Rhapsodies

You’d think after doing serial killers last week I’d get as far away from the topic as possible until Halloween. Instead, I double down watching films about how the media hypes serial killers. 

The first film on my list Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers tells the story of Micky and Mallory Knox ( Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) a pair of psychopaths on a killing spree. In the process, they become media icons, propped up by tabloid journalist Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) while hunted by corrupt celebrity detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). If you think that’s bad imagine what happens when they actually catch them. 

Natural Born Killers was one of those films that are better known for the controversy than the film itself. Frankly, I think I think it’s overrated. It’s pretty much an excuse for Stone to do just about every heavy-handed, He goes back and forth between color and black and white and whatever else in between. At first one would think he’s playing with the perceptions of insanity vs the real world but it’s inconsistent. He does other things throughout the film but ultimately it’s just one big mess. 

My next film, Man Bites Dog (French: C’est arrivé près de chez vous, literally “It Happened Near Your Home”) written, produced and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde take this even farther with a film crew following the serial killer, Ben (Benoît Poelvoorde). Ben takes the crew through his day as he murders people while telling them the tricks in the trade and his views of life. Gradually the crew is drawn in. 

This was funny at times, in a dark cynical way, but ultimately disappointing. 

I’ve always enjoyed modern folklore involving UFOs and related esoterica. Because of this, for this week’s selection, I chose films featuring the beings referred to as Men in Black. Keep in mind, when I say Men in Black, I’m not talking about agents of a shadowy secret government so popular in conspiracy theories, but the original versions where these are shadowy, mysterious, beings who are definitely not human.

The first film on my list, Alex Proyas Knowing, tells the story of a time capsule that contains a sheet of numbers written by Lucinda Embry, a disturbed young girl, fifty years ago. This is brought home by Caleb the nine-year-old son of the widowed MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) Koestler finds that the sheet is a list of dates and locations of the greatest disasters in the last fifty years. To make matters worse there are several dates on the art that haven’t happened yet. As he tries to get to the bottom of this he finds that he is being watched. By… People who seem to want things to continue on schedule.

. This was pretty much a by the numbers Nicolas Cage film, with Cage being paranoid and helpless for most of the Film. The disaster effects were impressive but that was pretty much all it had going for it.

The next film on my list, George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, tells the story of Congressman David Norris, (Matt Damon) an up and coming politician who, after his campaign for Senator crash and burns meets the love of his life, Elise Sellas, (Emily Blunt), inspiring him to move forward. However, he finds himself being constantly pushed away from her and his life being adjusted by a mysterious agency who controls human destiny for, what they claim, is the greater good.

Ultimately I found this film disappointing. I liked the concept, and execution was okay but ultimately, I found the bureau itself far more interesting than its protagonists and found myself wishing the story was completely about them and their operatives. Also, the ending seemed to consist of the writers forgetting all of the rules they’d written for the rest of the film.