Who says there's anything wrong with Margot?

A stand-alone masterpiece. An excursion away from Fassbinder’s marriage doesn’t work melodramas, working-class downers, everyone out for themselves feeding frenzies, and satires of revolutionaries. Fear of Fear (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) has a vibe. It’s light as air and has a propulsion that creates a hypnotically alluring effect of being the perfect type of foreign movie you stumble across late one night and best viewed in the dark alone dead silence. It’s also an understated triumph: his most cinematic work.

     Fear of Fear is a formally experimental woman’s picture tradwife psychological thriller chamber piece with an unreliable narrative. Its subject is identity. The self. Its subject is subjective. Its protagonist is MARGOT (a blonde Carstensen), a woman whom everyone around her constantly tries to figure out what’s wrong with. If you think you know the answer you’re as bad as them. Because it defeats the purpose. I know how she feels. She’s bored out of her mind. She’s desperate to feel anything. Desperate to know what’s wrong with her. And why does everyone else think they know? As in real life. Why is everyone prone to supply a diagnosis that explains everything? Where’s the mystery? It’s in cinema. Through art we have the chance to vicariously travel along a narrative that’s constructed so we may appreciate the unease. Call it mental illness or any other variety of pre-packaged explanation labels you will. I see it as our own personal emotions as interface to our place in our own lives while confronting our own delicately fragile unstable identity. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Margot. Yet everyone else does. And that’s all I meant by formally experimental. The narrative construction. 
     But yeah technically, visually it’s also experimental. Or at the very least innovatively accomplished. Is it even worth mentioning? Sure there’s all the opticals. The shimmering subjective cascade wall surrounding Margot accompanied by chime percussion leitmotifs or romantic swells. And there are the zooms that after a brief infatuation with although seemingly having died away Fassbinder rediscovers with an undaunted fervor that actually fits this thing like a glass slipper. And all the mirrors. Seriously have you ever seen so many mirrors? I’ve always had a notion that the most used shot since the history of movies is a woman looking at herself in the mirror. If anything else this is a film whose figurative theme very well could be a woman looking at herself in the mirror. Since my younger days I’d long fancied kandy kolored Xaver Schwarzenberger works; and the contrasty shadowy burnt hue mixed color temperature Ballhaus after that. But in Fear of Fear Jürgen Jürges achieves this singularly spellbinding palette that feels diffused like watercolor. And what’s up with all those quick right before a fade out dissolves into monochrome? 
     Normally weird unexplainable crap is obnoxious. But never for a second in Fear of Fear. How does it only work here? The subjective shots of Margot seemingly seeing a pov of herself then even sometimes entering the very same pov are motivated and legitimately employed to evoke her sense of being confronted with or delving into the nature of her own identity. And I have a hunch I’m wrong about this but I don’t think the layout of her neighborhood as seen from outside her windows entirely conforms to a spatial continuity. What’s across the street? Dr. Merck’s pharmacy or Mr. Bauer’s flat? Kurt Raab as MR. BAUER is what wins me over unequivocally adore this narrative. He’s this menacing shadowy figure stalking Margot (at one point her daughter sees so we may assume he’s not imaginary) yet also kinda harmless who keeps popping up until the very last scene of the film his corpse is loaded into a hearse out front of his place. I know I know by now this probably sounds pretentious, but I swear it works. He represents something. You feel it. It’s on the tip of your brain. Liminal. You might think he represents Margot having overcome some debilitating mental illness, but you’d be wrong? Because that last frame shimmers.
 
I am so tempted to use the term surreal but alas I’m gonna restrain myself. The logic this thing operates on. Or lack thereof. Like when Margot has visited the pharmacy with DR. MERCK (Adrian Hoven) back home Bibi is putting on her mother’s red nail polish and she doesn’t get mad is maybe code that Margot’s horny. Followed by the attic scene where Margot’s hanging wet clothes to dry and is alternately fascinated and terrified by her own handshadows until she’s distracted by the pharmacy down on the street viewed through the window, the pov she enters mentioned earlier. 
     Margot is trying to break free of a stifling claustrophobic cagey averseness to motherhood and tradwife obligations. First valium. Then adultery sex. Then cognac. Then rock and roll. When Bibi gets hurt at school and is brought home but Margot is locked inside with headphones on jamming out to the Stones all pilled out and wasted we get it. Been there. She just needs to unwind and let off some tension. But in Fear of Fear it’s unfit mother time to commit her consequences. Chill. 
     Again I love and hope that the point of this film is not what’s wrong with Margot. First it’s schizophrenia. Then misdiagnosed. Then depression. More pills are prescribed. And maybe get a job. Find some activities to distract you. Maybe she’s just a woman dealing with some stuff. She’s not suicidal she wants attention. She doesn’t want to get well she wants more pills. She’s just trying to navigate adjust and figure out who she really is to herself. The most astounding part is Fassbinder made a film that shows it.

Why does Herr Kusters run amok?

Losing one’s mind at work and beating a one-percenter to death amidst rumors of impending layoffs is pretty grim even for Fassbinder. Although it fits in nicely with his disillusionment trajectory. And it does get right to the heart of the people and how they’re treated. What they’re capable of. In Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) it serves as the inciting incident in this tradwife domestic melodrama that’s eventually overshadowed by its media-political ultimately anarchist satire. Overall the film’s got its share of problems and never quite seems to work because its ideas get in the way of its emotion or accessible meaning. In other words it’s a mess.

     Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven violates a cardinal rule of screenwriting, which is in order to have an audience care or invest in a protagonist, said protagonist must actively pursue a goal or overcome an obstacle-conflict. Not that there’s such a thing as rules. But clearly in this case this is possibly an example of why the work suffers. FRAU KÜSTERS (Brigitte Mira) getting exploited by the media then German Communist Party then anarchist group after her husband’s murder-suicide at his work are what drive the plot and all indicative of her not taking action but the action happening to her. And what’s the point of it all? In other words it’s a mess.
     Okay there is the ways this aftermath affects her kids that’s pretty good. For one just because anytime Fassbinder has a middle-aged or older parent with adult kids they’re always pieces of shit and that in itself is always funny the way he does it. So after Hermann Küsters’ death HELENE (Irm Hermann slay) has her whiny whipped husband (Frau Küsters’ son) move out because as Helene says, she's disgraced because the paper printed her picture in conjunction with her factory murderer late father in law. 
     But the real treat is the same inciting incident that causes one child to leave brings one back into Frau Küsters’ home. CORINNA COREN (Ingrid Caven) is really the only thing this movie’s got going for it if you ask me. As soon as Corinna hears of this scandalous incident and arrives, the journalist who’s made his way into Frau Küsters home to get the scoop all to himself (Gottfried John) points his camera at Corinna and she’s instantly this thirsty wanton slut opportunist who shamelessly exploits this window to advance her career for everything it’s worth. Why do I love this kind of soulless bloodsucker in Fassbinder? 
     Corinna is presciently timelessly then and now relevant as a depiction of a one-track mind narcissistic ambitious talentless sociopath desperate for the limelight. Is it too harsh to call her a slut? Well if the way her tit is always falling out tells you anything then no. The bit about how right in front of her mom when Corinna tells the interviewer that her late father never let her go to college and her mom interjects “you never wanted to go to college,” is perfect. Crafting your own narrative is nothing new for show people. And although the timing is cringe that’s what makes it so funny. Right after her father has died she decides is the perfect moment to launch her pr moves. Okay yes I feel sad and empathy for the Corinna character more than anyone else in the film though. She’s a bit one-dimensional but aren’t we all?
     When Corinna gets her first show performing at a third-rate cabaret and she invites her mother and brother you have to see it coming way too soon that it’s gonna be way awkward sad humiliating. And it is. Billed as the Daughter of the Factory Murderer in front of an audience that includes her family is the final nail in the coffin of this sad story. Or it should have been. The whole final act with the communists and anarchists goes nowhere. And every time I rewatch Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven I’m never able to process or adapt to the ending. The footage is missing. Spoiler alert. And you get a series of text exposition and some stills as a conclusion. It’s so weird. If it was supposed to be one of those distancing Brechtian effect devices and the point was supposed to be a fuck you to us the audience then it worked.

The entrepreneur and the lottery queen

The lottery could be a metaphor for commercial or escapist movies. Most people know the odds of winning are impossible. But this doesn’t stop those who play from spending their money on tickets because they have hope. I’m not talking about the people who enjoy watching Hollywood movies as entertainment, but those who buy into the dream of rising to the ranks of the rich and famous and beautiful, successful careers, falling madly in love. The people who buy into a life beyond their own that would make them happy. The people’s hope for better.

     Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) takes the standard rags to riches premise and somehow shows having it all while draining it of any semblance of joy or happiness. On target for Fassbinder’s disillusionment trajectory. And don’t think it’s a morality story to make you think about what your goals are and reflect on if they are really worth pursuing. That would be didactic. Fassbinder’s art is to take what we invest hope in and show how much it sucks. And God bless him for it. 
     The one aspect of Fox and His Friends which thus far separates it from any of Fassbinder’s other films is character. Because it has an antagonist we hate. An antagonist with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and who is exceedingly despicable, aggravating, obnoxiously loathsome. And this antagonist as the object of desire represents the attainment of both utter sexual indulgence and acceptance by someone of a higher social order as means of entry into that better life. It all comes down to earthly pleasures. Lust, vanity, ego, materialism. This is what everybody wants? Elsewhere in Fassbinder’s films we sympathize with flawed characters. Except not this time. Not with this villain.
     The protagonist is FOX (played by Fassbinder). Never before in one of Fassbinder’s films has there been a character as laidback, confident, resourceful, and cool for being completely down on their luck. Fox is a carny by trade. But moreover he’s a hustler. With the distinction here being that he’s not the kind of hustler who takes advantage of anyone so much as he lets himself be taken advantage of by others to get by. And this last nuance gets to the emotional core of Fassbinder’s cinema. Fox is the good guy.
 
The plot of Fox and His Friends is structured in the form of a narrative that for us to watch is slow torture. Fox’s friends tell him he’ll draw the short end of the stick. And a plot device which proves most effective is that say you find yourself involved with a woman who really gets your rocks off. And you can’t get enough. Yet you find that she’s rotten and only using you. There’s no genuine affection. Just animal craving. And as she dismantles your dignity gradually and deliberately you begin to lose your sense of self. Why don’t you get out before it’s too late? That’s what’s most compelling about Fox and His Friends. 
     When Fox says “And besides I don’t have much time left anyway,” that’s when this whole anti-fairytale becomes existential. It’s saying in life you can have it all. But once you get it what else is left after all it will have taken out of you, taken from you, except to wander off and die somewhere od’ing on pills face down in some underground station?
 
Other random observations of some stuff I fancy in the film are for one the bickering. That shift from good sex in a relationship can make you overlook and accept anything to gradual diminishing returns and the ugly overlap into neverending petty arguments escalating stress between two people codependent too stupid to admit they hate each other. EUGEN (Harry Bär) with his lying selfish belittling arrogance because he knows he has the upper hand is revolting but is so well designed as to build into a terrifying plausibility particularly by way of all his little condescending ways of correcting Franz. The scene where the couple order in the French restaurant is the hardest to watch. And the “If you’re looking for the sugar tongs they’re in the sugar bowl,” line at the family dinner which sends Franz into a rage tossing the sugar cubes on the floor both have so much emotional stimulation into audience anger using such ordinary material is the height of Fassbinder’s talents.
     And the breakup scene night exterior the way its high contrast color cinematography is so bold it looks like a million dollar 80s music video is too cool in its boldness. That red wall in the background at first. And the way Karl-Heinz Böhm is just silently there as chaperone intermediary in case Franz flips out and gets violent is such an effective component. 
     Finally I guess there’s the way KLAUS (Karl Scheydt) gets out on parole and instead of being this respite in Franz’s suffering he subtly is shown to have arranged some illegal smuggling partnership with UNCLE MAX. Kicking Franz literally when he’s down is also kicking us while we’re down. No honor among friends. Fox and His Friends is cruel. And among all Fassbinder’s other films that’s saying a lot. Although it also might be his most simple, straightforward, most accomplished narrative. And when Franz is lying there and Klaus and Uncle Max leave him for dead, the chilling finality mortality void of it all just when it seems too much Fassbinder gives us that whimsical carnival sideshow music and somehow that little twist is as if to say hey it’s life but it’s not a big deal. Commiserating becomes a celebration. Wait a minute I’m happy through all this? How is that possible? I don’t recall any catharsis? Don’t sweat the technique.

What Did I Just Watch?

Continuing the Wim Wenders series, the second entry in his road movie trilogy.

Shot on color 35mm by the amazing Robby Müller and restored at 4K in 2015 on DCP,  (1975, Wim Wenders) is droll and unpredictable throughout. It's odd.

Falsche Bewegung opens with some helicopter shots of a German town that progresses into the window of one of the houses where the film's star Rüdiger Vogler, who I'm really beginning to appreciate since Alice in den Städten (1974, Wenders), obsessively keeps playing a Troggs record then punches through windows with each of his fists. He lives with his mother and wants to be a writer, so he ventures out into the country on a train in search of inspiration.

None of this movie made any sense to me whatsoever. Yet watching it Friday night I would not have rather watched anything else. I'm still only beginning to really become familiar with the road movie as a genre. But Falsche Bewegung seems to be the best example I've seen of leaving your usual surroundings and encountering different people, who don't necessarily teach you anything although that in itself causes you to live.

Didactic film practices always rely on cause and effect. What's great about Falsche Bewegung is that it's never important where these characters came from or where they're going. So the first character the writer encounters is a girl called MIGNON played by 13 year old Nastassja Kinski (in her first movie and she's credited here as Nastassja Nakszynski). Mignon is really pretty, never speaks a word and is a magician acrobat performer who street hustles with her companion, an old man with a shady WWII Nazi past who plays a harmonica.

On a train across from them an actress played by Hannah Schygulla is drawn into the group. The final member of the group will be a poet played by Peter Kern. I'll always remember Kern as FATTY in Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Schygulla is easily one of cinemas greatest actresses who had a symbiotic chemistry with a director, in her case Fassbinder, that lasted through several films: Von Sternberg/Dietrich, Fellini/Masina, Cassavetes/Rowlands, Waters/Divine. Okay so I know I don't have a strong point to make here, but having watched dozens of Fassbinder movies and loving them so so so much I was absorbed by the nuanced creativity of Falsche Bewegung just because it used some of the same actors from Fassbinder's films, was made around the same places during the same years and is so far from resembling most mainstream more well known movies or all of the garbage on Netflix and cable TV.

Falsche Bewegung is mostly a couple of characters talking at any given time, but it's not dialogue driven. It's all about the people, but it's not character driven. I boil film down to a formula, I've always believed if a movie can nail just one aspect out of plot, dialogue, character, setting, or genre then it can fail at the other four and still work. Falsche Bewegung is a formidable example of the road movie genre and an unforgettable escape.

And again Robby Müller's cinematography painted gorgeous locations on canvasses both rural and urban, highlighted by green fluorescent sources in the nightwork, autumn foliage, sweeping valleys, giant snowy mountains in the day work.

Watching Falsche Bewegung in the theater last night was one of the rare instances I lost complete sense of time at some point during the movie. I can't wait to see where Wenders goes next.

--Dregs

We Must Be Doing Something Right to Last Two Hundred Years

I'd prefer to avoid being repetitive. However, I wish to express again the marvel of seeing a film projected in 35mm in a theater; and, rediscovering a movie that I've already seen on DVD at home several times. It's like time travel. It's like experiencing the same thing audiences did when the film was first released.

When I was nineteen Mike Clark's Movie Madness Video and More in Portland, OR was like being Charlie in the Chocolate Factory for me. It offered the chance to see anything I wanted or could think of. Now there are subsequent generations who have the internet for the equivalent of what for me were the VHS archives. I still enjoy home video. But, after seeing something like some of Altman's work from the Seventies on film, larger than life, it almost makes me want to throw my TV in the trash.

Before Prêt-à-Porter (1994, Robert Altman), Short Cuts (1993, Altman), and The Player (1992, Altman), there was Nashville (1975, Altman). Nashville is the Altman template. Nashville has a prestigious notoriety that caused me to see it on DVD many years ago. I wasn't a fan. It felt bloated, boring, and initially caused me to file Altman's status as possibly the emperor not wearing any clothes. But after returning to Altman's work, I found different aspects of his talent rewarding. Talents I began to realize were featured in Nashville.

As part of a mini-Altman retrospective here in Austin, a couple of days ago I again found myself spending Saturday afternoon alone in a dark theater surrounded by strangers. Quickly, once immersed in Nashville's panoramic, rich, colorful, aurally-assaulting portrait frame, I regretted how it'd taken so long for me to give this film my full attention. The 35mm print was clean, and provided the scale with which I was able to truly engage with the film. It's like the whole vocabulary of shot selection took on a new strength.

The opening credit sequence blasts a radio station DJ voiceover hurrying through a list of cast members as he advertises a greatest hits album that features them while illustrations bombard us front and center, their names scrolling up one side of the screen and the titles of their hit songs scrolling down the other, all to some twangy good ole country and western music. Sidenote: I can't think of any other instant in my life that I've not only tolerated country music, but enjoyed it.

The Altman template I'm talking about uses his large ensemble cast, intertwining plot threads, a satirical focus on some niche aspects of American culture, improvisational dialogue, and typically a limited temporal range, in general. But where Nashville stands apart is the music. There are so many performances, done by the cast, and featured extant.

The opening scene is with Henry Gibson as HAVEN HAMILTON in a recording studio working on his patriotic anthem (which has always managed to stay stuck in my head) with the chorus, "We must be doing something right to last two hundred years." Geographically, the ensemble aren't always in the same place, with the exception of the Airport scene at the beginning and the concert at the Parthenon that ends Nashville. And while many of the ensemble recur popping up with varying degrees of screen-time, Haven Hamilton feels like the lead to me, if for no other reason that he seems to be the biggest star in Nashville and wield the most clout.

Nashville's structure follows its locations. The primary locations, in order, are:

• Airport
• Freeway pile-up
• Hospital
• Haven's cabin picnic
• Opryland concert
• Church
• Race car track
• Parthenon concert

Between all of these there are smaller concerts, night clubs, and like, the boarding house that the Keenan Wynn character runs and the Lily Tomlin character's home.

And the glue that bonds these set pieces together is a technique of mosaic conversation jumping. Often intimate, these nuanced moments are accompanied sometimes by fragments, varying from comedic to odd, but always captivating. These characters all feature in a symbiotic relationship to each other. Altman doesn't play favorites and that is one of his most accomplished feats in Nashville--he's concerned with both those who made it as stars and those who didn't. Fame and stardom is the draw in Nashville, and Haven, CONNIE WHITE (Karen Black), BARBARA JEAN (Ronny Blakey), and BILL, MARY, AND TOM reside at the top, while at the bottom are the parasites that constantly seek them out.

The stars obviously need the parasites. But with OPAL, the BBC journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) as the most desperate, L.A. JOAN (Shelley Duvall), ALBUQUERQUE (Barbara Harris), and SUELEEN GAY (Gwen Welles) a pattern begins to emerge that tends to show how much sex as the currency of the female characters buys them in Nashville. Never one for on the nose depictions, Altman keeps these intricacies graded, with for example, Albuquerque appearing the most desperate and the only one of these women specifically motivated by being a star herself, while not using sex to her own ends. Albuquerque's opposite is Sueleen, who uses her sexuality for what she hopes will be fame until in the heartbreaking surreal scene where she performs at the nightclub and gets booed off and coerced into stripping nude. (It's not easy for me to buy her complicity in that moment.) And to add further insult, when the Ned Beatty character drives her home and propositions her, she sadly amounts to nothing more than a sex object.

But I shouldn't get too analytical here. I mean Opal and L.A. Joan appear as though they have no regrets about all of their different sexual partners and having a good time. They're just drawn to the scene. But another big thread that's set up early and takes time to play out is Tom's (Keith Carradine) pursuit of gospel singer LINNEA (Lily Tomlin). There's that moment when he keeps calling her house when you realize this guy who at first sounds like a harassing pervert stranger is Tom from folk group Bill, Mary, and Tom--and yet further, that Linnea wants him too. This leads to his performance of "I'm Easy," where he dedicates the song to a special lady, and there are singles on Opal, L.A. Joan, and Linnea, each sure he's talking about them.

Next to fame, and sex, there's power. Nashville makes so much more sense than the first time I saw it, as then a random series of vignettes. The opening Hal Phillip Walker campaign voice of God van that keeps appearing is connected with Michael Murphy's character, whom we find out is trying to sign all of the big music stars to perform at a political rally. Everybody needs something from somebody.

Keenan Wynn's (Damn I can't even begin to describe how much of a fan of Ed Wynn and his son Kennan Wynn I am) character generates so much pathos is because he's mixed up in this frenzy and is the only person not eager to worship the Nashville stars, but to get his niece--L.A. Joan--to go along with him to visit his sick wife, her aunt. The aunt dies while L.A. Joan's out cruising the scene, and the last scene of Nashville shows the Keenan Wynn character's desperate search for his niece. And this rounds out for me, just about everything that could have been put in Nashville. And now, I don't feel like it's bloated or boring, but the amazing portrait I'd long ago heard it hyped as.

So along with the satire on fame, sex, politics, there's race (I haven't gone into the Charley Pride parody), and several bursts of comedy. The freeway wreck is silly funny and great. The Elliot Gould as himself cameo is a lot of fun (wow, what a cool shirt). The line BARNETT (Allen Garfield) shouts at his wife Barbara Jean, as her manager, "Don't tell me how to run your life. I think I been doing a pretty good job of it," cracked me up and was spontaneous. Tom trying to score dope, requesting "speckled birds, L.A. turnarounds, uppers?" was neat. And Haven's wife's obsession with the Kennedys is very funny in an awesome, odd way.

Like Brewster McCloud (1970, Altman) before, Nashville's cinematography is never dull--roving long lens work, wide angle authentic location time capsules, and requisite slow zooms give the film its character. Nashville is Altman's perfect mix.

--Dregs

Watch This and Grab the World by the Asshole

A few months ago I had received some movies from a guy who downloaded the files on a drive for me. There was one title I didn't recognize. After I looked it up I learned it was a 1975 Blaxsploitation movie about a pimp who drives a custom-paint jobbed orange Rolls Royce, and that copies of the movie on home video are virtually non-existent (a local video store has an old bootleg VHS, and an inscription that says, "Samuel L. Jackson's favorite Blaxsploitation movie!").

I hesitated watching the movie because Blu-ray and a city that shows and cares about movies makes it hard for me to watch low-res shoddy transfers, if I can help it (often I can't, i.e. Warhol's films). Thanks to the Alamo Drafthouse there was a screening of The Candy Tangerine Man (1975, Matt Cimber) projected in 35mm.

Style is what this movie has going for it.

The genre is Blaxploitation Crime. Blaxploitation isn't really a genre because, like Film Noir, it's more of a feeling, an attitude, and hopefully, acknowledged to be historic. I date Noir from '41-'58. I think Blaxploitation is probably somewhere around the 70s.

I haven't done adequate critical work to call myself knowledgeable about Blaxploitation movies. I grew up watching Dolemite, but that's about it. I do like a movie called Emma Mae (1976, Jamaa Fanaka) that I saw fairly recently. That was some of the best Blaxploitation because of the way that it used real locations and non-professionally trained actors to evoke a vérité Compton.

But The Candy Tangerine Man doesn't transcend any of its low budget limitations in any significant way. Style does go a long way though. The star of the film is John Daniels, who plays The Baron. The Baron is a pimp, but in this film he's glorified and heroic.

Something about the score really stood out. It's so slow. It creates a constant sense of foreboding because of its menacing slow nature, but this also compliments The Baron--he's slow and menacing. The Baron is an anomaly in this film because every other character whines in obnoxious high registers except him. And everyone else are two-dimensional stereotypes but him.

This milieu is so rich. The Candy Tangerine Man doesn't come anywhere near having the verisimilitude of Iceberg Slim's masterpiece 1967 novel "Mama Black Widow," but it does cover the same turf (procuring and prostituting as run by Black people in a metropolitan US city). There is a scene where a rival pimp challenges The Baron: "I ain't into the slave trade," which seems like a pretty hefty accusation, but The Baron (and the movie) let this comment slide.

The big twist in this movie is that The Baron has a beautiful wife, child and home in the suburbs that he visits by day, and who are unaware of his alter ego's profession. So if one were to look at the morals (I'm not gonna dare attempt to say racial politics) this movie upholds, it is clear that it sees the pimp as industrious and prestigious rather than exploitative or immoral. And why not? I like seeing movies from alternate viewpoints, and the rare movies where crime does pay are always  fun.

--Dregs