March of the Penguins (2005)

Luc Jacquet brings us to a place on earth that most of us will never experience, a place totally foreign to anyone living under a roof. Originally released in France as Marche de l'empereur, La (The Emperor's Journey) with French male and female voice actors anthropomorphizing the penguins (would love to see how this worked), the film was picked up and released to American audiences with a slight overhaul of the structure. Of original elements altered, I assume the most drastic was the cut of the euro-trance soundtrack (which I read was awful) and the original narration (how couldn't this be awful?) with the soothing non-offensive vernacular of Morgan Freeman explaining in simplest terms what exactly these penguins are doing.
The film tells of one clan of the determined Emperor Penguins, first emerging from the water after spending 3 lavish months eating and storing brine in their bellies, and their incredible journey to a desolate ice shelf 70 miles from the water's edge in order to reproduce. The reproduction method is a perfect product of evolution, one born of the most extreme temperate conditions and harshest ways of life. This is not a matter or sex and birth, but one of overcoming the seemingly impossible odds in between. Successfully completing the act of birth becomes a way of life, their entire existence and behavior defined by the battle they wage against the very nature that crafted them. The simple act of balancing a single egg between their feet and under their belly becomes one of the most compelling situations in the film, as a fallen egg in the -60 degree Celsius temperature could almost immediately result in a frozen embryo. Scenes showing huddled masses of male penguins who had been balancing the eggs for months being knocked over by 180km per hour winds become so tragic without even showing the lost eggs.
I would have preferred to have had less of a narrative, and more facts about the penguin population and lifestyle. Too many comments are made on individual situations, such as the excess of narratives and scenes on infant penguins being so adorable (admittedly they are adorable, but I can turn to Lisa Frank when I need a hit of that shit). So much information on the life cycle of these creatures is only introduced, without truly finishing the educative process the audience needs. For example, the narration never tells us how many of these breeding clans there are in Antartica (the wonderful web tells me there are upwards of 40 colonies with a total Emperor Penguin population of 200,000 breeding pairs that we know of, and with more assumed to exist). I had assumed this wasn't the only clan, but I'm sure most viewers didn't.
As watching the film, I couldn't help but be aware that the penguins were not the only living organism living on this ice shelf. The work of the filmmakers is the other survival story on display here, as they co-existed with the creatures for 9+ months without leaving until they were finished. The story he tells us is a reflection of his own, as the pain and affection the penguins show when losing a child, or bracing against the harsh winds is emphasized through the human perspective in which it is told. The tagline for the film is "In the harshest place on Earth, love finds a way ", implying that the penguins themselves feel love. While this romanticism of nature is comforting (and following the immense struggle of reproduction and caring for one baby, telling yourself it is love seems to be an accurate description), I don't believe it to be true. The penguins feel sorrow, pain, affection and strength and they live only to successfully give new life to their child - but this is nature. Making love into the primary theme of the entire film comes off as a marketing strategy, as it ignores all the other wonders of this complex creatures existence. This film is not, however, without feeling. The intimacy we feel with the penguins is a direct result of the love Luc Jacquet has for his subject. This closeness with such an alienated species could never be attained without Jacquet and his crew showing the same dedication towards the penguins that they show towards life and birth.

The Devil's Rejects

The Devil's Rejects, a loose and infinitely better continuation than 2003's what the fuck was that identity-confused House of 1000 Corpses, reveals a much wiser, tighter and more psychologically punishing story than the previous entry. Rob Zombie writes and directs again, reuniting us with the Firefly Family as local police, , lead by William Forsythe as Sheriff Widell, surround their quaint cottage and proceed to engage them in a macabre dance of death with assault rifles in place of tiaras. Two members of the family escape and meet up with their father, Captain Spaulding (Sig Haig) to continue their path of careless murder through the Texas landscape. After vanquishing a harmless batch of pop-country performers, they head towards Spaulding's brother Charlie's (Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree - listen for some familiar sound effects) prostitution shack and have a final duel with the sheriff, who has become just as unstable as the very people he is chasing.
When watching this film, you will undoubtedly be aware of the material that it draws from. Zombie speaks a language very familiar to fans of horror cinema, especially gore films of the 70s. Its' nice to finally see a legitimate R-rated horror film again, void of Wes Craven's sitcom characters with tamed down scares and pumped full of blood, explicit language, irrelevant nudity and characters that don't take shit from anyone. The movie moves fast too, taking breaks only to let the plot develop and the dust settle after scenes of torture. With all his influences, Zombie is also aware of his place in Modern Cinema. The Devil's Rejects is at times a tribute to his influences and at times a progressive individual vision in a time of big budget studio films.
The story of the Firefly Family's killing spree is truly painful to watch at times, as on-screen victims are tortured, raped and humiliated at the hands of a seriously deranged group of Texans. There are no compromises made on the audience's behalf, as any sympathy you might feel towards the victims is quickly extinguished by Zombie's relentless punishments at the hands of the leading characters. This brings up the unique perspective given to the film, with the serial killers being the eyes of the film and the sheriff being the pursuing hand-of-god. This lack of consideration towards the conventional format of horror films can be strange to take in at first, but as the film progresses and the audience's sympathies are toyed with it becomes evident how successfully this was pulled off. It's hard to describe the feeling of sharing sympathy for a group of people that just removed the face of an innocent man and forcibly made the wife wear it as a mask, but as your allegiance shifts, you may find yourself appreciating Rob Zombie for forcing you into this unfamiliar moral territory.
While I applaud the movie for taking strides forward for Hollywood Horror, it is definitely not without faults. The Firefly Family, while by no means wholesome, never convince me that they are the same family who, at the opening of the film, rape corpses and keep human remains in their refrigerator. There was not enough on-screen development of their deranged psycosis and total indifference to mankind for them to have been as horrible as their previous crimes would has us believe. I found myself wanting even more insanity and more snaps of violent judgment at the hands of the family to make the characters more consistently evil.
This film is a nasty, heartless piece of horror cinema. The biggest hurdle it overcomes is in turning the alienation created between the audience and the film into an emotional experience. By creating a world in which everyone is inhuman, watching the film is along the lines of watching wild animals kill one another. There are no morals in the animal kingdom, and Zombie shows us that ours may be more maniputable than we had believed.