Delta College Film Club

The Delta College Film Club is sponsoring a film screening series this semester, featuring three films you probably haven't seen that you probably should have seen. In today's episode, I interview Mazen Zia, the club's president.

The first film of the series, the blaxsploitation spoof/tribute Black Dynamite, screens this Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in the lecture theater, G160, on Delta's main campus. For more information about the club or the film series, contact Mazen at ozymandias915@gmail.com.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

Twenty years ago, New Line Cinema released what is now considered one of the worst films ever made, The Island of Dr. Moreau. I had the misfortune of taking a first date to see it back in 1996. Her name was Katy and she was sweet and innocent and said she loved movies. I did too, so I opened up the newspaper (you know, back when that was how you found out what was playing at the theater) and there wasn’t much that looked interesting. But then I saw the ad for The Island of Dr. Moreau starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. Kilmer had just been Batman and given the performance of a lifetime in Tombstone just a couple of years before. Brando was, of course, Marlon Brando – the Godfather, Colonel Kurtz, Terry Malloy, one of the greatest actors of all time. So standing there in my kitchen, looking at the paper with sweet, innocent Katy at my side, I actually uttered the words, “How bad could it be?”

The answer is bad. Extraordinarily bad. 

 The movie is a mess. Based on an H.G. Wells novel, it is the story of a plane crash survivor played by David Thewlis who is rescued and brought to an island inhabited by a scientist who fled there so he could continue his boundary-and-ethics pushing experiments in creating animal/human hybrids. Brando plays Moreau and Kilmer plays his right hand man. While it’s an interesting premise, the film spins out of control quickly. Brando’s performance is the very definition of bizarre, the story is confusing, the dialogue badly written, and the special effects are both silly and unsettling. It was all supposed to be some kind of Garden of Eden metaphor with Moreau as God and the animals as Adam and Eve, but rather than smart and provocative, it came across as offensive, stupid, and gross. When the animal people drop their pretenses at being humans and stage a massive orgy, I knew the date with Katy was pretty much over.

The movie has haunted me for twenty years and whenever the subject of “worst movie ever” comes up, I have a quick and easy answer.

While I knew is it was stone-cold bad, I never knew why it was such a souped-up garbage wagon. Now, thanks to the fun and insightful documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, I know more about the fiasco than I ever thought possible.

The documentary retraces the story of Richard Stanley, the original director and screenwriter of the film. Stanley had directed two independent movies that got him some attention in the industry and that gave him just enough leverage to get him a meeting with producers. They basically wanted to say, “Thanks for the idea, sucker” and send him on his way, but as it happened, the star and main attraction of the project, Marlon Brando, took a liking to Stanley and insisted he stay on as director.

Through interviews with Stanley, the actors and crew, as well as several of the executives involved in the picture, Lost Soul documents the he-said-she-said chaos. Stanley seems confident and assured in the interviews, but co-workers from the time paint a picture of an insecure amateur in way over his head. He was fired from the picture and told not to come within 40 kilometers of the production. The whole story of the film’s descent into worst-movie-ever-made territory involves witchcraft, Marlon Brando wearing an ice bucket on his head, Val Kilmer refusing to come out of his trailer until Brando did, and Stanley sneaking back onto set in an extra’s costume and actually making it into the final cut of the film. 

 If you have any affection at all for behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories or for trainwreck movies, you’ll enjoy Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau.

Kubo and the Two Strings

The film production company Laika specializes in stop-motion animation, an art form so time-consuming and onerous that almost no one uses it any more. It involves puppets and marionettes that you photograph one frame at a time. Move the puppet’s mouth a little, take a picture, Move it a little more, take another picture. You can see why animators prefer being able to use powerful computer programs to create characters and sets with pixels rather than painstakingly constructing and moving every single element by hand. But as I said, Laika is a boutique company that specializes in stop motion and has produced the films Coraline, Paranorman, and The Boxtrolls. Each one has been exquisitely rendered with ingenious production and character design. The amount of time and care put into the films is apparent in every frame. However, none of them felt like the stories they were telling were worth all that effort. They weren’t bad, by any means, they just seemed like small, interesting experiments rather than films with a capitol F. 

 

With its new release, Kubo and the Two Strings, Laika has finally found a project worthy of its craftsmanship. It’s an original story that has all the resonance and spaciousness of an ancient folktale. But it’s never too epic for its own good. On the contrary, Kubo manages to be funny, sweet, and often touching. Not bad for a movie made with what amounts to a bunch of plastic toys.

The film is a quest story. Kubo is a young boy who, as a baby, had his left eye plucked out by the cold and powerful Moon King. The Moon King also happens to be Kubo’s grandfather, so you can imagine the whole eye-plucking thing might make family reunions awkward. So his grandfather is back and wants the other eye, and Kubo goes on a quest to find pieces of enchanted armor that will protect him.

He is assisted by a guardian monkey, a tiny origami samurai, and a warrior who was cursed and transformed into a man-sized bug who they call Beetle. It sounds bizarre, I know, but underneath all the strangeness is a moving story about familial love, the power of remembrance, and the magic of storytelling. In fact, before he begins his quest, Kubo himself is a storyteller who makes his money by narrating tales in the streets while playing his enchanted shamisen, the traditional Japanese three stringed instrument. When he plays, sheets of paper come blasting out of his pack and form themselves into ingenious origami creations that act out his stories. I can help but think the people at Laika saw this as a metaphor for what they do, bringing inanimate objects to life to tell a story. 

 

As a straightforward piece of art and entertainment, I recommend Kubo and the Two Strings unreservedly. But at the same time, nothing exists in a vacuum and the issue of Hollywood whitewashing is a problem here. The story takes place in Japan and is peopled entirely by Japanese characters. However, the three leads and one of the villains are voiced by Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaghey, Rooney Mara, and an Irish kid named Art Parkinson. That cast couldn’t be whiter if you dipped them in a tub of bleach. Do they do a fantastic job? Absolutely. Theron especially has a voice that conveys an armored, barbed strength while also projecting profound tenderness. But the fact remains that Hollywood has a painfully long history of shutting out Asian performers in favor of supposedly more marketable white actors in make-up. Kubo and the Two Strings is a great movie without question. But the politics and history surrounding some of its casting raise a lot of questions.