A weekend weakness for films

Netflix is my friend.  Yes, I know the company execs appear to have obtusely raised their prices significantly despite the very public hue and cry of their customers who threatened to leave them in droves (as many have done).  However, as a steady streamer myself, I still think the service is a bargain.  True, I seldom find the film I'm searching for, but each time I look, I find at least a few that I've never heard of, and some of these turn out to be at least as enjoyable.

For instance, I just finished watching "Rubber" (2010), a film that has been in my queue so long I don't remember what I was looking for when I stumbled upon it.  Among other things, it's about a tire that can will bottles, cans, animals, and people's heads to explode. Why does it do this? And why did I choose to watch the film?  As a character very early on insists, addressing his remarks to the audience, "for no reason." Except that's not quite true. I did have a reason, or, if you like, a motivation, the premise of the film struck me as interesting. It's also very nicely shot almost exclusively with a very narrow depth of field and quite a few magic hour sequences. I don't want to give much more away, even though I think that knowing what comes next probably wouldn't detract from a viewer's enjoyment of the film--or lack thereof. The film's own ambivalent audience is likely a mirror image of the one that watches it on a movie or television screen, though viewing it in either of these venues is significantly safer. At 82 minutes, the film is just the right length, though it is intentionally slow at times, and the animation of inanimate rubber and exploding props are done very well for such a modestly budgeted film. I recommend it for those who like smart, quirky, well-shot and for the most part well-acted independent films.  I liked it and give it three out of five stars.

Then there’s “Last Night” (1998), a Canadian film that explores how residents of Toronto choose (or simply happen) to live their last night on earth.  The world is coming to an end, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.  Humanity has known the exact time and date for months.  The question is what do you do with that knowledge?  As the radio counts down the top 500 hits of all time (the first of which is “Last Night I Couldn’t Get  to Sleep at All”), a pianist commandeers a concert hall for a farewell conference, a family sits down to a final Christmas dinner, a man caps off his bucket list of sexual exploits (one of which is to have sex with his high school French teacher, played by Genieve Bujold), a gas company executive (played by director David Cronenberg) leaves messages on answering machines assuring customers that the gas will flow up until the very end, a man estranged from his family grieves for his dead wife, and a woman tries to make it across town to her husband to complete a pre-planned suicide pact.  It’s certainly an interesting idea, and some of the vignettes work better than others, but I have a few quibbles at least, one minor and one major.  First off, though, the move takes place at night, all of the exterior shots take place in daylight.  Perhaps, the excess sunshine is a symptom of the coming apocalypse, but it isn’t mentioned in the film, and to me it was confusing and a bit of a distraction.  More difficult for me to believe was that the amount of vandalism and street violence would be as tame as presented. It’s nice to think that humanity would face extinction in a mostly peaceful, loving, and accepting manner, but that strikes me as extremely unlikely.  There are several scenes in which gangs roaming the streets turn over vehicles and look mean and menacing.  There’s also one in which an innocent person is killed.  However, these are much more the exception than the rule.

Some nice bits include a few answering machine recordings that reflect different attitudes toward the coming apocalypse, and a scene where the two main protagonists agree make themselves vulnerable in a conversation designed to ensure that each will fall in love with the other.  Then there’s the money shot toward the end, which I would bet was the scene that got the film made, and homage to Sergio Leone, Robert Rodriguez, the Wachowski Brothers, and all those directors who choose to punctuate the action with highly stylized directorial flourishes.  Kudos, too, to the filmmakers for their nod to Pete Seeger.  I guess I liked this film, too.  I give it three stars out of five.

Finally, at least for today, there’s “Special” (2006), the story of Les, an ultra meek, ultra mild-mannered, comics-loving parking enforcer whose mantra, which his boss requires him to repeat, is “I’m important and I keep the city running.”  Of course, he doesn’t feel important at all, and his low self-esteem induces him to volunteer for a clinical trial of a designer drug ostensibly manufactured to suppress self-doubt.  After a few doses, he unexpectedly develops the ability to read minds, walk through walls, and teleport himself not only from place to place but into the future and back.  The doctor in charge explains to him telepathically to tell no one.  Or does he?  Can Les really do these things or is he imagining it all?  His closest friends, co-owners a comic book store, revel in a demonstration of his powers, but they are stoned out of their minds at the time.  A desk sergeant in the local police station sees Les careen off a wall rather than pass through it as Les asserts he has.  True, he does foil a robbery of a local convenience store, but several additional interventions are reported on the news as assaults on innocent people.  When two men in suits, major investors in the drug company, begin stalking him in earnest, the consequences of misinterpreting the situation take a more serious turn.

The film’s ok, but it doesn’t really plumb the depths of any major issues.  Les exhorts the disaffected not to “give up no matter how lonely they feel, because anything is possible,” but that them has certainly been done to death. Also, the shallowness of the character (we really know nothing about this guy) and his overall limited effectiveness (he stops after tackling the armed robber, allowing him to regain his weapon) made it hard for me to muster much sympathy for him, especially as his situation deteriorated.  Finally, though he’s been seen on the news, he walks around the city in his self-styled superhero uniform and nobody recognizes or reports his whereabouts.  That said, I did like the relationship between and eccentricities of the comic book store owners and, to a lesser degree, the character of the cashier at the convenience store.  However, interesting as these and other members of the supporting cast were, none were sufficiently integral to the plot or to the development of the protagonist.  Although only 81 minutes, the film still seemed long.  I give it 2.5 stars out of 5.

And that's all for today.