Film Review: GO GO TALES (2007, Abel Ferrara)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Willem Dafoe (BODY OF EVIDENCE), Matthew Modine (VISION QUEST, FULL METAL JACKET), Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, THE COTTON CLUB), Sylvia Miles (MIDNIGHT COWBOY, THE SENTINEL), Asia Argento (TRAUMA, MOTHER OF TEARS), Burt Young (ROCKY, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA), Stefania Rocca (THE CARD PLAYER, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY), Anita Pallenberg (BARBARELLA, DILLINGER IS DEAD), Shanyn Leigh (PUBLIC ENEMIES, MARY), Roy Dotrice (AMADEUS, SUBURBAN COMMANDO), Joseph Cortese (AMERICAN HISTORY X, WINDOWS), Pras (of The Fugees). Soundtrack in association with Grace Jones.
Tag-line: "Un film di Abel Ferrara."
Best one-liner: "You can't put the dog in my gourmet kitchen!"

Described by its director as his first "international screwball comedy" and a mash-up of THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE and CHEERS, GO GO TALES is indeed an absurdly funny film, (it seems that Abel and Werner Herzog, at odds though they may be over the BAD LIEUTENANT 'remake,' are becoming the 21st Century's top purveyors of comedy and Willem Dafoe) but one which also strikes the seasoned Ferrara fan as an intimate self-portrait, full of melancholy and a yearning for simpler, scuzzier times. We're witnessing a world in transition; one with a smaller and smaller place in it for the scatterbrained, non-tech-savvy sleazemeister (here embodied by Dafoe's "Ray Ruby"). Ferrara himself, like many a gritty 70's NYC director, began rather modestly with pornographic films (NINE LIVES OF A WET PUSSY), simple exploitation (THE DRILLER KILLER, MS. 45), and even chronicled the Times Square strip club culture (FEAR CITY) in its pre-Giuliani heyday. But recently, despite cult followings and international successes, it seems he can't even get arrested in America. In a way, thank God that the Europeans have swooped in as his sometime patrons, but fuck the American 'indie' studio system for not allowing significant distribution or funding for a legendary filmmaker who, unlike so many of his contemporaries, has continued to generate that creative, envelope-pushing spark after nearly forty years in the business.

And so Dafoe's Ray Ruby finds himself living on the edge. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth, hand to mouth to lottery ticket.

His strip club, his brainchild, his life's work, his "Paradise Lounge" ...is in trouble. His brother (played with élan by a a moptopped, pompous Matthew Modine), a Staten Island hair salon mogul and the almighty supplier of finances, is threatening to pull the plug.

"The plug is pulled. Paradise is over!"

This delights to no end the vitriolic New Yawwk landlady (Sylvia Miles in one of her finest, meanest performances) who's been waiting in the wings, ready to sell the place out "to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, motherfuckers, on a ninety-nine year lease!"

"BED, BATH, AND BEYOND!!! BED, BATH, AND BEYOND!!!"

But Ray must shoulder some of the blame- after all, he's poured all of his profits into a dangerous lottery addiction ("I played the lottery- I mean, I REALLY PLAYED IT!"), has made some foolish investments ("Frisbees with my face on 'em, I don't know what I was thinking") and has lost money over his soft spot for struggling artists (seen in an incredible, tour de force sequence that can only be described as 'Talent Show Nite' at the strip club).

All is not lost, however, when Ray actually wins the lotto, but in the midst of his inveterate, notorious disorganization, he can't find the ticket!

It's Abel's plea to the heavens- actual, sort of quaint sleaziness has been hijacked by the corporate version of sleaziness! Is nothing sacred? You've taken everything else, are you gonna take TIMES SQUARE, too? Yes, they will. And they did. By the time Ray's business is being redirected and stolen by a doofus in a crustacean mascot costume, Ferrara's exasperation has become completely tangible. Go ahead, Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Just take it all away. I've got nothing to live for anymore.

Unfolding over the course of one night, and with an Altman-style, observational, roaming camera (which captures the life which teems upon and outside of its frame), Ferrara captures the best sort of comedy- the unforced kind, the kind that's true to life. Even at it's most outrageous, the laughs here don't feel planned or even like 'jokes,' they feel like the natural outpourings of characters whose lives (from afar, of course) happen to be hilarious. The musician Pras wanders about as the club's resident 'chef,' obsessed with the gourmet artistry of his (microwaved) free range hot dogs,


Pras witnesses the ignominious end of his organic, free range, gourmet hot dogs.

an ancient Burt Young receives awkward lap dances, a robust, gravel-voiced Bob Hoskins lauds the respectability of the joint, tanning beds catch fire, a Eurotrash stripper (Stefania Rocca) wrangles the greenlighting of her script during a private dance ("Sign da check! Sign da check!"), Matthew Modine plays a toy piano and performs a mind-blowing musical number,

and Willem Dafoe even croons a ballad with a debonair suavitude and creepy flourish seldom seen since the glory days of the Rat Pack.

All this, and I didn't even get to Asia Argento yet! I'm reasonably certain that her performance as the "scariest, sexiest girl in the world" is entirely improvised and her free-form poledancing/make-out session with a terrifying dog is easily the most startlingly outré incident to be captured on celluloid in years.

Yes, GO GO TALES is insane, and, yes, it rambles. It induces spit-takes, eye-pops, raised brows, and as Sylvia Miles' psychotic end credits song (about Bed, Bath, and Beyond) attests, it even draws a comparison with STREET TRASH. Most importantly, however, it's sincere. Five stars. Abel: may you always find new, disorderly, and innovative ways to make these maniacal movies of yours. Distributors: shame on you for not picking this film up during the four years it's been available. Willem Dafoe: take it easy, take it breezy... and take it sleazy.


-Sean Gill

EDIT: Apparently the release was also held up by a legal dispute concerning screenplay credit.

Film Review: VISION QUEST (1985, Harold Becker)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 105 minutes.
Tag-line: "All he needed was a lucky break. Then one day she moved in."
Notable Cast or Crew: Matthew Modine (FULL METAL JACKET, THE BLACKOUT), Linda Fiorentino (GOTCHA!, AFTER HOURS), Ronny Cox (ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL), Charles Hallahan (THE THING, FATAL BEAUTY), MADONNA (BODY OF EVIDENCE, DICK TRACY), Forest Whitaker (BIRD, GHOST DOG), Frank Jasper (FREEWAY MANIAC), J.C. Quinn (THE ABYSS, TURNER & HOOCH). Music (ostensibly) by Tangerine Dream. Screenplay by Darryl Ponicsan (novelist of THE LAST DETAIL and CINDERELLA LIBERTY).
Best one-liner: "SHUTE? Shute's a monster! A genuine geratoid! His own father has to use a livewire to keep him from fuckin' the fireplace!"

VISION QUEST is one of those unsung 80's workhorses- it's not flashy, it's not glitzy, it's not silly. And aside from a brief, refreshingly low-key early appearance by Madonna (her first movie role aside from a student film, A CERTAIN SACRIFICE, which she later tried to have banned), it's not populated with the biggest of stars or the slickest of production values. Shot on location in ramshackle diners, hotel kitchens, and sweaty high school gymnasiums in Spokane, Washington, it has a genuine, blue-collared determination to it. High school is not depicted as some nonstop keg party where the 'rents are on that everlasting "weekend getaway" and every teen has got a bedroom tricked out more elaborately than Pee-Wee's playhouse (a representation which I certainly enjoy in the proper context). Instead, it's filled with true-to-life characters who have to balance extracurriculars with thankless jobs and uncertain futures. On the surface, I suppose you could say that it's about wrestling. Generally, my feeling on sports movies is that if they don't involve soul-crushing performances by Stacy Keach & Susan Tyrrell (FAT CITY), dog skulls (THE BLOOD OF HEROES), pedestrian casualties (DEATH RACE 2000), or Sub-Zeros who become just plain zeros (THE RUNNING MAN), then they're going to be an uphill battle. But this isn't a sports movie. Not exactly. It's about the solitary, spiritual journey that every person must one day embark upon- that critical juncture when you must decide upon the answer to that weighty question- 'How to live?'

Based on Terry Davis' 1979 award-winning Young Adult novel (which was called "the truest novel about growing up since THE CATCHER IN THE RYE" by John Irving) and directed by the generally skillful Harold Becker (CITY HALL, TAPS, SEA OF LOVE...and MALICE), our story revolves around the eighteen year-old Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) and his desire to imbue his life with purpose by dropping twenty-some pounds and challenging Brian Shute, the menacing titan state wrestling champion. Along the way, he develops a sort of relationship with a New Jersey wandering artist (Linda Fiorentino, in her screen debut), who's on her way to San Francisco... and crashing at his house. The plot is deceptively simple, and though it lends itself to some rockin' montage sequences, it's a film very much in the mold of other slice-of-life quotidian storytellers like Vittorio de Sica or Satyajit Ray. And while that claim may seem (and may in fact be) ridiculous, VISION QUEST succeeds in getting you to take it seriously enough that the teased Jersey hair, the silver (astronaut?) track suit,

an odd athletic formation that involves purple jumpsuits & a raging circular movement, and even the presence of Madonna never distract you, never send you on a nostalgia tangent, never extract you from the pure, human drama.

The cast is excellent. Modine is committed, connected, and living the role. Fiorentino is taking that whole 'sexy deadpan' thing that she does and is running with it.

Charles Hallahan is appropriately gruff and appropriately supportive as the Coach, and, as a side note, he worked alongside Madonna twice– with this and BODY OF EVIDENCE. Maybe she was a closet fan of THE THING and pulled a couple of strings? Speaking of Madonna, she shows up merely as a singer on stage at the Big Foot Tavern, singing "Crazy for You" and "The Gambler." Hoping to bank more on Madonna and less on the thoughtful storytelling, the studio marketed the film on more than a few occasions as CRAZY FOR YOU.

Madonna: not the focal point of VISION QUEST.

Annnyway, Ronny Cox, the icy corporate villain of ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL, plays against type as Modine's encouraging, working-class pop (!), and it's a joy to watch. J.C. Quinn is tearing it up as a ragged but kindly arm-wrestlin' co-worker of Modine's.

Forest Whitaker has a bit part as a lighthearted fellow wrestler who doesn't quite qualify as comic relief, but he's got a palpable joie de vivre and he'd work again with Modine some years later on Abel Ferrara's MARY.

The soundtrack is solid, though calling it a Tangerine Dream one is extremely misleading. They only show up a little over an hour in to offer some of their patented, tense 'fiercely pulsating montage music.' The rest of the soundtrack belongs to satisfying 80's rockers like Foreigner, Journey, Don Henley, Sammy Hagar, and Red Rider, whose classic rock radio standby "Lunatic Fringe" is used in such a way that it now makes one think of of Modine working out in a gym instead of Holocaust denying.

Along the way, there's nosebleeds, jealousy, road trips, fainting spells, and martial arts tips from a creepy dude in a hotel room. When it all comes down to it, it's the rare sports film where you actually care about who wins. And you care because you really have no idea which way it's going to go.


Hallahan is impressed by Modine's fortitude.

In all, it's a mature, muted look at the formative years. My one complaint is that a near-rape scene is forgiven too easily, but on the whole it deals with sexuality in such a frank, honest way that I have no choice but to admire it. As far as I can tell, it's become a cult hit with the 'high school wrestling' crowd, and that probably has more to do with a loving attention to every grapplin' detail than the rich, character-driven monologues, but I can live with that. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: MARY (2008, Abel Ferrara)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 83 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Matthew Modine, Forest Whitaker, Juliette Binoche, Stefania Rocca, Marion Cotillard, Heather Graham, Marco Leonardi
Tag-line: "It takes courage to walk in the truth."
Prizes: Grand Prix, SIGNIS award, Sergio Trasatti Award, and Mimmo Rotella Foundation Award at 2005 Venice Film Festival (it was competing against the likes of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, and TAKESHI'S).

MARY is like most Abel Ferrara films- self-deprecating, not entirely narratively cogent, and bleakly difficult to watch- but with a transcendent sincerity that vaults it to the upper-tier of what the arthouse today has to offer. MARY is at once a spiritual journey film, a making of a movie-within-a-movie film, and a horror film. There are moments designed to jolt and scare, moments of true quotidian terror, moments of grim self-reassessment, moments of loud and quiet exasperation, and moments of tranquil beauty. Matthew Modine is a Mel Gibson/Ferrara amalgam of sorts, who is both and neither at the same time. His desire to let his film be seen heats into a fervor that leaves him a 'mad bomber' of cinema, creating a film possibly only to be screened for himself. Juliette Binoche plays Mary Magdalene in Modine's film, and she is having trouble divorcing the role from her present reality, which still may leave her as the most stable character in the film. Forest Whitaker is a Charlie Rose-type interviewer whose infidelity (with Marion Cotillard playing Gretchen Mol in what is perhaps a bizarre in-joke, as Mol appears in NEW ROSE HOTEL, THE FUNERAL, and Ferrara's segment of SUBWAYSTORIES) and lack of commitment to his pregnant wife (Heather Graham) leads him on a spiritual journey not unlike Harvey Keitel's in BAD LIEUTENANT. Every actor is excellent, playing the most humiliating and compromising moments with absolute conviction and realism. This is where Ferrara shines, as he always has: Keitel whimpering and crying out to a hallucination of Christ in BAD LIEUTENANT, Modine ending his sobriety while enveloping himself in a curtain and Miami's calming ocean winds in THE BLACKOUT, or the vampiric Lili Taylor feeding on junkies after hours near Washington Square in THE ADDICTION. The cycles of birth and rebirth, whether literal or existential, persist through Ferrara's films- the act of absolution seems attainable only when a character breaks down to their most childlike form: a baby crying in an incubator suddenly looks very similar to Keitel (or Whitaker, in MARY) crying out for forgiveness to a God they're not even sure exists.
The people who will hate this know so already. They grimaced at BAD LIEUTENANT, found THE BLACKOUT dull, and NEW ROSE HOTEL pointless. This movie isn't for them, and if they 'got' this, or any of Abel's films, it would be a defeat for Abel and the rest of us. Abel realizes he targets a small niche audience, otherwise he'd go back to pornos and THE DRILLER KILLER. (I'm sure there's money for a DRILLER KILLER reboot lying around if it were to star Jessica Biel.) But I'll leave with this benediction: Ferrara is one of the bravest, boldest archangels of cinema. He doesn't preach or pontificate needlessly; he doesn't have to. He achieves the near-impossible feat of unfurling his narratives like an age-old scroll, penned with the utmost sincerity, and with equal parts ancient knowledge and modern edifice. Even if the parts are greater than the sum, or if certain elements simply don't work, his and his collaborators' sincerity lift his films to a truly mystical level. Bravo, Abel. And let's hope it doesn't take three years for your next vision* to reach our shores.

*Ferrara's strip club screwball comedy GO GO TALES (starring Willem Dafoe, Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, and Anita Pallenberg) and his Chelsea Hotel documentary CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS are completed and have already run the festival circuit, yet remain unavailable in an American release as of yet.

-Sean Gill