Screening Log: 8 February 2012

1. Thin Ice (2011, Jill Sprecher) Review forthcoming. [screener]

2. Joe (1970, John G. Avildsen) Well, then. Had been led to believe this was a Rorshach Test, much like All in the Family inadvertently was, w/r/t its titular bigot. But it’s pretty obviously a liberal fantasy about conservatives going to violent extremes. Our psycho anti-heroes even go to a hippie apartment to partake in hippie drugs and hippie sex, which they seem to do expressly so they can announce themselves as hypocrites. The big climax is so ugly, with unarmed hippies pleading for their lives as they’re gunned down, that - and not to sound like a smug birkenstock-wearing pinko metrosexual who hates America — you have to be pretty fucked up to read it as your personal fantasy. Seriously, get help. (Peter Boyle, who is wholly committed to his part, was so justly grossed out by the contingent of fans who whooped during the violence he turned down any violent roles, including Popeye Doyle.) This needed to be more of a satire, which it almost is anyway; the real theme of the film isn’t conservative vs. liberal but class, albeit how upper and lower unite to gun down those outside traditional class systems. Amazed to learn this was an early production of Cannon Films, which sounds about right. [Netflix Instant]