MY MOVIE SHELF: Soul Survivors

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 176  Days to go: 123

Movie #262:  Soul Survivors

What the ever-loving fuck is this movie? I mean, really. According to my husband, he wound up with it in his divorce, even though he hates it. So why is it on my shelf? Are we averse to getting rid of awful movies?

Over the course of this project, I’ve come across some movies that I didn’t feel the need to own anymore, and I’ve gotten rid of them. To be frank, I knew I wouldn’t want to keep this one ahead of time, but I couldn’t get rid of it yet. That would be cheating. Now that I’ve watched the stupid thing, however, out the window it goes. Sorry about your luck, you piece of shit film.

I swear to God, Soul Survivors doesn’t make a lick of sense. With all the generic rock guitar over the wannabe psycho-thriller scenes, I’d almost think Rob Zombie was behind this, except from what I understand he actually makes quality horror. So maybe Soul Survivors is the brain child of Kid Rock instead. Actually, no. It’s even worse than that.

The hell of it is, there are a bunch of actors that I like in this thing. I’ve never heard of the lead Melissa Sagemiller (as Cassie) before, but all the supporting players of note are well-known. There’s Casey Affleck as Cassie’s boyfriend Sean, Wes Bentley as her ex Matt, Eliza Dushku as her best friend Annabel, and Luke Wilson as Father Jude. I like all of those people, and it kills me they are in this complete clusterfuck of a film.

The basic idea is that these four college-bound kids go out partying and wind up at a “club” that is no more than some burned out building with a lot of oddly dressed ravers dancing like mad (pig mask, death masks, BDSM fishnet stockings and chains and collars, whatever). There are also a couple of nefarious characters there who, apropos of nothing, slit some girl’s wrist in the pre-credits scene. As you do. Then there’s a big car crash and the rest of the movie tries to be mysterious about who is dead or what has happened, but it fails miserably. Even when it says Sean is dead and Cassie is being haunted by him and chased by those murderous dudes and whatnot, it’s completely fucking obvious that Cassie is actually the one dead. Only she’s not! Even though the priest gives her last rites over her unmoving, eyes-wide-open, lifeless body, dead Father Jude visits her in the ether and asks if she’s willing to live for Sean (what the fuck does that even mean?), and of course she is. It’s a miracle!

Then the two murderous dudes show up again, but surprise, it’s a nightmare. And either it’s several years later and Sean and Cassie are living together or married or something after college, or they decided not to go to separate colleges after all because he’s in her bed. I don’t know.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Don’t watch this movie. It’s awful. It’s not scary or cool or smart or interesting or anything. It’s just bad.

MY MOVIE SHELF: American Beauty

The long and the short of it is, I own well over 300 movies on DVD and Blu-ray (I’ll know for sure how many at the end of this project). Until June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #14:  American Beauty

You know who gets absolutely no credit for being great in this movie? Mena Suvari. American Pie came out three months earlier and instantly became pop culture legend, which is why I assume Mena’s performance gets overlooked here — as if people assumed she was just a kid from a teen sex comedy and didn’t have any substance, unlike Thora Birch (playing Jane Burnham), who had a bit more cachet as a serious young actress at that time.

It’s unfortunate, because Mena, as Jane’s snotty friend Angela Hayes, full of profanity and braggadocio, is perfect. She does nothing but throw her weight around at school, reveling in how beautiful she is and how much men want her, boasting of sexual encounters that never happened, pushing the envelope too far to make people notice and talk about her. She fears nothing more than being ordinary and alone, so she clumsily wields whatever power she has, whether it’s speaking down to the other kids at school, or intentionally making Jane feel uncomfortable and inferior, or flaunting sexuality she doesn’t quite have a handle on yet in front of Jane’s father Lester (Kevin Spacey). When Lester, feeling really strong and confident and free for the first time in the whole film, responds to her obviously calculated flirting without fear or uncertainty, she immediately freezes and flees. And later that night, when he tells her how beautiful she is and kisses her, all her bravado has fallen away. As she lies on the couch, her shirt open and exposing her, she cops to her virginity and is suddenly, to Lester and the audience, just a vulnerable, scared little girl.

The character of Angela Hayes is also a perfect distillation of what the film has to say about people. That is, we are all selfish. We are all locked in our own little worlds, seeing only ourselves, our difficulties, our struggles. Our only concerns are with how we feel and how we feel the world treats us, how the world sees us. We are not interested in, or not capable of, seeing how we treat the world. Only Ricky (Wes Bentley), through the lens of his camera, sees other people. Everyone else — Lester, his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), Ricky’s dad (Chris Cooper), Angela, and even Jane — is blind to things happening outside his or her personal sphere. And Ricky’s mom (the always great Allison Janney) is so locked in her own mind, after no doubt years of being emotionally beaten down by her hostile and controlling husband, she almost literally can’t see beyond it.

We are meant to see Lester’s transformation through the movie as a liberation, when in truth he’s just as blind and selfish when he buys his Firebird as he is when he’s still working his office job. It’s only actually at the very end of the movie, just before his untimely demise, that he sees Angela’s vulnerability instead of his own desire, and that he asks after his daughter instead of complaining about how much she despises him. And then he’s gone.

I read once that director Sam Mendes originally meant to structure the film as a mystery, with Jane and Ricky on trial for Lester’s murder. There are still traces of it here and there — the video, the multiple cuts to the people in and around the house (all with motive and opportunity) at the time of the fatal gunshot — but I’m glad they took it out. The movie says much more this way, and I like not knowing what happens afterward, in the wake of Lester’s death, save the desperate collapse of a broken-down Carolyn, hugging the clothes in his closet and wailing with grief.

Someone once told me that this movie changed his life, that it made him reevaluate his priorities and that he’s now a much happier person. I like that. I like to think movies are capable of that. They certainly have always been that way for me. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.