K² Film Festival

Kids is Larry Clark’s documentary-like (though fictional) expose of teenage debauchery around the streets of New York City. Telly is a teenage boy with a taste (perhaps a compulsion) for deflowering virgins. When 16 year old Jennie learns she has tested positive for HIV after a lone sexual encounter with Telly; she goes on a quest to find him. The irony is a little heavy handed since Telly states more than once that his preference for innocence is protection against STD’s. But this movie is a big stick and Larry Clark is going to beat you over the head with it every chance he gets. It will be particularly painful if you are a parent.

Why Jenny is seeking Telly is ambiguous. To confront him? To try and prevent further victims? To see if he can dig deep enough to find a feeling for her after all? I wasn’t sure throughout the film and in the end she finds him and walks away wordless so I’m still not sure. What I do know is that the world of casual and irresponsible sex, drugs, and violence that Jennie traverses to find Telly was repulsive enough that this is the first movie to ever transcend the K2 rating system.

That’s right, Kids was so disturbing that the thought of physical intimacy was nearly repulsive. I’m not sure how much of this was reflective of the actual culture of inner-city kids in 1995. I was an adult by then and I am far enough removed from adolescence at this point that I can never be sure that what seems shocking to me isn’t just normal teenage behavior. If mass media can be used as an honest measure then promiscuity among teens seems to be more widespread now than it was in my day when I thought about sleeping with boys but made the leap with only one or two. So are the checks and balances I had in place less common as they used to be or is this just sensationalism?

Maybe, maybe not. After all, even in sleepy rural metropolitan Atlanta we had a story about a group of young teens who passed syphilis amongst themselves. The films co-writer, Harmony Korine, was only 19 when the script was written and the story goes that Larry Clark saw him in Washington Square Park and asked him to write about his everyday life. So if it isn’t sensationalism then it might simply be an accurate account of a small subculture of inner-city youth but it’s scary enough that the fine line between probability and possibility doesn’t matter. Even the slight chance that this could be your kid is disturbing. No rating and it left a bad aftertaste. View this one at your own risk.

Rating: First Base

A 20-something Baltimore sandwich shop employee is saddled with unwelcome notoriety when his photographs are discovered by a New York City art dealer in this 1998 John Waters film.

“Pecker” is named for his eating habits, not any physical characteristic. He’s sincere and shy; wanting only to take pictures and hang out with his laundromat-operator girlfriend. When an art dealer discovers him it’s fun for a time, but you can’t take the Baltimore out of the boy even if you take the boy out of Baltimore. Pecker soon has friends and family clamoring for the way things used to be and even getting paid doesn’t make the sacrifice of all he knows seem worthwhile. He manages to turn things to his advantage and in the end he keeps his art, his integrity and his paycheck too I’ll bet.

This film is shot, as all John Waters films are, in Baltimore. There isn’t even an extra in this film that has the distinct Baltimore accent though, what gives? I can’t remember if it was missing in his other films as well, but I noticed its absence in this one. This film has Waters’ typical quirky characters; Peckers laundry-obsessed girlfriend, his mother on a mission to bring fashion to the homeless, his grandmother who believes her Virgin Mary doll talks to her, his sister the monomaniacal sugar-fiend and his best friend a career shoplifter. His older sister works in a dive gay bar and his grandmother sells “pit beef” sandwiches from the front yard. It’s all so very blue collar the New Yorkees can’t resist it.

I couldn’t really resist it either. Edward Furlong is cute in a skinny proletarian sort of way and I’m partial to both photography and Baltimore, having a background in each:) I’ve always loved John Waters’ films and this one was nice for its relative subtlety. I’m not sure this wasn’t a no hitter but I’m pretty sure I must have kissed KC at least once So I’m giving it a First Base rating. A solid film from a cinema icon.

kc writes:

Well, it is John Waters after all. I will admit to having to be reminded who John Waters is when Kim first mentioned the film to me, though. Pecker is a good movie. Lighthearted and whimsical, Pecker manages to poke fun at the trivial nature of art without being high-and-mighty about it.

I think “First Base” is a good score for this movie.

This was the much-anticipated (for me anyway) second directorial effort of John Cameron Mitchell. The Netflix blurb sound darn near interesting and I loved Hedwig and the Angry Inch so I expected great things from this film. Were my expectations met? Well, Mitchell certainly has a way with things and I wish he were more prolific. This wasn’t quite a Hedwig but it was no mean effort either.

The film follows the intertwined stories of a group of New Yorkers; a “couples counselor” who has never achieved an orgasm, a dominatrix who wants to find meaning in something, anything and a monogamous gay couple who are talking about opening their relationship up sexually. James and Jamie visit Sofia the therapist for advice on opening their relationship to allow new sexual partners. When she confesses she is “pre-orgasmic” they introduce her to a club/salon called “Shortbus” where art, music, conversation and public sexual intercourse coexist. There she meets Severin, the dominatrix and a naked sweaty cast of characters that could probably only exist in New York.

This film includes non-simulated hardcore sex. However, this is possibly the only movie I’ve ever seen where that much potential porn (they aren’t skimpy about the nudity here) was actually topical and fit the underlying emotional story so well. And unlike much porn, it’s actually nice to look at. These are pretty people, not plastic people and the visuals are quite rich. The sex shares the front seat with the story though. The challenging terrain the characters traverse emotionally within their relationships with each other is quite poignant and the whole thing is superbly acted by a cast of people I’ve never heard of before in my life.

I give it two thumbs up and highly recommend this film to anyone looking for something that covers a range from contemplative to tongue-in-cheek in a manner not quite ordinary. Careful you sensitive souls…this one made KC cry.

Rating: 1st Base

The Robinsons are your typical 1950′s suburban family. Nice house, white picket fences, pet zombie servant… wait, what? Fido is a post-destruction zombie meets “a boy and his dog” movie. (Heck, the lead character is even named “Timmy”.)

The world has recovered from a zombie attack, and civility has returned. In traditional American capitalist fashion, a corporation named Zomcon has taken on the role of controlling zombies and even taming them to the point that they can act as “servants” for the moderately wealthy middle class and above.

The Robinson family is the only family on the block to not have a zombie, until an upper level security officer from Zomcom moves in next door with their six zombie servants. Helen Robinson (Carrie Anne-Moss;pant pant.) decides she must “keep up with the Joneses” and hastily rushes out and buys the family their first Zombie. From there, we have a weird story of mishaps and twists – each one with a Dennis the Menace or Donna Reed feel, but set with zombies and zombie carnage.

Overall, the zombie carnage is fairly tame. I imagine it was hard to gauge how far over that line to go while maintaining the spic-and-span 1950′s look and feel to the movie. The sets are overly colorful, and the color saturation even makes the sky an impossible shade of blue.

This is an odd movie. I liked it, but it’s still very, very odd.

Kim says:
This movie borrowed a few things from the Romero classics (the radiation, the appearance of the zombies) and built upon one idea introduced in Romero’s Day of the Dead: that Zombies can be domesticated. Fido is the combination puppy/adult role model you never had who brings love and respect to a house that was broken by the presence of a socially stilted funeral-obsessed father figure. Everyone who ought to be ripped apart limb from limb is before the end of the movie; though as KC pointed out, the carnage is understated. Once everyone with an obvious personality disorder has been dispatched, the people of Willard are able to live in happy harmony with their zombies.

This is the first zombie movie I’ve seen with “zombies are people too” as a moral and I found it a refreshing departure from the usual treatment. This small suburban town being a microcosm of the way our society in general is run it’s also got requisite stabs to make at authoritarian attitudes, “family” values and blind faith in technology. All the social satire being wrapped up in the candy colored sets and costumes makes this quite the pleasant little nugget and though we did spend some of the slower moments focused on each other it’s a film worth watching even if you aren’t a particular fan of the zombie genre.

Rating: No Hitter

I loved this movie. It’s one of those little gems where you rent it not knowing what to expect and at the end you think, “Wow, I’m glad I took a chance on that”. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the musical autobiography of Hedwig (born Hansel) Robinson; a transvestite with a zest for living and a soul for rock and roll.

From his beginnings singing into the oven in his mother’s tiny apartment in Hansel escapes Communist East Berlin by marrying his American Military sweetheart but there’s just one catch. To pass the marital medical exam Hansel has to leave a little bit of himself behind and thus is born Hedwig and his angry inch. Love being what it is, Hedwig winds up single and stranded in Middle America where he strikes up a quasi-romance and songwriting collaboration with future rock star Tommy Gnosis. Most of the movie is comprised of Hedwig’s grudge tour; following Tommy’s national tour from city to city in the hopes of getting him to acknowledge from whence his hit songs and thus his stardom sprang forth.

The original soundtrack is amazing and John Cameron Mitchell’s performance as both an actor and a singer show just how versatile he is so how come we haven’t seen more of this guy? IMDB shows most of his activity as a bit part actor in the 80′s. Hedwig is a film adaptation of Mitchell’s 1998 stage musical of the same name so I assume he does mainly stage work. I moved his only other directorial effort to the top of my Netflix queue and hope to be similarly impressed.

kc writes

Just wow!  I had no idea what to expect, I had never heard of this movie.  I also had no idea it was a musical.   From the very beginning the movie grabs you and makes you pay attention to every detail, from the costumes to the sets to the occasional odd pencil animations that accompany some of the monologue.  It’s bizarre and fantastic at the same time.

We were both riveted and glued to the screen.  I think Kim is going to try and find the soundtrack, the music was quite good too!  It will be interesting to see how it holds up without the stunning visuals.

Rating: Grand Slam

I love Netflix. They have everything, and in no particular order. This can be both a blessing and a curse. KC and I were browsing through the Netflix “on demand” selection on the laptop when we came across Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Two priests are concerned that lesbians in the metropolis of, whatever metropolis this was shot in, are disappearing. Wow, so priests like lesbians too! In a very “children of God” kind of way of course. KC pointed out the devastating effect this could have on property values in Decatur if this were to happen in the Atlanta area, but these men of God are more concerned with staunching the flow of blood so they go to the main man to ask for help.

Thus it happens that in his second coming, Jesus has to contend with a band of roving bloodthirsty lesbian vampires. Don’t watch it for the hot goth lesbian vampire sex though (because it doesn’t have any) watch it for the kung fu moves and the soundtrack! This made the rounds of the smaller more obscure Indie film festivals in 2002 and won a couple of meaningless awards before fading into apparent obscurity deep in the mire of the Netflix “comedy” section. It was bad. I thought for a minute that it would be so bad as to transcend badness and achieve good but I was more interested in KC and wound up checking him out instead of watching the movie. Admittedly, we were in bed at the time but I think the movie is rated fairly.

kc writes

Ha!  Yeah, it might be a “so bad it’s good” contender… if I had consumed a fair amount of ethanol in the process.  In this state of mind, though, the fight sequences were painful.   And I don’t mean effective painful.

This is one of those spectacles that I couldn’t help but sit and wonder- “How is it that everybody involved in this project let it happen?”  Seriously, no one in the cast, crew, or production stood up and said “Hey, wait!  This is godawful!  What are we doing?”   There’s just no way anyone was paid well, so what’s the excuse?

Anyhow… Netflix On-demand FTW!   Without you, how would we ever discover such undiscovered.. uh… well.. crap?

Rating: 1st Base

The latest installment of the K² Film Festival represents the 2 year anniversary of the very first movie we ever didn’t watch together. I actually own the movie in question so I decided the nostalgia of bringing out Intolerable Cruelty was appealing and KC didn’t object because I never bothered asking him. Two years ago we only saw part of this film due to the fact that KC’s copy was defective. We did wind up watching the rest of it at a later date. I don’t remember what rating it got back then, we didn’t have a rating system in place at the time, but this time around it got a first base.

It really is an entertaining film. Exploring the theme of love, trust and career wives in upper-crusty LA it doesn’t get too heavy. All the morals are tongue in cheek and really, unless you’re a botoxed Beverly Hills housewife this isn’t the kind of subject matter that most people have a problem finding appropriately deplorable. Marilyn Hamilton Rexroth (Catherine Zeta Jones) is a woman without any visible skills beyond her beauty and her willingness to manipulate men in order to achieve her goal of financial independence. Having failed with her first husband when tenacious divorce lawyer Miles Massey (George Clooney) cuts her out of any settlement at all, she goes on to collect two more last names in her quest to achieve wealth through failed matrimony.

The symbolism isn’t allowed to speak for itself in this film, but that’s okay. There isn’t any pretense toward social commentary so there’s no need to be subtle to avoid offending anyone. I know a torn-up pre-nup represents not trust, but wasted paper but hey, this is Hollywood, land of the superficial. Maybe these people do need to be told that it’s pathetic to die alone from a combination of your own manipulations and a peptic ulcer and be discovered two days later by your Pilates instructor. It’s entertaining to see how miserable rich people really can be.

The casting was nicely done in this film and includes a rather funny bit part by Cedric the Entertainer (who will “nail yo’ ass”). and the sexual overtones are either slapstick funny (as in Rex Rexroth’s fascination with trains) or tastefully underdone. There are no actual sex scenes, only the implication. We filled those in ourselves later on in the evening. Here’s to many more K² Film Festivals!

kc adds:

Wow, it has been two years.   Intolerable Cruelty is entertaining, though it falls slightly short of expectations knowing it’s a Coen Brothers film with George Clooney in it.

Clooney performs nicely as Miles Masseey, giving the character his usual dose of charm and quirkiness.  The dialog is funny, the antics are funny if not downright hilarious.  So where does it fall short?

For me, the subject matter and the character development are kept at such a shallow level as to make this movie seem like all icing and no cake.  Granted, the Coens can pull that off and still make a better “fluff” movie than most of the industry (see the rest of Cedric the Entertainer’s resume for examples.)  But somehow at the end I feel like I never really went anywhere with the film.

It’s fun nonetheless, though, and I cracked up several times even having seen the movie at least twice prior.

To more K² Film Festivals indeed!

Rating: 1st Base

This is the second film in the saga that depicts the complete decimation of Great Britain’s population by the “Rage Virus” a disease that spreads between humans with lightning rapidity and causes it’s victims to render the people around them lifeless in as gory a manner as possible. That’s right, it’s a ZOMBIE MOVIE!

Well, pretty close to it anyway. The infected don’t seem to be self aware, don’t seem to feel pain and they attack every other human in sight without regard to morals or personal safety so if they aren’t technically dead they are not at least technically human anymore either. The K² team had previously screened (though failed to review) the first film in this series 28 Days Later so we were prepared for what to expect with this one. These zombies run. They run fast. They attack other humans with a “bury your face in your boyfriends shoulder” level of gore. They can be stopped by any method that would kill a regular human being, however. They possess the strength and dogged singularity of purpose that accompanies the rage that consumes them so they can be avoided by the standard means: Finding a hole and being very, very quiet.

A ragtag group of survivors in a boarded up country house have been surviving quite nicely until a little boy bangs on the door screaming one bright day. The frustrated maternal half of a married couple convinces her husband to open the door for the boy. Unfortunately, this opens the door to bloody mayhem as well when the infected (clued in to the existence of humans in the house) break in and start rending flesh. The husband and wife are separated in the chaos by the wife’s insisting on going back for the child they helped. Her husband, Don, leaves her ass high and dry and takes off running; his last view of her through an upstairs window where’s she bangs on the glass and calls his name before disappearing. Don, stand-up guy that he is, winds up being the only survivor of that melee. As far as we know.

This film picks up 5 months or so after 28 Days Later left off. Britain has been quarantined for the past 6 months and any infected are presumed dead. Survivors deemed healthy are housed in a safe zone in London that is patrolled by US Troops and surrounded by fences and razor wire. London is assumed to be safe from the further threat of the virus but the areas outside the safe zone have yet to be cleaned up and you can imagine what hundreds if thousands of dead bodies, rats, and stray dogs amount to. A big damn mess! I’ll take the razor wire.

Residents of London who had been evacuated in the early days of the virus (before the entire island was quarantined) are beginning to be repatriated. Don’s two children come back to Britain to hear Don’s manufactured story of how their Mother died and there was nothing he could do to help her. In a fit of nostalgia that just won’t be denied, the kids leave their island of safety and take a trip through the decimated remains of London to their old house to find a picture of their Mom. What a surprise when they find Mom herself instead. The Army brings the whole family back and quarantines them but that doesn’t stop Don from making his second major fuck-up in this film. His wife is immune to the Rage virus but she’s still a carrier and when Don cozies up to her the kiss they share is the kiss of death. His wife regretted it almost immediately of course but we have the entire rest of the film to savor the effects.

The Army puts their emergency plans into place with cruel efficiency but unfortunately, Don seems to possess enough awareness of the world around him to use his “all access” building manager’s badge to spread the virus among the the residents who have been locked down in a quarantine area. The military’s loss of control and the inability to distinguish infected from healthy persons means everyone gets a bullet in the head. Not everyone is going to be behind this plan of course, so this spawns our second group of ragtag survivors.

The rest of the film focuses on the attempts of this group to survive. It seems rather hopeless when to remain on the loose means to be discovered by zombies and eaten, and to go back to “civilization” means being shot on sight. The Army doctor realizes that the kids may be the key to finding a cure for the virus and charges everyone else with their safety. In the end, a well meaning officer with a helicopter and the lack of foresight that the young possess makes it possible for the virus to cross the English Channel and start mowing down mainland Europe.

And so we anticipate “28 Months Later”.

kc writes

Yay! Another zombie movie! I really enjoyed 28 Days Later, so I was looking forward to the sequel. Kim covered the bases, so I’ll stick to my opinion of the film.

I must admit, the incongruence between the haplessness, random nature of all the other zombies vs the seemingly more focused, consistent behavior of Don, the “zombified” father character, bothered me a bit in the film. It did give the movie that “recurring lurching bad guy” figure, but it felt like an inconsistency in the plot.

We are also left wondering exactly how his immune-but-infected wife Alice ever got from that country house to the attic of their city home. It would seem that Don had something to do with this, as he alludes to not ever wanting to return there to his kids. Yet, if he was involved with her relocation after infection, how had he not yet become infected by her?

Thankfully, the movie was fast paced and interesting enough to not allow one much time to ponder such questions. I liked some of the characters enough to hate seeing them be consumed by the antagonists, and disliked some of them enough to cheer the zombies on… which is all you can really ask for in a zombie movie, I think.

All in all, good movie, and I like where they are going with the series. I look forward to the third installment. And that is not something I say about very many movies!