Ai City (1986)

From https://alchetron.com/cdn/Ai-City-images-
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Director: Kōichi Mashimo

Screenplay: Hideki Sonoda

Based on the manga by SYUFO (Shuuhou Itahashi)

(Voice) Cast: Hirotaka Suzuoki as Kei; Yuki Ueda as Ai; Mami Koyama as K2; Banjou Ginga as Ii; Ichirō Nagai as Rai Ro Chin; Issei Futamata as Ryan; Jouji Yanami as Ti; Kenyuu Horiuchi as Mister J; Kiyoshi Kobayashi as Kuu Ragua Lee; Nachi Nozawa as Raiden; Seiko Nakano as S; Takeshi Watabe as Aroi

Synopsis: In a futuristic metropolis, a man named Kei, a young girl named Ai, a detective named Raiden and a cat are fleeing from a motorbike gang. Kei was a test subject, for the evil corporation FRAUD, for telekinetic powers as Ai was; their story becomes even more complicated as allegiances switch, FRAUD falls into violent infighting, and that there's the question of what and who Ai actually is.

 

Warning, this review will spoil a lot, but even then unravelling Ai City will not prepare one for actually watching the anime feature film. Most of the review will just be trying to untangle said plot - I understood most of Ai City, not an attempt at having an ego, but that I have learnt from seeing so many of these films which slip into vague connections to link the dots together. (And listened to the right podcasts/articles that try to explain the plot). Ai City, "loosely" based on the manga by Shuuhou Itahashi, is a film between its unconventional plot structure and erratic pacing of plotting that is put together to be much more difficult than it should've been, to the point it's gleefully weird. Also it just has weird content, else how do you explain a comedic side character cat who seems to have wandered from a children's cartoon in the midst of this proto- (or slightly off smelling) cousin of Akira (1988)?

That this film was only released two years before Akira, which broke into the West and properly introduced anime so that someone like myself is here writing this review in the first place, is significant as for a period in anime and manga's history it had an obsession with ESP and psychic powers. Possibly influenced by Uri Geller, every piece of cutlery's greatest nightmare, and to the general obsession with fortean culture that especially came from the late sixties and seventies, at least with the existence of Genma Wars (1967-9), the collaboration between sci-fi author Kazumasa Hirai and the legendary Shotaro Ishinomori which was adapted into the infamous 1983 feature length animation. Whatever the case it became an obsession for the industry: even Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980), a giant robot show that became an institutional franchise to this day, had to have psychics in its plot eventually; even a romantic comedy, the Kimagure Orange Road franchise, had psychics in it. Even the legendary musical groups Sparks had plans to turn Mai the Psychic Girl, a 1986 manga, into a musical that Tim Burton has interest in adapting into film. Ai City is another member of this fad, when psychics were big as a plot point, the inevitable weird one.

Kei, as is described in a very descriptive song halfway through, is a man with super psychic powers fighting for good, kidnapped alongside his girlfriend for experiments by a group named FRAUD; she dies, he is deemed defective and only useful for laundry duties, only for the inappropriate cartoon cat (who can't talk, but walks on hind legs and interacts with everyone) to reveal that his girlfriend was cloned, now a seven year old with incredibly powerful abilities. Certainly she's part of a power play between FRAUD's leader Kuu Ragua Lee, helped by minions including cloned female beaus and artificially constructed men, and Lee's former colleague Lai Lou Chin, probably the strangest character as he is literally a tiny little old man in a jar, in water, on top of a robot body who's psychic ability is so strong he can conjure up stone floating heads that swarm the city.

From https://fpscinema.files.wordpress.com/
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Ai City's difficulty is not from how dense the plot threads are, but how the story is told. A lot is in the abrupt flashbacks and a lot of exposition that feels out of place, eventually starting to get into ill defined details like past lives, a DNA evolutionary monster and an abrupt crow barring of what the title "Ai City" actually refers to. Other details are just unpredictable, weirdness of this specific eighties era of anime. The cat, a fully fledged character who eventually gets his own set of clothes and is a figure of importance plot wise, behind machinations and even responsible (with glowing yellow eyes) in causing Ai to remember a password randomly. Or K2, a former enemy who is blasted so hard with psychic power both all her clothes and the fabric of existed are blown away, propelled through reality itself as if a theatre stage cloth ripped asunder, losing her memories and becomes a heroine, entering a flirtatious relationship with detective Raiden, another character, and wearing a Playboy bunny outfit, even getting her memories back and getting in an awkward respect scenario with a henchman she is now against when she kills someone on his side. Material like this, or the relationship itself with Kei and Ai now, despite being once his girlfriend, she calls him her "papa" and take on a paternal one with all the creepy connotations there by accident, just adds to the strange collage that you have onscreen. Even in terms of the depiction of psychic powers, Ai City is unique in how, to depict the psychics being different, they have digital number gauges appear on their foreheads mid-use, the numbers for each power varying randomly depending on what's done.

It's all incredibly irrational, incredibly random, but also magnificently compelling and at times gorgeous to look at, the most eighties of anime in aesthetic style with moments of incredible experimentation. Even with an oblivious idea of why a metropolis this sprawling has few bystanders barring one scene, there's still a multicoloured spectacle as a result. It sadly wasn't a title Manga Entertainment added to their old DVD re-releases, a shame as its not only a cut above in craft (barring some wonky moments), but would've been the perfect representation of that delirious breed of anime churned out from the period, with all the tropes I love. The fabric of time is literally ripped, only to be fixed as if a traffic incident, whilst Lai Lou Chin is powerful enough to not only brainwash people but also release those aforementioned giant heads, big enough for anyone to ride on. The best way to approach this film, as I did, is to never attempt to figure out the whole plot, aware that a lot of it was probably improvised; it's not as difficult to grasp as it first appears as a result, but just mixed with wild tangents.

And yes, MAJOR SPOILERS HERE, it gets weirder when the film collapses into forgotten memories, a battle in a phantom realm with a horrifying mass of DNA that feels nonetheless illogical, and the plot being told as a Möbius strip which repeats itself from the beginning. Even admitting that doesn't spoil how this happens, as that in itself in its abruptness befits the work. And this is in mind of who made Ai City. Director Kōichi Mashimo is a prolific figure - the next year after this, he also helmed Dirty Pair: Project Eden (!987), a beloved entry in that famous franchise that was seen as an incredible piece of animation just in the opening credits alone, and he has cut work like The Irresponsible Captain Tylor (1993) before he founded Bee Train, a divisive studio behind titles like Noir (2000). Knowing something this bizarre may have been just another day in the office for him, alongside his more famous production for the next year, just adds to the madness.

Eventually the psychic genre ebbed away, befittingly with Akira when it helped anime reach the West feeling like the zenith. But it at least released this oddity too, even if questions have to be asked what they were thinking.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Mindbender/Psychedelic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Ai City, as obscure as you can get from the eighties anime boom, definitely feels like it could only have been made in that era. Something utterly perplexing yet energised as a mad, colourful head-trip.

From https://66.media.tumblr.com/339a9289eb4e15da3dfc
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The Headless Eyes (1971)

From https://img.reelgood.com/content/movie/
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Director: Kent Bateman

Screenplay: Kent Bateman

Cast: Bo Brundin as Arthur Malcolm; Gordon Ramon; Kelley Swartz; Mary Jane Early

Synopsis: After a bungled home robbery leaves him without an eye, artist Arthur Malcolm (Arthur Malcolm) goes further off the deep end as he secretly kills women for their eyes, using them for his plastic mould sculptures.

The father of Jason Bateman and Justine Bateman, Kent Bateman among directing a few films and television, and producing Teen Wolf Too (1987), also made and wrote this dirty little film named The Headless Eyes. Knee deep in the American independent genre industry in 1971, which writer/musician Stephen Thrower has famously chronicled beyond just that year in the book Nightmare U.S.A., this feels like the weird uncle of Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer (1979), also filmed in New York City. Ferrara's mainstream debut* was a grim-fest where an artist eventually loses his mind and goes on a kill-frenzy with a battery powered electric drill; imagine that with an artist who is already insane here and replaced Ferrara himself in that role with Swedish actor Bo Brundin, who in a really odd but interesting detail learnt for this review got a few mainstream roles from the late seventies into the eighties, one-off roles in major TV shows like Hawaii Five-O and The A-Team. Not bad considering here, with his thick accented English and looming insane look as a deranged eye patch wearing killer who rips eyes out for his art, this is as weird and grimy a movie to appear as you could get as an actor, the kind that with one look at it would cause someone to want to be in the other room for you. As I'll get into later on, that's not a cheap joke at Brundin's expense; instead, it feels appropriate the entire viewing experience that you feel uncomfortable even the how the lead acts.

The film immediately lets you in on what's going to be witnessed in the introductory scene - Brundin's character is introduced over a woman in her bed, with intentions to rob her, only to get the King Lear treatment and have an eye spooned out. The soundtrack from then repeats the same screaming of his, as he flails himself out of her apartment into the street in front of bystanders, the same sound bite over and over again about his eye ad nauseum. This makes one aware as well a larger part of the film's weirdness is it being a very low budget production where logic was a subjective thing, budgets were low and experimentation was encouraged, even if not sure of what it was doing.

Filmed in New York City, the environment itself is part of the feeling of needing a shower immediately after the viewing. A run down metropolis, utterly against sixties idealism already from a few years before just in the atmosphere felt, the hippies long drugged out and in-between claustrophobic rooms to tacky living room aesthetics a sense everyone's trapped in a confined space, something that'd seep even into big Hollywood productions through the decade. Our lead Arthur Malcolm himself, in the middle of this, is already a distinct figure, pronounced accent and forcefulness in his performance alongside the giant black eye patch. The character's also already mad when he starts, after the eye gouging introduction, and whilst it's a series of clichés from past and future films, obsessed with preserving beauty and clearing away "filthy" women, paranoid and proto-Driller Killer angst as an artist, Brundin's performance is legitimately creepy and freakish as he rambles to himself. Partially as much of this is accidental, as I suspect a lot of the film is post-synched in sound, but as much of it is because, whether he could have been a varied actor beyond this one film, he fits here looking and acting like a legitimately deranged person.

Arguably the film's a directionless mess - most of it is lengthy scenes of Arthur Malcolm pursuing victims, eventually becoming obsessed with a blonde female actress which lasts a long time and is the only backbone to a work which feels like a lingering nightmare instead. The film only shows some sense of progression a few times only to uncut them in the lead's sense of isolated psychosis - such as when his girlfriend appears, a middle class figure whose class and his neurosis created a wedge between them, or a young woman who wants to learn his art he tries to distance himself from. Structurally The Headless Eyes is a screenwriting class's worst nightmare as a result. Eventually concluding with the killer finding himself in a meat locker, being creped out by dead animals staring at him when he accomplishes a gruesome murder and eye gorging, the cheap gore and animal eyes certainly gross, the film ends with an anti-climax. A legitimately cold experience unless one was prepared for the ridiculous in odd films like this.

In general, production wise, The Headless Eyes befits this material even if it's a grungy, far from perfect work. Something shot by chance, with "stolen" shots or whatever was available. The music itself kept me on edge too, a druggy seventies mess of post psychedelia and what I expect would be the audio equivalent of taking crack, not since Psyched by the 4D Witch (1973) the burn out of late sixties music felt and staining my ear canals. It's a dishevelled mess which argues that, whilst an ugly mass, technical sloppiness if implemented again on purpose could add a greater sense of creepiness that cannot be mustered with a professional orchestral score exception in the best cases. Here in its accidental form it provides a lot of freakishness even if the material can be unintentionally hilarious.

Abstract Spectrum: Disturbing/Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Personal Opinion:

In lieu to the long anticipation I had for The Headless Eyes, it's not an American oddity in the truest sense, and I'd advise caution for a film like this one. It's at times a film even at a short length for a feature feels too long and out stays its welcome, but it makes up for it in what a mad experience it is if you can tolerate it. For us who've willingly dived into the currents of US independent made horror, it's a fascinating scuzz fest, one of those films which tap into an actual dark subterranean of their culture at the time.

From https://www.mondo-digital.com/headlesseyes5.jpg

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* Note that Ferrara's first feature length film was the porn film 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976). Whilst rumours exist of an actual Western re-release, nothing has materialised in 2019 yet.

Non-Abstract Review: Cry Baby Lane (2000)

From https://hiddenhorrors.files.wordpress.com
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Director: Peter Lauer

Screenplay: Peter Lauer and Bob Mittenthal

Cast: Jase Blankfort as Andrew; Trey Rogers as Carl; Larc Spies as Kenneth; Frank Langella as Bennett; Anne Lange as Ann Weber; Marc John Jefferies as Hall; Allison Siko as Louise; Jessica Brooks Grant as Megan; Sheri Drach as Kathy; Gary Perez as Gary; Steve Mellor as Dick Weber

Synopsis: In a small town, there is a tale of a pair of conjoined twins who, when they died as infants, were severed from each other, one buried in the cemetery and the other buried at a place called Cry Baby Lane. Andrew (Jase Blankfort), and his older brother Carl (Trey Rogers), have a mock séance at a grave to exploit this with a group of girls, only to release an entity that is significantly malicious.

The story goes, like any good spooky tale, that on October 28th 2000, a TV movie was shown on the American channel Nickelodeon that was deemed inappropriate for its young audience, and buried never to be heard of again. Over the decade or so that would follow, this work directed by Peter Lauer and originally meant to be a theatrical release, costing $800,000, was even questioned in terms of whether it actually existed. Some suggested, on the other side of the spectrum in a form of Creepy Pasta (online created urban legends) that it was suppressed for having incredibly disturbing material onscreen. Finally in 2011, a viral Reddit thread lead to a user ugnaught¹, who claimed to on the "lost" film on a VHS copy, uploading it online. Having seen the original broadcast version, which began with an introduction by Melissa Joan Hart, who I grew up with watching Clarissa Explains It All (1991–1994) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996–2003), I can attest that such a film did exist and, when that leaked VHS copy came about, Nickelodeon played into the hype by showing Cry Baby Lane again, claiming it was a "banned" film and then eventually showing it at Halloweens over the 2010s, particularly in a nod to a 90s nostalgia boom.

The fable of the horrible things said to exist in the film - as Creepy Pasta have included a SpongeBob Squarepants episode that was created by a psychologically disturbed figure which horrified the producers, or a cursed Mickey Mouse animation - is probably more horrifying than the actual TV movie, but it itself in the context of a one-off for a young audience is still weird, gruesome and frankly creepy in implied metaphors even for a crowd (like myself) who grew up on Goosebumps. Beyond the initial story told by the undertaker character Bennett (Frank Langella, who director Peter Lauer originally wanted to be played by Tom Waits) - where two conjoined twins (one good and one evil) die in infancy and are sewn away from each other - there's still a film here where which plays into a dark and fascinating premise. That, once the evil twin is accidentally released as a malevolent spectre, he infects people in the central town and makes them destructive and evil, particularly a group of girl scouts who become sadists, building off as well a central theme of our young male protagonist Andrew (Jase Blankfort) and his fears of puberty and masculinity.

And no, that's not between the lines either in the text, as he's shy and hates how he's scared all the time, at point confessing this and accusing his mother for having caused this by being over protective. His older brother Carl (Trey Rogers), obsessed with being macho and a diehard pro wrestling fan (1999 WCW and WWF merchandise on the walls), constantly picks on him and calls him a wimp, all whilst their father is a fascinating character, laid back and sardonically charming, also with one gag about him implying so much complexity when, watching monster trucks on the TV when his wife's in the room, one scene has him switch to coverage of supermodels on a catwalk when she's out the room.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xaz5GrH_-WI/Vh_YkulS3uI/
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Andrew's life is complex as he has a crush on a girl, who unfortunately is among those scouts possessed and becoming evil, among those tormenting him alongside his eventually possessed older brother and even trying to harm him; it reaches the point mid way through of him being stripped to his underwear, nearly being gored by a bull, and having to flee for his life half naked. Then there's the threat to kiss his beloved, whilst she's possess and threatening this or "chi chi", involving a significantly bigger and gigantic girl looking at him as if she'll easily break his spine in two. That's without his mother not believing him and even the adults, like a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, becoming possessed, where police will try to run you off the road, farmers with trying to run you over with a combine harvester, and guys for shits and giggles with beer will blow up their own boats in madness.

The eccentricity grows as a virtue. Whilst it would've been interesting to see Tom Waits in the role, Frank Langella, the major actor hired, also happens to be a great character actor who in his mere presence raises the material up. More so as, part of the film's sick sense of humour, he's openly a bad undertaker who will even replace coffins of those about to be buried with cheaper ones, as scummy as you can get despite still being a good, moral man at heart. His assistants include a stoner, (well an implied stoner who just acts sleepy), and another who digs the graves who pretends to always be ill but, when no one is looking, dresses up as a cowboy listening to country music in his home and prepares the dining table as if he's about to have a date there, never seen or even hinted at for a weirder twist. The production is as much like this, even if it evoked my childhood of watching shows like Goosebumps, with its moody atmosphere on such a low budget and the instrumental surf rock theme sounding like it's going to break into a song by The Cramps.

The result, appropriate for a more mature young teenage audience, is one I really liked and wished was more easily available. Yes, I admit the mythos is fun and there's something really rewarding in seeing old American commercials - alongside probably one incredibly weird and inspired mock "news report" that, barring one cringe worthy reference to Mexican food, is from a reporter inside a young boy's intestines, interviewing the staff within it just before it's about to blow with potent gestated fart gas. But, again, it'd be something great to see a proper release of just to learn more of its background - just to have witnessed a film which, far from below my expectations, provided its own interesting and blatant subtexts to its horror was enough for me to admire it.

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODQ4YjExM
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1. https://archive.is/20130204104051/http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/08/13/081311-tech-news-crybaby-1-2#selection-345.12-345.20

Non-Abstract Review - Amethyst: Princess of Gem World (2013)

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/2/24/Amethyst_Princess_
of_Gemworld_%28Shorts%29_Episode_Level_3_Random_Encounter.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20130728141857

Director: Brianne Drouhard

Screenplay: Amy Wolfram

Based on the comic book series created by Gary Cohn, Ernie Colon and Dan Mishkin

(Voice) Cast: Sophie Oda as Amethyst; Eric Bauza as  Pegacorn; Keith Ferguson as Prince Topaz; Grey Griffin as the Frog Mayor; Tara Strong as the Frog Prince; Nicole Sullivan as the Jalapeño Vendor

Synopsis: Amethyst is playing a video game, a high fantasy adventure, only to be sucked through the hand held console screen and turned into a princess of this weird little world.

Here's a work that'll be difficult to elaborate on but not by fault of its director Brianne Drouhard or any of the production staff* - the issue is that, with what they were given before this micro-series was cancelled, this DC comic property only consists of seven episodes which are only two minutes or so long each. Thus it's effectively a short film or a test project when put together; something clearly worked hard on in what creativity is still at hand, but handed an ignoble fate of a lack of length, where even micro-series from Japan of more limited animation and ridiculous premises like talking farts can at least get over twenty minutes if you combine all the episodes in a marathon.

The work was part of a series of projects called DC Nation Shorts, small shorts based on obscurer DC Comics properties which were shown between their other, more conventionally long animated work on Cartoon Network, such as DC Super Pets, inspired on the time Batman and Superman had their own animal sidekicks in the Silver Age of comics, or imagining Batman villain Riddler as voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic. Reading up on them, including one animated by Aardman Animations of all people and a live footage version where real life professionals demonstrate the equipment of these characters in practical reality, it's an inspired idea and I want to see all of them. As much because that, whilst I got bored out of my skull by the modern Marvel Studios superhero film template, I am still fascinated and growing in fondness for these types of characters. If I could afford American comic books at a price closer to their Japanese counterparts, in terms of value for money, I'd be less inclined to read more famous creations like Spider-Man or Superman either, but delve into comic book history's strange oddities and cult figures. Some are legitimate cult icons - like Swamp Thing, the living embodiment of nature who became a greater figure in DC Comics when the legendary comic writer Alan Moore had a hand in changing him drastically. Some are misbegotten - like Man-Thing, Marvel's swamp creature now unfortunately living as the poor man's Swamp Thing. And some truly ill-advised ideas I read up upon and still want to read - like Marvel's U.S. 1, a truck driver hero with a cybernetic brain, which could pick up CB radio transmissions, and armed with a super-equipped big rig truck

Among these, Amethyst is also intriguing in a positive way - from 1983, the era of My Little Pony and He-Man, it was clearly meant to be a high fantasy story for a female audience; here, from a female director and a largely female production crew, this premise was re-tweaked for the modern era. In this version, Amethyst starts off as a bespectacled nerdy girl who, once transformed into Amethyst the heroine, finds herself increasingly baffled by what she encounters, immediately from the village of frog people proclaiming her a heroine of the realm, and yet using her smarts to succeed, including the idea that peppers in video games are really, really hot. This leads to the fact the series would've taken the piss out of high fantasy and role playing games, immediately evoking for me a Japanese straight-the-video anime series which tragically only had two episodes before it also got canned, Dragon Half (1993), which ran with its high fantasy setting into utterly ridiculous and hilarious consequences. The reference to anime isn't far off either, clearly influenced by it in aesthetic and also that the first joke is a parody of the magical girl genre, of female characters who transform into heroines like Sailor Moon, where the costume change sequence found in them takes place here in mid-air, not bad for Amethyst until the dimensional pocket said transformations always take place in disappears and one is still falling down in the sky.

Sadly, and this is a justification for typing an expletive as it perfectly sums up the situation, the creators of this production were given a shit deal in that, even without the factor that Amethyst was cancelled, they only had enough time for a tiny little plot they had to quickly resolve. Sadly, a project like DC Nation Shorts, whilst absolutely compelling as an idea, can become its own worst enemy in terms of how short the projects within it could be, as was the case here. What you get here is only a minimal plot - which Amethyst must face an evil male character named Dark Opal - and a little of the world to see including its denizens, worst as you barely get to meet characters like Prince Topaz, the last person to take on Dark Opal only to be left a living skeleton, found in a cave and suffering from chronic apathetic depression and a lack of confidence in himself. It's not a lot in all honesty to work with as a viewer.

But thankfully, there are still signs of what could've been, and Episode 3 is the best episode to show this. Whilst needing to wash, she finds herself encountering a very perverted living tree, one who is watching her bathe, as well as there being the incredibly dark humour of living flowers nearby who argue among themselves who'll be eaten by her horse and reveal in their devouring by the steed. It's a clear sign that the series, if it existed in a longer form, would've still appealed to a young audience but would've had an eccentricity that appealed to adults. The best thing is that, by all accounts, those great gags were directly inspired from the source material, an obsession in the art with even rocks having faces and therefore being alive. This is a great argument for the virtues of adapting source material, even the strangest details, as with this example you get a great idiosyncratic aspect of this fantasy world that would've been used further. The same applies as much to those pastiches which, rather than the dreadful Family Guy style referencing style of merely referencing something for a joke, it's implemented in a way that still works without getting the references.

Sadly, this is all we have, less than ten minutes. We barely see this heroine or her worlds, which was why the review was going to be originally more middling, not a criticism of the show but a wonder if there wasn't enough to get a lot out of from bad luck. However, with hindsight there was a lot still to like, even if having to intricately dissect from what little was there. It's just a shame, in this significantly more positive review, there's just that much left to actually watch.

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* Without any hesitance, this review references back to a podcast episode for the show Cancelled Too Soon, which covered this micro-series with Drouhard herself, so I'll include a link HERE.

From https://www.dccomics.com/sites/default/files/video/
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The Endless Film (2018)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYWRlNGEzNDktYmE5ZC00ZTAyLTkzNzgtZj
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a.k.a. La película infinita

Director: Leandro Listorti

Screenplay: Leandro Listorti

Synopsis: Director Leandro Listorti creates a film here from others, the unfinished productions preserved at the film museum Pablo Hickens Ducros in Buenos Aires. The resulting project combines the curious obsessions of a man over Leonardo Di Vinci's drawings, an animated sci-fi film, softcore images, and even a previous attempt at adapting the novel Zama from 1984.

I wished The Endless Film had been restructured. I will praise Listorti's project as an inspired and worthy project that can continue in any form, all in terms of rescuing unfinished film reels and allowing them to breathe in some form. I think however just how this particular example was put together could've been changed for the better.

The devotion in the project however is something to admire - even the original Argentinean title, a better one frankly, suggests the really rewarding nature of this film as it translates not to "Endless" but "Infinite", evoking new connotations of a far vaster creation, one where there's no attempt to remix the original source material, which can vary from outtakes to imagines without sound, scenes where the clapper board is seen at the start or what remains. A series of progressions are found as, innately with patience, plots are to be found as a viewer will automatically try to make sense of the material, more so as it comes off in structure as the most subtly made of anthology movies. This is something Listorti could've used to deal with that issue of mine I've going to mention, in terms of its structure not being fully formed, in that he could've played off the anthology idea of separate smaller stories but by way of these half-completed apocrypha.

A sense of much welcomed weirdness is also to be found as a result even if not always in every fragment used. One, in monochrome, follows a man fixated on Leonardo De Vinci's the Vitruvian Man, drawing a circle on the floor at one point in the existing footage and lying within it spread out. That footage abruptly leads to a figure locked in upstairs in a bathtub, arms tied around their back, head jerking under the bag over the head, the footage suddenly turning into a David Lynch film and thus becoming legitimately disturbing, a film that would've been wonderful to witness in full form just to figure out where it'd go. The animated sci-fi film, with a man with a fifties ray gun against floral extras from Fantastic Planet (1973), was a loss to cinema too in its charming limited animation and vibrant colour, whilst the politically charged drama of a woman willingly prostituting herself out becomes the most prolonged tale of the group, beginning with her trying to find a missing figure only to end with her assassinating a man in an archive with fish tanks. Poignantly, a first attempt at adapting a novel Zama by Antonio di Benedetto is also here, which was finally completed by the great director Lucrecia Martel. A mirroring is here, a vibrant almost Technicolor ghost, where in the damaged film we effectively see test shots where little happens, someone walking from one side to another outside, and yet succeeds in effect.

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Sometimes it's even broader, a gag of a hit man passing off as the end member of a line of female divers in the midst of jumping into a pool, a couple of takes shown one after the other with him with gun wearing a black swimsuit and wig to match, or the idyllic scene of an older man painting his birdcage bright shocking pinking, the paint dripping onto the rural ground and rocks beneath. Sometimes there are merely little pieces with no explanation, including almost an intermission of technical diagrams and explicit nude photographs of women. The problem is that, again, this footage whilst great in itself isn't fully put together as a work with a clear structure, pacing even at less than an hour the real flaw alongside its tonal shift problems. If it had be reorganised, without even changing the material used in the slightest, than it would've been in the same ballpark as Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's The Forbidden Room (2015), only not a séance of lost films remade onscreen but using the existing footage from various time periods.

And that's a shame as this type of cinema exists already - Joe Dante's six plus hour The Movie Orgy (1968) was based on pop and trash culture but is also said to be structured both around certain films and the notion of being like an all night binging of television he grew with - so the precedent for an example which resurrects and makes use for these forgotten projects has weight alongside a nobility to it that is even more virtuous. The Endless Film as it stands was still a rewarding experience, but its flaws are made more painful knowing that, for me personally as a viewing, it's entirely just one aspect (the structure of the footage itself) and nothing more which undermined the finished work.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Eerie/Odd

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

The Endless Film should be a project that exists in multiple types per different countries. This Argentinean version certainly evokes a lot of its history just through cinema - both the changing landscape but also bold evocations their history such as with a discomforting propaganda film being used, one which promotes the virtue of authoritarian rule and immediate evokes the country's dark past. It's a shame that, feeling like a project that could just do with a re-edit, the fullest potential just from what exists here without more or any further tampering doesn't feel as fully evocative as its little moments within it do. The result leaves it a fascinating experimental work but a flawed one.

From https://www.berlinale-talents.de/bt/pf/000/278/278295_medium.jpg

Keep An Eye Out (2018)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
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Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Benoît Poelvoorde as Commissaire Buron; Grégoire Ludig as Fugain; Marc Fraize as Philippe; Anaïs Demoustier as Fiona; Orelsan as Sylvain; Philippe Duquesne as Champonin; Jacky Lambert as Franchet / Carine Lustain; Jeanne Rosa as Narta; Vincent Grass as Daniel

Synopsis: In a police station being questioned for a suspicious death by Commissaire Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde), main suspect Fugain (Grégoire Ludig) is in an even worst predicament when another gristly incident happens and figures start to invade his ongoing testimony to Buron.

[Some Major Spoilers, so be wary]

It's been a long while since I've seen a Quentin Dupieux film, since his debut (and influence on the blog) Rubber (2010), and it's been too long. Unfortunately whilst his work was still being released in the USA, it stopped in the UK leaving many films like Wrong (2012) and Reality (2014) out of reach. It's a shame as, since a film about a sentient rubber tire with psychic powers, Dupieux here plays a subtler game indebted to the final period of Luis Buñuel's career with the films he shot in France.

Initially it suggests a farce as a half naked man conducts an orchestra in the park, quite well in fact as he could've taken the job if he merely wore trousers, before the police chase him off. Afterwards it becomes a tale of Fugain, who finds himself being questioned by Commissaire Buron for an inexplicable body being found outside his apartment complex. Recounting his side through an ongoing testimony, Fugain has a further issue at hand that there's now a dead cop (by accident via a triangle protractor and an open filing cabinet drawer) being hidden in the room, deciding not to try to admit to an accident but hiding him in a cupboard.  

Keep An Eye Out is a small tale, one which is entirely about this incident whilst Dupieux punctures it with moments of strangeness. Buron has a hole in his chest, for example, from being shot which is brought up when he smokes, or when an oyster (plus shell) is eaten. All is played for deadpan humour thankfully, the absurdity found in it breaking the normalcy set up; it's particularly a good choice in lieu of the film being shot and designed as having a husky, deep coloured aesthetic with minimal camera movements, feeling like it is set in the seventies at points but clearly in its own world. Even when the cast is broad - a one eyed officer very enthusiastic about his police badge, Buron being the lacksidasical cop who takes a call for a casual meeting in the midst of an interrogation - there is still the sense of its own form of naturalism in contrast to Rubber which deliberately, in a meta text, played with the notion of "just because" with cinema's absurdities.

The thing that stands out here in contrast to that film, rather than openly riffing on its own artificiality, is that, even if it does raise questions about the logic of the film itself, Dupieux decided to have a film where the reality is constantly being manipulated without it being a deliberate meta text. Instead, Fugain's testimony of the night he found the body becomes the prime aspect of the narrative - starting with telling all the amount of times he went out his door one night, all watched over by a nosey female neighbour, alongside details such as the improvised cockroach spray he uses malfunction, all of which Buron immediately finds boring and openly says to him.

Then figures invade the testimony (including the dead officer Fugain is trying to hide) demanding questions and setting him off tangents in time, including a stint not part of the testimony talking to the officer's wife about how he'll meet him in the future outside the testimony, and even Buron himself becomes a bystander within it who can see everything visually. This is why I made the Buñuel reference. The film does have an overt moment of farce with this structure - the pair sharing false memories they can actually see, Buron stuck on an desert island starving, Fugain having a childhood memory of letting the dog free and sticking the dog collar (plus chain) on and sitting in the dog house outside - but the flashbacks in general become closer to Buñuel's work. Films in his final French era of cinema, famously The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), played with dreams and reality being constantly subjective to each other in layered plot structures; even before Fugain is forced on tangents talking to intruders, the entire fact that Buron is prodding these testimony scenes as not being particularly exciting have their own gleeful sense of the perverse to them in unfolding the reality itself.

From here, it's literally a chamber piece, apt as whilst it does have moments which might have some logic gaps, it does play into where the film leads to when its pulls the carpet from under the viewer's feet and the world is a literal stage. It's an obvious twist if you were open minded, but the joke is that Fugain is still stuck in a scenario which now becomes Kafkaesque when it ends. And ultimately Keep An Eye Out feels like, as a compliment, a small project for Dupieux, a sketch in filmic form going from his ambitious mad debut, the sketches' in a filmmaker's career capable of still being worthy and here in particular showing his flexibility. In fact, the earnestness of the cast and the film's style even enforces a greater weirdness, their good solid performances adding emphasis to the moments of true bizarreness whilst the production and technical craft, subdued, creates a level of its own rules of reality to work from. Just so that, when that aforementioned oyster is eaten whole, it feels of the world even down to a look of sheepishness when a trickle of blood is on the eater's lip, admitting whilst it was a nice oyster it cut their mouth as if a minor inconvenience.

Abstract Rating: Absurd/Playful/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Personal Opinion:

It was nice to see Quentin Dupieux again; excessively long since the first encounter and arguably he's matured in that time to an advantage whilst still being incredibly silly, which is also a good thing. The result is a nice, efficiently made gem which makes one wish Dupieux was actually better known so I can see his films.

From https://vanyaland.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/keepaneyeout.jpg

Plastic Neesan (2011-2012)

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Aka. +Tic Elder Sister

Director: Tsutomu Mizushima

Screenplay: Tsutomu Mizushima

Based on the manga by Cha Kurii

(Voice) Cast: Mari Kanou as Iroe "Neesan" Genma, Marina Inoue as Makina "Makimaki" Sakamazaki, Yumi Uchiyama as Hazuki "Okappa" Okamoto

A 1000 Anime Tie-In*

Synopsis: Neesan, with her friends Makimaki and Okappa, sets up a model making club at their high school; instead of actually making models, they spend their time over twelve episodes, two minutes each, exposing their hatreds for each other, encountering weird students, and learning of the mating dance of a female gorilla.

Let's delve into some weird anime, and particularly in the 2010s, anime comedy became a vast untamed jungle of such material, more so now as the limitations of a very low budget or restrictions on a certain length per episode no longer applied. Direct to online material and even tiny minute long projects shown on television have thrived, and they have a wider audience now anime has streaming services like Crunchyroll that can make them available in the West too. So instead, I choose a "micro-series", my own coinage of these tiny series of tiny episode lengths and full duration, which is an obscurity at the start of the 2010s, before this structure was fully available and has fallen into the cracks of availability.

Plastic Neesan, as well as not being properly available in the West, has another factor in that its director/screenwriter is Tsutomu Mizushima, a lesser known but prolific animation director who has entered the mainstream (at least for the anime community) for titles like the horror series Another (2012) to his forte in comedy like the Girls und Panzer franchise. However, it makes sense he made Plastic Neesan now as, in his past alongside this frothier comedy and his dabbling in other genres like horror, he was notorious for some truly misanthropic black humoured creations. His most infamous is Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan (2005), in which a cute female angel with a monstrous spiked club is assigned to male high school student to prevent him from becoming the ultimate pervert who creates a way for women never to age after their teens, infamous for its crudeness and (with that club and resurrection involved) extreme gore. I myself have seen the obscurer but still twisted Magical Witch Punie-Chan (2006-7), which envisions the young female heir of a fantasy land dictatorship, as sadistic as her parents, coming to Earth and still gladly using magic and pro wrestling moves to put down anyone trying to rebel against her kingdom. Both were written by Mizushima too, and considering his horror titles, Blood-C (2011) for example, are as notorious for their over-the-top violence or being ridiculous (such as the critically panned The Lost Village (2016)), he's got some quirks to say the least.

Created as an "ONA" (original net animation, so made to play over the internet), Plastic Neesan immediately runs off in a shambolic form, a grab-bag of jokes initially under the pretence of being about three girls who run a model making club, even to the point they have replicas of their favourite models permanently on their heads, such as Makimaki (the "rational" one of the trio) having a tank on her head with a living little man helming it.

Most of the series instead of gleefully misanthropic; Neesan (the mascot and the tiny, really hyper blonde one with a castle on her head), Makimaki (brown hair, a tank on her head), and Okappa (quiet but secretly a demonic sadist with a train on her black haired head) may be friends but they will gladly slam each other into a wall enough to make a decent person sized dent into it. Or, in the case of Okappa, go further like shove Neesan up in a basketball net, when pissed off with her, to the annoyance of the basketball team itself. This isn't different from a lot of anime in structure were it not for that added sense of darkness, Neesan a ball of weirdness in herself even next to other series' oddball female characters; she's mad enough to take a friend's bag and twerk with it between her knees until its night and everything's covered in sweat, entirely exhausted, just to make a point.

The ironic thing is that, for an outsider to a lot of anime, Plastic Neesan is weird, and even in the anime community I learnt of this ONA work through a "Weird Anime" list among strong competition, but in a medium where unrestrained anime comedy is commonplace, it's pretty conventional even in its weirdness, the carte blanche to be weird, such as the internet favourite show that trolls people Pop Epic Team (2018), actually a normalising effect that undercuts a work's strangest unless you really try harder. Really the more interesting thing about a show like Plastic Neesan is less it truly being weird but just the inventiveness in such little running time even in this commonplace style, at least in terms of this type of comedy providing its voice actors (actresses here) the room for vocal gymnastics and the staff to be unpredictable.

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/cHk2O8BExRkSLwZ1QhqLFtrU2l9.jpg

From there the series goes for various bizarre whole series gags. One of the most infamous, appearing in memes online, has to be a male class mate of the three protagonists who, "rescuing" two male students from a pair bullies, explodes his clothes off to reveal he's wearing a full set of female underwear, turning in a perpetual crotch thrusting machine moving towards any of the four others involved. It is, in description, deeply homophobic but the execution is stranger, even if it's a case that of a viewer like myself completely pulling the material away from the director/writer for my own interpretation; that something else is at hand in the epilogue, where he's in in the back of a cop car (not arrested but as a witness), draped in a blanket with a look of existential serenity that shows something much weirder in this one-off character's mind. Mizushima in general, from the little I've seen, is strange even when it comes to his characters and their various pathologies when allowed to create them, such as the cute animal mascot in Punie-Chan actually being a member of a race enslaved by her kingdom, planning to murder her constantly and having an entirely war flashback sequence parodying Platoon (1986) and The Deer Hunter (1978).

Among others include two twin girls with pink hair forced, in a classroom, to feed a giantess, and another character who could be argued as being deeply offensive too but in execution can (by accident) be viewed in a different way, that she is in reality that stereotypical vain pretty girl but here is a plump figured girl who in incredibly terrible at tennis and with a farcical sense of grace. Again, really offensive in premise, but the tone of the material (and her voice actor's actual grace) can easily reinterpret it, especially as with her legitimately luscious blonde hair and grace when she's paired to three absolutely miscreants whilst she posits her desire for beauty in an egotistical but energised form. Hell, you could rewrite one joke as her deliberately missing serves in a tennis game just to screw with Neesan's head, which would've been hilarious as a touch.

And this mis- or reinterpretation of Mizushima's work is not just myself own weird personal view either as, notoriously, his anime horror work has always been viewed as being too gory or ridiculous for its own good, even his most well regarded Another setting the tone for farce with the first death, falling literally on one's umbrella, and turning into a mass farce by the finale blown over proportions. Whilst Plastic Neesan is considered sane in the delirious waters of anime deep cuts, where true weirdness plays with the form and expectations of the medium, the more interesting detail is this obscurer but prolific director's very peculiar career has this twisted side to him whenever he was ever allowed to get away from it. Aside from this, Plastic Neesan is modestly animated with the obvious appeal of cute girls being utterly twisted in personality (or wearing skimpy bikinis in the final episode, when trying to follow the example of a female gorilla, with a mating dance, to get a boyfriend).  Not by a long shot is it truly the weirdest thing you can encounter in anime - ironically, for all its infamy online, this is just a regular day at the office for me - but its definitely memorable.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Mean/Misanthropic/Silly/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

Plastic Neesan is strange for anyone who would've never seen an anime or transition from a mainstream success (insert Pokemon/Sailor Moon/Attack on Titan here) without any prior warning, but in the vast catalogue of anime production, and especially comedy, this deliberately strange type of story is actually far less weird than you'd think by not taking itself seriously. Arguably as well the micro length, under thirty minutes to watch, and it's entirely sketch based style is also a shield from a greater abstraction. Instead, the dark sense of humour, nasty depending on your view of some of the jokes, is really the curious thing to experience.

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* Which you can take a look at HERE.

From https://ikilote.net/Galeries/News/
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