VADIM RIZOV'S GUILTY PLEASURES:
HEALTH (1980)
A lot of Altman films have bad reputations, at least among non-believers, but HealtH was legendarily deemed unreleasable; planned for a release during the 1980 presidential election, it didn't play anywhere before it was finally let into a grudging run at New York's Film Forum in 1982; it's subsequently plunged into obscurity, seen only in extremely rare revivals and occasionally on the Fox Movie Channel. A memorably facile regular charge against Altman is that he did little more than cluster people together and occasionally zoom in; HealtH basically is that movie, but if you enjoy Altman, it's a blast. A naked attempt to update Nashville for the 1980 election, HealtH's political commentary is just as weak as that of Nashville, with less density to cover it up. Kent Jones once wrote that Altman's "tendency ... to go systematic" almost killed this movie, but if you enjoy that process on top of little more than a string of verbal and visual non sequiturs (my favorite: a guy in a tomato costume — don't ask — jumping into a pool for no good reason), it's well worth tracking down. Truly a fans-only effort.
KILLA SEASON (2006)
I guess I'm kind of ridiculously humorless, because the whole idea of "guilty pleasures" strikes me as part of the reason people are getting dumber: it's easier to recognize bad material, sit back and mock it than try to engage with anything serious and remotely challenging. For some people, the whole genre of "guilty pleasures" takes over entirely from the non-guilty kind and they surrender. Which is fair enough if you're working a demanding job or have a tough life and don't really care about movies and just want the laughs. But if you have the time and leisure (unemployment induced or otherwise) to want a guilty pleasure that actively challenges your endurance, say hello to Cam'ron's directorial debut Killa Season. Not technically a direct-to-video film (limited tri-state area screenings were scheduled for its release), Cam'ron's endless ode to gangsta life begins with a back-alley craps game which turns into a man getting whacked over the head with an empty bottle for a minor betting infraction, then everyone cheering as Cam'ron pisses all over him while chanting "No homo." Killa Season's main achievement is being consistently morally depraved and technically incompetent at all times. If the amateur videography and dialogue that makes mumblecore sound like the snappiest film noir you ever saw (Juelz Santana: "They trying to take over the block"; cut to random guy: "Yo, let's take over the block") aren't enough to entice you, stay for levels of moral filth surpassing Salo. For sheer grossness, the close-ups of coke pellets being shat out by mules are hard to beat, but less-extreme scenes like the ones where Cam'ron spits on a little girl are constantly forthcoming. At well over two hours, Killa Season will make you question your dedication to unintentional hilarity. Me, I watch it once a year.
TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)
Transporter 2 treats real-world physics with less precision than your average Looney Tunes cartoon. Over the course of Louis Leterrer's film, Jason Statham, when not systematically evading and defeating various goons and hirelings (including a hired assassinatrix who, for good kinky measure, shoots up a hospital in her lingerie — Transporter 2 defeats subtext by being even dumber than you'd expect) — consistently test-drives cars in ways I've never seen. My favorite is when, to get rid of a time-bomb on the car's underside, Statham's character hooks it on a construction crane as part of a perfect 360 that lands him on the opposite roof just as the bomb explodes. But there's also the completely nonsensical climactic fight, where Statham and his Euro-foe (Alessandro Grassman) duke it out, bullets and all, while a plane plummets into the ocean, and even after. With such sublime visions of human possibility, why carp about the real world? There's also a smaller pleasure here: anyone fond of the Europudding productions of the '70s — where a bunch of awkwardly accented actors were brought together into an under-written film calculated for nothing so much as maximum exploitation of every country the cast came from — should dig the awkward polyglot cast. When Grassman hisses (in relation to his evil plot to disseminate air toxins) "That's right. Breathe, my friend, breathe" — well, if you're not amused, I can't help you.
HANNIBAL (2001)
The Silence Of The Lambs is a well-crafted and compelling film, but it's basically kind of a drag: with every year, the sexual tensions driving Buffalo Bill seem a little less compelling and defensible, and the sexism card seems like more of a time capsule. Hannibal, on the other hand, is just stupid. Although Ridley Scott's come a long way since Alien, it takes a truly brain-dead mind to settle on his unique way of expressing conflict. When Hannibal's on, the "Goldberg Variations" play; when his nemesis (Gary Oldman) is chewing the screen, the "Blue Danube" plays. And when they meet, they both play at the same time. Hannibal is mostly remembered for its final gross-out brain-eating scene, but it offers more than that: if the sexism seems a little dated in Silence, the leering misogyny of Ray Liotta here is entirely, uh, Liotta-esque, and the constant shots of Florence are pretty without getting all Merchant-Ivory.
Click Here For More Guilt From Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs & Sarah Clyne Sundberg
Contributor: Vadim Rizov