The ABCs of Death

It's not educational.

   Okay, I'm still sort of tripping out from that last short film from The ABCs of Death.  That was crazy.  This is an anthology of twenty-six short films.  Each director was given a different letter of the alphabet and told to come up with a word that starts with that letter.  Then they made short films about those words which strongly feature death.
   I wasn't impressed with a lot of them.  Over half of them were just weird and all fuckered up.The films from Japan were pretty screwy.  One largly featured farting, another featured really messed up sexuality, and the last film of the anthology, "Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)" was so messed up that I don't even have words to describe it.  The notes that I typed up as I watched said things like,

• WHHAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHHHTTTTTTTTTTTTT?  
• i can't, i just can;t, this is too weird
• awiafo;nasfsaijo;adfa,;8jioewfiohfawnhjiofwohiawfwhjiwfeohifaiwgogougraohigroigrapjifewpjaewfivfnlvzifewigrwlngrorgaoigraio, 
• oh my god i'm crying

So that one was, you know, probably the weirdest of the twenty-six.

   Really, the anthology doesn't even start getting good until around "R Is for Removed."  This surrealist film began by showing a bloody, raw man laying in a hospital bed.  A doctor flays the man alive and somehow develops his flesh into film.  He is then placed in a cage, covered from head to toe in clothing.  Rabid fans rush up to him and swarm around the cage, fans of the movies pulled from the mutilated man's skin.  In the end, the skinned man's revenge is gruesome and goretastic.  This was when my opinion of the whole anthology began to change.

  "S Is for Speed" was a short film centered around a metaphor.  Absolutely loved it, from the grindhouse-style vibe to the muscle car and flame thrower.  Two pin-up-looking girls are fighting with each other as they are being chased by a hooded figure in the desert.  The hotter of the two throws the other girl in the trunk of a bitchin' muscle car and takes off.  The hooded figure catches her, however, when that bitchin' muscle car runs out of gas.  The twist is glorious and unexpected.  I was able to find a Youtube video of it if you want to watch it.
   "U Is for Unearthed" was a vampire movie like none I've ever seen before.  It was told entirely in the POV of the vampire as he fights the torch-wielding villagers.  Very cool.  Gruesome, too, when they pull the fangs out of the monster, the pulling, tearing sound made me squirm.
   Another really good one is "X Is for XXL," it was a truly gruesome examination of the price of beauty in an increasingly weight-conscious world.  A homely, obese woman is harassed all the way home, from the subway, all along the walk home, and when she arrives there the TV begins to blare a weight-loss commercial featuring a skinny, beautiful brunette.  The woman then proceeds to take her frustration out on her own body, in GOREY, GOREY ways.  Spoiler: The pose she strikes just before she drops dead from blood loss is probably the freakiest image in the entire movie.
   Bear with this one through all the weird, bad films (pretty much "B Is for Bigfoot" through "Q Is for Quack"), if only for the four truly cool films towards the end.  Even if you just skip to 1:14:30.  As a whole, I'd give The ABCs of Death three out of five blocks.  From 1:14:30 until end credits, I'd give it at least four.

Dumplings

   Jiao zi (Dumplings) is a 2004 Chinese film about a woman named Mrs. Li, an aging ex-television actress who is trying to regain her youth because Mr. Li is having an affair with a twenty-something hotel masseuse.  She seeks out a woman named Aunt Mei, who makes dumplings which are famous for their rejuvenating ingredients.  Aunt Mei happens to be over sixty years old, but looks thirty, tops.  When Mrs. Li tries her first dumpling, she immediately spits it on the floor.  Aunt Mei doesn't act offended at all that Mrs. Li didn't like her food, nor that she spat partly masticated food on her floor, she just scoops up the unwanted dumpling and buries it in her potted plant.
   Eventually the dumplings begin to grow on Mrs. Li, and she eats a lot of them in a montage of gross squishing noises and close-ups of her chewing mouth.  However, even having eaten a few dozen of Aunt Mei's dumplings, she still hasn't noticed a change in her looks.  She demands that Aunt Mei give her more potent dumplings.
   Meanwhile, a mother and her teenage daughter appear at Aunt Mei's door.  The daughter is pregnant by her father.  Taking pity on the poor girl, Aunt Mei agrees to abort the child.  It's a long, arduous process, and when it's done, Aunt Mei sticks the fetus in a casserole dish and puts it in her fridge for later.  Yes, seriously.
   Aunt Mei prepares this fetus and serves it to Mrs. Li as dumplings.  Mrs. Li is horrified when she realizes what she's been eating, but proceeds to eat the fetus dumplings anyway.  Finally, the rejuvenating ingredient starts having its effect.  Mr. Li finds her attractive again.
   During a dinner party, Mrs. Li starts to notice that her skin is giving off a strange smell.  She calls Aunt Mei and they argue, but Mei isn't horribly sympathetic.  Eavesdropping, Mr. Li discovers that his wife is a cannibal and goes to confront Aunt Mei.  Rather than acting contrite, Aunt Mei feeds Mr. Li some of the biscuits, and then he screws her on her kitchen table.  Soon, Aunt Mei won't serve Mrs. Li anymore dumplings.  She tracks her down, which probably wasn't too difficult, considering that Aunt Mei wears some of the most ridiculous outfits I have ever seen, but Aunt Mei blows her off.  Growing more desperate, she decides to go out and get some rejuvenating ingredients of her own.
   Okay, this movie is just weird.  It's slow, it's plodding, and it all seems so unnecessary.  I know foreign movies tend to be slower than Hollywood films, but oh, my, God, Dumplings took forever to get to the point.  This movie was actually originally a short movie part of a trilogy called 3 Extremes, and I would actually watch it again in that form.  However, the full length movie was only worth two out of five aborted fetuses.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Serial Killers in Movies

10. Leslie Vernon

   Leslie Vernon is a budding serial killer.  Somehow he finds a documentary film crew willing to follow him through the process of his first massacre.  Well done for a low-budget film.  A darkly funny parody of the slasher films of the 1980's.
Body Count: 10

9. God Bless America

   Written and directed by Bobcat, this dark comedy is just as depressing as it is funny.  Frank has given up on life when he decides to take a few choice people out with him, including reality TV stars, a political commentator and some religious extremists who like to picket funerals.  Almost cathartic for us cynics, really.
Body Count: 40
Roxy: 8
Frank: 32

8. Sweeney Todd

   Todd and his landlord are a bit desperate when they decide that they best money-making scheme is to murder people and sell them in pies.  It's Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, so you know it's directed by Tim Burton.  They don't whistle while they work, either.  No, they sing show tunes.
Body Count: 10+

7. Paul and Peter

   Even the audience is helpless against these two, from the German film, Funny Games.  They break the fourth wall and address the audience.  One of them pauses the film from inside it and has a do-over.  They're polite and charming, and just want to play some games.
Body Count: 3

6. Henry

   Henry, of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is smart.  He knows how to avoid being caught and he is very, very good at what he does.  You can see his pleasure at the horrors he's perpetrated on the screen.  Maybe less twisted than his partner-in-crime, Otis, but Henry takes care of the problem of Otis before the end of the movie.  Based on real-life serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas.
Body Count: 11?


5. Mick Taylor

   Mick Taylor, the psychotic redneck from Wolf Creek (Are they called rednecks in Australia?  No, they're called "bogans."  The more you know...) is based on Australia's very own serial killer, Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer.  So called probably because, you know, he targeted backpackers.  So Mick basically invites some random kids back to his murder shack and from there it gets scary.  One of the two girls is raped, the other is stabbed in the back to make her a "head on a stick."  Her spine is broken, paralyzing her, but she is still conscious and aware of what follows (the audience is not shown what follows, which is probably a good thing.
Body Count: 2 (Way more implied)

4. Firefly Family

   This is an entire family of people who gleefully murder strangers.  This family genuinely loves what it does for a living and seems to kill as many people as they can get their hands on.  Some seriously twisted characters from the mind of Rob Zombie, whose wife plays Baby.
Body Count: 12
House of 1000 Corpses: 7
Devil's Rejects: 5

3. John Doe

   John Doe, the antagonist from Se7En shows up on this list for one very important reason: creativity.  All the other villains are out there stabbing or strangling and John Doe, played by an emotionless Kevin Spacey, decided to force a morbidly obese man to feed himself to death.  All his kills are specifically targeted to punish the seven deadly sins.
Body Count: 8
Gluttony- A morbidly obese man is forced to feed himself to death.
Greed- A defense attorney must pay for his sin of greed with a pound of flesh or be killed.  He fails and     bleeds to death
Sloth- A pedophile is tied to his own bed, kept barely alive for one year.  By the end of that year "his brain is mush.
Lust- A prostitute is raped to death with a bladed dildo.
Pride- With her face brutally mutilated, a young model is forced to choose between killing herself or being disfigured for life.
Spoiler: John Doe kills Mills' wife, Tracy, then allows himself to be shot multiple times by Mills to atone for his sin of envy.

2. Michael Myers

   Certainly the most prolific serial killer on the list with more than one hundred direct kills, Michael Meyers of the Halloween series missed out on number one on this countdown for one reason: lack of personality.  It's part of what makes him so scary.  There's nothing behind the mask.
Body Count: 111
Halloween- 5
Halloween 2- 9
Halloween 3- 0
Halloween 4- 17
Halloween 5- 12
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers- 16
Halloween H20- 6
Halloween Resurrection- 10
Halloween (2007)- 18
Halloween 2 (2009)- 17
Halloween: 10 Years Later- 1


1. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter

   Three men have played Hannibal Lecter, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, and Gaspard Ulliel.  Anthony Hopkins is perfect for this role.  Charming, suave, and highly intelligent, Lecter is the perfect predator, attractive yet deadly.  His modus operandi involves killing obnoxious people (he calls it the "free range rude"), and making gourmet dishes from their body parts.  Based on a character created by Thomas Harris, I liked the character before Harris gave Lecter a reason for his insanity in the disappointing prequel, Hannibal Rising.
Body Count: 12
Hannibal Rising- 6
Manhunter- 0
Red Dragon- 0
Silence of the Lambs- 3
Hannibal- 3


Honorable Mention: I didn't put Patrick Bateman on this list simply because I already addressed American Psycho in this post.

Chronicle

I've been doing a lot of reading, you know? Like, online about, like, just evolution and natural selection and how like there's this thing, right? It's called the apex predator, right? And basically what this is, is the strongest animal in the ecosystem, right? And as human beings, we're considered the apex predator but only because smaller animals can't feed on us because of weapons and stuff, right? A lion does not feel guilty when it kills a gazelle, right? You do not feel guilty when you squash a fly... and I think that means something. I just think that really means something.

   There is a time and a place for found footage films.  That time and place is horror movies, circa 2008.  The Blair Witch Project was groundbreaking.  [REC] perfected it.  Now it's dead, and we don't need anymore of them.  I'll give credit where credit is due: Chronicle was less shaky than the new Superman movie.  Go home, Hollywood, you're drunk.
   Basically, three high school kids find a cave filled with a giant, glowy thing inside.  Of course they touch it, because they're morons.  Next thing we now they're moving cars and flying around.  Steve is the super popular aspiring politician, charming and somehow nice to everyone.  Matt is the philosopher, and a pretentious douche bag.  If you don't think he's a pretentious douche bag, you might be a pretentious douche bag yourself.  Andrew is hostile, the victim of his father's abuse and seems to only care for his dying mother.  He's also the most powerful and dangerous of the three.
   As Matt tries to create rules to control their new-found telekinesis, but Andrew is having none of that.  He shoves a stranger's car off the road into a pond, crushes cars in a junkyard, and eventually he may or may not kill Steve.  I couldn't tell for sure.  With Steve out of the picture, we're left only with Matt, who becomes mildly less annoying through the course of the movie, and Andrew.  By the time Andrew splays a spider and tears it apart with only his mind, you can tell he's really not all there anymore.
   Anyway, unlike other found footage movies, Chronicle actually uses more than one camera.  It cuts to footage from other cameras, camera phones, police video, and surveillance video.  In terms of a fictional movie, that is pretty neat.  Relevant, too.  Everyone is an amateur photographer nowadays, and I have no doubt that if some sixteen-year-old threw a bitch fit and started creating a natural disaster with his mind, bystanders would be more concerned with filming it than running away.
   All in all, Chronicle was okay.  Neither terribly good nor terribly bad.  Forgettable, but enjoyable.  I'll give Chronicle three crushed cars out of five and probably never think about it again.