Thoughts on Brainstorm

    On Criterion, I watched the 1983 science fiction film Brainstorm, directed by the late Douglas Trumbull, and starring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, and Louise Fletcher. Trumbull, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 79, was a director and visual effects supervisor, who created special effects for iconic films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, and directed Silent Running. 

  

 This film has a complicated history, as Natalie Wood died in a drowning accident in 1981 after having completed most of this film, while she was on a weekend boat trip with Christopher Walken and her then-husband Robert Wagner in North Carolina, and died under mysterious circumstances. The film was almost cancelled, but Trumbull fought for it, and it was completed two years later, with Wood's sister Lana doubling for her in some scenes. The film received good critical reviews but bombed at the box office, likely due to the notoriety of Wood's death and the suspicions of Wagner and Walken, because Wagner was accused of killing her and Walken was accused of having an affair with her. It's a tragic end for a very talented and likable actress who was making her way back into films after taking a hiatus to raise her kids, and it was different to see Wood as a middle-aged woman with curly 80's hair after having been a youth for so long in old Hollywood films from the 1940s-1960s.

    With that necessary backstory out of the way, the film is a really interesting look at a version of virtual reality, where Walken and Louise Fletcher as two scientists, Michael and Lillian, who create a brain-computer interface that records people's memories and can play it back for others who can not only see the memories, but feel the same experiences emotionally in their minds and bodies. The project brings on Michael's estranged scientist wife, Karen (Wood), and they create this project that seems incredibly groundbreaking, allowing others to go past empathy and truly feel what another is feeling with the experiences in their bodies. When the military wants to use the invention, Lillian is firmly against it, seeing the creation as hers alone (despite Michael's objections about it being a collaborative project), and not wanting the military to use it for defense or torture purposes.

    The project didn't need the military to abuse it, as members of the team end up taking advantage of it for their own selfish interests, be it a man who plays back a sex tape on a loop to stay in continual arousal until he nearly dies from sensory overload, to Michael, who records his happiest memories with Karen and plays them back for her in a best-of montage to try to win her back.

    I liked the film as a creative look at 1980s technology and mixing virtual reality with computers and emotional manipulations. In 1995, Kathyrn Bigelow's film Strange Days would also explore this, with people selling memories on disks like a street drug, and Ralph Fiennes' character replaying memories of his ex-girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) in a self-abusing cycle of loneliness and living in the past. The police would also take advantage of the device when it records an act of police violence, which also leads to a sex worker being murdered while videotaped, and the whole use of recording memories and feeding off of them in a disturbing cycle of violence.

    The film has some cool special effects, like how the memories are stretched out to be wide-screen, stretched out on either side of the screen, with a different color grading to make them look different than the present-day world. And the finale gets very trippy with images of angels and Heaven and Hell and all these colliding images that make for a stunning ending.

    I really didn't like Michael in this, as charming as Walken can be in the role. Michael's abuse of the technology to win his ex-wife back by only playing the happy moments of their relationship came off as manipulative and disingenuous to me, trying to make her forget why they divorced in the first place (a major conflict being his obsessive workaholic personality). I preferred Lillian, as an assertive woman in STEM who was defending her creation from becoming a part of the military-industrial complex, and being surrounded by men who were treating her as if she was "hysterical," to dismiss her. It was also nice to see Louise Fletcher not be typecast from her most famous role as the cold and insensitive Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and see her in a more complex role. Fletcher also passed away in 2022, at the age of 88.

    Wood was good in her final role, though it felt like she was often sidelined as the ex-wife/love interest to win back. Still, I did like her in the film, seeing her as a middle-aged woman in the 1980s after years of being a pretty young ingenue, and her death was sudden and sad, but at least her final film was a good and unique science fiction film directed by a visionary artist, and her legacy is still celebrated decades later. 

Thoughts on Trouble Every Day

     On Criterion, I watched Claire Denis' 2001 body horror film Trouble Every Day. I wasn't really sure what to expect, and I liked how it was a mix between a slow art house film and then cannibal gore, with Beatrice Dalle just devouring men alive in bloody glee.

    Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey star as newlyweds Shane and June in Paris on their honeymoon, being very quiet and romantic with each other on the plane. But June is unaware that Shane picked Paris not just because it's a romantic honeymoon spot, but because he is seeking a neuroscientist, Dr. Léo Sémeneau, (Alex Descas) to help him cure his bloodthirsty disease. Shane knew Leo's wife, Coré, (Dalle) and was obsessed with her. Coré is a cannibal who her husband keeps locked in their home, but she occasionally breaks out to have sex with men and murder them, eating them alive.

 

  Gallo is well-cast as looking like a strange, unwell man with a mysterious disease, and his unsettling weirdness fits for this kind of film. He mostly feels like he just floats through Paris, not really mentally connected to the environment, and barely spends any time with his new wife, often leaving her alone in the hotel, where she mostly makes pleasantries with the hotel maid, who the film follows sometimes but doesn't seem to have much going on beyond the mundanities of her job.

    Beatrice Dalle barely has any lines in this film, but has a striking screen presence with her jolie-laide off-kilter beauty and demented joy in biting a man to death as he cries in pain. Outside of her attacks, she's quiet throughout the film, either staying in bed, slowly stalking around her home, or banging against the boarded-up windows while a couple of young men outside try to get a glimpse at her.

    Alex Descas is a regular in Claire Denis films, like No Fear, No Die; 35 Shots of Rum, and Nenette et Boni. He has been in ten films by Claire Denis, two films by Jim Jarmusch, and four films by Oliver Assayas. He works well as a reliable character actor, and has a quiet dignified presence about him, portraying a doctor trying to keep his wife from hurting other people, but still burying the bodies to cover up her crimes when she does.

    I thought the film was decent, but aside from the gore scenes, a little too slow-paced for me, and I'm not a fan of Vincent Gallo, so I wasn't into his presence, despite him being a fitting cast for his role. It was mostly interesting to watch Dalle playing a bloodthirsty and strange character, who some reviewers called a vampire, because she stays in during the day and hunts at night. I can see that, with elements of vampirism, but she just seemed more like a cannibal to me. It was fine to watch as an artsy slow horror film, where a lot of the characters just felt like they were in a trance or a reverie.

Thoughts on Dust Devil

   On Criterion, I watched the 1992 supernatural horror film Dust Devil, directed by Richard Stanley (Hardware, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Color of Space), and really liked it a lot. It had a Western meets horror vibe to it, set in the small town of Bethanie, Namibia, where a mysterious shapeshifter (Robert John Burke) poses as a hitchhiker in the desert and murders his victims, believed to be known as the "Dust Devil"; a local cop, Sgt. Ben Mukurob, (Zakes Mokae) is investigating the grisly murders and consulting a witch doctor on the supernatural elements of it, and a South African woman (Chelsea Field) is escaping her abusive husband, on a journey with no real destination. 

    The three all intersect with each other, and the film had this stunning look to it with the Namibian desert and haunting dreamlike atmosphere of the horror genre, where the shapeshifter justifies his murders by claiming he finds people who want to die, as if he is performing a mercy on them. I didn't fully believe that, as his methods of murder were pretty gruesome and awful, whether murdering a woman during sex or massacring a man in a bloody manner. Burke does have a great psychotic look to his eyes, where he can just be silent with a piercing, unsettling stare that one could find chilling in real life.

   

Chelsea Field was great as Wendy, as a woman looking for an escape from her awful husband, who slaps her and accuses her of infidelity, and she takes off from South Africa to Bethanie in Namibia, just on a journey for a way out. Field is stunning, with a muscular, lean figure, and she also casts a haunting look over the desert in her long purple dress, and is both attracted to the Dust Devil and disturbed by him. 

    Zakes Mokae was excellent as the local cop Sgt. Mukurob, as a more unique character as a Namibian cop in a Western horror movie, being one of the heroes of the film, using both detective skills and supernatural knowledge to find the Dust Devil. He would also stand up to Wendy's idiot husband, who has come looking for her and stands out as a clueless white Afrikaner among Namibian men, especially in a time that was just two years away from the abolishment of apartheid. Mokae also played a cop in Body Parts, the film I previously reviewed, so it was great to see him pop up again as an interesting and underrated character actor, who passed away in 2009 from a stroke.

    I really adored this film, I loved how it felt surreal and strange and weird and beautiful, and I'm happy I got to watch it.

Thoughts on Body Parts

    On Criterion, as part of their 90s Horror collection, I watched the 1991 film Body Parts, starring Jeff Fahey as a criminal psychologist who interviews killers, who loses his arm in a grisly car accident and he gets a grafted arm in an experimental operation, which turns out to be from a serial killer. He has weird visions of murdering people from the killer’s POV, and his right arm acts on its own, attacking his family and nearly killing guys in a bar fight. He meets other men who also had received limbs from the same body, with their own weird side effects.

    I’ve seen various films and TV that have this premise, where someone receives a donated organ that comes from a killer, so then they have strange visions or murderous impulses (Body Bags, Hideaway), or they get donated organs from the victim of the killer and use their visions to find the serial killer (Blind, a Beyond Belief episode). So it’s not a totally unique premise, but decent to watch.

    I can’t really get into Jeff Fahey as an actor. He has startling blue eyes that stick out against his dark hair, but beyond that, he’s not that charismatic or interesting, he’s just there. He fits in direct to video movies, that definitely felt like his market, but his acting pales in comparison when he’s against Brad Dourif in a scene, who is just obviously way more talented and interesting, and his supporting character as a struggling mediocre artist who turns successful post-surgery with his disturbing art from the killer’s POV made him way more compelling to watch, like just dropping into his story in the middle of it and wanting to follow him instead of Fahey and his family.

    The third act felt ludicrous and dumb, and didn’t make much sense to me, it just seemed like a stupid explanation. I bought that Lindsay Duncan as the doctor would have some corrupt ulterior motives for performing the experimental operation, but the further explanation and reveal just took me out of the movie, like not suspending my disbelief anymore.

    So it was fine to watch as an average psychological thriller (which had its TV trailers pulled after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught because of images of dismembered body parts in the movie), but could have had a better leading man, and especially not wasting Brad Dourif in a small supporting role.

Thoughts on Frankenhooker

 On Criterion, as part of their 90s Horror collection, I watched the classic 1990 B-movie Frankenhooker, about a med school dropout (James Lorinz) who brings back his dead fiancée (Patty Mullen), who had been killed in a lawnmower accident, using the body parts of sex workers he accidentally exploded with them smoking super enhanced crack. This was produced by Troma, so it’s definitely their style of sleaze, gore, and dark humor. It was goofy and silly to watch, with cheap effects like the actresses being replaced with obvious mannequins when they exploded, or the fiancée looking “fat” in the intro in an obviously padded body suit, only to look like her natural slim self when her body is pieced together from the other women.

    The film was directed by Frank Henenlotter, known for directing Basket Case (and its sequel from this same year) and Brain Damage, so it’s great at having that mix of dark comedy and grime.

    The only names I recognized were Louise Lasser, in one scene as the guy’s mom, and the 90s adult film star Heather Hunter as one of the sex workers.

    Lorinz had this Jeffrey Combs vibe, with the nerdy mad scientist look, but had this snarky voice that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place who. I liked how he came off as funny without intending to, like being innocent and incidentally funny. And Mullen had been a Penthouse Pet in the 1980s, and only acted in a couple of movies. She was pretty funny and goofy, especially when she’s walking all stiff and can only speak dialogue that the other sex workers have said, so it’s a lot of “Want a date? Got any money?” doing a mouth twitch move, and complete repetition of out of context dialogue. She’s pretty good in this in a self aware, sex object kind of way.

    I had long heard of this movie, so this was fun to check out.

    Trailer for the film

Thoughts on Broker

    Last week on Hulu, I watched Broker, a 2022 South Korean drama directed by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, Nobody Knows, Air Doll). It shares similar themes with Shoplifters, as both films are about unconventional families of criminals and misfits, but manages to stand out as its own world, especially being South Korean and not Japanese. It features a cast of major film stars, like Song Kang-ho (The Host, Parasite, Snowpiercer), Bae Doona (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Air Doll, Cloud Atlas), and Lee Ji-eun, aka IU (famed South Korean pop star and actress). It's a really interesting film about mothers, adoption, and feeling rejected by society and being outcasts.

    The film stars Song Kang-ho as Ha Sang-yeon, who owns a laundry service and volunteers at the church, where his friend Dong-soo (Gang Dong-wong) works. They together run a illegal business where they steal babies that are placed in the baby box by anonymous mothers for adoption, selling them on the black market to couples, acting as brokers. They take a baby that a young woman, Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun), had abandoned, only for her to return and want her child back. It's more complicated, as she not only gave up her child, and they already are in the process of contacting couples, but she had been a sex worker, and in a difficult relationship with the child's father. So she goes with the brokers to interview potential couples, traveling around in a van, along with a runaway orphan boy, to size up whether they would be good parents. Plus, two detectives, Soo-jin (Bae Doona) and Lee (Lee Joo-young) are on the brokers' trail, waiting to catch them in the act of a selling exchange to arrest them for child trafficking, and want to use So-young as an informant to reduce her sentence.

   It's been a week since I've seen it, so I may not remember a lot of it to highlight, but I liked that it had a melancholic feel to it, of a drama that felt sad but not depressing, and giving a three-dimensional portrait of people who are doing black market activities that are wrong for the child, but understandable for their difficult situations. And that the detectives were an interesting pair, between the veteran and the younger rookie, who were sympathetic to the trio even if they still had to bust them on trafficking charges. It was a thoughtful and interesting film to watch, and I've liked Kore-eda's quiet humanistic dramas for a long time.