Saturday 31 August 2019

Scary Movie (1991)

From https://www.filmfracture.com/wp-content/uploads/
2019/01/scarymovie_1-1050x550.jpg


Director: Daniel Erickson

Screenplay: Daniel Erickson, David Lane Smith and Mark Voges
Cast: John Hawkes as Warren; Suzanne Aldrich as Barbara; Ev Lunning as Sheriff Pat Briggs; Mark Voges as Jerry; Zane Rockenbaugh as Billy; Jason Russel Waller as Brad; Virginia Pratt as Shelley; Ernie Taliaferro as the Laughing Man; Zeke Mills as Basil; Butch Patrick as Eddie; Lee Gettys as John Louis Barker; Lorne Loganbill as Otto
Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

First of all, if you were expecting a review of the parody horror film by the Wayan Brothers, or the sequels, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Can I make it up with a once impossible to see horror film from Texas, not properly released until 2019, instead? Arguably the biggest factor to bear in mind, beyond the fact our fresh face lead is actually a thirty here and would become Oscar nominated John Hawkes, is that director Daniel Erickson was only nineteen when he made Scary Movie. That's pretty incredible especially as, in the midst of all the horror films churned out at this point in history, it's with its flaws still a hell of a lot more accomplished than many.

Halloween night - Warren (Hawkes) comes to a haunted house attraction less than in a great state of mind, nervous already having had a vivid nightmare the night before of a Grim Reaper like figure which is also found at this gruesome local haunted house. There's a potential romance - with a near sighted girl with raven black hair, bold eyeliner, in a white virgin maiden costume and with a collectomaniac habit - but he's still jittery. It doesn't help either a known killer has escaped from the nearby mental asylum that same night.

Don't expect a slasher film however, which was a big surprise and honestly a lot more interesting for myself. It's a make-or-break detail of the film for many, but I'm personally not a fan of slasher films as a concept; I enjoy them, but when they, like most, turn into stalk and chase scenes I turn off, when in reality even the emptiest of characterisation is more appealing. I personally found the result we get with Scary Movie a breath of fresh air instead, getting what is a very late regional horror production more interested in mood. Incredibly late, into the nineties, but very much of the type as this production also feels like a time capsule to community haunted houses which stands out; Halloween is an important holiday in British, but especially for the Americans, the traditional having greater weight even in terms of this type of yearly spectacle, where even the Evangelical Christians built their own "Hell Houses" to scare people to Jesus. This one in the film feels a lot closer to reality, to the point of potential verisimilitude, in how it's an immense creation but clearly the product of locals in a small town with enough elbow grease and cooperation between them, right down to the ghouls inside committing horrors being buddies likely to be drinking in the bar the day after.

From https://www.filmfracture.com/wp-content
/uploads/2019/01/scarymovie_4.jpg

It's an interesting mood to latch onto, and it's strange in slight doses in the best of ways. Even without Roky Erickson and the Butthole Surfers on the soundtrack, large portions of Scary Movie are incredibly eccentric. The collectomaniac to the reoccurring large man, the same one wearing a red top, who is always there to laugh at the appropriate moment, the film's openly peculiar. It also means the film wrong foots the viewer deliberately - the aforementioned ghouls from the last paragraph get a clever take on expectations I won't spoil. In general the local flavour right in terms of side characters onscreen add an incredible charm and personality to the material.

A lot of the film is also at a great advantage of both the director and production creating a very atmospheric film, one also aiding by John Hawkes in the lead. The film is built more on tension, as rather than a lot of deaths or jumps, Scary Movie taking its time housed in Warren's mind and his fears by the moment he is literally shoved into the haunted house. In dark, claustrophobic corridors and rooms, the homemade world of the set is idiosyncratic, and thankfully, Hawkes plays the neurotic main character exceptionally well, even with the fact he's clearly been based on Bruce Campbell's character Ash in the Evil Dead series in look. It follows a similar logic if not as cruel as what happens to Ash, but including climbing over pumpkins, the same tension is to be found with a killer in the same environment.

[Major Spoiler Warning]

Expect that isn't the case, and for any criticism that Scary Movie is a slow eighty minutes, Daniel Erickson especially as a nineteen year old filmmaker managed to pull out a morbid plot twist, where Warren has had a psychotic breakdown and maimed, even killed, patrons thinking they were a killer. It's a horror pulp story conclusion to be proud of, befitting as Scary Movie has tricked the viewer into thinking a figure has been killing haunted house staff only to continually undermine it continually throughout the film beforehand. And it makes sense considering how Hawkes' performance is great, built upon an anxiety built up from the start.

[Major Spoilers End]

Laced with an incredible cynical and black sense of humour at the end, Scary Movie does so much to admire, sad in knowledge that it took so much longer for the film to be properly seen. The film only had a semblance of release originally by a few VHS distributed locally in Erickson's home in Austin, Texas. This was the reason the film was unavailable, but also why versions were available as its composer Hank Hehmsoth, who only worked on this film but should be praised for his startling electronic score, put the film up online. As of 2019, the American Genre Film Archive released the film for cinema screenings with plans to be released properly in general, a wonderful conclusion for the film as it's worthy of an actual release finally. Erickson himself never made a lot of work sadly, though intriguingly he did return, with John Hawkes also returning to voice a character, with the utterly compelling premise of Eve's Necklace (2010), a neo-noir entirely acted out with mannequins.

Yes, mannequins...which has to be an inspired creative idea worth investigating for myself...


From https://www.americangenrefilm.com/wp-content
/uploads/2019/06/ScaryMovie3.jpg

Wednesday 28 August 2019

Too Old to Die Young (2019)

From https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2019/05/
TOTDYCover-1557511203-640x640.jpg


Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenplay: Nicolas Winding Refn and Ed Brubaker
Cast: Miles Teller as Martin Jones; Augusto Aguilera as Jesus Rojas; Cristina Rodlo as Yaritza; Nell Tiger Free as Janey Carter; John Hawkes as Viggo Larsen; Jena Malone as Diana DeYoung; William Baldwin as Theo Carter

Realising it in the midst of this review, Nicholas Winding Refn is becoming our new Quentin Tarantino. He doesn't have the reach of the latter, who can still somehow get violent and unconventional films playing in a British multiplex in the middle of the afternoon, but since Drive (2011) and its unexpected breakout success, he's the man whose name is used to promote other work and has spent his own money to restore exploitation films he feels are worth preserving. The later through byNWR, whilst not always great in the choices, is enough to point to in terms of him being a great guy1, but his actual films are divisive. This is an issue in the sense I have nothing but good will for the man, but in this particularly case that'll leave a sadness as what half way through was a great production eventually ends with a bitter taste to the mouth. On paper, following on from giving Sion Sono the mini-series Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2017) to relocate his sense of fun again, Amazon Prime funding this minimalist Refn production created with comic book writer Ed Brubaker was enticing. Whatever your thoughts on Amazon, or just its corporate head, it was at least a huge risk to fund this auteur after the divisiveness of The Neon Demon (2016), but for most of its length, Too Old to Die Young felt like a new, weirder and rewarding turn in Refn's career. Sadly things do take a turn, but let's start at the beginning first before we get ahead of ourselves.

The project was unexpected, deliberately playing to its unconventional history, when Amazon threw wads of cash to Refn, with two middle episodes being premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a creation that develops a Jekyll and Hyde personality as, when the mini-series is good, Refn has developed a new style of weird, confrontation avant-garde genre cinema waiting to blossom. At its worst, whilst I will still wait with interest for his next work, I cannot hold Refn as a great director for all his indulgence in violence laced in a deadly amount of pretension, perversely emphasised now Tarantino (for his controversial creative choices) has amazing matured and chewed on polarising ideas with deliberate complexity.

Too Old to Die Young is over ten episodes, and is paced as the most extreme of slow cinema where a simple dialogue scene can last over five or more minutes. Its surprisingly comparable to Filipino director Lav Diaz, for who eight hour plus films are a regularity, but whilst Diaz obscures important stories in way too much padding for me for the most part, Refn's deliberately taking a premise of a two hour film and stretching it to an extreme, but still had to make it with a pace appropriate for Amazon Prime where events do transpire of note. This conflict is a fascinating and rewarding result, as was the case for Sion Sono who had to start bringing back his older eccentricity and stretch a long form story out, and here Refn with Brubaker for the first half of Too Old... does create a compelling work.

Two main sides co-exist at first, conflicting each other in the first chunk of the first episode. A cop Martin (Miles Teller), who is involved with shady dealings, will be there when his cop partner is murdered point blank by Jesus (Augusto Aguilera), the son of a cartel boss taking revenge for the murder of his mother Magdalena, who he has is revealed to have an incestuous obsession with. For Jesus, he will flee to Mexico to his father, who is on death's door in illness. Martin will be promoted to a police detective, all whilst his romantic relationship with Janey Carter (Nell Tiger Free), as well as being problematic in that she is only seventeen and underage, will bring him into her life with her eccentric father Theo Carter (William Baldwin). Eventually this series will split from these two men to two women. Diana DeYoung (Jena Malone), a victim's advocate who secretly has hired Viggo Larsen (John Hawkes), a former FBI agent dying of a terminal illness, to kill rapists and child molesters, and Yaritza (Cristina Rodlo), who is the carer for Jesus' father but is secretly the High Priestess of Death, an urban myth who is killing men who harm women, especially those forced into sex work.

My eventual disappointment with the streaming series is tragic as at the start, Too Old to Die Young is very good. The insanely glacial tone mixes with Refn's obsession with neon is a match made in heaven, cinematographers Darius Khondji and Diego García earning their keep with the bold visual style, and Refn's usual composer Cliff Martinez hits it out the park again with his score. Probably the most interesting detail, working with Ed Brubaker, is that over a longer format, you still have to create enough to fill the detail, and this is where the show finds its best virtues.

Episode 2, in a bizarre paradox against its cold nihilism, even has a warm humanity, regardless if it's discoloured in black humour. For me it's the best episode as, when Jesus returns to his family in Mexico, his ailing cartel father despite being evil is made sympathetic as a tyrant reduced to a dying man, obsessed with football, and repeating a memory of seeing Pele over and over again, to the point he uses it as a peace maker between his group and the corrupt police force in their payroll to deal with tensions. In this, Refn had the potential to make even the worst in humanity perversely human in just giving them this detail. It could seem problematic, in Episode 5 when Martin has to track down and kill two brothers who make "rape porn", to have people who create the material argue over what to put on the radio in the middle of a long duration car chase, but it feels tonally appropriate and hits another highlight of the series when Barry Manilow's Mandy gets used in a montage immediately afterwards.

Points of absurd humour and even full blown weirdness are also a godsend. Be it that that car chase is not helped by an electric car used for one of the participants' runs out of energy in the middle of the desert, or how a confused police station reception asks Martin if someone really shot some ducks in a person's pond. Even something as absolute out of place like Diana DeYoung, in the final episode when we are meant to have a climax, having a scene using virtual reality porn with a head visor, even when the series sadly falls into its biggest problems, has a weight of something utterly unconventional and stands out more as its had no connection to anything that took place beforehand. Hell, William Baldwin's character of Theo Carter feels like he's wandered from a David Lynch film, a creep who's uncomfortably close to his daughter in how he finds her beautiful and, upon first meeting Martin, communicates to him waving around one of her plush tigers and growling at him. Refn has had this weirdness before, and it's one of his best virtues, be it The Neon Demon just beforehand, but it's rarely been funny with the exception of Bronson (2008) in the past.

From http://horrorfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/too-old.jpg

Even the nihilism at first is spiked with a humane side perversely skipping throughout. America's going to hell in a hand basket, as the problematic vigilante attitude of Viggo Larsen is counteracted by the fact of his despair both over his declining health and that he's also looking after a mother who is suffering from dementia. The only thing on the radio is a conspiracy disc jockey, and either that's contacted by a puppet making an appearance in the finale scene, and everyone's idiosyncratic, from the Jamaican contractors of hits to random samurai groups in the city. Even Martin is a curious one just for how much Miles Teller spits all the damn time and barely says a thing, not exactly Ryan Gosling in the slightest in style. The less said the better about his fellow police detectives the better, the strangest of them all - homoerotic yet joking about it in mock machismo, proudly singing about fascism in group sing longs, creating a mock version of Christ's crucifixion in the office from Martin's leaving party, definitely the weirdest moment of the entire series, and generally acting in a way that one criminal is horrified to even consider they are actually law enforcement at all.

The problems with Too Old to Die Young begin when the first major character is killed off. Callously, just written off, and whilst I tried keeping my enthusiasm up, I really got tired of the nihilism. Having passed my thirtieth birthday, I realise I cannot stand this. The truth is also that, an issue returning back to the likes of Only God Forgives (2013), the mini-series just comes off as juvenile and contrived after a while. The show literally peters off with the two main female leads as heroic vigilantes, a rewarding change of plotting undercut by how nasty and grim the violence also is.
And frankly, the vigilante content, with the pretension, is problematic in an eyeball rolling way, as Malone has a monologue directly to the camera about how in the future the world will turn to death and concentration camps again but she will protect the innocent. Throughout there are references clearly to the political era after Donald Trump became president, Nazi flags appearing more than once, but the idea of killing the evil doers yourself is like Dirty Harry (1971) without any of the ambiguity or whit. Its inherently a cheap sentimentality, a perverse one, to make the villains killed rapists and paedophiles, as no one morally would defend them, but it's still a cheap ad hoc creative choice that's dumb.

Least when you had Episode Five, starting with a disturbing opening of a young man being dragged into a "performance", it was still a show about moral darkness punctured with corpse black humour and how these figures had quirks. Instead, this evokes Drive, his most well known and probably best regarded film which I always found incredibly shallow and too obsessed with nastiness since it first came out. And this sucks as this turned into an accidental bait and switch. The bait was a subversion of Refn's usual material where clichés - the criminals, corrupt cops, murderers and scum - developed more complexity just through the obtuse pacing and eccentricity of the oddest sort.

However Refn falls back on this dull cool misanthropy masquerading in "profound" final episode dialogue and it sucks - even as I hold a few of his films in my personal canon, this is a time I cannot hold Refn on a high level as he's going to keep doing this and annoy me. Even if I still praise byNWR and still take interest in him, this issue is going to now linger in the back of my mind. It was like when I started becoming disengaged with Quentin Tarantino around 2007 to circle back to the beginning. Tarantino is still divisive, still has the problematic violence, but even if I have thoughts about a film like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), he's nonetheless grown up and still engaging. The controversial aspects of his cinema are laced in questions whether he wrote material that was deliberately divisive to get uncomfortable reactions from the type of cinema he creates.

Refn is capable of this, but that I have never seen him really be someone where those questions can be asked about his ideas. This is why controversially I consider his best film was Fear X (2003), the John Turturro production which killed off his first attempt to enter American cinema. Now that he has licked his wounds, and even directed a Miss Marple TV movie, he's been able to make idiosyncratic work but there's a danger not in him becoming more divisive, but that the violence and nihilism is just tedious, something to bear in mind as Fear X had none of it and was a dark, Lynchian puzzle of great interest. (The other film behind it was Valhalla Rising (2009), which was violent, but was also a period Viking freak-out where it made sense to have it and wasn't the main subject matter).
Aspects as a result are lost which could've been taken further. An interesting penultimate episode scene of the cartel discussing their heritage in terms of their work, hating on white taco vans invading their turf and Jesus making an apocalyptic view on the subject, shows what could've been, as is the sub current of actual supernatural content as Diana DeYoung is psychic and even, after one particularly strong one, has to get an exorcism so she can get her eyes back to their normal state. The fact each episode references Tarot cards in their titles, which immediately intrigues me, but never feels like they have any weight to the material just enforces a danger of pointlessness. He even ends the show on an old Judas Priest cut which proves Nicolas Winding Refn has the talent and the style; he just unfortunately falls back on ultimately boring themes.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Minimalism
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://nypdecider.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/too-old-to-die-young-miles-teller-
ep-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646&h=431&crop=1

======
1) Oh, and relocating a presumably lost Andy Milligan film Nightbirds (1970) that was deemed culturally important as a British production for the British Film Institute to come knocking at his door, or he to theirs, so he's done enough there to earn a pat on the back.

Tuesday 27 August 2019

Sparrow's Hotel (2013)

From https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rotten_k/28560669/
5327089/5327089_original.jpg


Director: Tetsuji Nakamura
Based on a manga by Yuka Santō
(Voice) Cast: Daisuke Kishio as Misono-kun; Haruka Nagashima as Tamaki Shiokawa; Minori Chihara as Sayuri Satō; Asuka Yūki as Yū Kojō; Shūta Morishima as Sakai
A Cinema of the Abstract/1000 Anime Crossover

[Sometimes, due to the fact I have two blogs, one of which also covers anime, i tend to miss the chance to cover some curiosities in the medium unless I deliberately post reviews on both. Here is an example of an older review for that blog, which you can see for yourself HERE, that I have re-reviewed for both this and that one. If anything this show's premise, a hotel management comedy where episodes are only three minutes long with a drastic animation shift halfway through, was odd enough for this blog too]

First thoughts? 480p resolution, as this particularly obscure anime oddity, three minutes per episode over twelve of them, is notorious for those who know of it for its aesthetic appearance and/or the highest quality you could screen it on an anime streaming site Crunchyroll. This gets weirder as that's only the first six episodes where that aesthetic is there, one of the many peculiarities of the kind of title you'd never have gotten a release of in the West were it not for streaming, a feature of modern entertainment which has allowed, in the ability now to have anime stream soon after its premieres on Japanese television, a similar premiere online for the West. (That, hey, it probably costs less to just license than to produce DVDs for, that also meant titles of a greater variety like Sparrow's Hotel can be made available) Considering how esoteric the subject matter is, the day-to-day management of a hotel, it certainly feels odd though that is tempered by aspects of the production. The first is that it's actually an adaptation of a "4-koma" manga, which are normally gag comic strips which have pages divided up by four panels. It's not that different from a Western comic strip in structure, just to give you an idea. The other is that it happens to be a hotel that hired a beauty buxom female employee, one named Sayuri Satō who happens to also have commando combat skills and assassination abilities. But still, pretty strange especially to someone used to the better known anime titles that crossed into the mainstream.

Some have speculated this is a parody of nineties straight-to-video animation, which had a history of high quality work, when it became an industry by the mid-eighties onwards to its down spell in the 2000s, but could also scrape the bottom of the barrel. I question this, having seen many bizarre anime premises especially in these "micro-series", and with knowledge that a lot of them use a lot of low-fi and frankly crude animation, sometimes for deliberate effect but some others clearly what was available. I wouldn't be surprised that this was a sincere production that, as I'll get into, was always meant to be a sex comedy/hotel hijinks show, where one of the jokes is a smaller female character smashing her face into Satō's giant bust as if that's a new concept, but had a major change of guard or how the episodes were being made halfway through.

Start with the first episode and the show's at least an experience, as whilst the second calms down and sets the pace, the first is (at merely three minutes including beginning credits) quick, hectic as it gallops along without pausing for breath as it introduces Satō, the carefree and sweet lass who is also the ultimate killing machine in the body of a voluptuous ditzy Venus, Tamaki Shiokawa the diminutive female manager, Shiokawa her older brother who is her superior and has a creepy incestuous fixation she is disturbed by, and bellboy Misono who is at first the meek, glasses wearing male employee but has a dark despondent side. It's a chaotic mess of a pilot, but the show in general is a series of vignettes which plays off those character traits. Whether they are actually any good is to question as the show never transitions further from just its surface. Yes, it is a curious subplot about Tamaki being freaked out by her older brother's advances (cough), and whilst even played out of humour that's a transgressive plot line to have, it never thankfully crosses into poor taste. Really, the only character who gets a lot of coverage is Satō, the figure on the manga covers who is significantly voiced by Minori Chihara, a singer who just happens to also play a side character, but still one of the main voice cast, of the huge franchise The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya before Sparrow's Hotel.

It doesn't try to hide Satō as a figure of cheesecake fan service. She openly declares, creating the second episode title, that her best assists are her breasts and assassination skills to Tamaki, which leads to a dichotomy that is reoccurring in anime of voluptuous female characters who are nonetheless insanely powerful and/or violent. Is it demeaning or empowering to have these kinds of female characters who are very sexual but strong? It frankly comes off as a kink at times and there are definitely times where it is just a failure and proves sexist when the material's dreadful. Yet there is also the double standard danger of the stereotypical picture of femininity being negative being itself an insult, really the bigger concern with these kinds of characters is whether they are just for sex appeal or if they're going to have some emotion or characterisation to them. Even the case of Satō being very simple and at times naive isn't necessarily something that could be used as a negative characterisation if done properly. If anything, in a better and more fleshed out work, we could've had a lot to work on as already in this there is plenty of subversive material already there to mind - of a sedate, kind hearted soul who can yet can power lift a whole bed by herself, buys gym equipment the same way Tamaki does for handbags, and always carries kunai (Japanese throwing knives) under the skirt, with the ability to use them in an improvised game of William Tell at the company trip to a cherry blossom festival in the park.

From https://theglorioblog.files.wordpress.com/
2013/04/shorts_spring2013_03_3.jpg

The subject of the series is also to be asked about as, honestly, for what is a unique twist; sadly, the show never had enough time to run with its premise of hotel management further. Manga particularly has a heritage of the least expected subjects being covered in stories, and in what little we get here, Sparrow's Hotel had so much to mine here too. A tale in which rowdy people outside are an issue, booking crowds for a nearby anime/manga convention is stressful, or where one has to send off Satō to subdue a drunk and irate customer by knocking him out with a single chop. If it'd been a full length series, it could've easily become worse, but it could've also been actually more interesting and funny to see an anime set in hotel management, as seen in a later episode where a violent storm outside provides a huge swath of customers to the benefit of the empty hotel. As it stands, the show's too short for this, even if it is still to be found in slithers.

Beyond that the episodes' are so short, it's both difficult to analyze them but that in itself is a critique - that for humour, it's not the best but with some amusement, but as mentioned it never fully invests in its premise. There is an additional character of Yū Kojō, a hotel inspector whose attempts to keep that are secret are useless, but a lot of the show never drastically changes for the first half. Really, the moment where things get really interesting is with the art style. The first half follows the source manga in style but is infamous, for those who know of it, for its brash colours and crude character designs, a garishness matched by the manic pace that is compelling in a way but arguably limits the show's potential by being a one note mood. The transition, befittingly set against the episode where renovations lead to a new bathing area being created in the hotel, and the episodes having end credits instead of opening ones, is a shock.

Muted colours, softer character designs, and frankly a leap in budget or craft as the animation becomes more fluid and more ambitious even in the show's comedic double takes and gags; I forgot how impactful it was, the change absolutely distinct and looking like an entirely different adaptation of the same material. There is even a deliberately attempt as well to push the fan service, such as the end credits being a nude Satō sleeping surrounding by underwear and kunai on the bedspread. (Make of that what you will). It however even includes the cast, including Misono, being dressed in cute animal costumes in the mid-episode eye-catches that were added for the later episodes. It doesn't necessarily add more - alongside Kojō returning, there's a possibly American older male fighter named Billy who locks eyes on Satō as his rival, the show teasing the pair fighting continually. A lot of the show is still based on the initial premise mind - your main female staff member a killing machine, the manager is still creeped out by her older brother's thoughts of her, Misono is despondent. It doesn't particularly change a lot and that's honestly the real issue for Sparrow's Hotel even if the show was entertainment. It thankfully did change the aesthetic completely thought, which is arguably why I feel those episodes pass the halfway mark are of a higher quality.

Personally, the fact I've rewatched Sparrow's Hotel shows it has had a lasting mark even an odd curiosity. The micro series as a concept is fascinating - allowing for new talent, odd premises like this can allow for a lot of creativity and opportunity just for strange content. The issue is really how slight the micro-series is, at literally under thirty minutes or so here with Sparrow's Hotel never pushing to a further level than it probably should've. I admit as much of the incentive to re-watch the show was how short it is altogether, but I have as I realise a fascination with these micro-series in general that isn't exactly a guilty pleasure, but a love directly from the gut. That doesn't mean I won't be honest mind.

Is it abstract or strange though? Strange definitely, but not as strange as it potentially could've been, one of the greater ironies beyond Japanese animation that if you play something off as comedy, unless you fully distort the structure or push yourself, it makes an odd premise more normal as a result. And as much as the three minute episode length a surprise, just in terms of how much storytelling you can try to tell with minimal time, Sparrow's Hotel isn't exactly unconventional. In fact it could've done with a lot more preciseness, more weirdness and probably less fan service, unless it was going to be more positive for the main character's depiction, and I might've had a little gem on my hands. Cause I don't know about you the reader, but a thirteen or twenty four episode normal length comedy show about the banalities about running a hotel, if pushed further even with these same characters, would be an utterly peculiar and interesting experience to sit through.

Abstract Spectrum: Quirky/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None


From https://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire1-tmb/d707
fffe1bdfceaa7fa44341858742a41369073669_fwide.jpg

Sunday 25 August 2019

Season of the Devil (2018)

From https://images.rankingfilms.com/movie/
poster/season-of-the-devil-2018-poster.jpg


Director: Lav Diaz
Screenplay: Lav Diaz
Cast: Piolo Pascual as Hugo Haniway; Shaina Magdayao as Lorena Haniway; Angel Aquino as Anghelita; Pinky Amador as Kwago; Bituin Escalante as Kwentista; Hazel Orencio as Teniente; Bart Guingona as Paham; Joel Saracho as Ahas

Another Lav Diaz film, and honestly, it was going to be a tough viewing experience even for fans of his work. Opening another wound in his country's history, Diaz recreates a situation that took place in the 1970s where, here, a group of soldiers meant to represent the Civilian Home Defense Forces, a non-standard paramilitary force supervised and deployed by the heads of the local government in the Philippines, in the middle of an era of martial law in the country who decide to terrorise and control a remote village by bringing back their fear in superstitions, witches and demons, whilst crushing their opposition. It is four hours long, incredibly short for the director's standards as he is known for films much longer than this, filmed in his usually preferred monochrome with still long takes. This time however it's a "musical". Not a "rock opera", as it's been inexplicably called in reviews, but specifically an a cappella musical in that (with Diaz writing the lyrics) the cast mostly sings without backing music.

On paper, it's inherently abstract and interesting as a structure, and to even tackle a bleak real life historical incident will be both miserable but a noble act. The result however, for me, raises furthers questions to do with Lav Diaz as a filmmaker, which has lead to him becoming even more frustrating as he's held in growing high regard for world cinema. Immediately of question, you never really get a wide picture of this story to provide context, entirely over four hours only really connected to the soldiers and a few characters - a poet and activist who travels to the central village where his wife, a doctor who takes the risk to tend to the sick in the small village in spite of the soldiers marauding within it, an actual witch not impressed by the soldiers' strategy, and an older man in the village. As a result, the village exists as a vague entity, possible due to Diaz working on a restrictive budget filmed outside the Philippines, filming in Malaysia, but probably deliberately. You rarely see this world beyond, say, an early scene showing the poet's urban life of poetry reading and costumes, and as a result a lot of missed out in terms of world building.

These figures mentioned in the last paragraph, then, are our centres, their songs elaborations of emotion but also analogies of the conflict at hand between the oppressive forces and the ordinary populous. There's an issue too here in that, whilst the horrors are felt for what is in store for these characters, they're not particularly distinct either. They have emotion, they feel pain, but as the dialogue is instead a lot of poetic and concept based, not a lot of four hours is truly felt for them to flesh them out. They are props in a political film which discards a psychological depth over four hours, and thus the misery of watching the film, which doesn't end wonderfully with almost everyone you'd want to care being dead, leads to a nihilistic note that feels pointless. It's vague, which raises questions when Norte, The End of History (2013), which I keep returning to, had this same length and imbued greater depth. Is it, dare I say it, a case where Norte was a deliberate attempt at being more commercially accessible, or an attempt with multiple screenwriters including Diaz, a deliberately narrative and plot heavier production. In comparison, is Season of the Devil unfortunately where the director has full freedom but cannot focus himself as much as he should?

The singing itself proves an issue too. When it succeeds, it truly succeeds, the most potent lyric just the sound "La la la" which is the mantra of the soldiers, an ominous mantra which is used to incredible effect. Other times the singers chosen, even if raw due to the production, stand out. But many of the lyrics, which replace the vast dialogue in his other work, are repetitious or don't register at all. The irony is that trying to not be a conventional musical in structure is a greater detriment than if this was to compromise as it doesn't feel fully connected to each other, the exception being mainly whenever the soldiers sing. It's strange, that the soldiers are the most interesting characters but at the same time they as they are the most interesting part of the cast, as they have the most grounded and distinct lyrics, openly understandable and evocative of their blind worship of dictatorship. They also have the one aspect where Diaz is really actually trying anything remotely unconventional in this entire film and creates a powerful image - that of the soldiers' leader, a man who babbles in an incomprehensible language, not translated in the subtitles I had probably on purpose, who has an entirely other face on the back of his neck, a grotesque piece of flesh wearing glasses that adds to the horror of this figure's evil power.

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzEyYjhhYzgtZGFmYS00ZmNmLTg0Ym
UtMTZmMWE0YTBmYjM0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTc5OTMwOTQ@._V1_.jpg

The issue that our villains, the real life tyrants, have more interest in their horrifying behaviour than those we are supposed to care for is a huge failure for Season of the Devil even as a bleak metaphor of this historical event. The only other song of note is “Talampunay Blues”, which is over the drugging, rape and eventually murder of a female character by them, mostly depicted off-screen with the song a hypnotic trance as they drug her. Its horrifying but actually with reason, where you have utterly care for her and feel your gut as a viewer entangle in revulsion. Everything else however falls into a problematic issue with a lot of art cinema, from the 2010s especially for me, that it's deemed enough to show the worst of humanity to win awards or be "great" without a greater psychological context or insight. Even in context of non-linear, experimental cinema, a vein of trajectory should have a credible logic to it. It is very bad sign when I felt that the village could've easily ganged up on the soldiers and disposed of them, only to procrastinate against a tiny motley bunch of thugs, a far more problematic thought for me to have had as this is based on real history with actual death of innocents involved.

Undeniably, the film looks incredible, but that in itself feels dangerously a crux to fall back behind as a defensive shield. There is a potential backlash with this type of "slow cinema", which has already been talked of, whether it is truly inspired. I am a huge defender of the likes of Tsai Ming-liang or Bela Tarr, who used this style to absorb a world especially as fall all the long takes of nothingness there was still activity being held onscreen. There's a question to ask if shooting long takes in forest, as I have seen from Lav Diaz a couple of times now, is actually profound or just indulgent, a completely subjective answer to make as artistic opinion is not technological fact, but with a sense that one (I) have to ask whether four hours plus of misery actually teaches me about the worst of Philippine's dire, complex history. To be subjective, compare it to a fellow artist like Nick Joaquin, an author who paints numerous histories of his home land of the Philippines in a more expressive form, and it has to be asked whether this extreme minimalism can work as well or have we swallowed a placebo by accident?

Slow cinema definitely succeeds, but you take a huge risk even going up to three hours. Four hours is in cinema still viewed as an epic, eight hours plus a mini-series or an art installation. We build over four hours here with one character left in the bleakest way possible, alone and crying with a loaded gun left to them, but has the film before that strong final image actually used its form well enough to built towards it? It is not a practical concept to spend time watching an audio-visual construct called cinema over three hours let alone more physically but also in the sense that the focus needed for such a construct is difficult to maintain even for the most engaged of cineastes. Unless you intend to make a cinematic equivalent of a trance, length demands justification, and to be honest I'll give Lav Diaz much more grievance over his films just for this fact when over "difficult" cinema is significantly shorter than this.

Is Season of the Devil abstract? No, because far from the length and style creating an unconventional and emotionally relevant mood for this important material as a result, it instead creates instead a very matter-of-fact tone which is paced with extremely long per scenes. Beyond whether you could've told the film in half its length, does the length imbue resonance either? Sadly, even when my viewing experience was unfortunately cut up into awkward sections, as Season of the Devil's length even for one of Diaz's shortest films is a lot to take in, I have to say no. It feels, worse as I have seen this filmmaker make a legitimately incredible film, like an artistic dead end. Not the work, but the sense that a backlash could transpire one day the more his work is made available beyond film festivals and film critics. Even for fans of tough cinema, it has to be asked whether this as is radical as say Satantango (1994) in terms of structure and meaning behind it as, for me, it really feels miscalculated.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Minimalist
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None


From https://cf-images.us-east-1.prod.boltdns.net/v1/static/769341148/31a02c2f-f757-4e58-bfd5
-5492d02a8ce6/e00714af-995a-4718-be9e-a5e14236caf2/928x523/match/image.jpg

Wednesday 21 August 2019

O Fantasma (2000)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
images/I/81zflOAcOmL._RI_.jpg


Director: João Pedro Rodrigues
Screenplay: João Pedro Rodrigues, José Neves, Paulo Rebelo and Alexandre Melo
Cast: Ricardo Meneses as Sérgio; Beatriz Torcato as Fátima; Andre Barbosa as João; Eurico Vieira as Virgilio

[Full Spoilers Ahead]

In mind that for many people, life is a cruel existence of constant yearning, I've probably developed a greater ability to follow protagonists in cinema who could be entirely duplicitous or even evil, but the experience in the best of cinema can be a trail to map their obsessions and the route leading to their downfalls and experiences. Even if the plot is minimal, it's at least with a logic that has meaning for them. In the case of Sérgio, protagonist of Portugeuse director João Pedro Rodrigues' debut, his particular yearning is a sexual one, the garbage collector desensitized by even a hook-up and BJ by another man in a urinal. Even when he gets into the strange erotic experience of masturbating a cop handcuffed in a car, it's only because he's abruptly encountered the sight and is curious.

O Fantasma isn't a "nice" film, a reminder that the wave of LGBTQ cinema of yore had teeth, a necessity felt from the likes of Kenneth Anger up to bisexual director Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse films, all in many ways reminding the viewers that the life of a gay man is not a one-dimensional construct. (The same for gay female filmmakers, though the fact that their work feels still maligned at times is frustrating). Admittedly, a film like O Fantasma starts immediately with a sharpness that will immediately make or break the film, where a leather gimp is shunting a handcuffed man from behind as a dog is pawing at the closed doo outside in the corridor, the film become even more transgressive and dark as it goes. As a heterosexual man, I am aware I am an outside looking in the metaphorical window, always in danger of distorting the image a gay viewer has more to be concerned of in interpreting, but it can probably be agreed upon that when we delve into the life of this anti-hero, a guy completely disconnected from the world barring a vague stimulus, his journey has a weight. The tangent from finds Speedos in the garbage he likes rubbing against himself to wandering a landfill on all fours in the aforementioned homemade gimp outfit is felt with having a logic to him even if that's bizarre to write as a journey in one sentence.

Another particular obsession is this rise in an idiosyncratic type of world cinema, very relaxed paces but yet to meet the post-Michael Haneke style of minimal filmmaking, instead a very idiosyncratic verisimilitude I grew into cinema with through the mid 2000s onwards. Films that are closer in looser plotting and introspective to novels, and have a realism in shooting on location, but had a tendency growing up for me, no matter no country of origin and similar production styles, of always being unpredictable, a wonderful richness in how they could never be signposted in clichés and that, not in this case but found in Rodrigues' The Ornithologist (2016), not afraid to enter magical realism or full blown surrealism. They also could be transgressive, O Fantasma somewhat early to the controversies the likes of Carlos Reygadas would get to in the mid 2000s but around the proto- era with a character in Sérgio who isn't exactly like an open book. He's a young man who has a love-hate relationship with Fátima, the young female member of the garbage collection team that is almost entirely male, her physical attractiveness confounded by a potential romantic rivalry with their boss, with the added complication that a) Sérgio is gay, or at least more attracted to sex on a raw level to anyone but Fátima, and b) more closer to the group's station dog in terms of friendliness.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P349Z7C1YG8/maxresdefault.jpg

Filmmaking wise, this is a muted, down-to-earth production which I commonly connect to an international style as mentioned a few paragraphs ago. This is from what I gather Rodrigues' most down-to-earth work in stylistic aesthetic; O Fantasma is proudly grotesque instead to a deliberately provocative style that contrasts these strange events we see with a logic. Mainly that the world of Portuguese urban life looks dull, Sérgio literally a nocturnal figure who comes out in the light out of work with no defined time where he sleeps. So comfortable in dirt from his job, he finds clothing like a black thong in the garbage and takes them home to festishised and wear unwashed, an ordinary thin and handsome guy who looks like anyone, whose compassion is shown in how he loves the dog, but is utterly disconnected from all. Even, as mention, sex in a bathroom is abruptly ended for him because he cannot gain anything from it.

Hence, he eventually becomes a literal phantom, culminating over the tensions he encounters, the film wilfully touching upon the idea of sexual violence from one male to another but as a fantasy, an even more taboo concept the older the film becomes, handcuffs and extreme fantasies played with. The film shows no judgement, doesn't damn or praise, merely depicts and you the viewer are forced to make up your mind on, which I see as the other virtue of world cinema into the Millennium. Eventually our protagonist ends up in a landfill, lucky enough to have created a costume that can allow him to relieve himself but doesn't have pockets for food in its skin tight nature, forcing him to catch a rabbit to sustain himself, drink muddy water in a ditch even if it's likely the cause of him puking later, all felt without a sense of a man degrading himself but someone who snapped, the tensions at work against his own little world merely colliding.

Is it all worth it? Yes, in mind I have viewed this type of world cinema less in terms of plot narrative but that it merely was a backbone for mood and introspective chamber pieces, subconscious narratives inside our casts' heads onscreen. Certainly in the small but growing filmography of João Pedro Rodrigues, who sadly isn't a hugely known figure despite carving a name in the small canon of prominent known Portuguese filmmakers, has never clearly cared for conventionality. Instead, he willingly deals with characters thrown into scenarios which deal with sexuality and in an existential state, taking to a greater point in The Ornithologist in how a secular ornithologist ends up on a spiritual journey through surreal vignettes, even to the point he transforms into the director himself playing the same character, literally taking its prangs of thought and placing them directly onto himself in a way that offers me a chance to be even more empathetic to him as an artist willing to bare himself.

Obviously, I wish these films were more easily available, but what I see by luck (and MUBI's streaming services) is to keep treasured, even when seeing a gimp in a cavernous industrial work area taking a dump isn't conventional Saturday night viewing imagery. Far from tasteless and problematic, human if profane is the best word to describe this film, philosophical regardless of a viewer's sexuality and gender. That it's still provocative to this day, and never in a way that's trying too hard to shock, is also a virtue that I wish was more common, something to be learnt from in this film.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Provocative/Sensual
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None


From http://fr.web.img4.acsta.net/r_1280_720/medias
/nmedia/00/02/23/73/69197521_ph1.jpg

Saturday 17 August 2019

Cop Rock (1990)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
/images/I/51MfjDb7AUL.jpg


Show Creator: Steven Bochco, William M. Finkelstein
Cast: Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn; Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank; Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick; Vondie Curtis-Hall as Cmdr. Warren Osborne; David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo; Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander; Paul McCrane as Det. Bob McIntire; James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose; Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin; Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines; Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso

As American television goes, the following is pretty infamous. Suffice to say, the reason why it exists is happily the same with television as it is cinema, that when someone is successful, they are allowed to have more creative freedom, which is something we thankfully (if only occasionally) have today. Yes, there are usually disasters, but having seen all eleven episodes of Cop Rock, even apparent disasters like this one are much more interesting than they are credited for originally. Steven Bochco, the man behind Cop Rock, was already cementing a legendary status for such shows as Hill Street Blues (1981-87), a major production in the cop procedural TV show which was culturally significant in how it changed the genre and did exceptionally well in the ratings. He worked in other genres, including infamously another cancelled one season show, the animated comedy Capitol Critters (1992), but he's synonymous for the American crime show. A female producer from Broadway, in the height of Hill Street Blues' success, came to him with the offer to turn it into a musical. He declined, but the idea nagged at him and he had the influence to make it, even if from the beginning many were baffled by the idea.

That Cop Rock combines a gritty police procedural with musical numbers, which was seen for a long time as one of the worst shows ever produced, is arguably a strange concept even today. It also isn't the worst show ever made - its instead a show that is at times utterly gauche and cringe inducing when it misses the mark completely, but when it hits said target is both absolutely compelling and uncomfortable pertinent in its subject matters. The notable detail is that it's still a dark show, even if the opening credits sequence - Randy Newman, who wrote the pilot and won a Best Song Emmy for his troubles, playing the main theme Under the Gun as the cast out of character nod along pleasingly - belies this.

Trying to keep the plot synopsis down is going to be difficult as there's so many. Every episode has its own little story, even one a reoccurring one with actress Kathleen Wilhoite playing a heroine addicted mother, but the show follows significant plot threads throughout the entire length of what was created. So let's use bullet points to concise them all....

  1. On-the-edge detective Vincent LaRusso (Peter Onorati), when an arrest of a cop killer is botched, kills him whilst he is in handcuffs and tries to cover up said incident. He doesn't succeed and the ensuing court trial places his precariously between a martyr for a right wing cause, and being a racist as the suspect killed was an African American man, made more uncomfortably prophetic as both the Rodney King incident and ensuing riot, where a black man was unjustifiably beaten up by white LA police on film, would take a year after this show set and shot in Los Angeles was cancelled. For me as well the O.J. Simpson trial that would take place in the mid 90s makes this as pertinent, both as a media circus and how it became a hot topic on the issue of racism in the LA police force, a subject that is reversed here years earlier with a white police officer on trial with the topic still a concern.
  2.  LaRusso's own partner, a black police officer Det. William Donald Potts (William Thomas Jr.), finds himself in an even worst predicament between being viewed as a Judas by testifying against his colleague, being viewed as stepping down from bravery if he doesn't testify, and actual racism as even a burning cross is placed on his family's front lawn.
  3. A young female officer Vicki Quinn (Anne Bobby) has a budding relationship with her male co-partner Officer Andy Campo (David Gianopoulos), which has playful flirtation but with a distance kept as she is married to the much older police coroner Ralph Ruskin (Ron McLarty). Tensions as Ruskin becomes jealous of a potential affair come about.
  4. The office whose partner was killed, Officer Franklin Rose (James McDaniel), has a tenuous relationship with the naive but open hearted new partner Det. Joseph Gaines (Mick Murray).
  5. Captain John Hollander (Larry Joshua), who believes in virtue and righteousness, places his interest behind LaRusso being put to jail for killing the cop killer, but is stuck in tough work which strains his marriage due to the long hours.
  6. Chief Roger Kendrick (Ronny Cox), the very conservative police chief who is a literal cowboy, is obsessed with good ol' Western justice in spite of it being woefully obsolete to Los Angeles of the new era, something he is going to have to confront with only his second Cmdr. Warren Osborne (Ernie Hudson in the pilot, Vondie Curtis-Hall throughout the rest of the show) trying to steer him along a sane path.
  7. Mayor Louise Plank (Barbara Bosson), who has higher political aspirations even if it means having drastic plastic surgery; whilst the subject of her requiring surgery to be "beautiful" is never tackled in the show or questioned, it does lead to a romance with Kendrick, who she loves but is stuck in a sometimes tense relationship as everything he says will also make her look bad, worse as he puts his foot in his mouth with deeply problematic ideas in front of the press especially when it comes to the trial of LaRusso.


That's a lot to take in, but by the end of Cop Rock, even due to how it was cancelled and how it decided to end the show, all the plots escalating as the series goes along. Arguably, Vincent LaRusso and his plot is the centre, as it's the biggest in terms of repercussions. Certainly it's the most ethnically and morally complex in terms of the themes Cop Rock is tackling, again surprisingly if disturbingly pertinent for this Los Angeles set show, as knowledge of issues that would take place in real life years later.

And again, this is all in mind these has musical numbers and even dance choreography, which will probably cause one's head to spin and look to this review in bafflement unless you have grown up with a lot of Broadway and theatrical musical adaptations of unconventional source material choices. Since this is the crux of the show, the question to ask is whether it's any good or not. Truthfully, it varies wildly though only one is truly dire - there's unintentional comedy in a plastic surgeon singing to Major Plank whilst models parade around him, but the only song that's truly indefensible even in unintentional comedy is one of a new female partner for Andy Campo who is turned on by beating perps up and has awful lyrics to it. Even when the songs might be deeply inappropriate, songs about a group for Hispanic men in a suspect line dancing about racial profiling or the female cops seducing their co workers whilst about to pose as sex workers to catch Johns, its felt like Cop Rock was at least being ambitious in those scenes. Randy Newman, famous for the likes of Toy Story's soundtrack, is the biggest name in terms of the music, but barring the opening credits he only wrote the pilot, which in itself took risks by starting with a rap song of all things. After that, the composers who stepped into his shoes took a risk of embarrassment through anything like country to straight ahead rock.

When it does succeed, it does well. Newman got the Emmy for the likes of the most memorable from the pilot "Guilty" where former Temptations singer Louis Price is the judge at a trial where a keyboard appears and the jurors become a gospel group; as absurd as it is, it's a fairly good example of what to expect. Ronny Cox has only one song, the country one, where he plays the antiquated cowboy singing of the good times whilst riding a horse through urban LA, much to the horrified bafflement of non-Caucasian families watching him pass. His assistant Osborne, as Cox's character has his own shooting gallery in his office, takes advantage of it to summon the backing singers of a Motown group he heads, Vondie Curtis-Halloffering romantic advice to his boss by way of his own Temptations like ballad. Or LaRusso confronting an African American campaigner who suggests he is a racist whilst the press gourd them on in the middle of a court house. Cop Rock wisely chooses actors who can sing and act, and that's arguably proven an advantage for the show as, reputation on the line, it's a lot more credible then its notoriety suggests. The issue is more that some of the song choices are abruptly included, or the musical backing has dated, people not used to trying rap or other genres trying it with awkward results. There's a sense that songs were included because that had to be a certain number per ad break, which is disruptive, more so when a few less meant that the best could've stood out more. Then you get something like the baby merchant who nearly steals his one scene, singing about selling tots with relish on a human black market, which is honestly a great moment, and the one that gets viral hits as a clip online, but also reveals that Cop Rock's issues come, being an experiment, as a result of tonal problems which can suddenly turn some scenes camp against what is actually a lot of compelling, complex drama.

From https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WmG897Ut62velwosqe2hjEnSZBM=
/0x1080/volume-assets.voxmedia.com/production/fe74e63408455c0
252dab24ad6cf74d7/migrate-ppdmpmMzE6eorpObdcu8RrPQpXXw1BXE.jpeg

It also comes with the knowledge that I eventually took the songs as a natural part of the show's universe, that there was nothing at all amiss about stalker targeting Gina Gershon, in a one episode as an actress, bursting in a song as I had adapted to the structure of the series. It all however comes too with the knowledge that this in itself is bizarre, and that even within the structure of a regular cop show at the time, the entire combination of it with this musical presentation is absolutely idiosyncratic. Reality is constantly intruded by these songs, including dance sequences, but they still speak the drama of the tales within itself, so even the funny songs like Joseph Gaines misplacing his car in a parking structure have to be taken seriously as character development, so it gets into a curious state of reality for a TV show to have.

Even the cop show structure is of note, as someone who rarely watches television and hasn't seen a lot of this era's American programming, what was considered normal here becoming unique to me as a result. And it goes without saying the drama is actually compelling, a level of depth as a result of continuous stories followed along together which means Cop Rock as a one off which never succeeded still works as a long form mini-series by proxy. The curious duality of Cop Rock, where its infamy comes from, doesn't deny that its very well acted and well made, and the idiosyncrasy is still unique to this day. Truly if it had focused more on a more serious tone for the songs, it "could've" lasted longer, or at least wouldn't of had as much of the stigma of its reputation. This is all in mind that, probably the case, musicals even in 1990 had lost so much of their pop cultural reputation outside certain circumstances it would've still been seen as a ridiculous premise. But it could've at least won a few more fans much earlier into its existence.

Certainly, it emphasises for me a brand new interest in the figure of Steve Bochco, as whilst there are heavy handed moments here, his very open minded and confrontational take on the cop drama for television is utterly engaging and thematically rich. Even a side story, where Joseph Gaines tried to help a homeless man only to find it more complicated then he'd presume it to be, comes off less nihilistic or cynical. Instead, this paints that these figures are complex figures that can try their best, but in the murky world of reality for the police, always bump against obstacles and detours with the potential of corrupt and slipping, which the story of Paul LaRusso becomes the most potent in how quietly that resolves. Every moment of pure cheese is contrasted by something still strong and pertinent, and not only is there an ending but Cop Rock got a good one.

[Major Spoiler Warning]

For you see, with the cast absolutely enjoying working on Cop Rock and aware that they were likely to be cancelled anyway, everyone comes to together for a final scene in the final episode which breaks the fourth wall so hard they literally make a joke about it not being over until a fat lady appears to sing. Ronny Cox complains to Vondie Curtis-Hall over scripts that he only got one song, everyone when they appear for a group song is clearly enjoying it all, and there's even a damn joke about both this series being more expensive than Heaven's Gate (1980), which is really an eye opener knowing the infamy of Michael Cimino's western epic, and of a show that replaced Cop Rock but only lasted for two seasons.

[Spoilers End]

Certainly, Cop Rock has the distinction of being one of the most infamous of all American shows that only got one season. Thought it's ironic, considering how long it actually took to even get a proper physical release, a DVD set from Shout Factory in the early 2010s, that it's been talked about for so long even before then. A lot of it was derision but as is common, the creations of any medium that usually get the most talked about even as the worst technically don't count for that as they're too memorable and interesting for the distinction. Also, major creative flaws and all, Cop Rock has too many good moments to outweigh the scenes for me that lunged badly into poor choices. And, come on, it's too memorable and weird for me to not like, someone whose obsessions from my writing usually about the peculiar one-offs.

Abstract Spectrum: Tonally Jarring/Unconventional
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low


From https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/05/14/arts/
14COPROCK1/14COPROCK1-jumbo.jpg