Halloween 2015 #4: American Psycho (2000) - Mary Harron

A film by a female director!! I’m pretty sure this is the third film I’ve reviewed that is solely directed by a woman, after The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola) and Sassy Pants (Coley Sohn). Out of 84 reviews! 

That’s me being sarcastic.

So American Psycho, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, tells the story of a Wall Street businessman, Patrick Bateman, who is also a serial killer. His douchey self-obsessed world of investment banking clashes with his murderous tendencies, and soon his world begins to fall apart as his taste for blood grows stronger.

His first murder, a homeless man, is a manifestation of his belief that he is superior to people who aren’t as wealthy as he is, and those who don’t contribute to society deserve to die. It’s sick and nasty and very un-Batman. 

He dates Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), despite the fact that they both cheat on each other with their other rich friends.

His interactions with his coworkers are always very strange, I felt like I was being forced to watch an overplayed pissing contest repeatedly. The characters obsess over each other’s business cards, despite the fact that they are essentially indistinguishable (even with the same title, Vice President). 

Bateman also keeps to his rigorous skin care and workout regimens, emphasizing the connection between physical superiority and supposed worth as a human being. The more Bateman sees himself as a brilliant albeit sociopathic individual, the easier his killings become.

Also Bateman’s bizarre relationship with music is interesting, because the early murder scenes are preceded by long, drawn out explanations of artists that he enjoys. He regularly prefers famous musician’s later albums to their previous ones (both Phil Collins and Whitney Houston are used as examples), which could possibly be a reference to how famous serial killers usually take a few tries to really find their own… style?

Bateman casually quotes serial killers, once with his friends when he talks about how Ed Guin viewed women in both a romantic and in a future victim sense, and then later he references Ted Bundy in front of his secretary, played by Chloë Sevigny.

I’m sorry I just keep jumping off on tangents, but I also think it’s important to talk about the way the film relates sex, violence, and vanity. Bateman is self-obsessed, and here we see him preferring to look at himself having sex rather than at the woman. He’s pretty much incapable of viewing her as a human (she’s an escort), and later he… well we don’t know exactly what he does. He is violent in some way, but he pays her and she leaves, so we’re unsure. Although he does make a porn with her and a prostitute, because Bateman loves porn. He’s always returning videotapes.

Anyway now that I’ve briefly touched on some of the subtext I noticed, I can address the ending. The violence escalates until Bateman reaches some sort of psychological breaking point, and then things get a little… crazy. His desire to kill becomes uncontrollable, and it seems almost certain that he will be punished. But the film has other ideas. You have to watch it to see what I mean. 

Or read the book, I don’t know. It’s only been about half a day since I watched it, so I don’t really know how I feel just yet. My gut reaction was “What the what?” and my brain was kind of like, “Let it sink in and try not to overanalyze.” Basically, if you want Wolf of Wall Street meets Dexter, this is for you. Everything Christian Bale says is cringeworthy but also dripping with irony, satirizing capitalism and materialism and everything about Wall Street. So that part is good.

Summer 2014 #1: Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - Hayao Miyazaki

I can’t believe that I’ve managed to get my almost 250 film Watchlist down to just 196 films in a little over a year. But I think I can do better! That means it’s time for another Moviecation. This time, I won’t be doing 15 films in 15 days like I did over winter break. I’m doing 15 films over the course of the summer. So

and let’s go!

My fifth Miyazaki film! In just sixth months. I can’t believe it was only January when I saw Spirited Away, and since then I have seen My Neighbor Totoro, The Wind Rises, and Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki has totally altered the way I think about animation, since, as I’ve said before, the only animation companies I respect are Disney and Pixar. 

I think Miyazaki has transcended the American idea that animated films have to be geared towards kids. And even though the fantastical worlds created in Studio Ghibli’s films are definitely, on the surface, childlike and wonderful, these films are always much deeper. Miyazaki’s hard childhood experiences with WWII bleed into all of his films, and you can feel the animator struggling to understand those troubling times in mid-twentieth century Japan.

Howl’s Moving Castle follows a strong female protagonist like many of his other films. This one’s name is Sophie, and within two minutes of meeting her as the bland hat shop girl who works herself too hard, a witch comes and transforms her into an old woman.

The film doesn’t care to take the time to characterize Sophie in her normal world, but we do hear a little about the strange wizard named Howl, who eats women’s hearts and must be watched out for. That is, until Sophie encounters him and he protects her from some evil spirits that are following her.

Old lady Sophie is a hilarious lens for the story, because she is strong-willed and curious and learns quickly that with old age comes a bizarre amount of courage. Her witty self-banter is probably the strongest comedic source in the film, and she quickly asserts herself into Howl’s magical world in hopes of having her curse lifted.

Howl’s connection to the crown makes him a target for the king’s system of drafting military men, since he trained with a witch that seems to have all the power in Japan. A violent and unjust war permeates the entire film, and Howl’s plight to stop it leaves him less and less human with each battle. It’s very interesting to see the negative characteristics in Howl, namely his cowardice, because it humanized someone who at the beginning of the film seems so inaccessible. 

Like the other Miyazaki films I’ve seen, feminist and anti-war themes ground the film, while the imaginative world it inhabits lifts it off of the screen and into a sort of escapist adventure. Between the witches and wizards, the spells, and Howl’s literal moving castle, the film has enough heart to rival even the best Pixar films. Not to mention a great love story.

And as always, Studio Ghibli’s ties with Disney made for some amazing English voice actors. Howl is voiced by Christian Bale, Josh Hutcherson plays his young assistant, and the amazing Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep) gets to be the antagonist turned comedic side character, the Witch of the Waste. 

There she is in her “normal” state. Here she is the next scene.

Also the fire she is referring to is a tiny fire voiced by Billy Crystal.

I loved the film overall. It has drama, heart, and comedy. Roger Ebert, one of the only critics to not love it, called it one of Miyazaki’s weakest films. I think I’d be hard-pressed to pick a “weak” Miyazaki film, but out of the five I’ve seen, I can see where this one seems to be missing in that last bit of extra spark that his films usually emit. Maybe it’s the nonchalance with which Sophie falls in love with the deluded, cowardly Howl, I’m not sure. Not that the film isn’t great, because it is. It’s beautiful in so many ways, and definitely worth viewing.

Howl’s Moving Castle lost the Best Animated Film at the 2005 Oscars to “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” But it ranks as #152 on the IMDb Top 250, only behind #36 Spirited Away and #130 My Neighbor Totoro.