Freeway 2 Confessions of a Trickbaby.

In a review by Brian J Dillard he offered a list of people that are likely to be offended by the 1999 exploitation movie Freeway 2: Confessions of Trickbaby: lawyers, African-Americans, correctional officers, people with eating disorders, wheelchair users, lesbians, Latinos, amputees, poor white people, the elderly, Catholics, transsexuals, the entire population of Tijuana, and anyone who is disturbed by necrophilia, incest, paedophilia, vomit, prostitution, drug use, compulsive masturbation, multiple homicide, Vincent Gallo's acting career, or gigantic prosthetic genitalia. Not a bad description of a film that offensive to nearly everyone but one that probably qualifies for cult status!

 

"Why did you interrupt i was just beginning to enjoy myself"

Described as a satire on America's confessional culture, both the films main characters are exactly the kind of pathologically dysfunctional social misfits who are wheeled out to confess their sins on carnivalesque American TV talk shows. 15-year-old Crystal Van Meter known as White Girl (Natasha Lyonne) has been sentenced to 25 years for various crimes including posing as a prostitute to beat up and rob men, and dealing in drugs. Her first port of call is a minimum-security hospital to seek treatment for bulimia. While there she teams up with Angela Garcia, a psychotic young lesbian known as Cyclona who is starting a life sentence for multiple killings. Both escape and make it across the border to Mexico and ending up in Tijuana where they meet up with the very strange Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo) who our young killer thinks is her guardian angel.  On the way White Girl realises that her travelling companion, now dressed as a boy, is a serial killer when she murders a family of three and has bloody sex with two of the dead bodies, but it's to late for White Girl to turn back so she has to join her friend on a murderous road trip to gain salvation at the hands of a Catholic Nun with a monstrous prosthetic penis!

 

"Sister Gomez? I don't think so"

A movie that's not afraid to confront taboo subjects and this stylised modern equivalent of the German folk tale does just that. In Hansel and Gretel feeding is a metaphor for sex and power, where the witch lures the young boy and girl into her house with the promise of food intending to fatten them up and eat them herself. When we reach the ‘church’ of Sister Gomes we find a basement full of very young children! According to Chris Campion's notes that accompany the Tartan Video release its Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) that is the movies closest equivalent being a road movie that descends into the heart of darkness. But in my humble opinion I would say that the Alejandro Jodorowshy’s avant-garde film Santa Sangre (1989) and John Waters movies had more relevance to our story. I think that with a lot of exploitation grind house movies the enjoyment, or not, will be in the eye of the beholder.

"Come to Sister Gomez and repent your sins children"

Arizona Dream.

Described as a surrealist comedy drama this early outing for both Johnny Depp and Vincent Gallo is a 'vision of the world that does not correspond to the weary write by numbers formulas of standard screenplays'[1]. Certainly more European than American Arizona Dream (1993) was filmed in 1991 released all over Europe in 1993 where it was highly regarded eventually becoming a cult film in France, but did not get a theatrical release in the USA until September 1994 and in the UK in June 1995, even a decent  DVD release never came about until much later. Watching this film you can't help but question why was there a delay in releasing this intriguing movie?

 

The wonderful Lili Taylor with a young looking Johnny Depp.

Directed and written by filmmaker Emir Kusturica. Although he has twice won the Palme d'Or at Cannes his is a name I was not familiar with but I must admit I was very impressed with my first experience of the Serbian director. Surrealistic is certainly the correct description for a film in which you’re never sure quite what's going to happen next! Depp plays Axel Blackmar whose dream about an Eskimo, who catches a rare halibut, gets rescued by his dog and finally gets the fish back to his family, opens the preceding's. Both the dog and the halibut make further appearances in the movie as our story unfolds.

 

Vincent Gallo and Faye Dunaway.

Axel earns his living tagging fish in New York City and it’s there he is approached by his cousin Paul Leger (Gallo best known for his roles in Buffalo 66 in 1998 and The Brown Bunny in 2003) to travel back to Arizona to be the best man at his Uncle Leo’s wedding (a truly great role for comedian Jerry Lewis whose ‘made up’ Eskimo language is one of the movies highlight's) to a much younger woman. Paul, who thinks of him self as a great ladies man, dreams of being an actor while Leo Sweetie dreams of selling enough Cadillac’s piled on top of one another to reach the moon. Leo talks Axel into becoming a salesman with the eventual aim of him taking over the management of his car sales business. While attempting to sell Cadillac’s Axel meets two women Elaine (Faye Dunaway) who dreams of building a flying machine and her stepdaughter Grace Stalker (Lili Taylor, who also played opposite Depp in 2009’s Public Enemies and was the first to be cast in this movie) who dreams of killing herself and being reincarnated as a turtle.

 

The comedic Jerry Lewis.

I think you may gleam from my brief description that Kusturica's beautifully evocative movie is not your standard main steam cinematic fodder but something slightly of the wall; well ok it's a long way of the wall! Ten years in the planning/writing stage it took a year to shoot during which time the director had a nervous breakdown! First cut was 4 hours that was finally reduced to around 140 minutes for release. In an interview Depp said all the actors morphed into the character that they were playing and that the script was adjusted and altered as the filming progressed also additional scenes were added. The director's work reminds me of Fellini, a man who also has his own unique way of working, and does not sound an easy man to work with, although it is said that after some initial problems he got on very well with his lead star. An unusual but very diverting piece of movie making and one I would highly recommend.

....and playing us out tonight.....

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[1] Chicago Sun-Times Review January 1995

Essential Killing

Somewhere in Poland.

Captured by the US military after killing the three soldiers that are tracking him in the Afghanistan desert, a Taliban insurgent is rendered to a secret American detention center located somewhere in Poland. When the vehicle he is being transported in crashes, he finds himself suddenly free and on the run in a freezing snow-blanketed forest, a world away from the desert home he knew. Relentlessly pursued by a white clad army with an American helicopter in constant support the escapee must face the fact that he must continue to kill in order to survive this harsh and unremitting terrain.

Vincent Gallo

Essential Killing (2010) is a grippingly stark political thriller by the Polish writer and director Jerzy Skolimowski that attempts to examine the physical and mental sufferings involved with attempting to stay alive under such dire and desperate circumstances. Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66 1998, The Brown Bunny 2003) is expertly cast as our protagonist Mohammed, whose name we do find out until you see the cast list at the end of the film. Without barely a word to say for the entire movie Gallo’s portrayal of the increasing cold and hunger suffered with its accompanying hallucinations and nightmare dream sequences of his past life is well deserving of the Best Actor Award he received at the 67^th Venice Film Festival. One of the most disturbing scenes in this film is when the fugitive comes across a peasant women breast feeding her baby at the side of the road and at gun point suckles on her other breast which I believe shows the intensity of Skolimowski’s latest work. A piece of work that does not encourage us to take the side of Mohammed, although I believe the viewer is tempted at times or are his pursues any more likable?