Sometimes I Feel Like A Human Sacrifice: New York Stories (1989)

The anthology film has become a thing to expect in contemporary cinema, a means within which to bridge the gap between loose genre ideas or to create a feeling of a global community discussing the rhetoric of a singular idea, such as love, loss or happiness.  Even the other omnibus works, such as Paris Je T'aime suffer from a heavy sense of knowing that this work is offered within a collection of larger statements, therefore, unjustly affording filmmakers a belief that they do not really have to try and offer anything of worthy cinematic consideration.  This is by far not the case when concerning New York Stories, a set of three featurettes by three directors whose identities are more or less inextricably tied to the city.  What makes this anthology work particularly fascinating is that the products of two out of three of the filmmakers are some of their best work in rather storied and well-regarded careers, and the third while clearly the weakest in the collection, nonetheless lays out what cinephiles would come to expect from a second generation filmmaker and writer in one of cinemas most well-respected families.  Where as other city film anthologies use the space of the movie to wax poetic about the serene and sentimental experiences of the spaces they occupy, New York Stories exists in  world about New York that paints it both with endearing pride, while also making note of all the ways it is a city of struggles, failures and lack.  Two out of the three works exist in a state of magical realism, nonetheless, playing upon the tropes of New York, where as the other manages to pinpoint into a singular narrative of a man and woman "in love," perhaps even extending into its own consideration of the relationship between New York and New Yorker.  I say all of this having only spent a couple of hours in New York as a teenager, not really understanding a bit about its spaces or the bodies which occupy its vast area.  Instead, what I posit is that New York Stories works for all moviegoers because through the intimacy of the subject matter, passion emerges, so much so that it becomes a text book look at New York, the entity, without ever being pretentious or calling attention to many viewers outsider status.

Split into three distinctly different narratives, the first film directed by Martin Scorsese is title Life Lessons and focuses on action painter Lionel (Nick Nolte) who is panicking for his upcoming studio exhibit, much to the chagrin of his agent  Lionel, while allegedly capable of throwing together a show at a moments notice is, nonetheless, anxiously awaiting the return of his assistant and lover Paulette (Rosanna Arquette).  Upon her return Paulette explains that she no longer wants to be involved with Lionel and has indeed just ended a tumultuous relationship with performance artist Gregory Stark (Steve Buscemi).  Flailing to assert his authority, Lionel plays a game of cat and mouse with Paulette, using his power as an artistic giant to convince her to stay and hone her craft in his studio.  However, it becomes clear that Lionel is only interested in using her sexually, leading to her eventually packing her things and leaving, an act that leads Lionel to complete his Bridge to Nowhere painting and mirroring this metaphor with his immediately moving on to a new ingenue during his exhibit opening.  The second film Life Without Zoe, is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by his daughter Sofia Coppola.  Wherein a young girl named Zoe (Heather McComb) talks in roundabout fairy tales as a way to analyze the troublesome relationship between her parents flautist Claudio (Giancarlo Giannini)  and wife Charlotte (Talia Shire), as well as commenting upon the feelings of alienation which emerge for her parents constantly being away.  In a decidedly child as adult feel evident in later Sofia Coppola work, the film looks at Zoe's attempts to act in the hyper-adult, only able to do so through excessive wealth.  In the end, however, Zoe realizes that sometimes a momentary feeling of unity with one's family is far more valuable than anything money could hope to buy.  The final segment is Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks which focuses on Sheldon (Woody Allen) an established attorney with a loving girlfriend named Lisa (Mia Farrow).  Despite success and love, Sheldon cannot shake the condemnation he constantly faces by his mother, played by Mae Questel.  It is during an "unfortunate" accident at a magic show that Sheldon's mother disappears inexplicably, leading to a momentary feeling of freedom by Sheldon, improving his sex life, while allowing him the freedom to excel at his job in new ways.  However, when his mother emerges as a floating entity in the sky line of New York things change drastically and Sheldon's feelings of oppression blow up to a grandiose proportion.  It is indeed not until he finds a new girlfriend appropriate to his mother's strict demands that her presence no longer becomes omniscient, or at least less blatantly so as the closing moments of the film might suggest.

The fascinating thing about this particular anthology is that aside from auteurist elements present within each film, one could find themselves hard-pressed to claim a thematic link between the three separate stories.  Indeed, aside from the psychoanalytic nightmare that is traditional Woody Allen filmmaking from the era, these seem like, as noted earlier, statements on existing within New York, more so that individual films about a city.  For Scorsese, the issue at hand is how one "performs" the New York lifestyle, particularly one like the New York art world which predicates itself upon a certain pomp and circumstance where struggle is embraced, but not something that should be affirmed physically.  Take the distinct difference between Lionel and Paulette for example, he is well off given his status in high art and can afford to drunkenly feign trouble, whereas Paulette's gender and other issues legitimize her struggle and also do not allow her the privilege to simply perform any degree of abjection.  Coppola's film then becomes about the issue of learning class privilege in the space of New York, it is fitting that Sofia helped write this script, because it lends a layer of credibility to how she would have seen the world as a youth, attempting to rationalize the decadence of her youth with the bustling reality of New York, one where hands literally extend from the trash to beg for food, while she can purchase absurd amounts of food, jewelry and even alcohol despite being admittedly too young to understand how credit works.  The robbery in the film takes on a wonderful layer of class conflict, as does the closing moment in Rome become a moment of scathing irony, which would become a staple of Sofia Coppola's oeuvre (it would be fascinating, in fact, to stand this film up against Marie Antoinette).  With these two films in mind, Oedipus Wrecks then considers the nature of constant looking and watching that occurs within New York, to Allen, New York in all its wonder is also a place where every action is scrutinized, because space is limited and filled with many bodies, all with stories and opinions, some more willing to share than others.  Always the existentialist, the film considers what distinction could possibly emerge between Sheldon's singular struggles and the larger struggles of society.  Perhaps it is all inherently meaningless and Sheldon is merely overreacting, what Allen does show is that, in the end, some encounters are simply unavoidable.

Key Scene: Woody Allen steals the show here and Sheldon's smirk when his mother is "being stabbed" will make you laugh.

The bluray for this is surprisingly cheap, but should in no way suggest a lesser product.  In fact, this is probably one of the more overlooked works from the year.

I Like You...: V/H/S (2012)

I will be the first to admit that this was the most anticipated of the films I would be reviewing this month and was quite worried when my car got put in the shop limiting me from going to the theaters to see this  film, however, thanks to its somewhat limited release and a watch instantly option on Amazon I was able to catch up with this found footage anthology with much elation.  I am aware that there are two camps for this film, the first claiming that is lack of plot and non-notable performances result in a weak film overall, while another camp claims it to be the savior of the horror genre and a veritable renaissance in scary movie creation.  I have firmly centered myself with the latter group, because not only did I find this conceptual horror film to be intensely scary, but it went far above any level of expectation I had formulated.  Sure some of the segments in the film are weaker than others, but overall each story commits to an idea or form within the horror genre and creates a suspense driven narrative of ten to fifteen minutes that had me more than leaning out of my seat.  I was taking notes on the film for this post but completely forgot about it within moments, the work was far to intriguing and certainly to scary to become distracted by what would invariably be half-assed comments on the social nature of the film.  If anything we as a film viewing community, particularly those favoring horror films, should be praising the efforts of such a film, regardless of what you may think of their execution.  The directors Adam Wingard, David Bruckern, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg and the group Radio Silence deserve acknowledgement if only for trying to breath some fresh life into a flailing genre.  V/H/S purely on a experimental level is something to be enjoyed with great pleasure and a certain level of psychological discomfort and remember this film has been said to induce vomiting and black-outs, even if it is purely because of the rattling camera work and onslaught of color bars and film tricks.

As noted the film is series of "found footage" pieces, all centered within one story titled Tape 51, in which a group of found footage enthusiasts are hired to retrieve an unexplained tape from a house.  Upon arrival to this house they find a man dead on a chair and a handful of televisions displaying either blue screens or electrical snow.  Perusing the house one of the members decides to pop in one of the tapes into his camera thus beginning the series of the films.  The first work Amateur Night follows a group of college males, one equipped with a glasses cam as they attempt to pick up women in a night club only to return home to video tape the entire conquest.  One of the women they meet named Lily (Hannah Fierman) is particularly attached to a member of the group starring blankly at him wile uttering the phrase "I Like You"  over and over again.  A bit paranoid the group agrees to take her and a few other women back to their hotel, only to discover that Lily is not exactly a woman and a creature far more disturbing an event that proves cataclysmic to the whole group.  The second tape title Second Honeymoon follows a guy named Sam (Joe Swanberg) and his wife Stephanie (Sophia Takal) as they travel through Arizona on a trip to celebrate their marriage, all seems uneventful until a young woman awkwardly asks them for a ride one night, only to break into their hotel later in the night and steal their money, an act that is caught on tape by the girl as she films it with their camera.  The next day leads to an awkward moment between Sam and Stephanie as they argue about money, an issue that becomes all the more intriguing when the young woman returns with a vengeance later that night.  The third story titled Tuesday the 17th follows a group of young people as they travel to the woods for a vacation, only to become the prey of some sort of spectral maddened assassin, however, what one would assume to be a group of unsuspecting youth is turned on its head when one girl admits that she has experienced this all before.  The next, and perhaps my favorite has the lengthy title of The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger is a webcam based video in which Emily (Helen Rogers) confesses to her doctor boyfriend about having an insatiable desire to itch a bump on her arm, something he promises to look at upon return from school.  Later that night Emily explains that she has been seeing ghosts and is able to catch one of them, a small child, on camera, leading her boyfriend to agree to help with her confrontation with the ghost.  This confrontation is far more than Emily bargains for and we come to realize that her relationship with her boyfriend is also not quite what we expected.  Finally, a tape called 10/31/98 focuses on a group of young men, one dressed as a nanny cam, providing for the found footage video, as they travel to a Halloween party.  This party upon arrival appears to be empty and the group discovers what they assume to be an intricately designed haunted house, yet when they get to the attic of the house and attempt to join in what they think to be a fake occult ceremony the falseness of the entire experience is undermined and the group undertakes an attempted rescuing of one of the houses victims.  These films compose the main narrative of the film, yet it should be no surprise that the video about finding this video also has its own twists of horror as well, something that I dare not ruin because it is yet another moment of brilliant metacinema scares.

A lot of the complaints directed at this film are about its lack of scary qualities, as they relate to its unexplained narrative and little to no back story.  I would argue that it is precisely this lack of logical connection that makes this work indeed unsettling.  Imagine if you will that you were to randomly buy a set of unmarked VHS tapes from a local thrift store as a means to do some found footage experimental work, say like the folks over at Everything Is Terrible.  Most of the stuff would probably be dubbed television shows or awkward home videos, but what if you were to find something like a group of kids being murdered in the wood.  The context would not be explained and under no circumstances would you find this not scary.  Conceptually I think this is what V/H/S was aiming for, an attempt at creating something that would genuinely reflect a piece of "found footage" of the paranormal degree.  While I am certainly a huge fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise it does bother me at times that the narratives spend so much time explaining a back story and having character be a bit to keen on occult and supernatural occurrences.  Sure the film has a slew of social criticisms, whether it be the condemnation of male sexual dominance, something that often leads to date rape or group sexual abuse and another film makes a blatant commentary on the effects financial strains can have on the unity of a marriage.  Hell one of the works could even be seen as making an backhanded commentary on women's reproductive rights, but they all exist primarily as horror works.  To me it is very much like The Shining, in that so much of the horror is such because it has not logical explanation for occurring and this is definitely what makes V/ H/S so intense.

Key Scene:  There is a moment during Amateur Night in which the camera pans across the bar and catches Lily starring into the camera, it is really really creepy and more than sets up the intensity that will consume the remainder of the film.

Buy this movie.  Buy your friend this movie.  Buy anybody you love this movie...although it may cause them to question why you love them.