The Woman (2011) dir. Lucky McKee
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand, Shyla Molhusen

****

By Greg Klymkiw

The Cleek family are living the American Dream! Chris (Sean Bridgers) is a successful back country real estate lawyer with loads of cash, oodles of prime land, a beautiful, devoted wife Belle (Angela Bettis) who puts June Cleaver to shame, three lovely kids including his chip-off-the-old-block son Brian (Zach Rand), a cute-as-a-button little girl with a name to match, Darlin' (Shyla Molhusen) and Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), an intelligent, attractive teenage Emo girl privately suffering morning sickness due to possibly being impregnated by her Dad. In the barn are some crazed German Shepherds and a blind, naked feral woman raised with the dogs and tended to by Brian who physically abuses them.

Like all corn-and-steak-fed American men, Chris wakes early in the morning, eats breakfast lovingly prepared by Belle and then, packing a scope rifle and adorned in hunting garb, he smiles and declares how much he loves the quiet of the country before revving up his ATV and tear-assing into the woods for some hunting. To complete this portrait of All-American bliss, one of his hunting trips yields a live trophy - a buxom, beautiful, feral woman from the backwoods that he manacles in the fallout shelter where she is forced to eat food from the floor and/or a Tupperware container and gets scrubbed raw by wifey after being good and hosed down by Dad. When she's first introduced to the family, one of the kids asks if they can really keep her. The answer from Dad is a resounding: YES! After all, she needs to be civilized - a charitable act on Dad's part; even more charitable considering she's already bitten off his ring finger when all he wanted to do was inspect her teeth.

Trussed up and manacled in the dank fallout shelter, the civilization process includes being raped late into the night by Chris while son Brian watches jealously through a peephole. The lovely daughters sleep soundly in their warm, comfortable beds and wifey Belle weeps in the properly accoutered conjugal boudoir at the thought of hubby getting his manly satisfaction elsewhere and, of course, as any eager All American Boy would do, the feral woman, is eventually tortured with wire cutters and sexually abused by the randy little chip-off-the-old-block.

America.

Love it or leave it.

As rendered by director Lucky McKee and his co-screenwriter Jack Ketchum, The Woman is, without a doubt, one of the most foul, wanton and viciously humorous movies of the new millennium. It also seems to be a part of a new wave of films (including those of the brilliant Bobcat Goldthwait) which take family dysfunction several steps further - where dysfunctional depravity has become the norm.

McKee has his actors play everything in a straight deadpan. There isn't a single, out-of-place performance in the entire movie. McKee's mise-en-scene is distinctively sun-dappled-with-dollops-of-blood-and-nastiness and the movie works as both vicious satire and thriller. To say the movie is brutal, would be an understatement of the highest order, but the horrors on display never feel cheap and exploitative the way most torture porn horror films are. This is a savage, raw-nerve-ending-exposed portrait of life in the mean, new America.

As such, it's an unflinching, unyielding ride on the locomotive of excess that has turned one of the world's strongest nations into a veritable third-world country. The movie requires a strong stomach and open mind - anything less and you'll feel like you stepped into your worst nightmare.

So grit your teeth, gird your loins and, enjoy!

The Woman was a closing night film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011. It's currently in very limited theatrical release and will soon be available on DVD.

"The Yes Men" (2003) dir. by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith
Starring: Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

Two men on a stage for a World Trade Organization conference somewhere in Stockholm or Cleveland gloss over collusion between business interests and local governments with a steep price paid by the countries of the third, second (Cuba? North Korea?), and occasionally first world.

Blah-blah-blah-unsafeworkingconditionsandabunchofchinesefolksdie-blah.
Yadda-yadda-industrialwastedumpedintoalake-yadda.

Then two other men get up and in a factually roundabout method that might segue into gold lame bodysuits and edible shitburgers say what the intentions of the W.T.O. and their global enablers really are.

I'd much prefer watching the latter. The W.T.O. would not.

Taking the prank-conscience activism of 'Adbusters' with a splash of the Situationists and swinging a wrecking ball at globalization, "The Yes Men" are a pack of good samaritans shaming corporation flunkies worldwide. An eponymous documentary on the two main wise-asses, 'Mike Bonanno' (Igor Vamos) and 'Andy Bichlbaum' (Jacques Servin), who go about these conferences nodding, shaking hands and smiling in suits until they get up on stage and stir shit up with their truth-telling. They've accomplished this by posting fake websites with subtle jibes towards the corporate world. Predictably by not reading-deeper this has lead to trade organizations inviting our heroes to conferences all over the globe, with the occasional appearance on primetime news. Poker-faced, the Yes Men argue in preference towards 'remote-controled foreign labour' and recycling fast-food burgers so we can sell them back to Bangladeshians. An inflatable phallus even puts on a show for the crowds.

Overwhelmingly in these situations 'Bichlbaum' as his alter-alter ego "Hank Hardy Unruh" (love that name) is met only with blank faces from the donkeys he's pinning a tail on.

A chilling reveal on the inhumane nature of capitalism while also being an enjoyable lark of a documentary, "The Yes Men" isn't exceptional in part due to an ending that peters out and the slight reveal on the real lives of the subjects. I found my latter issue surprising as co-directors Chris Smith and Sarah Price were responsible for such highly-praised works as “American Movie” and “Home Movie”, especially with “American Movie” digging right under the skin of its sad-sack dreamer Mark Borchardt.

Despite these qualms the anti-W.T.O. story is told with a lighter touch than Michael Moore's to which I am grateful, and I look forward to watching the sequel “The Yes Men Fix the World”, which involves the Halliburton-designed 'SurvivaBall', used to combat the effect of climate change. But of course.

Death Race 2000 (1975) dir. Paul Bartel
Starring: David Carradine, Sylvestor Stallone

***

by Alan Bacchus

In the mondo special features of this latest DVD incarnation of Death Race 2000, Roger Corman describes his reaction to reading sci-fi novelist Ib Melchior's 1956 short story The Racer, then a serious, cautionary, futurist tale. Corman, ever the astute producer and money maker, saw this story as a comedy and thus turned it into a raucous road movie, part action, part comedy, part science fiction and part cultural satire.

Twenty-five years later, when the millennium rolled around, we didn't exactly see our society debased to the level of nihilism of Death Race 2000, but with the onset of reality TV, which was only a couple years away from really breaking out, Corman wasn't that far off, and as social commentary, it's surprisingly sharp. While proponents might overdo the profoundness of the film's critique on the media and society's growing insatiability for violence, we can't forget that it's also a b-grade action picture with some titties.

It's a story that has been told in many other forms since 1975. Natural Born Killers, The Running Man, Battle Royale, Speed Racer and much of the modern videogame culture, whether conscious or not, all take influences from Corman/Bartel's vision, however kooky and bizarre.

It's the year 2000, and society has devolved into a Roman-like world where the people's need for violence is organized into a gladiatorial event called the Death Race: a cross-country car race/game show where contestants earn points by killing opponents and pedestrians. Among the contestants is Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (played well by a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone), Roberta Collins' Matilda the Hun, Martin Kove's Nero the Hero and the best of the best, Frankenstein (played with cool, iconic aloofness by David Carradine).

As the racers cruise the highways running down innocent victims with glee, we see a clandestine resistance movement angling to subvert the games and take down the government. Frankenstein feels the threat from all angles, including his trusted navigator, who may or may not be working for the resistance

Most of the laughs come from the audacity of the extreme concept and the audience's ability to embrace the kitsch. The cartoonish tone aids in the satire, as well as taking our attention away from the production deficiencies.

The DVD is chockfull of special features, more than enough to please geeky film buffs and collectors. There are multiple commentaries, including Corman, assistant director Lewis Teague, editor Tina Hirsch and director John Landis, interviews with Corman, Carradine and story author IB Melchior, and multiple featurettes on many of the film's production elements.

Network (1976) dir. Sidney Lumet
Starring: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Ned Beatty

****

By Alan Bacchus

While I wouldn’t go as far to say that television today as turned into what Paddy Chayefsky was satirizing back in 1976, 'Network' still seems as relevant and topical today as it was yesteryear, which goes to mean that very little has changed in television then as opposed to now.

Sure the landscape of television is near indistinguishable across this 30 year time span, but distilling Chayefsky’s critique of television to its core - the idea of news as ‘entertainment’, driven as much by the dollar and cents as any disposable reality television show - Chayesky is still right on the money.

William Holden plays Max Schumacher, a member of the old guard of journalism, the Edward R. Murrow days, when the value system was based on integrity rather than popularity. That was the 50’s. Now, in the 70’s, Max finds himself near obsolete. His old buddy and news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch), on the other hand, expresses his fears of obsolescence by suffering a mental breakdown and goes on an unruly improvised rant on national television – you know the line, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’.

Ironically instead of firing Beale, the popularity of his speech prompts the fictional UBS network, last in the ratings, to put Beale on the air to host his own political talk show. Under the guidance of ladder-climbing female producer Diane Christensen (Faye Dunaway) the show is a hit, thus pleasing her cutthroat network executive Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall). Complicating matters is the fact that Schumacher, who resents the network for exploiting Beale’s mental deficiencies, has actually fallen in love with Diane and left his wife and children for one last shot at foolhardy passionate romance. But when Beale’s antics turn against the network not only is Max’s new relationship threatened but even the physical well-being of his best friend Beale.

“Network” was like a swan song for Paddy Chayefsky, one of the great writers from the Golden Era of Television, tapping into all his insider knowledge of the inner workings of network television with the deeply cynical edge of 70’s cinema. Under the direction of Lumet the executed style and tone fits in well with the so-called paranoia films of the 70’s. ‘Network’, like ‘All the President’s Men’ and’ The Conversation’ is born from a deep distrust of the establishment.

While Finch’s show-offy performance won him an Oscar (posthumously) Lumet’s assembly of supportering actors lend even more gravitas to the drama. Robert Duvall as Hackett brings steely-eyed male aggression, exemplifying, like a guillotine poised to strike at the first sign of weakness, the constant fear which hangs over everyone in the film/tv industry. Even Max’s wife Louise gets only a couple of scenes, but two powerful moments of cathartic anger which won actress Beatrice Straight an Oscar.

The 33-year age difference between Dunaway and Holden would seem mismatched as a romantic pairing, but of course, their difference works perfectly for the story, playing off Holden’s reputation in Hollywood as an aged movie star, a former sex symbol passed his prime and thus susceptible to the advances of the career-minded sexual predator Diane.

While the milieu of the television studio is dramatized with immersive reality there’s a distinct theatricalness to many of the scenes, which, for political and satirical purposes, lift it out of this reality. Faye Dunaway’s bickering with William Holden plays as much as political statement-making as it exposes their emotional conflicts. In these scenes, especially the climactic finale when the lovers break up, Chayevsky’s is at his least restrained putting his thematic metaphors front and centre in the conversation. Max’s comparisons of Diana’s rollercoaster of emotions to the structure of a screenplay shows Chayefsky at his most heavy-handed.

There’s no need to beat around the bush in the final moments though. In the traditional of great satire and also great political cinema Chayefsky leaves his audience with his point taken, however obvious. And its effects miraculously last well into this new millennium.