Legion: holy shit

Legion: a new release starring paul bettany and that lady from the thing

know what i enjoyed? the dragonball movie. why? because i had NO expectations walking into that theater. and i feel very much the same about legion. sure, the plot don't hang together for crap. sure, the fact that a bunch of people banded together to defend a diner and then died gets completely overwhelmed by the sexual tension between gabriel, michael, and jeep (yes, dennis quaid character appears to have named his son jeep, and for that alone i think he probably deserves to die. so it was written). yes, apparently the archangel michael is also a trained gynecologist (a gynocologangel, perchance?)...and, as has been mentioned by several reviewers, the fact that god tired of our bullshit doesn't, at least to the bullshitters' perspective, appear to be enough of a reason for Him to be attacking us with sharktoothed angel-zombies. my personal favorite out of the banquet of either meaningless or over-obvious idiosyncrasies that one can hold against legion: archangel michael falls, scares junkyard dogs, walks into a "toy" manufacturing or distributing plant, and comes out (through a firey cross-hole) not only toting giant bagfuls of guns but wearing a beautifully tailored three-piece suit.

i don't know, man. you just can't put a price tag on that. not the suit, i mean. nor the guns. you could price both of those. but the moment itself. it's kind of like the moment when gabriel flips the switch on his giant spiky mace thing, and it starts to whirr in circles. very exciting; baroque in its execution.

i like totally unbelievable acts of self-mutilation and awesome fight scenes that make no sense whatsoever. it's why i enjoyed ninja assassin to the hilt. now, granted, the fact that the zombie angel child can think of nothing more creative to say than "you die now" in its creepy voice is slightly disappointing. but really, aside from this and most of the rest of the movie, i can think of nothing to hold against legion.

suuure liked the acting. jeep creeped me the frack out, but maybe he was supposed to. the rest of them were good. i really liked the lachrymose gabriel (might have picked that description up from some other review--also he certainly put the "gay" back in "gabriel," which i would never DREAM of objecting to). i also liked it when the cast of angel sanctuary somehow were called in as one of heaven's lines of offense.

there's a complex point to be made about how in legion, there's this certain amount of "people living as themselves" which is explored and...reaffirmed, maybe? kind of like in 30 days of night, but 30 days of night did it much better.

ah, screw that. paul bettany, you're awesome! eat something!!!

Beauty and the Beast, or how the enlightened '80's man is...a furry

Beauty and the Beast: Season 1
first season series of '80's tv show starring linda hamilton and ron perlman

i have a question to be asked of life in general. it goes a little something like this:

what is wrong with me?! why do i like things that are almost all bad and hate things that are almost not bad? neil gaiman, though one of my personal bete noir-s, is very close to being good (this is all my opinion, and i don't hold it up as more than subjective truth). his writing style is entertaining. his thoughts are interesting. and, along the lines of the observation that lizzie makes to jane, i've liked many a stupider characterization*. i read stardust; i found it vastly entertaining. granted, it made me feel somewhat dirty, but i've felt dirtier. i collect the '70's harlequin presents series. there is no form of entertainment more gross (this statement can be qualified, but not by a ton).

i think beauty and the beast kind of sucks, is what i'm getting at. most of the dialogue that isn't comic relief is irritating beyond irritation, my friends--you sit there and listen, and at least half of you is like "holy shiznit, batman, i've heard every single one of these lines before," and a good portion of the other half of you is like, "so THIS is the anti-buffy/angel relationship. when the buffy/angel relationship looks into the nietzschean void, this, the linda hamilton/ron-perlman-as-a-furry relationship, is what looks back at it. good 2 know. good 2 know. why wouldn't i want to know that?"

and why wouldn't i? and yet i like the show. i like making fun of it, but i also like it. i don't really get why they can't be together--i don't understand why they refuse to kiss each other--and i don't see how (or why) they propose to resolve such things as "the housing crisis," "the chinatown problem," "the voodoo embroglio," or "the gypsy issue" in an hour, not to mention "the irish conflict" (that one was particularly special, though i myself am partial to their solution to the chinatown problem, which involved vincent attacking a bunch of dudes wielding "the weapons of their ancestors" in order to benefit, a., two semi-vacuous young lovers and, b., script writers who had obviously seen chinatown--or possibly flower drum song**--one too many times). but i like it.

i like it a little bit in the way that i like smallville. smallville is CORNY AS HELL. and in all the seasons that i've seen (and may or may not own), it's never gotten less corny, less predictable, or less ridiculous. but at the same time...in some weird way, smallville seems to really care about these characters that are totally unbelievable and have such stupid lines. and my quasi-immense crushes on both lex and chloe have NOTHING to do with me making smallville's excuses, let me tell you that. i'm so totally unbiased, you'd have to bind me in bias tape to even get me to look at the physical attributes of one of the actors on a given show and i'm telling a bunch of lies here but anyway. romero says (forgive me if i'm quoting this wrong) of hitchcock that he feels like as much as he's drawn into the amazing story of any of hitchcock's films, he doesn't ever really care-care about the characters--i understand this as him saying that it's always a voyeuristic sort of thing one feels for the people in a hitchcock film. a person kind of empathizes with smallville's characters in a way that he or she doesn't quite with a joss whedon character. joss whedon's universes (universae?) are infinitely superior to most anything else out there, but in this one weird aspect--that of, like, viewer empathy (not sympathy, but empathy) with the characters--smallville wins by a tiny margin.

and i feel like beauty and the beast has a similar strength. cliched it most certainly is. in a good many ways i'm like, "what the hell is wrong with you people and why are you all acting like this? it being the '80's is an excuse, but you're going to need a better one." but, like, how it deals with its minor characters--brings them back, doesn't dick around with their backstories, allows them to maintain integrity--is a good example of how it deals with its main characters. you kind of feel like linda hamilton character is growing and changing in a way that's realistic...and you sort of (if you push it) feel the same way with ron-perlman-as-a-furry. the show doesn't treat her pain or her pleasure lightly, in the same way that it seems like she wouldn't treat such subjects lightly.

also it's pretty incredible (most of the time, at least) how ron perlman manages to convey emotion despite the fact that most of his face is prosthetic and lion-shaped. okay, so it's a dumb dumb show.


*not sure if i've used this "joke" on this blog before.
**satire about flower drum song is subject to being extra-fatuous, because i've never seen it.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, or, how to make this reviewer die inside, the hardish way

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: a film starring heath ledger posthumously

hmm. you know what's sad? heath ledger's death. it's bad. he was so talented, and had a baby that he loved, and maybe his demons got him or something but that's not any of my business and i'm going to respect that as it deserves. the death of anyone is sad. and heath ledger's death is sad--to say more, to give it more weight because he was famous, is to dishonor the fact that he was a person before he was an actor.


that said, the five thousand imaginariums of doctor p or whatever it was called was a stinky mess. i mean, you can cram all of postmodernism into a two-hour space and then mix it with MAGIC, but, astonishingly, even this recipe doesn't necessarily churn out a good movie.

i have to admit, there were parts when it almost had me. like the painterly school of the sublime, there were peaks of possibility that soared above the general morass. i thought the use of the mirrors was interesting--the moment at which the redhead (scrumpy?) chose hell was kind of interesting--the moments at which the heath-colin-jude-johnny character seemed to have a certain moral ambiguity were pretty interesting. at one point, a point at which h-c-j-j character seemed to maybe be depicted as having, like, a reasonable human morality, not too decent, not too indecent, i was in fact thinking to myself, "oh no! i'm going to have to start liking this!" but then it back-slid into its bombast-covering-for-total-lack-of-a-point mode, like a flip-flopping politician, and i experienced a distinct sensation of relief.

points in favor of doctor parnassorium's wonder imaginorium (or whatever it's called):
1. the acting. as usual, i don't want to blame the actors. i don't know what it is. i guess it's just that actors are generally so good nowadays, and if they're not good, they've got something else going for them: enthusiasm, looks, coolness, whatever. the ones in this i thought were very very good, ledger especially, but the redhead (volupte all over--she was a walking duparc song) and the one they called anton (i know i've seen him somewhere) were also just awesome. if terry gilliam had something to do with that, i blame him...less. also, always good to see tom waits as the devil.
2. um...
3. er...
4. i liked some of the less neil gaiman-y of the ideas. or, to concede to mr. gaiman (though without grace), i found some of the more neil gaiman-y ideas interesting: the story that's always being told, dichotomies between imagination and reality, the ever-expanding universe of the imaginary, etc. i don't agree with these ideas, but i do feel their appeal.

points against the animalia of graeme base (or whatever it's called):
1 through (where's the keyboard symbol for "infinity?"). COME ON!!!
(infinity plus 1). don't be that kind of barn owl, guys. give us a decent effort. STOP HIDING BEHIND WHAT YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE GOING TO WANT TO SEE. you think they're going to want to see heath ledger. that's valid. but do you think that showing them johnny depp saying something quasi-profound about death and then focusing on his face a split second too long will enhance their experience in any way that doesn't speed them toward acknowledging what ends up being force-fed to us as the inevitable inanity of the human condition? (sure, sra. whatever. try saying that last sentence five times fast.) the immigration of doctor paracelsus (or whatever it's called) in the end sells us a version of ourselves that is dull and dry, painted up to look super-cool, but stale and profitless, like putting good tuna salad on old-ass bread. i mean, what were the people who fell in imagining? what were they tempted by? my friend pointed out that imagination as depicted by such coated movies as the long vacation of steve and greg (or whatever it's called) is BORING AS SHIT. shoes. dancing. bars. gondolas. mothers...

yeah, what was the deal with the racism against russians?

...making these boring depictions of experience look exciting hurts our consciouses even worse than it would have if the movie had looked as trite as it was. our imaginations aren't limited by depiction, is what i guess maybe i'm getting at. if we long for home, that longing is miraculous and sad, private and immediate. if we long for someone else, the same thing is true. i don't quite know how to say it. i guess the fact that the aqua-terrarium of my younger brother (or whatever it's called) is supposed to depict the immense possibilities of imagination and instead just depicts whatever neil gaiman-like "thinkers" find fashionable in post-joseph-campbellian thought nowadays BUGS ME. the imaginarium of doctor parnassus just looks specific.

i don't know why i allow myself to rip into these things so wholeheartedly. i guess it's just that it makes me so angry when people who have the opportunity to depict something extroardinary end up depicting something even less than ordinary. i guess there are probably constraints--studio constraints, budgetary constraints (though they weren't in evidence by any means). and it's not like i don't have an agenda when it comes to human expression. i can't explain what they are, but i know i judge based on criteria that aren't necessarily either universal or accurate.

mmm, tuna.

Youth In Revolt, or, how i learned to spell "aggravated assault by an indie film" N-I-C-K (space) T-W-I-S-P

Youth In Revolt: film starring Michael Cera

don't know who directed; too lazy to find out. yes, in our push-button culture it would require the mere push of a button to do so; no, i don't care enough to push said button. enough buttons were pushed by this movie for me not to wish to retaliate. i think i'll take the high road. like gandhi.

ah, who am i kidding? youth in revolt bothered the HECK out of me. if i were roger ebert (wow, this sounds like the beginning of a song that could have been featured on the soundtrack of youth in revolt: "if i were roger ebert, i'd give you my thumbs..."), i'd say something mainstream yet incisive, like "youth in revolt is a solid representation of the genre of wacky coming-of-age stories." a grandchild of the graduate, a second cousin to i love you beth cooper (i assume--i really enjoyed i love you beth cooper the book, but didn't see the movie), youth in revolt is a story of a nerdy guy who gets a girl of some sort. it has better vocabulary than most teen movies, and knows it. it has higher pop culture references than most teen movies; it knows that too. and it SUCKS.

that's actually not true. youth in revolt is fine. if i hear one more teen boy depiction speaking in elevated prose about frank sinatra and the fact that nice guys never get the girl while when meeting a girl doing nothing but looking at her chests and speaking to her solely because of the fact that she's cute, i might have to puke, but youth in revolt is fine. if i have to listen to one more soundtrack that features nothing but acoustical instruments and lyrics that only make sense by sheer force of high-pop-art referential stamina, i might have to puke more, but youth in revolt is fine. if i am subjected to one more depiction of a slutty mother who couldn't be based on a human woman if she tried, i might have to burn holes in my esophagus with what puke i've still got left, but youth in revolt is fine. if i pay $10.25 more to see self-justifying assholes hiding their assholeness behind an excess of quirkiness, i might lose the entirety of my stomach lining. i might sue modern culture for its replacement. i might win. but youth in revolt is fine.

what made me like it least was the ridiculous amount of self-consciousness behind the construction of the characters and the plot, which is why i blame the author of the book it was based on. this is how i feel the movie happened: 1. asshole writes a book. 2. another asshole gets his or her hands on said book, and says, "people are buying this; let's make it a movie! let's ANIMATE parts of it! that'll throw viewers off the scent of the fact that what they're watching has been done unto death, like the hero that here lies, but without the slanderous tongues! oh, wait, i don't understand that reference! i'm not an erudite freak, i'm a hipster asshole! there's a slight difference!" 3. the director directs the movie. now, i thought the director did a pretty good job. i feel like the scenes themselves attempted to convey humanity, pathos, whatever, a weird veneer of reality with which to wash the total artificiality of what was toward, but it kind of worked for me. if it had been another film, i really would have enjoyed it. and this is despite the fact that i live in the bay area and have lived in santa cruz, and can say with absolute certainty that the oakland and santa cruz depicted by the movie are definitely in british columbia or something. 4. michael cera acts in the movie.

i love michael cera. he didn't make nick twisp likeable, but he did give the character some dignity, and watching him play an uninhibited alter ego in slender white pants was pretty great. he didn't do suave, quite, but what he did was much more interesting--the understated, animal psychopathy he portrayed as francois dillinger's was so much less cliched and so much more awesome than i suspect it maybe should have been.

i am not touching the book youth in revolt with a ninety-foot pole. why do teenage boys always get depicted as assuming that they're nice if they're not jocks? there's nothing nice about nick twisp. he's a dick. the girl he gets to be interested in him is a dick. it's the post-jameson-pastiche-characterization-but-knows-it version of the nanny diaries. or the devil wears prada, take your pick. oh, i said it. i meant it. after all, both of those books got made into movies as well. if you have something to say about the shallowness and artificiality of the human condition, just say it, author! don't cash in on humanity's weakness for things that look cool even if they fundamentally are terrible. the cold war kids, at least to me, show that beyond pastiche lies some form of passion, some interest in truth, and they sell. i bought their cd at a best buy. so come on!

what youth in revolt has going for it is the directing (i think), and most of the acting (cera especially)--it's really not un-enjoyable. which is what makes its evil all the more insidious.

The Lovely Bones, or, how to shove a safe five feet in 10 or more minutes

The Lovely Bones: film directed by Peter Jackson

not sure what i can say about this movie. i mostly wanted to write that blog title. some of the acting (especially that of the sisters salmon) was really good; the movie was quite terrible...

it made me want to read the book! that's a good thing. that's really about all i've got. i guess i took the whole thing a little too personally to deal with the film on a level of good and bad--i know it was bad, but it affected me powerfully.

to go into a place you don't expect to be able to come back from is not simple. even when the road is clear and the door is open. one knows one will survive--one knows that as there's a door in, there's something like a door out...one knows one will survive, because one has to. there is no question. but at the same time it seems impossible. i have faith. but it seems impossible. my mind can't understand the way it will work--can't see in advance the way that it'll happen. i have faith; i know my faith will be enough, but i don't know where i'm going; i know i will survive, but i don't know how.

it's not just faith in a higher, or broader, power. it's faith in myself--faith in the broad power, the roots that run through me, and faith in myself, the earth they move through. this is why i don't go to church except when i'm getting paid, or take communion when i am: the connection can't be fetishized, can't be solidified, can't be dictated. the root runs deeper and stronger than that. it's like with singing: i am always singing. or writing: i'm always writing. or loving. or grieving. these things aren't plain or simple, but they're true. i exist. nothing can stop that, except myself.

i'm just thinking out loud...and sounding crazy. up next: review of first two discs of season one of beauty and the beast. booyah!

Rock 'n' Roll High School: still not sure about the ramones

Rock 'n' Roll High School: Corman-produced movie of the '80's

my main problem with this movie: i am 27; it was aimed at 14-year-olds. secondary problems: i don't think i love the ramones. i like them. but not as much as i could. and as with most corman films i've seen, i did get bored. i mean, he produces witty stuff, but...i can't quite explain. it's witty without being super-duper interesting, which is in a sense part of its charm.

i don't know. anyway. i guess i don't feel comfortable reviewing it because i am, as aforestated, not 14.

it's like, why listen to the ramones when you can listen to the sex pistols? i love the stooges--i've got iggy pop growling into a microphone--in comparison, what's the freaking point of "gabba gabba hey?" that's probably my own preference for the ridiculously dramatic talking. the ramones are like art songs and the stooges are like opera. the ramones are like mozart and the stooges are like mussorgsky. mozart did a lot with what he had, but because i don't like the classical period, i find that a composer from another period (really any other period) can do a lot more in music, even if less skillfully (not that i'm willing to concede that mussorgsky was less skillful--that kid understood the vocal line, from what i can tell, whereas mozart just wrote modified oboe music and then set words to it [beautiful, clever modified oboe music, but still modified oboe music]). that said, i do want the rock 'n' roll high school soundtrack. maybe i'll come around.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: warning--excessive amounts of homosexuality may get you killed

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: campy shock (?) film of the '70's (?) by Roger Ebert


pretty great, this was. i feel like at this point, if anyone has ever read this blog, he or she may have noticed that i tend to LIKE things i'm supposed to find bad, and DISLIKE things i'm supposed to find good. and i won't deny this, necessarily--if something's supposed to be campy, racy, and stupid, i tend to give it the benefit of the doubt and am prepared to enjoy it, whereas if it's supposed to be fine, good, and quality, i tend to give it the opposite. but within these parameters, i do attempt to exercise taste. for instance, i wasn't wild about casino royale (the peter sellers version--i liked the new one), though from the externals of the thing, it was right up my alley, and i wouldn't call, say, dementia 13 a favorite movie of mine, even though it was low budget, with an awesome title sequence and a girl hanging on a hook (i mean, i like it, i just don't love it). also xanadu. it was supposed to be bad; it was bad; and gene kelly dancing in roller skates didn't save it.

beyond the valley of the dolls was also supposed to be right up my alley, and, hey, it was--it delivered to my door (yeah, not sure what that's supposed to mean; i'm trying to say "i liked it"). i mostly liked the script, and the fact that everyone in it was super-attractive. not that creepy attractiveness of the '60's through the '80's where you go, "eurgh! hunh..." like the blonde girl in shivers, or the girl in die! die! my darling!--not that these ladies (especially stefanie powers) are NOT good looking--it's not that. it's just that it's kind of hard to dig under the hair and the clothes. whereas in beyond the valley of the dolls, it wasn't. i don't know why. maybe it's because they got taken off with such frequency.

the best part is definitely the script. it's awkward, it's grammatically perfect, it's beautiful--it incorporates slang without rhythm, and at the beginning there's a whole use of slant rhyme that makes you glad to be alive. the plot is...not really comprehensible, which is okay. it's all about the script. if emily dickinson had written a movie about swinging, drugs, and rock and roll in hollywood, cast it with not great but extremely good looking actors and actresses, and then gone back home to amherst, it would look something like beyond the valley of the dolls i think. the best description i can think of is, precision almost entirely divorced from meaning--the z man's lines were a case in point.

and that's a pretty impressive feat. go go roger ebert. also i liked the part when z man killed everyone due to an excess of fruitcakery--they said it was the drugs, but we knew it was the cross-dressing. go go superwoman.

love actually: when there are so many reasons, why is it i can't stop liking hugh grant???

Love Actually: romantic comedy

i have disliked many a less worthy person. for instance, maggie gyllenhall. and all she does is twist up her neckbone for the camera and be very good in secretary. hugh grant has medium dubious proclivities (though a., i don't know the full story with the prostitute thing, and b., i don't know his life--call me underprincipled, but i don't think it's particularly fair to judge someone based on stuff about his or her home life that i really have no right to know), and he thinks that if he just sings almost in tune and dances inappropriately he can get away with no real characterization--he caricatures himself (hugh grant plays hugh grant) at this point at all moments available. and yet i don't hate him. AAUGH! WHY??? roguish charm, a twinkle in his eye, the sense that he knows whether you're naughty or nice...he appears to be in my mind the romantic lead equivalent of santa claus. also he angsts well.

anyway, the disturbing conundrum of hugh grant aside, i hated this film because i couldn't take my eyes off it. it pulled me in with its sappy sappy sappiness--the idea seemed to be, "if we twist various romantic comedy set-ups together enough times, we'll wring out the most romanticest comedy possible"--wrung me out accordingly, and hanged me up to dry like in the cold war kids song. i hate it when movies do this--hate hate hate. i hate it when they cut corners and don't give full characterizations and allow cute situations--or trite situations (c'mon, rickman-thompson plot, just give us a clue as to what's going on--we're rooting for you, really we are; we like your actors; just one hint, one little hint as to who these characters are supposed to be aside from alan rickman and emma thompson in a fat suit)--and attractive people to do the work of their storytelling for them. and i hate it more when they don't acknowledge that they've done it. with american romantic comedies (america! fuck yeah!), you know that what you're watching is a steaming pile of fecal matter, so you sort of sit back and allow the evil to happen (which doesn't sound unfamiliar as a strategy in american life in general [ooh, social commentary by the sra--much may it mean, meaning gods!]). but love actually makes a pretense at meaning something, and falls so short it doesn't even have to worry about minding the gap cuz it's not yet in the station (burn! [??]).

and, again, who sat screwed up like a romantic dishtowel? who was right where the movie wanted her to be? who, if she had such habits, would have found some juicy hangnail to tear at, waiting in agonies of anticipation for various happy endings? guess. that is the unkindest cut of all, definitely: that i got manipulated so hard and far. by something unworthy of my affections.

now of course i sound like a regency romance character, because think about what i'm admitting to: getting all involved in a movie that, whatever it made me feel, had nothing to offer me, nothing to truly give. it's a sterile, exhausting game of give and take. i start watching the movie and hence enter into a social contract with it, but not one in which i'm free like a 21st century woman: i have to let it do what it's going to, and my only real options are to disengage or to be taken for the ride. i mean, you could say, "for christ's sake, woman, it's just a movie. it entertained you, didn't it? what more do you want?"

but i can say in return, "i want to be entertained by something that doesn't hate me--something that doesn't mistake my emotions for points on a chart thingee (triangle graph?) that symbolize earned revenue, that doesn't grossly pander to my own sick proclivity for separating emotion from content. if the true fantasy here is that emotion does somehow cleave to content, let me live in that fantasy. let me believe that my feelings have something within me causing them, something that passes show, as opposed to being a cleverly formulated series of chain reactions to a chain series of stimuli that could, really, as is proved by this movie, come almost at random."

i guess what i'm trying to get at is, romantic comedies should not use government-funded algorithmic research to create ridiculous plots for their own nefarious uses. it's wrong. it's bad. and it's happening all around us.

el topo: i use netflix to the hilt!

El Topo: surreal spaghetti western movie

the good news is that i know what i want to be for next halloween. $400 to spend on leather duster and bellbottoms, about $6 for the hat...$3 worth of gigantic party store rings...

the better news is that i really liked this. no reservations. it was pretty spectacular. because i enjoy making these analogies, i'd say that it was bunuel's land without bread meets the wizard of oz...though this "meeting" doesn't satisfy my desire for the quixotic because both land without bread and wizard of oz could be seen as travelogues. maybe land without bread meets return to oz, the book, except the allegory's just as nightmareish but more dreamy--okay, land without bread meets the wizard of oz the movie meets return to oz the book meets heidegger.

i think ozma might be one of the first crushes on an illustration i ever contracted.

that has nothing to do with anything.

but seriously, i don't know what to say. it's really good. perhaps some user advice: don't expect big plot--but the plot it has delivers. don't expect serious violence--just lots of it. don't expect sympathetic portrayals of women--or men. do expect social commentary, but don't expect to be affected by it beyond a sort of surface identification and snide horror. don't expect to understand what's going on, but do allow your dream-conscious to get involved, because i think most of it goes all the way through, on the symbolic level at least. and if you're horrified by things that really oughtn't to be depicted, don't watch it (though i'd say that the candy-colored filming and the surreality keep el topo out of the realm of depicting things that shouldn't be depicted...but then again, i thought that the new sherlock holmes decently reinterpreted holmes' character).

jigoku: hell is other people AND has a kick-ass soundtrack

Jigoku: Japanese horror film of the 1960's

this is truly the way to inaugurate the new year: hammer meets akutagawa, but, you know, less so--akutagawa's "jigoku hen," as far as i remember it, is kind of a freaky terrifying miracle of a story, whereas the story of jigoku is more of a painful yet rollicking romp through the various reasons a person could get sent to hell, and then an equally painful yet rollicking romp through hell itself.

i kind of felt like tamura expresses it best as he's getting flayed or something by a dude in a mask: he starts to laugh, and then he's like "THIS IS HELL!" and that's a little how you feel, watching it: half of you's like, "STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!!!" and the other half of you is like, "man, hell's the new party town, apparently."

i don't like to let things like unevennesses of plotlines stand in the way of my enjoyment, at least not when it comes to weird, awkward, outside-the-flow-of-the-mainstream movies. the naked kiss is possibly my favorite movie ever, not just because it's great, gorgeously filmed, and weird, but because it responds to my personal aesthetic on many different levels: i like the dreaminess of the sequences, the way that every single scene is...not within the realm of what people tend to think is possible. so i'm not unduly prejudiced against jigoku because its plot is a little off-kilter. i kind of like the way that it takes so much time over the details of how everyone is evil--i kind of like the fact that the plot doesn't let its own disjointment stand in the way of exploring these realms of personal guilt. but it's crappy, pretty much; this is only medium arguable. which is also why i like the criterion collection: they're not afraid of genre. they give you the awesomest in crappy films...as well as the awesomest in good films.

the main problem i had with jigoku was the fact that the damn people kept screaming each others' names over and over. if the main dude had screamed "harumi" one more time, i would have reached out and slapped the '60's. "tamura" was also a favorite, as was "shiro." i admittedly talk to my tv a lot, but i think i was pretty justified in saying, aloud, to the movie, "stop screaming her name and just go GET her, for freak's sake!!! just crawl across the big cart wheel and go get her!!! why are you so afraid of dry ice steam???" (or words to this effect). and they don't just scream, they, like, scream BIG. they screw up all their neck cords and go for it. and they were all doing it. extras, main characters, demons, tortured, whatever. entire sequences cutting from torture to torture, and all of the victims letting out these intense, totally unbelievable, totally soul-grinding screams--seriously, they all sound like tom waits getting cheese grated. it's like one of those things where you're going, "i can't take this." and then suddenly you start to think maybe you can take this. and that's the point at which mark hamil is able to brainwash you if you're john wesley shipp in that one episode of the 90's flash (or the flash?). not flash gordon; the other flash. the one that kathy bates as annie wilkes didn't object to in misery. i am having my own personal nerd-out, here.

oh, and the soundtrack is really cool. i like it when everyone sings a lot. i wonder what happened to that kid who played harumi--did she grow up to love cabbage, or hate it?