♫: alton ellis - i'm still in love with you (1967)

so i think in addition to the movie posts im going to start upping songs from time to time that i particularly love or are just in the moment type things. it feels like a logical progression from the movie-related music videos i've already been posting. so without further ado...



this song is hardly more than six words repeated over and over but those six words are so affecting in their repetition, so moving in their insistence, it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the sincerity of it. it's almost painful to listen to. alton ellis might possibly be my all-time favorite reggae singer. he mixes ska and soul so beautifully together. or as youtube commenter nordec45 puts it, "the king of rocksteady, the wonderful star of jamaica!!!!"

robin hood: prince of thieves (1991)

arguably the best robin hood movie ever made. it's a close call between this one and the disney version starring animated foxes. as luck would have it, i should be receiving that version through netflix sometime next week so i'll be able to make the definitive call. who knows, maybe gladiator 2: robinus hoodus (aka. the new ridley scott/russell crowe collaboration) will blow them both away. still, i can't imagine anything that could possibly match the greatness that is kevin costner paired with bryan adams' (everything i do) i do it for you. so i'm going to go a little off format with this post and let the video for the aforementioned song do all the talking for me. enjoy, but please, when the feeling comes, don't fight back the tears. just let them come. let them come.



(I guess this might not work thanks to embedding being disabled but just click the link that shows up. same difference)

Oh, you can't tell me it's not worth tryin' for...
I can't help it, there's nothin' I want more...
I would fight for you. I'd lie for you.
Walk the wire for you. yeah I'd die for you...

Ya know it's true...
Everything I do...
oooh, I do it for you.

repulsion (1965)

repulsion is the story...actually, there isn't much of a story to it. it's more of a character study. a study of character who is straight up nut-balls. the movie's main character is carole, played by catherine deneuve (absolutely wow), who is described as "a bit strung up." that's putting it lightly. carole is disconnected from reality. people assume she's daydreaming, free-spirited. after all she's young and beautiful and there's never anything wrong with the young and the beautiful. all they see is a pretty face. oh, how they are wrong. oh god are they wrong. oh god...

obviously there is something wrong with carole. she displays neurotic tendencies. she's desperately attached to her sister and can't stand isolation. so when she begs her sister not to go on a week long holiday it's not because she's dramatic and wants the attention but because she knows she can't handle it. which is to say, with a little help and understanding the following events never would have happened. which is also to say, this movie would make a great case for the need for health care reform and the revision of best medical practices. anyways...back to the crazies. the first act of repulsion is a little tedious as we go through the seemingly normal day-to-day of carole's life. sure she seems a little off but she's a french woman in england. she's homesick. she's sick sick. she's just wistful. who knows? it's not until she's left alone to take care of herself we see how bad it really is. the nightmares inside her head start to manifest themselves into her reality. the walls of her apartment literally start crumbling around her. hands burst through the walls to try and grab her. a strange disgusting man continually breaks in and assaults her.


and why is there this strange man anyways? several times he sneaks into her bedroom and forces himself on her. well, im no psychologist, but i would say it's because most of her neurosis relates heavily to sexual anxiety. early on in the movie, carole is haunted by her sister's love-making moans through the wall. she persistently spurns the advances of men and freezes up around any acts of intimacy. later on she'll go at great lengths to prove her point (i used to want a straight razor, now not so much). she seems to have no real concept of what it means to be an adult. a lot of her actions could be interpreted as childlike and immature: wearing lingerie around strange company (a sort of naïveté), lashing out violently (ie. temper tantrums) to things that she doesn't understand or feels threatened by, etc. so this strange assaulter could be seen as a manifestation of this threat she feels from sexuality/men in general.


furthermore, it could be something similar to a rape fantasy. there's a couple of reasons i say this. the first is her relationship to her sister. she depends on her sister for support and direction. her sister's disappearance more than likely caused an intense episode of attachment anxiety which started the nightmarish series of events. studies have shown that women with attachment anxiety have more sexual fantasies featuring submissiveness. people who fear abandonment like other people who can't help but force themselves onto them. futhermore, a lot of times these types of fantasies are attempts to transform difficult experiences (aka. childhood trauma, aka. rape or even incest) into pleasure. an attempt to master their trauma by taming their experiences.




speaking of childhood trauma! the only hint of her past the viewer gets keyed in on is a family photo from long ago. in it we see carole, standing off by herself in the background, her face twisted in some sort of sour grimace which seems to indicate that her demons had already begun to take form back then. my sick misguided theory is that the evil scowl and death stare she's giving in the photo directed straight towards her father, who just so happens to be in the direction she's looking. yes, i'm making the conclusion that the trauma she experienced was from too much contact between her and dear old dad. which could also explain why she's stuck in her child-like behavior. it was the last time her mind existed free of trauma so it stuck itself there.


at the very least repulsion is a movie about something so beautiful that it can only see the ugly in everything around it - a sort of obsessive compulsion to the repulsive. it's sad in that way. in a lot of ways really...but overall this movie has some really cool concepts going on (relationship of space, lighting, sound and environment to the psyche) and the effects don't even look that dated. well some more than others i guess.

bonus:: another music video. this time the cardigans (i would feel better posting this if it was lovefool or my favorite game, but i actually like the cardigans so im not going to be ashamed about this). more a direct lift of the movie than the justice one:

ichi the killer (2001)

one of the nice things about streaming netflix is that i can revisit a bunch of movies i was really into in high school and see if they hold any water on second viewing. there was a good long period where i was really into takashi miike and his brand of bizarre. so with that in mind i plugged in my xbox360 and gave ichi the killer another try.

watching a takashi miike movie is sort of like taking a knife and poking the soft part of your stomach (all of it in my case) and seeing how far you can go before giving up. but in a good way? it's easy to dismiss ichi the killer as a mindless gore-fest. i don't know how to talk about this movie without being explicit, and with that said, if you are the faint of heart i invite you to skip this post entirely. it has been rated s, forsquirm-inducing and sensational and sick (and sexy?). but also consider that the violence mentioned is so over the top that it's obviously meant to be a farce: a man being cut in two down the middle by a bladed heel kick, a face sliding down the wall as if its been filleted from the head, a man having a phone conversation seconds after he cuts off part of his own tongue, etc. if we can laugh at a cheap kick to the balls like i know we all can, why can we also not laugh at a man pouring burning oil over another?


traditionally, japanese films, even ones about the yakuza, have a sort of understated subtlety about them. they value order, honor, restraint. a takashi miike movie is a sort of protest against the conformity of those values. they're excessive on all fronts: violence, imagery, editing, sound, the senses, so on and so forth. they have all the subtlety of an atomic...well, you get what i mean.


believe it or not there is a character in the movie named ichi, and yes, he is a killer. but he's not your prototypical killer for hire. he's an extremely vulnerable and mentally deteriorated young man who cries while he's slicing off limbs. due to the trickery of a foul old man, poor ichi comes to relate killing and pain with sex and love. he's the very embodiment of sadism. the thing about sadism is that it highlights an already existing connection between death and sex. without getting too above the pg-13 line, if we understand that the french term la petite mort (meaning "the little death") is a metaphor for orgasm, and that it's often thought as an escape from or transcendence of life through the expenditure of your "life force", then the leap isn't that large of one to make (for more on this, please refer to tatsuya fuji's in the realm of the senses). it's especially significant when examining gender roles and male dominance, which is a rather large and grotesque focus of the film. to be male in a patriarchal society means having power and in the act of sex we lose that power. for sex is the ultimate expression of giving and taking. its a perfect union. that is until violence is added into the equation and once again dominance is tossed either way. when ichi sees a man brutally raping and beating a girl he's not angry or disgusted. he's excited. very "excited" (see title image above). he doesn't understand the mutual relationship in the act of love.


another interesting, and parallel, dichotomy in the movie is the relationship between sadism and masochism. if ichi is the embodiment of sadism then kakihara has masochism on lock-down. he is pain obsessed. he just can't get enough of it. his face is full of scarring. his mouth has been extended well into his cheeks. he cut off his own tongue. through pain there are moments when we escape reality - when we lose ourselves. i'm thinking specifically of the scene in i heart huckabees (weird movie to be mentioning here) where jason schwartzman and mark wahlberg hit each other in the face with the big red balls in order to experience themselves outside of the world of self. speaking of which, it's remarkable how spiritual some of the ideas in this movie are considering the subject matter. it could be that im also re-reading siddhartha. anyways, if the act of sex is the ultimate in giving and taking, then ichi and kakihara's relationship can be seen as a sexual one - ichi the giver of pain, kakihara the grateful receiver. which makes the ending more than a little funny. like the ultimate in sexual frustration let-downs.

after that i feel like i need to take a shower. i find it difficult to really recommend ichi the killer to anyone, but it's still an interesting film and if you're ever feeling like you need a good punch in the gut maybe you should give it a try. to be honest it wasn't even the most disturbing movie i saw all weekend. that honor goes to (500) days of summer. this coming from a guy who adores zooey deschanel (such an anomaly, i know), but talk about masochism...still, i think the best introduction into the work of takashi miike is audition, which is also on netflix instant play. so maybe in a month or two, when im good and ready, ill give it another shot too.

la femme nikita (1990)

ya'll suckas write me checks and then they bounce
so i reach in my pocket for the fresh amount
see i'm the long leaner, victor the cleaner
i'm the illest motherfucker from here to gardenia
i'm as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce
you've got the rhyme and reason but no cause
so if you're hot to trot you think you're slicker than grease
i've got news for you crews you'll be sucking like a leach

you can't front on that
(image: jean reno as victor the cleaner in la femme nikita)

over the weekend i plopped down on the futon and watched luc benson's la femme nikita with my roommate. had i seen the movie when it first came out i would have enjoyed it, yes, but i would have been more preoccupied with thoughts of a stand-alone movie starring jean reno as a bad ass hit man to really get into it. and then it wouldn't be another four years for my wish to come true with léon the professional. a drag to be sure.

speaking of the professional, is it weird that i have a hard time reconciling the difference between modern day natalie portman and pre-teen 1994 portman. i cant help look at her and still think, wow, she is attractive. i hope i don't get locked up for saying that.

and yet another fun la femme nikita note before i break it down: the 1993 u.s. remake of the movie was called point of no return and starred bridget fonda in anne parillaud's original role (maggie/nikita) and harvey keitel as victor the cleaner. in quentin tarantino's pulp fiction, keitel plays a character whose role is also a "cleaner of problems."


anyways, this movie. it's a mistake to write it off as just another gritty action movie. not that you were, but let's just say that's where your heads at. nikita is no more woman than she is feral beast. she's a rebel with a bad attitude so obviously she doesn't give a shit what she does or what happens to her. she's a product of violence - she lives it, she breathes it (she loves it?). she's certainly not afraid of it, and more importantly, as the viewer we're not particularly concerned what happens to her as a result.



but then she gets thrown in jail, fake killed, and enrolled in some secret french assassin program (i have a hard time believing the french of all countries have a secret assassination program). they bring her in because they admire her raw killer instinct and yet her training is more of a rehabilitation. through it we all learn that femininity is a weapon. i have no doubt this is true and that every woman uses it as such. and while she gains all sorts of great abilities, like how to use ms paint and put together a steyr aug and take out a target from a bathroom window, she also loses something in her transformation - that hard edge that made her seem so above the violence she was apart of. that cold detachment to reality that everyone knows from watching too many movies makes a great killer. now, she's still trapped in that same world of violence, but she has all the stereotypical fragility of a woman. all of the sudden she's in tears at having to kill people, she's involved in a romantic and meaningful relationship...she's a real person and as such the viewer is concerned for her well-being. all of the sudden we're shocked that this movie is putting a woman into this world of violence.


what seems like it should be the ultimate in girl power affirmation - a powerful woman, with guns! - falls back in line with typical feminine characteristics: emotional, domestic, and adverse to violence. i'm sure the intent is to show the story of a woman learning to transcend her past with the help of love and trust. bullshit. if i wanted that storyline i would watch a lifetime original movie. this is what i imagine the sisterhood of the traveling pants is about if the traveling pants were actually a desert eagle.

and as a final comment i'd just like to note that luc benson also directed the fifth element which is one of those movies that i tend to watch whenever it's on tv. mul-ti-pass?

hard boiled (1992)

the awesome thing about this movie is all i have to do is post that picture of chow yun fat sliding down a rail shooting double pistols and anyone with a pulse is already interested. still on the fence? well take a look at this.


yeah. thats a baby. game over, you're world was just blown. just like the barrels of gasoline that used to be in that text.

bonus image:

"you're that hard-boiled cop." - actual movie quote.

only let down: not enough slow motion flying doves. it must have been pre-dove woo. although there was a shootout in a tea shop filled with caged birds. how did he miss that opportunity?

paranormal activity (2009)

first of all i just want to say that i probably saw the movie the exorcist way too early in my childhood development. as a result i spent years afraid of demons and satan and religion in general. it wasn't that i was afraid of my own possession - those possessed looked pretty out of it. i sort of imagined them taking a back seat, sitting somewhere in the empty void of the body sipping on some tea while a demon had its way with your loved ones. that's why i was always afraid that it would be my parents or a friend at a sleepover, who would wake me up in the middle of the night by floating into my room and puking all over me. i still can't stand puke to this day.

imagine my delight when i learned that paranormal activity wasn't about your run of the mill hauntings (ie. poltergeist or ghost dad), but a full on demon fest. i mean, what is it about demons that they gotta be such straight up assholes? cast out of heaven, sure, sure...but i thought they were supposed to lead us into temptation, not drive us to tears by slamming doors in the middle of the night and pulling us out of our beds.


whereas movies like hostel and my bloody valentine 3d (i can't even be mad at this movie, it was pretty great) hit you over the head with gore and violence (almost quite literally in the later), paranormal activity comes at you with subtlety. the slight pivot of a door. foot steps left in powder. an impossible photograph. a loved one standing at the side of the bed. the villain here isn't an axe wielding maniac or sadistic mother-in-law, it's the immense void of darkness. it's your own imagination. there are gaps of time where you're staring at nothing but a couple sleeping with a foreboding corridor taunting you at the side of the screen. is there something about to come through it? are you about to be scared out of your seat? it doesn't matter because you're already imagining things far worse than what is probably going to happen. and that's the scariest part of this movie. the tension. the waiting. your own sick head just trying to scare the piss out of you before the movie can.

the story focuses on a relationship under the stress of this haunting. it's simple but adds to the success of the movie. in an odd way it's themes closely parallel that of my last movie, la haine. for the majority of the movie michah, the boyfriend, pretends like nothing wrong is happening to his girlfriend or their relationship (so far so good...) and in the end, well, i won't ruin the movie expect to say something is obviously wrong with both. especially the girlfriend. women. you can't live with them, you can't live without them bringing a demon to plague you for the rest of your days. my only complaint has to be the end, which pulls the signs treatment and lets you see a little too much. why try put a face on pure evil?

la haine (1995)

last year un prophete, a french film about a young man working his way up the prison pecking order to become a certified gangster, picked up the grand prix at cannes. unromanticized italian crime film, gomorrah, won the year before it. obviously the french have a thing for gritty crime dramas. which is maybe why la haine is so good - it's a labor of love. directed by mathieu kassovitz (whose credits include gothika and babylon a.d...what?), la haine follows the lives of three young men in the industrial parisian suburbs (called a banlieue - bonus french lesson) for a single day in the aftermath of a riot. the english title of the film is hate, so needless to say, there's a lot of raw emotions. especially from vinz, played by a young vincent cassel, who just wants to go 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin' cop.

ultimately, it's an examination of france's working class and immigrant cultures as a juxtaposition to the national parisian identity. there's the city of lights with the eiffel tower glowing at it's center while crime, urban decay and unemployment wreck its surroundings.

consider this parable that's repeated several times throughout the course of the movie by hubert (paraphrasing):

a man is falling off a skyscraper. to reassure himself, every few seconds he says, "so far so good... so far so good...so far so good..."

here we have a delusional man refusing to focus on the important aspect of his fall - the landing. and, like the man, the characters in the story are at free fall, reassuring themselves that everything is okay, all the while they hurdling straight for the ground.




bonus:: the video for justice's stress is what you would call an homage to la haine. boys will be boys, h-yuck!