When the apocalypse comes and our mortal bodies are resurrected, the Dear Lord Jesus himself won’t be able to scrape together enough of your earthly remains to put you back together again.

This Film Festival’s Not for Sissies … or Steven Seagal’

Like Canada, and Italy, and various otherwise-fine places around the globe, there are many shitty things about living in Cape Town. This includes the retarded service, and the retards serving you; The ridiculously high beer prices; The people; The small-town, third-world, spaced-out, stoner-haze mentality; The city planning by rabid spider monkeys on crack; Capetonians generally. In fact, the only place I’ve visited that I disliked more on first sight was Edinburgh, and that’s because my first experience with that allegedly fine city involved a smelly room in a cheaply-run-but-hopelessly-expensive guest house, a jammed window, and a pile of sweat-drenched socks that some primeval yeti deposited there aeons ago but which, thanks to the oppressive humidity, had not yet petrified.

‘You can’t stop here … this is banana country.’

Not being Capetonian by birth and yet, as you know, prone to strong opinions, there are times where I’m fucking convinced I’d be better off living someplace else. Being a well-seasoned traveller – someone who has single-handedly journeyed to the shopping centre at the end of the street, battling the elements and the slow-moving cunts on the sidewalk in order to purchase travel guides on the wonders of Paris and Peru; a modern Cousteau, who has bravely sat through entire episodes of the Discovery Channel series on Mount Everest, and who fearlessly skimmed an issue of National Geographic about the glories of the Himalayas; an indomitable explorer who has watched The Life Aquatic seven times in one sitting – being, as it were, a man of my time, I have seen numerous places I’d rather live. Hawaii. Honduras. Enchanting Sudan.

Another excellent film.

But, for once, something actually went right in this piece of crap town that I’ve been indoctrinated into calling “home”. And it happened in the most unexpected place: the cinema – you know, that venue where the most foolish of mortals congregate to annoy the living crap out of their more intelligent cousins several rungs up the evolutionary ladder. In any event. Last week I gave a shameless plug to the X-Fest, which promised a variety of movies that were either in bad taste, called Bad Taste, or a combination of the two.