Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Something horrible has happened to you. Someone has betrayed you, double-crossed you, committed an act of unspeakable violence against you and/or your family. You drag yourself out of the mud, effortfully pull yourself to your feet, raise your fists to the sky, and devote the rest of your waking hours in the pursuit of the one thing you yell to the heavens:
REVENGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Or, at least, that's what characters in these movies did. I don't know anything about it myself. I SWEAR.
Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004) In the words of Uma Thurman's Bride: "Looked dead, didn't I? But I wasn't. But it wasn't from lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last bullet put me in a coma. A coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a 'roaring rampage of revenge.' I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna KILL BILL." Very few movies make me as giddy from sheer movie-making bravura as Part One of Tarantino's revenge fantasia. If Part Two suffers a bit in comparison, that's only because it focuses more on the characters involved than the action. I still long to see the "Whole Bloody Affair" cut that fuses the two parts into one whole, but it looks like we'll never get it.
Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002) A tale of revenge spun backward: We first see a man getting arrested for killing the wrong man, then watch him brutally beat that man to death, and then slowly learn why. Irréversible is a notoriously difficult film to watch, partially because of the sickening camera swoops and swirls that send the film careening backward in time, and partially because of one particular scene that occurs at the midway point of the film, wherein the murderer's girlfriend (played by the gorgeous Monica Bellucci) gets brutally raped and beaten to within an inch of her life in one unbroken nine-minute shot. This is sick-making cinema, and very much on purpose: There is a background noise with a frequency of 28 Hz (low frequency, almost inaudible), which causes nausea, sickness and vertigo, playing for the first thirty minutes of the film. If you can make it through, Irréversible is a unforgettable cinematic experience with fantastic performances and stunning, inventive camera work.
The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960) Adapted from a 13th Century Swedish ballad, Bergman's masterpiece was the basis for Wes Craven's notorious The Last House on the Left, although the two films couldn't be more different. Bergman's film is, unsurprisingly, focused on the spiritual aspects of the story, and the revenge-seeker's quest not just for revenge, but acceptance in the eyes of God. Max von Sydow gives a typically brilliant performance, but in some ways, this film is almost as difficult to watch as Irréversible - just in a very different, internalized way.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun and games by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling everyone a bit about them!
Well, here we go: This week for Thursday Movie Picks we are leaving the hot hot heat of summer in the city to go off to the lands of Scandinavia, where it is much cooler/more bearable. For those of you who may not be entirely sure what "Scandinavia" refers to (I wasn't entirely sure myself), it is the northern region of Europe comprising three countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (and sometimes also Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands). For most film buffs, this means two things: Bergman and the Dogme 95 movement.
For me, it means one other thing:
You, the Living (Roy Andersson, 2007) Roy Andersson. One of the most unique voices in modern cinema. His films are all very similar: There's not really a plot so much as a series of vignettes with a static camera that have only the vaguest connection to each other. In You, the Living, the connection is the foibles of humanity, and my lord if it isn't the drollest thing I've ever seen! That isn't a word you can use to describe too many movies, much less movies today. I loved every single second of this. The humor - often but not always dark, and almost always played straight - is just right up my alley. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to seek it out and watch. At the very least, it is a unique experience you won't soon forget.
Okay. Now that we've gotten my great love out of the way...
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1958) This is the one. The one that made Ingmar Bergman an international cause célèbre, ushered in the foreign art house era, and launched a thousand spoofs. The thing is, as much as The Seventh Seal has a reputation for being seriously dour and pretentious (a knight of the Crusades does play a chess game with Death, after all), it's actually not. Well, I mean, it IS, but it's also REALLY entertaining and surprisingly funny in large enough doses to counteract the seriousness. The film totally lives up to its reputation, but in surprising ways, which for me meant it not only lived up to its reputation, but surpassed it. One of the greatest films ever made, no doubt about it.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) AKA the BETTER Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. You've heard of this one, right? An investigative journalist gets hired by a rich old man to investigate the forty year-old murder of his favorite family member, and he in turn asks a reclusive hacker girl named Lisbeth Salander for help? If you haven't read the book, read it - if you can get through the first hundred pages it totally sinks its teeth into you and won't let you go until you've finished the whole trilogy. If you have, then you know the story is pretty irresistible, and that Noomi Rapace simply IS Lisbeth Salander. If there is nothing else to take away from this film (a perfectly serviceable thriller that doesn't skimp on the character study lurking underneath), it's that Rapace is a tremendous actress and deserves to be a much bigger star than she is. And that sometimes, it's best to leave films in their native language ALONE.
