A Whole New World: “Lover’s Vow,” The Little Mermaid and Transformation in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie

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Of the three segments from Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, my hands-down favorite is “Lover’s Vow.” In it, stuggling artist Preston (James Remar) witnesses a monster kill a friend; the monster agrees with spare Preston in exchange for his silence. Preston then experiences amazing luck: he meets and falls in love with Carola (Rae Dawn Chong), then quickly gains acclaim and fortune as an artist. He maintains his silence for 10 years, until he tells Carola about the incident with the monster under the pretense of the honesty of love and his desire to never keep a secret from her. She then reveals herself to be the monster in human form, transforms both herself and their children, kills him and turns into a stone statue. It’s dark. No really, it’s literally dark – the lighting, setting and costuming is all done in shades of black, brown and grey. It doesn’t have a happy ending. It’s a messy version of love. As a preteen when I first watched this film, I felt that it was oddly familiar. Something about the story stuck out for me. Then, re-watching it on an overcast afternoon this past weekend, it hit me: this is The Little Mermaid retold. I was a little amazed that I hadn’t picked up on that before.
When the segment first opens, we see a gargoyle statue looking down on Preston’s apartment. The way that it’s positioned, it’s been watching him for some time. That his bartender friend Jer is killed is a little too convenient: this act gets Preston alone with the creature, who exacts a promise. The wording is interesting: it focuses on Preston’s speech. “If I let you go,” it tells him, “you must swear you’ll never say you saw me. Never say you heard me speak. Never tell anyone how I look. Never repeat what I have said.” This is a direct parallel to the story of the mermaid, who cuts out her tongue in exchange for legs. The creature exacts this promise to bind Preston into the same silence to which the mermaid is bound.
Both the act of the murder and the promise prove to be a calculated way for Carola to worm her way into his life. Almost immediately, Carola appears. Preston’s first instinct is to protect her. Much like the story, he brings her to his home. Curious, she begins touching his work station at first. We see her inspect his work station as she remarks, “You’re the first real artist I’ve ever met.” She tests him successfully on their first meeting when she sees his wounds from the creature, as he does not tell her where he got them. The wounds, in fact, harken back to the original story: the mermaid is in pain when she walks on her new legs, but continues to do so in order to maintain her transformation.
Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just stalking an artist.
Carola’s test receives another try the next day. Preston leaves to check out the crime scene after he hears sirens. When he goes to leave, Carola doesn’t ask what’s wrong – she merely looks disappointed. When he doesn’t talk, she comes back with her bags and moves in. A third test arrives in the form of Preston’s drunken friend Maddox, who wants to know if Preston saw anything concerning Jer’s death. Carola witnesses Preston’s denial, ensuring their contract is intact. Within a short time frame, he’s a successful artist and she’s pregnant. All is well so long as he is silent. In the grand tradition of fairy tales, Preston does betray his promise, first with sight, then with speech. He creates sculptures and drawings of the creature, then hides them. This act of creation does not break the promise. Carola discovers part of the drawing, but does not say anything. It’s when he tells her about his experience that she changes. The secretive fragment of a drawing she seems to be able to live with because it does not violate the contract. It’s the act of speech that breaks the promise and voids their contract, causing her transformation.
Up until this point, it appears as though Preston has taken on the role of the mermaid; however, the wording of the exchange between Preston and Carola post-transformation is easy to miss if you’re not paying attention to the semantics. After all, Preston was the one that got the amazing Faustian deal: life, art career, beautiful partner, children. However, Carola explicitly states that he broke his promise, and it’s “too late.” When Preston begs her to stop the change, she replies that she can’t. This turns the situation into Carola’s Faustian deal: in order to remain human, Preston, like the prince, must uphold his end of the bargain. In story, this was the form of marriage, which the prince would not provide to the mermaid. When Preston does not uphold his end of the deal, she is compelled to kill him to save herself. In the story, the mermaid chooses to die rather than kill the prince to save her life. In this case, though, Carola has her children with which to contend. They transform as well. She chooses her life and their lives over their father’s life. She has stalked him, tested him and built a life with him. She declares her love for him. She is truly sorry that she can’t remain human, and that she is compelled to kill him. She does kill him, which alters the meaning of the story. Her regression back to the creature she is defeats the transformative purpose of the story, and places a different twist on the 80s theme of transformation.
Yeah, this totally didn’t go the way she planned it.
The notion of transformation is something that ran rampant in the 80s. How many movies featured someone masquerading as someone or something they weren’t? Roxanne, Can’t Buy Me Love, Soul Man – just a few, but all featured a lead that felt the need to lie about their appearance and/or circumstances in order to achieve something. Typically, these stories involved a romantic partner that would not have gone for that lead under normal conditions. In the end, the true nature prevailed, and the couple was able to move forward with the honesty. This is not the case in “Lover’s Vow.” The broken promise ups the ante in this respect: while most films of the 80s featured this theme and ultimately had the lead get the girl in the end, this one goes folk tale style on the theme: it treats the deception as contract enforcible by death. This is a rather damning take on the light-hearted transformations of the 80s. No, you can’t be just anyone. You can’t escape your true self. Sometimes, you sign up for something and you have to live with the consequences. You don’t criticize a theme more harshly than that.
Somehow, I don’t think these two kids are going to make it.
In the end, Carola reverts back to her creature form, hiding as a stone statue. Instead of watching over Preston’s apartment, she’s facing the other way with her children in a pose of mourning. Her transformation failed, and now she’s frozen in a state of emotional agony with her children. In the end, love didn’t transform. Love brought about the true self, ugly as it was.

Another World: Why the Film Adaptation of Night Watch Works

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By all means, I should have been upset with the adaptation of Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. I like it when films to follow their book source material; this one did not follow Lukyanenko’s novel of the same name. In fact, it combined the first part of his novel Night Watch with elements of his follow-up Day Watch, and even then, there were radical differences. However, I loved this film.
The first ten minutes alone of this film is enough to hook you. As we watch Darya attempt to kill an unborn Yegor, there’s a sense of real fear that she’s going to succeed. In the battle to subdue her, the camera work and special effects used enhance the scene without being the sole thing that drives it. Between Tiger Cub’s transformation and the slow motion attempted clap of Darya, you can’t take your eyes off of it. There’s tension and style, and we have Timur Bekmambetov to thank for that. He took a budget of approximately $4.2 million dollars and produced something this slick-looking. That’s fairly impressive. He uses the effects to enhance the story, not totally drive it. Michael Bay, take note.

 

Khabensky is the man.
So, let’s address the elephant in the room: the differences between the book and the film. In the book, Anton is not Yegor’s father, and Yegor is actually a very minor role for the first of three parts in the first book alone. Yegor isn’t the great other; in fact, he refuses to choose a side due to his distaste for the manipulations of both sides. Under normal circumstances, I’d be yelling “bastardized adaptation.” We need to bear in mind, though, that Lukyanenko collaborated with Bekmambetov to write the script. The author himself worked to make this come to the big screen. Here’s where we need to address a broader cinematic truth, one of which even I have difficulty with sometimes: not everything is adaptable and/or filmable. The Lord of the Rings, though good, is really fucking long. One book was over three hours, and that was cutting portions out. Done poorly, this can take your favorite novel and turn it into an endurance test. Sometimes, the material needs to get retooled to make it work for the length of time you have to tell your story.
So how was this handled so deftly? Lukyanenko builds characters in the film that follow the DNA of the story, but merge into a kind of alternate reality. In a way, he writes his own fan ficiton. What works is that he knows how to flesh these characters out onscreen. We like Yegor the scared child, and we accept that he’s angry with Anton. We like Olga and are curious about her backstory. We get vested in the suffering Sveta; we feel that the hand she’s been dealt in life is unfair. We want Zavulon to fall flat on his face. We care.
The Russian version of Starsky and Hutch is so much cooler.
The introduction makes us believe that Anton is the Great Other, and when it’s revealed that he’s not – that it’s actually Yegor, and that his mistake in 1992 has pretty much fucked humanity – there’s an element of surprise. Konstantin Khabensky is perfect as a man that has messed up and knows it. He gives us damaged and cool simultaneously. It works because it moves in a logical progression. It tries to tie up its loose ends. It gets us vested in these characters. It’s a compelling story. It ends on a down note as well, which makes me ;ike it all the more.
In the later books, Lukyanenko nods to the films when Yegor, well on the path to becoming an Inquisitor, bumps into Anton and tells him that he had a dream that he was his father. Anton replies that dreams are alternate realities. This alternate reality in film worked, at least for me.

Coming Soon: Live Tweet Event

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The Backseat Driver is on Twitter, and we’re going after the Citizen Kane of crappy cinema, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.

Oh hai terrified audience.

Follow us on Twitter: @bsdriverreview

Stay tuned for dates and times of a live tweet. If you’re local, we might even turn this into a party.

Weekend Movies: Girls Will Be Girls

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I’ll cut right to the chase: this movie is fucking funny. It’s edgy, wry and just plain wrong at times. It features the mother from hell in the most humorous way possible. Let’s do this: five reasons to watch Girls Will Be Girls this weekend.
#1 – Drag humor with a twist
In the tale of an aging Hollywood has-been, her long-suffering confidant and the young upstart with a past that moves in with them, the leads are not just three men dressed as women. For the purposes of this film, they are women. They’ve been pregnant and have straight sex. We’re in on the joke, but no one else is in this movie. I’ve seen this concept done elsewhere, but here, it adds charm and sass.
Clockwise, from right: Coco, Evie and Varla
#2 – Evie Harris
Evie (Jack Plotnick) has the best lines of the movie. I would hate Evie in real life. I love Evie in this movie. She’s a fun drunk without a mind-to-mouth filter. She can’t remember her son’s name. She’s drunk before noon. She’s cock-happy and spreads destruction everywhere she goes. She’s inappropriate and unapologetic. And I love her. You will too.
#3 – Singing and Cheez Whiz
The sheer skill of the Cheez Whiz trick baffles me. I can’t try this at home. I’m just going to slow-clap and marvel.
#4 – Asteroid!
A movie within the movie. A disaster flick about an asteroid with the tag line, “EARTH MIGHT GET CRUSHED!” If Asteroid! was a real movie, it might have a chance of being shown as a double feature with The Room. You will never again hear the term “astrophysicist” without laughing. Watch it just for that.
“Oh Billy — what about the children?”
#5 – The writing and delivery
The first line of this movie is someone screaming “FUCK” after knocking over a picture. It’s delivered in a primal scream over a nearly one-minute period. That really does set the tone for the rest of it. Dick jokes, vibrators, Hollywood, motherhood, dating, abortions, the worst marriage proposal ever, dead dogs, money-making schemes – nothing is spared the quick wit and deadpan delivery. So many one-liners that I can’t quote right now. This is killing me.
Yes, that is Eric Stonestreet. He’s completely epic in this movie.
Sorry if this is vague, but I don’t want to spoil the best parts, and it’s so quotable. Do yourself a favor and check this one out. Be prepared to laugh.

No Thanks: 5 Films To Put You Off Motherhood

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Films serve many a purpose: social commentary, allegory, whimsical mind-wandering. They also serve as a medium for the expression of various fears, including the fears associated with parenthood, motherhood in particular. There are the usual suspects – The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Bad Seed, etc. – but we’re going to give those movies the day off. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’re going to take a look at five films you may or may not have seen that may cause you to reach for that jumbo pack of condoms at the drugstore.
Grace (2009)
Grace delves into a fear that, despite how often it happens, still makes us uncomfortable: the delivery of a baby you know will be dead. After a car accident claims the lives of her husband and unborn baby, the grieving Madeline (Jordan Ladd) chooses the carry her dead fetus to term. Labor is often viewed as a painful, necessary means to a joyful end: we know that there will be something chubby and cute at the end of it. Going into it knowing that there will be no adorable, crying baby at the end is an entirely different, wrenching experience beyond words. To have that baby then begin to move plunges you on a journey that explores how far a mother would go to keep her baby with her, even if it’s not entirely alive.
This isn’t going to end well.
Inside (2007)
On Christmas Eve, the widowed, heavily pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) must fend off a woman (Béatrice Dalle) who breaks into her house and attempts to perform a c-section with a pair of scissors. Reading about a scenario like this on the news is one thing; watching 82 minutes of a home invasion with the intent to cut the baby out of its mother is fucking horrifying. It’s graphic and grim. Your uterus will want to crawl behind every other organ and hide. It’s very good, but you will not want another person to come near you after watching it, much less put yourself in the potential position as Sarah.
I don’t even like strangers touching my pregnant belly.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
This one tackles so much n the parenthood umbrella. The stand out for me was the delivery from hell. There’s a terrible sense of dread that will fill you as Guillermo del Toro shows us a laboring woman in a blood-soaked bed, then her daughter fearfully watching a maid carry the sheets out of the room. I wouldn’t blame the kid one bit for wanting nothing to do with childbirth after that. God knows I didn’t.
That’s it, Ofelia. Close your eyes and think of the fairies.
The Babadook (2014)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this film is extremely honest in how draining it is to have a child that is not like the other children. Samuel (Noah Wiseman) is exhausting, and his mother Amelia (Essie Davis in fatigued perfection) tries her best to muddle through their existence. Enter a book about a boogeyman and their fragile grip on the waking life goes to shit. It’s terrifying, but one of the underlying themes is the honest look at dealing with the child that you get, who may not necessarily be the child that you wanted. there are a lot of women out there that go into motherhood daydreaming about dance recitals, baseball games and snuggly afternoons on the couch. The Babadook laughs at this notion and force-feeds a heaping dose of the motherhood experience that you never imagined. Most women couldn’t handle a Samuel; he’ll make you think twice before you pre-order that baseball glove for your yet-to-be-conceived son.
Yeah, this is one of the touching parts.
Jude (1996)
Between the graphic birth scene and the, how shall we say, workforce reduction of the children, this one will make you want to avoid sex, babies and small children for some time. A single friend of mine saw this movie and decided she didn’t want to date for a while. Just in case.
You poor sods have no idea what’s in for you.
There you have it. Five films to put you off of motherhood. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Boom, Headshot! John Wick and the Importance of Taking Out Your Cinematic Enemies

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I used to watch The Blacklist. I had to stop due to the constant head-shaking and disbelief that trained FBI agents could really be that incompetent. It made me too angry. Part of it was the writing, part of it was the acting, but all of it was infuriating. The Blacklist is just one example, though, of the idiot that doesn’t think to take out the enemy/pursuant/generic bad guy in a fictional world. It’s rampant in both film and television. It’s not a tricky concept: make sure that the bad guy doesn’t get back up. Do not give that person a second chance. If you’ve got solid writing, then you don’t need to take the easy way out of letting your villain get back up to surprise the hero.
You know which movie nailed this concept? John Wick. This film got so much right: it’s peppy, it’s action-packed, it has heart, and most importantly, it does not fuck around when it comes to taking care of business. Some have criticized Keanu Reeves for being the lead, but honestly, that stems from the dude stereotype he’s (unfairly, in my opinion) picked up over the years. The man did a great job. Case in point: upon receiving a note from his late wife, he presses it to his nose. Call it direction, call it scripting, but he broke my heart in that moment. I got attached and wanted good things for the character John. And he made me love the character even more when he had the brains to take out his enemies with a shot to the head.
Good aim AND knows how to wear the hell out of a suit.
When John begins his mission to get revenge against Iosef (played to crap-weasel perfection by Alfie Allen), he prepares himself with weaponry and quiet resolve. He then proceeds to take out attackers, enforcers and assorted mobsters with precision, skill and old-fashioned common sense. John does not suffer survivors. He takes people out when they get in his way, and he doesn’t give them a second chance to bite him in the ass. They get between one and two bullets in the head apiece, save for the odd person or two that gets fatally stabbed or a snapped neck. There are only two instances in this film when he allows someone to walk away: Francis, the doorman of the nightclub, and Perkins. In the instance of Francis, he offers a night off. This comes off as a professional courtesy rather than an act of misguided mercy (memo to the writers of the sequel: if you make Francis the big bad wolf of the second film, we’re going to have some words). As for the sparing of Perkins, he operates within the ethics of the hotel for hitmen: no killing on neutral ground. He defends himself, incapacitates his attacker, then leaves her to be dealt with by management. That’s not stupid; that’s a consumate professional. In the end, even Perkins get the headshot treatment from hotel management. She won’t be back for a half-baked sequel.
Nice knowing you, Perkins.
It’s extraordinarily refreshing to see a film that doesn’t go for the easy out. I was surprised at first because it’s been so long since someone actually had the smarts to make sure that the person trying to kill you is really dead. No Michael Myers-style revivals. No “I’ll leave a survivor to tell the tale”m mistakes. Nope. There are no cheap scares or surprises, no last-minute gun battles stemming from the mistake of leaving a pulse. We know that John is going to take out his attackers. He is efficient and does not leave anything to chance. He does not believe in mercy. This has kept him alive and makes him the top of his field. You don’t earn a nickname like Baba Yaga by leaving a sloppy mistake. John takes out the boogeymen, one headshot at a time. It’s about damn time.

Weekend Movies: Five Reasons to Watch Suburban Gothic

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The first time I saw the trailer for Suburban Gothic, I full-on laughed and decided that I needed to watch this movie. Fearless, I trekked far and wide to find it (okay, I was lazy and used the Amazon rental service on my streamer) and was happy to find out that it’s one of those movies that’s as good, if not better, than its trailer. Need a movie this weekend? Here are five reasons to give Suburban Gothic a try.
#1 – Sarcasm, Party of Two…
The sarcasm and sheer amount of dry wit in this film will keep you smiling for most of the 90-minute ride. If you’re a snarky little thing like yours truly, you’ll find that the dialog will run something like your inner monologue. Our protagonist, Raymond, lets his commentary fly at the slightest provocation. For a psychic, unemployed hipster stuck living with his disapproving jock father in the midst of a paranormal mystery, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.
#2 – The Jokes Are Edgy Without Being Offensive
Some jokes, no matter how good their set up, just fall flat. A tasteless nature and poor delivery will combine to make a joke fail fast. Some subjects really struggle with this combination. Sometimes, though, the stars align and we get a joke that’s both edgy and funny. There are a few in this movie. To be more specific, there’s a great one-liner about abortion. I cackled. I won’t spoil it, but it’s really funny. I have a newfound love of Kat Dennings.
#3 – The Special Effects Aren’t That Bad
Don’t let a small film fool you: there are some effects contained within that are so subtle they’re easy to miss, but entirely worth it. Watch the pictures on the bathroom walls. I had to pause the movie, rewind and point it out for my copilot to notice, and afterwards, was rewarded with a, “DAMN, that’s cool.” Goes to show you that good things can come from a small(ish) budget. It’s also nice to be reminded that special effects don’t always have to be an over-the-top, Michael Bay spectacle.
#4 – The Cast Gels Together Very Well
Matthew Gray Gubler and Ray Wise as a father and son that do not get along at all are both believable and hysterical. The way that they play off of each other totally had me buying this dynamic. There’s also the added bonus of Jeffrey Combs (a.k.a Dr. Herbert West) and one of my personal favorites, Jack Plotnick (Miss Evie Harris of Girls Will Be Girls). Barbara Niven is great as Raymond’s mother Eve, and Kat Dennings is the perfect foil Gubler. The script is good, but the casting makes it sing.
#5 – It’s Relevant For Any Graduate Feeling Lost
At the start of the film, Raymond is forced to move home after failing to procure employment following the receipt of his MBA, which we find out he didn’t really want to pursue in the first place. In a world where we have college students with staggering debt forced to move home with their parents, this film tackles an uncomfortable elephant in the room: the boomerang kid. We live in a society now that is seeing college kids that can’t afford to live on their own, and no one wants to talk about it for fear of coming off as a loser. Suburban Gothic presents the discomfort from all angles, from being an adult sleeping in a childhood room to finding time to view online porn without your parents bursting in. It also explores the flipside of this scenario: the experience of the parent trying to find quiet time once again after the bird has returned to the nest. It’s funny, stylish and relevant. Three good reasons to give it a try by itself.

The Road Not Taken: Interpreting the Ending of Snowpiercer

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Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer is many things: well-acted, well-written, well-directed, well-photographed, well-choreographed. Dirty, bleak, imaginative. At times, it can feel rather long, like we’ve been stuck on that train for the past 18 years. It is relevant in its subject matter, from the botched solution to global warming to the extremes of classism and social order. It’s all of these things and stylish to boot. It also boasts an ending that can either been interpreted as uplifting and hopeful or utterly disastrous.
Snowpiercer: The Hopeful Interpretation
The journey to the front of the train has been a long, bloody one. We’ve seen parallels between the Rodney King beating and quite possibly the most hellish Olympic torch relay conceived. There have been realizations about food supply, psychic drug addicts, child abduction, and the scariest elementary school teacher since the nun that ran my preschool.
Miss Sherri she ain’t.
So by the time our ride is actually over, everyone is dead, with the exception of Timmy and Yona. Not exactly happy time. However, what sight greets Timmy and Yona after all of this? A polar bear, set to the swell of uplifting music. The world can support a polar bear. It’s not absolute zero. There is hope that life can survive outside of the train.
From a social perspective, this means that the revolution was righteous. The tail passengers literally kept the machine going until the outside world was rendered viable again. The rich needed the working class to survive, and used machinations to manipulate and control them for nearly 20 years.While the tail passengers endured filth, the seizing of their children, food bars made of bugs and orchestrated revolutions designed to reduce their population, the front end passengers received luxury, education and a reinforced sense of social superiority. Nevermind that the tail enders were far more resourceful and imaginative; the front enders clung to the belief that, because someone had paid for a ticket 18 years ago, it somehow made them better. No one from the front got that survival is a game best played in teams, with everyone bringing something to the table. Nope, not the front-enders. They consume while the tail end produces.
We’re not worried about Yona and Timmy surviving. The world’s getting warmer. They survived the worst of it. Yona’s mother was an Inuit revolutionary, her father was a technological genius, and she can see the future. Timmy was born into a working-class environment and can run an engine. They’ll be just fine. There’s hope to live a life in a less complicated world, free of social constraints and manipulations.
Snowpiercer: Complete Doom Edition
Now let’s look at the other side of the coin: after all that death and destruction, we arrive at the front of the train to have Curtis confess to cannibalism and infanticide, then turn down the offer to lead the train into the future for the survival of the human race. He then yanks Timmy from the engine, effectively causing it to crash (not that the door explosion and resulting avalanche didn’t help) and winds up killing nearly every person on the train. The only two survivors are Yona and Timmy, a seventeen-year-old psychic drug addict who has spent the better part of her days in a type of hyper-sleep, and a five-year-old boy. What greets them upon setting foot on the outside world? A polar bear.
That’s right: we’ve gone through all of this to get down to just two people with no survival skills winding up face-to-face with a polar bear searching for food. This is how we spell “fucked,” kids.
“We’re going to need a lot more Kronole…”

 

Even if they could survive, we’re looking at about 7-9 years until Timmy could impregnate Yona and continue the human race. After that, the gene pool gets severely limted because only two people survived the train crash. Unless if there’s a small contingency that survived the crash off-camera, the human race ends there.
The implications of this ending are depressing beyond belief. In attempting to redeem himself by fighting against the machine that had him desperately resort to murder and eating babies, Curtis has destroyed all hope for the future. Curtis gives his hand and arm, the one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do for 17 years, and it results in the stopping of the train and certain death for what’s left of the human race. In saving a life that mattered to him and attempting to redeem himself, he rejected the calculated mathematics of keeping life going on the train. Our takeaway is now, “Please, don’t try to make yourself happy. Sometimes, people have to suffer for the greater good. You might not like, but it has to happen that way because life must go on.” Way to go, Captain America.
So, which one is it?
This film reminds me of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” in that the interpretations typically divide the audience with very little middle ground. The responses elicited are passionate and stubborn, with ample proof offered up one way or the other.
Many choose to embrace the more optimistic interpretation. Much like Frost’s poem, it’s psychologically easier to accept and helps one justify his or her actions. No one likes the idea of the human race ending. We don’t want Curtis to have suffered for certain doom. We want the downtrodden to triumph in the end. We want to feel happy at the swell of music and the sight of a living creature. We want to be alive after the ride from hell.
On the other hand, the more depressing ending just seems so much more realistic. After the glow of the affirming decision to change and/or survive, reality will always set in, and sometimes, it ain’t pretty. It’s easier to make the change sometimes than to anticipate or accept the far-reaching consequences. Life sucks, then your train crashes and you’re eaten by polar bears before you can hit sexual maturity.
Bong Joon-Ho endorses this positive interpretation, but gamely acknowledges that it’s up to the audience to decide. So, which is it for you – did you take the road not traveled, or did you simply choose and hope for the best?

Hell in a Handbasket: Prometheus Edition

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When word broke that Prometheus was coming out, I bounced, squeed, giggled, clapped, etc. A huge fan of the Alien universe, this was a big deal for me. I didn’t care that it wasn’t a strict prequel. I knew that it had a great cast, a great director, and a writer that was coming off of a show I adored. This one should have been set, locked and loaded. It was going to be good. I grabbed my now-husband and sprinted to the theater opening weekend, eager to see it. Boy, am I glad that I brought him along with me. I needed someone to confirm that:
  1. No, I could not shout at the screen.
  2. Yes, this movie made about as much sense as a condom machine in the  men’s bathroom at the Vatican.
Years later, this movie still pisses me off to no end. The worst part is that it doesn’t start off as a complete train wreck. There were some things I was prepared to overlook: the obvious backstory of Ellie displayed in a pod-viewable dream sequence; the one-dimensional, tattooed, stereotypical badass crew member Fifield, who fled at the first ancient corpse; the overly detached performance of Fassbender; the holograms-as-cheap-exposition convention. I was prepared to accept that, so long as I got my cool aliens.
Nope, Prometheus officially gets shit-faced and decides that it wants to go for waffles about an hour in. Here are my big problems once the movie gets drunk off its ass:
#1 – Milburn, a fucking zoologist, does not have enough brains to step away from the alien snake when it goes into a goddamned attack posture. Really, where the hell did he get his degree? When an animal feels threatened and/or is ready to attack, it makes itself look larger. I majored in English and even I know this. What’s his response? He smiles and pulls a “Hey there, little fella!” while trying to pet it. HE TRIES TO PET IT. The icing on the cake is that the alien snake looks like a penis. That’s right, the zoologist is about to get attacked by an angry dick that he’s trying to pet. When he does get attacked, he’s surprised.
#2 – Hologramatic Backstory, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. I was prepared to overlook it the first time it happened. The second time? You’re just being a lazy storyteller. Even worse, the holograms of the Engineers in the hidden control room are shoddy at best, while the map of the stars is clear and articulate. If you’re going to stick with a storytelling method, then make sure it’s uniform. Either all of it’s crap or none of it’s crap.
#3 – Captain Janek wants to bring Holloway on board and put him in quarantine. Do these people not have access to protocols and/or any science fiction films? Yes, he’s aged about 40 years in 10 minutes – let’s bring him on board! We can save him! In a rare moment of sense, the film mercifully has Vickers demand that he not come on board… then goes to the extreme route of torching the guy. I’m a bit on the fence, considering that this is the smartest thing anyone’s done in the past 20 minutes of the movie at this point.
#4 – When the newly-discovered-to-be-pregnant Ellie asks David point blank to “get it out,” he refuses to give her an abortion on the grounds of, “We don’t have the personnel.” Really? You have how much intelligence crammed in there, how much equipment on board, and you can’t come up with a better excuse than, “We don’t have the parts”? David, for a superior piece of A.I., you’re a total dumbass. No one believed you.
#5 – Warning, this is the big one: when Ellie can’t get the medical pod to perform a c-section on her because it’s programmed for a male, she enters in a surgery for an abdominal foreign body removal. At this point, I yelled, “Aw HELL no!” in the middle of the theater. Sorry, but those are two totally different procedures. The fact that she’s lasered open, has an intact amniotic sac removed, then stapled up while completely conscious is just not believable. Unless if she’s completely missing a uterus, there would have been a whole organ to cut through and suture. Not to mention that a pod designed for a man would not take a uterine artery into account. She would have bled to death in no time flat.
#6 – The fact that Ellie is able to move so fluidly and vigorously around after she’s had her abdomen sawed open and stapled back up in a pod not configured for a woman is just dumb. There’s not even an utterance of pain until a short while later. I get that adrenaline would keep her going, but the pacing of her actually feeling pain just feels like a writer remembered at some point that there might need to be some believability in this movie. All of her running and jumping would have ripped open those staples and torn fragile tissue. Again, commence bleeding and death without proper medical attention. Not buying it.
#7 – Why is Ellie that easy for Weyland to sway? She gives her speech about the Engineers not being what they thought, and goes from, “We need to get the hell out of Dodge” to the prayer/strength pose after Weyland tells her, “You need to have faith that you’ll find your answers.” Lady, you just had a rapidly growing squid pulled out of your abdomen (see numbers five and six above) – the “have faith, young grasshopper” routine should have been your cue to kick that old bastard over and undergo a mutiny. He’s only got a few days left. He won’t survive the trip home.
#8 – Janek’s explanation of what the planet really is (military installation). Really, Ridley – you’re going to spoon feed me every last bit of this movie? That’s just condescending.
#9 – The Engineer’s rolling donut ship is going down a straight line, so why keep running in a straight line? Go to either the left or the right. It’s not that difficult. Ellie had enough sense to roll after she fell; Vickers, not so much. I wouldn’t have held it against the movie if it had killed Ellie in this fashion, though. She got dumber as the minutes ticked by.
#10 – After the ship crashes into the Engineer’s ship, against all odds, your freakish squid alien baby will still be alive. In fact, it will be bigger.
#11 – When in doubt, use your squid alien baby to dispatch the Engineer trying to kill you for no discernible reason. Let it kill mommy’s tormentors! In fact, it will open up to reveal a toothed vagina AND a penis snake for optimal annihilation. (Moral of the story: fear both sexes.)
#12 – Yes, Ellie, GO BACK for the android that started this whole mess. That’s not going to bite you in the ass. You’d probably be better off dying on that planet than carting David’s manipulative head around. He never once showed regret for the loss of life or utter mess he caused. So he’s an interstellar GPS – what could possibly go wrong with David in tow?
#13 – Final scare moment that we all expected: the birth of the more traditional alien we’re used to seeing in this universe. After all that, Ridley, you give us a bastardized alien that looks like it mated with a hammerhead shark? It was skinny and looked like it was on the verge of having a stroke. I expected something bigger and scarier.
I refuse to watch the planned sequel for this. I’m taking a stand against character stupidity and plot holes. Who’s with me?

Through Our History, We Learn: Why We Need Movies Like Psychopathia Sexualis

The Backseat Driver Reviews Posted on by
I admit it: I found Psychopathia Sexualis on Netflix quite some time ago and was intrigued by the concept. And the possibility of sex scenes and nudity. An avid fan of Dan Savage, I smiled at the thought of a film that took historical perceptions of sexual deviancy to task, in part because it’s a subject that still needs to be broached to purge the notion of shame in sex. So when I actually watched it, I was going in two-fold: the history and the boobs. I found myself upset by the end of it, but not for reasons of being let down by the presentation of the material.
The film had its ups and downs. It was beautifully photographed and scored. The use of color, from rich jewel tones to musty earthen backgrounds, helped make it visually appealing. The score was haunting and pitch-perfect. The acting, on the other hand, was a bit stiff and over-wrought at times, though this was not a factor that destroyed the film for me. I wasn’t even upset by the lack of graphic on-screen sex. I can respect the film that doesn’t always go for the cheap shots. As fun as nudity is, we don’t always need the extreme to have a good time.
To this effect, many reviews out there lament that the film isn’t sexy enough, or that it made sex boring; however, that’s missing the point of the film and the book upon which it was based. The book is a medical text written by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, mentor to Freud. The book chronicled what was considered medical condition at the time, and wasn’t meant to view the acts described as sexy; the book was intended to document, learn from and treat Victorian notions of sexual deviancy (basically, any version of sex outside of procreation). The film merely presented the contents of the book and dramatized it, a way of peering into the accepted medical fact of the past. The film doesn’t want to show you two people fucking; it wants to get you thinking about the mindframe of the time in which it was written.
To this end, Psychopathia Sexualis did not take the text verbatim. Rather than demonstrating the thought of the author, it visually displayed truths we now know to accompany the text: men and women were physically abused and subjected to barbaric treatments in the name of curing behavior and/or illness; women were sexually assaulted in asylums; a doctor could go to an employer with health information and use that information to get a patient fired. In essence, it condemns the dated text by quoting from it, then displaying a contradictory, modern fact-based visual. We see at one point a woman about to be assaulted at night in an asylum while the voiceover proclaims that many women claim to be violated by demons at night. History tells us that these women weren’t imagining this; they were being raped and then told that they were crazy. The film points this out without having to lift a finger.
Between the juxtaposition of antiquated medical text and visual acknowledgment of modern fact, this film brings the uncomfortable realization that the book upon which it’s based was used to classify and “treat” people for so-called deviant behaviors, while begging a further question: how far off from this text are we now? Let’s review the Victorian sexual practices we learn from this film:
  • Sex is purely for making babies. You shouldn’t want to have sex unless if you want babies.
  • If you’re a woman, your sex drive should be pretty much nil if you’re of good breeding and sound mind.
  • If you make a fuss, we’ll send you to the sanitorium to get better.
  • Don’t masturbate because it’s bad and could make you into a bad person.
  • All fetishes are bad. Anyone that suffers from one is going to hurt other people.
  • Homosexuality is bad, but fear not – we can find a cure!
Sound familiar? We’re getting more studies about the failure of conversion therapy, more pressure to teach abstinence-only sex ed in schools, and a media circus when a public figure has a piece of personal sexual preference revealed. Kink is still trying to make its way into mainstream conversation without being a joke or embarrassment at the same time when gay rights are forging ahead. This film wrapped principle photography in January 2005, when the fight for marriage equality was ramping up and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect. Platforms espoused in the book are visually frowned upon, ever so slightly, in this film. That’s not coincidence, that’s subtle criticism.
What does the film want us to feel? It makes me want to let kinky people be kinky (unless if it’s harming another person and/or animal). You want to suck some blood? Find yourself a partner on the internet and go forth. It makes me want Xavier to find his ideal bear and embrace who he is. It makes me want Annabelle and Lydia to have two kids, a dog and a nice house in the suburbs. I don’t like the thinking in the book. That’s what upset me. I looked around at the world and saw that we still have a long way to go. We can point and laugh at how dated the thinking of the text book was and is, but the hard fact is that it still occurs today. Was it the best film? Nope, not by a long shot. But we still need a film like this to point out that it still happens, that it’s hypocritical, and that it needs to change. Be the happy ending you want everyone else to have in this film.