You Kind Of Look Like Betty Crocker: The Stepford Wives (2004)

There are a handful of films that for some reason or another just end up with a bad wrap, I often argue that this is due to choosing and awful time to be released, or having an actor whose offscreen persona manages to be so distancing as to affect ticket sales or the reputation of the film, fortunately for this remake of The Stepford Wives it appears to be the aforementioned issue of timing, something that can be transcended as we look at the film nearly a decade later.  Having never seen the original, although I am quite interested based on the DVD cover alone, it is quite clear that the revamp of The Stepford Wives is not a perfect film, however, I do not believe that anyone was expecting it to be such a thing.  The satirical jabs set-up in the film are often to misdirected or on-the-nose to really become effective and the mixture of veteran actors and comedic performers causes a clear divide between film and viewer, making it hard to become wholly involved with Frank Oz's narrative.  Of course, as a out and out satire it is not fair to criticize these points too heavily, because within this particular cultural framework tradition and the rules of filmmaking are certainly allowed to be undermined, yet, while viewing the film one cannot help but feel that it is falling victim to over cutting of scenes and key plot points at the hands of producers.  It also cannot be ignored that this film was released in the wake of a post-9/11 hyper conservative American landscape that seemed to sop up anything spouted from the good ol'boy president in office.  Furthermore, The Stepford Wives does a rather intriguing thing with feminist theory that, to some degree, undermines some of the key figures and commentaries of second wave feminist rhetoric and could damn well be a third wave feminist masterpiece, in so much, as it confronts issues of intersectionality, in the very fact that the film ignores intersectional bodies, excluding two gay characters.  This movie is certainly above middle of the road quality and deserves reconsideration, if only for Christopher Walken probably being given the most appropriate role of his entire acting career.

The Stepford Wives begins with an awards ceremony for a major television network headed by Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) whose female-empowering television has become a means for her own iconic cultural place, yet when one of her shows causes a man to lose his wife, he exacts revenge by attempting to shoot her during the ceremony.  The insanity of this situation leads her to be released from the network, which also causes her husband Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick) to step down from his position as vice-president and suggest they move to the suburbs.  Along with their two children the family moves to Stepford, the hyper-idyllic gated community in where the ideal image of woman is ripped right out of a 1950's home decor catalogue.  The gender divide is rather clearly established within Stepford, women are to be subservient to their husbands, while they shoot off to a large mansion to enjoy the masculine pleasures of life, most of which revolve around scotch and sports.  Realizing the absurdity of this lifestyle, Joanna befriends the Jewish anti-oppression writer Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler) and the outspoken gay male Roger (Roger Bart) who is attempting to meet at a middle ground with his gay republican partner by living in the suburbs.  The trio makes their own world within Stepford, all the while the community pretending not to notice, although their condemnation is rather obvious.  It is not until Roger disappears one night and becomes inexplicably altered into the ideal male political partner that Joanna becomes suspicious, a fear that is reaffirmed when Bobbie turns into a blonde housewife days later.  It is revealed that Mike (Christopher Walken) a former employee at Microsoft has discovered a technology that allows men to implant chips into their wives heads to make them submissive and able to reaffirm their place of power in a traditional hegemony.  Walter wrestles with whether or not to submit Joanna to this treatment, which leads to a climactic garden party in which all assumptions of submissiveness, power and whose hands are really in control of this idyllic community come into question.  Needless to say oppression is completely undermine and the power of the Stepford syndrome is eventually removed.

I mentioned that this film probably suffered from coming out at a terrible time.  The American landscape in 2004 certainly did not want to question anything, serious fears of another terrorist attack still gripped our nation and to question anything our government did in the name of our protection was tantamount to claiming to be a communist during the Cold War, as such the undermining of the ideal American image, no matter how illogical, was a death sentence during this time and, I would contest, that The Stepford Wives suffers from this mind frame.  Were it to have come out in the past five years, it would probably have been an entirely different story.  Another issue arises in that many people seem to dismiss this is a feminist friendly film, sure on a cinematic level it does not display anything but white , privileged bodies, however, I would contest that the ironic and undermining ways in which they do so is entirely intended to draw attention to issues of intersectionality.  Even the gay characters depicted are so overdramatized as to be a point of critique.  Furthermore, and spoilers ensue, another attack comes in that the main villain in this film is that of a woman seeking traditional values, many feminist thinkers would seemingly have a problem with this depiction, but it should not be ignored that many women do internalize traditional patriarchal values and heavily effect the ability of progress.  However, the character in this scenario specifically seems to be doing so because she was once a powerful woman who could not handle the stresses and strain of constant work and pressure.  It seems again on a passive glance to suggest latent femininity, however, it is wrong to read the film as such.  The women who desire the suburban housewife lifestyle of submissiveness are no less stressful and have very little to show for it, the classic cult of domesticity at work.  The woman who desires to have simplicity in making a family in the suburbs is blindly following the male patriarchal oppression because her stress has opened up a chance to internalize a false ideal.  Sure the film is a bit tenuous in how it depicts this idea, but I promise you it is in there somewhere.

Key Scene:  The introduction of Mike is a pretty funny scene and really sets up the illogical way in which Stepford presents itself for the remainder of the film.

This is an exceptionally cheap movie to purchase and while it is not great anyone who seriously enjoys discussing feminist theory or theories of oppression should own this movie as it provides for a great point of discussion.  This is also secretly a horror film, something people seem reticent to admit.

Guys Like Me Are Born Loving Women Like You: Young Adult (2011)

I had the highest hopes for a film that was written by Diablo Cody, she is perhaps the only writer who I have come to know by name excluding Aaron Sorkin and it took multiple movies for that to become the case.  Given this, I was thoroughly excited to see her name attached to Young Adult, as I knew it would be a witty, hip narrative that required a vast cultural awareness to appreciate.  While this can certainly be said about the narrative, it still manages to fall short as a film.  I felt the film to lack several layers of believability and any amount of sincere honesty.  I cannot blame this on the acting, because each actor delivers their character with skill and subtlety and void of the self-reverence present in Cody's previous film Juno.  I am more inclined to blame the films overall lack on the filmic composition of the narrative, we are given little back story throughout the film to understand the characters, but nowhere near enough to empathize with them, regardless of their various levels of pity.  Simply put, Cody tries so desperately for us to find her characters troubled, yet endearing that it becomes obnoxiously obvious to the point that their self-loathing, particularly the main character, is disgusting.  I applaud Cody for removing the wit of her work from the script, as it would undeniably serve as a crutch, yet she as a writer has not evolved enough to find a replacement for the wit and the Young Adult suffers heavily from this failure.

Young Adult follows a ghostwriter named Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) who is having an existential crisis concerning her impending 30th birthday and the realization that her former boyfriend was having a child.  As a result undertakes a quest to return to her small town of Mercury, Minnesota to flaunt her popularity and win back her high school sweetheart Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson).  Mavis, a functioning alcoholic, who spends her days knocking back buckets of Ben & Jerry's and watching reality television thinks, that her plans will happen instantaneously and that everything in Mercury will be precisely as she left it a decade ago.  When she enters the now suburban city, she is disgusted by its corporate consumption and seeks out shelter in a popular local pub named Woody's.  There she runs into Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) a former classmate of Mavis's who was badly injured by classmates who beat him up after falsely assuming him to be gay.  Mavis in a drunken stupor explains her plans to Matt who instantly dismisses her reminding her that Buddy was married with a child.  Mavis ignores his warnings and schedules a meeting for drinks with Buddy, who agrees to the date simply out of kindness.  It is at this point in the narrative that viewers realize how far gone Mavis is mentally.  Her meeting with Buddy is clearly awkward and brief, yet Mavis is assured that she has won back her former lover and agrees to meet up with him again to see Buddy's wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) play a live show with her band, aptly named Nipple Confusion.  In the process every thing falls apart for Mavis.  She wrecks her vehicle, has an awkward confrontation with her mother and drunkenly sleeps with Matt before waking up to realize the delusion she is facing.  She leaves Matt's room and after having a talk with his younger sister about the place of her life in relation to Mercury and drives off to return to Minneapolis.  It is implied that Mavis finishes her book with a new and bold perspective on life, one that is completely distanced from her past.

Young Adult is a decent movie, but I cannot begin to attempt to analyze the varying problematic portrayals within the film.  The film is drenched now with what one would call "first world problems," a phrase made popular by the rise of tumbler based websites.  These problems refer to anything that is a seeming inconvenience to an individual that are reflective of their obvious comfort, for example a person complaining about their favorite restaurant changing the menu would be first world in that a considerable part of the global community struggles to gain proper, if any, nourishment.   While the film's examples are by no means this extreme, they certainly are rather arbitrary.  Mavis complains of her job as a ghostwriter and her lack of hip restaurant choices to the people of Mercury when it is clear that her lifestyle far exceeds any of those she encounters, particularly that of Matt who has become a cripple based solely on fictitious rumors spread by ill-willed teenager.  Her job and lazy lifestyle are the thing of dreams as made apparent by the longing gazes of the women she encounters in the film, making her complaints seem bitter and illogical.  Similarly, Mavis is self-destructive, abrasive alcoholic who is never judged in the narrative for her actions.  Instead, the film simply ends with her comfortable in her own shoes, implying that her truly destructive ways are in the past, along with the people she inevitably destroyed.  Aside from suffering from Trichotillomania there is really no explanation to Mavis mental state, thus making her actions simply bitter and hateful, not acts of a person who is suffering mental instability.  While it may seem this way, Mavis is an unkind person who never receives narrative punishment for her problems.  This is perhaps the inherent flaw in the film that explains is ultimate lack of enjoyability.

I know my critique makes it seem unwatchable, but the film is not terrible.  If anything, you should watch it just to see the excellent performance by Patton Oswalt...trust me it will surprise you.  It is still in the cheap theaters making it worth a theater going experience.

Chopping Wood and Shooting Prostitues: Revanche (2008)

I am starting to realize that a trend exists in European cinema that appears to have began around the mid-nineties with emotionally and visually jarring films such as La Haine.  This style of cinema is one that adheres to gritty and often brutal stories of the underworld of Europe and often portrays such narratives with little concern for viewers comfort.  These often urban films are different from their film noir predecessors in that they are not emotionally detached from their subject, but instead very much involved in their story to the point that one viewing this type of film begins to empathize with a character even if they are completely detestable.  Gotz Spielman's Austrian thriller Revanche is such a film, however, unlike its predecessors; it takes the urban experience and forces it to collide rather chaotically with the rural and suburban world.  The result is a poetically abrasive film about people moving in and out of the dredges of society and the relationships they share that are both life affirming and life changing in the process.

The film focuses directly on Alex (Johannes Krisch) a recently released convict who has found employment as a bounder/errand man for the owner of strip club and brothel.  While working at the establishment, Alex begins to formulate a relationship with one of the employees, a Ukranian prostitute named Tamara (Irina Potapenko).  Their relationship, while secretive appears to be working, until Alex's boss takes a personal likening to Tamara, offering her a job as a high end escort.  Realizing his boss's ulterior motives Alex hatches a plan to rob a bank and flee to Spain with Tamara.  This occurs simultaneous to the film depicting the relationship of grocery store employee Susanne (Ursulla Strauss) and her cop husband Robert (Andreas Lust) whose marriage has been rather rocky after the realization of Robert's infertility issues.  These two narratives seem distinct were it not for the fact that Susanne and Robert's closest neighbor is Alex's aging father Hausner (Johannes Thanheiser).  The robbery that Alex undertakes appears to be successful, despite taking Tamara along with him for the heist, however, due almost entirely to chance Robert is the person on duty during the robbery and approaches Tamara out of suspicion while Alex is committing the robbery.  When Alex still wearing his robber's mask returns to his car he finds Robert questioning Tamara and in a fit of panic forces Robert to drop his weapon and lay on the ground.  After Alex and Tamara make a getaway Robert shoots at the car in an attempt to blow the tires, unfortunately, his gun misses and hits Tamara in the head.  Realizing that the cops will search for him Alex ditches his car and heads to hideout at his father's house under the guise of helping him with some large scale chores, the biggest of which is his cutting of wood for the fireplace.  During his time there he realizes that Hausner's neighbors are indeed Susanne and Robert whom he recognizes instantly as Tamara's killer.  Alex then spends the rest of the film plotting revenge on Robert, which in Alex's eyes means death.  However, Alex certainly does not shy away from the opportunity to sleep with Susanne as a point of revenge.  This portion of the film is lengthy and drawn out purposefully, but as it ends we witness Susanne using her infidelity as a guise for successful pregnancy, while Robert unknowingly confesses to Alex his guilt upon accidentally murdering Tamara, which leads to an unspoken forgiveness.  In fact, Alex seems to be free of any association to the robbery were it not for Susanne's discovery of a photograph of Tamara in Alex's possession, which leads her to piece all the events together.  She realizes though that to turn Alex in would be to forfeit her newly rejuvenated relationship with Robert, something she cannot bear to do.  As such the film closes with Alex picking apples up outside his father's house continuing in his life with a fresh start, even if the new life came at a dire cost.

Revanche is spectacular in its unconventional approach to a revenge film.  This is a revenge narrative with an incredibly slow burn.  Compare Revanche to a film like Taken in which the character is all out in his actions and scenes are incredibly violent and occur frequently.  The violence in Revanche is minimal, but the threat of it is ever present.  The unusual nature of this plot can be tied directly to the fact that ethically speaking Alex does not have a justifiable reason to seek revenge.  In the case of Tamara's death, it was a legitimate accident and one that could have been prevented had Alex simply told Tamara to wait for him while he engaged in his theft.  This leaves the viewer in an interesting scenario, because they cannot simply support Alex's decision.  Reading the film in such a way makes actions like his involvement with Susanne all the more intriguing.  His decision to take advantage of her sexually is unusual, but somehow manages to seem more appropriate as a means of revenge than killing her or Robert.  It is as though he is making a mark for Tamara, without destroying anything.  In fact, as the film implies he could very well be responsible for Susanne's pregnancy.  If this is the case than Alex has delivered the ultimate form of revenge and only himself and Susanne will be aware.  Furthermore, Alex's continual chopping of wood becomes a sort of penance for his misdeeds and an attempt at meditation on his life up to this point.  In the end, Alex is left to accept the error of his ways and engage in a life that assures loneliness, but also the impossibility of reoccurring heartbreak.

I had the pleasure of viewing Revanche on 35 mm print.  It is certainly not feasible to do so for everyone, thankfully the folks at Criterion released a bluray version that is probably almost as nice.

We're Out Of Peanut Butter Super Chunk: Benny and Joon (1993)

I defy you to find a sweeter movie than this one.  Benny and Joon is a cult classic of sorts, its rather absurdist story and quotable dialogue make for a great movie that is neither over the top, nor lacking in frill.  It is a simplistic film about romance, family, and making ends meet in a world that constantly challenges normalcy.  Benny and Joon offers both a well paced narrative and subtly shot film that is as easy to watch as it is to enjoy.  Employing popular music and classical cinema images, the film is a revisiting of slapstick of years gone by, as well as a complete rethinking of the romantic comedy tradition.  It is a film that is both normal and unusual simultaneously, a rare thing in cinema, particularly after the 1960's.

Benny and Joon is rather unusual in its character choices.  The title characters Benny (Aidan Quinn) and Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson) are siblings living in a suburban northeast town.  Benny is a easy going mechanic whose only devotion is taking care of his mentally challenged sister Juniper "Joon."  Sadly, Joon is proving to be more and more burdensome causing Benny to question her ability to remain in a normal social setting, as well as questioning his own sanity in taking care of Joon.  Just as things appear to be impossible, one of Benny's friends pawns his cousin Sam (Johnny Depp) onto Benny.  Fortunately for Benny, Sam is just as eccentric as Joon and proves to be her ideal companion.  After a confrontation between Benny and Sam over Sam's intimacy with Joon the two separate, resulting in Joon's hospitalization.  Benny and Sam through a joint effort rescue Joon from the hospital and in the closing scenes Sam and Joon are shown making grilled cheese together on a ironing board.  I should note that this is a rather cursory overview of the film, but is in order to segway into my critical analysis of the film...being its textbook creation of a cult classic.

Benny and Joon is an exemplary film in relation to making a quotable and image driven cult film.  Every element of the film is undeniably personal and has the heir of being part of an inside joke that the viewer has generously been invited to witness.  This comes most obviously in the rhetoric between Benny and Joon, between Peanut Butter Super Chunk, betting drop chord in poker games and ping-pong it is very much a film about a familial relationship.  Viewers may not partake in these specific rituals, but they certainly have their own eccentric habits with family that helps to relate.  Secondly, the setting of the film helps to add to the cult-like nature of the film.  Benny and Joon's house is obviously a residence beyond their means, given that they are both orphans.  Regardless, their house is full of unusual artifacts more appropriate for a small town history museum and Joon's paintings, which are quite good and very modern.  It is obviously a house of the director's personal favorites, as opposed to a believable place of residence for two struggling siblings.  Finally, it is a cult film because William H. Macy has a role in the film, as arbitrary as it may seem he seems to show up in every damn cult movie I know and love and seeing him in this only added to its already unusual flare...mustache and all.

Benny and Joon is a perfect date movie.  It is sweetly romantic and quotable.  I would recommend  viewing a copy with someone dear to you, because it will only increase its enjoyability.