Cautionary Tale?

Film: Monster
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

Aside from the movies that have been on my Oscars list for a year or two, there is still a handful of movies I haven’t watched. Most of these are movies that I can’t find, but there are a couple I just keep putting off. In the case of Monster, it might be that I just didn’t really want to dive head-first into the world of Aileen Wuornos again. The 1001 Movies list is scant on documentaries, but over its history, two of those documentaries are about Aileen Wuornos. How much did I really want to dive into a slightly fictionalized version?

Because here’s the thing—I don’t know how fictionalized this is. The documentaries more or less tried to tell the story of Aileen Wuornos from her point of view, and essentially presented the case for someone deeply disturbed. Monster very much does the same thing. The real Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who killed a series of Johns. As depicted here, her first victim was attempting to rape her, and she defended herself. Following this, Aileen (played in an Oscar-winning performance by Charlize Theron) essentially decides that all of her clients are going to kill her and she acts pre-emptively. She makes an exception for one person, and also kills another who was legitimately trying to help her.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1963

The Contenders:

Captain Newman, M.D.
Hud
Lilies of the Field
Sundays and Cybele
Tom Jones (winner)

"Based on a True Story"

Film: The Conjuring
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.

Say what you will about The Conjuring, the producers and director James Wan made something that is terrifying for people of a particular mindset. The story behind the production is that this was handed an R-rating by the MPAA immediately. When asked what could be done to bring the rating down to PG-13, they were told that there was nothing they could do. The film is simply too scary to ever be rated PG-13. There’s no gore, no real violence, not much language, and no nudity. It’s just too scary to be seen by kids without supervision.

So is that really the case? It kind of is. There are some supremely scary moments in The Conjuring, and I appreciate that a great deal. The problem for me is that so much of what makes this movie scary for many people is completely lost on me. The claim is that this story is based on the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a pair of paranormal investigators who have claimed to be involved in real hauntings. Well, that’s fine, but I don’t buy into the supernatural. I don’t doubt that they’ve had some interesting experiences, but for me, things like demonic possession and the like is about as real as pixies and leprechauns. When you don’t have that basic belief, a great deal of the impact of this story is lost.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1951

The Contenders:

Katharine Hepburn: The African Queen
Jane Wyman: The Blue Veil
Eleanor Parker: Detective Story
Shelley Winters: A Place in the Sun
Vivien Leigh: A Streetcar Named Desire (winner)

Bungle in the Jungle

Film: Vinyan
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television

A lot of movies are naturally combinations of other movies or of multiple ideas. Sometimes, those are unique combinations, or at least unexpected ones, while some are commonplace. There are plenty of movies that are essentially “Die Hard on a _______,” for instance. Speed was “Die Hard on a bus.” Some movies are far more interesting combinations of movies. Vinyan, for instance, feels like the novel “The Lord of the Flies” combined with the last part of Apocalypse Now with a sizable dollop of Cannibal Ferox.

If you think that means we’re going to have white people traveling to the middle of nowhere and attacked by groups of native people, you’d be exactly right. We start with the tsunami in the mid-2000s that killed off a quarter of a million people. Among the dead is Joshua, the young son of French couple Jeanne (Emmanuelle Beart) and Paul Bellmer (Rufus Sewell). The couple has stayed in Thailand, and six months later, while at a fundraiser for an orphanage, Jeanne sees footage of a child that she is convinced is Joshua.

Everything All at Once

Film: Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor)
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television

I have complained in the past about the fact that a lot of anime don’t have a great deal of exposition. I felt exactly the same way with Night Watch (also known as Nochnoy Dozor or Ночноы дозор if you prefer the Cyrillic), which is Russian and not Japanese. Night Watch is based on a novel, which is actually kind of reassuring. The problem with the movie is that it wants desperately to fit all of the material from the book in regardless of whether or not it has time to really help the audience understand it. A hell of a lot of concepts come flying out here right at the start and they aren’t fully explained except through a sort of osmosis.

So where do I start here? The basic premise of the movie is that there are forces of good and forces of evil in the world known as “Others.” The others are essentially human, but have a variety of powers and abilities like vampirism or being able to see future events. The “Light Others,” who are the good guys and the “Dark Others,” who are the bad guys have reached a truce. The truce is enforced by a group called the Night Watch (the good guys watching the bad guys) and a group called the Day Watch (the bad guys watching the good guys).

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2006

The Contenders:

Leonardo DiCaprio: Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling: Half Nelson
Forest Whitaker: The Last King of Scotland (winner)
Will Smith: The Pursuit of Happyness
Peter O’Toole: Venus