MOVIE REVIEW: CUBE (1997)

 Directed by Vincenzo Natali

. . .

FUN FACT: The actor Ice Cube does not appear in the 1997 film Cube.

-William D. Tucker.

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

You wake up inside a cube. You don't know how you got there. There's doors in each wall, the floor, and the ceiling. The doors-hatches, really-lead to other cubes with doors that lead to other cubes with doors that lead to other cubes with-

Eventually, you discover that some cubes are booby-trapped, some are safe. The booby traps are invariably lethal. Eventually, you discover there are other people here in the cubes with you. These other people also woke up here with no idea how or why or if there are any whys or hows to it. Maybe it was just Cube Time. Now is the time for everyone to wake up inside cubes. #CubeTime4Lyfe

You and the other people in the cubes decide that it is not right for you to be inside the cubes, so you figure out ways to protect yourself from the booby-traps, and you traverse the path of cubes-a maze, really-hoping to find your way back to the outside world. You don't know how you got here, but you do remember your life before getting all cubed-up. There's no water or food, so you've got to pay attention, and work with some haste. It's possible that there's no way out, and that you have been royally and completely fucked out of existence. But your will to survive drives you to try to escape. 

That's what the movie Cube's about, more or less. It's a set of situations and a set of responses to those situations. You watch and ask yourself what you would do if you got cubed-up. Or you pick apart the logic, the plausibility, the plot holes. Math becomes important in this movie, so you might get off checking the filmmakers' homework, so to speak. I listened to a podgrift wherein a group of insufferable grad students nitpicked the film to death and I thought,"You know what? I'd probably prefer getting cubed-up to hanging out with a bunch of academics. Of course, I might end up in the cubes with the unbearable privileged jack-offs. Shit. You just can't win. You really can't."

Look, I get it. The situations presented in the film Cube are thoroughly impossible on many levels. The same could be said of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel Movies, DC Movies, Godzilla, John Wick, The Fast and the Furious, The Matrix, Twilight, Resident Evil, Jurassic World, Top Gun: Maverick, Star Trek-Cube is no more or less realistic and/or plausible. But all these fanciful movies are about exploring possibilities:

What if you could travel in space at faster than light? What if a corporation used viruses to create undead monsters for military use? What if you had both telekinesis and a laser sword? What if your mind was deluded by a sinister computer system? What if hobbits existed? What if a magic ring could save the world? What if snapping your fingers could alter reality? What if the air force of a major nation allowed a sixty-year old to fly a fighter jet into battle? What if you could fight and shoot and run and kill and get stabbed and shot and brutally beaten for hours and hours without using PCP and without losing consciousness or dying? What if you could save the universe by firing lasers and spitting catchy one-liners?

I guess I think the questions Cube raises are both more interesting and more relateable:

Is there any escape from the cubes? How do you know the other people you meet in the cubes are who they say they are? Could any or all of these other people be collaborators with who or what engineered this bizarre situation? Is this an engineered situation? Is this punishment from God or Satan or L. Ron Hubbard? Is this a reward from God or Satan or L. Ron Hubbard? Is this ordeal some kind of severe form of recruitment? If we survive the cubes will we be rewarded with a cash prize or merely an internship? Will there be a snack waiting for anyone who finds a way out of the cubes? Are we in a construct of the material world, or is this a spooky supernatural and/or metaphysical situation? Are ancient aliens involved? What of young aliens-do they have the attention span to construct such a bizarre and ambitious project? At what age is the brain of a bug-eyed gray considered fully developed? 

Cube seems to lean more towards materialist explanations for what it's worth.

I have decided not to list the actors or the names of the characters they play on the off chance that you, Dear Reader, have not seen Cube, or if you saw it a long time ago and maybe you don't remember all the details. I was lucky enough to watch it without a single spoiler years ago, and I consider myself blessed. Cube, 1997, and the name of the director are all the coordinates you need.

It's not that it's a perfect film. Cube is basically a pricy, state-subsidized student film from Canada, so all you libertarians and Ayn Rand readers can foam and fume about that shit. The actors are hammy, but effective. The dialogue isn't David Mamet, but it's good enough. The set designs are low-budj, but cleverly contrived. You'll remember at least one of the booby-traps, I think. Music's fine. Overall, it's on the level of an episode of The Outer Limits, I would say, which is good enough for me. The group dynamics of the cubists-my pet name for those trapped in the cubes-are sharply observed. Much like the art movement, they're working to attain new and effective perspectives on the bizarre and trying subject matter that surrounds them, that constitutes their oh-so-deadly cosmos. 

Could it be that the cubes are all part of one really big . . . block of cheese?!

POSTMODERN SURVIVALISM.

Greetings, my dog.

Did you ever watch that program about doomsday preppers and/or survivalists? I think it was on Discovery or History Channel or the National Geographic YouTube?

Shit . . . was it on Playboy? Did Hustler ever have a channel? Remember USA's Up All Night?

At any rate, there was this program about a survivalist/doomsday prepper guy. He has lots of guns. Lots of pre-prepared meals in buckets and ration cases. Sorta like what those Christian fundamentalists sell on their call-in shows like you see in those Vic Berger videos. Our survivalist/doomsday prepper guy has a plan to dig a deep hole in the ground out in the desert. Into this hole he shall deposit a huge shipping container that has been modified into a survival bunker. Into this shipping container that has been modified into a survival bunker our survivalist/doomsday prepper guy intends to deposit himself and his family. Yes, he has a wife. She does appear on camera, so that is confirmed. He also has two sons.

A crucial sequence involves our survivalist/doomsday prepper guy taking his two sons out into the desert to shoot guns. If memory serves, our survivalist/doomsday prepper guy says that going out to shoot in the desert is better than joining a gun club, because you are subject to less rules out in the wilderness.

The two sons-who look to be no older than twelve-appear to be firing AR-15s or analogues of same.

Our survivalist/doomsday prepper guy is shooting a handgun. Off-camera, he accidentally shoots off one of his knuckles. Apparently, for reasons known only to himself, he held his hand in front of his gun prior to firing it and then he neglected to stop holding his hand in front of the gun when he decided to pull the trigger.

I am no firearms expert. But my working assumption is that a gun should be pointed away from your own body in order to reduce the risk of injury, especially when you are firing the gun. But, in general, if you are handling a gun you DO NOT point it at yourself or any other person or animal or object you do not wish to come to harm. But this is my admittedly simplistic, non-expert understanding of these matters.

Perhaps our doomsday prepper guy-for some reason I can no longer refer to him as a survivalist-is a sophisticated, highly theoretical postmodern gun user. Up is down. Self is other. Virtual is indistinguishable from reality. In fact, the relevant action seems to be taking place in the desert of the real. Micro is macro. Macro micro. Target is knuckle.

So, I approach this episode with the intellectual humility which is the fashion of our times, rather than pass the obvious judgment:

This man is no survivalist.

No, no . . . this man is clearly implementing postmodern survivalism, and I am far too simple-far too mired in my modernism-to grasp this truly deep shit. 

Whoa is me. 

POSTSCRIPTUS: Did they ever do a show about a bunker full of survivalist Playboy Bunnies, my dog?

STUPID COMPUTER DINOSAURS.

 I confess.

I only watch these stupid computer dinosaur movies for the scenes where people are eaten by the stupid computer dinosaurs.

I know, I know . . . this makes me an irredeemably brilliant and sexy person. I get it. I really do.

But some people on Internet seem to think these stupid computer dinosaur movies are documentary exposes or something. Maybe these are the same people who believe in ancient aliens.

I want to believe in stupid computer dinosaurs in real life. And if they're all gathered together inside a theme park-all the better.

Especially if the theme of that park is "Death by Dinosaur."

Wouldn't it be cool to be eaten by a dinosaur? I think it would. In real life, you'll probably die a long, lingering expensive death in some for profit hospital; or you'll be killed in a car crash; or poisoned by fentanyl; or some asshole with a gun will do you in-no, fuck every last bit of that.

I want to be eaten by a dinosaur. 

I especially like the bit where the two huge dinos-T-Rexes?-both bite you, and then pull you apart like a wishbone.

Or you get swarmed by the little skittery bastards.

Getting stomped into guts gruel by an ankylosaurus-that would be the shit.

I wouldn't even mind getting impaled on some triceratops horns. Maybe I'm running from a velociraptor, and I end up impaling myself. Like accidentally.

One of the flying ones could swoop down, pick me up, drop me in the middle of a Republican Dark Money Donors meeting. I could die of disgust to be in the presence of such filth, such corruption.

Oh, I know. One section of the park could be the Charles Bronson section. Bronson shoots you, a squib full of crimson corn syrup goes off, and you slump to the ground with a stupid look on your face. But it has to be interactive. So, I dunno, you key up Bronson's car or shit on his lawn or something. 

Maybe Matlock could show up and stab you. Or something. People wouldn't expect that. 

You could have Hologram Elvis slip you some bad speed. 

And-as a twist-Ronald Reagan threatens to hit you with an all-out nuclear assault . . . but then him and Nancy watch The Day After on TV, and he has a change of heart. It's the power of story.

But, no, my preference would be to get ripped apart by two T-Rexes.

Getting eaten by dinosaurs is awesome.

COMICS REVIEW: WE3 (2004, 2005, 2011)

 

Written by Grant Morrison 

Art by Frank Quitely

Color/Digital Inking by Jamie Grant

Lettered by Todd Klein

WE3 created by Morrison and Quitely

Published by Vertigo/DC Comics as WE3 #1-3 in 2004 and 2005. Later published in an expanded collected version in 2011.

. . .

"Is coat not we."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

You have a pet. Could be a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a rat, a bird. You give it a name. You call it by that name. Your pet responds when you speak the name you've given it. Or maybe your pet is just responding to human made noise coupled with your body language directed at it, but it has no conception of having a name. Or maybe your pet offers no response at all. Maybe you have to pick it up to move it where you want it to be. Perhaps you have a pet which can be housebroken so it doesn't shit and piss all over your home. Maybe your pet needs to be caged or crated. Your pet might be able to roam free within the bounds of your house or enclosed yard or your apartment-or maybe you've sprung for one of those invisible fences. Maybe your pet seems to greet you when you come home after being away for awhile. Your pet could be happy to see you, your pet may even have missed you while you were away, or it just knows that you're the one who controls the food and water. Maybe you like to stroke your pet and have it cuddle in your lap or perch on your shoulder or even upon the crown of your head. Maybe your pet likes to curl up by your feet when you're lying in bed. It's possible that your pet is a draw, a social lubricant, that encourages people to spend time with you. It's possible that you see your pet as a means to get people to see you as attractive, as caring, as a responsible person, to date you, to have sex with you-or, alternatively, you don't want your pet to be so friendly with other people. Maybe you enjoy injuring, beating, torturing, and/or mutilating your pet. Maybe that's just the kinda person you are. You might even want your pet to be aggressive towards other pets-for fun, for profit, because you like having control over other living things that can't resist you, that can't fight back, or you just like the sight of blood and mayhem. Maybe, just maybe . . . what you truly want . . . what you most fervently desire . . . is for your pet-or pets-to kill other people. You could want that above all things. 

—

In the comic book WE3 the American military transforms cats, dogs, rabbits, and rats into cyborg warriors that can be piloted with what looks like a wireless X-Box controller. These animals have been surgically wired into armored bionic bodies that give them enhanced speed, resistance to bullets, along with explosive pellets, missiles, focused beam weapons, and high velocity projectile blades. And they can talk. 

This technological transformation involves complex neurosurgery along with constant administration of an array of anti-rejection and psychiatric medications via body-sited pumps and reservoirs. The logic is that in a world where war is a necessity if you replace human soldiers with animal cyborgs then humans no longer have to die fighting necessay wars. American humans, to begin with, but presumably the animal cyborg technology will spread across the globe just like nuclear weapons, the AK-47, and cyber-warfare viruses, but, in the fullness of time, all warlike nations will be fielding animal 'borgs, and humans will just be at-a-distance wargamers, support/maintainence/troubleshooting personnel, logistics-

-not bad, right? 

I mean, if we accept that war is a necessity.

Not to mention you're using sophisticated mammal brains as a basis for controllable but also autonomous intelligence when necessary. How many times have we been burned by the overblown promises of A.I., right? Those drones people get up in arms about? Those things are piloted, okay, by some flightsim jockeys in air-conditioned trailers. None of that shit is Skynet. Not even close. Moreover, the drone operators still suffer from PTSD every time they obliterate a civilian cab driver or a giant wedding party or a school full of children and teachers. The operators see the instant of slaughter up close and personal in super hi-def. That's traumatic to human brains. The traumatized soldiers tell their stories to journalists. Journalists inform the public. The public is appalled. Popular support for default militarism craters. Recruitment numbers sink. Defense budgets must increase. That's what they do in the American system. Defense budgets go up despite lack of popular support for whatever Forever Wars we got goin' on at the moment. Popularity or lack of same is not the determining factor. Desire to project strength to rest of world is what matters. But you need dependable personnel to fight wars. And remember: war is a necessity. 

So, you know, animal cyborg soldiers. They don't experience trauma when they kill. So far as we know. You've seen how cats "play" with mice or squirrels or cockroaches-they're not even hungry! We romanticize canines, but they have aggression, too, and especially when they're socialized-or de-socialized, if you like-to fight on behalf of humans. Think hunting dogs. Think guard dogs. Think dog fighting rings. Dogs have seemingly co-evolved alongside us homo sapiens, so what living being could be a more loyal military asset? 

Imagine being attacked by a large cyborg dog, one that's tearing out your throat. Imagine a cyborg cat leaping onto your face, clawing out your eyes. Think how demoralizing, how terrifying that would be to all-too-human enemy troops.

Rat brains are simple, easy to wire-up, and you can quickly breed up whole messes of 'em. They can be filled with incendiary and/or explosive substances and directed en masse to destabilize/destroy enemy personnel, infrastructure, etc. 

Rabbits breed real easy, too, and they're deft at creating underground complexes of tunnels. The reconnaisance applications are killer. Plus they, too, can be wired up for boom-boom action if you're in need.

So, you know, the idea of cyborg animal warrirors although seemingly crazy and/or cruel is definitely not insane. It's not detached from reality. In fact, maybe it makes too much sense. 

This overabundance of sense-making is what drives WE3.

We see the animal cyborg warrior program laid out in all its particulars. We meet the military leadership. We meet the politician who has backed the project with hopes that this new way of war will rocket them from the Senate to the White House. We meet the scientists who work their Frankenstein magic on rats, cats, dogs, and rabbits. We even get to see field logistics personnel who make the cyborg animal soldier deployments run as smoothly as possible. 

And we meet the three: a dog, a cat, a rabbit. The dog's fierce and loyal. The cat is basically a ruthless murder machine-in a Vietnam War movie, the cat would be the soldier crafting necklaces out of human ears. And the rabbit is skittish, unpredictable, and quite dangerous, as it deploys bomb pellets all over the field from its robo-rectum. Each animal is surgically merged with a quadrupedal suit of armor that makes them hard to kill, increases their speed, and features gauntlets with carballoy scalpel claws and high velocity razor launchers. They can also be equpped with machine guns, rockets, death rays-all the toys. This bestial trio is not to be fucked with, for they will slice you into shredded bits of intestine, and smash you into shattered bone fragments. You know what a dog does to a chew toy, right? You're the chew toy. 

WE3 is economical. It was just three issues in its original serialization. The expanded trade paperback edition is about 110 pages. Dialogue is stripped to the minimum. The pages feature dynamic panels within panels during battle scenes to give you both extreme close-ups of gruesome violence and the wider perspective on the field of combat all-in-one. You can read through it quickly, or savor the details. There's no sequel or prequel or sidequel as far as I'm aware. The creators said everything they needed to say, I assume. Nor do I disagree, if this is the case. Plenty of comic books go on and on to diminishing returns. Amusingly, WE3 avoids mission creep. 

WE3 is about ways of seeing. How do humans see the world? How do animals view things? What do humans see when we look at animals? Do animals see us the way we see ourselves? What about complex surveillance systems? What perspectives do we gain or lose or ignore or privilege when we implement pervasive audio/visual/biometric tracking? What do you see when you accept war as a necessity?

WE3 is about speech. If we technologically modified dogs and cats and rabbits to be able to talk . . . what would they say? How would they say it? Would we accept this? The military and political leadership in WE3 seem freaked-the-fuck-out to hear a dog talking. Is that just the shock of the new? Is that something they'll get used to with time?

WE3 wants to know if cats and dogs and rabbits want to be surgically wired into ferocious cyborg bodies. Without giving it away, I felt WE3 gives a definitive answer . . . but then I thought, That's a definitive answer for these specific animal characters . . .

—

WE3 is surprisingly convincing, considering its far-out Frankenscience premises. Or maybe I'm just an easy mark. Yeah, I'll talk to a dog or a cat. Sure, I convince myself they understand-that we understand each other. And, yes, the idea of bionic pet warriors strikes me as clever. If I were a political-military shotcaller, I'd probably even look into it. I suppose, at some level, I've even accepted the necessity of war. 

And all I did was read a talking animal comic!

MANGA REVIEW: MW (2007)

 

by Osamu Tezuka

English Translation by Camellia Nieh

Book Design by Chip Kidd

Production by Hiroko Mizuno, Mami Yamada, Ayako Fukumitsu, Shinobu Sato, and Akane Ishida

Original Japanese Language Publication in Big Comic (Biggu Komikku) 1976 to 1978. 

English Language Publication by Vertical, Inc. in 2007. 

. . .

"You and I are bound by fate. When you fall, I'm prepared to fall with you." 

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Once upon a time in Japan-

At the end of the 1970s-

Widespread disillusionment with the self-immolating excesses of radical left-wing violence . . . The Red Army factions spent more time "purifying" their own ranks into oblivion than they did smashing capitalism. Left wing thought is now mostly entombed within academia and pretentious theoretical texts of surpassing tedium and opacity. 

Widespread cynicism with the entrenched right-wing conservatism of the Japanese government . . . It's a man's world of rigid gender roles and consolidated political blocs. It's all about who you know and who you blow. Having a dumptruck of cash money also helps. 

Normalized denialism of the atrocities committed by Japan against China and Korea during World War II . . . Hey, lotta war criminals in the executive suites, doncha know!

And now Japan has to live with the fresh stigma of being perceived as a forward operating base for America in its protracted war of folly against Vietnam.

And what of the scores of civilians annihilated by conventional firebombing campaigns during World War II conducted by the U.S.? All this followed by Occupation, censorship of thought and culture, and infuriating land reforms. There are those who resent the heavy hand of Uncle Sam. 

What of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-the Bomb is Everywhere, now! The USA and the USSR could spark off any day and lay waste to the entire human population of Planet Earth! Why bother with questions of right and wrong when it could all become twisted and fused rubble in a flash crimson instant?

And do people still think on the six million systematically murdered by the Nazi death machine of the Holocaust? Germany and Japan had been allies in World War II. How do you come to terms with that?

People forget. Willfully and/or accidentally.

Because the economy is hotting up, and the past is pointless. 

But, into this world of amoral greed and dominance a monster of revelation is born to remind people of what has been buried-

MW gives us a doomed pair-a Catholic priest and a terrorist serial killer-who find themselves drawn to the fires of hell in late 1970s Japan. These fires manifest in different forms for each one. The priest has convinced himself of the literal hellfire of spooky religious damnation. The terrorist's body and mind burns during intense episodes of agony due to his exposure to a chemical warfare substance as a child. Priest and terrorist are also drawn to the flame of a forbidden love for each other-well, it's supposed to be forbidden on the part of the priest, who presumably has sworn off carnal desire. The terrorist is way less uptight. For what it's worth, the priest beats himself up on a spiritual level for his desires. The good father doesn't resist his desires, of course, which should come as no surprise for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the mechanics of performative public piety, institutional/political homophobia, religious hypocrisy, etc. These two are bound to each other as they pursue a mission of cruel vengeance against the government of Japan. 

Our terrorist is named Michio Yuki, a handsome banker who looks like a manga riff on Clark Kent. Yuki comes from a respectable family. His older brother is a kabuki theater actor specializing in female roles. Fifteen years ago, he was on a coastal vacation when he's assaulted by a gang of scruffy hippies. One of these teenage hooligans is named Iwao Garai. Garai holds Yuki prisoner inside a cave where they spend the night. In the morning, the entire population of the coastal town has been killed due to exposure to a chemical warfare agent. Yuki is also exposed. Garai is spared. MW's plot is driven by the mystery of the chemwar substance: who made it? Why? How did it get loose during a time of peace?

Yuki's neurological damage deprives him of a conscience, but his intelligence and determination are unaffected. He studies his older brother's female impersonation techniques and uses an alternate identity as a woman to contrive various blackmail scenarios to work his way up through the hierarchies of Japan's male-dominated business and political elites. Yuki's seeking the truth behind the mysterious presence of deadly chemical weapons being housed on Japanese soil. Yuki's lack of conscience and unconstrained rage allows him to engage in all manner of atrocities-torture, rape, murder, bombings, blackmail, stolen identities-to get what he wants. And what Yuki wants, ultimately, goes beyond the simple truth or even bloody vengeance.

Garai grows up to become a Catholic priest. He tries his best to deny his hooligan past as a drugged-out hippie. Garai also attempts to suppress his homosexuality, but he cannot deny the spark between himself and Yuki. This leads to comical displays of bogus sexual conservatism, but as Yuki's rage spirals out of control, Father Garai tries to prevent violence. But the Good Father just can't bring himself to expose Yuki to the police. Part of it is his fatalistic love, but, in a telling sequence, it is also due to the moral confusions of the mid-century: Garai listens to the fears of his flock, who are riled up by a media story of an unknown madman injecting poisons into chocolate candies. This leads him to ask God why He allows mass slaughter by chemical warfare and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Powerful states and obscure individuals both seem to indulge the desire for indiscriminate massacre. Anybody paying attention upstairs? 

Yuki looks at this moral confusion more decisively: I'm free to do as I please and unleash my inner beast! Truly, Yuki reveals himself to be a monster shaped by both unjust external factors as well as his own rage and sadism. Yuki wants to know the secret behind the chemwar substance so he can use it for himself. Yuki desires the power of mass slaughter just as nation states covet the Bomb. Why should scummy politicians and their bloated government systems have all the fun, eh?

MW gets super-dark, no question. These weighty moral dilemmas-and amoral dilemmas-get a deft and pacy treatment from God of Manga Osamu Tezuka, who shapes it all into a grandiose superthriller that evokes Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, Hiroshi Matsuno's The Living Skeleton, Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge, and the perverse cruelties of Italian giallo cinema. We see it mostly from Yuki and Garai's perspectives. Together, they are,perhaps, one of the most dysfunctional couples in all fiction. Edward Albee was writing light chamber comedy by comparison. 

Tezuka's cinematic visuals evoke the hard-boiled black and white of film noir and Akira Kurosawa's dynamic riffs on noir: Yojimbo, High and Low, The Bad Sleep Well. Tezuka also uses the deft fluidity of comics to weave in visual metaphors of mythic allusions-to evoke the hermetic tragedy of romance gone toxic-and metamorphic monstosity-to evoke the veneer of human civility ruptured by the loosing of inner cruelty. MW is an effective mixture of realism and expressionistic hyperbole. 

MW gives us a cynical view of late 1970s Japan wherein everyone is acting as some sort of stage character due to the rigid norms of masculinity and femininity; of class position and family name; of church and state. Politicians serve money. The media is widely perceived as just another weapon in a national game of conformity control. This rigidity allows a bright, ruthless operator like Yuki to prevail. The more conflicted Garai ends up a well-meaning fool, both lost in aggrandizing self-flagellation fantasias and in deep denial about his sexuality. In the bleak reality of MW only a psychopathic terrorist can be truly free of all the interlocking layers of bullshit.  

MOVIE REVIEW: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

 Written and Directed by David Cronenberg

Cinematography by Douglas Koch

Production Design by Carol Spier

Music by Howard Shore

Edited by Christopher Donaldson

Produced by Robert Lantos 

Starring

Viggo Mortensen as Saul Tenser

Lea Seydoux as Caprice

Scott Speedman as Lang Dotrice

Lihi Kornowski as Djuna Dotrice

Don McKellar as Wippet

Kristen Stewart as Timlin

Nadia Litz as Router

Tanaya Beatty as Berst

Welket Bungue as Detective Cope

Yorgos Pirpassopoulos as Dr. Nasatir

. . .

"SAVE THE TUMORS!"

-bumper sticker slogan attributed to the American stand-up philosopher George Carlin in the late twentieth century or thereabouts.

"BODY

IS

REALITY"

-slogan appearing on a tube tv screen in the film Crimes of the Future (2022)

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

A body changes. A slogan appears on a screen-"BODY IS REALITY." So, reality changes. We are not what we once were. Gestation, birth, growth, exercise, diet, thoughts, beliefs, politics, art, sex, doubt, drugs, tattoos, piercings, aging, surgeries, modifications, medications, infections, sickness, death. Changes we choose, changes we seek, changes by chance, changes imposed by religion, changes imposed by the state. There's who you are, who you want to be, and what others want you to be. A lot of times, instead of the word want the word need gets used, but maybe that's stating the obvious.

In the movie Crimes of the Future, the human species has stopped feeling pain, and it has stopped getting infections . . . so, like, where's the orgy at? 

Whoops. I guess I just laid my cards on the table. Sorry 'bout that.

Clears throat.

In the movie Crimes of the Future, the human species has stopped feeling pain, and it has stopped getting infections. Therefore, naturally, cutting becomes a recreational/sexual activity, and surgeons become performance artists. Instead of going to some boring museum to look at LCDs of some atrocious NFT monkeys, you crowd into what used to be a BDSM fuck dungeon in a post-industrial sector, and watch people get sliced open by precision robotic surgery machines, and then laser-cauterized shut just for the hell of it. I suppose the orgy is to be inferred. Hey, this is still a mainstream narrative movie. You can literally expose someone's guts as part of your content, but heaven help you if you have people fuck in any combination. It ain't boring, that's for sure.

We have various couples:

Saul Tensor and Caprice: Saul has a rare medical condition wherein he constantly grows novel organs that have to be cut out of his abdomen before they crowd out his essential viscera. Caprice is a former trauma surgeon. Together, they are the premiere power couple of the surgical performance art scene. Saul grows it, Caprice uses robotic scalpel armatures to slice it. The harvested novel organs are catalogued and stylishly illustrated into art objects.

Lang and Djuna Dotrice: These two had a son that was a mutant who lived by eating plastic. Mom Djuna was disgusted by this and so murdered her offspring to express her disaproval of such an abomination. Dad Lang is convinced his son was the next stage of human evolution, and so he establishes a radical evolutionary front movement to advocate on behalf of this new mode of being.  So, the question is: was their son an aberration to be shit-canned or the embodiment of the human future?

Wippet and Timlin: These are a pair of colleagues, working on behalf of an evolutionary enforcement agency. They're supposed to be policing radical evolutionaries, but each of them seem to be drawn to the radical surgeries put on by Saul and Caprice, and, possibly, to the radical transformations that Lang is advocating. They're kinda like establishment squares wrestling with their inner freaks. 

Router and Berst: Colleagues, but also a couple. They're technicians who service the biomechanical surgical beds that make the avant garde surgery scene possible. They represent the interests of what passes for Big Tech in this peculiar world. 

Detective Cope and Dr. Nasatir: Not actually a couple, but these two each represent the ideological hardcore. Cope's a lawman looking to gather intel on the evolutionary outlaws. Nasatir's lending his medical expertise to the surgical artists and the mutant faction promoted by Lang. They're enemies, but they don't quite know it.

Crimes of the Future has a lot going on, much of it conveyed through layered, witty dialogue, and cleverly realized special effects setpieces embedded within moody, subterranean production design. The surgery beds have a gristly organic look evoking technology as an extension of human bodies and human desires. 

Accelerated evolution brings about changes in technology, values, identity, sexuality, law, and economics. Some resist the future, others embrace it, still others react with violence. 

I find the characters of Wippet and Timlin especially amusing. They're supposed to be government regulators but they're woefully underfunded and stuck using antiquated dead tree methods of record keeping. 

Saul and Caprice have a couple of memorably perverse scenes of what I suppose could be described as, um, Surgical Sexuality? I said that this is a future wherein people have stopped feeling pain, but there's also the implication that humans have rapidly evolved new sources of pleasure. 

Of course, Crimes of the Future, like many works of science fiction, can be interpreted both literally and metaphorically. We have here themes of sacrificing oneself for one's art; dealing with change; coping with sickness; asserting identity; art criticism; sexuality-it borders on the didactic, but I didn't mind this. Here's a movie with ideas, goddamnit, not a bunch of computer generated wrastling matches. It's funny, it's disturbing, its reach exceeds its grasp, it did not waste my time. 

This is a David Cronenberg movie. He's the guy who made movies like Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Shivers, Rabid, Crash, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, The Brood, The Dead Zone, Cosmopolis, Eastern Promises, and Videodrome. These are all movies dealing with questions of the body, of technology, of radical transformations-all within the context of a world driven by greed and the desires of established factions to impose controls upon outlaws, freaks, and rebels. Crimes of the Future is a worthy addition to this ever-mutating body of work. Internet tells me that Cronenberg is almost eighty years old, which makes me think that experience must count for something in this world. 

I look forward to the next one. 

Two words . . .

 . . . EQUUS TWO . . .

. . . in a dream, I laid out my pitch for a sequel to Equus:

"-our troubled young man leaves dreary old England for Hollywood, where he sweet talks his way into directing an independent feature for a Roger Corman-esque producer. This low-budj flick becomes his calling card for the majors, who throw him a low stakes comeback vehicle for an aging Marlon Brando-esque star that becomes the shock hit of the summer. Now our troubled thirtysomething can pursue his dream project: an epic western taking on themes of class struggle and range warfare and the sunset of the Mythic Wild West-and the Movie Gods shower him with cash beyond the dreams of avarice, and he shoots it on desolate locations out in Utah and Wyoming, where he builds elaborate soundstages indistinguishable from real life towns, and even though he's not permitted to actually harm the human performers he does put them through hellish twenty-three hour days, requiring thousands of takes just to get that one detail exactly right. In the depths of this slog, our Great Director snorts five mile rails of cocaine-he calls it the Molar Cracker Express-and begins to abuse the hundreds of horses that are already being  overworked under dubious conditions. And that's when he starts hearing the creepy voice of the horse god from the previous movie. And where did that voice come from, hmm? That was never fully explained the first time around, was it? No. Maybe it had something to do with those TV jingles he obsessively sang, hmmm? Put a pin in that. Sooo, after shooting several horses dead to get that authentic dead horse vibe for the shot, the horse god accuses him of murder outright in a strangely familiar drawling voice. A terrifying stallion cloaked in spectral fire chases our Great Director all through the elaborate frontier town set, lighting off everything and everyone. In desperation, the Great Director summons the MGM lion to fight the hellhorse. But the hellhorse tears out the elderly logo lion's throat with ease, and finally catches up with the Great Director. And the hellhorse speaks, saying,

"Hello. I'm Mr. Ed. And it's my turn, now, motherfucker!"

-well, it goes rather poorly for the Great Director. All those years of living in fear of a horse god . . . and it was merely misremembered dialogue from an old TV show. Yep. So, the hellhorse bites his face off as the frontier town set burns to ashes. Cut to a lavish golf course where not only do we see Apollo and Dionysus enjoying the holes . . . but they go riding off together into the sunset in the same golf cart! Roll credits."

 . . .of course, it is all still but a dream . . .

Well . . .

 . . . I've never been more relieved to not have children in my life than right now.

In my country-the USofA-guns and money are more important than human life.

Bunch of elementary school children slaughtered in a mass shooting? Doesn't count for fucking shit. 

Republicans will have their guns and their blood money and dead children don't mean anything. Not a thing.

Yeah. 

If anything's going to change, it'll probably take a general strike, a general walkout, 'cause the violence could strike anywhere.

You got mass shootings at schools, at churches, at mosques, at synagogues, at hospitals, at cemeteries, at stores, at supermarkets, at barbecues, at parties, everywhere-and we are all supposed to just accept this reign of terror. 

It's sad. It's fucking sick and twisted and depraved beyond all forgiveness. It's business-as-usual for gutless-mostly Republican-politicians who have all made their Devil's Bargain with the NRA. 

We need gun control, now.

We need a permanent ban on assault rifles, now.

We need to vote every last Republican out of office when the time comes. 

We need to face the truth that guns are made by people for people to kill other people. 

And, no, I don't think America has the guts to do the right thing. I really don't. Gun atrocities have been happening nonstop for years and years, and it has only gotten worse. 

We know what needs to be done, and instead we choose gun violence over the lives of children. 

That's why I'm glad I'm not a parent. If I were a father, I'd worry myself into an early grave. I don't see why any rational person would have a child in this ghoulish reality. 

And the saddest part?

These grotesque mass shootings aren't even statistically that significant when measured against the rates of gun suicides and gun homicides and awful gun injuries. 

The gun is a threat to us all.

When will we stop worshipping it as our True God?

Probably never.

Ah, well. 

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #2:

 COMBAT ENCOUNTERS MAY RESULT IN VICTORY OR DEFEAT. TRY TO AVOID DEFEAT.