10 Reasons BATTLESHIP (2012)

In honor of Oscar night, here's the underappreciated BATTLESHIP (2012), which asks the question, is Peter Berg the new Howard Hawks? Unlike similar blockbuster directors, he's also an actor, writer and military historian, so there's a sense of real grassroots humility coupled to ballsy cocksureness and team spirit oomph, stuff lacking in the more "family man story"-driven guys like Ron Howard, and a good understanding of pacing and narrative lacking in sugar-addled egotists like Michael Bay. And being a classic Hawksian, I don't mind Navy recruitment ads stretched to Hasbro length if I feel the quasi-fascist thrill created when strong egos finally submerge into the altruistic whole. I also love the use of NOAA to track water displacement for the Battleship quadrants in the original game --man, that's just plan genius.

Of course for most critics, BATTLESHIP was a dog before it hatched: "Imagine, a movie about a board game," they exclaimed to one another. "What on earth is next, Monopoly starring Sean Connery as Mr. Monopoly, and Jonah Hill as 'Thimble'? or maybe Scrabble starring Chris Pratt as 'Triple Word')?" Oh. how they laughed as they unveiled their clever line of fantasy casting before the screening even began --presuming it yet another in a long line of Michael Bay-esque furious and soundful, nothing signifying. CGI-crammed circle jerks and writing their reviews in their head rather than paying attention. They wouldn't have known a gem if Berg shoved it down their throats, and he should have. Expecting shoving of this sort, they closed their throats tight to the genius onscreen like tea-totalers at a funnel time.

Some of the cooler critics stuck up for it. Video and TV airings find and unearth such gems for they arrive with no expectations. And now it's on FX in the exact right spot for it, a Saturday afternoon in February. Now on FX, they have this thing "Movie Download" where two chipper hosts link up clips from making-of extras and drop interesting facts, tidbits and interviews with cast and director between commercials, kind of like folding in DVD extras every other commercial break. A movie like BATTLESHIP is perfect for that approach: commercials and context boost its 'America strong'-ness, and giving us a look at he relaxed keyed up vibe of Berg's set--the vast complicated water action (always difficult when shot on location in real water) and minimal green screen--help contextualize a very refreshing sense of masculine inclusiveness. It's nice to see people having a good time and razzing Berg (which means they like him), rather than cautiously praising Michael Bay as they do in other "Movie Download' events (which means they don't). And so BAM! Ten reasons.

1. Taylor Kitsch
I'm a big fan of this gorgeous young buck; he's everything Tom Cruise thought he was 30 years ago, which is why I always hated Cruise, who thought he wasn't an insecure narcissist. Cruise always played the short guy narcissist with good hair who learns humility. Kitsch on the other hand can play a headstrong narcissistic prick but you know deep down he's not, sort of the way Don Rickles can insult anyone without taking offense because the love is there, while Chevy Chase or someone just comes off vicious and snide, because the love isn't  Cruise's competence seemed more like butch posturing or needling little dick overcompensation, yelling in people's faces and repeating phrases over and over like he's not standing on a box or wearing platforms. Following a similar arc to Cruise's, Kitsch's character here also needs to get humble, but that's a fine arc for a young alpha male who looks and acts like it. He blows a big preliminary soccer game with Japan by being a ball hog, leaving us to realize that no one has a harder time passing the ball in hoops then the guy who's best at 3 pointers. Terrible athletes like myself learn to be humble much earlier. When he finally does learn to be a team player, it's galvanizing. By contrast, Cruise made even other peoples' suffering all about him, and when you demand a fanfare for your gaining humility then you already lost it.

Plus, there's that name. Oh my god, it's probably the best pauvres blanc name in the world, except maybe for the actress who plays his girlfriend here, Brooklyn Decker. Between the two of them, oh what trailer parks and Williamsburg flea markets they could name. Imagine they married and she became Brooklyn Kitsch-Decker. I swoon to imagine it.

2. The Navy
Director Berg's the son of a Navy man, and conveys a contagious respect love and awe for real vessels like the John Paul Jones and the Missouri and the men who sail them. Their bulky fit bodies hustling in and out tight spaces with professional grace seasoned grace bespeaks the kind of lived-in experiential detail that can't be faked by everyday extras and character actors, the large amounts of real Naval personnel in the cast, the real ships, the real ship jargon and familiarity with chains of command, it all makes it perhaps the most vivid Naval story since maybe Dmytryk's CAINE MUTINY. And if you can't feel a stirring in your blood when the elderly WW2 battleship vets come strutting in slow motion to reignite the John Paul Jones engines at the AC/DC power chord climax then you're a goddamned Commie spy (THE AMERICANS, on FX).

3. Rihanna 
As a weapons expert / in a sexy black boarding raft / manning a mounted machine gun like she fucking owns it / bobbing up and down in the waves / in shades and blue camouflage / ready for whatever. Absolutely God Damn right.

4. Dirt Bag Aliens: 
Memories of past wars function great here as contrast with the war against the aliens, as wits and technology evolve through necessity and inspiration, to become evenly matched, ala America mobilizing after Pearl Harbor (the Japanese and Germans always envied our military's 'every man a strategist'+- intuition and free-thinking, compared to their own  'no one makes a move without an order' kind of fear-based conformity). The aliens' cool gadgets fit their Viking marauder--cum Davy Jones ghost ship barnacle-crusted crew in Pirates of the Caribbean dirt bag skate punk/biker aesthetic, like the combination bowling pall/tire chain free roaming power balls; the way they focus in on perceived threats and weapons but don't really hassle unarmed beings (like the kid playing softball). In fact, they're probably a bit like how the Germans went into France or the cavalry into the Black Mountains. As one guy says "this time they're Columbus, we're the Indians" by which to say their tech is superior to ours so we're going down to Davy Jones unless we learn some new tricks, fast. But I love that they're not so superior we can't even touch them. Resistance isn't as futile as it is in War of the Worlds. They have exploitable weaknesses and crust-punk skater goatees that are like sea urchin spikes, gecko eyes (vaguely reptilian) and slimy hands. But we've got home court advantage, a combination of hastily remembered Sun Tzu sayings, and the best of eastern and western military thought fused together on the sly.

5. Absence of Bad Dialogue (or instantly dated attempts at sass)
A film like BATTLESHIP is something I give three strikes before I change the channel or mosey on. For example, I'll stop watching once I see 1. sassy robot, 2. stuck-in-1981 misogynistic objectification and 3. there's no way that oily little pisher Shia LaBoeuf deserves Megan Fox. So Erich is GONE from TRANSFORMERS, dig? But BATTLESHIP has not one single strike against it. There's no sassy robot spouting instantly dated catch phrases ("where's the beef, ribby ribby"), no clumsy nerdy oaf grinding up on beer ad braindead bimbo hotties like he deserves them, no blithering CPO doing exasperated slow burns, no bullying captain, or snarky adenoidal teen. Everyone's cool, competent, and good at teamwork, as Hawks would say, they're professional men doing a professional job, even the women. The only guy who needs to learn to work well with others is Kitsch - and he learns it quick. There are no sing-a-longs in the cafeteria or objectifying sex scenes against a Trans-Am or fireworks, no shower melt-downs or sulky driving away from the funeral on your motorcycle. The closest thing to a ditherer is the guy up at right--the Robert Wuhl of the team--but he just has trouble getting to the point, whereas he's still an invaluable addition to the team.

6. Col. Greg Gadson
A real life Iraq war ver/amputee, he's not a great actor but that works for the character's understandable surliness; his mechanical legs make a fascinating hybrid with the mechanized suit-wearing aliens (like the lovebirds Melanie Daniels brings to the Brenners) + his interesting rapport with his physical therapist (and Admiral Neeson's daughter and also Kitsch's girlfriend) Brooklyn Decker (she's so hot but he never loses his professional respect, even treating her with the same surly reticence he'd exhibit with any man). Also, his lack of experience as an actor ensures he's not stereotypically drama-class 'heroic' or 'dejected'. He may not reach the heart-wrenching heights of Harold Russell in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, but we don't want that in a film called BATTLESHIP anyway --he's earned our respect and you feel a real hard-won if cranky courage in the face of the unknown.

7. Japanese-American relations
In the "Movie Download" part they note that the USS Missouri was reactivated for the climactic battle and it's also where the Japanese signed the surrender agreement at the end of WW2. And there's a Japanese captain (Tadanobu Asano) whose ship is, like Kitsch's, wiped out. They must work together to bring the Missouri out of retirement for one last ride - this after fighting on the soccer field the day before. For any WW2 buff, these wounds are still fresh and for historians (like Beg) provide insight into the highly competitive nature of our individual national identities . Coulda been trite, corny, or racist, but instead it's tight, bra.

8. Beautiful Hawaiian scenery
All sorts of great ocean lighting and actors really bobbing around in real ocean makes all the difference. Beautiful greenery on land and blazing blue skies above--it all chills one out. Let's face it, we don't watch BATTLESHIP for art or thought, we watch it to kick back to on a lazy weekend. We don't want a lot of feel bad eco-moralizing or Chicken Little overacting and product placement, dated slang douche chills. We want just enough action to keep us from dozing off and enough strikingly photographed scenery to chill us out without us even knowing it's working (i.e. the XENA effect).

9. Color/Gender Blind Casting
Great race/gender blindness rare in films but keenly observed and real here (one of my favorite new faces, Rami Malek is even in it). Hawaiian baller John Tui is 'the Beast', Kitsch's right hand man and a big ass motherfucker but there's no dumb jokes about him eating a lot or whatever. The black guys don't have to deliver scenes of ogling girls and blasting rap music and goldbricking --they are professionals, in a script that's good enough to not have to rely on all those tedious mixes of nervous blankness (the nonthreatening black friend with no personality), or pimp strut racism. Same with gender: Rihanna's a babe but there's no mention of it; physical therapist Brooklyn is respected by her patient Gadson as an equal, etc.

10. Creedence! 
Steve Jablonsky's unobtrusive score is leagues away from John Williams-style pomp and micro-management and the AC/DC at the end is the perfect touch, a great example of a moment 'earning' its big rock anthem send-off. Creedence Clearwater Revival? "I ain't no military son" is also apt and it's so American that the Navy would rock out to it considering it's anti-draft lyrics. Compare it to that hollowed out cocaine Moroder and Loggins synth crap from TOP GUN and shudder with relief.
--
Right after the Movie Download screening on FX this past Sunday I watched a TIVO-ed UNDER SIEGE to keep the Navy theme afloat. If that's not a recommendation I don't know what is. Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey seem to be having a ball and Steven Seagal is frickin' hilarious.

Give him all the stars...

Acidemic's Best Films of the 1980s

Jack Torrance wants to say hi - but you have to see him first. See him in there - dead center?

Ugh, February, the month of hassles and cold and weariness. Slogging towards March like a slouchy Bethlehem that evaporates on clammy handed contact. Another March 2nd means another year older for your humble narrator, another step closer to the grave. I've been looking for a way out, and I found one --the past! Thirty very odd years ago, to the 80s, a time when American became, once more, tragically uncool. NatGeo is showing their entire 80s series today - Sat. March 1st -- right now they're saluting Reagan. And now skate parks... I'm watching, in soggy despair. They're missing so much!

To me, the 1980s begins the now-forgotten Betamax vs. VHS war. Before there were video stores, when you rented tapes from the appliance store back room, and it was split half-and-half with Betamax and VHS formats. That's how it began.

My generation, the non-film critics, are currently trying to assemble a Best of 80s canon, mostly crap that evokes nostalgia to them, like Ferris Bueller (which I loathe on principle) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (or acts of admittedly brilliant but manipulative bromide pap like Tootsie and Terms of Endearment.  Someone, me, needs to step in and take the best-of list pencil away before these nostalgia-bewitched old yuppies hurt themselves.

Don't think I don't love some of the aforementioned too, in my fashion. I can quote them endlessly (because of the VCR), namely, Tootsie and Raiders (we had them both on tape). Here, can you guess which lines are from which movie (these all off the top of my head): Was ist los? Warum schläfst du!? Nobody cared... nobody showed; Blow it up! Blow it back to God; That is one nutty hospital; Too bad you don't speak Hovito, you might have warned them; I could have done without the dancing. Truth is... truth is you were okay company; Why don't you tell me...eh... where the ark is, ah right now?; Michael, I begged you to get some therapy; The charmer's name was Gaffe... I'd seen him around.

Wait, that last one is Blade Runner's now excised voice over, and thank god - how we hated that damned voiceover. We hated everything about the 80s, aside from the rise of the advent of the VCR. That was a miracle and we were saved by it. Then, in 1987 of course, when--in college sophomore year-- I discovered another miracle.

 We could escape the 80s altogether.

With the right set and setting we live in the 60s.

But now, in the 10s, the 80s, especially its cinema, which now glows with tactile pre-CGI analog 35mm celluloid brilliance, having been converted flawlessly to Blu-ray... for-widescreen-HD-TVs.

(the below descriptions are taken from past posts or are new - links appear where applicable). 

Top 15 of the 1980s (in reverse chronology)

15. PASSION  (1982) Dir. Jean Luc Godard

...Godard assumes his audience has seen many films, and so comes to his with pre-set responses to cinematic iconography (and that includes the meta-iconography of 'a film about filmmakers')--he riffs on these the way Ornette Coleman might riff on "Melancholy Baby." We're made aware of how dogmatically we're conditioned by a lifetime of filmgoing and story hearing. When a film adheres too closely to predetermined narrative formulations, we have cliche, When a film deliberately screws with them we have Godard: a medieval knight on a horse is seen trying to scoop up a naked, running maiden while racing a horse around a circular spinning scenery wheel --thunderous classical music on the soundtrack, hoofbeats, her frightened panting and shrieks--this generates a certain preconditioned response: Will we see this chick being carried off? Will we see the hero ride to her rescue? Where is this hero? Your stomach might clamp in suspense, used to a thousand permutations of the same immanent virginal violation. Suddenly the horse pulls up short so it doesn't bump into a moving camera; the naked maiden runs off set and hides behind the cameraman; the knight rides after her; she climbs up into the lighting rigging to escape; the knight dismounts and goes to have a smoke.. The Stunt Man is suddenly as bound up in linear single-line narrative reality as DW Griffith by comprison... (more)

14. AKIRA 
(1988) Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo

The quintessential cyber punk anime, Akira occurs in a riot-scarred "Neo-Tokyo" on the verge of some massive unnamed catastrophe and peppered with amok biker gangs, conspiratorial cops, cute anarchists, riots, flying vehicles, telekinetic mutants, and teddy bear hallucinations, all so gorgeously illustrated that time melts and even the tear gas flows gorgeous enough to leave your already-dropped jaw so low it distends off your skull and HDMI-ready flesh tendrils reach out, connecting your tongue directly to the screen.

The plot may hinge in the end on one of those typical Asian male friendships between differing misfits (one of whom goes crazy) but there's a cataclysmic beer-after-liquor-never-sicker sort of apocalypse involved this time, as the government-sponsored Methuselah syndrome psionics try to reign in Akira's crazy friend who's become godlike and fallen in love with smashing half the city. When things get quiet enough you can hear Walt Disney's frozen head explode deep in a bunker beneath Magic Mountain. 

13. MOONSTRUCK 
(1987) Dir. Norman Jewison

Does a mainstream ethnic humor rom-com film like this really belong on a disreputable but oh-so artsy list like mine, you ask? How dare you? What would you put instead, Tootsie? I thought about it, but I saw it recently and it hasn't aged as well. We've grown hipper about patriarchal subtext so we're wise to Dustin Hoffman's whole 'better woman than a woman' schtick, now (re: Molly Haskell). But Moonstruck eschews stealth-patriarchal pop and instead looks to the great Italian operas (and Dino) for its soundtrack, and Cher is luminous. If you never quite 'got' the appeal, see her in this and be a believer. Her chemistry with Nicolas Cage sizzles right through the cast iron skillet. She has the best walk of shame ever; watch how she comes wafting in to her mother the next morning and as soon as she hears her fiancee has returned, starts taking off her make-up and dressing back down from the opera and into a frumpy (but still glamorous) sweater, all while engaging in several layers of dialogue with Olympia Dukakis as her mother.

A relative unknown at the time, Nicolas Cage brings so much mushmouth ferocity to lines like "Gimme da knife so I can cut my froat!" and "Get in my bed!" that we all would have fallen off a cliff for him if he asked and given us one of those hooded stares. Never before had we laughed at and with and swooned over someone at the same time. Between this and Raising Arizona (also 1987) and The Vampire's Kiss (1988), Cage became instantly iconic, akin to what Brando must have been 30 years before but harnessed to wild John Barrymore-in-Twentieth Century level lunacy: that infectious mix of madness, heat, wit, beauty, and ferocity, unleashed at the right time, electrified the house like Castle's tingler. Interestingly enough, all three of these Cage films from that era are dark comedies, though Jewison's is only dark literally. Its beautiful palette of black clothes, red roses, perfect clothing (was there ever a more beautiful--uniquely Italian/New York City-dressed couple at the Metropolitan Opera?) and silvery  giant moon-lit nights helps balances the comic-earthy hues of the characters and brings tension without need for animosity and comedy without slapstick. It all climaxes in a family breakfast where all grievances are aired, love declared, and Olympia Dukakis steals all her scenes with little more than a series of resigned sighs. Forget Scorsese, it was this film that made me proud to be dating overlapping Italian-American chicks at the time. Seeing it today, it holds up way better. The more viewings the richer its mythic sweep, allowing all the myriad details to seep in. 

12. MATADOR 
(1986) Dir. Pedro Almodóvar

Already his fifth film, Matador marks the turning point of Spain's beloved Pedro Almodóvar from a post-Franco celebratory shock cinema queer anarchist to something infinitely darker, yet more tender and compassionate and above all, more brave in gamely crossing meta-borders vis-a-vis intertextual cinematic reference. After a disturbing credit sequence involving a toreador (Nacho Martinez) masturbating to a a tape editing together death scenes (from Bava's Blood and Black Lace and others I'm not familiar with), we find him lecturing a class on the proper way to kill a bull in the ring, intercut with a strange woman (Assumpta Serna) killing her lover in just such a way, piercing him in the back of the neck with a hatpin. Almodovar tacks on plenty of other links between serial killing, bullfights and sex, so we're not really sure if this is his attempt at a sun-drenched horror film. But then Bernardo Bonezzi's small minor key piano motif plays over it all and it becomes an almost Sleepless in Seattle-level romantic melancholy reverie. Suddenly we want, we need, these two sick fucks to meet. Avoiding last second 'life wins' interruptions we're in the zone between Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951 - also set in Spain with bullfighting allegories) and 1934's Mediterranean-set Death Takes a Holiday. With Hitchcock / Wellesian / Bunuelian homage, death drive-to-the-floor Freudian psycho-savvy, color-coded symbolism, a theater playing King Vidor's Duel in the Sun, and a solar eclipse, Almodovar strews roses on the path forward to a romantic lover's climax so free of the usual last-second morality and phony sentiment it restores one's faith in cinema. Dub it a downer if you want but then you'd best run back under the censor's skirts for protection, because cinema's true heart is darkness, not sentiment, no matter how remorseless beats the Spanish afternoon sun.

A very young Antonio Banderas plays Diego's psychic, vertigo-stricken protege; Eva Cobo is Diego's model girlfriend who dresses in red like she wants to be the cape waved by this once-star toreador; Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura, Veronica Forque, Chuz Lampreave also appear in memorable bits, and the astonishing drag-ilicious Bibi Andersen is a flower girl; Almodóvar himself cameos as a fashion designer. Great as they are, though, the film belongs to Martinez's cobra-hooded toreador and the very sexy Serna's femme fatale, so voluptuously bloodthirsty Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct is but an ice tray-cracking naif by contrast. Most American fans of Almodóvar started out with the 1988 hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Todos Sobre Mi Madre in 2000, but rich, hilarious, brilliantly acted and subversively life-affirming as those films are, I'll take Matador... to the bloody grave!

 11. EXCALIBUR 
(1981) Dir. John Boorman

Time has been kind to this deeply Jungian retelling of the Arthur legend. It takes a few dozen viewings to really understand what's going on, especially if you see it only on a second generation pan and scan VHS dupe for 20 years. But thanks to the beautiful Blu-ray I have finally figured out most of it, and even if incomprehensible there's the beauty and the Wagner and the natural magic. A mythic interpretation of how lust can wreck the noblest intentions, it has something close to the stirring manly grace that only loyalty to a worthy king can provide, and may be John Boorman's most perfectly realized film, once you unscramble what kind of masculine Jungian shizz he's after. He also stocks the film with an array of dreamy class-A Brit thespians players incl. Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Nicol Williamson, Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, Nigel Terry, all drinking the same Wolfram von Eisenbach-laced Kool-Aid through glistening glasses that make armor gleam like mirrors. See it and become a fan of "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Wagner's Ring cycle forever and ever. In homage, it made it onto the climax of my own Arthurian retelling, Queen of Disks (2005).

10. POSSESSION

(1981) Dir. Andrzej Zulawski

Perhaps the only way to really understand and love this film is to be temporarily insane yourself, or at least to remember what it's like to have the terrifying freedom of flying fast and loose atop the ever-inward spiral of the maelstrom and have the experience now forever etched in your Silver Surfer memory. I'm thinking of Poe's story "A Descent into the Maelstrom," wherein a sailor finds himself on a damned ghostly boat hovering ever on the edge of a vast never-ending whirlpool wave. Our hero eventually escapes and is rescued only to find his ship mates no longer recognize him: "My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed." Sometimes that change of countenance has to happen: you've seen too much; you've peered beyond the veil and the veil has left its gnarly mark. 

Such things happen all the time, to those who dare to take the voyage into the maelstrom or walk that yellow "brick" road. Some of us are called to the curtain and bid look beyond, and some do, and they get white hair, if not a diploma. I've never seen a film before or since that made white such a violently post-modern wrenching force (not even in Kieślowski's WHITE or Argento's TENEBRE) except maybe in a humorous and romantic way, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, wherein white swallows up whole bookstores and kitchens of Jim Carey's memory. (MORE)

9. CONAN THE BARBARIAN 
(1982) Dir. John Milius

Fuck it, I'm putting this in. We now know that 1982 was the single greatest year for sci fi and fantasy, giving us Blade Runner, The Thing, Road Warrior, Cat People, to name just a few. But of them all, for me, Conan has best survived the winds of change and become a classic as enduring as that ancient king's sword. The dead set opposite of many of the artier films in this list, it uses all the narrative tricks modernism eschews but brings such a heady focus, such an enraptured attention to even the smallest details, that repeat viewings just continue to reveal facets--especially in beautiful widescreen anamorphic and with some cut scenes restored. And best of all, surprisingly enough, is the love story between Valeria and Conan, one so touching it's been making fanboys of a certain age weep for the last 30 years. (more)

 8. REPO MAN 
(1984) Dir. Alex Cox

Long before it split into a dozen subsets--straight-edge, goth, emo, and hardcore, etc--we alienated teens were all just one thing: punk, and the film that defined us was Repo Man. It had alien conspiracies (with roots in the real conspiracies rather than made up for the movie), oblique "lattice of coincidence" Greek chorus TV commentary ("He is risen!"), Emilio Estevez in the role for which we still love him (fuck Breakfast Club, man), consumer parody (everything's 'generic'), Harry Dean Stanton in the role for which he is now and forever considered cool by those who know, a Modern Lovers cover, and the Circle Jerks gamely going lounge. Along with Rude Boy, Gimme Shelter, and that great legendary T.A.M.I Show with James Brown and the Stones, this was part of a daily after-school TV party ritual for myself and my suburban punk brethren. We'd all imitate Dick Rude's whiny timbre, "let's go do some crimes" when going off to score booze or weed, and "I blame society" when we failed. When we went to work instead at our very first jobs, our very first taste of the grinding real world, Repo Man guided us like a drunk but cocksure shepherd. The Criterion Blu-ray finally reveals what we never saw on our ratty pan and scan taped-off-cable version, that director Alex Cox has a modernist knack for capturing not just the sunny desolation of L.A.'s seediest outer fringes, but its natural magic, each shot is like a piece of found object junkyard art. I still write within this film's kinetic but forlorn rhythms. And it made me a lifetime fan of the great Fox Harris ("I had a lobotomy, man!") - It's worth having Forbidden World (1982) on Blu-ray just because Harris is in it in kind of a similar role. It could almost be a prequel!

7. PLATOON 
(1986) Dir. Oliver Stone

It's impossible to describe the effect this had on America and me at the time but I'll try: I was a sophomore in college in 1986, in upstate NY, where psychedelic molds and tie-dyes grow wild and my hippie-ish posse and I were all in the class America in the 60s (which PS- I failed). We had to see it while it was still in the theater, as homework. We called for a cab, piled in, smoked a joint with the driver at his request -- and the mushrooms we'd taken an hour earlier were kicking in by the time we sat down in the dark - our heightened sense giving the amazing jungle foley work an extra 3-D surround boost. Every humming bug and footstep dripped with possible ambush menace; humanity's potential for raw violent evil felt palpable in the jungle shimmer. We howled with relief when Sheen finally finds some a tent where everyone's smoking weed. Later, my buddy Jason had to leave for awhile when Bunny says those immortal words, "Sarge, did you see the way his head busted open like that?" But by then, I was enthralled, the psilocybin in my brain giving me rare access to the feeling of "hell yeah kill 'em all!" like I was channeling the madness of Colonel Kurz as a kind of rationalizing druggy courage, the mushrooms short-circuiting my pre-set empathic response, making everything I saw seem brand new and sans social sermon. The soul fear terror of the jungle was so palpable to me that the soldiers' level of sociopathic anger and violence seemed the only way to stay sane, if that makes any sense. If you ever took 'too much' of anything maybe you know the feeling: without a warrior howl, a game face, courage screwed sticky side-down, you'd wind up strapped down to a gurney, or freaking out your parents at dinner.

and his hair was perfect.

Seeing it later, on VHS, over and over, zonked out on whiskey and 3' graphix, was never quite the same as that magical afternoon in 1986, but I still have sympathy for the hardened Tom Berenger character and think Dafoe's hippy sarge is way too naive. Some elements are downright racist, (the Asian characters are all extra-alien and inscrutable, though that works for creating paranoia there's no excuse for making the black soldiers mostly cowardly and the first to fall asleep on guard duty) and Sheen's tacky voiceover ("They're the best I've ever seen, grandma") is almost as bad as the one, now excised, from Blade Runner.

But I'd heard of vet's cathartic reaction to the film, and I actually saw a sobbing vet-age man in the audience on the way out of the theater that afternoon, and even in the low house lights I could see he'd been crying, a cathartic wave of inky aura was fizzling around him like a fading wall of gnats, replaced by a pink light. He'd clearly been keeping a dark secret venom up in his nervous system for the last 15 years, and it was now broken open, leaking all over the sticky floor. I walked out on rubber legs and gave him one of those overly compassionate shroom looks. With Platoon, the horrible secrets of a nation seemed at last exposed to light as if some glorious combination award ceremony and drug intervention. This wasn't some silly Russian roulette gambit, a Willard going up river, or a paraplegic Jon Voight, this was maybe something like what the kind of low-to-the-ground eye view only a writer-director who was there at the time, with a gun in hand and people actively trying to kill him, could tell. The last time we were graced with such a survivor's eye view was the 50s, with Sam Fuller's Fixed Bayonets and Steel Helmet. --each of which made a comparable, if less publicized, mark on a generation of vets struggling to unpack their own collective traumas. But those boys had always been heroes; before Platoon, the Vietnam vets had been outcasts. Now, at last, we could begin to welcome them home. If that sounds corny, I guess you had to be there... or emerged within a convincing facsimile.

6. RAGING BULL 
(1980) Dir. Martin Scorsese

I remember hearing a WBNC talk radio review of this film (I would have been 13) on my dad's clock radio one morning while he was in the shower and I was trying to think of a good illness to feign so I could stay home from school. The way the announcer went on I thought this landmark movie was going to crack open the world. I felt like wow, this movie sounds soooo adult and dangerous. It's sad that you don't hear that kind of literally unrestrained enthusiasm anymore, as if critics no longer trust their own instincts, or is it the pictures that got small? Maybe Raging Bull was the last time they really knew a masterpiece had landed brand new in front of their eyes. Yeah, maybe.

Flash forward a decade, Seattle, 1990: my girlfriend coming home from a traumatic day of work with a bad headache; me loafing in front of our tiny TV, drunk; LaMotta in a Florida jail pounding the wall shoitng "Dummy! DUMMY!" over and over while I drank; her raincoat angrily dropping onto the floor; I was hoping La Motta would stop beating the wall soon, as I could see what the misery of that scene was doing to her. But he kept pounding and screaming, and our apartment was too small to escape it. On and on the pounding went, breaking our relationship apart. I was to drunk to defend Scorsese's choice, or to find the remote and press stop, or remember how long that scene dragged on from past (also drunk) viewings.

We broke up. I drove to Syracuse in time for the block parties. When I came back to get my shit she was already dating a jackass hippie whose claim to fame was that he curated an open mic at the O.K. Hotel. He whinnied like a horse when he laughed and danced arms akimbo when he walked. But he was so terrified of me he ran literally the other way when he saw me comin' - I'm not gonna hurt ya! I shouted. Come 'eah!

Sure, despite it breaking up my relationship, Bull is a towering masterpiece but it's not fun, or perfect. And after the string of Leo-starring bros-behaving-badly films Marty's given us this past fifteen or so years, Scorsese's inability to depict a strong female character (even Alice should have just whacked Harvey Keitel over the head with a frying pan instead of running away) and his over-reliance on manly violence rather than exploring his castration anxiety head on and cutting through, if you'll forgive the expression, the bullshit, shows a willingness to use flashy editing and resonant masculine humor to avoid using the mirror for anything except lines, coke or poetry - makes no difference; they're the same, ain't they? Come 'eah!

The result is that now Jake LaMotta seems an odd choice for such artful storytelling. He's a thug, a bruiser, and might be suffering from paranoid derangement brought on by consistent head trauma. One last thing I remember from that relationship: trying to sleep at her place while I was in the midst of a terrible fever (Syracuse = always sick). She was in the other room, painting (VPA). I got up and in my delerium accused her of having a lover in the closet - then after I looked, I knew he was under the bed, I looked there too, nothing, but then I knew he was back in the closet. I kept looking in the closet over and over. I knew he was there even if he wasn't. Even while she was all alone in the other room I could hear her conspiring whispers and a man's voice, even though it was just a Billie Holiday album. I heard males whispering about me, laughing quietly with her about how easily they could snow me.  So when I see LaMotta all supernaturally jealous I wonder if head trauma would be the same thing as my fever.

That's no excuse though, and either way, the film is certainly rich enough with the language and pulsing rhythmic emotion of Little Italy it doesn't need great psychological insight, and yet... there's Cathy Moriarty laying out by a sparking community pool, being lured over to the wire fence by LaMotta (and in some senses the most courageous thing he does in the film) and in her breathy agreement, as much worldly romantic poetry as in any other movie on this list, .

Aside from Valeria's of course. DUMMY! 

5. BLUE VELVET 
(1986) Dir. David Lynch

I'll confess it took me a long way to come around to this movie. I found the violent thuggery disturbing and without a cathartic resolution. After a few decades of film theory and great books by Todd McGowan and Zizek helped me unravel my private relationship to its Freudian subconscious Oedipal separation trauma, that attitude began to change. Turns out the purple and blue velvet apartment where Kyle McLachlan spies through the closet blinds isn't merely his anger/anxiety over a woman being hurt, but a primal scene as understood through the mind of a child who mistrusts the animal grunts of sex and seethes with resentment over the dad's power to shut him out of the bedroom at a whim. The problem was mine not the film's - I myself was Frank as much as Kyle. Damn, that's deep. It prepped us all for Twin Peaks, and therefore the '90s.

Highlights include of course the beautiful Dean Stockwell, lip syncing Roy Orbison as a nightmarish gay stereotype (see CinemArchetype 18: The Aesthete) while Kyle behaves like a frightened kid hanging out with his drug dealer to score coke in order to impress some girl, all for the very first time. The initiation these terrifying people provide him is invaluable, and eventually he becomes a mature man through their loving abuse. Lynch's subsequent works would all point back to this key moment, some improving on it (Mulholland Dr.) some not so much (Wild at Heart - though that too is open to debate and changes as a viewer's psyche). But Blue Velvet is Lynch's first great 'cracking it wide open,' his Picasso's "Demoiselles d'avignon" his Pollock's 1947 drip stick moment. It endures and like a dream you'll find that it's never the same movie twice.

4. LOLA

(1981) Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder 

There can be no sleep for the German people unless they take Naziism as a bump in their record album and return to track one: the glory of the Weimar era of the post-WWI era. Fassbinder digs that and, for this candy-colored econo-comedy (set in 1957), he takes the mythos of the The Blue Angel (1929) and wraps it like a sticky carmel apple in a post-war restoration/corruption sagas, so that--as we do in Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)---we're watching the booming neo-Weimar weeds spring up from the WW2 rubble, leading to a whole new kind of Warners pre-code/Columbia-post-code Babrbara Stanwyck opportunity for the right kind of sauced neo-Dietrich seductress who doesn't mind pretending to be interested in Asian art if it means winning a bet for 30 cases of champagne. She just might fall in love with her mark's world-weary wisdom; he was a WW2 officer and still hasn't found a country to come home to (could she be it?) but can he forgive the way everyone already knows she's a slut?

It's perfect casting with gorgeous Barbara Sukowa as naughty Lola, whose drunken resentment of the incorruptible (but totally progressive pro-capital) Von Bohm ( Armin Muller-Stahl) leads to a typical night caught in the storm and spending 'some time' in an old barn (a pre-code hook-up spot) and a heartbreakingly sweet bit of church singing that takes them both by surprise. One of the most quietly disarming characters in the Fassbinder lexicon, Von Bohmm's gentle wit and limitless tolerance proves a perfect match for Lola, whose sloppy drunken abandon is always real and beautiful to see. A perfect third in the romance is her pimp /club owner/building contractor boyfriend Shukert (the delightful Mario Adorf) and the three of them somehow rebuild Germany through their 'only-in-the-Weimar' era level of tolerance (ala Rudi and Marlene). It's all for the best; nobody dies and everyone can get rich as part of the New Deal here in the West side of the Wall. Von Bohn gets to avoid having eggs smashed onto his forehead and crowing like a jackass; he winds up married to the lady with "the sweetest ass in all of NATO." Even the insufferably idealist protesting drummer accepts an expensive cigar and realizes there is no bad here, so where is Fassbinder aiming his cynicism? The neo-Weimar flowers are sweet with dolorous savors! (See Peter K. Tyson's great piece on Lola here and my analysis of the German economy, prostitution, the post-war black market and Blue Angel hier)

3. THE LITTLE MERMAID 
(1989) Dir. Ron Clements

If The Shining set the uncertain scary tone at the start of the 80s, then The Little Mermaid signaled the glorious start of the ending. Tapping deeply into the Jungian dream core of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, it reinvigorated Disney and sent them scrambling back to animation full time. The voiceover work is uniformly strong (the congested kid playing Flounder the only exception) especially Ursula the Sea Witch, luxuriantly voiced by Pat Caroll as a zaftig, tentacled hybrid of Margo Channing and Ethel Mermen. And what's most impressive, Ariel (Jodi Benson) breathes in the currents of the deep and her eyes dilate when she's turned on. Not to mention the prince is named Erich, all of which make Little Mermaid the best example of resonant Jungian archetypal myth since The Wizard of Oz. It's universal, yet we all feel it belongs only to us, that it's about us, and that's what myth does when it's working.

2. THE SHINING 
(1980) Dir. Stanley Kubrick

This is really a 70s movie, or rather the last movie of the 70s, virtually creating the 80s to come in its molten intellectual crucible. It even has a whole documentary devoted to critics exploring myriad paranoid deconstructions. (Room 237: See: Ripped Danny's Dopey Decal, baby). The film is open to almost anything because the space of the hotel is so vast the Torrence family each falls into a separate cabin fever --no direct link to each other, the social order or linear time/space--they dissolve into the archetypal time warp created by their own unconscious minds, which are, for our purposes, indistinguishable from reality, and from the ghosts and dark energy of the hotel... if any. They are like an iPod that must erase its current contents to connect with a new hard drive (the family name isn't 'torrents' for nothing). Danny is erased from his body altogether, to be replaced by his talking finger, Tony. Jack-- in his writerly determination to not be 'a dull boy'--can't figure out how to erase enough RAM and so is compelled to literally sever his family ties so he can reboot; Shelly's inability to get a 'normal' connection from either of the Torrance males drives her into hysterics. There's no new hard drive waiting to fill her memory, the social connection won't erase. With each new viewing she's less annoying and more genuinely heroic. (See: Pupils in the Bathroom Mirror).

1. COME AND SEE
(1985) Dir. Elem Klimov

A stunning movie that changed me absolutely, left me literally trembling in awe, and yet I never want to see it again. It's just too beautiful and disturbing, taking the Munch-ish scream of Kubrick's Shining, flooring it to the ceiling and exploding through the wall of what is possible in depicting brutality and beauty at once, telling through a child soldier's eyes of Bellarus's suffering at the hands of the Nazis until it becomes a bizarre transhumanist poetry, staggering in the way it encompasses the best of Tarkovsky, Kubrick and even David Lynch and just keeps expanding from there, widening from the unfathomable horror of war wider even than insanity's parameters.

As a side note, one thing that's kind of deeply reassuring about WWII is the way the Nazis bound us to the Russians in a forced realization of our shared humanity. We knew they were human too because they felt the same soul-crushing trauma liberating the camps. There was no way not to shudder if you were human, and that bound almost the entirety of the world together in a common cause. In Come and See we are as viewers united in a similar way, watching the sparkle in this kid's eyes gradually replaced by a twisted Munch scream, something the boy and girl stars (Aleksey Kravchenko and Olga Mironova) were supposedly hypnotized to be able to provide, something beyond human, a face unseen before or since in any cinema, so haunting I can't even post a pic (except for below and top, folded into collage - can you guess which face?).  Still relatively undiscovered either here or overseas, Come and See dwarfs the more highly praised Hollywood offerings of Citizen Kane and Vertigo, or at least standing rightly amongst them, at peer-level, as the crazy genius cousin, the one whose mad artistic gifts threaten to tear the fabric between history and the present, life and death, art and reality, until it's all one giant X-ray eye.

So that's the 80s. It can be summed I think in the above collage - all those crazed purple stares into camera, the rationalization for greed and monstrous evil creating itself like Escher's sketching hands.

Coal und der Switches Symplex: JINGLE ALL THE WAY

When it comes to holiday entertainment for the whole family nothing tops the "heroin-smuggling nuns" episode of the BIONIC WOMAN that played Xmas eve back in the 70s and has never been seen again. But we must settle. Mom wants the CHRISTMAS STORY marathon on TNT ("you kids loved that movie as kids, remember?") My brother and I roll our eyes since we endured high school with co-star Scottie Schwartz. My brother Fred likes BADDER SANTA but that kid grosses me out. I vote for the Pagan Solstice celebration of THE WICKER MAN! There's no kid at all in that, just evil Celtic children snickering at a cop's befuddlement, which is badass. We settle, always, for them all... and just wince whenever 'good' or 'normal' kids are present.

Bridgewater-Raritan HS's Scourge

Then there's a second problem with Xmas movies, the classic example of which is in SCROOGED when Bill Murray starts his lengthy rant about how we should all sing soul music together because he's finally learned the meaning of Christmas. My friends, this is nothing more than Münchausen-by-proxy syndrome, the Xmas version, which I call Coal and Switches Syndrome. It's that thing where an egotistical workaholic proceeds to create pointless disasters so that Xmas is almost ruined, all so he can race in at the 11th hour and save it. Beside Murray's Scrooge, there's Nic Cage in The FAMILY MAN (2000) and Arnold Schwarzenegger in JINGLE ALL DER WAY (1996).

To get back to kids, for they pollute many Xmas films. If real kids could have any wish, could be anything they wanted, more than anything they'd want to be adults. They don't ever imagine themselves as kids. There wasn't a single kid in STAR WARS because Lucas understood this (but then forgot it). Misunderstanding this fundamental rule of viewer identification processes led to the idiotic decision to create sidekicks like Robin and Superboy and all those movies where we don't just see what a kid would imagine, but a kid imagining it.

I mention all this because Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of those men children want to be. His overly muscular body is almost a burlesque of how boys confuse muscles with prowess; we love his comically stern accent, his straightforward way with a catch phrase, wherein you can't tell if he gets the joke or not (it's better if he doesn't). Kids delight in seeing someone so free of layers and guile; he's a crazy playful tyrant six year-old in a giant barbarian body --and we love him for it. But in JINGLE, Arnold is just an ordinary gym owner/personal trainer and largely absentee father, avoiding his son's karate performance because (subconsciously) it would mean some other athlete getting the applause. Arnold thinking he can get away with being an average suburban dad in the first place is a really bad sign. He's like an unconvincing superhero alter-ego with no superhero to turn into.

Arnold needs to realize he is not, and has never been, an average dad figure. He is not all-American Joe material, if he was, why would we bother paying to see him? In the symbolic structure of the film, though, being unaverage is a crime tantamount to neglect and he must atone by finding an unavailable/sold out super hero action figure for his emotionally blackmailing son, the superhero itself being a burlesque of impotent male rage (as a kid you have the excuse --you have no rights, are dependent on adults, and easily beaten up by kids even one or two years older). Arnold wants to be his son's action figure, but such a character, like Lacan's Phallus, is defined (in a child's mind) by his absence. And in the guilt trip nanny state PC 90's, absence is also tantamount to neglect, so Arnold has a double neglect thing going. The result is that he has to bow down to a plastic figure because his son prefers the totemic imitation phallus to his dad's genuine absence. It's a bit like Jesus being told he's not a good messiah unless he writes a letter to Santa.  

JINGLE has hints of turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself (which Guy Debord dubbed détournement): the film digs a canal into the rotting roots of the American capitalist frenzy Xmas tooth, only to fill it at the last minute with souvenir gift items available for purchase at a store near you. And like any good capitalist product, JINGLE knows how to incorporate its critique against itself within itself. That's recuperation!

One way Arnold tries to become the action figure phallus-fetish for his son is through the aforementioned Coal-Switch Syndrome: He creates drastic emergencies for himself, crises anyone who's lived in suburbia for more than five minutes would easily avoid. But he's an adrenalin junkie who rides suburban angst the way Charlie Sheen rides air currents in MAXIMUM VELOCITY. He ignores his secretary's notes that he needs to go to his kid's karate practice until the last minute, just so he can speed down the emergency lane because of the traffic. He combs through every toy story in town on Xmas Eve like a maniac as he slowly realizes his son's asked-for toy has been sold out for months, unavailable at any price. He asks for help from other shoppers and is genuinely shocked they laugh at him for being so naive. He seems to subconsciously invite contempt from fellow shoppers just so he can throw one of them into a toy display. His inability to get a call through to a radio station giving away one of the dolls leads to him smashing up the DJ booth. The fervency of his son's Xmas wish, and his own terror over seeming a bad father create a kind of eminent domain right to push and shove old ladies and children, resist arrest, trash a kid's jungle gym in the mall, willfully commit legions of traffic violations, impersonate an officer, terrify innocent pedestrians, break into and rob his neighbor's house, punch out a reindeer, and inadvertently interfere with a bust on a bootleg toy factory (run by carny schemers dressed as elves and Santas in the film's funniest bit).

In short he may not be a good dad but his reign of downtown Xmas terror makes a great metaphor for American foreign policy, especially as concerns third world countries: America is a nation so frenzied in our conspicuous consumption we trample every country who gets in the way, barging in wherever we smell oil and trampling any ecosystem like it's some slow-moving old lady shopper.

I imagine we're supposed to sympathize with Arnold's amok American dad, but the only dads who could possibly relate are, I imagine, the Hollywood elite who aren't off their cell phones more than a few minutes a year, and would be as dumbstruck as Arnold is if they suddenly had to do their own Christmas shopping. It would be more believable if Arnold was a toy come to life, fresh out of the box, believing his own cover story, like a Buzz Lightyear or post-Recall Quaid. Here he's supposed to have been living in the suburbs since before his kid was even born.  And that's just not believable.

When all his feigned ignorance and willful bull-in-a-china-shop methods fail, Arnold eventually solves it all by becoming the real life version of toy, by positing himself as the kind of father who's not afraid to use a jet pack to trash an African American family's living room as they're sitting down for Xmas eve dinner, praying! Arnold speeds through one window and out the other, just missing their heads for their heads are lowered in prayer, the only mention of God or Jesus anywhere in the film --all to prevent another African American from stealing the toy he's (unfairly) awarded to his own son by endangering the lives of pedestrians.

Needless to say, this was before 9/11 and now his behavior seems more unnerving than comical, like showing your son you love him by leaving unmarked black suitcases around an airport.

Who is to blame?

1) TOY MARKETING STRATEGIES: Perhaps it makes sense from a PR standpoint for toy companies to deliberately limit production on certain popular toys to drive the demand up, but in a country like America where everyone's self-worth hinges on providing their child with whatever they 'wish' for, it can create real stress on the national fibre. There's no reason that the most productive country in the world (China) can't meet the demands of the most demanding country in the world (U.S.) so the blame becomes personal --the dads who forgot to shop til the last minute are the victims. Movies themselves do this all the time. Disney lets their classic titles go "into the vault" to drive up resale value and ensure higher sales during releases / promotions, and certain rarefied cult director iconoclasts insist on releasing their own films on their own label, like David Lynch or Russ Meyer, ensuring the price never gets too low and avoiding middleman and PR fees but resulting in long stretches where they're not available. But kids don't understand supply and demand. They only know that if they don't get the toy they want, there is no Santa, and so they may as well become a derelict drug addict.

2) MEASURING-UP ANXIETIES: I don't have kids so I don't quite understand, but from movies like JINGLE I glean a certain fear of measuring up to some paternal ideal that, to be honest, I don't remember seeing when I was a kid in the 70's, when parents looked after their own good time first (as on MAD MEN) and got us some, not all, presents we wanted. To get us all was considered bad form, 'spoiling' us. Overall we were much more bored than kids today: we had no internet or cell phones. But, in knowing our father's self-regard didn't hinge our approval, we at least felt secure. In fearing him, we didn't need to fear anyone else. Arnold's kid might not fear his dad, but pays for the luxury with a great deal of collateral anxiety. If the son says he wants a jet ski, for example, and the next day one is waiting in the driveway, what a great dad! But then the kid feels guilty because he sees dad's car is missing, clearly having been sold to pay for the jet ski. Now the kid can't even get a ride to the lake to use it.

A Wizard of Oz version would be if the dad--rather than standing firm on his split subject of the fearsome non-du-pere / old man behind the curtain able to hold the black bag of social decoration (the social order's equivalent to Skeeball prizes--tried to be the wizard all the time, s has to race to set up his smoke and mirrors at school for his son's soccer game or--in this case--karate demonstration. Finally, he collapses from a stroke trying to keep the illusion alive, only in this case since he can't separate the two, the illusion on the smoke and mirrors isn't a fearsome green patriarch but a sensitive square jawed smiling advertisement of the perfect 'soft' dad.

3) NO ONE LEARNS THE RIGHT LESSON FROM CAESAR MILAN: If you don't assert your dominance over your dog, your dog assumes you are weak and thus feels he must take over as pack leader. This makes your dog a nervous wreck. How can a dog take care of a family when he can't even open the front door?  Kids with needy parents wind up in the same position. Adults are able to navigate the social order and assess dangers far better than dogs or children. But if they are too weak-willed to be stern and authoritarian when they need be, then the children or dogs feel, however unconsciously, that they have to step in. This is illustrated perfectly when Arnold calls his wife to tell her his car is totaled in pursuit of the doll, and Hartman answers the phone saying he's eating Arnold's wife's cookies while she takes a shower. Arnold shouts into the phone: "Put that cookie down now!" He's trying to boss around Hartman like he's a kid, showing only a frazzled damage control kind of obsessiveness that's destructive to himself and those around. In other words, Arnold is like a five year-old trying to be the father and falling apart (like a bad pack leader), yapping at falling leaves and biting mailmen. He doesn't realize he needs to embody the role of the father, not the 'fun dad who's a pal' or the superhero or the 'swell generous appeaser' who will only create another nervous idiot like himself out of his son.

That cookie line has gone on to become quite the meme and gives Arnold the quid pro quo revenge excuse he needs to Grinch up Phil's tree :

While we're expected to root for Arnold, it's actually rival doll-seeker and uncouth mailman Sinbad who is the most complex and worthy of sympathy. The only one at the store who doesn't sneer at Arnold's confusion over the absence of Turbo Men, he even offers to join forces, an offer which Arnold coldly rejects. As we see then-relatively unusual sights like people macing and tazing each other over sale items at the department store, what's most amazing and sad is how completely oblivious Arnold is to the idea that he is not the only dad in the world who waited too long, that he is just another dopey sucker paying capitalism's harshest price for waiting to buy buy buy. In other words, he's punished for not fully absorbing the Pavlovian conditioning necessary for impulse spending early and often (he works out at the gym, rather than shops, for his endorphins). But he is still conditioned enough that he genuinely believes it's his right as an American dad to use excessive force in pursuit of his individual needs, never questioning the validity of his Coal and Switches Symplex. Even having a coffee with Sinbad, his only friend, guarantees nothing: Arnold shoves him aside to be the first caller into a radio station, then seems genuinely shocked and hurt when Sinbad does the same to him.

But all is redeemed as far as I'm concerned, when, after he hits bottom, Arnold shares a beer with the reindeer he knocked out the previous shot. It's his moment of alleged redemption, making up for decades of bad blood between him and the animal kingdom from when he drunkenly punched out a camel in CONAN. And even if it skirts around being a total anti-consumerist parable, I applaud the film's brutal satirization of the consumer mindset and the Coal Switches Syndrome, even while endorsing each in the end. That's the unique problem of a country with a free press, namely that once an institution incorporates its own critique, it nulls all criticism by depicting the critic criticizing it, of having the thing itself critique its own thinghood and thus having its cake but charging you for it anyway. Like the kid who punches himself in the face so the bully doesn't get him first, Arnold can only fight bigger guys than himself and have it be fair....just like Rock Hudson has to wait until the end of GIANT before he finally finds someone in his same height and weight class. (Sinbad comes close, as does this guy:)

The point is, fatherhood's integrity takes a bullet in the name of commercial fetishization and makes us wonder: who is it that thinks kids most want to see parents suffering indignities on their behalf? The same idiots who think kids want to see kids in the first place? Arnold's kid is an emotional blackmailer --he needs to have his father not get him the action figure. He needs to feel that terrible sting, suffer in his room for awhile, and get over it. it's part of the maturation process; having the figure under the tree would make him happy for a few hours, but he would lose interest in it by dinnertime, and dad--having busted so many heads to get it--will be upset and hurt his son's not playing with it enough. Not getting it keeps it at maximum value as an objet petit a. His son will need to Adults like Arnold in JINGLE are not avatars of how boys want to imagine themselves, but stooges, cautionary tales, comical, neutered, pleading, desperate, pissing themselves in vain attempts to win their children's fickle favor. A kid trying to impress his father is natural and helps both parties grow, but a father trying to impress a kid is unnatural and stunts the world, as we now know (by which I mean the world is stunted). Feminism, the nanny state, equal rights, and anti-smoking legislation have stolen the balls from out the father and then kicked him where they used to hang, saying 'see, if your balls were still there, that kick would totally hurt, so you're welcome!'

A handicapped man once said of women: "we let 'em smoke, vote and drive, even put 'em in pants! And what do we get? Russian roulette on the highway, a democrat in the White House, you can't even tell male from female.... unless you meet 'em head on."

That old man was played by Stuart Lancaster, and the movie was the Russ Meyer's 1965's FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL! It's currently out of print, but if ever there was an Xmas movie worth running someone over for it's this one. RIP Haji... you were some kind of a woman... and ballsier than most modern dads. We could learn a lesson, if it was only in stock.