Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is his last Little Tramp picture and a commentary on the financial situation during the Great Depression. The Little Tramp has difficulty adjusting to the industrialized world as he works in a factory and attempts to help an orphan girl, Ellen Peterson (Paulette Goddard), as she escapes from the police. The Tramp works on an assembly line that causes him to have a nervous breakdown in the film's most famous scenes. Another high point occurs when he sings a gibberish song, "Je Cherche Après Titine," or as Chaplin's version was known, "The Nonsense Song," at the cafe where Ellen works as a dancer. This scene serves as a fitting final tribute to the character as Chaplin's voice is heard in a film for the first time.

Damien Chazelle's Golden Globe award winning La La Land starts slowly with a song, "Another Day in the Sun" and scenario that recalls  Rent as commuters in a Los Angeles freeway traffic jam get out of their cars to perform the biggest dance number. While the average musical fan might relish this scene, due to its expansiveness, with hundreds of dancers and stunning cinematography, I thought it hurt the pacing of the film. Indeed,the film captures the ambience and feel of life in LA, but its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp as Chazelle tries to fit in many influences and references. However, his heart is in the right place as he creates a stylistically stunning tribute to classic Hollywood and the stories it told. The songs sometimes do not feel fully formed either, but that just might be me as my knowledge of musicals is mostly confined to Astaire and Rodgers and MGM musicals.   Despite these minor complaints, I was unprepared for how much I enjoyed the film. When ...

An early Dave Markey Super-8, warts and all, documentary, capturing the '81-'82 Southern California hardcore scene. While not as well known as Decline of Western Civilization or Suburbia , it features live performances from the Circle Jerks, T.S.O.L, Fear, and Circle One among others. While the film does not have a real plot, Sin 34, a lesser known, but equally righteous band, appears in tour footage. While not as interesting as later Markey films like 1991: The Year Punk Broke, The Slog Movie is an interesting document of the period for punks who've seen them all and others just becoming interested in the genre.

Listening to Helmet at the bar Milquetoast 1994 is the key text No one cares, but I sit back, Remembering my youth Thanks, Page Hamilton For the weird time signatures

I never expected Mondo Weirdo to be a black and white art film, drifting between imagery of sadism, sex, and violence. The title made me think it would be like Mondo Cane or other documentaries in the Mondo subgenre, cataloging practices that shock western audiences. Instead, Mondo Weirdo documents a young girl's discoveries of the violent world around her to an industrial soundtrack. Equal parts snuff film, hardcore pornography, and gore vehicle, it is not for the faint of heart. Once I discovered it was directed by Carl Andersen, an associate of transgressive filmmaker, Jorg Buttgereit, best known for Nekromantik , another extreme film, I realized that it was attempting to break taboos and challenge audience perceptions rather than shock. However, its short running time of less than an hour might still be too long for many to stomach.

The soundtrack, which includes The Fleshtones and a humorous Ray Dennis Steckler vibe, is the high point in this third-rate zombie flick in which radioactive weed turns teenagers into low budget zombies.

Rene Laloux's Fantastic Planet is a masterful Franco-Czech animated science fiction film that uses stop motion and cut out animation to tell the story of humans that are controlled by large humanoid aliens on a distant planet. The aliens known as Draags consider them animals, and some are treated as barely suitable pets for their children. Others live in the wilderness and are subject to periodical purgings. When his mother is teased to death by children, a Draag leader finds Terr. He grows up the pet of the leader's daughter, Tiva, and learns from her education headphones. Later, when he escapes he takes them with him and joins a tribe. When they discover that the Draag plan to exterminate them, they make plans to leave the planet. The bizarre animation, which recalls 60s underground comix, Vaughn Bode for instance, is coupled with a jazzy psychedelic soundtrack by Alain Goraguer (I have been long familiar with the soundtrack but never watched the film). The film is heavily ...