Blurbing For The Weekend: 3/8/24

Though I’ve known the title Man Bites Dog since I was a wee lad reading the local arts weekly (and Entertainment Weekly) in the early ‘90s, I had no idea until this year that it was a controversial film, or even a mockumentary, one that likely influenced both Natural Born Killers and What We Do In The Shadows. While the film ostensibly involves a documentary crew following a “serial killer,” the character plays out more like a gangster than the post-Hannibal Lecter breed of psychopath the term suggests in film today - Ben (Benoit Poolvorde) has some pretensions about his indifference to life, but chooses most of his victims based on a cost/benefit ratio involving the likelihood of drama and loose cash lying around. He loves his family and close friends, uses racism as a casual bonding technique - all more Scorsese in archetype than Fincher.

Decades of found footage slashers have normalized the matter-of-fact gore, while also making new audiences cognizant of the dubious editing choices of…whoever hypothetically put this footage together (someone willing to make sudden montages of carnage and climactic slo-mo, apparently). The increasing complicity of the documentary crew almost makes a point about the infectiousness of amorality, but their involvement is already beyond the social pale from the beginning, making their turn to violence less audience-damning than it might be. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

I rewatched The Gift because 1) man, am I having a hard time finding stuff I want to watch and 2) I couldn’t remember what the gift in The Gift was. The reason I probably didn’t remember is that - despite the title - the film is less about some ominous package than three unsympathetic characters who need to get away from each other yesterday. Jason Bateman sure loves to play easily aggravated, manipulative “nice guys” with no respect for women, though this time he’s not the one who potentially tricks someone into carrying his child. Rebecca Hall plays a woman with terrible, terrible taste in men, an archetype she’d make far more interesting in films like The Night House and Resurrection. Joel Edgerton plays a wormy guy with ridiculous hair who is either a raving psycho, an avenging angel or both (the final shot implies he might also be Keyser Soze). I’m not sure what drove Edgerton to write and direct this thing, other than the knowledge that audiences will really want to know what The Gift is. THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

If you saw my How I Like R.E.M.: The Albums, pt. 1 post, you may have noticed I didn’t comment on the deluxe reissues of the band’s I.R.S. albums. That’s mostly because homie don’t play “bonus live discs,” but I accidentally wandered onto the one attached to Reckoning on Spotify the other night, which captures a Chicago performance in 1984 originally aired on the radio. I was surprised to learn the Dream Syndicate opened instead of the Replacements, because I'm guessing the band was hammered as fuck. If I hadn’t grown up watching the professionalism of 1989’s Tourfilm, I would have to assume Michael Stipe has never had an easy time remembering lyrics, mumbling whatever came to mind until it finally hit him in 1995 that he could use a music stand. Thankfully, Bill Berry sounds like he needs to pee rather than pass out, and the show is a hurried, ragged but raucuous blitz through their early songbook. I may just have to get a copy.