I'm Still Here (4 Stars)

In 2008 Joaquin Phoenix announced that he was retiring as an actor and would pursue a new career as a rapper. He hired a documentary crew to film him every day. A big screen version of the Osbournes. As we later found out, it was all a hoax. After 12 months he returned to acting. But what's remarkable is that almost nobody knew. His feeble attempts at rapping were ridiculed by the media, and he didn't care. He was even mocked by Ben Stiller at the 2009 Oscars.

What other actor would have done something like this? Only someone as insane as Joaquin Phoenix.

Here's the film's title song, which Joaquin performed live in Miami.

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I'm still here,
I don’t scare,
I don't fear,
Don't even fear fucking fear.
I never cracked, never,
I don’t give, never,
I'll live forever, I'm the one that God chose.

I'm still real,
I won't kneel,
Unless it's God, my team know how I feel,
I never sold out, never, my good soul, never,
I'll live forever, I'm that one that God chose.

I heard the call, alarms sounding off,
Feeling guilty cause my night was spent fucking off,
History’s perverted me,
Words can never harm me,
Saying I’m the epitome of a motherfucking self-parody,
A charity being formed for this deformity,
Cause man can't conform for nobody.
I made it here despite the efforts of a few.
What can I say to a punk but "Fuck you"?
You might suggest I’m conscious at best,
A pretentious mess that can't get himself even dressed.
In response I don't get mad,
I shake you off,
Waving goodbye like I was last year's fad.
Trendsetting on you, I won’t be betting,
I let it go so long as you know I'm stormy weather,
And whether or not you're better or not,
Couldn't make a lick of difference from where I'm sitting at the top.

I'm still here
Through these years,
I don't scare
Don't even fear fucking fear.
I never cracked, never,
I don't give, never,
I'll throw it down,
You can bet on that, fella.

I'm still real,
I won't kneel,
Unless it's God, my team know how I feel.
I never sold out, never, my good soul, never,
I'll live forever, I'm that one that God chose,
Bitch!

Long-winded letters that I've written,
Once a snake has bitten I'll forgive but won't forget it,
Not taking revenge, I don't have the time to do to you
All the fucked up things, fantasies of ruining you.
Ain't got a crew, but I'll take on you,
Gotta wrap this shit up with you cause I'm so fucking bored.
Just this one thing I gotta say to let you know,
To get off my chest before this long rest,
I never betrayed you, I never did what you thought I did,
But still you came at me swinging, kid.
Nevertheless, I wish you the best, I pray you get to Heaven,
But more than likely you'll be burning with the Devil.

Here,
Through these years,
I don't scare,
Don't even fear fucking fear.
I never cracked, never,
I don't give, never,
I'll grow in value, you can bet on that.

I'm still real,
I won't kneel,
Unless it's God, my team know how I feel.
I never sold out, never, my good soul, never,
I'll live forever, I'm that one that God chose,
Bitch!

Oppenheimer (5 Stars)

I'll watch any film made by Christopher Nolan, despite my disappointment with his last (almost) true film, "Dunkirk". Before going to see "Oppenheimer" I was tempted to read up on Robert Oppenheimer. I'd heard his name and I knew he had something to do with the first atom bomb, but I knew nothing about his life. Eventually I decided to watch the film first and inform myself later.

Imagine my shock when the film started as a courtroom drama. Almost a courtroom drama. It's repeatedly emphasised that it wasn't a court, it was a senate committee. The difference is subtle. If found guilty, Robert Oppenheimer wouldn't be sentenced to prison, but he'd lose his security clearance and his ability to work for the government.

The film shows three phases in his life: before the Second World War, during the war and after the war. They're easy to tell apart from the cinematography, with the post war scenes being shown in black and white. A slight criticism is that I only roughly know when they happen. I would have appreciated the dates, or at least the years, being flashed on the screen.

So far I've only skimmed the Wikipedia page on Oppenheimer. It's late at night. I'll read more about him tomorrow. All I'll do is give a very brief summary of his life. It's not spoilers, because people with more knowledge than me would have known it already.

Before the war Robert Oppenheimer was an internationally renowned expert in quantum mechanics. He wasn't a Communist, but he kept an open mind, and he attended informal meetings of Communists. During the war he was made the leader of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. After the war he was an adviser to the American government on the further development of atomic bombs, but his past history with the Communist party was dug up to discredit him, until he lost his security clearance and was no longer allowed as an adviser.

It's a powerful film. It's not exactly a pacifist film, although it could be interpreted that way. Oppenheimer built the bomb, and he was proud of his work, because it saved millions of lives. In 1945 America was planning to invade Japan, but every Japanese child from the age of 12 upwards had been given a rifle. It was estimated that at least nine million Japanese civilians would die in the invasion. In comparison, less than 300,000 died as a result of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, in the following years Oppenheimer had a What-Have-I-Done feeling, and he tried to persuade America not to make even bigger bombs.

Despite being shown in English, the film was almost sold out in Gloria, a cinema that has two large screens. The other screen showed "Barbie", also almost sold out. This made me happy. It's Gloria's most successful day since the Corona pandemic started in 2020. Cinema isn't dead, it just needs the right films.

A Ghost Story (4 Stars)

This is one of those films that people will either love or hate. Critics seem to like it, based on its 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I'm talking about real film fans like you and me. The film isn't just slow, it crawls at a snail's pace. I mean, how many films do you know with a woman eating apple pie by herself for more than five minutes? There are many scenes, especially at the beginning, where nothing is moving, there are just sounds in the background.

Normally slowness is used to create emotion, but in "A Ghost Story" there's nothing that brings tears to my eyes. When the musician C (Casey Affleck) dies in a car crash there are no tears. His wife M (Rooney Mara) sheds no tears, and neither did I when I watched it. Everything is cold and sterile. She merely acknowledges his death.

Yet after C's death he chooses not to go into the light. He makes a conscious decision to return home. He stands watching his wife, whether she's sleeping or sitting on the floor eating pie. When she moves out – she never liked the house – he remains in the house instead of going with her. His attachment is to the house, not her. And yet he spends years scratching at the wall, trying to retrieve a message that she wrote for future residents to find.

Other people live in the house. There's a single mother with two children. He puts up with them for a few years, then grows frustrated and throws plates around the room. Then there's another family that he likes more. The man talks a lot of philosophy at the party, which is relevant to the film. It has some similarity to the underlying idea of "Cloud Atlas", that it's possible to remember the future. C tolerates them, maybe even learns from them. As a ghost C doesn't talk. He just stands and listens.

The house is torn down, but C doesn't leave. He remains in the ruins. A large building is constructed on the same site, and he remains there. He walks around the building while it's being constructed. When it's completed he stalks the corridors, listening in on the board meetings of the companies renting space.

By the way, can you see how the picture has been made in a 4:3 ratio with rounded edges, like the early television sets? This gives the film a retro feeling.

I don't want to give too much away, but the philosopher in C's house was correct. Time runs its course, then the universe reaches its maximum expansion and begins to shrink. Time runs backwards until the universe is a pin-prick in size, and there's a new big bang. History repeats itself. It's the same, but not quite the same. C has survived the destruction and recreation of the universe. He watches the foundation of his house being laid, and he waits for himself to move in. His songs have been remembered before he wrote them. He tries to influence his living self to act differently, but is it possible?

Watch the film for yourself.

As for me, I'm going to drink another glass of Besigheimer Felsengarten Samtrot Spätlese. It might help me get my head around the film's concepts.

Success Rate:  + 17.0

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A Ghost Story (4 Stars)

This is one of the most unusual films I've seen for a long time. It's not the first time a haunted house film has been told from a ghost's point of view, but I've never seen it done so effectively. Supposedly the film's budget was only $100,000. How is that possible nowadays? The lead actors must have worked for free.

A young couple live in a small house in a rural area. They aren't named in the film, but in the credits they're called C and M. I'll use those names for the sake of simplicity. C is a musician. M seems to be an interior designer, but it isn't completely clear.

C is killed in a car accident. In hospital he wakes up as a ghost. A big light shines in front of him, signifying a call for him to move on, but he refuses to walk into the light. He goes back home to be with his wife. She can't see him, so he stands watching her as the days, months and years roll by. The only way he can make himself noticed is by making lights flicker and moving objects.

Eventually M sells the house and moves out. Instead of following her C remains in the house. A new family moves in. They leave after he scares them by throwing plates. A group of young people move in. Then the house is demolished and a large office building is built on the same spot. C spends years walking through the building.

This is a very emotional film. I could feel C's loneliness. He's desperate to make contact with the living, especially the people he loves, but whatever he does to make contact scares people.

Despite its slowness, this is a fascinating film. It'll make you think about it for a long time afterwards.

Interstellar (3 Stars)

This is Christopher Nolan's most ambitious film to date, exceeding even "Inception" in its scale. It's his first attempt to create a film that can be called an epic, depending on your definition of the word. It's also his biggest failure. In his attempt to write a film that stretches across billions of miles and dozens of years he's produced a piece of work that is painfully slow.

The film begins in the near future when the human race is in danger of extinction. Dust clouds are killing almost all the crops, leading to mass starvation. The film's hero, Cooper, is recruited to fly a mission through a wormhole to find habitable planets to relocate the human race.

The twists and turns in the plot, which I won't further discuss here, rely on a huge bootstrap paradox. Human beings from the far future are sending back information needed to save the human race. They don't seem to be very good at it. Rather than send barely comprehensible messages, couldn't they have phoned up the Earth's top scientists and told them what to do? Or better still, couldn't they have sent a big rescue pod back in time to whisk everyone away to a new home? The film doesn't make sense.

The contrast between the lazy farming community and the space exploration is deliberate, but I found the farm scenes too boring. The talks about ghosts annoyed me, and I only tolerated them because it was obvious that it would be relevant later in the film.

Stanley Kubrick left a legacy with "2001: A Space Odyssey". This is clearly what Christopher Nolan intended. Whereas Stanley Kubrick's film is a classic of cinema that will never be forgotten, Christopher Nolan's Space Odyssey fizzles out before it even starts.

I'm Still Here (4 Stars)

In 2009 Joaquin Phoenix, 34 years old at the time, announced that he was giving up acting to follow a career as a hip hop singer. This was to be the subject of a documentary, so cameras followed him day and night for the next 12 months. During this time his health and his physical appearance deteriorated, and he received setbacks from music insiders telling him he didn't have the talent to make it as a singer.

Some of the events were staged, others happened spontaneously, and they are all mixed up together. This is similar to the way that modern reality shows are made. Be honest: does anyone really believe that the Osbournes, Anna Nicole Smith or even Honey Boo Boo behave naturally when a camera is pointing at them?

Joaquin didn't really intend to quit acting, but this wasn't evident at the time. He remained in character throughout the filming, which meant that many people, even news reporters, believed he was really quitting. Very few people were in on the secret that it was just a film. Even David Letterman was fooled when he invited Joaquin Phoenix onto his show.

What was Joaquin Phoenix trying to say with the film? He was making fun of himself, he was mocking reality shows, and he was showing how shallow the music and film industries are. More than anything else, he was making fun of the audiences who watched him live (during that year). He was ridiculing them because they were gullible enough to believe anything.

The Killer Inside Me (3¾ Stars)

This is a twisted, though somehow fascinating drama, set in a small town in Texas in the 1950's. It was difficult for me to rate. I can appreciate the film's quality on so many levels, such as the atmosphere, the plot and the acting. On the other hand there are scenes that disgusted me so much that I wanted to turn it off. I could have given the film any rating between 1 and 4 stars, depending on my mood.

Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is the deputy sheriff in Central City, Texas. Despite the grand sound of its name, Central City is actually only a small town in which everyone knows everyone. The only justification for its name is that it really is in the middle of Texas. Lou has a beautiful girlfriend, a school teacher called Amy (Kate Hudson), with whom he has a torrid sado-masochistic relationship, but she isn't enough for him. When he's asked by the town's biggest employer, the owner of a construction company, to run a prostitute (Jessica Alba) out of town who has had an affair with the employer's son, Lou begins an affair with her. Another sado-masochistic affair. Lou likes to hit women, and they enjoy it.

I personally have been involved in the S&M scene, on various levels, since I was at university. This isn't the place to describe my past in detail, but I do have fixed ideas on the subject which are rejected by many others in the scene, although I am convinced that I am right. I know that there are people, both men and women, who experience a certain amount of sexual pleasure out of being dominated, even if the domination involves being hurt. There are both men and women who act as dominants, either acting gently as loving dominants, or acting harshly as cruel dominants. In either case, especially the latter, it's the official party line of the S&M scene that whatever happens must be consensual. It's usual that in S&M relationships the submissive person has a "safe word" which he/she can use when he wants the dominant person to stop what he's doing. This has led to the commonly stated misconception that the submissive is really the one who is in control.

Based on my experience I am strongly of the opinion that men are ill-suited as dominants. Dominant men are unable to stop when they're sexually aroused and often go too far. A problem with men, both dominant and submissive, is that they consider the domination to be foreplay for sexual intercourse, whereas women can enjoy domination without sex. This means that domination by a man can frequently lead to rape. It's also my experience that dominant men tend to be below average intelligence, which further complicates the issue.

I don't know if Lou Ford is based on any real person, but to me he's a typical dominant male. Women submit to him, so he hurts them, but he's unable to stop, and the domination turns into abuse. In this film he kills the women that he's involved with, and then he's forced to kill men to hide what he's done. He's a disgusting creature.

Please leave comments if you agree or disagree with what I've written. Maybe I can go into the subject in more detail.