T2: Trainspotting - Danny Boyle (2017)

First comes an opportunity, then comes betrayal.  T2: Trainspotting centers around the connection between betrayal and revenge.

Sitting down to watch T2, I went in with two questions:

1) What's happened over the past 20 years with this cast of characters, none of whom had a likely long self life.

2) Is this going to even come close to the feverish brilliance of Danny Boyle's 1996 original breakthrough, Trainspotting? 

Mark Renton is back in Edinburgh after 20 years and his friends are pissed.

The original film ended as Renton stole 12,000, the take from a profitable drug deal, from his three best friends, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.


On top of that, he called the cops on Begbie, wanted for armed robbery and the violently dangerous bully of their little group.

Renton had returned Spuds take from their deal at the end of Trainspotting and he's the first person Renton visits now that he's back.

Surprisingly, Spud is not thankful for the cash Renton had left him.

It seems that the money financed Spud's immersion into the world of heroin, which has dogged his life with the losses of his wife and child, and any hope he'd ever had about holding down a job.

Spud is so far gone that when Renton calls on him, he's in the act of attempting suicide.

He doesn't emotionally move far away from that sad despair until the final act of the film.

Renton finds Sick Boy the sleaziest kind of professional blackmailer.

Sick Boy's partner in crime and girlfriend, Veronika replaces Diane as the focus of Renton's dysfunctional lust.

The sadistic and vengeful Begbie has escaped from prison to find out that Renton is back.

That means Renton is not safe, nor is anyone in the path from Begbie, even Spud and Sick Boy, to his revenge.

It's unsure whether Renton's other friends will stand with him through this mortal danger because of how he'd burned them so badly 20 years before.

But Spud and Sick Boy know that Begbie is a danger, even when he's not hunting down Renton and any of his possible accomplices.

He's volatile and unpredictable and they can sleep better when he's back in prison.

So after all this works itself out, the questions is does T2's entertaining sequences, and the nostalgia from the first film equal the amazement we all felt 20 years ago when we walked out of the theater speechless, knowing we had just watched cinematic history.

In a word, no.

A large part of the fun of Trainspotting was being introduced to these characters and their insane natures. 


Now that's been established and the first act of T2 feels noticeably emptier.

It doesn't feel like they're reintroduced them properly, even though it answers some questions about how these 4 have been spending these past 2 decades.


The answer is that none of them have been doing much of anything, nor have any of them grown as people at all.

In the end, we're left with a lovely little film in and of itself.

But it doesn't even come close to the hyperactive intensity that defined the original "Trainspotting."

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival

It's the time of year when the best and wettest dreams of any cinophile come true.

The selections for the 2017 Cannes Film Festival have been announced, and it's thrilling.

New films from Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Somewhere,) Noah Baumbach (Francis Ha!, Greenberg,) Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool, In the House,) Todd Haynes (Safe, Carol,) and Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Das Weisse Band,) will premiere at the Fest.

Coppola's remake of Don Siegel's 1971 film "Beguiled" centers on a Civil War-era girls school and how their lives are disrupted by the presence of a wounded soldier.

Baumbach will show "The Meyerowitz Stories," a story about an estranged family that reunites to deal with their aging patriarch.

Ozon's "L'amant Double" is about a woman, played by Jacqueline Bisset, who falls for her psychoanalyst.

Haynes presents us with "Wonderstruck," a film about the bizarre connection between a modern-day boy and a girl from half a century ago.

Haneke will premiere "Happy End," a film about the European refugee/migration crisis, starring Isabelle Huppert.)

(Side note, Huppert was robbed of an Oscar this past year for her performance in the subtle and violent film "Elle.")

In addition to all these releases, David Lynch will premiere the upcoming continuation of "Twin Peaks" and Jane Campion brings her show, "Top of the Lake: China Girl."

And not for nothing, but this year's Fest is chock-full of womany goodness.

Out of the 49 film being shown at the Fest, 12 of them come from women directors.

It's not quite equality, but hell, we'll just keep marching down the right path and get there soon.

The Greasy Strangler by Jim Hosking (2016) - "Hootie Tootie Disco Cutie!"

"The Greasy Strangler" is an odd duck of a film that centers on, Big Braydon, a man-child who lives with his father/landlord, Big Ronnie, an old man whose interests are disco and grease.

Braydon is a severely socially limited man. 
To be honest, he made me think of the worst-case scenario of what Napoleon Dynamite could grow up to be.


Braydon's boring life is shaken up by when he starts to suspect that Ronnie is the serial killer known as The Greasy Strangler. 

At the same time, he meets Janet, played by Elizabeth De Razzo, and falls in love. It feels like the worst thing for his victims isn't death as much as it is having those greasy, greasy hands around their necks.

The story follows not only the murders but an insane love triangle between Braydon, Ronnie and Janet.

Throughout the film, I kept being reminded of John Waters. It's as if director Jim Hosking was brought up on a steady diet of "Pink Flamingos" and "Hairspray."After one viewing, it looks like he succeeded, but we'll have to wait a decade or so to see if we're still watching "The Greasy Strangler."

In the end, this film is as disgusting and hilarious as the title suggests. Everything Ronnie eats is either cooked in, slathered in, or dipped in grease. 

Yes, you will cringe while watching this movie.

Whether you're a Waters fan or like cult films, I highly recommend you watch "The Greasy Strangler." 

It really is a wonderful, revolting experience.


We, the audience already know that Ronnie is indeed The Greasy Strangler as we've seen him in action. Ronnie's murders are more gross than gruesome.

Of course, these two story lines come together to give us a bizarre twist before its puzzling ending.

It's obvious that Hosking set out to make a cult classic. And I think he did. History will tell.

Nightmare is a Comfort Blanket

If anything in this life is comforting, it's familiarity.  It's a little odd that finding and re-watching on Netflix "A Nightmare on Elm Street.

It feels just like a worn and warm comfort blanket.

Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali - (1929)

Arguably The Most Influential Experimental Film Ever.

10 Best Films of 2016

This a couple of months late, but I like to be thorough and see everything I think I need to.  So, here they are: The 10 Best Films of 2016.

So in descending order (as all lists should be) here are the top ten films of 2016.

10) Don't Breathe (Fede Alvarez)

09) Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford)

08) Loving (Jeff Nichols)

07) Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)

06) The Greasy Strangler (Jim Hosking)

05) Sing Street (John Carney)

04) Swiss Army Man (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)

03) Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson)

02) Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)

01) Elle (Paul Verhoeven)

And, of course, there are always a few honorable mentions.

Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig)

Deadpool (Tim Miller)

Lion (Garth Davis)

Tarzan (David Yates)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (David Yates)

Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi)

And now all my white friends can yell at me as much as they want for what I'm about to say: La La Land doesn't even come near the list, the honorable mentions, or anywhere close to a movie I will ever watch again.  

It was intolerable.

I hated this movie.


If you want to see a truly high musical, go and find "Sing Street."

Get Out by Jordan Peele - 2017

Comic Jordan Peele seems to have been hiding his talent for writing and directing with intensity and true horror while retaining a good deal of his smart-ass humor.

Aside from working solely as a work of entertainment, "Get Out" is arguably one of the most political horror films since George Romero's original "Dead" trilogy.

The first scene opens very like many others. In your slasher film, you'll find the first victim about to walk down a dank alley or open the door to a dilapidated, 'haunted' house' or down a dark hallway of an abandoned insane asylum all the teenage kids have decided to spend the night in.

Only this first victim is a black guy walking down a seemingly safe, residential, suburban street.  And before the audience can yell, "Hey don't go down there!" it's too late.

"Get Out" is the story of Chris, the black boyfriend and Rose, the white girlfriend who is taking her man to go meet her parents. Chris is nervous about how her family is going to react to him as their daughter's beau, considering he's black.

At first, Rose's family seems harmless enough, if condescending. Rose's dad even takes Chris aside to tell him how much he wanted to vote for Obama for a third term.  

Then small things pop up that just don't seem right and start to unsettle Chris.

When he's finally put in 'the sunken place,' he knows that something is rotten in Denmark and things go south from there. 

That's all I'm going to say about the plot.  I don't want to spoil anyone.  But the story is only part of the reason this film is so exceptional.

The film is really about the separation of races, not just geographically, but in points of view and how different races see America.

This is important at a time when our government is actively doing everything they can to separate us even further. This is a time when the HUD Secretary has said that the slaves who came to America in the bottom of slave ships were excited about opportunities in the new world, just like all immigrants.

But the film speaks to more than the politics of the day. Peele's running theme is that things between the races haven't been acceptable for a long damn time. It's not okay that people only claim they're not racist because they feel like they'll be shamed if their real beliefs surface. That's simply not good enough.

The truth is that white America has the notion that we fixed what was broken back during the civil rights era. And that just isn't so. Laws were changed and rights were grudgingly handed out, but that didn't really change the hearts of white America.

Now, I'm half German, a quarter Swedish and a quarter Norwegian, so I could not be any whiter. 

And I've been the only white face plenty of times at clubs, shows, movies and even a Black Literature class in college. And my family has lived in a neighborhood where we were the only white folk for a mile radius. So you'd think I'd be able to relate to what it feels like to be a minority, right? I mean, these experiences should tell me vividly how black people feel in a white environment, yes?  

Wrong. 

White America, I'm talking to you now. We have no idea what it's like to really be a minority, especially a historically despised people like the Black Community.

There is no way we can fathom how that feels. We have no idea what it would be like to walk a mile in their shoes and nothing can change that. We'll never see the world through the eyes of a black man.

I've believed this for a long time, but after seeing "Get Out," I don't just believe it. I see it as an absolute, irrefutable truth. I'm adding it to the filter that is my worldview.

It's amazing how much Peele accomplishes with this film. He's telling us that rights and laws are fantastic, but until perception is changed, across the board, we're not assimilated yet.

And as a bonus, his warning comes in the form of one of the best crafted horror films in years. Peele is an artist who works on many levels and I am actually holding my breath to see what he does next.