Totally Inappropriate

We'll need to search you  - Pic courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

by blogSpotter

In the past 3 weeks I’ve been truly entertained by my movie choices -- each movie evoking greater heights of shock, outrage and yes -- titillation.  None of these 3 movies are Oscar caliber in any conventional sense but they all sent me to imdb.com and web discussion boards to glean more information about the actors and surrounding events.  Let me give a brief synopsis of each one.

COMPLIANCE - 2012

This is a small, independent movie -- Craig Zobel’s disturbing, painstakingly accurate retelling of an actual event.   A “police detective” calls the lady manager (a 50ish frump played by Ann Dowd) of a ChichWich fast food restaurant to inform her that a 19 year old girl cashier has been caught stealing in a sting operation.  The manager is to detain the cashier and search her for money in the back of the store.  What follows is a jaw-dropping escalation of invasive acts -- a strip search and next a body cavity search.  The acts are performed by a different series of employees to the instructions of a yet unidentified stranger on the phone. The movie shows in painful detail what horrifically stupid things people will do when directed by authority.   It is said that 25% of movie audiences walked out of the theater in initial viewings, and much anger was directed at Craig Zobel for showing what happened.  Sometimes, it hurts to think and it hurts to reconsider our own density.

WAKE IN FRIGHT - 1971  (Australian)

This movie stars Gary Bond as a public grade school teacher John Grant, working in the remote Outback.  The handsome, blond 30ish gent has to travel by train to Sydney across the holidays and stops in the rough-neck mining town of Bundanyabba along the way.   The town has a 10-to-1 ratio of men to women; the men spit, swagger, gamble, box kangaroos and drink alcohol every waking hour.   The town’s sheriff befriends John and tells him ambiguously that “Some chaps come here and they decide to never leave”.   John is at first aghast by the low-class ways of the townspeople but gets drawn in … He drinks himself senseless and then gambles away his paltry cash.   From here, John becomes indebted to a local middle-aged business owner and his band of odd yokel friends (and one nymphomaniac daughter).   The movie has a couple of climaxes if you will.   It shows an extremely brutal kangaroo hunt where these beautiful creatures are slaughtered.  That is a 10 minute segment that I would advise people to fast-forward past.   The Australian film registry has left the sequence in for its shock value, to enlighten people about the plight of kangaroos.  The last few scenes “go there” if you will to a place you knew it might be going.  I can actually see this movie remade in 2013 as a dark comedy.   Points of despair (as seen in 1971) would be points of extreme levity in my proposed 2013 redo.  I won’t give away the plot because this movie is a treasure that should be seen, not read about in a synopsis.

THE PAPERBOY - 2012

This movie, written and directed by Lee Daniels, is a southern gothic on steroids.  It’s a fast, furious collision of Mississippi Burning, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Night of the Hunter.  Set in the 1960’s, it’s the story of two liberal reporters trying to free a wrongly convicted death row inmate in Lately, Florida.  The movie has bondage, nymphomania, racism and homosexuality -- probably all within the first 10 minutes.  It has an all-star cast;  the stand-out performances are probably Nicole Kidman as the insatiable Charlotte and John Cusack as the horny and somewhat nasty Hillary Van Wetter.   But we really shouldn’t minimize the performance of Matthew McConaughey as the closeted sadomasochist and and Zac Efron as the sweet, sensible, heart-broken Jack Jansen.   

IN SUM

These, to me, are what movies are about. They grip and they entertain you.  They also slap, tease and possibly enrage you.  Without trying to deliver any “deep serious” message in a sealed envelope, they raise all manner of questions and points of discussion.  The Paperboy was dissed as a trashy melodrama but I beg to differ.   I’ve seen trashy, shallow flicks and this was something else. In these last few years, Netflix and Apple TV have given me a pass away from mainstream gloss, and into a cinematic land of thought-provoking magic.
        

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