Videodrome

Huh.  After reading the tagline to this film, I realized that you could substitute the title and tagline for the chorus of Soundgarden's "Superunknown."  You know..."Alive in the videodrome/ first it controls your mind/ and then it destroys your...sooooouuuul!"  Not that that has anything to do with anything.  I was just amusing myself.

Max (James Woods) is the president of a sleazy cable television channel that specializes in soft-core porn and excessive violence.  As glamorous as that life is, Max is always on the lookout for new shows to push the envelope and shock his desensitized viewers.  He's not picky about his sources, either; one day he gets called in to his team's pirate satellite room, where they hijack whatever programming they choose.  Here, Max first witnesses Videodrome.  It's a show where masked men beat/torture someone for hours.  It's brutal.  It's uncomfortable to watch.  It might even show real people really dying.  In fact, it's perfect for Max's channel!  For a while after Videodrome starts airing on Max's channel, things go pretty well for the man.  He makes a television appearance, gets some notoriety, and meets a new girlfriend (Deborah Harry) who enjoys violent/kinky sex.  Personally, I would be frightened by anyone who, in an erotic moment, asked "Wanna try some things?" and pulled out a knife.  I, however, am not James Woods.

"I want to put out my cigarettes on your flesh.  Does that make you horny?"

Around this time, things start to get weird.  Max begins to have hallucinations --- weird, trippy violent ones --- and he can't tell the difference between his visions and reality.  Oh, and he grows some sort of Betamax-sized vagina in his torso.

Ewww.

Basically, the more obsessed Max becomes with Videodrome, the more he learns about it.  The more he learns, the more surreal things get, and it becomes apparent that Max is a pawn in a larger conspiracy.  Just because he's a pawn doesn't make him helpless, though.

While not the strangest film I have ever seen, Videodrome is a weird experience.  James Woods is pretty decent in the lead role, although I found his "roll with the weirdness" attitude a little unbelievable; if I noticed that I had grown a stomach-vagina, I would go to the hospital.  James Woods, on the other hand, uses it as storage for his handgun.  Of course, with all the bizarre things that his character experiences in this movie, a certain amount of desensitization is inevitable, but I would have liked one moment where he appeared genuinely frightened.

Like, maybe when his gun grows into his arm

The rest of the actors are fairly odd.  Deborah Harry maintains lifeless eyes for most of her screen time, but I will admit that she didn't overact in a role that could have been pretty cheesy.  Jack Creley only appeared in the film as video playback, which explains why his delivery was noticeably odd; it fit the script, though, so I guess it's all okay.  The rest of the supporting cast was either mediocre or strange, depending on whether Max is hallucinating at the time.  It's hard to judge their performances due to that, but I think the acting fit the tone of the film.

For instance, no one reacted to this

The fact that Videodrome was written and directed by David Cronenberg should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his work.  It's bizarre and gory and has a plot that is designed to mess with your head, which were all his calling cards in the 1980s.

I believe that Cronenberg got exactly the performances he wanted from his cast, and the special effects are pretty cool, even after nearly thirty years.  Early Cronenberg was a master of disgusting (and yet awesome) gore, and the effects his team managed to create are some of the best of their time.

But here's the thing: the story didn't really appeal to me.  None of the characters acted or reacted realistically, so none of them are truly sympathetic.  These people are so far from the norm --- Max wants to air snuff films on cable television, and he's the hero --- that it's difficult to identify with them.  Since the characters aren't particularly likable, the buildup of the plot isn't as compelling as it should be.  Honestly, I found myself bored at times during the first half of the film.  I really enjoyed the hallucinogenic second half, and I like the story in broad terms, but the slow pace early on really hurts Videodrome.  This is definitely worth watching, but I wouldn't call it a classic.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but one of the most disturbing things I saw in this film was this male dancer's outfit.  Seriously, I stopped and rewound because I was laughing over the dialogue.

Night Moves

With a poster like that, how can you not want to watch this movie?  Right off the bat, you know this movie has a plane, a naked chick swimming (possibly through the air), and Gene Hackman's famous locks, flowing in the wind.  Actually, I watched Night Moves because I'm a fan of Gene Hackman, especially when he plays intelligent characters; he's a private eye in this movie, so this sounded right up my alley.

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a retired football player turned private eye.  He doesn't handle big, important cases, or even cases that leave him with a moderately clean feeling, but he likes the idea of his work.  His devotion to the job doesn't win him any fans at home; his wife, Ellen (Susan Clark), is having an affair.  Of course, Harry finds out --- he's an investigator, after all --- and he's devastated.  As luck would have it, Harry can postpone the dreaded "we need to talk" moment with his wife by taking a case for an over-the-hill Hollywood sexpot.  She wants Harry to track down her runaway daughter, the unfortunately named Delly (Melanie Griffith), and is so concerned over her daughter's well-being that she flirts mercilessly with Harry.  Harry does some digging, and learns that the sixteen year-old Delly is a notorious tramp.  She ran away from home with a Hollywood mechanic, Quentin (James Woods), then ran into the pelvic thrust of a douchebag stunt driver, and then ran to her stepfather's (John Crawford) home in Florida.  Just because he found the girl doesn't mean that Harry knows what he's doing.  The longer he spends on this case, the less straightforward it seems, proving that even a smart man like Harry can still be very, very wrong.

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt when the movie ended, too.

Night Moves was far from a critical or financial success upon its 1975 release, but the seventies were a strange time in the film industry, filled with new film styles and abrupt endings.  Whatever the reasons for its initial failure, Night Moves has grown more appreciated over time, thanks largely to the great and subtle performance of Gene Hackman.  I don't even know how to give his performance a just summary; he's smart, but easily fooled; he's physically tough, but emotionally tender; he's very reserved at times, but brash at others.  The best thing about Hackman's performance is how believable it is.  The rest of the cast is good, too.  Jennifer Warren is surprisingly good as a person of (romantic) interest in the case; this kind of complex supporting role is a shoe-in nowadays for an Oscar nomination.  I'm not quite sure how believable her attraction to the men in this film is, but people were often ugly in the seventies.

It's easy to be infatuated with Gene Hackman when his face is obscured by a tree trunk.

Perhaps the most shocking performance for me was that of a then seventeen year-old Melanie Griffith as the nudity-loving (yes, at seventeen) Delly.  It's not just that Griffith is almost unrecognizable as a teen, but she did a very good job in her frequently naked role. 

Where did all the swollen face lumps go?

The rest of the cast was solid, but not particularly noteworthy.  Susan Clark was fine as Harry's wife and James Woods was okay in a small (and also almost unrecognizable) part, where he snarled ineffectively a few times.

The script by Alan Sharp and the direction by Arthur Penn do the rest of the work.  And work, they do!  This is a phenomenal script.  It is rare to have a script filled with clever (and non-zinger) lines, but this one is very nuanced in how it advances the plot and gives compelling glimpses into the minds of the characters.  I look forward to watching this movie a second time; I have the feeling that many of the lines will have new meanings, now that I have seen the ending.  Arthur Penn did a great job working with this script and the actors.  It is rare for a movie to be enjoyable and confusing at the same time, but Penn manages to get multi-layered line readings from the entire cast, filled with shades of grey, and he has the guts to provide a conclusion that asks a question.

Whatever happens here, I doubt that it's happy.

I did have one issue with the script and direction, though.  What was with the romances in this movie?  I have no problem with unattractive or moderately attractive men in movies having beautiful romantic interests, but this movie pushes my suspension of disbelief a little too much.

When this movie finished, I wasn't particularly impressed.  Sure, I acknowledged the talent of in-his-prime Hackman, but I was left a little cold by the ending.  It's confusing, to put it mildly.  A funny thing happened as I started to summarize the plot in my head, though; I started to reflect on the many instances where Harry was wrong, even when I (as a viewer) assumed he would be right.  That got me thinking about other parts of the movie, and I began to appreciate the non-sequitors in the dialogue and the depth they gave the plot.  Can I explain the whys of this story?  Absolutely not, but I can accurately describe the plot.  It's easy to understand what happened, but understanding the why is what makes this one special.  I'm going to give this a moderate rating now, but I think I'll bump it up whenever I decide to watch it again.  It's a grower that I look forward to discussing at length with friends.