Crimes of the Future, Sólo con tu pareja, and Impossible Horror (12/12/2022)
Your weekly Josiah round-up
Good afternoon. It’s time for me to write a list.
New from me
Nothing. Not a new thing at all. We ended up unable to do a Mammonburg episode this week because it’s finals time, and I share a podcast with three students. We were gonna do an episode on Children of Men (2006), but since that didn’t happen, I’ll just talk about that movie later on in the list.
I have a Fruitless episode that still needs edited. I should hopefully be getting that to the feed sometime later this week, but who knows. I am pretty lazy.
Film
Last Monday, I watched one of the worst movies to come out this year. Moonfall (2022). My girlfriend picked it out, and I happily obliged, because I like science fiction and, hey, Roland Emmerich made Independence Day (1996) and I remember liking that as a kid. I haven’t watched Independence Day in a long time, so maybe it’s worse than I remember, but it really is depressing to see that guy make such a terrible movie. The film is about forty minutes too long with useless characters, a half-assed plot that butchers what could have been a cool cosmic horror premise if anyone involved had the slightest bit of passion, and it had the strangest Elon Musk apologia sprinkled into it. It also does that Joss Whedon thing where someone has to make a lame joke or comment like “well that just happened” every time something dramatic happens, undercutting any emotional gravity any event in it would have.
But okay, aside from that, I watched Kick-Ass (2010) which was fun and enjoyable. Kind of a nice pallet cleanser.
My big watch this last week was, as I mentioned above, Children of Men (2006) which is one of my favorite films of all time. I got the idea to watch it again this year from my friend, Chris Barker, who has a theory that it’s an advent movie. At first glance, that doesn’t seem right, but upon watching it again I can confirm that yes, it’s a Christmas movie. A movie about a pregnant migrant woman whose baby is the only hope for humankind seems kind of on the nose, actually. Upon this most recent re-watch, I was laughing at how many times a character would see the baby or Kee’s pregnant belly, and exclaim “Jesus Christ!” Once was ironic, but after a few times I began to suspect it was intentional.
Aside from Children of Men, the only films from Alfonso Cuarón I’d seen were Gravity (2013) and the Harry Potter film he directed (arguably one of the most competently directed from that franchise). I wanted to branch out and see more of his work, so I watched his first feature length film, the 1991 Mexican sex comedy Sólo con tu pareja.
This film gave me whiplash. It was a mode I’d never seen Cuarón in, and it absolutely wasn’t what I was expecting, and yet I really enjoyed it. It’s a strange and potentially problematic film (although, if you decide to watch a sex romp from 1991, you shouldn’t be expecting something tasteful) that was commissioned by the Mexican government to be an AIDS awareness film, and instead became a wacky comedy about a dipshit playboy who angers a nurse he is sleeping with so badly that she decides to write “positive” on an HIV test he received. He goes on to have an existential crisis, learn a valuable lesson, and ends up with one woman who he heroically decides to be monogamous with. The Mexican government replied, “This is not at all what we asked for” and refused to distribute the film, and Cuarón proceeded to send the film to American film festivals, beginning his worldwide career that would eventually lead him to direct a Harry Potter film. Weird world we live in.
The film is incredibly funny. Certainly in poor taste, but the physical gags of him trying to be on two dates at once, him getting locked out of his apartment naked, or him attempting to commit suicide by sticking his head in a microwave after reading his test results (again, poor taste), all makes the film a pretty entertaining time. I’m also told it’s intended to be a satire of the Mexican middle class, which is a cultural side that was lost on me, and also a bit of a jab at the Mexican government’s handling of the AIDS crisis—the title translates to “Only with your partner,” which was the Mexican government’s official stance on how to prevent the spread of HIV. It being a heavy handed endorsement of monogamy by the end is probably intended as a bit of a joke on this front. Someone smarter than me could probably write a solid essay on this.
I’m hoping to watch some more Cuarón this coming week.
The other director I explored over the last week was Cronenberg. Now, Cronenberg is one of my favorite directors, but I still haven’t seen all of his work. I chiseled away at some big ones I hadn’t seen recently. I watched Naked Lunch (1991), A History of Violence (2005), and his most recent film, Crimes of the Future (2022).
Naked Lunch is pretty great, but surreal to the point of barely having a plot. Which I understand is the point since it is based off of William S. Boroughs’ novel and life, but I still didn’t have much to grab onto outside of the horrifying and fascinating visuals. A History of Violence, on the other hand, has a very coherent plot that builds in a slow and suspenseful manner. I really liked spending time with the characters in this film, and I appreciated the fact that, despite having a typical action plot/suspense, the gore is realistic and unsettling. His reasoning behind this was to make violence unpleasant. Sure, we can feel the character is justified in his violent act, but we still ought to see what a shotgun does to the skull, and remember that this is what it means when we talk abstractly about self-defense or necessary violence.
Here’s how he put it in an interview:
For me the first fact of human existence is the human body. I'm not an atheist, but for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body to me is a philosophical betrayal. And there's a lot of art and religion whose whole purpose is to turn away from the human body. I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it's beautiful things—the sexuality part, or the violent part or the gooey part—it's just body fluids. It's when Elliott in Dead Ringer (sic) says, "Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?" It's a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That really doesn't make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn't make human sense so I'm always discussing that in my movies.
Lastly, Crimes of the Future is a masterpiece. I’ll put my cards on the table, here. The above quote sheds some light on what he was doing with Crimes of the Future and it’s amazing to see that he was able to encapsulate and articulate these thoughts he’s been playing with since the 1980s so well now.
Moving away from Cronenberg, the last film I wanted to mention this week is Impossible Horror (2017) directed by Justin Decloux. If you’re unfamiliar with Justin, he is one of the hosts of Important Cinema Club, one of the best film podcasts out there. He currently has Impossible Horror on Youtube for a limited time, and I highly recommend you watch it. It’s a fun, dark, low-budget film about the artistic process and the struggles of making art when you feel like a failure or a burnout. But if you don’t care about that emotional side, that’s fine, the film is a long series of homages to numerous genres and styles, from giallo to found footage horror to Hong Kong martial arts films. It’s an absolute blast, and it’s definitely worth your time.
Reading
Completely changing gears here. This last week I was trying to catch up on stuff for the Education for Ministry (EfM) program I’m doing through the Episcopal Church and some books I started a while ago and never finished. This meant, I read a lot of the Bible—specifically Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which are notoriously easy and enjoyable reads. I read some of Walter Brueggemann’s An Introduction to the Old Testament, which is not required for Efm, but I felt complemented it. I read some more of Reading the Bible from the Margins by Miguel A. De La Torre, which is an alright book, although not quite my favorite left wing Christian scholar. I also made some progress in Chris Wickham’s The Inheritance of Rome. Unfortunately, I don’t have much to say about any of this.
Music
It’s Christmas time, so I’ve been meaning to listen to Christmas music. But I haven’t. I’m just not really in the Christmas spirit this year, I guess. I listened to Fairytales of New York by The Pogues a few times, although I’m told that song doesn’t really count. It counts to me.
I’ve been enjoying TV Girl’s album French Exit and The Rural Alberta Advantage’s album Hometowns.
Think that’s about it. See you next week.