Monkey Bastard

Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy" was a fascinating viewing experience for Monkey Bastard. I found myself enjoying every second, and found myself annoyed with a million things. And still enjoying it.

The cinematography is stunning, it really captures that gray, damp, depressing atmosphere present in so many (if not all) parts of the north-west. The writing and a few of the performances bugged me however. A previous reviewer mentioned something about Van Sant "being stuck" with Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch because they couldn't get anyone else. I could not agree more.

Dillon was as stiff as ever, thinking that a low, whispered voice will make his performance seem real and "gritty". It wont. The following is straight out of The Dillon 10 Steps To Acting Programme (TM) pamphlet:

Step 1: Take a sip of tea. Slurp loudly to show people that you are a wild and loose & goosey method actor. Make sure the audience understand the tea is hot. They saw you boil water ten seconds ago, but they are idiots so they may have forgotten. Remind them.

Step 2: Turn around in a slow, stiff manner. Look thoughtful.

Step 3: Put down tea on table.

Step 4: Turn back around. Stiffly.

Step 5: Clear throat. Think "realism".

Step 6: Frown and look brooding. The character is oh so tortured, remember?

Step 7: Wave hands around a bit. Y'know, like Chandler on "Friends".

Step 8: Stop waving. Don't wanna do too much. Gotta make it seem like it's all just coming to you right then and there, and that you're just mucking it up and improvising. You gotta make it look... uhhm... the word escapes me... I think the word is "spontaneous", but I'm not sure because I am a male bimbo. I went to the library to look the word up, but for some reason I couldn't find "spontaneous" under the F section so I got bored and read one of the magazines instead. It had a funny picture of a chimp smoking a cigar. Oh how I laughed. Chimps rule. Corona Light rules too. Damn now I'm thirsty. Wait, what am I doing in a library? Hey look, there's a picture of a funny chimp in this magazine! Huh-huh-huh-huh! Is this a library?

Step 9: Look up. Speak your line. Use a hoarse, husky voice and mumble a little bit. Just like that Brando Calrissian dude in that "Streetcat With Designer" movie.

Step 10: Make sure there is a fifteen second pause between each step. You need these fifteen seconds to remind yourself of your next line, because the Dillon mind is not complicated enough to harbor more than one thought at any time. Give the thought plenty of time to leave to make space for the next one.

Tada!

The only time I've enjoyed a Matt Dillon performance was in "There's Something About Mary", where his awkwardness worked as an advantage. Kelly Lynch didn't fare much better. I never believed Dillon and Lynch were addicts. Their acting just seemed like... well, acting (see the Ten Step Programme). I saw Dillon & Lynch running around playing addicts, much like a little children playing house. Sure they're cute as hell, but do you really believe for one second 4 year old Emma and 5 year old Timmy are mother and son? No. Lynch, much like Dillon, seems to think that uttering a line really slowly with a bored face will make them seem tough, arrogant and addict-like. They wont. It takes a real lack of talent to say the line "F**k you, a**hole" with no emotion what so ever. And no, it's not because she was playing an addict. It's because she doesn't know who to act.

I will have to blame some of this on the writing though. Why exactly does almost every line the name of the person the character is talking to? Sure, Bob. Yeah, Bob. Why, Bob? Where are you going, Dianne? Where are you going, Rick? Screw you, Gentry, Screw you, Bob. Dianne, take your coat off. Dianne, stay for a while. Dianne, you look good. Get in the car, Rick. Put this in the car, Nadine. You know what, Dianne? Tom, it's Bob. How much speed do you have, David? Nadine, do you know what you've done? No, Bob.

Who the hell talks like this? Makes you wonder if the writer has ever had one single conversation in his life. A little advice: the audience knows the names of the characters already, no need to say it over and over. It's only insulting and annoying. Why didn't the actors mention this to Van Sant? Why did they accept such shoddy lines? Didn't they realize how phony it sounded? If not, it only makes me think even less of their acting abilities. Heather Graham (who admittedly didn't have much to do) and James LeGros were a little better. Not much, but a little. Probably because neither had a lot of lines, they just had to stand there and look stupid. They did that well.

But still, I did enjoy it. Why? Because I had a lot of fun watching Matt Dillon's scenes and imagining how much better any actor in the world would have done them.

Let's just get one thing straight off the bat: I do not find The Exorcist scary in the least, and I'm getting pretty damn tired of being insulted for it. As if the people who aren't scared by "The Exorcist" and either immature, have no imagination and/or are completely dead inside, and we are adviced to go back and watch teen slasher flicks instead, since that's apparently "our type of films". Not everything is black and white, folks. I should know, I'm the king of the gray area.

Personally, I absolutely detest "Scream", "I Know What You Did Last Summer", "Urban Legends" and all of that mind-less, commercial, so-called horror movie crap. Just because "The Exorcist" doesn't scare me, doesn't mean I need half-naked teens with surgically enlarged bodyparts, knife-wielding murderers in raincoats, and tons of splatter and gore to please me. Nothing irks me more than barely dressed bimbos and there is nothing scary about blood and guts, to be honest it bores me to no end. Unless of course it's done deliberately OTT and tongue-in-cheek, like in "Braindead" and "Evil Dead 2", then it's absolutely hilarious.

Another argument often used is that we can't appreciate older films. That's a bunch of crap. Out of my collection of over 6.000 DVD's and VHS tapes, 85% of the movies were produced between 1920 and 1975, and over half of them were made in the 50's and 60's. Just because a film is old, doesn't mean it can't be scary. The scene in "Psycho" where Lila is sneaking around the Bates manor whilst Norman is in the motel only a few yards away down the hill always puts me on the edge of my seat. Or how about the horrific murders in "Peeping Tom"? Not to mention the slow-moving and ever-growing number of zombies in "Night Of The Living Dead", which still freak me out. And these are all movies that were made before I was born. Let's not forget the grainy, shadowy, high-contrast footage of Count Orloc in "Nosferatu". My grandparents weren't even born when FW Murnau made that one, and it's still one of the most frightening piece of cinema I have ever laid my beautiful blue eyes on.

Maybe I would find "The Exorcist" more frightening if I was religious. If I was catholic, I'm sure I would soil myself silly. But then again, many reviewers have said you need not to believe in God and the devil to be scared. Come to think of it, I don't believe in zombies and vampires either, but I still find them scary if it's done the right way, so I really don't know. All I know is, this film is not scary to me.

In my opinion, the Japanese and the Korean have totally taken over the horror genre, with films such as "The Eye", "Ring" (yes, I liked it better than the remake, feel free to send private messages explaining to me why I am a complete idiot - I promise to delete them as soon as I spot them), "Audition" (which admittedly was more of a psychological thriller), "Dark Water", "Kaïro" and "Ju-On". If I may say so, there hasn't been a truly scary, unsettling American horror/thriller since "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer". "Se7en" had it's moments, and "Silence Of The Lambs" was kinda creepy towards the end with Buffalo Bill watching Clarice through the nightvision goggles, but the main reason I return to those two films over and over again is the tight story, the claustrophobic cinematography and the wonderful performances. Whether they're scary or not comes in second to me. Which is exactly my point (betcha didn't think I had one).

Alright, enough nagging. To round this review off on a positive note, "The Exorcist" a great movie. The whole setup and the perfectly balanced structure of the film make it a joy to watch. The opening sequence with Father Merrin (the majestic Max Von Sydow) in Iraq is superb in so many ways. Not much is said (and when something IS said, it's in Arabic), instead Friedkin devotes the first 10-15 minutes of the film to haunting images and music as a way to get us inside the head, or rather the heart, of Father Merrin. Then he disappears from the film for a good hour or so, and the focus changes to the parallel storylines of the torn Father Karras and his aging mother, and Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her 12-year old daughter (Linda Blair), until these three stories finally meet under horrific circumstances. Unfortunately, this pace and rhythm is completely destroyed in "The Version You've Never Seen", where additional (and superfluous) scenes have been added. Sure, the spider-walk scene and all that is interesting to see from a nerdy cineast POV, but they add very little, if anything, to the film. I would suggest to anyone who hasn't seen "The Exorcist" to firstly see the original 1973 version, and then move on to the aforementioned, newer version for it's trivia value, for that is the only value that version has.

The performances are great through out, in particular Von Sydow (who is always great, even in the suckiest of films), and Ellen Burstyn. The cinematography and the set design are flawless, especially Regan's room during the actual exorcism. And of course Mike Oldfield's haunting music. Sure, the special effects have dated and look cheap, but that has never gotten in the way of good storytelling.

I really like The Exorcist. I would even go as far as saying I love it, I've seen it fourteen times and I'm looking forward to the fifteenth. But I wouldn't call it a horror film. To me, it's always been a drama. But it's a damn fine drama, that's for sure.

8.5/10

A three hour masterpiece, accused to be "GoodFellas all over again" by those who don't know any better.

The first hour seems almost like a documentary on how to become a proper gangster, while the last hour reminds me of a drama by Swedish writer/director Lars Norén.

But when it comes down to it, this is not just a story about gangster trying to make it big in Lag Vegas. It's much deeper than, and the metaphores are obvious. Martin Scorsese always uses religious elements, usually Catholic, in his movies to accentuate the story, but here he decided to go for the big one and tell the classical tale of God.

Yeah, you heard me. God. It's so obvious that it surprises me that no other reviewer has mentioned this. It's simple, DeNiro's character is God, trying to create order in this thing he has created, while Pesci's character is Lucifer, always rebellious, always trying to break free and create something of his own. Pesci's character is even named Nick, which is an old name for Satan.