The House Of God (1984)

Couldn't find a movie
poster, here's the book

Background: The House Of God started as a novel by a psychiatrist named Stephen Bergman, though he used the name Samuel Shem, M.D. It was based on his grueling life as a medical intern in 1974. The book was held in high regard at the time, and is still popular among medical interns today. The book is a satire along the same lines as Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It was equal parts funny and scathing, to the point where established medical professionals were speaking out against it, or simply denying they had even heard of it. It introduced many acronyms that are still, apparently, in use today, like LOL in NAD, or Little Old Lady In No Apparent Distress.

There is no denying the impact of the original source material on the medical world, but the movie on the other hand... not so much. It stars Tim Matheson, known best as Otter from Animal House, and prominent TV Actor Charles Haid, in the middle of his long run on Hill Street Blues. This is a rare feature film from director Donald Wrye. His career is filled almost exclusively by TV movies. His other feature film was 1978's Ice Castles, which was later remade in 2010... by Donald Wrye again. I guess dramas about ice skating are timeless.

The opening credits also list Joe Piscopo. Good gravy.

Plot: This is the story of a group of new interns at The House Of God. the best teaching hospital in the world, according to Dr. Joe Piscopo. Dr. Piscopo is Chief Intern. Surprisingly, he never once does a cheesy Frank Sinatra impression, nor does he ever make stupid faces for the camera. I don't know who dropped the ball there. When we first meet the group of interns, they're all in various states. Some are bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to get doctoring and medicine doing. There's a black guy dressed like a pimp, there's a jewish guy that looks like Horshack. No asians though. Lead among them (meaning most handsome) is Roy Basch (Matheson).

The Fatman is there to lead them through their studies. he introduces them to the idea of a "Gomer" or "Get out of my emergency room".  Gomers, he says, never die. This is demonstrated a number of times with varying degrees of comedy. The first Gomer the interns meet immediately struggles against the interns helping her, and she falls out of the bed. This, as it turns out, is fairly common, so The Fatman hands the interns a helmet to slap on her. It's a New Orleans Saints helmet. Not sure if that's part of the joke.

The Fatman has a lot of advice along these lines. He says that since Gomers don't die, they have to be forced out of the hospital by other means. These range from creative (Scaring a patient with a painful procedure so she leaves) to the unthinkable (Raising a patient's bed so when he inevitably falls out of it, it causes a more serious injury and is transferred). The idea of getting these Gomers transferred is called "Turfing" them. All these acronyms and jargons don't really add up to much, but they're fun.

Along the way, the characters grow in various ways. The handsome one falls for a nurse. The black guy can't handle the pressure because he really just wanted to be a singer. They introduce a contest to see who can do the most autopsies so doctors start intentionally letting patients die. The handsome one wants to be the best doctor he can and lets relationships suffer. One guy, when blamed with a patients death, jumps off the building. It should be said, that while these are wildly varying themes, tonally, the movie handles these pretty well. If I had one complaint, it's that the plot is sorta cartoony at times, but the tone is unable to take it far enough.

Why Was It Forgotten? Scrubs. You remember that show right? Man, what ever happened to Zach Braff? Yeah, I don't care either. Where was I? Scrubs set out to say many of the same things this movie says. Now, I know this story predates Scrubs by several decades, but in a world where Scrubs exists, it's easy for this to get lost in the depths. In fact, tonally, this seems to have been the main influence on Scrubs. There are new doctors fighting against becoming completely jaded, but bonding with each other. Here though, the wise all knowing janitor is replaced by 2 wise all knowing police officers. Also changing, the main character falls for the nurse, not the sidekick.

Scrubs was far more accessible though. The dialogue moved fast, but not this fast. Also, smartly, it slowed down when they were talking about medical jargon. Here though, the characters talk equally fast no matter what they're talking about. While this may seem more realistic, but makes it harder to keep up with for the layperson.

Also, I dunno if this has to do with people forgetting this movie, but it is vaguely, and sometimes overtly, racist. There's only one black intern in the group. When we first meet him, he's dressed audaciously, pimplike if you will. Turns out he's from the inner city in Memphis. The only way he got into college is by filling out a card with his race and financial status. Same with med school and the internship itself. So the only black guy is only there because he's black. You can fill in the gaps.

What Went Right? Scrubs again. People should probably give this movie a shot if they liked Scrubs. it's funny enough, I found myself laughing quite a few times, and it has the more touching moments (far less compelling). It's fun watching the interns learn their ways around the hospital. Plus, Joe Piscopo is kept to a very minimal role, only appearing in a few scenes. That, above all else, is to be commended. It's unfortunate though that the movie completely falls apart whenever it attempts any sort of plot developments. The characters are fun at least.

Verdict: Proto-Scrubs and very little Joe Piscopo, not too shabby!

Score: 65%

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Background: This movie won the 2010 Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival. That is to say that it won one of the most, possible the single most, prestigious awards in world of film. That said, I'm absolutely not surprised to see this qualifies for The Depths. First of all, this movie was made in Thailand and, unfortunate as it is, people don't like reading subtitles. That counts double for a language as foreign as Thai. A lot of Americans can fumble through the major European languages that they learned in high school, some people will even seek out foreign movies that they know a bit of the language of, either to bone up a bit or just try to see how much they know. I know I watched Downfall (which was fantastic) and Good Bye, Lenin! (which isn't as good as everyone says) because I took a lot of German classes.

That said, even if this movie were made in English, this would not be a popular movie. Even in Thailand, this movie only barely saw a release. It had a limited run for a month in Bangkok thanks to Kick The Machine. It's a deliberately paced and deeply contemplative movie. To say that it's an art movie almost sells it short, though. There is a plot that, though strange, is actually easy to follow, something not seen too often in art films.

This film was directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who also helpfully goes by Joe. I'll call him Joe because holy shit that is some name he's got. In addition to the Palme D'or, his previous films have also won the Cannes Jury Prize (Tropical Malady) and the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes (Blissfully Yours) so it's clear that this is a man who knows his film.

Plot: This film has far less plot than tone. The pacing of the film is intentionally slow, forcing the viewer to soak in the movie and all the moods of all the characters. Essentially, this movie is about a man, the eponymous Boonmee, who is dying. By his side is his sister in law, his nephew, and his helper/nurse. They all try to console Boonmee by telling him that he'll get better. One evening, during a dinner with his family, the ghost of his wife appears. Though the family is confused, none of them appear to be scared or even taken aback by the appearance of the ghost.

Later, another ghost appears in another form to Boonmee and his family. This time it's that of his long lost son. Now though, he's been transformed into a hairy monkey hybrid with glowing eyes. This sounds ridiculous, sure, but hear me out. He says that he became that way because he mated with other monkey-people out in the hills in the wilderness. Okay, now you can think it's ridiculous.

Along the way, Boonmee talks to the ghost of his wife and the new form of his son. In this way, the movie isn't about what most people think of when they picture "past lives." It's more about the life he led with his wife before she died and his son before he ran off to live in the hills. These scenes are moving emotionally, but given their supernatural elements, also put the viewer in this strange world where people don't notice the crazy things around them.

Why Was If Forgotten? There are a lot of people that will be thrown off by the subtitles, there are a lot of people that will mill the themes entirely, there are a lot of people that will find the supernatural parts silly and not take the movie seriously, but none of those reasons really get down to the core of why most people will never  give this movie a chance. It's the pacing. Take the opening scene, for example. The film starts with an ox wandering through the forrest. There is no context surrounding it, nor is it ever referenced again in the movie. But that doesn't mean Joe left it in there by accident. It's clear that every moment of every shot is how Joe wanted it. 

It's also clear though, that he's working on a completely different level than most directors. Take the scene where the ghost of Boonmee's wife appears. The family is eating dinner and a mysterious figure appears so slowly, viewers might not even realize it at first.

This movie isn't complicated the way American movies are. Over here, movies are complicated mostly in their plots and that's how filmmakers will fit themes in. Film Noir in the '40s especially was great for this. Lately, the films of Christopher Nolan and Spike Jonze have picked up in similar ways. Uncle Boonmee though wears its themes on its sleeve, and that can be off putting to some people. It's sort of the inverse of American cinema, putting a lot of contemplation around very little plot.

What Went Right? Judging by the Ebert scale of whether or not a movie achieves what it sets out to say? I'd say everything.

Verdict: Sure it's weird, see the damn movie.

Score: 100%

Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt And The Magnetic Fields (2010)

Background: This is gonna be another music movie. I did one of those before withe the Andrew W.K. concert film Who Knows? I'll admit that I'm inherently biased towards these movies because I like the bands in them. The Magnetic Fields, for instance, have been one of my favorite bands since the release of their 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs. That album goes through many different styles of music, a rotation of singers and a wildly varying degree of seriousness. This was far from the first time the band has struck gold though. 1994 was a banner year, seeing the release of both Holiday and The Charm Of The Highway Strip. Both are synth heavy, melancholic albums rooted in bouncy pop melodies, but both are also distinctly unique.

Stephin Merritt, the subject of this documentary, is the leader and songwriter for the band, as well as the main singer. Early in the band's career though, the songs were sung by Susan Anway, and since the release of 69 Love Songs, a usual cast of characters appears on every album. I know I've been doing a lot of documentaries, but they usually have the highest success rate, and I can only take so many obscure Italian erotic thrillers.

Plot: This movie doesn't really have much of a plot, it's more of a portrait of Stephin Merritt, interspersed with a brief history of The Magnetic Fields as a band. Most of the interviews with other people in the band (Pianist, Singer and prime collaborator Claudia Gonson; Guitarist John Woo; Cellist Sam Davol) are all about Stephin as a person and as a boss. Right from the get go, Merritt comes off as a dour, bitchy, sorta mean spirited guy. But you can also tell that he revels in being a dour, bitchy, sorta mean spirited guy. Even a couple celebrities, like Sarah Silverman and Neil Gaiman, chime in to talk about their impressions of Merritt from interviews. They all agree that he comes off as the biggest jerk in the world. This, as any fan of The Magnetic Fields could tell you, is his trademark.

The movie touches on how Merritt creates his songs. He says he sits in gay bars for up to 8 hours listening to disco, smoking and drinking a cocktail. Though the soundtrack focusses mostly on songs from 69 Love Songs the movie barely touches on it at all. It gives brief mention to most of their other albums, but barely says anything about their most popular album. It never even mentions Holiday, nor do you hear even a single bar of the song Strange Powers until the closing credits.

One of the few plot points is the accusation of racism against Merritt that was flying around a few years ago. Stephin decided to write a list of his top 100 songs from the past 100 years, one for each year, for the magazine Time Out New York. Sasha Frere-Jones, music critic for The New Yorker, read the list and decided that it didn't have enough black artists on it. This leads to a brief detour from the thoughts of Stephin into whether not listening to artists of other races makes you racist. The movie quickly comes to the common sense conclusion of "Of course not, you jackass" and even Frere-Jones apologizes.

The movie ends with Merritt's move from his New York City studio apartment where many of the Magnetic Fields' albums were recorded (his neighbors must have really hated him) to Los Angeles. This puts some strain on the relationship between him and Gonson, because they had always worked so closely together, and the change very clearly worries Gonson, but it ends on a happy note with a west coast tour promoting their album Distortion.

Why Was If Forgotten? Instead of talking about why this movie isn't terribly popular, let's instead talk about why The Magnetic Fields have never hit in the mainstream. It seems like the main purpose of this movie is to demonstrate why this is so. The early parts of the movie show Merritt recording with Gonson in his studio apartment using crazy instruments like a wind chime made out of plastic cups. Merritt also shows off his ukulele collection. These are all things that don't make sense in a pop context, yet he uses these kooky things to make pop music. He mentions ABBA among his influences, even. 

Most of the music in the movie focusses on 69 Love Songs. This is arguably their most popular album, but doesn't really give much scope on why people love them. The album is broad and diverse, sure, but there are many different Magnetic Fields sounds. They started as a very synth heavy band, and 69 Love Songs veers away from that. 

What Went Right? Though this movie is ostensibly about The Magnetic Fields and the making of their many albums, but Stephin Merritt is really the only subject. Even the interviews with other members of the band are about what it's like to work with Stephin. As the brain behind the music, I guess this makes sense. It might have been more interesting though if more of the band were included, but that would have been a different movie entirely. Stephin comes off as charmingly prickly, often sort of mean in a funny way. Though he's dour, he's still fun to spend the movie with.

This gives a really cool peek inside the head of a guy I like a lot. If you don't like that guy, chances are this movie isn't for you. If you find his songs annoying or pretentious or what have you, this will be the last movie you want to watch. Even if you have never heard The Magnetic Fields before, this movie will be stupid and boring. Though if you haven't heard The Magnetic Fields before, go out and get Holiday as soon as possible. Then watch this movie. Then read this review.

Verdict: I'm gonna be listening to The Magnetic Fields for the rest of the week if you don't mind.

Score: 80%

BMX Bandits (1983)

Background: They say to truly understand someone, you have to understand where he or she came from. Every flower has roots or some mumbo jumbo like that. Well, today we're gonna look at both the mumbo and jumbo of Nicole Kidman's feature film debut.  Nicole Kidman is famous, of course, for being in the boring parts of the Tom Cruise/Robert Duval NASCAR epic Days Of Thunder, as well as winning an Oscar for her role The Hours. She also boasts what I believe to be the lowest hit-to-flop ratio of just about an A-List actress. The Golden Compass, Nine and The Invasion, all within the course of just a few years, all failed to make back their budgets. Some missed that mark by a country mile. These movies were all made after her divorce from Tom Cruise in 2006. Other movies, like the recent remake of The Stepford Wives only barely managed to break even. Despite pretty terrible reviews, this movie was made before their split, so it did okay. Not saying these two have any connection, just something to think about.

Something else to think about is what the hell kind of state was Australian filmmaking in in 1983? This movie was nominated for 4 awards from the Australian Film Institute including Best Adapted Screenplay. I have no damn clue from what this was adapted. I can't find a "Novel by" credit anywhere. Looking through the list of nominees for the rest of the categories, it looks like only 4 or 5 movies came out of Australia at all that year, so maybe it says more that it wasn't nominated for every category.

Nicole Kidman. Really.

Plot: The movie predictably opens on a pair of kids riding BMX bikes. BMX, for the uninitiated, stands for Bicycle Motocross. Why they call it motocross when there are no motors I'll never know, but that's neither here nor there. They do tricks and it's clear that they both couldn't handle doing the same trick in the same shot. Every take has one or the other wobbling or just not quite landing properly. That's how a low budget shoot goes though.

Cut to a bank robbery. There are 4 robbers, three with pig masks, the driver is the wolf. They get away with the money and back to their hideout. The boss isn't pleased with the couple hundred thousand dollars they made, keep in mind this is Aussie dollars. I have no idea how that converts. This is where they hatch their next big scheme. They're gonna steal a remote controlled payroll truck. Those don't really exist and will never really exist, but whatever. They're gonna use special walkie talkies to control the truck right into their arms.

The BMX riders run into Nicole Kidman along the way, They take her out on a fishing trip for some reason and take a package that's dangling off a boat for some reason. They call it salvaging a shipwreck. It's walkie talkies! They don't question why they were at the bottom of the sea and sell them to local kids. You know how kids love having single walkie talkies with no one on the other end.

Most of the movie consists of two of the bank robbers tracking down the kids. Of course they're the two bumbling robbers, and they get up to a bunch of hijinks in the meantime. Turns out the walkies work on every frequency simultaneously, so the cops can hear everything they say. That doesn't matter in the long run because the cops play absolutely no role in the end of the movie. The only purpose this really serves is one scene where all the walkie chatter interferes with a construction site and a girder crushes a car in a ridiculously large explosion. The BMX kids win in the long run. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Why Was It Forgotten: This movie's from Austrlia and it contains neither shrimp nor barbies. For most of America, this is a deal breaker. Also, right from the jump it's dated as all hell. It was made in 1983 and makes no bones about it. From the cheesey synths to the brightly colored BMX bikes to the riders wearing rainbow pads, nothing about it says "Modern filmmaking". I'm sure there was a time when riding a bike the way these guys do was mindblowing, but in today's society with The X-Games and such, there is little wonder in a wheelie and a tailwhip.

Usually, I'd make an example out of the idiotic plot, the motiveless characters or any of the other glaring flaws in this movie, but trying to pick one or two to write about would exclude all the others. Let's just say that the entire movie's the problem here. Let's just say that Nicole Kidman doesn't really display the prowess she's now known for.

What Went Right? The Super-80's has its own charms I suppose. A lot of movie soundtracks in the 80s became dated really quickly, though. This just seems like a cheep knockoff of better work by Giorgio Moroder. The two actual licensed songs are pretty fun though. It's just a shame the rest of the movie is generic synthesized nonsense. Also, easily one of the top 4 adapted screen plays to come out of Australia in 1983.

Verdict: This movie should probably actually be called "BMX, Bandits"

Score: 12%

4 For Texas (1963)

Background: The stars of this movie need no introduction. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were two of the biggest stars in the world and remain household names to this day. Add in other names like Anita Ekberg, most famous for starring in the Fellini masterpiece La Dolce Vita, Ursula Andress, the original Bond girl, and super badass Charles Bronson, you barely need anything else to sell the movie to most people. This movie even has a big name director in Robert Aldrich. He had already scored big with Kiss Me Deadly and would go on to make The Dirty Dozen and The Longest Yard.

It was not without problems in production though. Frank Sinatra has always been known for being a hard man to work with, especially when he's acting. Aldrich became very frustrated with Sinatra's attitude and tried to have him kicked out of the movie, though this of course failed in the long run. Interestingly, this movie was going to be the first big hollywood production to feature nudity since the introduction of the infamous "Production code" and both Ursula Andress and Anita Ekberg did nude screen test. The censors weren't having it though and it was taken out of the final cut of the movie. Instead, the low budget movie Promises! Promises! featured the first female nudity since that code was put in place, featuring all of Jayne Mansfield.

Plot: The movie opens with a stagecoach robbery. Frank Sinatra is on the roof of the coach protecting it from the robbers. Dean is inside the coach, unknown to Ol' Blue Eyes. Turns out the coach is back to the gills with cash. They get away from the robbers (the leader of which is played by Charles Bronson) and Frank starts checking on the cash. Dean pulls a gun on Frank and takes the money, then Frank pulls a different gun and stops him as he's getting away. Then Dean pulls a third gun and gets away for real. Along the way, Frank details what he wants to do with the money, start a project that will net $500,000 per year. A riverboat perhaps. But all that is for naught as Dean makes off with the cash.

Frank, as it turns out, has been working for the bank. Though it's not totally clear in what capacity, because the bank owner (A fat man who burps constantly) totally hates Sinatra. Says he's gone mad with power, though again, the nature of his power is nebulous at best.  The bank owner hates him so much that he hired those stage coach robbers. 

The movie, seemingly unable to edit out even a single scene, takes a of time to do very little. After some time, Dean winds up tracking down this famed riverboat, and finds it's still owned by Ursula Andress. She's willing to make a deal for the boat if someone were willing to put up the money. Dean is more than willing to help out a pretty lady, especially one whose outfit doesn't make any practical sense except to show off her legs.

The two eventually decide they have to join up to hold off the banker and his goons. The scenes with Sinatra and Martin are among the rare times the charm this movie keeps striving for actually comes though for a while. The new team and their riverboat have to hold off Bronson. He was shot twice earlier in the movie, but keeps at them. Persistent guy. Can they put their differences aside and keep their new business afloat? (Afloat, get it?)

Why Was It Forgotten? Like most of the rat pack movies, like Ocean's Eleven and Robin And The 7 Hoods, they exist mostly as ways to show off how much fun those guys can have. Frank and Dean smirk their way through the entire movie, though they're certainly not the first nor last to do so. This movie actually has a lot in common with Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. In that movie, both Paul Newman and Robert Redford play hardened criminals who come off as completely charming. This movie goes for a similar tone, though admittedly several years earlier, and never fails to alienate the audience at every turn. In the opening scene, Dean takes the scarf and watch of a dead man, later we see Frank with an army of French maids at his every beck and call. So even though the smirking never stops, the charm never comes through.

What Went Right? The plot is perfectly serviceable, if a little crowded. The entire character of the bank owner is almost completely unnecessary. And he's almost completely annoying. Also, Charles Bronson is great as always. He's the only one in the movie that comes off even remotely believably as a criminal. The pacing is wildly uneven, but when it moves, it's always fun and interesting. It's unfortunate then that the movie rarely gets going.

Verdict: It's a rat pack movie alright. If that's a good thing to you, go for this one.

Score: 55%

Two Orphan Vampires (1997)

Background: First off, I’ll be doing one or two guest posts for our regular Depths writer until he gets his Internet back. I’m a fellow movie and Netflix lover, although admittedly not as knowledgeable about it as he is. I’m also a lover of offbeat, little-known vampire films, which is what we have on the bill today. Jean Rollin, who is apparently rather well known for his erotic, usually vampire-themed horror films, directs this forgotten 1997 film. The Netflix description of this actually describes him as “the master of the lesbian vampire movie genre,” which I for one didn’t even know exists. Apparently, most would say the same about Two Orphan Vampires, as Rollins is best known for his earlier films such as Le Viol du Vampire (Queen of the Vampires). This was his directorial debut, and it opened in 1968 amid largely negative reactions that almost forced him to quit film. Obviously he didn’t, and went on to make more successful films. There’s enough information about his early films online, but not much at all about the background behind Two Orphan Vampires. I did find out that it’s based on his own novel, and that it was his most extravagant budget yet at $700,000. Also the two stars were wholly inexperienced in film—he found them in a newspaper ad. That’s it for behind the scenes info; now let’s judge the actual thing.

Plot: This movie has a rather long and winding plot, and it’s not in a hurry. It starts with two nuns explaining to a doctor that the orphan sisters, Louise and Henriette, are blind. This starts a movie-long trend of the girls being referred to as angels. Their innocence and sweetness is emphasized throughout the whole movie, mostly by nuns and old women. Their little adventure begins when they get out of bed at the orphanage in the middle of the night. Apparently they can only see at night, and then everything is blue, which explains the blue filter that’s in every other scene. They decide to go join the stray dog that’s hanging out in the cemetery because why the hell not. Fun times are hard to find in an orphanage, I suppose. They frolic around the graves for a bit, then sit down and talk about their past lives. Looking at the camera for a large part of it with odd smiles, they talk about how they’ve had “mishaps,” how they’ve been killed and then came back.

We first see them as vampires in the beginning of a series of flashbacks to past lives. In this one, they ravage their innocent prey on the Brooklyn Bridge (the rest of the movie is in Paris) before gleefully running away. Their flashbacks often try to indicate a different time period by way of their outfits. They also meet a variety of odd characters throughout the movie: a crazy she-wolf at the train station, a ghoul, an old man who chases them, and some kind of ridiculous vampire/dragon lady in a church who gives them a place to hide from the asshole old man.

At some point in the movie they move from the orphanage to the doctor’s house. When he mistakenly shoots Louise outside the house at night (don’t worry, she survives thanks to Henriette being so generous with her blood, and yes it was as weird as it sounds), they decide to kill him. I found it amusing that instead of doing their usual vampire thing, Henriette stabs him from behind with a knife. It was a rather effective scene, since for once we actually see guilt or fear on her face as she hesitates. The rest of the movie, they’re just normal teenagers who smoke and get drunk and sneak out at night and give each other naked hugs. Oh, right, and they suck people’s blood—and they never seem guilty about it. They do seem conflicted about their identity, constantly asking throughout the movie, “Who are we?” At one point, they decide they’re actually Aztec goddesses, and at another they’re convinced they are magicians.

Near the end, they go back to the orphanage and, in another effective scene, the nuns walk in to find them with two dead orphans lying in their bloody laps. Of course, after that, the girls are on the run. Oddly, the old man who chased them earlier sees them and goes after them again with a gun. This time it’s Henriette who’s shot. They stumble into a pond together, and basically just drown themselves. It’s okay though, they’ll probably be back. 

Why Was it Forgotten? It really does drag on a lot (sooo many shots of them just walking up and down stairs), and for a filmmaker known for his erotic horror films, this one has very little horror or eroticism. The gore is satisfying enough, but there’s no real scares (and I don’t believe he was trying for them) except for the scene in which she stabs the doctor, and perhaps when the nuns find them with their dead victims. Even those are more horrific than actually “scary.” There is some brief nudity, but it’s more of an awkward-to-watch sisterly kind. Most people probably go into this hoping for a certain kind of film and finding an entirely different one. It is also easy to find the actresses’ performance alienating, since whenever they are with the nuns or the doctor, their dialogue is stilted and their expressions devoid of emotion. Also, I thought it would be in French; instead, it seems to have been dubbed in English. Disappointing.

What Went Right? It is often a very pretty film, and although usually the high amount of blue filter would bother me, I don’t mind it much since there’s a reason behind it. I also quite liked the score. Also, I enjoyed the girls’ performances. Whenever they were on their own, they suddenly alternated between giddiness and profound sadness. Sometimes it still seemed sort of like they were playacting their emotions, but I think that might have been the point. They’re supposed to be inhuman. Overall, the mood of the film was pitch perfect, it was often rather funny, and the girls’ beauty and wide smiles were appropriately creepy.

 

Verdict: I wish it hadn’t been quite so slow, and I would have preferred a tighter plot. That said, it’s an interesting vampire film that will stick with me.

Score: 70%

Bawdy Tales (1974)

Background: This is another Italian movie from the '70s, like Depths Of Netflix favorite, Nude For Satan. Though that was in no way a good movie, I did admire its attempts at moodiness. It failed miserably, mind you, but it tried. That movie was a damn mess of slow pacing, boring characters and a Gothic Liberace. Why in the world would I want to go back to the well of obscure italian movies? Well, this one was written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. He somehow managed to direct an adaptation of 120 Days Of Sodom. Yes, that 120 Days Of Sodom. The Marquis De Sade's 120 Days Of Sodom. Add in the fact that he also directed an adaptation of 1,001 Arabian Nights, and a saucy version of The Canturbury Tales (what?) and that shows that this man clearly has some bawdy tales in his back pocket. You probably don't want to reach into that pocket though. So let's enjoy some Bawdy Tales.

Plot: This movie sets its tone early with two guys in silly hats talking about crimes they've committed while taking a shit. This, I guess, is a joke. If it is, it's one of the more tasteful ones in the movie. These guys are the framing device for the rest of the movie. These two tell stories back and forth, and the stories they tell make up most of the running time. I'll talk about their part first. They run into another criminal who has a sack of money from all the people he's killed. They end up killing him for his money, taken to jail and ultimately hung for their crimes, telling stories to each other right up until the bitter end.

The first story takes place in a small town. The women of this town are wildly unfaithful, as are the preachers. One older man worries about his wife who seems to have changed recently. Turns out she's nailing a dozen different guys. He learns this by sneaking into the confession booth as she tells the preacher about her impropriety. Another man's wife cheats on him with a younger preacher with a shitty mustache. He walks in on the preacher jamming on his wife, stabs her, but lets the padre live. Instead he just forces him to cut off his own dick. The other story ends in a weirdly similar way. The wife that's getting it from most of the town's husband locks her in a dungeon like basement (completely nude, natch) and he cuts of his member and throws it at her. This action is never explained or rationalized at all.

The next story is about two shepherds. One, the thinner, tells the other how much fun it is to have sex with sheep. The other, the fatter, isn't having any of it. But he insists, bestiality is where it's at. Finally, the fatter agrees to give it a shot, but he couldn't do it with one of his own sheep. The thinner agrees to let the fatter use his prettiest sheep, and they run off together. The fatter, though, just can't pull the trigger. Then we see the real reason Thinner was trying to convince him, it was so he could run off and rape Fatter's wife! Haha, classic. The next time this happens, Fatter dresses in his wife's clothes and catches and murders Thinner. He then strings up thinner upside down, Mussolini style. It might be social commentary come to think of it.

The other stories continue like this. Casual rape, stabbing out the ying yang, etc. I'm  never really sure if any of this is played for comedy, but good lord I hope not. The word "Bawdy" implies a lightheartedness that was shockingly absent in this movie.

Why Was It Forgotten? Well, there is the issue of casual rape. I get that there's a cultural divide between the puritanical United States and the freewheeling Europe, but I can't imagine this shit flew over there that well. One scene in the third story exists outside of that subplot entirely just so the character can forcibly deflower a virgin... at the behest of her mother. All this before he kills a Priest and gets beheaded.

What Went Right? I guess if that's what they were going for...

Verdict: Movies like this make me think "Maybe Nude For Satan wasn't so bad after all"

Score: 0%

Men Who Swim (2010)

Background: Writing about documentaries poses a unique problem to someone like me. I've always wanted The Depths to be as much about the stories behind the movie as much as the movies themselves. Unfortunately, small scale foreign documentaries are not very well documented, and the makers of small scale foreign documentaries are even more obscure. Apart from an incredibly brief bio from PBS' Independent Lens there is very little readily available information on director Dylan Williams (Having a fairly common name probably doesn't help matters. I know that pain well.) He's produced things for The History Channel and The BBC, but IMDb lists Men Who Swim as his only credit. Even information on the all-male Swedish synchronized swimming team, around which this movie is centered, is limited mostly to blurbs about when this movie was shown on PBS (even the stream is just a rip from the Independent Lens). So I guess the best you and I can hope for is to just dive into the deep end and watch together... get it?

Plot: This movie starts simply enough. It's about a man, the man directing the documentary, who moves to Sweden for love. He's been living there for about 5 years, but still doesn't feel like he's a part of Sweden. He loves swimming and decides to join a club. The club in question is the Swedish Swim Arts Gents, an all male synchronized swimming club. The club is made up of guys that are pushing 40 that have a diverse background. The leader of the club is a meat buyer, but he's not really content with that. Other members include two old rockers who have been longtime friends, a man who decides he's been working too much since getting a promotion and other mundane people like that.

They hire a coach who whips them into a little bit of shape, she even wrote a book on synchronized swimming. Though she teaches the guys some basic moves (When she gets to them, they can't even float properly), it's clear early on that they won't be able to grow too far, she's become too close to them. Word about the team gets around quick and they book some gigs out of the sheer novelty of an all-male synchronized swimming team. They actually book a surprisingly large crowd, though most of them, as they predicted early, walk out in droves before the performance is over.

Along the way, we get to learn Dylan Williams and all that he's going though. He still doesn't really feel like he fits in. To make matters worse, he loses his job, right when the woman he moved to Sweden to be with decides to go back to her studies. It's a shame too because he's gonna have a lot to pay for. Turns out they're not the only men's synchronized swimming team in the world, in fact there's a world championship and they're going to go to it.

The guys get pretty good

Training gets intense and tempers flare around the team. It's only 3 months before the championship and they can't even decide what they should practice. So they ditch their old coach (with her consent, they remain friends, don't worry) and hire a former pro. She whips them into shape and makes them train for real. It's suprising how quickly they come together once they get a little direction. Dylan even manages to land a job teaching film to kids that seem like they couldn't care less about film.

As for the competition itself, well, you'll just have to watch the movie.

Why Was It Forgotten? Subject matter. This is certainly not the first documentary with a very niche subject matter. Indie hit The King Of Kong comes to mind. That was about the world of competitive arcade gaming. This movie has many of the same trappings as that one. It has a familiar story line, told in an incredibly unfamiliar setting. It's safe to say, though, that synchronized swimming has an even smaller fanbase than classic gaming though.

What Went Right? Everything. This is a truly great movie. It's a sports comedy that just so happens to be completely real. A scene where they show other national teams warming up before the big cometition seems like it should be straight out of a movie like Dodgeball or previous Depths entry Blackball, but it actually exists. It has characters you want to root for, it has a story arc you want to follow, it has the reigning champions you want to hate (Seriously, fuck those Dutch bastards). If this were a scripted comedy, it would all seem very unbelievable, which is part of the charm of this movie.

There's also the side plot of Dylan growing as a character. He, like much of the team, is pushing 40. He had lost his job at the beginning of the movie and the movie gets some genuinely emotional beats out of his money woes. But that all plays a backseat to the way this motley crew comes together to be the most charming all male synchronized swimming crew ever to come out of Sweden.

Verdict: I've never cared more about synchronized swimming

Score: 100%