Gravity

written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón (2013)

I was born shortly before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, so I grew up steeped in the mystique and glamour of the astronaut. I think every kid of my generation had dreams of being an astronaut, at least until we realized how much talent and work that would entail. This movie is about as close as you can get to the experience of what that would actually be like in terms of the amazing visuals. For sure, it's a gorgeous, spectacular, technical achievement, but I don't know that it's a very accurate portrayal of what those space folk get up to task wise though. In fact I doubt that it is, because it for sure isn't accurate in depicting how I imagine astronauts would behave under the circumstances presented in the flick.

Sandra Bullock commands the most screen time, but she's framed as a doofus in comparison to the mission commander played by George Clooney. It's his last mission and he's channeling his usual charm of the cock of the spacewalk, and has oodles of experience compared to the neophyte startrekker, Bullock. She was recruited to install some kind of medical scanner of her design, that has been repurposed for space use, so she's a genius engineer.  As Clooney says, NASA doesn't waste it's time on uselessness. However she sure doesn't act like she's got any brains in her head for much of the flick. I kept thinking, did she even go to astronaut school? She's mentions that she had 6 months of astronaut training, but whatever for that, because the whole movie she's bumbling her way through one crisis to the next, doing DUMB things. I kept groaning at the way she was written. It was just way too much like misogynistic, WOMAN DRIVER bullshit. Especially since there was no need to have her making stupid mistakes either - the beauty of a space tale, is with the setting being such a hostile environment, things could just HAPPEN without the need for human error.

Bullock's character does have an arc - she's lost a child and since then has been living a very circumscribed life - just working.  Not living to work, or working to live - work is the only thing that keeps her going.  So literally and virtually, she's lost in space. And the way this is resolved I found irksome too, because when she regains her will to live, through a spiritual moment - she gives credit to CLOONEY, for choices she makes on her own. Ok, these are aspects of spirituality that I can get behind - to honour the ineffable and have a sense of awe or transcendence, also a feeling of connection to the people we love who have passed, and it's great too to recognize that we don't do anything on our own, but build on the work of others.  Unfortunately,  I thought that the movie framed these spiritual truths in a very dualistic male/female manner with her being the ignoramus and receiver of edjumacations - the usual humble female role thang eh?  

And there was also the fact that the first guy to die - the red shirt - well he had a brown face. And the bad guys in this could have just been asteroids, or circumstance,  but NO - they're RUSSIANS cluttering up the orbital areas of the earth with their malfunctioning space junk. Too sexist, too white, too Manifestdestiny Pro-American. Still it looked real good, and it's exciting as hell. I think it's going to be especially enjoyable for those not prone to notice its embedded disdain for women.

I just found out about this short film made Alfonso Cuarón's son Jonas - he's also the co-writer of Gravity.

I really liked seeing this mirror perspective to the same scene from Gravity, because in the film, I didn't understand the language of who it was she was talking to when she was undergoing her egoic death. I had assumed he was Chinese, maybe a Laplander. I had an inkling it was somewhere Northern because of the dogs, but that was just guessing. What I did understand was that he was a simple man who had a family. And what's the point of this scene? I think this high tech flick about a women who is not in touch with her needs, contains this portrayal of Native People because the Cuaróns are using them to represent a "natural" life style, where human relations are paramount over ego, and its concerns for achievement.  That's what movie folk tend to use us Indigenous types for anyhow - spiritual shorthand for living in balance with nature. This is something that is a timely and important value, and since it's a concept that is so undervalued in current society, the fact that the NDN's are invisible is actually quite appropriate.

Further thoughts based on a comment I left on  Outlaw Vern's Gravity review :

Spoilers….I had a lot of problems with Gravity and they all related to gender. I really didn’t like how incompetently Bullock was framed in context with Clooney. She was always doing STUPID stuff,  at first being the stumbling, bumbling, screaming, female being rescued and hauled around by Clooney, and then doing her usual flustered lady thang, in reaction to the implacable relentless monster – space. After some thought though, and after seeing the short film Cuaron’s son did – it shows the conversation Bullock has with the guy on Earth from his perspective – I came around to understanding that aspect being a direct result and possible subversion of patriarchal gender values. Yes, the way she was portrayed had too much of the awfulness of gender stereotyping, but she could just as easily have been a male character. I think the choice of casting the role as a woman was deliberate: not because women are incompetent compared to men, but largely because patriarchal values read women as having a higher humanistic capacity BECAUSE of their gender and life giving caregiver roles.  It’s more the norm for women to have feelings, than to repress them, and for them to be vulnerable and grow is also more acceptable. That these aspects of herself were parts she had lost and rejected, set the arc of her character's growth, and framed the moral message of the film - to reify the importance of our connection to others, the earth and the environment. In some ways it might have been more of a push back against gender stereotyping to have a male character transforming this way, but I think having a woman navigate the vacuum of space jockey ego achievement, gave more strength overall to the rejection of the patriarchal systems that puts so much weight on things that have very little to do with the rest of society. True her return could also be read as her failure to get er done up there, and a call out to "get back to the kitchen and make sammiches",  but that's a small mind response, and really what's more important than making sure our kitchen - the earth - is looked after, and each other too.

The Devil Inside

directed by William Brent Bell (2012)

What a waste of time.  It's a cinema verité faux documentary that starts off with a disclaimer saying, The Vatican did not approve of the following film.  Made me laugh. As if.  The sad thing is there's gotta be some people who will watch it and think it's for real found footage. The same thing happened with The Blair Witch marking in gullible folk.

I'm totally gonna spoil this film so if you want to see it, and I don't recommend that, don't read  the following, because I'm gonna wreck what suspense the film could possibly have for you.

First is a 911 call where Marie Rossi says I killed everybody, next is police footage of the crime scene.  Cop camera viewpoint going into a hoarder's house and coming across 3 dead bodies, lingering on the bloody weapons and mutilated corpses. These scenes were graphic and gross.  Then there's a jump scare with movement and the camera person getting knocked over and the film cutting to black. Then you get TV news report footage saying that 3 clergy were murdered and a woman was found in a crawlspace.  You see her in the back of a squad car looking traumatised and wide eyed into the camera.   This was 1999, and that was the set up.  Cut to 2009 and Isabella Rossi, the daughter of Marie Rossi, the murder lady, is looking into what happened, and making a documentary of her investigational process.  Her dad died and just before he died, he told her the murders happened while the mom was being exorcised.

Aside from the creepy opening scenes, all this exposition stuff is fairly boring,  but it picks up a bit when she jets off to Rome and the Vatican City backdrops add a lot to the atmosphere. 

For whatever reason, I guess to be more cinematic?  More religious mysteriouso?  The mom was transferred to a mental hospital in Italy.  Riiiight.  Whatever, you go with these kinda things in horror flicks, suspend the disbelief ifen you can eh?  So the daughter sees her mom in the hospital after a Silence of the Lambs kinda interview with the mom's doctor, where he shows her a video of the mom freaking out and attacking people in her room.  I'm warning you, finger waggin doc says in an Italian accent, religious talk inflames her some.

The mom is creepy crazy cakes, but she knows the daughter had an abortion and she tells her she's going to hell before letting out with a super powered scream that ends the visit.

Isabella hooks up with some exorcists when she audits an exorcism lecture at the Vatican.  I did not realise there were exorcism classes the public could just walk into, nor that they'd be in English.  She meets 2 priests who do undercover exorcisms of people that the Vatican has decided aren't possessed but who the dynamic duo believe actually ARE possessed.  Stupid bureaucracy in the Church eh?  In 1999 the Vatican tightened the rules that meant someone was officially possessed, so there's lots of sick demonic possessed folk falling through the cracks that these two want to save.  I guess there were budget cutbacks or summat, too many exorcisms maybe pissing off Vatican bean counters.  Like how insurance companies get after doctors -  Quit stacking fees and padding your bills with unnecessary medical procedures already!

The daughter shows them footage of her interview with the mom, is my moms possessed? The one British officially licensed? exorcist, (I wonder if they get diplomas or what) tells her she needs to participate in an exorcism then she'll know if her mom is possessed.  I guess you have to see demons in the flesh to recognise them. The exorcism has some spooky contortionist scenes and wall climbing, also some menstrual gushing?!!  All goes well and the girl is ready for life outta the basement.  But back to the moms.  The renegade priests aren't sure she fits all the criteria for possession so they arrange for an interview at the hospital, where they'll use their pupil dilation measurement eye camera.  (If your pupils are dilated over 9 millimetres, you got the evil in you.) Things go bananas at the hospital. The chubby balding priest starts acting weird after, because of transference.  That's when there's more than one demon hanging out in the possessed and it jumps out into someone else.  The British priest is listening to the audio of the exorcist/examination and notices there's more than one voice/language being spoken. Sounds like 4! Also, the demon(s) told him he'd never be forgiven for what he did - it seemed like maybe he killed his exorcist uncle whose footsteps he followed?  I dunno because that thread was left hanging.

Things get stupid.  The Vatican finds out about the botched exorcism/examination. How? I guess the hospital rats them out?  I dunno, the church must be tight with everyone there.  The chubby priest is all moaning about getting excommunicated having bloody noses and eating chicken in the dark. Seriously, he angrily slams the light switch back to dark when Isabella turns it on and goggles at his gobbling food in the black as night kitchen.  uhuh, that's evil behaviour all right, gorging on food in the dark all eating disordered...for shame.

alla time.  He did install 4 in the car.  Anyhow, the chubby priest is upstairs, the lights go out, LOUD noises upstairs, creep upstairs to check on him with by the light of the camera,  priest is fucking scary in the dark making noise, and BAM there he is, eyes all rolled up in his head and long bloody cuts on his arms.   Then he's not there, disappearing and reappearing other places. OOOooo!!! Run Downstairs!!! The police have arrived, British priest warns them, it's not safe to go up there, but brave cop does, and scuffle...oops priest takes his  gun, oh no!  Next is a suicide scene, which was graphic and sad.

The daughter starts having a seizure.  They rush her to the hospital.  She's in a room and the British priest is arguing with a nurse about it not being safe, as medical professionals rush into the room behind her.  Looks like the daughter ripped out the throat of another patient. Blood everywhere on the other patient, but not on the daughter. The priest and the camera man sedate the daughter and steal her from the hospital, taking her to another location for an exorcism, and the nurse nods yeah, take her!! Escape this chaos with the perpetrator! Isabella starts coming to in the car and then the camera man gets possessed and crashes the car.  The end.  What?!!!  I know, what a rip eh? The whole theatre did a disappointed aw! Man! kinda groan.

The last bit before the credits was an url to find out more of what happened to the Rossis .

Whatever.  It was such a shitty ending.  I could have forgave all the boring bits if it had resolved with a proper ending.  It was all leading up to an epic 4 demon exorcism, instead we get this car crash?  Cheap mang.

I get the feeling whoever made this film is hoping to make a prequel, maybe a sequel, and that's why it felt so unfinished.

The trailer is good though, it shows pretty much every spooky scene and is totally creepy.  Watch that a bunch of times and forget the film is my advice.

 Or you could totally ditch everything about this unsatisfying horror and watch INXS do The Devil Inside.  80's rock band FTW!