Glenn Heath Jr.
More wacky and experimental than its predecessor, Gremlins 2: The New Batch willfully celebrates film references and iconography within an absurd interior space of dysfunctional technology and communication. Joe Dante, always the master of subtext, plants some stunning critiques of big business under the guise of mainstream entertainment.
This time out the Gremlins take over a corporate mega-building in New York City, hatching, playing, and destroying with reckless abandon, hollowing American Capitalism from the inside out. The disjointed narrative isn’t as finely tuned or focused as the original, but Dante seems more concerned with set-pieces of debauchery, even the complex blocking of the Gremlins themselves, best on display in the genius Busby Berkley-inspired musical number. Even when Gremlins 2 skirts along the edge of flimsy ridiculousness, the overarching themes regarding corporate ethics, greed, and synergy feel especially current and provocative, a potent reminder how little our destructive economic practices have changed over the years.
What makes the British “Angry Young Man” films of the 1960’s so potent is their dual purpose as critique and character study, two dilemma’s clashing within a cinematic context. Such a dichotomy becomes moot in Ma 6-T va Crack-er (Crack City) as poor young men scream that political anger equates to violent unrest, a necessary evil for the lower classes facing blatant oppression by police and the French Government. But the film’s success or failure as a social outcry depends on the characters being repressed, the human face of the dire war between the classes. In this case a group of multinational young men, jobless and penniless, are consistently hellbent on having a good time and antagonizing the police. Unfortunately, these characters never step beyond their one-note cinematic purpose as pawns in this flimsy revolution. Director Jean-Francois Richet represents most of them as capable, even intelligent people, who’ve been pushed into the cracks of society by an uncaring elite. But surprisingly, their idle chatter about racism, police brutality, and government oppression comes from a place of pure ignorance because the film itself is a blatant, simplistic propaganda piece. These men roam the streets, looking for trouble and their actions often turn violent, eventually even deadly, but their plight evokes indifference instead of outrage. Richet does wonderfully infuse an experimental juxtaposition of a music video into the narrative, both forms participating in the violence simultaneously. But aside from this dynamic moment, Crack City plays like a broken record, condemning the violence of France’s police state while gloriously reveling in the act itself.
The oversized burning smily face on the side of a corporate building, characters gazing at the camera with blood-soaked grins, and the overall kidding sensibility during each Norton/Pitt interaction, and suddenly it’s clear – Fight Club is a demented slapstick comedy. A decade on, the film doesn’t come across as masochistic or provocative as it once did, but David Fincher’s notorious mind-game still brashly confronts the viewer as few films do, painting a bleak world of numbing consumerism while laughing at everyone’s culpability in the act. The freeze frames of Edward Norton in distress are especially potent, marking Fincher’s obsession with characters who cannot comprehend the fractured world they live within. Fight Club also finds Fincher at his most playful, riotously moving characters through the frame toward uncertain ends, messing with point of view until the whole world hinges on the edge of oblivion. Fight Club revels in its mischievous antics and that’s part of the fun, but the end result still turns my stomach, since the material laughs a bit too genuinely at the end of Western civilization.
David Fincher structures many of his films around conflicted protagonists at odds with their surroundings, people entrenched behind literal or imagined walls hiding their mind-numbing guilt from the outside world. In Se7en, Det. Somerset (Morgan Freeman) understands and accepts his inability to protect the innocent, while the trio of characters at the heart of Zodiac tragically pursue a futile conclusion to their own obsessive quest of a serial killer. In Panic Room and Fight Club, Fincher’s respective leads entomb themselves inward to escape the evils, either self-induced or not, that challenge notions of physical and mental space. This approach to character organically connects with Fincher’s often brilliant construction of audio and visual elements, allowing for the viewer a first hand look into a very detailed nightmare.
But with The Game, Fincher challenges the root of his hero’s guilt, making Nicolas Van Orten (Michael Douglas) an incredibly wealthy but cinematically ordinary investment banker who chooses to insert himself into a modern day hall of mirrors out of sheer boredom. Even the moments Van Orten sits alone in his dark mansion, or drives down the emotionally hollow San Francisco streets, evoke monotony rather than suspense. Yes, Van Orten’s father killed himself in a rather dramatic fashion, witnessed in the stark 8-mm home movie flashbacks, and Fincher clearly makes a fateful connection between father and son. But for once, the Fincher protagonist isn’t directly responsible for the guilt he feels, at least not in an overt way, which makes the faux cruelty of the film’s narrative striking and relentless. The outside world forces an exciting and dangerous perception onto Van Orten’s benign reality, pushing him to appreciate the life he has built without regretting the family skeletons in the closet. In this way, The Game is literally about cinematic manipulation, and Van Orten, along with the audience happens to be the guinea pig. Disturbingly, the ending seems to suggest that if you’ve got enough money, you can buy your own false comeuppance, learn from it, and move on richer not only in wealth, but moral respects as well. This makes The Game increasingly complex in that the conflicted moral center gets let off the hook and allowed closure, as opposed to other Fincher heroes who suffer mightily to the bitter end. Watching The Game more than a decade after its release and amidst a huge global recession, I wonder if Fincher would be so kind to Van Orten’s future prospects if given the chance.
Long before Office Space, John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano tackled the monotonous horrors of the workplace, the rhythms and patterns of occupational degradation, to preface a hero’s journey toward enlightenment. In Joe’s (Tom Hanks) case, the maddening corporate workplace turns a once courageous firefighter into a sniveling hypochondriac convinced he’s dying of cancer. The credit sequence and opening scenes are straight out of every working man’s nightmare; fluorescent lights droning from above, toxic lumpy coffee, a boss repeating conversations over and over again, and a windowless lair ripe for suffocation. This makes Milton’s dank basement office seem like a sunny day at the park. The following narrative can only be described as odd – Joe gets diagnosed with a Brain cloud, terminal of course, finding a new lease on life, then gets convinced by a tycoon (Lloyd Bridges) to live out his remaining days in style and sacrifice himself to a South Pacific volcano so that the company can gain mining rights from the natives (led by Nathan Lane and Abe Vigoda). Joe Versus the Volcano is a singular vision, a Romance of class manipulation, second chances, and love at third sight (Meg Ryan plays three very different women). The sublime and strange characters live in a disturbingly familiar not-so-distant future, where honest to goodness valor gets perverted so the rich can get richer and the poor can sit idly by and await death. Joe transcends this murky and stagnant life by staring mortality in the face and smiling confidently.
Wong Kar-Wai takes his time revealing the thematic motivations and concerns within Ashes of Time Redux, a gorgeous remastering of his 1994 Martial arts film. But as Wong’s trademark ruminations on love, honor, and guilt finally connect with the often violent and mystical Samurai narrative, the film achieves a devastating melancholy worthy of its genre. No other director addresses the haunting theme of lost love with such clarity and honesty, and Ashes of Time Redux, while disjointed and sloppy at times, provides many fateful moments drenched in heartache. The film stars a who’s who of Hong Kong stars doing their best at tragedy, and Wong guides each longing face into a realm of suffering that never quite feels permanent, yet remains impacting and genuine.
