Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Twelve: I Love Everything About LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT, Except For The Fact That It's A Musical

"I'm sure I need a long, slow root canal."

When I started watching the director's cut of Little Shop Of Horrors, Jamie was astounded that I had never seen it before.  In fact, she posted the following on Facebook:

"Not only has Daley never seen Little Shop of Horrors, but he's actively underwhelmed by the prospect of watching it. He just turned it on, and he's already sighing exasperatedly. I had no idea his hatred of musicals extended even to Steve Martin and Rick Moranis."

In truth, it's not entirely accurate to say that I've never seen Little Shop.  Lerman and I met in high school, where we were each members of the A/V Crew.  (Shocking, I know.)  Since it was a day and boarding school, the A/V usually showed movies on the weekends and I frequently volunteered to serve as the projectionist.  I definitely remember showing Little Shop one night and, being the guy in the booth, I watched the first few minutes to make sure there were no issues with the picture or sound.  But my fiery hatred of all things musical theater kicked in after about five minutes.  "Fuck this noise," I thought, and I retreated into the A/V office to play Skittles or South Park Snood.*

If I had stuck around a bit longer I would have discovered that the film is directed by the one and only Frank Oz (!!) and largely populated by a collection of my favorite 80's comedians.  I'll admit that it took me a while to realize the full brilliance that is Rick Moranis.  Honey, I Shrunk The Kids was a movie that I used to watch on endless repeat as a child, so I only ever thought of Moranis as a nerdy family man until I eventually began to appreciate his amazing work as Louis Tulley in Ghostbusters, a role he snagged when John Candy was unavailable.  Speaking of which, Candy has a short but memorable turn here as a wacky radio DJ that was just silly enough to leave me wanting more, while Christopher Guest makes another one of his infamous chameleon-like appearance as the first businessman to notice the Audrey II in the window.  And then there's Steve Martin, whose leather jacket-wearing, motorcycle-driving abusive dentist Orin Scrivello is rightfully the stuff of legend.  The guy is a nitrous-fueled nightmare, twisting the heads off of little girls' dolls and punching his own nurse in the face.  By the time Oz sticks the camera inside the mouth of one of Scrivello's victims/patients, complete with a giant tongue wagging in Martin's face, I was ecstatic.

And then Bill Murray showed up and OH MY GOD WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS?

Martin and Murray are pretty much my comedy idols, so having them share the screen is nothing short of heaven realized.  I'd have been happy just to watch them stand around reading people's text messages a la those Sprint commercials with James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell, but Oz knows a fucking golden opportunity when he sees one, pairing Martin's dental sadist with Murray as a masochistic patient who's literally jumping up and down in his seat with excitement at the prospect of having his teeth drilled.  ("Candy bar!!")  It's four and a half minutes of pure, uncut amazing.

And then there's the blood-sucking, man-eating, singing plant from outer space.  I'm a well known sucker for practical effects, so it's pretty much impossible for me not to love everything about Audrey II.  Along with providing the voice for Yoda, Grover, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, Frank Oz was Jim Henson's original partner in crime and puppetry before he went on to direct films like Little Shop, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and What About Bob?  It's therefore no surprise that the execution of Audrey II is, quite simply, some of the greatest practical effects and puppet work I have ever seen, from her humble beginnings in an old coffee can to her gargantuan rampage upon the citizens of New York City. (Pictured above.)

Some of you may be scratching your head in bewilderment, thinking to yourself, "Attack on New York?  I don't remember that part."  That's because the film's theatrical ending, the only one that audiences have had access to for the past 26 years, has what Wayne and Garth would refer to as "the mega-happy ending."  Audrey II brings down the roof of Mushnik's flower shop, but Seymour emerges from the rubble, grabs a severed power cable and electrocutes the plant until it suddenly explodes.  Seymour saves Audrey (the human one) and the two get married and live happily ever after.  But that's not how it was initially intended to play out.  The film's original ending saw all the characters eaten and killed while a horde of giant Audrey II's laid waste to the Big Apple.  Apparently this version did not sit well with test audiences, so reshoots were called for.  Ironically, this happier ending was largely scorned by fans of the darker Off-Broadway musical, itself based on a 1960 film.  The original ending was restored** and released on Blu-ray and DVD in 2012 and it's absolutely glorious in the darkest, most nihilistic way imaginable.

Now if only they could have done away with the damn musical numbers.

What's The Connection? Anthropomorphism!  Babe features talking animals and Little Shop has a talking plant.  Boom.

Up Next: The Happiness Of The Katakuris


*Historical note: Snood was a very big game when I was in high school, and there was a variation of the game in which all the pieces were replaced with the faces of the boys from South Park, a show that was just coming into its own at the time.  We used to get in trouble for playing it because in that version, the Danger bar had been relabeled to simply read "Oh Fuck!"

**The scene with Jim Belushi as the guy who first suggests the idea of selling millions of little Audrey II's in shopping malls was actually part of the reshoots when the original actor Paul Dooley (a.k.a. the dad from Sixteen Candles) was unavailable.  Dooley's scene is restored in the Director's Cut.


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Title: Little Shop Of Horrors: The Director's Cut
Director: Frank Oz
Starring: Rick Moranis, Levi Stubbs, Ellen Greene, Steve Martin, Vincent Gardenia, Bill Murray, John Candy, Christopher Guest, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Paul Dooley/Jim Belushi
Year Of Release: 1986
Viewing Method: DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Eleven - BABE: PIG IN THE CITY. Yes, Really.

"A murderous shadow lies hard across my soul."

Only Lerman would send me from juvenile detention rape and riots directly to a children's movie about a talking pig.  That's the thing about Lerman, he can find genius in the most unexpected of places.

I was old enough that I had aged out of most overtly little kid movies when Babe was released.  I know the first one is beloved by many, but the sequel seemed to fill most fans with disappointment or indifference and I suppose I can understand that reaction.  I still haven't watched Babe, but I'm familiar with the premise: Babe is a pig who lives on a farm and dreams of being a sheepdog.  All the animals can talk (to each other, not to the humans) and the other residents of the farm warn him to give up his foolish goal, but eventually Babe overcomes their doubts and becomes a champion sheep-pig.  I'm sure kids and parents alike were expecting a similarly sweet and charming story in Babe's second adventure.

They weren't counting on George Fucking Miller.

Yes, that's right, Babe: Pig In The City was directed by the same man responsible for Mad Max.    Miller gleefully eschews everything that people loved about that first installment and instead throws that endearing little pork chop into a gothic, subversive alternate reality.  AND IT'S AWESOME.  It becomes clear that something is askew right from the film's opening moments.  James Cromwell's lovable Farmer Hoggett is only present long enough for Babe to accidentally cause a pump motor to fall on him while he's stranded at the bottom of a well.  (I legit thought that Miller was going to violently kill him off five minutes into the movie AND make it all the pig's fault)  Cromwell's crippling creates a financial crisis when the farmer's wife is not able to take care of the property all on her own, so she immediately grabs the pig and heads off to attend a state fair that has promised a generous appearance fee for a demonstration of champion sheep-pigging.  But the pair is detained by DEA agents during an airport layover when Babe chats up a drug-sniffing dog who ends up falsely implicating the farmer's wife as a drug mule.

Again, this is a movie for children.

Babe and Mrs. Hoggett miss their connecting flight and are stranded in The City, whose skyline includes the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the World Trade Center, the Sydney Opera House and the Hollywood sign.  While The City is never explicitly referred to by name, some onscreen signage suggests that the city is called Metropolis, which almost implies that this whole thing is some kind of insane Superman spin-off.  (I like to think this is the version of Metropolis where Nicolas Cage's aborted version of Kal-El would have lived.)  After some helpful advice from a janitor that appears to be some kind of pig mutant, Babe and Mrs. Hoggett end up staying in a bizarre hotel that is largely populated by animals, including a choir of cats, a paraplegic dog in a sweater, and a family of circus chimps who perform for sick children alongside elder clown Uncle Fugly who is played by a drooling and sputtering Mickey Rooney.  (!!!!)  Mrs Hoggett accidentally causes a ruckus on the boardwalk, gets doused with billboard glue and hauled off to jail while Babe gets recruited into the circus act, which includes a lady chimp dressed like a hooker and voiced by Glenne Headley along with her husband who's dressed like a 50's greaser and voiced by, of all people, Stephen Wright.  Babe promptly sets the hospital on fire in his first performance.

I swear to god, I'm not making this shit up.

The humans are largely absent for most of the remainder of the film, in which the chimps try to turn Babe into a patsy while they steal food, only to see Babe save the life of a vicious street dog who looks like Spuds MacKenzie and sounds like Don Corleone.  The Dogfather then instills the pig as the head of the hotel, taking in all the neighborhood strays who are thus forced to give fealty to Babe.  Eventually the Animal Control guys show up and haul most of the animals off, leading to a daring rescue and a wacky climax of destruction in which Mrs. Hoggett, released from jail thanks to a sympathetic judge who is also a pig mutant, ends up bungee jumping from the chandelier of a fancy charity ball while wearing Mickey Rooney's clown pants.

AND THEN IT JUST FUCKING ENDS.

The hotel owner, a woman who looks like an ostrich (were all of these people grown in a lab?) decides to to sell the hotel and take all her animals to the Hoggett's farm, giving them the profits from the sale in order to save the farm from foreclosure.  A now-healthy James Cromwell returns to say "That'll do, pig" and collect his paycheck, and that's the whole shebang.

What.  The.  Fuck.

This thing is dark.  This thing is weird.  This thing is twisted.

I can't wait to show it to my kids.


What's The Connection?  Babe is far less rapey than Dog Pound, but he does end up as the head of a prison-like hierarchy over the neighborhood strays.  But much like Butch and Davis, the good times eventually come crashing down.

Up Next: Little Shop Of Horrors: The Director's Cut


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Title: Babe: Pig In The City
Director: George Miller
Starring: Madga Szubanski, James Cromwell, Mary Stein, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Daily, Glenne Headley, Stephen Wright, Adam Goldberg
Year Of Release: 1998
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Ten: DOG POUND And The Terrors Of Life In The Hole

"Dead.  Dead.  Dead."

I would not do well in prison.  Of this, I have no doubt.  I think I could handle solitude pretty well - with nowhere to go and no wifi-based distractions, I'd probably end up doing a lot of reading and perhaps even some long-form writing.  But aside from the frequent threat of physical violence, I think the psychological pressure of incarceration would really wear me down over time.  I'm generally pretty adaptable and I tend to let a lot of stuff pretty much roll off of me, but I'm certain that serving any appreciable amount of time in prison would have a profound effect on my personality going forward; much like (I imagine) going to war, I'd simply come out the other side a completely different person.

That's the thing that struck me most about Dog Pound, the story of three teenage boys serving time in a youth correctional facility.  They suffer gross indignities at the hands of a trio of older kids while the guards are generally indifferent to their situation.  Eventually the boys push back and, for a time, usurp their peer oppressors and enjoy the relative good life.  But you know it simply can't last and when these guys fall, they fall HARD.  I couldn't help but wonder which character I would most resemble if I too had been incarcerated at such an impressionable age.  I accept the fact that I would certainly get pushed around and beaten up, although I'd hope that my generally non-confrontational nature and head-down tendencies would at least partially insulate me from violence.  Nonetheless, it seems inevitable that I'd eventually get backed into a corner (physically and/or emotionally) and end up with more than a few bruises.  How would I react to such a situation is the really intriguing factor.  Would I become dominated by anger or despair?  

(Spoilers ensue.)

Butch (Adam Butcher) is already a product of the system, a strong and vaguely psychopathic kid who refuses to back down from a challenge and often strikes out with uncompromising lethality.  He's intelligent to be sure, but has resigned himself to a dead end future full of rage.  Rather than try to turn his life around, he's content to play king of the hill, determined to keep himself from ever becoming a victim.  Given enough time and punishment, could I eventually morph into such an individual?  Pushed far enough to the edge with no hope of redemption I'm sure I could turn just as dark and violent as Butch, however it doesn't feel like a natural fit.  I'd likely end up shivved in my sleep.

Instead I suspect that Davis (Shane Kippel) is a more accurate barometer for my own hypothetical imprisonment.  Davis is a charismatic ladies man, easy going and friendly.  He gets pushed around and intimidated, but he somehow manages to mostly shrug it all off, entertaining his bunkmates (it's a juvenile facility so they don't live in individual cells) with late night tales of his various sexual conquests.  Most of them are probably total bullshit, but who cares?  The kid is a legend and you just can't help but like him.  Of course that means he's doomed to suffer the most brutal fate of all.  Trapped alone in the laundry room, a typical beatdown suddenly and unexpectedly turn into a harrowing rape scene.  That's obviously a scarring ordeal, but for a teenage boy whose entire personality is built on his sexual identity...he's left a broken, shell of a person who sees no better alternative than to empty his veins in the middle of the night.

That's not to say I think I'd kill myself if I went to prison, merely that I would likely turn inward rather than face off against my tormentors.  To be honest, I'm not sure if I could really bring myself to commit suicide.  It's certainly something I've contemplated before, but only as an intellectual exercise and not out of honest desire.  I don't necessarily begrudge anyone for pursuing the ultimate end to true physical suffering or psychological pain.  I've known one person in my life who's committed suicide, the mother of a friend who had previously passed away from cancer.  I would never presume to understand the depth of her grief and sorrow so I couldn't possibly judge whether her emotional state justified her extreme actions, but I do believe she was in serious pain and I'm glad she was able to find relief.  My only frustration with her decision lay in the fact that she left behind a husband and a young daughter and, putting myself in their shoes, I can't imagine how I might handle the self-inflicted death of either my wife or my mother, just as I can't imagine abandoning Jamie and any children that might lie in our future.  There seems to be an element of selfishness there, but then again is it really selfish simply to desire peace?  It's easy to ponder this stuff from my current position in life, happily married and living without any major hardship.  In the face of crippling depression or imminent and prolonged physical agony, my opinions might change real quick.

Mostly it's the fear of losing my humanity, of being trapped in a world that slowly robs me of everything that makes me...me.  That's the thing that terrifies me most of all, and why I hope to never experience anything like the events of Dog Pound.


What's The Connection?  Down Terrace began with guys getting out of prison, while Dog Pound starts with guys going into prison.

Up Next: Babe: Pig In The City

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Title: Dog Pound
Director: Kim Chapiron
Starring: Adam Butcher, Shane Kippel, Mateo Morales, Slim Twig, Taylor Poulin, Lawrence Bayne
Year Of Release: 2010
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Nine: DOWN TERRACE Is Lean, Violent, And Funny

"It's not the decisions that are tough, Bill.  It's the actions."

Ben Wheatley is a name I've heard buzzing around my head for the past few years.  He's a British director, mostly specializing in dark comedies, that has yet to experience the same kind of breakout success here in the states as the likes of fellow countrymen Edgar Wright, Matthew Vaughn or Guy Ritchie.  But he's only got a handful of films under his belt and it feels like that success is almost inevitable at this point.  I've been meaning to watch his two big successes for a while now and sadly I've yet to capitalize on plenty of opportunity; Kill List has been streaming on Netflix for months and Sightseers played at the Brattle last year, but it was a single showing on a night when I was out of town.  Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze one or both of them in before my final deadline.  Wheatley's latest film, the psychedelic period piece A Field In England, will get a VOD and limited theatrical release in early February courtesy of the fine folks over at Drafthouse Films.

Down Terrace was Wheatley's big screen debut and it's a real cracker of a story.  A sublime mixture of family drama and crime humor, the film plays almost like The Sopranos if that show were actually a comedy about a dysfunctional family of borderline inept criminals.  Much of the film is left deliberately opaque; the story opens with Bill and his grown son Karl (real life father and son Robert and Robin Hill) getting out of prison for a crime that is never specified.  Bill is the head of a small time criminal enterprise, although their precise racket is never actually specified.  But none of those details are really all that important to the plot.  It could be drugs, prostitution, dwarf-tossing...the specifics are immaterial.  All that matters is that business is bad, the family is in trouble and there is a traitor somewhere in their midst.  And what's worse, Karl's ex-girlfriend shows up pregnant!  Womp womp!   The tone is never as sitcom-y as it might sound on paper, but that doesn't change the actual events of the day.  Seriously, at one point a hitman shows up to do a job with his three year old son in tow because he couldn't get a sitter.

But don't take that as a criticism though.  The shit is hilarious.

The cast is all pretty strong, but Julia Deakin is absolutely magnetic as Maggie, the quiet and menacing Lady Macbeth of the family.  For all of Bill's posturing and Karl's complaining, it's only Maggie that seems to have a proper knack for the business and knows how to get shit done.  Deakin should be a familiar face to fans of Edgar Wright's Spaced series (she played Marsha) as well as his Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, albeit it in smaller roles.  I'd love to see Wheatley give her some truly meaty stuff somewhere down the line.

What's The Connection?  Bloody Sunday takes place almost entirely on a Sunday (obviously) and the giant onscreen title tells us that Down Terrace starts on a Monday.  Feels like a stretch, but it's all that I've got.  (I thought that perhaps DT also had a lot of killing happen on a Sunday, but it didn't match up.)

Up Next:  Dog Pound

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Title: Down Terrace
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Robert Hill, Robin Hill, Julia Deakin, David Schaal, Tony Way, Kerry Peacock, Michael Smiley
Year Of Release: 2010
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Eight: Violence Begets Violence BLOODY SUNDAY

"...and you will reap a whirlwind."

I am now convinced that Paul Greengrass is a goddamn magician.

I have no other explanation for how he is able to make staged drama look and feel so much like documented reality that the two become practically indistinguishable.  Lest you think I'm exaggerating, this was the conversation that Jamie and I had just before I started the movie:

Jamie: "What's on for tonight?"
Daley: "Bloody Sunday."
Jamie:  "Oh I think I saw that in theaters.  It's a documentary, right?"
Daley: "No, but it's Paul Greengrass.  So yeah."

I already talked about this with Captain Phillips (as well as in reference to United 93) so I don't really want to harp on it again in great detail, except to say that without a movie star face* like Tom Hanks to keep reminding you that you're watching a film, it's easy to see how folks could confuse Bloody Sunday for eyewitness footage of the violent murder of 13 peaceful civil rights protesters in Derry, Ireland at the hands of British soldiers.

I've been meaning to watch this movie for ages.  I fell in love with Greengrass after United 93 and that love was only cemented with his two Bourne films, which are some of the best action/spy films of the modern era.  Bloody Sunday is one of those films that I've never heard a bad word spoken about, and all that praise is absolutely earned.  It is an absolute masterstroke, with a climax that will tear your heart right out of chest and shred it to pieces in front of you.  It is so utterly horrifying precisely because it is so realistic.  All the camera work is done handheld with no lighting setups to perfectly mimic the documentary style.  I'm assuming that much of the cast is made up of Derry natives and so much of dialogue is delivered in an overlapping, chaotic style that I probably missed about a quarter of what was spoken, but it's such an immersive experience that I don't care.  There's no haunting score to amp up the drama, no cutting away to close ups so we can experience the emotional turmoil of those involved...just a cold, dispassionate presentation of slaughter as it would have appeared to any one of the hundreds of innocent bystanders.

Much like Captain Phillips, Greengrass certainly has a point of view about these events, but he isn't totally one-sided about it.  In his latest film we see Phillips ignore safety warnings to avoid the Somali coast, but he's never vilified for that decision.  The man made a judgement call and the situation didn't go his way, but his ensuing bravery and heroism are indisputable, even if the initial danger was somewhat of his own making.  Here we see many of the young protestors throwing rocks at the British troops and a few IRA guys even take a few shots at the barricades.  There's no argument that the military wasn't at least on some level provoked, but it's also clear that their response was a grossly disproportionate use of lethal force by both commanders looking to make a public statement and by a handful of bloodthirsty soldiers anxious to make civilians pay for the deeds of the IRA.

I'm sure that, had I lived in Derry at that time, I too would have been marching with the crowd that Sunday, although I highly doubt that I would have been throwing rocks.  I've never had a strong propensity for violence and I'm generally a pretty even keel sort of fellow.  Jamie and I were just talking the other day about how I don't often get seriously angry, but when I do it tends to manifest itself as a full-on Hulk rage.  So perhaps I, like so many others that day, would have been so devastated and filled with hate after witnessing such a massacre that I would have promptly signed up with the militant IRA in order to make the English pay for their savagery.  Then again, perhaps I would have simply curled up in the corner and wept.  Hard to say.  The closest example I can think of to an event in my own life is September 11th, and I certainly never even considered enlisting in the armed forces in the days and weeks following the attack.  But I'll be honest, military service scares the pants off me on a number of different levels and I absolutely know that I'm simply not cut out for such a lifestyle.  I'm soft.  And you can't really get good nachos in Fallujah.

There's no music in the entire film, save for the closing credits which play over a life performance of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday."  It's a beautiful song that you'll never be able to hear the same way again after watching Greengrass's film.  I thought I'd leave you with a cover version from my one-time cover band BiPFT! featuring our resident Irishman Warren O'Reilly on vocals.  His quiet, cracking, soulful voice really reflects the sorrow of that day.  I think it's actually my favorite version of this song ever.




*I'll admit that watching Bloody Sunday now suffers retroactively from a similar condition, as James Nesbitt is currently best known from his work in The Hobbit films as The Dwarf With The Floppy Hat And The Fu Manchu Handlebar Mustache.


What's The Connection? - Brutality at the hands of the system.  While Bloody Sunday depicts soldiers killing helpless civilians, Memories Of Murder featured Korean police detectives beating and torturing suspects in connection to crimes of which they were certainly innocent.

Up Next - Down Terrace




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Title: Bloody Sunday
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: James Nesbitt, Allen Gildea, Gerard Crossan, Mary Moulds, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas Farrell, Christopher Villiers
Year Of Release: 2002
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Seven: MEMORIES OF MURDER And Police Duplicity

"Documents don't lie."

Back in 2006, Lerman took me out to see The Host, which I remember him describing as, "Jaws meets Godzilla, but Korean and fucking funny."  The film (which you can currently stream on Netflix) did not disappoint and I ended up buying on DVD the moment it became available.  I even revisited it for the first time in a few years during the run-up to Pacific Rim and found it to be just as great as I remembered.  Director Joon-ho Bong manages to balance a number of different tones and styles in a fairly remarkable way and I'm now growing positively rabid to see his upcoming post-apocalyptic epic Snowpiercer. Yet somehow I'd never managed to dig back through the rest of Bong's filmography.  It's only a small handful of films and I'm glad that Lerman threw one into the mix.  It seems fitting.

Memories Of Murder, Bong's immediate predecessor to The Host, is a dramatic change of pace, the tale of two rural and and largely unskilled police detectives, along with a far more competent officer transferred in from Seoul, who are investigating a serial rapist and killer of women in 1986.  Much like The Host, it's beautifully shot and smartly structured although it lacks much of that film's playful sense of humor, hardly a surprise considering the grisly subject matter.  Star Kang-ho Song (a frequent Bong collaborator) has a certain pathetic yet lovable quality that makes for a strange emotional disconnect when seeing him as a police officer, similar to Joe Lo Truglio's character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  Song's Detective Park is like a dark mirror of his character from The Host, less of an adorable child and more of a simple-minded brute.  Park is isn't really interested in following the evidence to find the actual killer and would rather grab the first convenient suspect and fit him for the noose regardless of any obvious innocence.

This struck a chord with me, as it reflected a situation that befell a friend.  She has a son who filed a false police report and when the police followed up they quickly realized that his claims were bullshit.  The officers told the boy's mother that he should simply admit his mistake, pay a small penalty and that would be the end of it.  But when he came clean the kid was hit with a huge fine and charged with a misdemeanor.  Aside from the radioactive fallout that will haunt this kid forever and the fact that it feels like absurd overkill for a largely victimless crime (yes he wasted the time and efforts of the officers involved, but he also never actually pointed a finger at anyone specific) what's worse is that the kid and his mother have now been instilled with a strong distrust of police in general.

I've been lucky enough to have had minimal interactions with cops in my time, mostly consisting of a series of (largely unwarranted) noise complaints at my old apartment in LA and a handful of traffic stops.  I have an uncle who's a cop and he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met.  He volunteered his car for my license road test simply because neither of my parents' cars had an accessible parking brake.  Especially after the events of the Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent manhunt, I have nothing but respect for the police.  But, at the same time, I recognize that not all cops are my uncle and, just like in any profession, there are always a couple of assholes.  The thing to keep in mind if you ever find yourself a suspect in an investigation, no matter how minor, is that the police do not necessarily have your best interests at heart.  Odds are that, much like Detective Park, the officers involved are far more interested in successfully closing the case and moving on to the next thing.  Park even goes so far as to manufacture evidence and coerce knowingly false confessions out of suspects using methods tantamount to torture.  It's reminiscent of the situation with the Central Park Five, in which the NYPD decided to pin the brutal rape and attack of a female jogger on whatever suspects they had conveniently lying around, despite the fact that they were minors and obviously couldn't have committed that crime.  Much like the kid with the false police report, the investigators lied to the suspects, telling them that they would be able to go home if they cooperated and made up a story that implicated themselves and/or each other.  It's pretty fucking despicable behavior.

Is this simply a systemic problem, a natural side effect when someone is given that much authority over others, constantly exposed to the worst impulses of human nature and then placed under tremendous stress?  Memories Of Murder would seem to suggest as much.  Detective Seo, held up as the model detective who focuses solely on the evidence and refuses to engage in Park's aggressive interrogation techniques, is finally driven so far to the edge that he's willing to ignore DNA evidence exonerating the suspect that he feels in his gut is the killer.  It's a powerful moment to be sure, and illustrates that even the best of the police is susceptible to weakness and poor judgement, especially when surrounded by the likes of Park.  In truth, it happens to everyone regardless of your station in life.  The difference is that if I have a bad day at work, I can't literally destroy someone's life as a result.

That's why if I ever find myself being questioned by the police, the only thing they're going to hear me say is, "I want my phone call and my lawyer."


What's The Connection? - I really struggled to find a common thread with The Disappearance Of Alice Creed and I feel like I'm probably missing something that connected the two in Lerman's mind.  But I'm gonna go with an inverse relationship: in Alice Creed we spend all our time with kidnappers and never see the efforts of the police.  The opposite is true here...sort of.  While we do see the killer take down two women, it's only a brief flash, not enough for us to identify him.  Instead we spend all our time focused on the cops, who never actually catch up with the killer.  Hey, they have that in common too!  Also for what it's worth, in both films the title doesn't really take on its full weight until the final moments.

Up Next - Bloody Sunday


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Title: Memories Of Murder
Director: Joon-ho Bong
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Sang-kyung Kim, Roe-ha Kim, Jae-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon, Seo-hie Ko, No-shik Park, Hae-il Park
Year Of Release: 2003
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Six: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED And The Inauguration Of Marty Walsh

"Love you too, babe."

Put simply, I love everything about this movie.

Great opening sequence?  Check.

Charismatic actors?  Check.

Strong performances?  Check.

Confident visual style?  Check.

Economy of storytelling?  Check.

Engaging and surprising script?  That's a BIG check.

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed details the kidnapping of a beautiful British woman (Gemma Arterton) by two cold and calculating criminals (Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston) in order to secure a hefty ransom from her wealthy father.  Plotwise, that's all you need to know going into the film and I'd encourage you to not let anyone reveal any more details.  So much of what makes the film so damn compelling is the way that writer/director J. Blakeson communicates all the relevant information in slow drips, delaying every revelation until the last possible second.  There's no speechifying, no monologues full of exposition to clue the audience into the characters or their backstories.  We are simply dropped into the middle of the story and forced to decipher motivations and relationships from the subtlest of clues, so that when a scene reaches the breaking point and a character finally drops some knowledge, whether it's for the benefit of another character or the audience at home, it catches you completely off guard.  And as someone who spent a number of my formative years in the theater, it's hard not to love a story that only has three characters and takes place largely in a single location.  The first 45 minutes are simply brilliant, winding up all the players, setting them on a collision course and then letting them loose to see who comes out the other side.

I must admit that, as sometimes happens in this endeavor, my own scheduling dilemma certainly made a big impact on my viewing of the film.  Jamie and I got some last minute tickets to the Inauguration Gala for Marty Walsh, the new Mayor of Boston.  Obviously it was a fancy affair that required a bit of preparation and would keep us out rather late on a Monday night, so I knew I wouldn't have time to watch the whole movie either before or after the event.  Splitting the movie in two seemed like my best option, so I got through about the first 35 minutes and, directly following the first major twist in the plot, felt like I had probably reached an ideal pause point.  We got all gussied up, met Warren and his family downtown, and had an absolute blast.  There was food, booze, and a lengthy performance by the Boston Symphony Orhestra, assisted by the likes of Blue Man Group, Ellis Hall and The Dropkick Murphys.  (Sidenote: I had this very strange moment, standing at a political gala in a suit alongside my wife and listening to a prestigious symphony play backup for the same punk rockers I used to go see in high school while stage diving and jumping around in the mosh pit.  Being a grown up is weird.)

After Mayor Walsh came up and gave his remarks, Jamie and I decided to split before the majority of the crowd found its way to the coat check line.  By 11:30 I was settled back on my couch and excited to jump back into the movie, having had some time to mull over that big reveal.  I pressed play and, within five minutes, was suddenly presented with another twist that absolutely blew the first one out of the water.  Thinking back upon it now, I'm not sure if I would have found it awesome or off-putting getting both of those shocks within minutes of each other, as opposed to spaced out with a six hour interlude full of whiskey and political ceremony.  Those two scenes are certainly the defining ten minutes of the movie from a tonal perspective and in truth I probably robbed myself of experiencing it properly.  But after over 300 movies, sometimes that's just the way it goes.

Regardless, The Disappearance Of Alice Creed is still a phenomenal crime drama, as well as fabulous showcase for the considerable talents of Eddie Marsan, Gemma Arterton and Martin Compston.  While I'm unfamiliar with Compston, I'm on record as a big of both Marsan and Arterton, each of whom had some limited success here in the states in 2013 with stuff like The World's End and Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters, respectively.  Alice Creed was a big moment for both of them and left them each poised and ready to break out in a major way.  Sadly it hasn't quite happened for either of them yet, but it feels like only a matter of time before Arterton ends up in a marquee franchise and Marsan snags a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.  I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long.


What's The Connection? - As the titles suggest, The Vanishing and The Disappearance Of Alice Creed both feature kidnapped women.  Pretty clear cut.

Up Next - Memories Of Murder

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Title: The Disappearance Of Alice Creed
Director: J Blakeson
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Eddie Marsan, Martin Compston
Year Of Release: 2009
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD