THE DEAD GIRL -- Movie Review by Porfle

(NOTE: This review was originally posted online in 2007.)

There are few things more exciting for a movie buff than to be so blown away by a film that you're captivated by every minute of it and still excited about it long after it's over, which is exactly the effect THE DEAD GIRL (2006) had on me. It's without a doubt one of the most satisfying and exhilarating movie experiences I've had in years. I can find no fault with it--it does no wrong.

Arden (Toni Collette, hardly recognizable as the mother in THE SIXTH SENSE) is an introverted, emotionally-troubled woman caring for her invalid mother (Piper Laurie as yet another nightmarish mom), who makes life a living hell for her with her constant, bitter haranguing.

One day while walking by herself in a field near her house, Arden discovers the dead, nude body of a young woman. The battered corpse has the numbers "12:13" tattooed on her arm. Arden reports her find to the police and becomes the focus of unwanted local notoriety and curiosity, notably from a morbid supermarket bag-boy named Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi), who asks her out.

She hesitantly accepts, and while getting ready to go out is cruelly taunted and ridiculed by her mother until she finally reaches the breaking point. Arden and Rudy spend a strangely intimate night together in her station wagon parked in the woods.

Rudy is fascinated by serial killers and is generally rather creepy, yet in his clumsily sympathetic way he's the best thing that has happened to Arden in a long time. In fact, she considers leaving her mother to whatever fate awaits her and taking her chances on a new life with Rudy.

This, it turns out, is merely the first story in a series of episodes that are related in one way or another to the dead girl. We are next introduced to Leah (in a deeply-moving portrayal by Rose Byrne), whose sister has been missing for fifteen years. Her single-minded parents have never given up on finding her and Leah's homelife is eternally dominated by her sister's shadow, driving her to therapy and anti-depressants.

One day as she works as a forensic pathology student, she finds herself examining the dead girl and discovers a distinctive birthmark on her hand--one which matches the birthmark her missing sister had. With this, Leah envisions an end to her phantom sister's oppressive influence over her life and a new beginning at last. But it is not to be.

There are several more stories to be told, and each one is a fascinating and richly emotional character study that is brought to life by an incredible cast. Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison play Leah's obsessed parents, James Franco her nerdy boyfriend. Mary Beth Hurt (THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP) gives an intense performance as a neglected housewife whose husband (Nick Searcy) abandons her for days at a time--she makes a discovery about his mysterious nocturnal outings that will throw her life into turmoil. Marcia Gay Harden is fine as Melora, the dead girl's mother, who comes to identify the body and stays to delve into the heartbreaking details of her runaway daughter's last days.

This is Karen Moncrieff's second feature as writer-director (the first was 2002's BLUE CAR), and she displays a sure hand throughout. The story is scintillating and original, and her handling of it is visually exquisite.

Not a moment is wasted--every shot counts and adds to the emotional weight of the story. My attention never wandered for a second. And there isn't a single false step along the way. This is the sort of finely-crafted filmmaking that doesn't come along every day.

And finally, there's the dead girl herself. Brittany Murphy plays Krista, who we see storming through the last day of her life like a force of nature. She's a tragic figure, on the skids and down on her luck, but she's tough as nails and never gives in. I won't give away anything else about her or what finally happens, but everything is tied up nicely and the ending is both haunting and resonant.

This is probably Brittany Murphy's finest hour, in a beautifully-rendered film filled with remarkable actors giving memorable performances.  I guess you could say I kinda liked it.

THE DEAD GIRL -- Movie Review by Porfle

DEADGIRL -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 7/17/09

 

Recently I watched another coming-of-age film called "Bart Got a Room", which might be thought of as the happy flipside to today's very different coming-of-age story, DEADGIRL (2008).

 In this one, two high school misfits named Rickie and J.T. get a room too, only instead of being in a posh hotel it's in the dark basement of an abandoned mental institution, and instead of finding prom dates, they find a naked living-dead girl wrapped in plastic and strapped to a lab table.

Needless to say, this isn't your father's Archie and Jughead. While Rickie (the soulful Shiloh Fernandez, who reminds me of a pre-nutso Joaquin Phoenix) is disturbed by their discovery and wants to report it to somebody, the considerably flakier J.T. (Noah Segan) quickly sees Deadgirl as their own animated RealDoll.

Before long he's as paranoid and possessive as Fred C. Dobbs and acting out his twisted adolescent urges with the undying corpse. In one startling scene, he proves to Rickie that she can't die by firing several bullets into her torso with no effect. Rickie is repulsed but intimidated into silence by the increasingly unbalanced J.T. Eventually others are brought in on the sick setup, with varying horrific consequences.

In a way, DEADGIRL reminded me of "The River's Edge", a fact-based story of some disaffected high school kids who find a murdered girl's body in the weeds and bring their friends out to gawk at her instead of doing anything about it. Here, however, we go way beyond merely "disaffected" and into full-blown "deranged."

Many viewers will no doubt find it difficult to endure scenes of J.T. and his pathetic toady Wheeler (Eric Podnar) taking turns with the increasingly worse-for-wear Deadgirl as her chilling visage contorts, her eyes rolling and leering in their sockets. Equally repellent is the sight of J.T. poking at her pus-oozing bulletholes as he giddily marvels at her inability to die.

While J.T. has found the ghoul of his nightmares, Rickie still pines for the beautiful and unattainable popular girl Joann (Candice Accola), who, as J.T. points out with brutal frankness, would rather die than be with him. She'll eventually have to make that choice.

Her bullying jock boyfriend Johnny (Andrew DiPalma) and his equally sadistic sidekick Dwyer (Nolan Gerard Funk) also get drawn into the situation, culminating in some of the film's most ghastly and nerve-wracking images. Even tied up, Deadgirl is dangerous, because when you least expect it, she bites. And the bites get...infected. What happens to one hapless lad in particular is, for me anyway, quite a jaw-dropper.

 

I wasn't altogether satisfied by the ending, although I suppose there was a kind of resigned inevitability to it. The leads play their parts convincingly--Segan is especially effective as the downwardly spiralling J.T., and Michael Bowen, who was "Buck" in KILL BILL VOL. 1, is one of the best character actors working today.

Best of all, Jenny Spain's Deadgirl is a truly strange and frightening creation. The combination of the right makeup and her cunningly controlled performance, along with the imaginative direction of Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, makes Deadgirl a memorable movie "monster." You're never quite sure what's going through her fevered mind and can't wait to find out what will happen when she gets loose from her bonds. Which she eventually does, of course.

DEADGIRL is not to be confused with the similarly-titled 2006 film "The Dead Girl." That was a thoughtful, bittersweet account of the affect that one girl's murder has on the lives of several people who are connected with her in one way or another. This, on the other hand, is a pitch dark, full-blown horror flick that sets out to disgust and disturb and succeeds by being one of the most deviously over-the-top cinematic fever dreams of recent years. As for Deadgirl herself, she is both loathesome and sympathetic, repellant yet compelling, horrific yet oddly heroic--and altogether fascinating.

DEADGIRL -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE MAD ADVENTURES OF "RABBI" JACOB -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/6/19

 

I was bored one night back in 1973, so I drove ten miles to see this obscure (to me, anyway) foreign comedy that had a funny trailer. Not expecting much, I ended up having the time of my life (well, one of them, anyway) because this kooky little French romp turned out to be one of the funniest, wildest and most delightful farce comedies I'd ever seen.

Now, forty some-odd years later, THE MAD ADVENTURES OF "RABBI" JACOB (Film Movement Classics) is just as funny, just as wild, and somehow even more delightful because it has aged like fine bubbly champagne that gets up your nose and makes you giggle.

Popular, rubber-faced French comic Louis de Funès plays Victor Pivert, a diminutive hothead speeding cross-country to his daughter's wedding while berating his chaffeur Solomon and yelling at other drivers, especially the foreign ones (he hates Belgians, Germans, Englishmen, anyone who isn't French).

Somehow--I'm not going to go into it here--Pivert gets mixed up in violent political intrigue between two Middle Eastern countries and is fleeing on a moped with a revolutionary named Slimane (Claude Giraud), a gang of ruthless killers hot on their heels.  And he can't depend on his chauffeur Solomon for help because he just fired him after finding out he was Jewish. (That wasn't the actual reason but it's an added factor.)

Then, somehow--I'm not going to go into it here--Pivert and Slimane assume the identities of a Hassidic rabbi named Jacob and his assistant. The real Rabbi Jacob is due to return to his French community after years in the U.S.A., and the imposters are welcomed by gleeful mobs of admirers as Pivert is expected to preside over the bar mitzvah of Jacob's nephew in addition to several other ceremonies and such of which he has absolutely no knowledge.

And as all this is going on, the little town is beseiged by Slimane's gun-blazing enemies, police detectives on the trail of Pivert because they think he's a killer, and Pivert's frantic wife who wants to throttle him for not showing up at their daughter's wedding.

Obviously I've tried to summarize the plot as well as possible, but it just can't come close to describing what a wonderfully wacky comic delight this movie is.  Pivert may be the most lovable bigot in any film comedy, especially since we know he's eventually going to learn his lesson before it's over.

He has a hilarious talent for deadpan mugging (I love the part where he tries to get the attention of two cops by making faces at them) and the frantic, cartoonish physicality of Leon Errol. Not only that, but when he's eluding his would-be killers in a chewing gum factory he and they all end up sliding into a vat of the stuff and emerging as gooey green blobs.

As Pivert contends with these murderous political zealots (the actors play their roles wonderfully straight) I was reminded of Woody Allen's perilous comedic entanglements with South American revolutionaries in BANANAS.

Indeed, much of the raucous slapstick comedy in this film is just as intensely off-the-wall and often startlingly bent as anything Woody came up with in his early, funnier films. 

The Tex Avery-level sight gags and outlandish situations come fast and furious. Pivert's nagging, spoiled wife berates him over the phone while working on a nervous patient (she's a dentist, of all things) and Pivert flees in a car with a boat on top that eventually goes into a lake and becomes a boat with a car on top. 

His experiences in the Jewish community filled with well-wishers who adore him (as Rabbi Jacob) are both achingly funny and heartwarming without ever getting sappy.  Needless to say, his daughter's belated wedding becomes the scene of a calamitous collision of all the different characters and plot elements that never lets up until the fadeout.

THE MAD ADVENTURES OF "RABBI" JACOB has a nice message of tolerance, but it shows it instead of preaching it to us and never lets it get in the way of the sparkling fun.  If you're looking for a truly feelgood comedy that will have you giddy with joyful laughter, this is it.



Buy it at Film Movement

Blu-ray Features
Interview with co-screenwriter Danièle Thompson
New essay by author Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Sound: Mono

DVD Features
Interview with co-screenwriter Danièle Thompson
New essay by author Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Sound: Mono

THE MAD ADVENTURES OF "RABBI" JACOB -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

What "Flicker Show" Did John Coffey REALLY Watch In "The Green Mile"? (video)

 

 "I ain't never seen me a flicker show..."

That's what condemned prisoner John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) tells his two sympathetic prison guards in "The Green Mile." 

But what "flicker show" did they really show him? 

 

Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

 

What "Flicker Show" Did John Coffey REALLY Watch In "The Green Mile"? (video)

The Three Stooges: Getting Hurt For Real (video)

Stooging could be a hazardous profession...

In "Gem of a Jam" (1943), the table Curly's on tilts too fast and his head hits the window sill.
The gash required nine stitches.  He immediately returned to work.

"Heavenly Daze" (1939) director Jules White assured Moe that a pen gag wouldn't hurt Larry. 
It did.  The pen deeply punctured Larry's forehead, and Moe took off after White.

Ironically, Moe sustained the most on-set injuries.

A blast of gunk to the face in "Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise" (1939) required medical attention to Moe's eyes.

In "Self-Made Maids" (1950), a twisted ankle has Moe diving out of camera range to save the shot.
He hits his head on a bed frame and is knocked cold.

In "Pardon My Scotch" (1935), Moe does a pratfall that results in several broken ribs.

He rises and finishes the shot before passing out.  The rest of the scene was filmed later.



I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!

The Three Stooges: Getting Hurt For Real (video)