Sunday, January 23, 2011

ACCURACY IN ADVERTISING


Tell Me Something (1999)
dir: Yoon-Hyun Chang

More like "Tell Me Everything." You may as well go ahead and throw a bongo in my hand and give me a Red-hearted firecrotch to verbally abuse, because this movie's got some 'splaining to do! I initially decided to give it a chance because I'd read that it featured some heavily Argento-inspired murder set pieces, although I now realize that those comparisons were nothing if not a bit generous. This isn't a bad film by any means, and it probably features the most unexpectedly touching flashback sequence ever set to a children's chorus interpreting the musical background of the first popular Fugees song (WTF indeed), but seriously, what happened? All of the grotesque exploding bags of body parts "hidden" in the corner of a crowded elevator in the world can't really make up for the seemingly unending string of question marks that will probably forever hover above my head every time somebody brings up this film, which may never actually happen as I don't think it ever gained too much in the way of notoriety. Nor did it ever gain much in the way of logicality, reason or resolution. In some ways this is beneficial; the film maintains a palpable sense of dread throughout its admittedly excessive running time, continually subverting expectations and providing more red herrings than a Communist fish hatchery. But there is no real payoff by the end, primarily due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to decipher exactly what happened. A brief list of questions: 1) who did it?, 2) what did they do?, 3) why did they do it?, 4) Placebo? Seriously?, and 5) wait... what? Maybe it loses something in translation. Maybe it loses everything in translation. Maybe I should even give it another look and hope that a second viewing will bless me with some degree of illumination, but Piranha 3D just dropped on DVD and if I'm going to waste my time watching something twice then it may as well feature an operatic underwater lesbian scene and the goriest beach experience since Saving Private Ryan almost convinced the world that Vin Diesel isn't dumb and Tom Hanks isn't a pansy.

In completely unrelated news, I can't stop listening to this Jeff the Brotherhood album. This song is the only real "ballad" but I like the video for its accurate representation of teenage romance: the girls are in the kitchen gossiping and smoking and looking hot and girly while the dudes dick around in the living room and probably never get laid. Life is unfair (unless you can shred the guitar, which I cannot).

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