Zabriskie Point (1970) :(((

This film was obviously aimed at 1960s LSD addicts, as they are the only ones who could understand what the hell director Michelangelo Antonioni was trying to say with Zabriskie Point (1970).  Lets look at some of the bands whose music is played in it: Pink Floyd, the Kaleidoscope, and the Grateful Dead.  Need I say more? The movie bombed at the box office, but has become a cult classic over the years. This is yet another sign that this is a movie aimed at deadheads. Oh, yes, I know Antonioni is making a statement about the 1960s counterculture movement and American consumerism, so please don’t go ballistic on that point.  It’s just bad on so many levels—not even the spectacular work of cinematographer Alfio Contini can save it. 

For those of you who don’t know, Zabriskie Point is an actual place in Death Valley National Park.  Just as Dennis Hopper desecrated St. Louis Cemetery in Easy Rider (1969) with lewd sexual acts, Antonioni delivers a psychedelic and graphic sex scene that involves group sex and goes on for what seems like half the movie.  I get that people like to go to Zabriskie Point and drop acid and/or take peyote, but who’d really want to have sex there? It’s hotter than hell and is composed of various sediments—namely borax.  And, they didn’t even have a blanket!

Okay, I’ve gone off on a tangent and forgotten to tell you who is actually having sex.  Mark (Mark Frechette) is a college dropout and carpenter who is involved in the counterculture movement on an unnamed college campus in Los Angeles.  Daria (Daria Halprin) is the secretary and girlfriend of a man (Rod Taylor) building a subdivision somewhere near Phoenix.  They meet after Mark steals a single-engine plane and takes it for a joyride over the desert.  It is never explained how Mark knows how to fly or why Daria would think it’s a good idea to give a ride to a complete stranger whom she meets in the desert. Approximately an hour after meeting they are having sex at Zabriskie Point. Not too much longer after this Mark flies the plane back to LA and is shot to death by the police, and Daria imagines that her boyfriend’s awesome house in the desert explodes.  Really, that’s what happens.

There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Frechette or Halprin: they were horrible actors.  Frechette was a hippie who gave all his money to a commune and then ended up in jail after he robbed a bank (he died in jail in a bizarre weightlifting accident). For her part, Halprin made one more film after Zabriskie Point and then married Dennis Hopper (perhaps they shared a sense of depravity?).  Why would Antonioni cast them, you ask? They were attractive—sort of the American versions of Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti, but with a lot less talent. 

The only thing this film has going for it is its cinematography.  I can only imagine what Contini thought when he saw all of his fantastic widescreen shots set to horrible American music and ruined by the wooden acting of the leads.  Even the apocalyptic ending sequence, which sees multiple views of the exploding house, is somehow corrupted by whatever anti-consumerism/capitalism statement that Antonioni is trying to make. Plus, the house he blew up was awesome—what a complete waste, especially for a film like Zabriskie Point. 

Playtime (1967) :(((

You suck, Jacques Tati! I’ve seen three of your films and they all blew. Francois Truffaut wrote that your Playtime (1967) was a “film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently.” I expect he meant that as some sort of compliment—to me it means that somewhere in the galaxy there is a planet full of films I would never want to watch.  I’m glad you went bankrupt after this ₣17-million fiasco, and I’m especially pleased that the man who constantly criticized modernization had to do an advertisement for Lloyd’s Bank ATM machines to pay off debts incurred while making this pointless, plot-less, meandering film.

For a man who said he grew to dislike playing his signature character, Monsieur Hulot, you sure went to the well a lot.  Many people find the pipe-smoking Hulot lovingly innocent and likable.  He just annoys me.  Just how many people in the French army did this man meet? And, how many after meeting him would be so pleased to run into him years later on the street and offer him a job or to buy him a drink, etc.?  Even worse, he spawned an evil doppelganger in England with the creation of Mr. Bean!  You suck Jacques Tati, and so does M. Hulot!

I’d discuss what Playtime is about, but that would require a plot.  Your Hulot is back in Paris and he is still bewildered by modernization.  Everything is cold and sterile in his view of the modern world. Ultra-clean lines, metal and glass are everywhere to be seen.  You built a massive set that was nicknamed Tativille and then shot it with 70mm film—those were your best ideas.  The set design is awesome—everything else sucks, just like you, Jacques Tati! 

Hulot’s mindless wandering is overlapped with the sightseeing of an American tourist played by Barbara Dennek.  Through their travels you visually criticize the modern workplace, transportation system, and home.  Along the way you make us watch the complete deconstruction of a restaurant for 45-minutes and then your idiotic carousel of cars.  The only thing in your entire film that I found mildly entertaining was how you designed your apartment scenes to appear as TV screens.  Everything else sucks, just like you, Jacques Tati!

Overall, this film sucks, just like you, Jacques Tati!

The Age of Gold (L'âge d'or) 1930 :(((

To say that watching this 1930 film is a surreal experience is an understatement. To say that I hated all 60 minutes of it is an accurate statement. Rich Vicomtes should not give crazy, young Spaniards money and complete freedom to make art that is "exquisite and delicious." There’s a reason the Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate the de Noailles if they distributed this Luis Bunuel film: it’s just too absurdly raw.

Bunuel opens the film as a documentary, using footage from a 1912 film about the habits of scorpions. If only that were what this film was actually about! Bunuel moves from scorpions to chanting archbishops on a beach. Max Ernst plays a starving soldier who witnesses this act and then hurries to tell other starving soldiers that the Mallorcans (a Spanish island) have arrived. Evidently these Mallorcans are enemies, but because the soldiers are suffering from starvation they are too weak to fight. This isn’t good for the archbishops— we later see the Mallorcans laying a monument to celebrate the archbishops’ skeletal remains. Just as this celebration is taking place we hear amorous screams (yes, it is 1930). The couple is arrested, but the man is released after he shows documents revealing he’s a government official—and a real SOB who kicks dogs. The woman is the daughter of a marquis, who throws a crazy party where all kinds of strange (but evidently not noteworthy to the guests) things happen. A gamekeeper shoots his son over nothing but people continue to mingle. Later, the government official arrives and he and the woman get it on, with Wagner’s "Tristan and Isolde" playing in the background, in the garden. Somehow a concert conductor ends up in the arms of this woman and the official gets a phone call telling him that thousands have died because of his actions. He then goes to his apartment and throws an archbishop out a window. The film ends with the announcement that the Duc de Blangis (and Jesus) is to reemerge from a castle after 120 days of debauchery—Pier Paolo Pasolini references should be inserted here, but I didn’t like his film, either.

The film is most remembered for its shocking images, most notably the cow in the bed (see picture), a woman sucking the toe of a statue (image not included because so much could be inferred), and, of course, Jesus as a spent libertine on the castle drawbridge. These are all images I wish were easily forgotten—they are not.

So, what is this film about? Eroticism? Anti-authoritarianism? Anti-Catholicism? Bunuel said it was "a romantic film performed in full Surrealist frenzy." Okay, whatever you say Luis.

An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) 1928 :(((

Above you see the French and English titles for this 1928 silent directed by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. However, my personal title for this film is: 16 Minutes of Your Life That You’ll Never Get Back.

Another film class must (at least that’s what the professors think); this surrealist film bombards viewers with a cornucopia of shocking images. Viewers are treated to a woman's eye being cut open with a razor blade; a man with a hole in his hand that is filled with ants, who hauls dead donkeys and live priests in grand pianos; severed hands poked at with canes; and, other nonsensical images.

There is no narrative to this film. The images are random and disconnected from one another. I’m sure more artsy people can identify themes in these images, but I have no desire to figure out which one represents love, lust, life, and death. I am not a Freudian and I have no inclination to use free association to decipher what the hell this film is supposed to represent other than avant-garde filmmaking at its height. It does not shock me that the "stars" of this film later committed suicide—one burned herself to death in a public square—because this film could drive anyone crazy.

This is one film that I could easily have done without seeing before my death.