"The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding."

Holden Caulfield said that. He was right.

I officially hate the movies. Mostly.


Viewing a contemporary Hollywood film is like being bludgeoned repeatedly with a lit signal flare. (Aside from the horrible physical pain I mean.) Sure, there are pretty tracers and blobs of light, but when you stop to consider them, they’ve already disappeared. They have little real, lasting significance. They're just stupefying, ephemeral flashes.

The only reason you don’t notice their lack of meaning within this onslaught is because they're so damn noisy and disorienting. (Ever have that problem where you have to keep turning the movie up to hear what the fuck people are saying, only to be deafened when the music or the car chases or whatever shoots up to a deafening level, causing you to dive for the remote in a desperate attempt to save your hearing?) You’re too busy being jerked around from one shallow bang, be it physical or emotional, to the next.
I hate the movies. I'm not kidding. I am never going to see a movie again unless it's a low budget B movie, (including, but not limited to low budget 50s sci-fi, Western, noir, teen exploitation, etc. movies; kung fu movies; splatter movies; Italian zombie movies; soft core Euro trash porn; LSD inspired movies; biker movies; Bollywood musicals; Mexican wrestling movies; Brazilian horror movies; early Peter Jackson movies; (from before he turned into a Hollywood shill;) etc.

What I'm really holding out for is a super hero team up movie featuring El Santo, Coffin Joe, Emmanuel, Blacula, the fat giggling sheriff from 1000 Maniacs, Ralphus and the sadistic dentist from Bloodsucking Freaks, Coffee, that kid who can't stop playing the piano from Reefer Madness, the flying head from Zombie 3, that tough biker chick from Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! the rabbit from Meet the Feebles, the Rod Serling narrator-type guy from Maniac, the Doctor from Faces of Death, the master of the Flying Guillotine, as well as his henchman who has to have flute music playing to do his kung fu, the Great Kriswell, that poor slob from Detour, (have no idea what he could contribute to the proceedings besides downright tragic bad luck, but what the hell, let's give the poor fuck something,) the insane knife-wielding Catherine Deneuve found in Repulsion, the doctor from Shock Corridor who says, "It's a tragedy—an insane mute will win the Pulitzer Prize," and many, many others.

That's a lot of team members, I know, but look at DCs Justice League comic books of the 1970s or the more recent "Crisis of Infinite Earths" series. They had approximately 5017 characters, and they made it work somehow.

I will watch some art house movies. (Though there are plenty of shitty movies to be found here too.) Sorry if watching those things is snobbish. Remember, I did go to film school, which probably polluted my mind. Besides, think of the existential angst the pastor from Winter Light could contribute to our super hero team. He could, like, depress his enemies into submission. (At least I'm sparing us from experimental film, which I got shoved down my throat whilst in school, and which, aside from a few exceptions, I kinda hate.)

Hollywood movies of the 1910s-70s—and a few from the 80s-2000s are OK—many of them—films by Ford, Scorsese, Sturges, Wilder, Ray, for example, are great. (If you haven't seen it, run, don't walk to your local video store and rent In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart. Tell me it doesn't kick ass. If your local video store carries it.) Or a lot (but not all) of the independent films of ca. 1980-1995. (When Quentin Tarantino started to ruin the whole thing.)

But no fucking contemporary Hollywood movies. In fact no fucking Hollywood movies after maybe Unforgiven or something like that. (There are other good movies from around then, but that's just the first decent one that popped into my head.) Some animated films are still good, but not anything featuring CGI stuff. And to be fair, I never want to see my own student films ever again, because they suck, except for my animated stuff, which is only OK at best.

Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject of films that suck, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say something that would doubtlessly piss a lot of people off. (Fortunately, they'll never read my blog, so I don't have to worry about them.) Stanley Kubrick had no clothes! I mean, like the Emperor didn't. His movies are not these deep philosophical "experiences." They're just muddled, bloated crap. Even when I'm high, they still bore me, unlike The Wall, which remains the unintentionally hilarious masterpiece it always was.

Oh yeah—and this is probably another symptom of film school poisoning—there are some great documentaries. (Though again, there are many, many that suck.) Generally, I think it's an underrated format.


Speaking of documentaries, does gnomish filmmaker Nick Broomfield ever get laid? And if so, who the hell sleeps with him? These and other ponderables maintained my interest through the awkwardly constructed opening moments of Broomfield’s schlockumentary Aileen, which I just watched. So much so that by the time the movie really got going, I was engaged in this film about the last days of a mass murderer Aileen Wournos in a way that went beyond the predictably necrophiliac.

This movie had a feeling of depth that was unprecedented by anything else I’ve seen from ol’ Slick Nick. It’s just as impressionistic and sketchy as all his other shit. (Kurt and Courtney; Biggie and Tupac.) But in the end, it finds some sort of humanity in Wournos, and in the process makes a virtually unspoken but eloquent argument against the death penalty.

That it does so without whitewashing Wournos, without ever trying to make the viewer forget what she has done and is probably still capable of doing, is no small feat. It’s easy to win compassion for victims, saints and puppy dogs, but what about “monsters?” (Incidentally, as much as I admired Monster, Aileen also bore out the fact that the other film rendering the characters and the world they inhabit a little too pretty and comprehensible.) Once you paint someone as “evil,” you’ve excused society (and yourself) from taking any responsibility for her.

Broomfield's still crass and awkward here— just as he was in his earlier taken on this subject, Aileen Wournos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. Still, here, he refuses to use that whole "evil" oversimplification. He also refuses to titillate or add forensic fuel to an already well-fed fire. He just asks why and how, while acknowledging that there aren't really any good answers. And ultimately, he advocates for compassion, even trying, I think, to save Wournos’s life. That he’s only able to do so by making a film is a poignant absurdity that he ruefully acknowledges.

Wournos, at least, who had been around the block more than once with filmmakers and journalists, seems to genuinely appreciate his efforts to communicate with her. Overall, the movie did a fine job of demonstrating the consequences of failure: Broomfield's, Wournos's, and (gulp, sorry, gotta say it,) that of the society that spawned her. Everyone failed to save her or her victims.

The movie was definitely a big downer, but I liked it.