Graveyard of Honor

I don't have a lot of goals in life, but the few I have usually come from musings like, "I wonder how many Greg Ginn solo albums I could sit through" or "You think I could see every Takashi Miike film by the end of the year?"

Masters of Horror -- Imprint

The Masters of Horror episode so unsettling Showtime refused to air it! Takashi Miike strikes again with both a needles under the fingernails torture scene and a few good ol' flashbacks of countryside abortions. Strange and dense, Imprint is exactly what we expected: second-tier pay cable production values coupled with impenetrable hallucinogenic story arcs that could only come from the Ray-Banned mind of Miike hisself. What the hell was that end about anyway? You see that head and hand grow out of that prostitute's right temple?!?

Visitor Q

What was the fucking point? We don't claim to understand any of Miike's films, but at least Gozu felt like it meant something. It's possible Visitor Q really is a disturbingly absurdist representation of Freudian familiar dynamics, but we think it's more likely a litany of sexual perversions. Necrophilia, rape, incest...yep, all here, right alongside lactation, poop, and mom abuse. The thing that troubles us most of all is our compulsion to watch Zebraman, Ichi the Killer, and all three Dead or Alives!

Gozu

At the end of this movie this dude bones a happening chick, then fears for his bits n pieces, and then watches his lady birth a full-grown man. And that's not even the strangest part of the movie! Seriously, this one's full of weird fuckers, lactating menopausal ladies, dudes who really like "spooning," and lots o' other stuff we'd probably appreciate more if we were Japanese. Or if we had cool Jim Jarmusch hair. Or if we could spell "Jodorowsky" without looking it up in the Wiki. I don't get Gozu. I don't get Takashi Miike. But Ichi the Killer's still in the queue! Hey, I don't know why either!

Three...Extremes

The most unsettling stuff we've seen at Highland thus far. If you remember this, you remember how Joel M Reed made us yawn when he showed us human dart boards and some broad with a straw stabbed in her skull. What a hack. Then some guy named Fruit Chan of all things shows me a bloody fetus and I think I'll have nightmares. Don't even get me started on this Takashi Miike character. We'll leave his segment for the neo-Freudians. That guy is some kind of genius. An auteur, if I remember my Film 151 definitions. No, not Freud, he was a quack. Scroll to "Acquisition and Control of Fire" and laugh yourself 'til you pee.



Act I: Soylent dumplings make you young. I'll have to wait until a Supreme Court decision comes down before I can definitively call them "soylent." Grossed us out with its gyno-corporeal Cronenbergisms and bloody bathtub water, but way too conventional when stacked up against the next two. Watch as Bai Ling picks her nose. We spotted the plot turns a mile away.



Act II: Ok, Fruit Chan was lame. This Oldboy cat is the real deal. Fingers in a blender. Vampire girl in the opening scene. Unbelievably great set design. Hurtful and nasty confessions. I didn't get the ending. Probably requires a second viewing.



Act III: Miike gives us some Taboo shit. [Wince] Speechless. Nothing funny to say.

Except this: remember when I saw the Three...Extremes trailer? It was after this. I was not on my A-game that day.

Audition

Whoa, f'ing weird. We've been screening all these sleazy movies and now I have to call David Lynch to tell me what this is about. I know, I know, it's interesting and good, and probably has a lot to say about serious things like gender identity and patterns of abuse, but we're in the mood to eat Doritos and make snide comments. That's hard to do when you're saying, "What's happening?" or "Is this real?" At least there's a decapitation and some extended needle torture. How 'bout that guy who lives in a bag? He had a reverse shocker. And no tongue. I wonder what he thought of Bad Taste?

The Highland Cinema's current calendar looks more Grindhouse a Go-Go than Pacific Film Archive. My condolences to our more erudite readers, but stay tuned as I'm sure this will change if only slightly.