Possession

 Have you ever stumbled upon a film that entranced you, not just with the plot progression or stellar casting, but with a tale of murmuring madness? Going into Possession with the knowledge only of a feminine hatred uprising, I concluded that this film was to chronicle a break-up and how right I was. Directed in the eye of the storm, Andrzej Żuławski continues his (unknown to me) cosmically surreal ascension into philosophical tripe masked with a "blasphemous" swipe to the construct of puritanism - all in the span of his own terribly messy divorce! As Infinite Jester would spread it, "Isn't Possession the perfect break-up movie?" This continues my autumn habit of not reading a synopsis and indulging tastes with a blindfold, lucky for me that Possession breaks tides in its berserk ambiguity. As regarded by a select group of people who can stomach the events and forgo an unnecessary criticism for something that transcends a physical manifestation of the supernatural, Possession was an arthouse classic destined for the guillotine.

 First thing I'd like to bring up and discuss is Anna's (Isabelle Adjani) role throughout Possession as the sole agitator and let's not even bring to surface the intentions of the films title. Starting out, Mark (Sam Neill) is in a meeting with his previous employers and resigning against their wishes to return home to his wife and son in Berlin. Upon arriving, Mark discovers a certain air around Anna; she's leaving him with mention unearthing of a German dandy she has been sleeping with, name of Heinrich. Not to concern oneself with dispelling the great treasures this film has to offer, Mark gradually exorcises his pedantic nature in turn for a more primal and instinctual defensive to better suit the fluctuating needs and desires of his precious whore. Turn after turn, the opposition proves fierce and we are graced with what might be the sole continuum of the body horror filmic turn and a film that shields its own misogynistic(?) claims in a sometimes muddled allegory towards marital bliss and lack thereof. With the familiarity of heart break and spousal abandonment, it's safe to assume that Żuławski not only played his part of concerning husband but also that Possession also treads the boards of a medium for his anguish and rage, something I am only too familiar with, which is what most of you men can agree with me on.

Possession is a fright. I found myself genuinely disturbed and a slimy ooze creeping down my back during the subway scene of miscarriage interpretive dance. It's ultimately at this point where the thin line between reality and fictional prurience becomes blurred and shuffled over; a worthy conflict. As the title so reads, Possession takes on a tale of a domicile possession. It's very unclear whether or not an existing presence other than menstruation possessed Anna to do the deeds she did. Further highlighting the excuses at work, the masquerade of feminine blood-lust, Isabelle Adjani is reported to have attempted suicide after seeing the finished product of Possession, as told by the director himself in the DVD audio commentary. Is Anna really such a distant and unrelenting character or is Isabelle Adjani just another woman afflicted with the possible parasite of ladyhood? As we continue this primordial descent into tactical manipulation at the hands of "Barbara" and other such succubi, Possession points out a question only homosexuals ever ask - " Is it really worth it? "

To retain previous discussion towards the earlier events of the film, I'd like to point out the technical achievements of Andrzej Żuławski and his sweeping throes of woeful congregation. The camerawork featured in Possession recounts a trait that seems entirely extraterrestrial - camera work based on continuity. Whether or not the recurring shots of twisted and voyeuristic embrace actually pose as an accelerator to the many thoughts and theories lay jumbled in the mess is another situation and topic that is overthrown by the sheer velocity of which Possession strikes. A frequent meandering of broadcasting insatiable images, Żuławski features many scenes in which his compelling nature of filming isolates the subjects from settings temporarily leaving me bewildered and aroused. Playing coy and innocent, I'd also like to point out the marvelous score collected by Andrzej Korzynski, a man proven genius that pains me that I've never heard of his work sooner. His cloying and clouding of playground instrumentals ripples through subspheres of what can only be intermittently described as carny organs and dandy flutes. While I agree wholeheartedly that specific temperatures of films aren't made for everyone, I have deemed it impossible not to appreciate the remarkable technical achievement in which Żuławski has secured permanently.

I mentioned misogyny and you guffawed. Possession formally accepts all of the traits and habitual rituals of the female kind and precociously envies the freedom they have to look stupid and not be judged by their effervescent taste in shoes and luxuries. During many scenes of Mark wading through Anna's insecurities, he chivalrously attempts to meet in the middle to discuss what could come. Mark tells her that they can work it out while she squirms and resists his passes for emotional convergence. Once her defensive stature and hysterics withdraw from sheer amount of mutilated use, she sleeps easy in their bed as they both lay naked, secured with a nice and calming sheet only for Żuławski to implement a flip psychosis trick on the viewer in which the symmetrical shape of the room and the exiting furniture flips suddenly to present his empty bed with a note from his dearly departed wife. Alas, Mark. There is no saving the wretch now. Enter scene of subway corridors ghostlike in filming. Anna struts through these smooth-cold tiled walls carrying a bag of groceries with a sadistic and sprawled grin of regalement. The actions of Anna soon spiral into a blistering nothingness in what seems to take an infinite amount of time for her "possession" to fully take place. As she whips her groceries into a wall and is showered with goods and services, she begins screaming uncontrollably - writhing and convulsing which brings to light the earlier scenes of high-velocity kitchenware in one of our couples many fights. And to think that this notorious subway scene was universally set in our same world with many of mans own inventions, machinery and otherworldly oddities,   . . . can they really coexist?

Accent so thick and dementia so bloomed, it's as if Anna were communicating in a form of tongues. Through the "misogyny", through the shroud of cinema prose, it becomes adamantly clear that this film is the most brave, inventive, and conniving of all "possession" films as it deals with a very close-to-home approach of married life and to think I just recommended this film to a lady who has been recently married. A film with such a title defies all paranormal ties except for brief instances of dubious measure on behalf of the stricken and old-age Kali Yuga in which man suffers for his sins and to be controlled by women, which happens on so many occasions within the teasingly-heretic film of Possession. Relapsing back, Possession is a film that cannot be disregarded as anything and especially not as a supernatural reflection of the nuclear family. By the last half-an-hour mark it becomes unclear that if the "possession", so to speak, is a singular occurrence or a dual possession. The belligerent way in which Żuławski captures the going-ons prevents us from allowing such meticulous ideas to become apparent. The scene involving the sacrilegious miscarriage could lay waste to many theories revolving around the film but alas, another director whose own esoteric mindplay is a manipulating game even to us, his devoted audience.

Possession is one of the few films generally regarded as a "mindfuck" that I feel I could revisit over and over again. From the mysteries of the Jewish fellow with the pink socks to the entirely audacious ending with the self-destructive nature of a son who has seen more than we are let on to (given the previous story development of him screaming in his sleep, stammering for his mother), Possession is a film that can be enjoyed regardless of the deceitful and depressing nature of this handicam heartbreak. Even the fate of prissy-Tantric boy Heinrich can be traced back to the cut/copy traits of the now-infamous stylizing of black widows. Did he really witness a creature in which Cronenberg is probably idling over himself for not imagining it first, or was that just a realization of his "loved one's" real gutter instincts? Hedonism is dually explained earlier in the film but is actually manifested upon later with what can only be uttered as "Naked Lunch...?" near the ending of the film. It's at this point where Possession skydives into marital imperfections and a pre-nuclear Bonnie and Clyde tale of monstrous, lustful appetites and double standards as to how one woman envisions how her husband should be, darkened pupils and all. Possession is astoundingly one of those films where you hold tight, let your mind flood, sensors buckles, and try to scramble your way out of this erratic yet brilliant masterpiece with all your previous morals intact. Good luck.

-mAQ

Bullet

I once lived with this little Jew that looked like Rick Moranis.  Despite growing up in a nice upper middle class Jewish neighborhood and having two doctors as parents, this little Jew started dealing drugs at the ripe age of 13, surely not long after his Bar Mitzvah, the day he became a "man."  I always tried to imagine this weak and tiny Jew getting busted by the cops and being sent to one of the various American prisons aka rape factories.  How would such a little guy fair against horny Tyrone and deranged delinquent Darnell behind bars?  In the film Bullet, I thankfully got to see such a scenario.  The film stars the very Un-Jewish Mickey Rourke (who also co-wrote the film under the pseudonym Sir Eddie Cook) as a good criminal Jew boy named Bullet who has been recently released from prison and is now a changed (and morally stained) man.

 
Despite growing up in a nice upper middle class, Bullet fell into drugs and crime at an early age.  His brother Louis (played with love and empathy by Ted Levine) is a Vietnam Vet who now suffers from some type of debilitating psychosis where he believes he is leading an invisible army towards final victory.  Bullet's baby brother Ruby (played eloquently by Adrian Brody) is an aspiring street artist who most fancies illegally painting buildings and other forms of public/private property.  The overweight alcoholic father of these three brothers sees them all as bums and disappointments, sons on the apocalypse. Their Mother seems in denial about her boys, an elder Jewess who loves to play piano and probably never misses Temple.  After Bullet gets back from prison, most of his family does not seem to recognize him as a new and changed man, a victim of prison sodomy.  

Tupac Shakur stars in Bullet as Tank, a drug lord enemy of Bullet who seeks bloodthirsty revenge.  Bullet was responsible for taking out one of Tank's eyes whilst they were in prison. Tank must have some respect for his Judaic friend's background as he claims to be evening the score by looking to get an "eye for an eye."  To show Tank what Bullet really thinks of him, he stabs an anti-Semitic Latino in the eye with a lovely knife in a fairly concerned fashion.  Bullet's only interest after getting out of prison is shooting up H and speeding up his own belligerently executed suicide, kind of like Mickey Rourke's tragic character in Rumble Fish, only less suave. Bullet may be one of the last films Rourke acted in before his face was butchered by botched plastic surgery, but his character looks like a miserable mess, wearing a not-so-flattering hoodie, sunglasses, beanie, and star of David gold chain at all times.  No one has ever accused the Jews of being great dressers or being proponents of aesthetics but Bullet looks like he belongs in a homeless shelter habitat.  Of course, a Sicilian-American gangster business associate lets Bullet know that one must always dress to impress.

Tank may be a drug lord but he is also obviously a play thug carny huckster at heart who lacks real tact.  Instead of killing Tank with his own bare hands, he decides giving a poisonous package of junk is the best way to treat the man who stole his eye. When that fails, Tank brings in a beefy buck Negro to pound Bullet into the ground but that ultimately fails as well.  I have a feeling that the real Tupac was much like Tank, a Nigga who talked a bunch of shit but had nothing to really back it up with, hence his early death.  Tupac's death also came the same year that Bullet was released, a wonderful example of trash art reflecting trash life.  Thankfully, the bright and infinitely intrinsically valuable life of Tupac has been immortalized in a Jewish dysfunctional family crime film like Bullet.  

I must admit the funniest and most fulfilling part of Bullet is the ending.  Bullet's deranged Vietnam Vet brother goes on one more special-ops mission that involves Tupac's throat, a large expertly sharpened knife blade, and an albino rat.  I hate most contemporary crime and gang films because they glorify the lowest gutter trash imaginable. Of course, I can respect the well dressed Italian-American men featured in The Godfather as well as the coked out Mafia men of Goodfellas but never nor ever the contemporary urban jungle cretins of the intercity.  There is nothing glamorous or ideal about the world featured in Bullet.  Bullet makes this clear when he shows his happy heroin track marks to a couple of up and coming hoodlum play thugs.  He was doing them a favor knowing his own life ended the day he entered a jail cell.  If only my Jewish ex-roommate would listen to the wise words of stoic street philosopher Bullet.  

-Ty E

Giallo

Wave after wave, these old horror maestros rekindle their slightly squirming fan base to watch the buzz kick shit around the Internet and film circuits. That must be the reason, some sick sadistic fetish for crushed expectations. I mean, why else would Dario Argento be releasing the fetid premature efforts that he is to this day? After Do You Like Hitchcock?,The Card Player, and Mother of Tears, the only consistent aesthetic Dario retained from his glory days of lite-brite wop thrillers was his unbridled narcissism and plucky sense of violence. While these two facets do build a product, the result is not something I'd appreciate from the man responsible for some of the greatest Italian horror films, directing or producing. Without Argento, would Demons have found a budget to play with? The fickle pseudo-science of premonition will not be wasted here in this text space but rather, I'd like to review his latest foray in homicidal angst and othernatural slaughter in his sardonically-titled Giallo. Get it? Let the chortling begin.

Giallo marks the third Adrien Brody film I've reviewed in a 2 month span. I wish it were a coincidence but truthfully, I've found myself drawn to his irreplaceable charm and versatility. After viewing Predators and discovering that even wimps can play macho, I've selected several films of his recent career to view and haven't been disappointed by his roles yet. Even in The Experiment did he traject the desperation of having to play guinea pig to a sadistic and blatantly homosexual Forest Whitaker. Adrien's ability is not to be underestimated and I find myself very warm to the idea of him playing a smarmy detective shadowed by seclusion and late night pizza. That begins Giallo in a way, however Adrien Brody's character, name of Enzo, isn't introduced until after the damsels in distress are desecrated by the killer known esoterically as "Yellow." After the sister of an American stewardess is kidnapped, the desperate dame from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly seeks the help of Inspector Enzo Avolfi to recover her before it's ultimately too late.

If I had to protect a single shred of evidence to prove the films reputation as anything but fallible, I'd select Brody's performance as an asshole investigator whose modus operandi is letting himself get too attached to cases. After watching his mother get slaughtered as a child, Enzo discovers the killer working at a butcher shop and decides to appropriate his own vengeance. Growing up, it must have become obvious that his only possible career path would be to convert to a gumshoe and track down serial murderers. This set-up is enough to install the arrogant, egocentric personality that is good for few laughs as his nasty demeanor paints the screen. Not only does he deflect the sex appeal and passes from Emmanuelle Seigner but leaves the film with such form that will undoubtedly echo in the minds of critics and cynics alike. Only after the film reaches its conclusion can you form a solid hypothesis on whether the film had the makings of something of acceptable quality. Even at the point of this review I'm very torn between hating this film and appreciating its brave casting and slimy misogynistic violence.

No Italian thriller is complete without a formidable opponent, a killer for continuity's sake. In this film, the killer is grotesquely crafted as a cab driver with appalling intentions for young bodies. Yellow, named for the color of his skin and the taunts of school children, operates solely on the destructive inner guide that leads him to slaughter beauty in order to progress his own vanity. To complete his psychosis, Argento made sure to dope him up on "happy pills," thus endangering the victims even more because once his euphoria peaks, all hell breaks loose upon the supple and soft bodies of some of Italy's more beautiful specimens of lechery. Giallo is by all means a serious film, which hurts its credit, but the thing I couldn't get over most was how Yellow (played by Brody as well), in all his facial prosthesis, didn't look any less monstrous as he does without practical makeup application. Intentional or not, the idea of Argento cementing the killers pugnacious appearance as less of an embellishment towards the actors real face tickles my ribs. Subversive resentment for not acquiring the intended Ray Liotta? Possibly.

Dario Argento set himself up for failure, what, with creating all those classic departures from your typical Italian slasher by implementing luscious colors with the purpose of enchanting the set and creating something of a brand of mysticism around death. His reputation has preceded him since his cinematic venture into an extended midlife crisis. To be fair and blunt, Giallo isn't the phoenix rising from the ashes of which you so wished. I can find much to hate and much to appreciate, Giallo is simply a film that will not make everyone happy. The faults lie heavy in the diagrams of the killer, Yellow, as his jaundiced skin has led him to the instrumental slash-repeat ritual that leaps to his close capture. Beautiful escapist entertainment, for us and him, is what Giallo rests on. The idea of being engaged, whether it be from an awfully scripted slasher film to Adrien Brody who tries his damnedest to be a dapper douche, is the drive of Giallo. Perhaps the biggest flaw of Argento's latest is that this film wears its heart on its sleeve and will catch flak for doing so. Let my unmentioned recommendation float on the promise that it's not as bad as Mother of Tears. 

-mAQ

Daylight

 

A disaster film installed within the boundaries of reality, Daylight isn't your exaggerated planet-in-peril film that we're by now accustomed to. No earth shattering nuclear warhead or enormous asteroid hurtling towards our blue planet, just a simple and avoidable disaster that jeopardizes and kills but a large handful. I repeat, not a world-killing event. Starring in this chancre-sore of claustrophobia is Sylvester Stallone who continues his embarrassing trend of adopting wildly perverse names such as Marion Cobretti, Lincoln Hawk, and in this case, Kit Latura. Daylight couldn't normally be considered a "special" film in any universe but ours. But since we're the special case, the denizens of a wholly hostile race, these scenes of hopelessness, persecution, and intense disaster terror in what might be the greatest explosion scene recorded on video, Daylight manages to progress into a stellar action/suspense film with a quick-to-twitch narrative.

Daylight sure had the innards of a summer blockbuster and a fine one at that. Electing the maiden of this voyage underground is a chance encounter of a bunch of two-bit punks and a convoy of trucks containing barrels of explosive, toxic materials. As fate would have it, the punks in the stolen car swerve and crash right into one of the payloads resulting in an extravagant explosion. This explosion scene is not only ambivalent in its miniature comic genocide but appalling in its graphic depiction of irreversible structure damage. To take this film as humor is a cinema sin though and should not be disregarded as a tablet of disposable meat. Each of the "survivors" highlighting this film is a real person, over the top or not. The narcissistic young delinquent is Sage Stallone, co-founder of exploitation DVD company Grindhouse Releasing and son of Sylvester Stallone, in one of his very few acting roles. Only in Chaos was he allowed to vent and portray the attitude of these venomous films he so lovingly wishes to restore and distribute. After this initial explosion, ex-EMS chief Latura, now cab driver, is mere feet from the tunnel as it explodes. He watches the structure outside of the Holland tunnel crumble violently, showering debris on top of its fleeing commuters.

Deciding to aim for redemption of a failed previous job that left him with a suicidal conscience and a bizarre fetish for martyrdom, Kit aims to find a way within the smoldering ruins to assist the survivors in escaping before the toxic fumes cause the humans to succumb to infinite silence. To reach the inner tunnel walls, Kit must descend through a series of oxygenating fans that are on a time delay. This introductory scene between Stallone and tunnel reinstates that hypnotic paranoia of fans that has been leeching on me since viewing Alien³ as a child. After near-escaping, our lone hero is vaulted into a vacuum tunnel and blasts a seal into the tunnel. This alone is the precursor to Kit Latura's odyssey that proves Daylight to be pretty rogue when it comes to characters fate selection. The inescapable nihilism of a catastrophe weighs solid with exploding racial tension. After Madelyne follows screams for help and traces the callback to a prison transport with a giant Negro gripping the bars screaming, she regresses the idea of helping them. After some lurid discouragement by way of "rape eye," Madelyne decides to release them from their cage. Some support that unleashed, the bullish black man does nothing but to impede upon escape attempts in his chronic hyperventilation.

Despite the unusual assortment of characters trapped between the rubble and the Hudson river, they never stay too muddled in the confines of cliche. To prove this, might I bring up the whiny and selfish love interest in Madelyne. This woman is established in the beginning of the film as a worthless being with gypsy dreams. After being dumped or cheated on, she packs her bags and leaves her low rent apartment with dreams of grandeur in New Jersey. Being caught in this mess taught her nothing about selflessness and when a wooden plank collapses, dropping her into a rapidly flooding room, she begs and screams for them not to leave her. She wishes for the world and she will never have it. This right here is true-to-life character sketching, as slimy and obtrusive as can be. One of the greatest feats of Daylight is presenting a disaster epic in which plausibility is a heavy factor. Laden with incredible special effects and seat-squirming tension, Daylight is a film that was a warm and enthralling experience in retro 90s adventure cheese. Definitely the high point in Rob Cohen's filmography.

-mAQ

L'Immortel

 

Perhaps better known within the Western continents as 22 Bullets, L'Immortel is based loosely around the real life events of Jacky Le Mat, a mafioso who was shot 22 times and left for dead. As you can most likely assume, Le Mat survived and exacted bloody revenge on his assailants. As far as I can tell, this exposure of the "Revenge of the Professional" will no doubt draw comparisons to Vincent Cassel's Mesrine crime epic but allow me to assure you that in no way, shape, or form are these two films to be connected or juxtaposed aside from the country of origin and a sweeping tale of true crime reincarnated via cinema. My hopes for L'Immortel were exceedingly substantial after seeing a true return to form from Vincent Cassel at damn near his best and I could only hope the same for the Moroccan titan, Jean Reno. Sadly, L'Immortel never fully recognizes its potential until too late, giving us a sub-par film that secures its lead actor's potential a bit too far in. 

Picking up with a quiet prelude was the smart and reasonable way to open this film of a bloodthirsty retiree; bloodthirsty being implied as Charly Matteï's bloody roots are never looked fiercely upon save for a single flashback scene of a youthful assassination. As Charly picks up his son from the grandmothers house, Reno gives us the same semblance of a giddy killer as seen and recycled from Leon: The Professional. One of several reasons why the film substitutes the need for plot consistency is due to Jean Reno's quirky and charming performance as a quiet, hulking killer with a heart of euphoric gold. After enjoying the company of his son, Charly lets him out of the car to explore a festival while he parks the car. Proceeding an overture of opera, a black unmarked van pulls up and 8 masked men get out with weapons drawn. Shot after shot, bullet after bullet, is buried in Jean Reno's body with a brutality unmatched by most crime films. Facial tearing and fleshy squib, L'Immortel opens up with a lit fuse waiting for the foundation to blast open and once it does, the onslaught of incredible editing and seamless violence becomes intertwined with the frustrating and mundane. 

Key scene being the surgery and in this scene we are introduced to the characters running the film and motivations, the aforementioned 22 bullets. Voltage peaks at scene of slug removal - lead like candy. Metal dish stained red delicious with a heaving mound of clinking confections. Words that come to mind when this scene takes place. I had never thought my mind would so vividly explode with imagination as it did with Jean Reno's comatose body on a hospital gurney. 22 Bullets might forever be known as the "little thriller that couldn't" but it remains a career necessity and a stunning evolution of Jean Reno as a bad ass with a heart and serves as a prime weight on his character alignment scale. While I can appreciate all forms of the man's kindness, his entries of Crimson Rivers, Empire of the Wolves, and now, 22 Bullets, really help to even out his contributions of family friendly adult entertainment including Godzilla, The Big Blue, The Pink Panther, and For Roseanna. Marketing this film to an American audience is what the split personality of 22 Bullets has in mind. France has it right with a sprawling cityscape overshadowed by a near-crippled marauding mafioso. American audiences are instead treated with the poster concept of a tacky lookalike to that of a straight-to-DVD Al Pacino machine. Vending machine quality and all. The tag-line "Revenge of the Professional" is misconstrued in an attempt to market this film to fans of Leon: The Professional and the reoccurring affinity for classical music. Hook, line, sinker?

No matter what you hear, L'Immortel is simply and ethically one of those films in which the only opinion you can holster is your own. From someone who has an endearing appreciation for all of Jean Reno's line of work and bloody crime thrillers, L'Immortel is a bittersweet film caressing the honor system supposed in most of these killers in their call of duty. Jean Reno turns over an excellent and versatile performance as a wicked murderer not to be fucked with. Within his smile and wrinkles, his face tells a tale that every movie fleshes out. Behind wise eyes lurks a terrific character actor that accommodates real life emotion with a harrowing efficiency. Sadly, L'Immortel becomes ensnared by loose ends and patented revenge devices in such a way that the only real saving grace is the keen brutality and jolting violence. To quote Uzi Joe on the subject of Jean Reno's tears, "Each tear is a thousand souls of weaker men who died trying to gain his powers." Fantasy put to the side, I believe him.

-mAQ

Nigger Lover

To review this film under its intended title is my main priority. To point out its reverse bottlecap propaganda is my second. Given the nature of this film and its history, Nigger Lover, also lovingly known as Tom, The Bad Bunch, and The Brothers, is a film directed by a civil rights activist turned schlock maestro. As per his unusual occupation, Nigger Lover is a film that gets all too confused in conveying which message it supports. Consider the branching extensions of this film universal. You can plug and play this film into any meaning or racial ultimatum which also happens to do something for the swept sake at stake. This is the film that they didn't want you to see, with reason enough however. Nigger Lover is a film wrapped up in its own lost ideology and features a sympathetic look at the white man and dealing with many pig-headed and angry "niggas" as the "bad bunch" cavorts around the streets with intention to harm "Whitey." Nigger Lover surely is the pièce de résistance of Greydon Clark's expansive gutter career. I support independent idealism transgressed to film but the only thing Clark's created of social importance is regrettably this anchored look at the fabled "aggression gene" present in all blacks.

Restoring my faith within the cracked-black case of cassettes and the corroded picturesque look at materialism in the age of exploitation, Nigger Lover starts centering itself within the conversation of a black and white GI stationed in Vietnam (but is obviously shot in a neighbor's backyard). After discussing what they believe home to be like, the wise black man begins to say that the war is still going back home and that he knows the answer on how to stop ebony & ivory confrontations and bring peace to all sides. Lucky for us he is suddenly and humorously shot and utters a violent scream before he can whisper the secret vaccine for Helter Skelter. Bringing a letter back home for his fallen friend's family, he encounters a brother reeking of soul who approaches with incredible hostility. It's our dearly departed soldier's brother name of Tom. But don't call him by his slave name, his name is now "Makimba." Along springs his gang of groovy, white-women stealing soul brothers and after utilizing some heavy intimidation tactics, Jim decides to cut his losses and leaves. Makimba, having nothing to do with Jim's lack of confrontation, decides to assault him at an ethnic fair before two "corrupt" detectives break it up waving their pistols around and calling Jim a "Nigger Lover" after claiming Makimba is his friend, obviously to extinguish any more violence from the Negroes.

As you can expect, a campaign of disinformation is thrust upon the sexually-frustrated Jim. While the camera hops between an endless void of interracial nudity and forced repressed ethnic ideals, Jim brings around a heavy aura of indecisiveness while he hops between the love of his life, Nancy (I think I recall that they've been dating for "2 months"), and some barfly hooker named Bobbie. To beef up the story devices of this film and the jolting ending, Clark sets out to humanize Jim but fails halfway and creates a socially incompetent Frankenstein of faults and idiosyncrasies. While drunk later in the film, he proposes to the bubble-headed Nancy out of reverse-engineered hostility towards her decision to not move in with him because of Sin as a deciding factor. So after the plans and arrangements are set, he makes a progressive decision to possibly not go through with the marriage, thus sparking a several minute long conversation with the priest about the sanctity of marriage. Necessary scene or a clever time divergent? Assessing the run time of Nigger Lover at a measly hour and thirteen or so minutes, I suppose this film could use every cutting room floor scene in a final last ditch effort to achieve feature length before a certain deadline.

When you take the poster image of a prone negro holstering a rifle at a fleeing white couple, you can no doubt theorize that this film image is one of the near end shocks of agonizing still-life and the unquestionable lives taken on account of ignorance. Although Makimba had the right to protest and attest the vicious beatings at the hands of the two "pigs", such wonderful lines came out of their confrontations e.g. "Niggers sure bleed!" Of course, no film countering the image of blaxploitation could be without its very own scenes of Jewish discretion! At a pool party, Makimba and his beasts patiently await the arrival of Jim, as they are visiting as his "friends." In the meantime, the bull Negro of the lot decides to mingle with the white women, topless of course. After stealing all the white women with his superior masculinity, the giant picks up a tiny white male and begins to have the females goad the inferior White's size calling him "little man" and "tiny." This infuriates Makimba as he sees this pool turn into a integrated cesspool of spoiled races mixing with such fervor that his devious pose & stare become all the more aggressive with each passing frame. In no time, as the party picks up and the whites become more settled with their chocolate counterparts, one grabs the arm of one of the militants, provoking an angry reaction. Fearing for his safety, he babbles "Is he anti-Semitic or something?" which garners the response "if he iss, we ALLL in trouble!"

What Nigger Lover accomplishes is providing a sleazy shell for some disturbingly true stereotypes. These soul militants provide excellent opposition to the weakling Vietnam veteran but to some degree, also dampen the credibility of the constant peace talks from Jim. Trying to take the higher ground dug this Honky in deeper trouble than he originally planned and by the time the credits roll with image and sound intact, we hardly mourn the fate of our white brother. It's yet another casualty of not doing something sooner and elongating the process of physical contact. For scenes of white police officers seeming unfazed by a mention of a murder plot against a white man, only to suddenly become enraged when hearing they were kidnapping white women, Nigger Lover provides many hilarious sociopolitical thematic elements and enough subversive VHS sleaze to keep a jaded blaxploitation treasure hunter at ease for the time being. If you can handle the atrocious and flimsy editing, that is. Might I add that this is not nearly as anti-white as the original intentions set out to engrave upon the face of exploitation. In the end, Nigger Lover stands triumphant as nigger kitsch.

-mAQ

12 and Holding

I can only imagine that youth nowadays have a hard time finding a decent coming-of-age film. Hollywood seems most interested in sexualizing youngsters as well as indoctrinating them with a slave morality where the weak is looked at as good (especially poor, modernly mythical ghetto Jews and disenfranchised Negroes) and the strong as evil (and don't forget usually "racist") rather than providing them with quality entertainment.  No longer will there be films like Monster Squad where kids call other kids "faggots" for such words are borderline hate speech. Also, one should not expect many kids movies with strong Nordic heroes wiping out dark and slimy scum.  If one wants to see a quality coming-of-age films nowadays, it is going to have to be subversive and borderline morally bankrupt, the kind of film that kids probably should not see. 12 and Holding, directed by Michael Cuesta, is such a film; a sin-filled and not-so-sunny motion picture featuring kids killing other kids. Cuesta is probably best known for his hurdy-gurdy masterpiece L.I.E., a film featuring a young teen who takes on a Pedo named Big John as a father figure. With 12 and Holding, Cuesta once again proves he is proficient at directing films about juveniles that no parent would want to see nor think about.

The children in 12 and Holding are a group of young and upcoming degenerates. Jacob has a disgusting birthmark on his face and a recently deceased twin brother who his parents loved more, Leonard is an obese lump of turd, and Carla is a 1/2 Asian girl who has a thing for adult men. It seems all these 12 year old kids are united by their early disdain for life and most of humanity. All of these preteens also suffer some type of existential crisis with some of the children more conscious of their problems than others. All the children also take extreme measures in attempting to correct their problems. For example, young Carla thinks that breaking into an adult male friend's apartment and surprising him in the nude would be the best way to correct her father-less void. Lardo Leonard thinks by locking his disgustingly obese mother in the basement and forcing her to eat fruit/vegetables that he will force Miss Piggy to lose some weight. I guess children sometimes have ridiculous solutions to their problems, but one must respect them for their passionate audacity.  

12 and Holding was shot on Super 16mm film which certainly adds to the film's realism. The scenarios featured in the film may sometimes seem exaggerated and unheard of, but I am sure similar situations play out more often in American society than one would want to admit. I believe a lot of kids in the city start pushing crack around age 12 and the girls start shooting out worthless eaters around the same age too. The somewhat prudish preteens of 12 and Holding are not yet keen on the same recreations as their fellow city youth but they certainly have their own poison of abuse. Chances are if you're 12 years or younger the film will likely give your nightmares but then again, so will Anne Frank and Barney. 

-Ty E