Category Archives: Imaginary US Cinema

Art Film, Documentary, Imaginary US Cinema

#36 – Access Road

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(2012, US, 87 min) Dir Emmanuel Pascal, Andrea Filipe.

An ethnographical docufeature from Pascal and Filipe, the makers of 2009’s Raised Road that followed the titular elevated motorway’s three year construction in the Philippines. Access Road ploughs a similar furrow in the unnarrated documentation of process and progress. A road is built through the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the site of a prospective mine. Trees are felled and rock dug out by bulldozers to make way for the asphalting crews. At the end of the road is the mountain, at which point the demolition crew get to work. The camera seems as interested in the environment and the equipment as it is in the people, keeping itself at a distance to the action being observed. Not everyone will be happy with this perspective being that it casts the workers as ants in the dirt and indeed there are those who have condemned the filmmakers oeuvre as ‘construction porn’ that sides with the devastation being witnessed. Of course an equal amount have taken an opposite view, that the remove places the filmmakers in the God’s eye view of nature, witness to it’s own ravishment. Personally I can see neither vantage point being explicitly portrayed but instead see a process usually hidden from view – one that forms part of our society for good or ill – being documented without prejudice for us to judge ourselves. That diametrically opposing perspectives can be had based on this film speaks volumes, I think, of the directors’ success.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Action/Adventure, Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#32 – S.P.O.T.S.

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(2013, US, 117 min) Dir Roger Bertle. Cast Elle Fanning, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ed Harris, Sam Elliott.

“S.P.O.T.S. stands for Special Protection Organisation, Teenage Service,” says Sam Elliott’s General Macey, pacing before his new adolescent recruits, “And yes, we did do that on purpose. So what is it for, this organisation? Well let me tell you – if we were to send in a bus full of students into North Korea or Iran on a cross-cultural exchange then nobody would bat an eyelid, not really. If those students were to be highly trained assassins? Well then, that’d be an advantage, wouldn’t it? The perfect cover for the perfect killers.” Think Kick-Ass meets Mission: Impossible. Will Poulter’s troubled Danny is spirited away to the S.P.O.T.S. training camp following the death of his parents and finds himself being trained as the ‘Cleaner’ for his assassin’s cell that includes Fanning’s trained killer Mindy and Brodie-Sangster’s tech head Patch. Their mission, following the obligatory training montage, is to use a school trip to the fictional Eastern European country of Ezkhazia to kill its West-unfriendly premier who is played by Ed Harris and, despite all appearances and biographical similarities, is definitely not Vladimir Putin. No sir. Ex-ad man Bertle’s flashy, bubbly direction and the film’s appealing leads helps to ease the moral issues of the ensuing underage bloodbath even though the whole thing’s totally reprehensible.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Drama, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#28 – Mean Average, The

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(2012, US, 100 min) Dir Eric Ceder. Cast Rob Morrow, Brent Briscoe, Laura Regan.

Bizarre Randian horror movie that spitballs the unrest of the Occupy movement into a society wide uprising that targets the innocent one per cent that are safeguarding our society. Our hero here is Alex Forster (Rob Morrow, possibly prepping for his role in Atlas Shrugged Part 3), a stockbroker titan unlike anything seen in The Wolf of Wall Street – he himself would totally never do anything bad ever and has a loving family that apparently exists in a perpetual sunbeam. The supposedly expensive but cheap-looking walls of his world come tumbling down one day when the unwashed drug-crazed hippies protesting outside his office move indoors and begin exacting their revenge on the money men. Thus begins a discount apocalypse in what is essentially a filmed play with CGI inserts and crowd scenes of mass riot that only work if your definition of the word ‘crowd’ bottoms out at two dozen. It’s baffling to conceive as to who this film is aimed at as it seems designed to offend and angry anyone not rich enough to own a gold toilet but, at the same time, is so cheap and stagey in its execution to betray the fact that no self-respecting wealthy person would put their money near it.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#26 – Can You Do What Doobie Do?

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(1966, US, 72 min) Dir William Asher. Cast Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Susan Hart, Luciana Paluzzi.

Made at the decline of the beach party movie, CYDWDD betrays no shortage of spirit for this and in fact has more of an anything goes attitude than anything else. Fabian and Avalon are Hank and Randy, rivals for king of the beach who put their differences to one side when the big house on the dune is rented out by a quartet of British musicians. The band is The Weevils and they’re adorably mop-topped and skinny trousered – that’s right, the American insecurity of having their rock and roll music stolen from them has made it to the beach party movie. Much to Hank and Randy’s chagrin the girls are just head over heels for these guys and they have to battle on the beach to get them back via surf contests, dance-offs, you name it. Everything goes in The Weevils’ favour until Hank and Randy pull out their big gun – the titular Doobie Do, who is a dancing, surfing rock and roll chimp (and is obviously a man in a suit). It’s all very tongue in cheek and more like a parody of the genre than anything else, down to wacky cameos from horror maestros Boris Karloff and Vincent Price.

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Black and White, Detective, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#20 – Skull and Jones and the Return of the Scarlet Ghost

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(1942, US, 83 min, b/w) Dir Irving Pichel. Cast Preston Foster, Susan Hayward, Rita Johnson, Joe E. Brown.

Two years from the Scarlet Ghost’s first appearance and for America the war is now in full swing. Joe E. Brown is shipping magnate Forster Blueford who hires our crime fighting hero and his disembodied pal to investigate the sabotage happening in the docks, sending his secretary Hayward along for the ride. Of course the Germans are responsible and at their head is the Ghost herself, who by this time has morphed into the blonde Rita Johnson and has been rebranded as the head witch of an occult wing of the Nazi party. She kidnaps Skull and hypnotises Jones into a hallucinating stupor and reprogrammes him with anti-American sentiment to act as their stooge. Of course he can’t follow through, stopping before he can strangle Blueford as bidden and rescuing Skull but getting the slip from the Scarlet Ghost, who makes off in a U-boat to plot another day. Great fun that belies it’s propaganda purposes with Preston Foster now wearing the role as comfortably as an old jumper, chatting away to his skull in a bag as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

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Black and White, Detective, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#19 – Skull and Jones and the Scarlet Ghost

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(1940, US, 70 min, b/w) Dir Albert S. Rogell. Cast Preston Foster, Claire Trevor, Ogdon Marshall.

The fourth film in the S&B series and the first to star their longest serving Jones, Preston Foster. Filming began about five minutes after cut was called on The Laughing Darkness and this is belied by a crossover in the cast, including a tiny role for Lugosi, uncredited, as an Oriental stereotype. Not a supernatural caper, this one – Skull and Jones here find themselves on the trail of a Nazi saboteur called (as the title would suggest) the Scarlet Ghost, who is at large in LA agitating  in some manner or another.  A twist in the tale reveals it to be none other than his socialite pal from the previous feature, the lovely Claire Tracey in a mask seemingly without eye holes and a sparkling ball gown, both of which seem odd attire for a Nazi saboteur. She tumbles from some docks into thick sea fog and is presumed dead in the final act but returns as Skull and Jones’ first recurring villain in later features. A slapdash affair, not a great start to Foster’s tenure (though he equips himself well enough) nor a great introduction such a strong a character in the series history as the Scarlet Ghost. Things pick up subsequently, leaving this one for the history books and completists only.

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Black and White, Detective, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#18 – Skull and Jones and the Laughing Darkness

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(1939, US, 73 min, b/w) Dir Albert S. Rogell. Cast Paul Fix, Claire Trevor, Bela Lugosi.

The notion with the Skull and Jones series – as popularized by Generation X viewers of the nineties such as Quentin Tarantino – is that Jones himself is insane, that Skull isn’t talking but that Jones is in fact a great detective throwing his voice into it. This theory is given credence in this, the third in the series (and the only one with a miscast Paul Fix, best known as a Western actor), where in the execution of his detective duties Jones finds himself locked in an asylum, hallucinating his cranial companion in his moonlit cell. Of course he escapes with the help of his knock-out socialite friend Tracey (Claire Trevor in a slinky silk number and ill-advised heels) and uncovers the warden’s dastardly plot to exploit the mad for his own financial gain via faux spectral apparitions. Lugosi’s casting as said warden makes the third act reveal a bit of a foregone conclusion but this is a fun romp with its eerie moments nonetheless.

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Black and White, Detective, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#17 – Skull and Jones

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(1937, US, 67 min, b/w) Dir Edgar G. Ulmer. Cast Francis Lederer, Margo, Olaf Hytten.

The first in the oddball Skull and Jones series. Lederer is the titular Jones, investigating supernatural mysteries with the aid of a skull (called Skull) that he carries around with him in a velvet sack and takes out to consult with when no one else is around. Called to the mansion of the recently deceased Hugo Noir by his daughter (Margo, the same year she and Lederer wed) who suspects that foul play and devilry were the cause of her father’s demise. His investigations take him beyond the sunny, palm-lined streets of LA and into the shadowy world of the occult, all leading to an explosive gun battle in a deserted night time Hollywood Bowl. An intriguing mix of horror and detective tropes with atmospheric direction from The Black Cat’s Ulmer and spry banter from all. Only one of two S&B starring Lederer before the torch was passed on a la James Bond – popular in its day, the series lasted for sixteen films and a short lived television series in the 1950’s. A blockbuster franchise attempt has been rumoured for the premise for some time, most recently with Johnny Depp in the lead.

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Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#14 – Baba Yaga, The

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(2010, US, 81 min) Dir James Patrick Francis. Cast Ellen Moscovicz, Jim Beemer, Sal Jordan, Olive Merchant.

If ever there was a concept unsuited to the found footage fad its Baba Yaga, the fairy tale witch who lives in a shack that moves around on giant chicken’s feet and travels through the air by means of a flying pestle and mortar. If you had the money you could possibly do it, much like Cloverfield and Troll Hunter worked, but the producers of Baba Yaga haven’t that kind of coin. So how do they get it to work? Simple – by ignoring all existing literature and turning the titular hag into a generic spook. A quartet of American teens enter the woods of an ill-defined Eastern Europe (filmed in Canada) on the premise that they’re on the trail of the ‘truth behind the legend’. In no time they’re being picked off by a fast-moving crone when they’re not turning on each other, giving the film a ten to one ratio of annoying bickering to scares. And that’s it – beyond pointless with nothing to differentiate it from the million other found footage films that abound.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema, Romance

#8 – Taste of Love, A

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(2011, US, 110 min) Dir Marc Lawrence. Cast Hugh Grant, Katherine Heigl, Elizabeth Moss, Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci.

Culinary romcom. Heigl – who is of course clumsy and unlucky in love – decides to go with her heart, packs in her job in some sort of an office and signs up for the notoriously difficult Culinarian school under the tutelage of Hugh Grant’s Gordon Ramsay Douglas Thatchell. He’s a hard taskmaster – sweary, volatile and fond of throwing things – but, wouldn’t you know it, he has a sensitive side, no doubt born from some past heartbreak to be revealed once Heigl’s peeled him like a big angry onion. Of course the road to the inevitable doesn’t run smooth and, along with her comic relief classmates Moss and Pratt (both stealing what they can of the show), Heigl has to cope with soufflé and blowtorch related mishaps en route to the high stakes finale of their end of year show where the dishes will be judged by Tucci’s snobbish broadsheet reviewer. While this is certainly no feast it’s a passable confection, though one with a high sugar content.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms