There have been several interesting film-related posts in the Onion's AV Club recently including:
On June 22, 1954, in Victoria Park in Christchurch, New Zealand, 16-year-old Pauline Parker and her 15-year-old best friend Juliet Hulme bludgeoned Parker’s mother, Honora Rieper, to death with a chunk of brick stuffed into an old stocking. The murder and the trial that followed gained huge notoriety in the country because of the girls’ ages, the pitiless nature of their conspiracy, and the intimations of lesbianism and insanity—connected in mental-health circles at the time—that coursed through their friendship. Predictably, it was also held up as evidence of moral decline, one of those “kids these days” stories that get advanced in the face of the seemingly inexplicable. Parker and Hulme each served five years in prison for the crime, and were released under the stipulation that they never meet again.
Back in 1994, director Peter Jackson seemed like the last person in the world who should be telling this story. Starting with 1987’s Bad Taste, and continuing with Meet The Feebles in 1989 and Dead Alive in 1992, Jackson had come to specialize in homemade, effects-driven “splatstick” comedies that took the horror-comedy of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies to new gross-out extremes. Bad Taste centered on an alien plot to grind up humans into fast-food products for an intergalactic chain called Crumb’s Crunchy Delights; Dead Alive closes with a sequence of mass zombie slaughter that a sump pump would clean up more efficiently than a mop. Of course, we know now that Jackson had much, much grander ambitions for his career, and with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and King Kong, he established himself as a skilled driver of gas-guzzling science-fiction/fantasy behemoths.
Serving as a bridge between the hand-crafted splatter artisan of old and the epic visionary of new, Heavenly Creatures represents not only a key transition into critical respectability—not that his splatstick wasn’t awesome, mind—but perhaps the best use of Jackson’s talents to date. Obviously, the story requires a seriousness and emotional gravity that Jackson hadn’t attempted before, but a great part of the film’s vitality is that he doesn’t abandon the frenetic energy of his early work. A more austere director might have strangled the life out of this mad tragedy, but Jackson has the audacity to risk a certain amount of vulgarity if it means better connecting with the terribly insular world of these two young conspirators. It’s a delicate tack to take—and probably would not have been possible four years after the crime instead of 40—but Heavenly Creatures seeks to understand and communicate the intensity of adolescence and close friendship, and how the impulse to create can also destroy.
There's also a new feature called Gateways To Geekery. This one is dedicated to French New Wave films:
Actually, the genesis of the movement is youthful and invigorating, sparked by a group of Cahiers du Cinema critics who were bored by the staid, unadventurous “cinema of quality” films coming out of France, and anxious to reinvent the form by incorporating influences ranging from Hollywood auteurs like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford to the street-level vitality of Italian neo-realism. But getting into the individual directors is much taller order, especially with pricklier figures like Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette.
The Essentials
1. The Wrestler (2008): After a long period in exile, Rourke scored the role and comeback of a lifetime as an aging wrestler with a bum ticker and a lifetime of regrets in Darren Aronofsky’s heartbreaking character study. It’s an exquisitely quiet film about the loudest and flashiest of “sports,” as well as a tender, empathetic, beautifully observed portrait of a professional gladiator in twilight.
2. Diner (1982): The original “dick in a box” is the obvious touchstone in Barry Levinson’s winning debut feature, which went a long way toward establishing a screen persona that would stick with Rourke for more than a quarter-century. But for all his brooding cool, there’s as much innocence to Rourke’s role as there is in the other, less-edgy performances from the rest of the cast. And in light of all the dark places Rourke’s life and career would go, it’s refreshing to revisit the film and see him having a good time before the shadows crept in.
3. Body Heat (1981): An impossibly young, handsome, and charismatic Rourke didn’t need more than a few minutes of screen time to make an indelible impression on moviegoers as a principled arsonist in Lawrence Kasdan’s neo-noir. Rourke turns in the kind of effortlessly magnetic, attention-grabbing performance that makes audiences wonder, “Who is that man and where can I see more of him?” His subsequent career represented a death match between the actor’s ferocious talent and his equally ferocious genius for squandering that talent.
4. Barfly (1987): Rourke’s brawling, soulful persona was tailor-made for the barroom romanticism and purple poetry of Charles Bukowski’s life and work, so it was perhaps inevitable that Rourke would play a thinly veiled version of the cult poet/author in 1987’s shadow biopic.Like the author whose outsized legend and colorful mythology is hopelessly intertwined with his own, Rourke has lived his dangerous art yet miraculously survived, battered and bruised but defiant.
5. Sin City (2005): Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s graphic novel come to life exploits Rourke’s gravelly voice, pumped-up frame, and age-pocked face to great pulp effect as a loveable thug who pummels his way to the truth about who killed his girlfriend. The film itself hasn’t aged well—Miller’s dire The Spirit, which employed a similar style, did it no favors—but Rourke embodies the adrenalized retro-noir feeling that Rodriguez and Miller only intermittently achieve.
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