"Accomplishments"In theaters: When you don't have access to the Beekeeper or the Equalizer, you have to take things into your own hands. The eponymous Thelma may be 93, but she likes doing things for herself, like tracking down the scammers who wrung 10,000 dollars out of her on a phone call. She's helped on this mission by Richard Roundtree (Shaft!) in his last role (RIP), and her "man in the chair" Fred Hechinger (her hapless grandson). It's not QUITE Punisher Granny as the trailers make it seems, but it does poke fun at action movie tropes by giving them a silver finish. Ultimately, it's about how the middle generation - here played to comic perfection by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg - infantilize their aged mother and their twentysomething son. And how the former rejects that vision of herself and the latter seems conditioned by it and has to get beyond it. A lot of laughs, and June Squibb the strong heart of the film thanks to which the film works as well as it does.
At home: Sometimes you're in the mood for a shitty space station movie, but I.S.S. is so aggressively mid, I'm not sure it fits the bill. Wielding its political message like a blunt instrument, it wastes no time getting to its announced premise - nuclear war breaks out on Earth and on the International Space Station, six astronauts (three Americans and three Russians, which sure doesn't feel very "international") jump at each other's throats. Because of their relationships, it's possible the lines won't be drawn geographically, so there's a lot of paranoia, but that's not where the interest lies (to the film's detriment). Rather, the moments where people feel truly conflicted shine the brightest... except it really is shot like a TV-strength thriller. And then there's the rather unresolved ending that makes you wonder if it was worth sitting through the preceding hour and a half, and the slightly ridiculous stakes of the I.S.S. somehow carrying the "cure to radiation poisoning". Space junk.
Shinya Tsukamoto shoots Bullet Ballet with raw black and white energy like his Tetsuo the Iron Man, but without the surreal technogore, making for a more approachable, but no sunnier film experience. He plays the central role, a man whose girlfriend took her own life, sending him on a path of vigilantism to exact revenge on those who procured her the gun. I've seen a lot of revenge pictures - it's a favorite subgenre - but I don't think there's ever been one where so much of the action was about procuring a weapon (it should always be this difficult). And even once he has the means, our man doesn't become a hyper-competent everyman. Quite the opposite. And there's the sense that leaving the bad guys alone and letting them off each other would probably be more efficient. Even the crime he's trying to avenge has a desperate and self-destructive aimlessness (pun intended). And what of the prostitute with a death wish who stands in for the barely present girlfriend? Friend or foe or an incarnation of death itself? Some powerful images here, showing you really don't need a lot of money to make an impactful movie.
Stanley Kwan's Love Unto Waste (or Wastes, websites and physical media covers can't agree) is an odd duck inside a pig's stomach... It starts with a romcom or romdram set-up, as a young Tony Leung starts dating one of a trio of mid-level star ladies (there's a model, a singer and an actress) and develops affectionate relationships with each. How many movies has a meetcute that involves puking on a girl? But then, one of the women is murdered and the film takes a turn, with Chow Yun-Fat entering the picture as a rude Columbo-like police detective. But by the third act, we're sort of back to the relationship drama and there's no real satisfaction to be had if you care about the murder plot. So why do I have some affection for this strangely sown together story? Kwan is a good observer of human behavior, and "plot" is not. He's just letting things evolve organically. He also creates memorable scenes and images, whether the rice sex scene, the sad mirror scenes, or, finally, that last scene that acts as coda to the rest and gives meaning to the title. This is essentially about watching people waste their lives, loving badly, putting things on hold, doing things that don't matter in the long run. And Kwan seems to be asking if it's any better than death. Now excuse me, I need to go wash my rice.
From the very beginning, there's something askew about The Duke of Burgundy. The opening has odd credits, the locations are strange... and indeed we'll find ourselves in a world where things are not what they seem, nor appear to be set in our world exactly. We're witness to a sado-masochisitic relationship between two women that involves an elaborate script that, one the second go, makes us realize the masochistic partner is really in control, and her fetish is taking its toll on the "sadistic" partner. That in other words, masochism is sadistic, and sadism masochistic. (To call all this erotic really depends on your personal kink.) There's a strange sense that this entire town is made up of women with similar proclivities, just as everyone seems to be a member of the entomology club and enjoy talking about moth subspecies. The title is derived from one such moth, in fact, and the link is a little nebulous, but has to do with programmed behavior (genetic for moths, scripted for the couple) and the whole identification problem probably related to who is S and who is M in this culture. By making everyone the same, the film feels recursive and provokes discussion on the idea that ALL relationships are based on imposing and being imposed upon.
Lizzie Borden's Working Girls is a fantastic look at prostitution, spending a day in a middle-class bordello and making it feel like it's just another job in just another office, DESPITE having a lot of sex and nudity. The girls gossip, goof off, love certain clients, hate others, get berated by their boss (a nice comic performance by Ellen McElduff), just like any other job. Our access into this world is Molly, fearlessly played by Louise Smith, fairly new to the job, going through the longest shift of her short career. She's at peace with what she does, but cracks start to show. By banalizing (sic) the work they do, Borden seeks to take the eroticism out of the equation. Men may impose their gaze if they want to, but the sexy doings are mechanical, the conversations about it frank and unromantic, the pace is relentless, and the Johns pathetic. This is squarely from the women's perspectives, and clients are just that. Smiles must be faked. Words are formulaic. It's like waiting tables. Beautifully done and draws you in with both comedy and tragedy despite the limited sets and mostly unknown faces (theater actors of the day who didn't have movie careers).
After Samantha Futerman started acting in movies and videos, it was only a matter of time before her long-lost, and hitherto unknown twin found her. Futerman tracks the journey in Twinsters, a cute little documentary that is just a little too long for its own good, though they do keep things going by trying to track down their birth mother in Korea together. It's a device that allows the film to talk about the broader topic adoption even if it's more focused on the twin experience. These two grew up in two different countries, and yet find an immediate kinship based on common personality traits. Still, there's an awful lot of giggling that doesn't contribute much, and a certain repetition in seeing different people reacting to the twins or being told the story of how they found each other. Futerman has professional credits and is MAKING the film, so there's a sense that perhaps she's making some of these moments happen, but her sister Anaïs is a "real" person and therefore more touching. One's attention may wander during the telling, but the finish is pleasantly moving.
My Companion Film of the week features Sarah "Nyssa" Sutton... There's a reason Alice in Wonderland has be adapted as often as it has, but not Lewis Carroll's second volume, Alice Through the Looking Glass. It's a nearly-plotless adventure that serves as a delivery device for poetry, in which Alice (here played by Sarah Sutton from Doctor Who, who basically needs to be a perky, attentive child and not much more) moves across a chessboard and meets various whimsical characters who recite poetry at her and/or have nonsense conversations with her. And still, the book creates a number of memorable characters - Freddie Jones' Humpty Dumpty is a triumph, even if the scene goes on way too long. Of interest is how they're really pushing the CSO process of the time (the ancestor of what we call green screen today) with Alice skipping through drawn landscapes and actors' heads showing up on flowers and bugs. In this latter case, it's actually quite well done (the flowers especially). Some fun wordplay, and you might like to see how early 70s technology found a way to translate the concepts into visuals, but it can be hard-going.
RPGs: Played Call of Cthulhu, a close to our second investigation (but for the epilogues), with the feeling that my high-rolling from previous sessions was probably going to be reversed. And it was. I don't know if I naturally succeeded at ANYTHING except Sanity (and used Luck once to bat away a thrown lantern). Oscar Alan Phelps is a lover and not a fighter, and in this confrontation between the body-swapping coven and our merry band, he ended up walking away rather than kill the defeated baddies while the rest of the party decided what to do. He was justified because THIS isn't his normal group. The age-reversed English lady is in hospital up in Boston and her player is using a violent bodyguard. The photo-journalist was killed at the end of the previous session (or during those mysterious dice rolls I can see on our Discord) and his player has taken on the role of a colossal (and colossally ugly) gravedigger who swings a mean battle-shovel. Phelps owes nothing to these people (even if me, the player, enjoy them a lot). But allowing a stain on his soul, he walks off to call for an ambulance (not that Arkham has great service), suspecting the baddies are going to get murdered behind him. Except his two stalwart associates instead summon the Byakhee in service of the coven and try to fight it. The witches ARE killed in the process, and the PCs barely escape with their lives and rejoin Phelps who remains in possession of the spellbook they uses. Great for my Cthulhu Mythos score, not so great for Sanity, I expect.
In our Torg Eternity game, it's October 31st, and I really wanted to do a take on Trick or Treat (or Torg or Treat) where the PCs are in costumes and use the Halloween-flavored Cosm cards shared by Jay Rutley on the Infiniverse Discord channel. So I came up with a once-a-year ritual that would allow them to take the fruit of a Nightmare Tree (a spiky, tainted chestnut), genetically manipulate it with Pan-Pacifican technology, and purify it by calling on the goddess of the Living Land, Lanala, after capturing a dino-spirit into it... So where WOULD this take place? Well, my Cosmverse incorporates Over the Edge's Al Amarja as a place where all Cosms intersect (with wi-fi and tunnels). So the PCs blend into a costumed parade that's part Ibiza, part Mardi Gras, part Day of the Dead, and part ComiCon, visit an Aspirant contact in the Tharkold sector (introducing the "goody" Tharkoldu into the game), who points them to a tainted CyberChurch under which is the Orrorshan Nightmare Tree. From there, a Pan-Pacifican lab (where our Akashan fairly easily made modifications), the Aysle Embassy to get into the Land Between and from there the Living Land's Land Below to get the spirit. Bit of a wash later, the chestnut now acts as a seed for a Reality Tree, which they planted in a Nile Empire temple as a creepy Slasher opened sarcophagi full of mummies to ambush our agents. This guy was spawned by one of the Halloween Cosm cards, and the way that worked is that I gave each player their own Cosm's card (or approximate, since there's no Ashakan one, for example) AND the one corresponding to their costume. I was kind of sad some of these weren't used, but when they were, it was a lot of fun. They're going into the proper Cosm decks officially.
Best bits: The Realm Runner stuck with the Tharkoldian costume - assless S&M gear - made for some adolescent jokes, but less so than carrying that seed everywhere (because seed in French is "graine" and it's a local euphemism for male genitalia). I also like that the Monster Hunter was dressed in an Edeinos mascot outfit (which he considers monsters). I agreed to let him pull his punches with the Slayer's Gun by using half the powder (so the dinospirit would be KO'ed, but not destroyed by his ghost bullets). The best-used Halloween card was the one that created a flash mob of cosplayers/ravers, crashing the CyberChurch before a fight with networked gun fu CyberMonks could happen. In turn, this game the players the idea to draw the temple guards into a dance so they could slip in undetected. The Slasher card was also fruitful, with dead bodies showing up all over the place until the Horror finally attacked. There's a Scooby-Doo reveal card in there too, and it was played when the monster was defeated (see news above) and the Slasher taken to the authorities. Our new Frankenstein's Monster (transformed last session) got his first airing, and was played as a depressed version of his old self (didn't stop him from charging the Slasher and sending him flying). The Akashan would also have transformed, but the players all chipped in with cards to prevent it, seeing as he's kind of the last of his kind. Really down to the razor wire on the last Dramatic Skill Resolution, planting the seed on the last possible turn with the worst Drama card in the deck showing (the characters couldn't use Destiny cards and the Realm Runner was burdened with multi-action penalties AND a Slasher on his ass (literally). Any failure would have yielded a new Nightmare Tree (instead, Al Amarja will become Core Earth dominant within a month).
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