Half of the Coen Bros. to Direct Another Macbeth

By Steve Evans

Most intriguing film news of the day... Joel Coen, sans brother Ethan, is set to direct yet another film adaptation of Macbeth. He is also writing the screenplay, again, without his brother. This represents a first in their 35-year collaboration. Two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Joel's wife, is to play Lady Macbeth. Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington is in talks to co-star in an undefined role. Would be interesting if Denzel played Macbeth, as that would represent a refreshing reversal of so many white dudes playing Othello in blackface through the years. Conversely, Denzel playing Macbeth will inevitably raise questions, like, what's a brother doing in 11th century Scotland? That would be in keeping with Coen's Dutch-angle sensibilities. 

Whatever he's up to, Coen will need to jazz it up a bit, because Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, who made their own versions in 1948 and 1971, respectively, will be tough to beat. Yet another version with Michael Fassbender in the title role was released just four years ago.

I mention all this because why Joel Coen would want to make his solo directing debut with a Shakespeare adaptation -- a play that's been filmed more or less definitively many times before -- has got to be one of the great curiosities of the cinema in the last 25 years.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Remembering Kubrick

By Steve Evans

I remember exactly where I was 20 years ago today when I learned that Stanley Kubrick had died. First order of business was to phone in a bogus illness at the office and squander a sick day. I spent the balance of that morning and afternoon watching Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, his four greatest films. Over the remainder of that week I watched the rest of his films, developed a newfound appreciation for the artistry of Barry Lyndon, discovered some interesting symbols and subtext in The Shining, and marveled at how the man managed to make such a sly and gleefully perverse film of Nabokov’s unfilmable novel, Lolita, considering the censorship restrictions of the day. I watched The Killing for the umpteenth time, once again shaking my head at how Tarantino shamelessly lifted the non-linear plot structure and adapted it for use in his film Reservoir Dogs. In-between these screenings, I endured a dial-up Internet connection to glean any information I could find about Kubrick’s swansong, Eyes Wide Shut, which would be released four months after his death. He made only 13 films in a career spanning 45 years, mainly because he spent years making them. The man was meticulous.

The world was a more interesting place when Kubrick was alive, making films and cultivating an air of mystery about his methods. I believed then as now that wherever he was at any given time, he was always the smartest guy in the room. His films positively pulsate with intelligence, with trenchant observations on the human condition. The jackals of bourgeois sensibility often criticized Kubrick for what they perceived as a cold misanthropy in his work. Nonsense. No intelligent man would devote so much time and obsession to the perfection of his life’s work – and then share it with millions – unless he had a passionate concern for the fate of humanity. If there is a connective thread woven throughout his films, it is this: every single one of them follows a protagonist whose fate is impacted by the random insanity of a world beyond his comprehension or control.

Existential fatalism is the dominant theme in all of Kubrick, except one film that turns the idea upside down: A Clockwork Orange. This is the only Kubrick film (and it is his best film) where the antihero gets his life back, albeit through a pitch-black paradox. Here, the film itself is a meditation on free will raging against the forces of fate in a dystopian future where everyone is unpleasant. The protagonist loses his freedom of choice due to government brainwashing only to regain free will through that most ironic of choices, an attempted suicide. “I was cured alright.”

Stanley Kubrick. July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999. Irreplaceable. Sorely missed.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Bad Cinema for a Happy New Year

By Steve Evans 

It’s something of a tradition for me to start off the first week of the New Year by watching a bad movie. Bad, as in incompetent. Poorly produced. Ineptly acted. Lousy direction. Ridiculous special effects. The idea is my film watching can only improve as the year progresses. Not really. I just have a dangerous and evidently incurable addiction to really dreadful flicks.

So today we’re gonna spin I Eat Your Skin (1964), a longtime fav in the disreputable genre of Le Bad Cinema. As is my nature, I must first share some backstory about this motion picture.

It was made as Voodoo Blood Bath and sat unreleased for seven years until an exhibitor, the aptly named Jerry Gross, bought the picture for pennies on the dollar to use as a double feature with his movie I Drink Your Blood. To enhance the alliterative exploitation effect, Voodoo Blood Bath was retitled I Eat Your Skin.

No skin is actually eaten.

Our story: A sexist-pig novelist, his publicist and a shrill woman with a powerful thirst for cocktails decide to visit a mysterious island for research on a new book. The island is home to a sketchy scientist, his smoking-hot daughter and assorted natives who practice voodoo rituals. Eventually zombies show up with makeup that resembles fried eggs for eyes. I am not making this up. On-screen talent includes nobody you ever heard of, which in a strange way makes the story more involving since there are zero celebrity distractions.

The movie opens at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach – the same hotel used in early scenes for the James Bond adventure Goldfinger, also made that year. There all similarities end, as I Eat Your Skin flies off the rails almost immediately. It is wildly entertaining and will leave you incredulous. A full 80 minutes and 47 seconds of WTF?

Directed by the incomparable Del Tenney, who was a busy man in the early 1960s. The same year he wrapped up I Eat Your Skin, Tenney also managed to complete The Horror of Party Beach, which is likewise essential viewing if you enjoy movies about bikers, beach babes in bikinis, surf rock and rubbery bug-eyed monsters with bratwursts for teeth.

As a public service, a full and uncut copy of I Eat Your Skin is available below. Learn to see the worst films; they are often sublime.


Cinema Uprising Copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

At 2 1/2 Hours 'Infinity War' Earns Its Title

By Steve Evans

I’ve long since outlived the core demographic for superhero films, yet when I find out such-and-such a movie is one of the most expensive ever made, I’m drawn to it like moth to flame. So I squandered more than 2 ½ hours of life watching Avengers Infinity War on Netflix. This is a movie that cost almost $400 million to make and has so far recouped more than $2 billion – with a B – worldwide. Big Business, this. So I wanted to see what $400 million looks like burning up on a screen. My screen, as it turns out, since I had no desire to drop $15 on a theater ticket when the flick came out last April. Sitting in a packed auditorium with 13-year-old boys chattering like monkeys is not my idea of fun. So what does $400 million look like on fire?

It looks like a lot of computer-generated imagery supplemented by noise, more characters with speaking parts and convoluted backstories than I care to count, planets where anyone can breathe without oxygen tank assistance and phenomenally powerful, mystical devices with names I am ill-prepared to pronounce.

No way I could summarize the plot here, beyond the observation that the antagonist looks like an oak tree covered in shit and he wants magic stones to fit in his metal glove (or "gauntlet," if you want to be particular about it) so he can obliterate half the life in the universe by snapping his fingers, which makes him marginally worse than Hitler. Or possibly Trump. When his glove is fully tricked out, this tuff guy looks like he's been accessorizing at boutiques favored by George Michael. The villain’s name is Thanos, which I do know is derived from the Greek word for “immortality,” suggesting he’ll be a tough bastard to beat when the next installment of this franchise opens in April 2019. Marvel excels at cliffhangers; keep 'em coming back for more.

You can read this film as an anti-capitalist screed, as some have, though that seems ludicrous given the amount of money these Marvel films make. You can read the film as a dire warning on totalitarianism, though I’m skeptical the world really needs such another warning, given the prevalence of mad would-be tyrants running amok these days.

Was I entertained? Marginally. I have a kickin’ surround sound system and it got quite a workout from all the booms and bangs. For my own troubles, I got a three-Aleve headache and a bunch of questions I suspect can only be answered if I watch earlier Marvel films and get caught up on who’s who and what’s what, which I am not wont to do. I also wonder how much good could be done in the world with $400 million, rather than give Robert Downey Jr. profit participation so he’ll have money to go buy another bong.

At 2 hours and nearly 40 minutes, calling the film Infinity War almost seems like truth in advertising.

Behold the churlishness of a middle-aged man, a film snob whose preferences run to black & white foreign films with beautiful women and subtitles. I should have known better.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.