The Immortals

Well, it looks great and heaven knows it doesn't matter if you leave the sound off.

The Immortals is directed by Tarsem Singh, known for sinking an incredible amount of time, energy and skill into the visual aspect of his work and devoting about five minutes and ten I.Q. points to the story. It was produced by the people who brought you 300; it also makes 300 seem like Eugene O'Neil.

This whole flick is just one big, butch upskirt shot.

Let us not consider that The Immortals bears little to no resemblance to the myths you may be familiar with, expect as far as cribbing some names and a monster or two. It kind of reminds me of when i saw Clash of the Titans as a kid and got all aggro about the inaccuracies. See, when i was about seven or eight, i got my sticky little hands on a copy of Bullfinch's Mythology and became totally hooked. The gods and goddesses of Olympus had powers beyond our reckoning, but that were often in service of emotions all too human. (Like Artemis did Acateon: Embarrass a goddess, get turned into a stag, be shot down by your own hunstmen and devoured by your own dogs. Bam!) They managed to be movie stars, Disney Princesses and the X-Men all at once and what little girl can resist that? But, compared to The Immortals, Clash of the Titans was scrupulous in its attention to... accepted fiction.

... not so much Mount Olympus as a Gay Pride float.

But, anyway, the point of The Immortals seems to be that evil King Hyperion, played by Mickey Rourke in a state of low-energy camp wants to... take over the world? Kill the gods? Release the Titans? Destroy all the temples? Sterilize every man on earth with a big clown hammer? Find a +5 laser-shooting enchanted crossbow of doom? Just be the biggest asshole he can to as many people as possible? All of these goals are alluded to, but none seem to be a real focus...

Yup, you're wearing a vagina dentata topped off with crab-claw bunny ears on your head.

But, hey, you're Mickey Rourke. This doesn't even crack your bad decision Top Ten.

Our hero is Theseus, pretty-boy killing machine. (Like Jon Snow in Pompeii, i just don't believe it.) He is played by Henry Cavill, who seems way more impressive in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. trailer that's making the rounds. But, hey, shit movies are a part of life and, even if the flick isn't one for the resume, i'd say that the stills are one for the portfolio.

I'm not going to try to explain the plot of The Immortals further, because i'm not even sure there is one. Zeus claims that, according to divine law, gods may not interfere with mortals. But he's been hanging out with Theseus pretty much every day of his life, teaching him to fight, imparting old-dude wisdom (in the guise of John Hurt, who's just collecting the check, thanks). How is that not interfering?

Zeus is played by Luke Evans, who does his best to have some kind of gravitas while wearing a tinsel tutu. (The funny thing is, he looks less ridiculous than he did as Apollo in that shitty Clash of the Titans remake.) Then there's his daughter, Athena, an actress-waitress from Orange County. (Goddess of wisdom and war who could outwit and outfight pretty much any creature in heaven or Earth... not so much.) and the rest of the gods, an interchangeable bunch of underwear models in lame jockstraps and showgirl headdresses

So, down on Earth, King Hyperion is being an asshole. And there's some mean soldiers and some not-mean soldiers. And Theseus is kind of milling about. Then we have Frieda Pinto as the Sibyl and her three backup Sibyls and Stephen Dorff as some guy named Stavros, because Greece, right? 

The Minotaur turns up, but it's not really a Minotaur and they're not really in a labyrinth... which is kind of a waste of a righteous set piece. And then there's this magic bow, that they all sort of want and are sort of looking for, but everyone keeps getting distracted. It's all very unclear but, again, it's a plot you can ignore. Turn off the sound and put on some tunes. Groove on the fabulous images. Do another bong hit, maybe eat some gelato...

 You want a fun mythology movie full of cool effects, Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans is still it. You want to see Greek gods as pouty go-go boys, watch The Immortals.

Poseidon's muffin had gluten it it. Sad Poseidon.

The Naked Kiss

 The Naked Kiss grabs you right away with one of the three best opening sequences in all of cinema -- the other two being Touch of Evil and Shakes the Clown. 

Yes, the legendary bald hooker beatdown. It's a doozy. And while it's over-the-top and attention-grabbing, it also sets the right tone. It tells you that The Naked Kiss is going to be very weird and also that our heroine is utterly fearless and, while her morals may be questionable, her ethics are incorruptible... 

It's an opening very typical of the film's director. Samuel Fuller may have used some of exploitation's tools, but it was always in service of a higher, idealistic message -- a stance that is something of a holdover from his early days as a tabloid crime reporter. Come for the leggy babes, explosions and fistfights; stay for the lessons about racial equality, women's rights, political corruption and social justice.

Kelly, played by Constance Towers, puts her hair back on and puts herself back together. We next see her three years later, getting off a Greyhound bus in Grantville. (This was back when people with monogrammed luggage took Greyhound buses.) Kelly is a "champagne saleswoman" now and a man quickly chats her up and samples her wares.

"Angel Foam goes down like liquid gold, and it comes on like slow dynamite.
For the man of taste... If you can afford it."

Unfortunately, said gentleman is Griff, a local cop. He has no problem with her hooking, just not in his precinct. He suggests that Kelly pack up her booze and her box and head for Del Mar Falls, "a wide open town." He even gives her a reference to the Del Mar whorehouse, Candy's, and offers to, erm, visit once she's settled there. She quotes Goethe and calls him a hypocrite. He has no idea what she's talking about on either count.

Then Kelly has some kind of Come Ta Jeezuz Moment and decides to give up hooking, rent a room from a lovable old lady and start working with disabled children. She dresses them up as pirates. It's insane. The weird dream sequences of kids running around shrieking "I have legs! I have legs!" and the surreal scene where they all sing...

Griff goes to find Kelly out at Candy's, where he knows all the girls and the Head Bitch in Charge is none other than Virginia Grey, pal of Lana Turner and  paramour of Clark Gable and a broad whose career extended from playing Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1927 to guesting on episodes of Love, American Style in 1973.

 

 

He doesn't find Kelly, but he does find Edy Williams (of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) among the bon-bons. He apparently sent her to Candy's as well, after finding her in a bus station. So he's a cop, but he procures women for the whorehouse across the river. Nice.

When he does find Kelly in the little crip's ward, he is pissed. Yeah, most cops would be glad to see a hooker reform, but not this guy. I'm guessing he was supposed to get a finder's fee from Virginia Grey. And, of course, now Kelly is free to say no to him and his sorry-ass dick.

 "I'm trying your side of the fence now. Is there a law against it?
Is there anything wrong with that?"

 "You'll have a problems breaking in those little girls to walk the streets on crutches." [smack]

Kelly does eventually make it across the river, but not to work. Nope. It seems that a young nurse she works with is being lured into the world's oldest profession by Virginia Grey and Kelly. Ain't. Having. It.

She has a heart-to-heart with the lass about what hooking is really like (and it ain't Pretty Woman). Then she dresses up in her chic-est little black dress and heads out to kick ass and take names.

Meanwhile, we also meet Grant, scion of Grantville, boss of Grant Mill, benefactor of Grant Hospital, and buddy of Griff. International playboy, local philanthropist and all-around totally awesome guy. Really.

He takes a shine to Kelly and the two sit on his leopard-print sofa in his mansion, listening to Beethoven and watching home movies... not the kind you're thinking. Of Venice. Or at least the ones he shows Kelly are of Venice. I suspect there are others stashed somewhere, yet to be revealed. The man does have a leopard-print sofa, after all...

Griff wants to marry Kelly. But she hesitates, concerned about her, ah, prior career. She should be thinking more about the fact that he's a rich creep with a leopard-print sofa. And here comes the plot twist!

Having a dark past that keeps coming back to haunt her is another way in which Kelly is like one of those doomed, damaged noir heroes played by Robert Mitchum or John Garfield, especially when she says things like, "I was a broken down piece of machinery. Nothing but the buck, the bed and the bottle for the rest of my life." That's some Bukowski shit right there.

The Naked Kiss was made in 1964 and, while Kelly's maquillage, girdle and stilettoes plant her in the Kennedy era, the film, the script, and its independent, fearless, badass heroine could be moved ten years ahead to the days of Watergate without changing anything but the aesthetics. Kelly may be a whore, but she's the only person who won't sell out.

If i'm giving away less than i usually do about The Naked Kiss, it's because it's simply one of those movies that i think everyone needs to see. Let's just say that Kelly's ending is happy, although less "women's movie happy," than "hero of a western" happy. As well it should be: Kelly buys no one's bullshit. And she ain't going to sell it to us either.

Mahagony

Do you know where you're going to?

No, really, do you have a single clue?

That dress does nothing for you.

Do you know?

Seriously. Because i am completely lost here...

Ah, Mahogany, what a confused movie you are. Are you about feminism? Black empowerment? Class disparity? The perils of success? The shallowness of the fashion world? Or are you just a muddled vanity project based around Diana Ross' lust for glamour and Berry Gordy's lust for Diana Ross?

However, Mahogany opens far from the world of champagne and runways. Diana Ross lives in Chicago, specifically and pointedly in the ghetto but she loves dresses. She works as an assistant to the buyer in a department store by day and goes to design school at night. Walking home one evening, she is accosted by Lando Calrissian -- sorry, Billy Dee Williams -- a community activist.

It takes a special man to rock a turtleneck. Billy Dee Williams is that man.

Lando Calrissian hollers at Diana Ross about how she should care about gentrification through his bullhorn, she tells him to get bent. They meet again later, him still with the megaphone, her still with the attitude. She pours milk into his holler-horn, he thinks a bunch of construction workers did it, he gets into a fight, gets arrested, she bails him out with a bad check and they start dating. So that's how you get a man. And here i've been making with the cheeseburgers and the blowjobs when all i really needed to do was get a guy beaten up and arrested. Silly me. (Silly me, because i've known this for some time and i still keep doing it wrong.)

Meanwhile, Diana Ross is getting shit at design school...

... but Diana Ross ignores Tim Gunn's critique, as she is focused on becoming the sort of designer whose work will involve the words "Kabuki finale." And, of course, being Lando Calrissian's main lady, which involves going to sweet arcades (Arcades with air hockey and chandeliers!) and walking around looking at abandoned buildings and graffiti, talking about life, the universe and everything. (Add in a vodka gimlet or two and it's pretty much my dream date.)

Life seems to be rolling along until...

Hey! It's Crazy Anthony Perkins!

Crazy Anthony Perkins is a famous fashion photographer who has come to shoot clothes at the store where Diana Ross toils thanklessly for her bitch of a boss. Crazy Anthony Perkins doesn't like any of the skanks they have recruited as models and throws a big ol' famous fashion photographer hissy -- but then he sees Diana Ross and her he likes. (Sort of like Funny Face but... so not like Funny Face. Because those clothes were beautiful and Diana Ross ain't no black Audrey Hepburn. We all know that Lupita Nyong'o is black Audrey Hepburn, but that's really not relevant here...)

Then, Diana Ross and Lando Calrissian have a fight and justthen Crazy Anthony Curtis calls and invites Diana Ross to come model in Rome. 

In a rare moment of non-foolishness, she hops on that plane. Crazy Anthony Perkins' apartment has a shrine to Crystal, his last model. He even calls it "my shrine." No, couldn't possibly be any hazards in getting involved with this guy...

He then dubs Diana Ross "Mahogany" because "I give all of my creations the name of inanimate objects." (Nope, not a warning sign at all.) For towering hairdos, flowing chiffon and general ridiculousness, the "high fashion" montages in Mahogany are up there with the "Gillian Girl" commercials from Valley of the Dolls. And this is probably a good place to state that i enjoy both film for the same reason: Camp melodrama with costumes. I suppose you could also look at both movies as attempts to update the women's film for the feminist era -- updates which seemed to consist of making the career world seem even more fabulous and renouncing it even more difficult...

Naturally, Diana Ross becomes a supermodel with all the Euro-style partying down, huffing high-end dope and hanging with royalty while rocking fabulous outfits that entails. Much of the super-'70s "high fashion" was actually designed by Ross herself and, Jesus, it is terrible. Although on the scale of questionable decisions made by Berry Gordy because he was blinded by Diana Ross' magic box, it's really not that bad... compared to ignoring Marvin Gaye's career, destroying Florence Ballard and letting one of the greatest record labels of all time devolve into a train wreck. The unfortunate part is that there are some great clothes in Mahogany and Ross is stunning in them -- they're just not the ones she did. It's a little weird when the Bob Mackie designs are the restrained, classy looks in the picture.

Lando Calrissian tries to win Diana Ross back, but she is in too deep, y'all. Instead Diana fails to complete the act with Crazy Anthony Perkins, the insinuation that he's a repressed closet case who winds up hating all of his models because he can't get it up. (When you consider that Anthony Perkins actually was a homosexual by all reports, but then was happily married for twenty years to Berry Berenson, sister of supermodel Marisa Berenson --  well, weirdly appropriate.) 

 So Crazy Anthony Perkins goes really crazy and he and Diana Ross have a car accident, the most fabulous car accident since The Bad and the Beautiful. Classy Old Italian Count appears and carries Diana Ross off to his castle where not only will she recover from her injuries, but she will finally create her fashion line with his full backing. But does this make her happy?

Of course not. Diana Ross goes full diva fit, shrieking impossible demands at terrified underlings. But the runway show does come off -- you decide whether it should have or not. You can also amuse yourself by imagining the exact tone of voice Nina Garcia would use to question "the taste level" and what kind of insults Michael Kors would throw her way...

She looks like a slutty TGI Friday's hostess going to a NASA launch in Liberace's trash bag!

She's a smacked-out Ukranian shut-in wearing Merlin's bathrobe at Donna Summer's funeral!

She looks like an anorexic Sumo wrestler that went to a Bukkake party and rolled in Tang!

Amazingly, these kooky ensembles are well-received. But all Miss Ross can think of is Lando Calrissian's words: "You said they'd be left in the city under my supervision!" Whoops, sorry. Actually it was "Success ain't nothing without someone you love to share it with!" And you know what happens next...

Like so many women's movies of the past, our heroine fights tooth and nail for the career that she desires in a field she loves ... only to realize it's not nearly important as doing that special guy's laundry. And there is no way a lady can do laundry and have a career, so that paycheck, business card and self-worth that's not based solely on relationships with other people have got to go, y'all!

Actually, Mahogany is somewhat similar to Made in Paris, a '60s flick in which Ann-Margret rises to the top of the fashion world, only to give it all up for the right suburban station wagon (No, really, they drive a damn wood-paneled station wagon down the Champs-Elysees and she actually goes for it!). Except, of course, Made in Paris' ersatz Diors were way more chic than Mahogany's raised-by-wolves idea of high fashion and Ann-Margret is infinitely more endearing than Diana Ross. And more believable: Miss Ross deciding her career means nothing is about as likely as Rush Limbaugh joining the NOW and the NAACP. On the same day.

 

Oh, yes. Truly this is a woman devoid of personal ambition.

Although, upon reviewing Miss Ross' design portfolio, perhaps the lesson of Mahogany is to know when you're really, really bad at what you do and should just quit, go back to your hometown and get married... although we all know that wedded bliss with a community activist from Chicago will never lead a girl to a life of fabulous designer gowns.