Straw Dogs + some other movies

While it's in my head, I must write about several movies I've seen in the last couple of days. By far the most compelling and interesting film I've seen in a long time was Straw Dogs, a Peckinpah film I watched at the Egyptian Theater last night. Holy shit, what a movie!

Peckinpah has this amazing ability to create a sense of menace and fear. He builds a tremendous amount of tension through looks, camera angle, cutting. The terror felt by the couple, whose decided to return to Amy's (the wife) hometown in rural England, builds and builds unrelentingly.

I've heard Peckinpah was a misogynist and I guess I can see that intepretation of the "rape" --> consent scene. But he does it in such a sophisticated way, that it's worth examining anyway. I interpreted the scene more from a sense of character need. Amy needed to feel safe, which she didn't with Dustin Hoffman.

I can't say enough about this film. I watched it as part of a double feature when I was tired and it kept me completely engaged the entire time. Some absolutely amazing visuals of this lonely farmhouse in foggy England. The end, vicious and exciting, is more than worth the wait....but truthfully, I found the entire build up just as compelling.

And at risk of being labeled a pervert, it is the most erotic rape "scene" I've ever seen. And that makes it ever more powerful.

The second part of the double feature was Junior Bonner, another Peckinpah film about a rodeo family. The son, played by Steve Mcqueen (who I honestly don't really get), comes home to find his brother getting rich and his charming father being drunk.

A lot of interesting things going on in this film, some of the same type of things I've been exploring in Soccer Bums, trying to hang on to sporting glory, the brother (or friend) in my case, finding financial success, the relationship between son and father. Overall, I was honestly too tired at this point and fell asleep a couple of times. Most interesting was the way he shot the rodeo itself, lots of slow motion close-ups, very powerful, especially when compared to the look of the regular action. The first scenes are amazing, a washed out blue-jean type look to a rodeo, with split screen editing and freeze frames all over the place. Very suave for 1972.

In constrast, the two nights ago, I watched Saved!, an absolutely terrible movie with Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Maculay Culkin. It was the premiere, which is almost always worth going because of the free popcorn and soda, but I nearly walked out on this story about a Christian high school and a girl struggling with her gay boyfriend, who ends up getting pregnant. The movie couldn't figure out whether to be funny or serious, neither of which was working too well, to be honest. They had worthless voice over, crappy emotional music to make you feel something that wasn't there between the characters and action, boring characters, lame story, nothing visually interesting at ALL. There were a few good cracks at Christians and gays, and that's about it. Easy, easy jokes. The highlight for me, however, was the afterparty, filled with teenage stars from the movie and elsewhere. Lindsey Lohan made an appearance - awesome. I rubbed elbows with Jena Malone. I pretended to Rich Schroder's agent that I was an aspiring soap opera star. I got a prom picture taken. I ran into a girl from the hollywood reporter I met at the Dresden. I ate free food and drank free chardonnay. I met the director and congradulated him. He said to me, "If I can make a movie, anyone can." Funny thing was, I totally believed him.