The Human Centipede (2010)

Filmmaker Tom Six once made a joke of sewing a child-rapist perv’s mouth to a truck driver’s ass. Get it: When the fat hauler would crap, perv dude would get a meal. Somehow that crack, so to speak, gave Six the idea to make a horror movie about a whacky Nazi-inspired surgeon (Dieter Laser) who sews three youth (Ashley Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, and Akihiro Kitamura) together end to end, with the guy first in line. The whole affair is grisly, gross, and warped beyond measure, but Six smartly puts much of the gore and ick off screen and –- in a sly joke that somewhat backfires -- makes the mad doc the most boring horror villain one can imagine. This all comes apart, so to speak again, at the end when fat cops come knocking and the entire medical ordeal finally unravels as beyond preposterous: Mainly hydration and oxygen. There’s too little thrill here, the “Watch your back or else!” joke that forms the “Friday the 13^th” or “Elm Street” series, however campy they might be. It’s all just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  Again, so to speak. B

Sleuth (1972)

I saw the original “Sleuth” ages ago, whilst in college, and remember it as highly entertaining, a wild cinematic shape shifter, turning in on itself repeatedly as a cuckolded old man of wealth (Laurence Olivier) invites the hairdresser (Michael Caine) sleeping with his wife to his home for a cruel game of psychological torture. But the tables turn, and the characters onscreen one-up each other, as do the actors, classic theater thesp versus young hotshot sex symbol. I also recall it being painfully overlong, just one damn parlor trick too much. And, damn it, I hold at exactly that. Seriously, watch this film if you love acting, the way people play at bouncing off each other on screen, revealing -– and more importantly, holding back information -– until exactly the most painful or ludicrous moment. But beware, past the two-hour mark, you as I did, may get antsy and there’s 20 minutes to go. Based on a play, Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay desperately needs shortening. Olivier and Caine are beyond great, I can barely imagine the thrill of being on set. So watch. But squirm. Avoid the remake. B

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored Oscars but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set “Hurt Locker.” In “Zero Dark Thirty,” they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden. 

This is an openly controversial film. It invites scorn and bravado, as does any good piece of journalism. And this is a hard-hitting news piece a la spy/war film. A fantastic, bewildering, white-knuckle thriller, hard to easily grasp on a first viewing, but mesmerizing. In short, one of the year's best, most complex films. A must see.

After we hear 911 calls from that terrible Tuesday over a black screen, we delve for 40-some minutes into the capture and torture or an apparent terrorist at the hands of CIA operatives, as well as the back office paperwork and myriad details of the largest manhunt in U.S. history. The torture scenes hit hard. Our government denies torture ever took place. Nothing happened. I tend to trust the film. Torture happened. The detainee -- one of scores of captured men seen put through various acts of distress -- cracks a peep about a courier for bin Laden. From there a tiny, illusive thread is tracked for a decade by Mia (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field agent who has no other mission in life but to find the Al Qaeda leader. 

Leads dead-end, attacks rock London and elsewhere, colleagues are killed, and Mia is targeted by would-be assassins. It makes her more determined. Mia is an enigma, her inner character only partially revealed via child-made drawings on a wall and a daring taunt tossed at Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), where she declares herself the “mother fucker” who found the mastermind of 3,000 deaths. She also makes a crack at him over lunch, and constantly hounds her supervisors. She is one rocking red head. Angry.

The backlash against this film is insanely grotesque. Many liberals want a neon sign damning torture as bad. Poor dears. Conservatives just hate the idea bin Laden went down on Obama’s watch. Jack asses. Both are off-base, lost between ignorance and delusion, and not a little denial. 

The last hour, where bin Laden -– barely seen -- meets his end, is flat-out riveting in its stark matter-of-fact rawness. Like the great book “No Easy Day” by SEAL Team Six member Mark Owen, “Zero” somberly lays out the cards of today’s reality. Here, flatly stated, no holds barred, it says we torture to get intel, and then we act on it. To save the day, or so we hope. Sure Bush, Cheney, and our current government call it, what, “enhanced interrogation techniques”? A quick note: As with any film, dramatic license is taken, most especially during this climatic raid of the bin Laden compound -- see, Bigelow and Boal have their SEALS talk -- talk! -- inside the chopper as they approach their target, and then on the ground -- shouting and what not -- and that stuff never happens. Silence, always. Any one remotely familiar with Army tactics knows that. Paint ball war enthusiasts know that. You shout, talk, yell, you might as well draw a hand flare to bring on enemy fire. It is a small, but significant deviation.

“Hurt Locker” and every film ever made, including “Lincoln” take dramatic license, add a flare, a chase, a drink, a conversation. It is drama. That does not take away from the case of the film, the depths America goes, and likely has gone in the past, but never debated. Damn sure in World War II, enemy combatants I am sure were ... interrogated to the fullest extent. 

And how does that stack against the terrorists? Have we sunk to their level? Recall the days when Saddam in Iraq caught our airmen, he was beaten and tortured. The U.S. balked. Now we do that, and call it patriotic duty to God. I know people in the Army who have looked me square in the face and say they witnessed it, and it works. Do they not lie, I ask. To get out of the pain? Sure, they say. But you compare the different lies to find the truth. Morality, mercy has no bearing. This is the way it is for them, no questions.

If Iran or Syria did these acts to our troops, bombs would fall. Rage would flame across America. Fact. Hell, yes, it's disturbing to see here, the shit and piss, the man stuffed in a box like laundry. The food games. The dog walk scene. They ought to make any sane viewer cringe, to hate the action on screen. Boal and Bigelow do not allow us to flinch, and we are forced to watch, and see it eat up the perpetrators, and they allow us to maybe, just maybe, see -- most disturbingly -- into the mindset that it is worth the price. 

They do not judge, or comment, or place in mock-shocked characters. They want the anger, the debate. The critics be damned, let them foam. And what happens? They get investigated. They. Get. Investigated. By our Congress. To squash any talk on torture. It is a sick ironic twist of our new American values.

As with “Lincoln,” this is a vital film that transcends Hollywood entertainment. It’s a mirror of our grim reality. And Mia -– based on a real CIA agent, but also fictionalized and combined with the actions of others like her -– is our best hope of a good future. Chastain carries the film on her back, her final scene tearing the lid open on her greatness as the leading actress of her generation. yes, she is an agent, but she is no super spy. She does not pop a gun, kick butt, or go James Bond. Her weapons is her brain, her determination, he eye for detail and language, and a laptop. The new weapon of our day, the laptop.

Bigelow is making the best war films of our time. She is tackling the effects of violence on our warriors and nation, not mindless gun porn. Wonderfully ironic as our military finally allows women into combat, and conservatives blanch hard about old-time values: A

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” is lightning caught in a whisky bottle, a miracle film of casting, script, time, and eerie black and white cinematography that can never be duplicated despite all the remake plans. Bette Davis and Jane Crawford play aging sisters living together in Hollywood Hell, their fame as movie stars forgotten. Jane (Davis) was the vaudeville child star clipped by Blanche (Crawford) who became the Hollywood starlet. Now Jane is a psychotic alcoholic permanently and by choice 6 years old. She walks around in children’s clothing, hair in curls, and giggles like a demon kindergartner. Her only kicks: Torturing Blanche, now paralyzed and virtual prisoner. The twists in director Richard Aldridge’s flick are sick and quick: Jane cooks up pets and rats to drive mad and starve Blanche, but when panic hits, “child” Jane runs to Blanche for help. The film and the actresses pull no punches: Davis and Crawford famously loathed each other and the seething torches every frame right up to an uncertain and shocking finale that will send you right back to the start. Davis is spectacularly grotesque, while Crawford is marvelously panicked. A+

Last House on the Left (2009)

I don’t think I got a full half-hour into “Last House on the Left,” a sadistic, nasty film that takes great lengths to show one teenage girl being gutted and another young woman be methodically raped. With the camera at ground level. I guess I’m not cut out to watch every film. If you can stomach it, let me know how. Or why. No Grade