End of Evangelion: the greatest of all anime features

This is a video of Hideaki Anno's 1997 Japanese animated science fiction film 'The End of Evangelion'. The song in this clip is called 'Komm, susser Tod (Come, sweet death)' by Arianne.

Analysis of a scene in Stanley Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket'

This is my perspective on the final scene from Stanley Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket.'

If you agree or disagree, please feel free to let me know what you think. Thanks. 

The film concludes by reconciling what Joker refers to as the duality of man. Man, by nature, is an animal and will revert to his basic drives under the right circumstances. The battlefield brings out the animal side of man’s personality. Joker’s cognitive dissonance comes from his desire for peace being in conflict with his basic animal drive which is that of a killer. God commands men not to kill when He, Himself, kills when doing so is justified. This is why Joker’s gun jams at the end of the film when he tries to shoot the sniper in the back; this kind of kill would have been impersonal and not have reconciled humanity and the act of killing. To harmonize his “Peace” button with “Born to Kill” on his helmet, he has to find a moral justification for killing the sniper and this moral justification is given when she looks him in the face and begs him to end her suffering. Killing her this way becomes a mercy killing, something that involves humanity and something that brings the act of killing in line with his idea of peace. In killing her out of mercy, Joker transcends the animal side of his personality, combining the qualities of both humanity and animal, acquires the 1,000-yard stare, and becomes the Full Metal Jacket.

Scene breakdown of Gaspar Noe's 2002 thriller 'Irreversible'

An analysis of Gaspar Noe's film 'Irreversible'

Irreversible is a 2002 revenge thriller by French director Gaspar Noe about the consequences of making impulsive decisions. This is a plot analysis I created that you can follow along with the DVD. If you agree or disagree, please feel free to leave a comment.

Title 2 (8:22-22:50)

Summary

Marcus and Pierre enter a gay S&M club called The Rectum looking for a man called The Tenia who brutally raped Marcus’ girlfriend named Alex. Marcus confronts a man he believes is Tenia and they square off. However, the man gains the upper hand, breaks Marcus’ arm, and Pierre, Marcus’ friend, intervenes to save Marcus from being raped. Meanwhile, the Tenia himself watches all of this happening in awe as an innocent man is killed for his crime. 

Analysis

Marcus’ anger puts him into a dangerous situation. He is not thinking and he is following his impulses. In this scene it is established that he is the impulsive side of the mind. His friend Pierre follows him into the club trying to reason with him to stop and think. Pierre is the critical or analytical side of the mind which is why he follows Marcus and which also describes the relationship between the left brain that takes risks and acts on impulse and the right brain that relies on analysis and critical thinking. As the Bible says in Matthew. 26:41: Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. This scripture explains why Pierre follows Marcus and not the other way around, because it’s easier to think a thing than to do a thing. Temptation, or our impulses, contend with our thoughts or moral discipline which is why throughout the film Pierre is there with Alex and Marcus trying to keep them out of trouble.

It is also important to note the cinematography and how it reflects Marcus’ state of mind. The camera movement suggests that Marcus’ mind is distorted with anger, nothing’s stable. Also, note the red interior lights inside of the gay nightclub. This is important because later in the film, the tunnel where Alex is raped is also red, a color that represents anger and violence. Also, the fact that she is sodomized foreshadows the name of the club, The Rectum. Remember, everything in this film occurs twice. 

Title 5 (27:03-34:23)

Summary

Marcus searches for the man who raped his girlfriend. He steals a cab and tracks down Guillermo Nunez, a gay prostitute who saw the crime. At first, the prostitute is reluctant to cooperate but complies after Marcus threatens to hurt him. The prostitute tells Marcus he can find the man called the Tenia at the Rectum, a gay S&M nightclub.

Analysis

Led by his emotions, Marcus 1st steals a cab, then he assaults a prostitute. All the while, Pierre is there pleading with him to think about what he’s doing, yet Marcus is deaf to anything but his anger. There is a brief interval between him robbing the cab and him assaulting the she-male prostitute where the wild camera movements stabilize somewhat. The shot widens temporarily and Marcus is given a little space and air to think before the next incident. 

Title 9 (39:24-40:54)

Summary

Marcus and Pierre are leaving a party and there is commotion in front of the apartment surrounding an ambulance. Medics carry his girlfriend, Alex, out of the subway on a stretcher. Marcus can’t believe it. Her face is almost unrecognizable as she is placed in the ambulance. Two hitmen on the scene offer Marcus their services. 

Analysis

When Marcus comes out of the party, the camera perspective is stable and he is drinking a bottle of water. But when he sees Alex on the stretcher, the camera and the world begin to spin as his emotions take control of his brain. 

Title 10 (41:03-44:48)

Summary

Alex leaves the party alone and takes the subway. In the tunnel, she stumbles upon a pimp choking a prostitute. The  pimp leaves the prostitute and turns his attention to Alex, raping her and leaving her for dead in the tunnel. 

Analysis

Alex is upset at Marcus’ behavior and makes a couple of tragic mistakes. Her 1st mistake is leaving the party alone. Pierre begs to take her home but she refuses to let him do so. Her 2nd mistake is following the bad advice of some woman on the sidewalk who tells her that the subway is safer than waiting on a taxi. In Alex’s right mind, she may or may not have followed this advice but being that she is in an emotional state almost guarantees that she will not make a rational decision about this. Any sensible person would assume that she would be safer catching a cab above ground and in public view than going down into a subway tunnel where she is completely cut off from civilization. 

Again, there are parallels to this scene and the scene where Marcus goes to the Rectum in search of the Tenia. The 1st parallel is that Pierre, the thinker, appeals with her to not follow her emotions into a potentially dangerous situation. Like Marcus before her, Alex disregards Pierre’s warning choosing instead to follow her emotions. The 2nd parallel is Alex being encouraged to follow her emotions by the Black woman outside the building who tells Alex that the subway is safer than hailing a taxi. Earlier in the film, the 2 hitmen counter Pierre’s warnings by offering to find the Tenia for Marcus. The 3rd parallel is the fact that Marcus and Alex give in to their emotions and suffer similar fates, although in Marcus’ case he is saved by Pierre. The last parallel between these scenes is that they are both red. The walls of the tunnel are red and the lights in the gay club are red. 

Title 11 (54:09-1:06:28)

Summary

Marcus persuades Pierre to come with him to a party. Since Pierre and Alex broke up 3 years ago, he hasn’t been in a relationship with a woman. There are lots of women and drugs at this party and Marcus indulges himself. All the while, Pierre pleads with him to stop. Alex is at the party and she plays along with the atmosphere.  However, seeing Marcus-her man-drunk, high, and groping other women becomes too much and she leaves the party alone against Pierre’s warning not to do so.

Analysis

Pierre again acts as the moral conscience to both Marcus and Alex who are being led by the lower base aspect of human nature which is ruled by appetite, emotion, and instinct. Temptation is everywhere for Marcus and Pierre is with him appealing with him to THINK about Alex and the consequences of his actions. But Marcus further disconnects himself from Pierre, his moral conscience, with drugs and alcohol. Pierre and Marcus are metaphors for cognitive dissonance with Pierre acting as the thinking rational right side of her mind and Marcus acting as the impulsive, emotional, non-thinking left side of her mind. It is important to note that she left Pierre, the thinker, to be with Marcus, the non-thinker who follows his impulses. This explains why she acts against Pierre’s good advice to not leave the party by herself. She is allowing her emotions to dictate her actions. Pierre points out the changes in her personality since she’s been with Marcus who exercises zero moral restraint. But unlike Marcus, whom Pierre saves from being raped at the Rectum, Alex won’t be saved from her reckless decisions.

Title 12 (1:06:31-1:13:15) (6:44)

Summary

Alex, Marcus, and Pierre are taking the subway and having a conversation about premonitory dreams, overthinking, and sex. 

Analysis

Pierre, the thinker, is cut off from his impulses and is unable to understand why Alex left him to be with Marcus, the primitive. Throughout this scene, Pierre walks behind them symbolic of the fact that she is allowing her impulses represented by Marcus to suppress her rational mind represented by Pierre. When Pierre refers to Marcus as a primate he is referring to her new position on how she chooses to live her life. This philosophical discussion suggests that there has to be a balance, psychologically, between thinking and being which is why all 3 of them are together even though she left Pierre. Her mistake is taking it to the extreme which is what Marcus, who lives by his impulses, represents. 

Another thing about this conversation: Alex criticizes Pierre of focusing on the other person’s pleasure (regarding sex).  “You have to let yourself go,” she says, “and only think of yourself.” The irony of her criticism is that it is Marcus’ selfish behavior at the party that upsets her and causes her to make unwise decisions that lead to her being raped by the Tenia. 

Title 13 (1:15:42-1:29:12) (13:30)

Summary

Marcus and Alex wake up in bed together. Later, she does a pregnancy test and it comes up positive.

Analysis

Since Alex and Marcus have both abandoned rational thinking and submitted to their primitive urges, it is fitting that this scene begins with them in bed naked. In the previous clip (12) Alex describes a book she is reading on premonitory dreams. When she and Marcus wake up in this clip, Alex describes her dream to him of being inside of a red tunnel that splits in two. He wakes up complaining of numbness in the arm that is broken later in the film. He then, puts on a  record and the song’s lyrics describe both the reverse structure of this film and also events that occur later in the film. The song also talks about outer space. Here are some of the lyrics: 

You make my head spin,

You are my merry-go-round.

I’m always at a party,

When I’m in your arms. 

…We could fly to outer space, 

On the wall above the bed there is a poster of Star-child from 2001: A Space Odyssey so it is no coincidence that the song in the background references outer space. This scene ends with her doing a pregnancy test on herself and finding out that she is pregnant. Remember that in the party scene Pierre says that she is “dancing away the pain.” Pierre says this because Alex knows that Marcus is an unsuitable father for her child. 

Title 13 (1:28:29-end)

Summary

Alex is on the sofa, pregnant. Then, she’s lying on her side on a field of grass surrounded by children playing. The scene spins counter-clockwise until it finally ends in outer space. 

Analysis

Remember, this film is structured in reverse order with the end of each scene attached to the beginning of the following scene and that scene ending where the previous scene leaves off. This scene is no different in that it begins at a different time period from the previous scene. The clip opens and the camera pans down the poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey, across the top of which reads “The Ultimate Trip!” Alex is underneath this poster, on the sofa, holding her stomach which is obviously carrying a child. Her exposed arms and upper body are fleshier than they are in previous scenes. But at no time in the story does she indicate that she was ever pregnant before leaving Pierre to be with Marcus. The camera lingers on her a moment before angling upwards again, over the 2001 poster to the ceiling. 

The overhead camera spins counter-clockwise showing Alex lying on her side in a field of grass with children playing around her. The camera angles up towards the sky which pulsates until there’s only outer space and stars spinning counter-clockwise—this image is the beginning of the subsequent scene that begins with Alex and Marcus waking up in bed together. Either this is a dream or this actually happens and if the latter is true then what happened to Alex’s baby between this scene and her waking with marcus in the previous scene? Was she impregnated by extra-terrestrials, returned to Earth, and robbed of the child prior to her involvement with Marcus? This seems to be the case as foreshadowed by the song in the previous scene, the poster of 2001’s Star-Child, and the fact that the scenes are arranged backwards, meaning that every scene ends where the previous scene begins. This scene ends in space suggesting that she was abducted and impregnated by aliens who used her as a surrogate and who claimed the child prior to her involvement with Marcus. 

James Cameron's 'Terminator': a review

This is a review of James Cameron's 1984 science fiction film 'Terminator' starring Arnold Schwarzenegger 

Some films age like wine: the older they get, the better they get. It's hard to believe that James Cameron's 'Terminator is pushing 35 years old. Terminator's lean script, staccato editing and direction, and its human driven storyline are what allows it to survive amongst modern films that benefit from superior technologies like CGI, motion capture, and now 3D-motion photography. Everything's relative and, in 1984, Terminator's special effects were extraordinary. For instance, there's a scene in a motel where the Terminator attends to some gunshot wounds he suffered. Using a box-knife, he opens up his forearm to readjust a broken piston rod. Then, he stabs the box-knife into his eyeball and plucks the soft gelatin organ out of his head. In the ragged and empty mouth of his eye-socket, a hard shiny light zooms in and out. This was scary back in 1984. Today, a five-year old could see through these transparent effects.

Plot: The Terminator is a cyborg from the future that travels back in time--forty years--to kill a woman, a waitress, whose unborn son will save mankind in near the future. But the true magic about this film is that despite its concept, it is a human story 1st and an action film 2nd.

Terminator is James Cameron's best movie. It has the perfect atmosphere; most of the action is at night. The big `70's cars in the Terminator's chase sequences are reminiscent of the big cars in The French Connection's chase sequences. Unlike T2, where there's a lot of exposition between action scenes, Terminator's action scenes erupt out of nowhere. I could go on and on but the bottom line is that Terminator will be around long after most of today's science fiction rip-offs are obsolete.

Is Taxi Driver De Niro's best film? A review

A review of Martin Scorsese's film 'Taxi Driver' starring Robert De Niro

The world has become a toilet to Travis Bickle. Out of this filth appears a flower of virtue that nothing can touch--a young gorgeous campaign-volunteer named Betsy played by Cybill Shepherd. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Driving a cab at night, all Travis sees are whores; however, Betsy's incorruptible, and she alone can redeem mankind. She allows him to take her on a date. Though awkward, he says all the right things. He takes her to the theater to see a movie--a porno flick. Horrified and offended, she hails a cab and leaves him on the sidewalk. Travis is stunned. At that moment, a whore saunters by. They pause to gaze at each other--she is his mirror; they are one and the same.

Betsy destroys Travis; she's just like all the others. Now, there's nothing in the world worth saving--now, he knows what he must do. He hones his body and his mind: no more smoking; no more drinking; no more bad food--he must be fit. He'll annihilate Betsy and the whole world. By chance, he stumbles into the middle of a pimp/whore squabble; the whore is a thirteen-year-old girl. Something rises up in Travis's heart, something he never felt before. He discovers something worth saving-- a lost thirteen-year-old whore named Iris (Jodie Foster).

Taxi Driver was the second collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. Bernard Herman's magical score wafts over every scene. Taxi Driver was an omen, forecasting the senseless tragedies of both Columbine and Virginia Tech. No movie collection is adequate without this great film. 

'The Seventh Seal' Review

This is a review of director Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal'.

Of Ingmar Bergman's early black and white films, The Seventh Seal (1957) is my personal favorite. The story takes place in the middle of the 12th century. The black plague strikes Europe. A knight (Max von Sydow) and his squire, Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) return from the Crusades: the Crusades were a series of military campaigns by western European Christians to recover the Holy Land from the Saracen Muslims. The ocean delivers Antonius and his squire to a beach. The sky is half lit; the ocean is restless; the sun is almost under the horizon. A black bird--a scavenger--hangs over Antonius. He prays. But he and his squire are not alone. Nearby stands a tall figure in a long black robe. His face is pale and familiar--he is Death. Antonius is ready, but first he must challenge Death to a game of chess. If Death prevails, Antonius dies; if Antonius prevails, Death must allow him to live. Death agrees; his chess figures are black. The game begins.

Death and the chessboard vanish, the sun burns overhead, and once again, Antonius and his squire are alone on the beach. They find two stray horses and begin their inland journey. Deeper inland, they encounter symbols of death and danger. The clouds are light and unable to cool the sun. Antonius and his squire encounter the corpse of a monk. They stroll past an old rundown wagon. Three troubadours--Jof (Nils Pope), his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and Skat (Erik Strandmark)--sleep inside the wagon. They will travel to the Saint's Festival in Elsinor, and the lead actor shall play the role of Death in a play on the church steps. Antonius and his squire visit the church in Elsinor. There, an artist is painting a fresco. Within this fresco, Death leads a ghoulish parade of corpses. The knight, Antonius Block, notices a priest inside of a small room. There, Block alleviates his conscience. Iron bars separate Antonius and the priest in the chamber who bears Antonius's confession. A black cloak obscures the priests face. Antonius speaks freely. His whole life has been meaningless. Is there a God? Antonius tells the priest of his scheme to stall Death with a game of chess. The chess game is a respite for Antonius to search out the meaning of life on earth. Antonius's confession amuses the priest. Antonius discloses his strategy: he shall outmaneuver Death with a bishop and a knight. Hearing this, the priest rises from his seat and shows his face: the priest is Death--the Knight has been fooled! Round one to Death.

And so the story progresses. Most of Bergman's early films-- Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Virgin Spring, etc.--were allegorical. The Seventh Seal is the best known of his earlier films, all of which were done in black and white. I loved this film the first time I saw it. Bergman's films and characters speak to you. Bibi Andersson--who plays one of the traveling troubadours in the film-- has starred in many of Bergman's early black and white films such as The Seventh Seal, Smiles of a Summer Night, and the Magician. Also, she has starred in many of Bergman's latter color films such as Scenes From a Marriage and Persona. Max von Sydow starred in several of Bergman's earlier films.

My review of Gaspar Noe's 'Enter The Void'

A review of Gaspar Noe's 2009 thriller 'Enter The Void'.

Some films are simply so far ahead of their time that they simply can't be completely appreciated on 1 viewing. I am going to say this without equivocating and with all humility: this film has replaced 2001: A Space Odyssey as my all time favorite trip-out film. That's right, I take back everything I said against this film in my former review. I guess after seeing Irreversible and being blown away by it, I was expecting something similarly shocking. This film is an entirely different animal than the previous films in that it's trippier and, in its own ugly perverse way, more beautiful than his previous films.

Basically, the film's an odyssey of reincarnation and the afterlife told through the eyes of the main character who's a drug dealer who happens to get caught at the wrong place (Tokyo) at the wrong time with dope, a psychedelic drug called DMT. This is one of those movies you have to see twice, once to be be introduced to it, and a second time after it's taken root in your subconscious. It is something about the whole experience of this film that sets it apart from other films, much the same as what separates 2001 from other sci fi films. There's a plot but it's buried in the experience, the beauty, the horror of the images in this film, unconscious, you can't see it but you know it's there, like air, all around you. This is definitely a love or hate film. Gaspar Noe outdid himself. This film will be talked about for years to come. Like I said, it's not about the story as much as it's about what you see, hear, and feel on the screen. Incredible film! Not for the squeamish and a great follow-up to his 2001 film Irreversible.