I haven’t been fortunate enough to watch Alex Cox’s other populist films Sid & Nancy and Repo Man, but if Walker is anything to go by then I should be adding them to my list. He’s fallen off the radar since this – his last major studio production – but similar to other cinematic artists like Richard Stanley and Richard Rush who Hollywood execs refuse to work with (since some of us have integrity beyond a paycheck) they never really went away. Stanley just released his Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space; Rush is old AF but still working as a film professor (and I liked Color of Night, but I also like Jane March); and Cox seems to be pumping out independently-financed features whenever he can get the money, in addition to teaching. It’s a twofer.
“Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”
Clint Eastwood. The man with the ever-brusque facial expression. Western hero turned cop hero turned cineaste with an output that rivals Woody Allen: in quantity and quality. I mean terrible. Wait, I don’t mean terrible. I mean “not for me”. His directorial efforts are not for me. You see, Eastwood seems to make movies that fit his own demographic: seniors that need everything spelled out for them.
Clint isn’t one for subtlety or ambiguity: his characters are often expressing exactly how they are feeling; and if they don’t express it, then someone else will put the words in their mouth. He wants the viewer to feel unburdened by things like subtext and metaphors. He wants you to “be on the same page”. A few examples: Sully, the discouraged aircraft pilot simulator; Mystic River, the child sex trauma victim simulator; and Invictus, the Nelson Mandela fanclub simulator. I use the word “simulator” because Clint’s movies are deliberately-paced for maximum pragmatism. You start to “feel” for Sully’s social isolation; for Dave Boyle’s self-inflicted alienation; for how stoked you’d be to get the chance to meet Nelson Mandela.
The greatest hack the devil ever pulled was making the world believe he was just a Facebook personality test.
Typical Netflix. Cambridge Analytica rose to public consciousness when Trump won the 2016 election so since then, we have had innumerable news reports; documentaries; movies; new files in the investigation coming to light; etc etc etc. As long as there is air we will NEVER FORGET about the security compromise that SHOCKED A GENERATION (sic Monty Python). I followed along when the story broke (only because I couldn’t get away from it) but never thought it directly affected ME, personally. I know that online is no longer a safe bastion and possibly never was: that ANYONE can read ANYTHING you publish, ANYTIME, even when you delete it! So why post anything incriminating? But people do all the time and it is for these people this movie was made: a step-by-step breakdown of the events that led CA to bankruptcy; Zukerburg under fire; and a whole new hashtag for the internet to use to protest the lack of online privacy.
That non-licensed free-use Netflix logo (that I made myself, thank you) will have to do until I watch more Netflix. Netflix Netflix Netflix you can’t get away from it. More than fifty-percent of the film and television production in my area is for Netflix. Now they are advertising on bus shelters. That’s how my partner and I agreed to watch it: because we were bombarded by this ONE choice on a service that I can spend minutes scrolling looking for content that appeals to me and find NOTHING. My partner loves the service though, especially those dime-a-dozen “teen vampire academy being attacked by werewolves from another dimension” shows. So it isn’t my first choice to pick something there. But like I said, there was NO OTHER OPTION. Even with the bus shelter poster being vandalized it proudly proclaimed that even you, yes YOU, can watch this NOW on Netflix. Fuck why not try it for free? You have NO EXCUSE. Okay okay okay I’ll watch your Ali Wong romcom if you’ll just stop annoying me. But they don’t stop. Now they know. My carefully-curated list of Shark Tank and Star Trek TNG is RUINED.
brent, like taylor, is a survivor. after travelling through the same break in space time, he crash lands on post-apocalyptic earth of the year 3978 where man is all but extinct and the planet is ruled by intelligent apes. they are losing numbers to a supernatural force preventing them from encroaching in to the forbidden zone, an area where monuments from the past still rise from the ashes of society as we knew it. brent escapes imprisonment by the apes and enters the forbidden zone to look for taylor, and finds a race of humans living underground. they are physically mutated, presumably from radiation poisoning, and have evolved a telekinetic ability that has prevented the apes from marching on their territory. however, as the apes grow wise and close in, the humans threaten a second doomsday on the planet with an atomic bomb they worship at the altar like jesus on the cross. all hope to prevent annihilation are moot. the apes enter the encampment. brent is killed in a flurry of machine gun fire. taylor, who is revealed to be alive and held captive by the mutants, is mortally-wounded. with his dying breath he actives the bomb, and the film ends.
on the list of great movie sequels beside star trek and the godfather, beneath the planet of the apes is unfairly treated. every couple of years a new planet of the apes movie comes out in an attempt to revitalize the franchise and the original sequels, from beneath to battle, are forgotten in this stream of endless reboots and sequels. those who have seen beneath as it rests within the timeline of the original series can agree though that it expands on the mythology of the original in a slick, fast-paced (ninety lean minutes) package. and the abrupt, nihilistic ending (courtesy of charlton heston, apparently to make sure his appearance in further sequels was never going to happen) is the definition of awesome. everyone dies horribly, especially brent in the third-to-last shot of the film (literally). the planet is effectively destroyed. fade to black. end credits. there was nowhere left to go from there but back in time.
theory of a daskeman 