The Sharon Situation

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Do you remember when Harry Potter was forced to put his face into Dumbledore's bowl of jizz in order to relive old memories? I think it was the film in which the old wizard had been wanking so hard that his hand had turned black and it looked like it was about to drop off. I literally dread to think what his dick must have looked like by that point. Well Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood is exactly like being waterboarded by that spaff bucket and being forced to remember Los Angeles in 1969. In fact the world is so brilliantly created that I genuinely found it to be a more believable place than some of the Butlins Holiday camps I've been to. The film focuses on three different characters who weave in and out of each others' stories despite the fact that fuck all seems to happen for the bulk of the running time. DiCaprio's Rick Dalton is a washed up TV actor that's trying to break into films before his sense of failure becomes too overpowering and he's forced to top himself. I guess suicide was how failed actors coped before reality tv was invented. Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth is Dalton's best-friend and stunt-double who makes money during his downtime by acting as his partners handyman. The kind of handyman who fixes broken shit around the house, though and not the kind that's forced to tug you off whenever you need it. Although you get the feeling that they're only ever one drink away from that. Finally there's also Sharon Tate who simply seems to float about the movie like an angelic moth that's constantly being drawn to the bright lights of the big screen. 

 

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I Spy With My Little Wife

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After Inglorious Basterds and Fury, Allied is another film in which Brad Pitt has some sort of issue with the Nazis. Here he must go into enemy territory and masquerade as Marion Cotillard's husband, which must be nice for him. It's good to know that the war wasn't all doom and gloom. They parade themselves as a couple in front of Nazi soldiers with the intent of killing one specific one when the time is right. Their cover must therefore be absolutely convincing as married partners, so, good for them for portraying their relationship as being one with literally fuck all chemistry. I guess they are pretending to be a newly married couple and I hear that marriage gets a bit tedious after a while. Therefore the sparks that are flying between them are flying about as effectively as a budgie chained to a bowling ball and after suffering a broken fucking wing. Eventually shit goes down, bullets start flying, and the two become a Mr and Mrs Smith for the Churchill generation... so, Mr and Mrs Schmidt, I guess.

Hell Hath No Fury

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There's a person in my life who I can't stand. I won't refer to them by name but if you're reading this, you leather-faced old bitch, then I hope you fucking die. Just so that you have something to imagine, she's coated in three inches of fake sun-tan and has wrinkles so deep that she looks like a satellite photo of a mud slide. If you can picture a pair of testicles that somebody has stuck some googly eyes and a frowny face onto then you're pretty much there. Anyway, the hag pisses me off to the point that often I'll call somebody up to vent to. On one occasion this just happened to be my Mum where I said that I wished that this person would get stabbed in the face and bleed to death. That was fine. Then I said that I hoped they'd get cancer of the soul, painfully slip away into the afterlife and then spend an eternity boiling in a pool of hot, molten shit. It was at that point that my Mum started having a go at me for wishing cancer on somebody. Where's the fucking consistency there? Apparently it's okay to hope somebody gets a sharp blade jammed into their face but not to wish they get a fairly common disease. My Mum said it was different because anybody can get cancer. Who'd have thought that saying "I'm pretty sure anybody can get stabbed in the face, too" would lead to such an argument?

Two Hours of Guilt

Horror movies don't horrify me for the most part because they're bland and shit and I tend to find myself relating to the killer. I think these days the studios generally care more about cheap shocks than actual scares and so spend less time creating relatable characters and more time deciding how many ways there are to stab a person in the tits. Instead of ‘characters’ we now have these airheaded mongtards that say and do things so stupid that you want them to get their face ripped off just to shut them the fuck up. To change the subject slightly there are also period films which I have issues with because they can also be a bit po-faced and worthy. I'll honestly watch any film with an open mind but if it involves a Queen who died over a hundred years ago then the odds are it's going to be a proper bitch to get through. Just three hours of people staring out of a window whilst contemplating their duty and whinging like the boring twats that they are. However I'm pleased to announce that in an effort to address both these issues, a character driven horror/period film has just been released which is set during the ever so cheerful period of the slave trade. If you're white and fancy feeling guilty as fuck for a couple of hours then I can't recommend 12 Years a Slave strongly enough.

Okay, so to summarise.. the film is set in America before their civil war and so at a time when owning people was a perfectly acceptable past-time. Solomon Northup is a free black chap just living his life and indulging in his basic human rights as though he thinks we're all allowed to be equal. Well as nice a thought as this is, he quickly ends up with egg on his face as he wakes up one morning to find himself chained to a floor after an evening out on the piss with two shady gents. Don't you just hate it when you treat yourself to one night of getting rat arsed with strangers and then before you know it you've been stripped and sold into slavery just because you had the God damn nerve to be black... It's happened to the best of us I guess! Anyway, from this point on Solomon finds himself being thrown from pillar to whipping post by his various masters who bat him back and forth like a dark ping-pong ball during a bigots game of wiff-waff. With his owners varying in unkindness on 'The Great Twat-ometer Of Evil' and over the course of twelve years Solomon patiently waits for an opportunity to escape as though all the horrendous abuse isn't quite his idea of a good time. I won't ruin what happens by saying whether or not he does manage to get away in the end and so to find out, you'll either have to watch the film or read the book that it's based on which was written by the man himself several years later... Or you could just work it out from that I suppose.

I can whip you or we can watch Jonah Hex.. you choose!

Anywho, so obviously this movie probably wouldn't technically be labelled as a horror film but after enduring it for two hours it really fucking should be. Like I said, it takes a lot to horrify me but the graphic depiction of how we crackers used to treat black people really was nothing short of demented. It's one thing to know that people used to get whipped but it's another to see it happen to a young woman whose only crime was being owned by a wealthy-but-mental knobend. Seeing pieces of her back flick off was absolutely horrendous as she screamed for death in an unforgiving sequence that was so much more powerful than any mere history book could possibly ever get across to me... and not just because I don't read history books. If this film has a purpose beyond simply re-telling the story of Solomon Northup it's also to remind our species of just how cruel we can be and have been to anybody we outnumber. In fact, the movie was so miserable in its depiction of our inhumanity that it reminded me of one of those dystopian sci-fi films in which society has gone to shit and we're all rounded up and tortured by either broken, naked robots or damned dirty apes. Except instead of being completely fictitious, this is a true story, has already happened and the evil cunts were us.

The treatment of the slaves is shown in all its mad bastard grimness with the owners and traders beating down on their hostages with more force and fury than a teenaged boy at a regional wank-a-thon. When I first got my dog she used to shit in the house and so to stop her doing it I was told to shove her nose into the mess. However because I'm not a psychopath I couldn't do that and so instead next time she took a kitchen dump I pointed it out to her and then flicked her on the nose. That was seven years ago and I still feel guilty about it now even though all she did was look at me with mild curiosity and briefly wondered why I'd just been such a bell-end to her. My point is that I really regret something my dog would have forgotten about a minute later and so how in God's name could those owners treat the slaves with such violence and so little empathy? Maybe this is one aspect that 12 Years A Slave doesn't really delve into as it seems more concerned with what happened than why it happened. Of his various owners, Solomon finds himself belonging to Benedict Cumberbatch who is depicted as being fairly sane however even he at his kindest still owns people and so is complicit to the cruelty being inflicted throughout the system. The basic equation to work it out is simply One person + People owned = One ignorant fucknugget. Although no reason for how we can be so horrible is suggested beyond a mass mental illness of the collective honky mind, though religion seems to be a common defence for it. Cumberbatch and Solomon's next owner Fassbender both quote the Bible as a way of justifying their own dickishness because if God says it's right then it damn well must be. To be honest, it'd be easy to blame God for allowing the slave trade to happen considering he's omnipotent but as he's also a fictional character that's been spunked into the world by our paranoid minds, I guess we're still at least a little responsible.

What do you mean Brad Pitt is in this film?!

These reasons above are why I think 12 Years a Slave is a pretty mental horror film and obviously also a great period piece. Somebody else could have made this as a bland, watered down slab of Oscar bait rather than the traumatic slice of shitty life that it is and so let’s all be grateful that Lee Daniel's and Oprah Winfrey were busy. Although that's not to say that it won't necessarily win any Oscars by the way, just that if it does it'll be by being true to itself and not because it was already lubed up and gaping for the voters pleasure. It's directed by Steve 'not that one' McQueen, who has brought the same kind of unflinching tone over from his previous films however this time adding the odd flash of influence from Terrence Malick. In case you've not seen a Malick film, this basically means that every time something interesting happens then you cut to a shot of some grass for ten minutes to highlight how important everything is. His previous film Shame very nearly put me off ever jizzing again and so if you've ever dreamed of legally being somebodies bitch then maybe give this one a bit of a miss. Everything about his direction here is pretty spot-on from the framing to the pacing to the performances with a hanging scene being a particularly great way of demonstrating the nonchalant horror of the time. In fact despite the hanging scene lasting a good few minutes, the film affected me so strongly that I'm not even going to make a David Carradine wanking joke about it... which is a shame because I have a good one too. However as well as direction, the other thing that makes this film so powerful is of course the cast who are all pretty much perfect. Chiwetel Ejiofor is brilliant, Fassbender is excellent, Cumberbatch is great and Brad Pitt... well he definitely turned up... so fuck it- lets stick Pitt’s face on the poster!

Anyway to wrap all this up I suppose I can't stress enough how important this film is and how much you should see it. I had a snack to eat during it and I have honestly never felt more awful in my life for chowing down on a chocolate flake as some starving black guy got branded by an evil land baron. I'd been waiting for the one moment I could have it but in the end I had to just eat before my treat melted. The whole situation was a real tragedy. Once a year we hold a minute’s silence for those who have died during all the wars however after seeing 12 Years a Slave I think we should start having one days silence a month to repent for our bastard ancestors actions during this unforgivable shit stain on history. Although having said that, I suppose it does seem to be coming kind of common place at the minute to make films about slavery. I won't bother comparing 12 Years a Slave to Django Unchained though because so many other people already have, this blog is already way to long and I'm dying for a piss right now. To summarise- they're completely different to each other. There was also Lincoln which came out recently but although I haven't seen it, I think I might have to if only to try and restore any faith in our horrible, horrible species. I used to worry about the inevitable expansion of the Sun one day destroying everything humanity has worked towards however now I worry that by the time it happens we nasty cunts might have worked out a way of surviving. See this film and feel the guilt!

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Branching Out

For some reason there are certain things that just seem impossible to photograph. The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, and Terrence Malick are all undeniably camera shy with some people even doubting whether or not they actually exist. Since his feature film debuted in 1973, there have been many reported sightings of the reclusive filmmaker although most have been debunked as simple hoaxes. If the camera isn't out of focus or too shaky, then the odds are that it's just someone wearing a rubber Malick suit in the distance. In actual fact I once thought I'd spotted the legendary movie maker surfacing for air in the middle of a lake. Turns out it was just a rotten log and a dead badger.

Since releasing Badlands almost forty years ago, Malick has become one of the most respected and critically adored filmmakers of all time, which is impressive considering that in the entirety of the last four decades he's only made about five fucking films. In half that time alone, Michael Bay has produced enough shite to fill an entire cathedral with bollocks movies. Until recently, the only two Malick films that I'd seen were Badlands and The Thin Red Line and I was obviously a huge fan of both. They were meditations on the nature of humanity and both were shot with a poetic love for life. The Thin Red Line has a huge cast consisting of cinema’s most famous faces and yet it’s shots of leaves and crocodile shit that Malick decides to focus on the most.

The latest of his films to be released is The Tree of Life which, despite being heckled at Cannes, managed to end up winning the 2011 Palme D'or. I know a film being booed is usually considered a bad thing but when it's coming from the French, I'll generally make an absolute effort to love it. With this in mind I finally got around to watching it the other night and was absolutely blown away. How the French can boo what is obviously a masterpiece is completely beyond me. First they surrendered Paris to the Nazi's and now this. It's just one stupid mistake after another with them, isn't it.

Jeff Spicoli: Earth's Mightiest Hero

It's hard to kind of describe the plot of The Tree of Life, but I'll have a go anyway. So- for some reason it starts with Sean Penn walking around aimlessly in a modern day city. I'm not sure what he's doing there but I don't think it really matters. It's Sean Penn, so he's probably just roaming the Earth, looking for some political injustice to get angry about. When the world is controlled by shadowy Corporations and corrupt Governments, it honestly makes me feel so much safer to know that we're being protected by an ageing Jeff Spicoli.

The film then starts to depict Penn's birth and childhood. He was raised in the 50's in Texas by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. He has two brothers with the family grieving over the sudden death of their oldest son. His mother is depicted angelically as a woman who wants to instil her children with a sense of wonder for the natural world. Brad Pitt on the other hand has the temper of a cunt and thinks the world's going to shit. Whilst she's outside pissing about with butterflies, he's inside teaching the kids that society is a manipulative rapist that will sly-fuck them into the grave. At one point, he educates his son on how to defend himself by asking him to punch him in the face. For some reason though the child seems bizarrely reluctant to physically assault his own Dad. As we all know though, when Brad Pitt asks you to hit him, you do so immediately and you aim straight for his fucking ear.

Whilst Penn's character’s childhood does take up the bulk of the film, there's also a few other things thrown in for good measure. Every so often, we're randomly treated to some scenes from the creation of the Universe which, to be fair, are absolutely mesmerising. Responsible for these shots was legendary special effects Supervisor Doug Trumbull who had worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and whose previous film had been Blade Runner almost thirty years previous. I watched his work on The Tree of Life and was in absolute awe of how eye-bleedingly gorgeous everything looked. I seriously wouldn't recommend watching whilst stoned though as you could easily lose a few hours to gawping at any single frame of this film, though having said that, I did also once lose about fifteen long minutes by just staring intently at a door handle. It looked so plastic and shiny that in my stupor, I seriously couldn't believe my luck.

"Clever girl..."

There's another scene thrown into this film too which actually received a little bit of criticism. A dinosaur is lying helpless by the side of a stream when a larger carnivore heads over to eat it. Before the sharp tooth chows down however, he has a second thought and decides instead to scuttle off without murdering his intended victim. If only OJ Simpson had a similar epiphany then perhaps that murder that he 'didn't' commit wouldn't have happened either. This is apparently supposed to represent the birth of conscience with the meat eater feeling too guilty to kill its helpless meal. Most critics seem to think that overall this section is just a little bit out of place but fuck it, they're all wrong. In fact I don't think there's a single film out there that couldn't be improved with a few extra dinosaur scenes thrown in for good measure. Sure The Godfather is great but is a T-Rex's head not more threatening than a horse’s? If there was a risk of a Raptor attack in any of Katherine Heigl's movies, one of them might even be in danger of being watchable. There's a big emphasis on the word ‘might’, there.

So as is probably obvious, The Tree of Life doesn't have a standard and straight forward narrative. In a way, this film actually consists of two separate halves. The first is a montage of those above sections, highlighting the poetry of love, death and nature. There's the beauty of the universe, the kindness of a species and the sheer joy of Penn's youth. In fact I think this could be the most exuberant depiction of childhood that could exist without an XBox or widescreen TV. On one of the rare occasions that my boyhood self decided to play outside, I ended up finding cans of beer and grotty pornography in the bushes. It was one of those ‘reader’s wife’ magazines featuring such a manky standard of fanny that I think I was genuinely traumatised for a good few years by it. The young Penn however luckily just plays ball games and frolics in fields with his brothers.

"Ah... Flash back humour."

If it wasn't for Pitt's brooding bulk of insecurities then everything in the boy’s life would be great. It's not that Pitt doesn't love his kids; it's more that he wants to ensure they're hardened to a world that's disappointed him. He'd dreamed of being a musician but ended up being a failed business man. In fact everything that irks Pitt here was cheerfully summed up by Pitt in 1999, “We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off”.

The second half of the film tones down the collage of beauty and instead focuses a little more on the 50's upbringing. The young Penn also starts to become angry and disillusioned by his father after noticing the hypocrisies of what he preaches and how he acts. In fact the film surprisingly starts heading slightly into Badlands territory as the young boy goes a little off the rails turning slightly into Sid from Toy Story. He starts vandalising buildings, assaulting people and abusing animals. At one point he ties a frog to a firework and sets it off. I'd like to say this scene ends with the frog, “falling with style”, but it doesn't, he just explodes like a big green twat. I can't say for sure, but I suspect this is about the point that the French audience probably started booing.

Moustache, coffee stain or caterpillar?

Easily every single thing about this film can be described as beautiful. Generally I hate that word because it has too many vowels and makes me sound either a little pretentious or a little gay. However it really does apply to every single aspect of The Tree of Life. The visuals, the music, the themes and Jessica Chastain are all heart stabbingly beautiful here. The acting is also inspiringly great with particular praise being owed to Hunter McCracken. McCracken is the chap who brilliantly plays the young Penn with the character really appearing in his more youthful form for ninety-nine percent of the film. It would have been fairer for me to instead refer to Penn's performance as the Older McCracken but fuck it, since when was life fair? If he wants to compete with Penn for fame then he's got to spend the next few decades churning out brooding performances, engaging in political activism and growing a distinctively shitty moustache. Beating the living shit out of Madonna once or twice would probably help too.

"I'm 21 and wearing nothing but nipple tassles."

So anyway I guess I should say what The Tree of Life is actually all about but in honesty I haven't got a fucking clue. I mean, I can see that it's examining the meaning of life and exploring the presence of God or divinity in nature but I'm not sure what's concluded. However I don't think that it's a film that intends to provide any definitive answers either. It's one of those movies with enough openness and ambiguity that I think it will just feed back to you with whatever you go in looking for. Kind of like having a conversation on one of those sex lines where they're always just going to tell you what you want to hear.

Special Effects aside, this film obviously has a lot of thematic and narrative similarities with 2001: A Space Odyssey as both are films that look at the origins of life, the purpose of existence and how everything links together. However, where Kubrick's film can appear cold-hearted and pretentious, Malick's plays out like it's straight from his heart. In my opinion, 2001 has a kind of lecturing feel whilst The Tree of Life is more like a poetry of observations and of optimistic expressions.  If Kubrick was the strict Professor shutting the class room blinds on a sunny day then, Malick would be the soon-to-be-fired hippy teacher dicking about in the leaves and mud outside.

Malick on set of latest film?

It should probably also be pointed out just quite how autobiographical and personal this is for Malick too. He was raised in a similar place at a similar time and within a similar family setup. The film contains all of his usual nuances such as whispering voice-overs, use of natural light, a warm but smothering sense of existentialism and of course, a couple of neglected A-List actors. Sean Penn was allegedly pissed off with the film because his character ended up with significantly less scenes than he'd filmed. Although I can see why he'd be annoyed, I wasn't the one who spent time filming them, so fuck him.

The Tree of Life is such a phenomenal and joyous movie that I genuinely think it should be shown and discussed in schools. Teachers put plenty of effort into convincing kids to read books but not enough into weaning them onto decent movies. It might sound like a sit off, but encouraging children to write an essay on their perceived philosophies of this film would probably be more beneficial than pretending to read Macbeth for the five-hundredth time. If we taught them the joy and truth of cinema then perhaps cunts like Michael Bay wouldn't be so rich. When I was in school, there was a teacher who was a domestically abused, alcoholic with a lesson plan consisting of simply handing out word searches. As much as we used to enjoy how her horrific personal life would allow us an easy lesson, a movie from Terrence Malick would probably have been somewhat more educational.

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