The grand daddy of all wise guy films.
Stick and move, Bobby, stick and move.

Robert DeNiro bobs, weaves, curses, spits and earns a Best Actor Oscar in Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull”, playing prizefighter Jake La Motta.
Released in 1980, it’s a brutal and beautiful film that probably wouldn’t get past the pitch stage today let alone be filmed. I can just see Scorsese at the lunch meeting, on the edge of his chair and spilling salad all over the table: “This guy was middleweight champ in ’49. Sure, no one outside The Bronx has heard of him, but he knocked Sugar Ray Robinson on his ass! We’ll shoot it in black and white. Every other word will be diry, and Joe Pesci…Who’s Joe Pesci?! So, he’s an unknown NOW, but you just wait…He’ll say, ‘Yo’ mutha sucks fuckin’ BIG fuckin’ ELEPHANT DICKS!'”
Yet it was made. And even more unbelievably it was nominated for Best Picture. But that isn’t saying much considering the Academy gave the award to “Ordinary People”.
The 2 disc collector’s edition is essential for anyone who loves “GoodFellas” and “The Sopranos” because this is the granddaddy of all modern day wiseguy films and your girlfriend will fall asleep halfway through it. In addition to mini-documentaries on the making of the film, the special features include the theatrical trailer, which, at the time, was like no other trailer I’d ever seen. In fact, I went to see the film when it was released on the strength of the trailer. There was no cheesy narration, just a few scenes with dialogue followed by images of the film set to the opening Intermezzo. I forgot what movie my girlfriend and I went to see when I first saw the trailer (I think it was ‘Ordinary People’), but after it was over, there were none of the usual murmurs from the crowd, just silence. A few people looked at each other, as if saying, “What the hell was THAT!?!?!”
I saw the film at least twenty times after it was released. It was a mesmerizing roller-coaster ride, rising with the ferocious fight scenes, both in the ring at at home, levelling out with Michael Chapman’s beautifully shot slow motion images, and sinking to the gritty and just downright depressing end of La Motta’s fight career, where it blurs to his stint as a nightclub owner and entertainer and his second term in prison. Sure, the film was famous for De Niro’s gaining fifty pounds to play La Motta in retirement, but it’s the sinewy, hunched over, stick and move, stick and move De Niro that stands out after all these years. (Here’s what I think is a sad comment on De Niro’s career: I was at Blockbuster recently and two college women were browsing through Drama and one of them commented: “I just can’t see Robert De Niro as a bad guy.”)
So buy, rent or steal this collector’s edition and watch Joe Pesci become a star, watch De Niro play tony Soprano years before that character was even a gleam in David Chase’s eye, and try to figure out where you’ve seen that guy who plays Mob Boss Tommy Como…
It’s ‘Coach’ in the TV Sitcom “Cheers”.

Hit your man over the head and EAT A HAMBURGER!!!

Vittorio bathes his reptilian spawn

What a sick movie.
That’s pretty much all I could think of while watching Strand Releasing’s newest piece of European DVD trash that provides its viewers with many of those primal exploitation elements we all know and love but offers them in a way that is, to quote one of my favorite Stooges songs, NO FUN.
This latest bit of cinematic excrement is Matteo Garrone’s Primo Amore, a film that somehow tries to romanticize extreme control, sick psychological problems, dangerous eating disorders, and emotional violence. Sure, the film’s press release claims that it is “a cautionary tale,” but after watching it I’m pretty convinced that this movie exists just to titillate some sick suckers out there who love to see nude ladies romping around with their ribs poking out from under their pasty white emaciated skin.
The plot of this wacky film is the kind that makes me want to seal all the windows, turn on the gas, and watch The Cosby Show until my eyes grow heavy with peaceful, eternal sleep. It goes a little somethin’ like this: Vittorio (Vitaliano Trevisan) is a bald, older guy who meets young, pretty Sonia (Michela Cescon) through a personal ad and immediately tells her that she’s fat. Desperate for love and companionship, Sonia begins a relationship with Vittorio, who immediately starts controlling her by making her go on a diet.
Sonia isn’t fat in the least, but Vittorio has some screws loose in his big melon head and he apparently wants her to be like all of the pasty white toothpick women who entertain us in many excellent movies and television shows. Sonia gets sucked into the whole deal, happily restricting her intake of food and charting her progress/decline on a chart. Well, a few pounds isn’t enough for Vittorio, and as he makes her lose more and more weight, both go totally insane and their already unhealthy relationship becomes positively diabolical.
I’m at times a “glass half full” kinda guy, so I’ll give you a few positives on this dungheap. The acting is good, the dialogue is competently written, and there are some striking images found throughout the film. Sonia’s transformation from normal to ultra-thin is convincingly executed and I give mad props to Michela Cescon for going on whatever extreme diet she had to go on in order to make this change. But honey, was it all really worth it?
My main problem with this movie is that it’s just not very believable that the young, attractive Sonia would go through all of this for Vittorio, who’s dull, lacks charisma, and is actually a dick. I know that many women get themselves into abusive relationships that they can’t pull themselves out of, so perhaps my view is naive. Still, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. The press release states that it is based on a true story, so I guess that the truth really is stranger than fiction… and it’s also proof that the truth doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie.
So you wanna make a movie about obsessive love that serves as a cautionary tale? Make a self-help video, not a feature film that passes itself as entertainment. However, if you’re the kind of person that sees the words “Obsessive Love, Sexual Fixation, Dieting to the Extreme!” and goes “Wow! That’s exactly what I need!”, then by all means, go rent Primo Amore. Just keep your sick-shit-lovin’ ass the hell away from me.
Please.

…

Primo DisgustingoRead More »

Last Days
4 Stars

It is usually a bad sign when, in a movie, the protagonist seems to be dead and an audience member shouts, “I hope he is finally dead, so this film can be over.” I overhead phrases like, “it was the worst movie I have seen all year,” to “a pretentious mess.”

Even though we know the film is fictionalized take on the last days of a grunge rock start, as seen by Van Sant, the diehard Nirvana and Cobain fans can relax. What made Cobain a rock god to so many will remain intact because none of us knows what happened and it is the music, always the music that remains important.

Last Days visualizes the story of the struggles of a Kurt Cobain-like musical artist in the final 36 hours or so of his life.

We first meet Blake (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Dreamers, Dawson’s Creek) running through the lush woods, underdressed in silk pajama bottoms, a dirty t-shirt, still sporting his hospital identification bracelet. He dives into what must be a freezing river stream for a cleansing, therapeutic swim, followed by some reflective time in front of an inviting campfire.

Blake is next seen as a man on a mission. We follow him tumbling and stumbling through the woods into a decaying mansion with shabby chic furniture, mumbling, groaning, incomprehensible. He finds his buried treasure and mumbles some of his first comprehensible words, “spoon, spoon.”

In an unsatisfying drug haze, he hides from the world, hides from friends, tries to hide from the a woman who may be the mother of his little girl, the wheelers and dealers of the music world, but, dressed in a black silk slip and coat, Blake greets and talks to, not mumbles, a determined Yellow Pages sales rep. He can talk to a strangers.

Blake enjoys little, but, he seems to be having fun, playing his own version of hide and seek throughout the mansion, in the woods and pretending to be both the hunter and the hunted with what may be a loaded rifle. He cradles and caresses it,  making it a twisted form of foreplay for him and for the audience because we know what is coming, but not when.

Then there is the music. Usually in a shuffling, mumbling, numbing drug-state, Blake only comes alive when making music. He is coherent, clear, passionate, intense, electric. Now we can understand his pain, through his lyrics and some primal screaming that could wake the dead. Outside the music, he is a dead soul, afraid of the world which no drug can help him overcome.

Although Blake rarely interacts with them, other members of his band are also roaming around the mansion. Luke (Lukas Haas, hiding behind coke-bottled glasses) mainly wants Blake to help him with a song. Scott ( Scott Green), is there to help deflect unwanted visitors. Asia ( Asia Argento, Michael Pitt‘s real life girlfriend at the time) is the girlfriend, maybe, of Luke. These are members of his troop, protectors, maybe, but, not real friends. They all seem to have their own agendas for Blake, but, caring about helping him save his life and their careers is not one of them.

Everyone sitting in the audience knows what is coming. We watch and wait and when the end does come, there is a sense of relief for us and for Blake because for him, after repeated failures in rehab, he is tired, he has shared his heart and soul with the world, through his music, now it is time for his big sleep.

Last Days is the third in a trilogy of death films, following Gerry (2002) and Elephant (2003). How could I go from thinking Last Days was a pretentious mess to thinking it is a film of beauty and poignancy? Gus Van Sant.

When I let go, stepped back and reviewed his whole approach to the film,  I then began to understand the inarticulate ramblings of a man, a boy, a put-on-a-pedestal, insecure rock god reciting his long suicide note to us, to himself. Irritating long shots of the meditative woods became visual postcards of the beauty that surrounded Blake but, he could not see. Looping and looping of scenes, some with subtle perspective changes, some not, was a view of the Blake’s world through the haze of his drugged-out, depressed mind. Van Sant teases us throughout the film, creating tension, by having Blake play with his rifle.

Michael Pitt plays guitar and sings and fronts for the band Pagoda. He has portrayed and sang as the glam, rock star, Tommy Gnosis, in Hedwig. For some strange reason, director, Bernardo Bertolucci uses Pitt’s cover of “Hey Joe” in the movie Dreamers, whose soundtrack covered the greatest musicians of the late sixties: Hendrix, Joplin, The Dead, The Doors. Pitt’s cover of a song that even Hendrix never felt he was worthy to sing, was distracting. But, in Last Days, Van Sant (he and Pitt have been good friends for years) lets Pitt cut loose in two powerful music scenes. We get to watch Blake, (with Pitt singing and playing all the instruments) tell the world his truths through the music. He is tired of all the crap that is his environment. Watching Blake create music from what was his ramblings is brilliant and electrifying.

There is an almost homoerotic scene between Luke and Scott, which is one of the many looped scenes, that even on reflection, seems out of place. I will have to continue to ponder that one, because there has to be some deeper meaning beyond the obvious.

Gus Van Sant is usually ahead of the curve in his story telling methods. He will make you work in order to “get” his story, understand his unique vision. When we are angry and frustrated with Blake, the film itself, we are suppose to be. After you have left Last Days feeling like Van Sant has made a bomb, wait, think, reflect and you will began to visualize, smell, feel and understand the small sparks and then the whole mental picture of a great auteur who refuses to tell his stories the easy way.