The Coens have another movie out. Or, rather, a Coen
has a movie out. While Ethan is taking a break from movies to try his hand at
theatre, Joel is… well, he’s kinda doing the same thing here, with an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Yep, after spending their entire career up
to this point working together (albeit without always being credited as a duo,
because guild rules are weird like that), one of the leading filmmaking teams
is now working apart. Between the separating of the paths, and Shakespeare
being all about the staging rather than the writing (which, let’s be honest,
isn’t exactly how either of the Coens operate), I was certainly curious about
how it would turn out, but was willing to accept that things could get a bit
shaky. However, nothing of the sort takes place here: Joel can fly solo just as
well as he has with his brother up to this point.
After spending most of this decade adding his approach to
period fidelity to a wide range of other literary adaptations, from the
Arthurian tinges of Thor to the whodunit conservatism of Murder On The OrientExpress, filmmaker and thespian Kenneth Branagh has returned to his
Shakespearean roots to direct and lead a production all about the man himself.
Specifically, a story covering the last three years of the Bard’s life, from
the destruction of the Globe Theatre to his untimely death.
There’s something off about this movie. The latest from
Aussie director David Michôd is an adaptation of the Henriad, the classic canon
of Shakespearean works focusing on King Henry IV and V… and yet, it is a
remarkably loose adaptation. Written by Michôd and Joel Edgerton, you’d have to
strain to hear any of the original prose in here. Even considering the lengthy
history of adaptations of the Bard, including Ophelia from earlier this year,
this seems like a backwards move. Why would you bother adapting a work of
fiction, which itself is based on historical fact, and leave behind the writing
that is the main reason why Shakespeare’s work survives to the present day?
Well, thankfully, there are quite a few answers to that, and all things
considered, I think these guys took the right approach.
Honestly, first time watching this, I didn’t see what was so
funny about seeing a disaffected housewife deal with the kitsch version of the
Book of Job. You know, having every bizarre bad thing happen to her at once. Of
course, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t engaged; I was just engaged under the
impression that this was a tragedy, and between Divine’s solid performance in
the lead and the rather over-the-top forces working against her, I was not
displeased with the result. Sure, upon rewatching it, some of the more farcical
elements made themselves more noticeable, not to mention the origins of the
nuanced title, but part of me will always remember this as the tragic tale of
Francine Fishpaw, her complete dick of a husband and the extent to which he
inflicted his dickery on that poor woman.
-sition. Ah, Oancitizen. For all his pretences of avoiding…
well, pretence, some of his works concerning Shakespeare adaptations do carry
faint whiffs of such in the guy’s wording. Not only that, he is one in a long list of people that should probably
not have a Twitter account, as the guy is growing a certain notoriety for his
long pity parties for one and his in-fighting with certain producers. And he’s
also my absolute favourite reviewer. In fact, I’ve taken to calling this guy my
‘guru’ with how much I actively want to convey even a tenth of the wisdom and
humour that Kyle Kallgren manages in the majority of his videos. Let it be
known that the following Top 20 videos list is centred on a guy who is one of
the few people that I honestly look up to as an influence, even with how much
time has passed. And with that, before my inner fanboy gets into any more
embarrassing territory, here are my picks for the Top 20 best Oancitizen
videos.
Special Mention: 9
Songs
This only gets a special mention, rather than a place on the
list proper, because the best part about it is its introduction. That said, the
intro to this video contains some of the most nimble blue humour of anything
I’ve ever seen and, given how I’m supposed to showing off this guy’s abilities
with this list, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t give some credit to one of his
funniest moments.
#20: Eraserhead
Yet another April Fool’s Day gag review, this shows a venue
for April foolery that isn’t used nearly enough. Basically, he creates his own
lo-fi production about a pencil trying to make it in the big city and passes that off as the David Lynch classic. It
genuinely reaches Adult Swim Infomercial levels of surreal hilarity, particularly
when the pencil’s best friend, a chicken nugget, turns on him.
#19: Between The
Lines: The Beatles
An easy excuse for Kyle to showcase his more-than-capable
singing voice is great on its own, but the fact that he is able to break down
the finer points of poetry in such an easily digestible way is what puts this
video where it is on the list. This notion of highlighting the artistry that
goes into elements of popular culture is one of the big reasons I like this guy
so much; he doesn’t so much highlight arthouse media as much as he often
highlights popular media as being more artsy than people may think.
#18: Ghost Dog: The
Way Of The Samurai
The meeting point between arthouse cerebral drama and
hip-hop flavoured gangster flicks, this collaboration with the Rap Critic is
another occasion that seems to bring the best out of both of them. Kyle delves
into the film’s cinematic sensibilities, courtesy of indie favourite Jim
Jarmusch, while RC discusses its importance within the realms of music, given
its place in history as one of the defining moments when the hip-hop aesthetic
officially broke through into the realms of cinema. Or, as Kyle himself puts
it, where the old gangster meets the new gangsta. It concludes with Kyle rapping, of course, and while his flow
and cadence needs some serious work if he ever wants to attempt this sort of
thing again, it holds up lyrically and condenses a lot of the reviewer’s larger
details down to a single freestyle over Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M. Much like the
film itself, this video shows a great intersection between the two cultures.
#17:
Exterminating Angels
One of Kyle’s greatest strengths as
a critic is how much he focuses on the theory behind the film as opposed to
just taking the film at face value, always keeping its relevant context at the
forefront. This sometimes leads to him enhancing the film by bolstering its
dramatic or socio-political weight, as you’ll see further on down the list. But
sometimes, it results in exposing the director of the subject as the sexist
piece of garbage that he is, as is the case here. Based on a true story that
you’d think would want to be kept under wraps, he tries to give credit where
it’s due in the film’s purpose as a means for the director to examine his past
actions, but through some extremely back-handed execution, he only ends up
making himself look even worse,
making for some great comedic fodder for the show.
#16: The Brown Bunny
The vanity project to end all vanity projects, complete with
the director literally being fellated on camera by his co-star, this is more a
showcasing for Kyle’s underappreciated skill at riffing. From his jokes about
the director/star’s somewhat unnerving visage, to the mocking of the disjointed
plot elements, to his brilliant reaction to the big twist at the end that puts
the film’s sole memorable moment into question, Kyle may be at his most
enthralling when he’s flexing intellectual muscle… but that doesn’t mean that
he isn’t fantastic when he’s trying to be out-and-out funny either.
#15: The Idiots
This is a film about a group of people who pretend to be
mentally handicapped in public for the perks(?) It’s like shooting ableist fish
in a barrel, but trust Kyle to give this display of misanthropic dickery an
unprecedented amount of pathos. Directed by the show’s resident punching bag
Lars Von Trier, whose work will appear again later on down the list, he pushes
past the extremely unseemly surface and grabs at the film’s emotional core for
all to see. It takes a lot of work to make a film like this seem worth
watching, and even more so without it coming across as facetious nonsense, but
here’s the guy who pulled it off.
#14: The Lion King,
Or The History Of King Simba I
He concluded his previous iteration of Shakespeare Month on
a note of what Shakespeare means to people. This time around, one year later,
he goes into a more cerebral conclusion by looking at what is Shakespeare by delving into what is widely considered to be one
of the more popular ‘inspired by Shakespeare’ films with Disney’s The Lion
King. Starting out by completely heading off the obvious Hamlet comparisons off
at the pass, he instead goes into comparing it different stories. Starting off
with King Henry I, then ancient African folk stories, then to every other
Shakespearean play that it shares similarities with, he ultimately reaches a
conclusion that, for a guy who discusses the Bard as much as he does, is at
once surprising and affecting: Maybe it just doesn’t matter.
#13: Tromeo & Juliet
Admittedly, this crossover is a little depressing in
retrospect given how these two aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment,
but that still isn’t enough to detract from how well Kyle and the Cinema Snob
work off of each other. From the plethora of Shakespeare jokes from Oancitizen
(his rattling off of different porn parody names is hilarious, to the point
where even Brad cracks up a bit on camera) to the finely-honed riffing skills
of the Snob, they’re a perfect match for this weird mash-up of Shakespearean
text and Troma-style B-movie antics. Fun fact: The writer of T&J was also
behind the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie.
#12: Häxan
In keeping with the structure of the film itself (a silent
film), Oancitizen goes full gimmick and does the review in the style of a
silent film, complete with gloriously over-the-top acting. Marrying a suitable
gimmick to a subject is one thing, but all the points go to how well it is
executed here, never feeling bogged down due to its lack of dialogue (or, in
Kyle’s case, monologue) as he looks at one of the most surprisingly influential
films you have likely never heard of.
#11: Gerry REDUX
If you’re going to commit to a do-over of a previous review,
there needs to be some damn good reasoning for doing so. This time around,
involving easily one of the slowest crawls of a film to ever be released, it
comes down to four simple words: Inspired by Tomb Raider. Taking that slice of
newly-found info and morphing it into probably one of the best responses to
GamerGate ever conceived (all without even bringing up the debate itself at any
point), Kyle looks at the relationship between video games and films and how
much the two borrow from each other. This results in him bringing a surprising
amount of sense to the impossibly sluggish pacing of the film itself which,
while interesting, still isn’t quite enough to forgive the film’s overall
issues.
#10: How To Speak
Movie
Probably the most straight-up lecture-y of his entire
videography, this 3-part series is meant to serve as a small phrasebook for
filmmaking techniques involving camerawork, mise en scene (what is shown on camera) and editing. What
makes it work so well is that not only are the examples he uses pitch perfect
for each technique, but his way of depicting each aspect as a form of literacy
(words, tone and sentence structure) makes it amazingly easy to digest. I
freely admit that I regularly come back to these videos for quick tune-ups every
now and then, and this is probably the most obvious example of me having
gaining a better appreciation and understanding for film after watching it.
#9: Between The
Lines: Inception
What begins as a look into the film’s ‘surrealism’
credibility, comparing it to works by Satoshi Kon and David Lynch, turns into
an interpretation of the film as a metaphor for filmmaking. As Kyle twists and
turns through the comparisons and the analysis of the film’s dream logic, which
seems to put far emphasis on the logic than the dream, he reaches a conclusion
that, in lesser hands, would come across as astoundingly pretentious. However,
between the lead-up and the genuine thought and care put into the words and
perspectives given on the film as a whole, it is legitimately one of those
mind-blowing moments that only ever get joked about happening.
#8: Angels In America
I feel bad that even one
review on this list made it purely because of the subject matter, given Kyle’s
talent at warping the films he reviews into discussion on a wide variety of
topics, but if I had to pick one it couldn’t be any other than this. Looking
into the still criminally underrated HBO miniseries, he does his usual
contextual wizardry that puts the already amazing material on a grander
pedestal, all the while making it just about the perfect subject matter for a review as part of the Red Ribbon
Reviewers project. His closing words still send shivers down my spine every
time I hear them, both his own and the quote from the play itself.
#7: Blue
How does a person realistically justify a film that only
shows a single shade of blue, accompanied with voice-over narration, for its
entire running time? Quite easily, it turns out, as Kyle delves into the
confinements of the cinematic medium and the background of the film’s
production that, when combined, lead to a remarkably potent realization that
this film might indeed be a genuine work of art. Yeah, ignore my earlier pokes
at his more pretentious side; when he makes statements like this, he makes damn
sure that they are backed up.
#6: Vase De Noces
Before clicking on the above video (if you decide to do so),
please be advised that this film is better known in film circles as “The Pig
Fucking Movie”. While fighting the urge to burn things, Kyle goes into the many
ways that this film uses its… questionable subject matter to confounding
effects, including some of the most bizarre music choices of any film he’s
reviewed. And then we get to the ending skit with Phelous and Brad Jones, where
he brings up an interesting point about how bad movies are regarded in the
realms of Internet critiquing, reaching some rather nuanced points about the
medium.
#5: A Serbian Film
Sometimes, attempting to look for a deeper meaning behind a
film pales in comparison to the sheer hatred felt towards said film. There is
no better example of this than A Serbian Film, one of the few films I can
honestly see being remembered by the general public decades from now… for all the wrong reasons. He actively
tries to hold back his contempt for the film as he goes over Serbian history
and the film’s attempt at political satire, before just self-destructing and
taking the idea of critical rage to its furthest logical point: By calling in a nuclear strike on Serbia.
Yeah, it’s dark shit, but his and Ed Glaser’s banter helps keep the ridiculous
over-reaction within its boundaries.
#4: Beauty And The
Beast
Kyle’s crossover persona usually involves increasing the
snooty levels ten-fold, and while that has led to some impressive results with
the right team-up (set against Obscurus Lupa’s simplicity, Film Brain’s
analytical nature, etc.) but this is easily the best use of his
Crossover!Oancitizen personality. The entire review, which is a musical by the
way with some damn funny numbers, is a duel between Oancitizen’s love for more
European-tinted cinema of Cocteau’s Beauty And The Beast and A Jerk With A
Camera’s appreciation for the populist take of the Disney version. Rather than
pushing one point of view over another, both are presented for their respective
positives and negatives and how they always end up balancing each other out by
the end. Also, best Twilight reference ever
given how it leads to a moment that you literally couldn’t make up if you
tried.
#3: Anonymous
As you can probably tell from the majority of this list, the
guy has a real Shakespeare fixation on his main show Brows Held High. So it
should come as no surprise that this review would show the pinnacle of that
ilk, where Kyle not only slashes through every bit of historical inaccuracy
contained within (which is quite a lot, given this is Roland Emmerich we’re
talking about here) but also taking a certain prideful joy in tearing apart the
Anti-Stratfordian theory that fuels not only the film’s core story but the
mindset that created it in the first place. Putting the audience, himself and
even Emmerich into the context of the theory itself, he shows a breadth of
knowledge and respect for the auteur that even his past work wasn’t able to
reach.
#2: This Is Not A
Film
While the review itself may start out on too upbeat of a
note (which, admittedly, is warranted as Kyle goes on to explain), that’s
not nearly enough to detract from how well he places the film in question in
its appropriate cultural context. As a result, through just talking about a man
who literally isn’t allowed to make films anymore, he creates a video that is
absolutely inspiring to watch with how it portrays the film’s existence as one
of the more surprisingly badass notions possible: Filmmaking itself as a means of political rebellion.
The way he goes into the director’s backstory involving cinema as well as
Iranian cinematic culture (leading to easily the best music gag I’ve ever heard
when discussing the Iranian New Wave that you might actually miss if you aren’t
looking out for it), it imbues the film (and the review itself) with this
insatiable air of inspiration that almost demands the creative process to grow
within a human being. Needless to say, whenever I feel myself getting burnt out
and/or lacking drive when writing a review, this
is my go-to video.
#1: Melancholia
I wrestled with myself on what would ultimately take the top
spot on the list. What ended up tipping the scale in this review’s favour is
that while the TINAF review is downright inspiring, this review is emotionally affecting on so many other levels. While
delving into this weirdly fantastical and very downbeat depiction of
depression, Kyle delves into his own depressed state and showcases the kind of
“it’s kind of creepy how accurate this is” emotive writing that rarely if ever
gets to be seen. I made brief mention of it before back when I reviewed Inside
Out, but I do suffer from clinical depression myself and… I don’t even think I
have the words to express how much it means to me that an Internet reviewer, a
creator in a medium that I regularly make use of to get through some pretty
dark times, is able to articulate the more finite points of this very harrowing
experience this fucking precisely. It also helps that, much like Inside Out,
the darker points are balanced out by some damn good jokes, particularly with
the Muppets comparison that is confounding in how much sense it makes. I’ve
used this phrase before with other reviewers, but I have never meant it more
than I do now: Un. Dying. Loyalty.
Much as how I believe myself to be heavily influenced by the
reviewer I have just spent nearly 3000 words talking about, he himself was no
doubt influenced by others. Specifically, as he explained in his Melancholia
review funnily enough, the critic I’ll be highlighting next time who started
out as a makeshift clone of yet another popular critic, and then morphed into
something else entirely.
Shakespeare is far and away the most adapted writer in human
history, which makes the prospect of reviewing one of the thousand films based
on his work a little daunting. Not only that, as much as some scholars would
eagerly wish to argue, the man’s work is full of notoriously intricate language
that can prove rather difficult to read. As someone who has a serious habit of
comparing films to each other, even when it isn’t called for, how am I to know
whether or not the supposedly 'fresh' ideas presented in one adaptation haven’t
already been made cornerstones of the work previously? Is there nearly enough
time in the world for me to spool through every work just to be sure? Is it
even worth me doing so in the first place? This is where I come face-to-face with
the reason I started this blog in the first place: To learn. I have never made
any pretence about my own knowledge involving the medium: Everything I claim to
know about film, I have learnt in passing and I am by no means a definitive
voice on anything except my own personal tastes and opinions.
So, with that
unnaturally heavy introduction to another one of my typically idiosyncratic and
scatterbrained analyses out of the way, time to get into today’s film.
