Really, Netflix?

Exte: Hair Extensions

I came into this movie expecting it to do something fairly predictable: to hire only incredibly beautiful women and then deploy a plot explicitly designed to chastise women for all their vanity. It did not do this at all. At all. If anything, Exte was remarkably respectful of the work done by stylists and of the very complex business and social relationships that exist in a salon. The protagonist is an apprentice, and there is no question that she works incredibly hard at many skills: the difficult craft of cutting hair, the constant research and training demanded by ever-evolving trends, even the responsibility of caring for one's clients and respecting not only their investment, but their very personal relationship to their hair as part of how they present themselves to the world. The film featured a large cast of women and did a remarkably fair job examining the salon as a business environment of real value and complex relationships that is run almost entirely by women.

I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "feminist" for Exte; there's a lot of weird abortion shaming. But by the end of the film the lesson learned by Yuko is not that she should be chastised for vanity, but that she recognize the value of hard work and solid relationships, so I was pretty happy with this.

Then there's the plot. I'll see if I can summarize it and if I can communicate exactly where Exte and I disagree on the real crime here. The hair extensions gone mad came from a woman who was kidnapped and used for organ harvest. I know what you're thinking: they harvested her hair for extensions at the same time. Nope. Not at all. I know what else you're thinking: the extensions will get their vengeance on the harvesters. Also no. They are, as far as we know, happily harvesting away somewhere.

Here's what happens: a pervy coroner shaves her head like he does all the corpses because he has a hair fetish. When her hair grows back he decides she's just magnificent, steals her corpse, and slowly fills his apartment with her hair. Eventually he sells some as extensions and things get violent. Finally, he is sliced into three small parts by the extensions and becomes a shoe, head, hair, hat creature that is harmless because he can only scuttle around making small squeaking sounds. [Oh, Spoiler Alert] I tried to find a picture of this, but no such luck.

As far as I can tell, the moral of the movie is not about organ harvest at all, but rather: Don't be pervy.

I watched the movie because I got extensions yesterday. There is something inimitably creepy about having someone else's hair on your head. The hair has a wholly different texture than my own and feels foreign. Exte wholly disagrees with me on this point. There is nothing wrong with extensions at all, unless you buy them from some weird guy.

[Photo: Exte features a lot of tongue hair growth, which I think is supposed to gross you out because of hair-in-mouth aversion. A lot of Exte relies on the viewer being grossed out by hair. Consequently, no one who has ever painted, swept, or cleaned a salon has anything to fear from this film.]

The people from Coraline seem to have another movie coming out. 

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom is shameless, non-stop kitschy nostalgia, and it is a weird nostalgia, because it is aimed at an audience that does not remember the stuff it is nostaligic about. It is a movie for the Etsy generation. An Instagram movie. It may be the Wes Andersonest of all the Wes Anderson movies, but I would not know, because I have only seen The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic all the way through, and neither of them left much of an impression, to be perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest, I may have avoided the more beloved of his movies (Rushmore) because I fear the uncomfortable conversations in which I say horrible insincere-sounding things like, "Yeah, a lot of people like that movie" or "I really liked the shoes in that movie." (I'm terrified of hurting people's feelings, I'm terrified of being judged for my taste. Why am I writing stuff here on a blog about movies...?) 

Wes Anderson: I put a bird on it. 

So I had no plans to like Moonrise Kingdom. I thought I would damage my eye-sockets with all the eye-rolling Moonrise Kingdom would require. However. I was totally charmed by it. I thought Ed Norton's Khaki Scouts troupe leader was funny and sincere and believable. Frances McDormand was great. The sweet naive sexuality and romance were flat and unrealistic in the way a good picture book is. 

What does this mean?

Do I have to turn in my dried-up humorless cynic card? 

SW&tH

What if told you there is a movie, in theaters now, with the following actors in it? Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane. You would think, that sounds like something pretty great, probably fairly violent, maybe a Guy Ritchie crime caper, or maybe some medieval epic, with lots of historical accuracy and very cool costumes. Or maybe you wouldn't think that because you don’t know all their names, but you know these guys.

See? Those guys. Maybe they would be working class weirdos in a Mike Leigh film. Maybe they would be the supporting cast in a new Danny Boyle sci fi movie. What you would probably not think is this: all those actors are the dwarfs in the second weak retelling of Snow White to come to theaters this summer. This is Snow White and the Hunstman, starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Theron, by the way, is a phenomenon. I felt like everyone else understood that this was a silly movie--Chris Hemsworth especially seemed to maintain an ironic smirk the whole time. Maybe that's just his face, or his character. But Charlize Theron, I don't think she knows how to phone it in, and her performance is almost embarrassing because it's too good for the film she's in. Unlike Kristen Stewart. There is an amazing scene near the end of the movie, where Kristen Stewart gives a sort of St Crispin's Day speech, inspiring the troupes, but in that same face-touching, dead-eyed style of naturalistic acting that has occasionally worked really well for her, when she played a sullen teenager. "Iron melts," she growls, in a weird halfway English accent. "But it also writhes about inside itself." I have no idea what any of this means. But I would definitely like to be kidnapped by that band of dwarfs.