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!
This week's theme was harder than I expected. Honestly, it's far more common for me to think I'll really love something and end up disappointed than the opposite. Simply put, life is too short to spend the time watching movies that I don't think I'll like. That said, if enough people I know and trust tell me something's good, or if a movie becomes such a huge cultural moment that I feel like I HAVE to see it, I will, and sometimes I do end up being pleasantly surprised.
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016) Everything I had heard about this had me fearing that it was going to be a pretentious bore, nothing but watching Kristen Stewart affectlessly plod her way through a succession of pretty clothes while pondering death, or some other such European art film bullshit. But to my surprise, it turned out to be a surprisingly great, if somewhat low-key, thriller, and sexy as all hell. Ozon manages to make text messaging seem like the most stressful thing in the world, and while there is plenty of pondering about death, it's mostly underplayed, and is integrated really well into the whole. And it's ALSO a low-key ghost story, following Stewart's titular assistant/part-time medium as she deals with her fashion-world boss, the death of her twin brother, and being stalked, possibly by a ghost. I was pleasantly shocked by how much I enjoyed this.
Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon, 2017) While I'm fascinated by horror films, they're not usually my cup of tea. Especially PG-13 slasher flicks, which tend to be lazy jump scare after lazy jump scare with ciphers in the place of characters. But time and again I heard this praised as hilarious and clever, and the trailer for the sequel looked like a lot of fun. So I eventually broke down and watched this mash-up of Groundhog Day and trashy teensploitation horror flicks like Sorority Row... and really enjoyed it! No, it's not especially scary, but it's not nearly as interested in its slasher elements as it is in its comedic elements and its lead character, played by Jessica Rothe in a fierce, funny performance that should absolutely make her a huge star (she's even better in the sequel). Even if you're not into horror, give this a shot. It's fast, fun, and REALLY funny.
To All The Boys I've Loved Before (Susan Johnson, 2018) Look, after everyone was raving about how Set It Up totally reinvigorated the romantic comedy and I found it to be unbearably bland and insulting, I did not have high hopes for this other Netflix rom-com about a high school girl whose private, unsent letters to boys she felt intense passion for (one of whom just so happens to be her sister's boyfriend) at one get unwittingly mailed out, causing her quiet, safe world to come crashing down around her. So I was completely taken aback by how open-hearted and warm and genuinely funny this movie is. Lana Condor is an immensely appealing lead, and Noah Centineo makes for a fantastic love interest/obstacle. The film just has a spark that is somehow missing from a lot of the other similar Netflix "originals".
Written as part of the annual Girl Week blogathon hosted by Dell on Movies. Head on over to Dell's site and check out the other entries!
The year is 1977. Susie Bannion has run away from her Mennonite home in Ohio to join the Helena Markos Dance Company in West Berlin. Susie has long been obsessed with the dancing of the company, and its lead choreographer, Madame Blanc - she has studied the company's performances on videos from her local library, and even traveled against her parents wishes to New York City to see the company perform live. She was out of place in Ohio, feeling the need to express herself through the act of dance. Thankfully for her there is a spot open in the Markos Company, as one of the dancers, Patricia, vanished under mysterious circumstances (the rumor is that she was working with an activist anarchist group). More and more mysterious things start to happen around Susie, for you see, this dance company is run by a coven of witches. Yes, in outline form, the plot of Suspiria is the same as the justly famed Dario Argento film of the same name, but this Suspiria, directed by Luca Guadagnino, couldn't be further from that film. Where the original was a Technicolor wondershow, assaulting the audience with the most garish reds and blues you ever did see, the 2018 version has a mostly muted color palette, greyed out in the shades of winter in Berlin. Where the plot of the original sort of tumbles out in the form of a fever dream, the plot here is very linear, and extended to two hours and forty minutes, divided into six acts and an epilogue. And most importantly, whereas the original only cared about the dance academy as a setting, this one puts the dance front and center. And with that, it also throws the politics of the time and place into sharp relief.
Perhaps all of those things put you off. Perhaps that all makes Guadagnino's Suspiria sound like a chore, a piece of homework, a pretentious piece of claptrap wearing the clothes of horror. Maybe that's all true. But Suspiria got me right in the chest. This is a horror film about a dancer's body so scarily accurate that it feels as though it were made entirely by dancers. "When you dance the dance of another," Madame Blanc says, "you make yourself in the image of its creator." That's true. Watch any random episode of So You Think You Can Dance and you're likely to see a choreographer imposing their way of moving on a dancer unused to it. With each new piece you are a part of, you have to re-find your center, re-teach your body how to move, re-set your mind to the feeling of the new dance. It's why some dancers stay with certain companies for decades on end - when you find a choreographer whose movement vocabulary is close to your own, you stick with them, and they with you.
But dancing is also backbreaking work. When you're really in the moment, giving yourself over completely to the throes of the music and the choreography, injuries can happen if you're not careful. Anything from minor injuries like blisters, to injuries that will cause a huge set-back like a dislocated shoulder, to major career-ending injuries like a broken tail bone. There is one sequence early on in Suspiria of just such bone-shattering cruelty that I was thrown all the way back in my seat, eyes riveted to the screen, completely unable to look away. This is what it can be like to put your body through torture, day in and day out, to "dance the dance of another." It is one of the most horrifying, difficult scenes I have ever had to watch. And I loved every second of it - the bravura performance and makeup effects, the downright nasty editing, the blood-curdling sound design... it's stunning. And the film is only just getting started. Suspiria does feel exactly as long as it is - which is to say, very - but I was never once bored or unengaged with what was happening. I was completely involved with the characters and story the entire time. Part of this is due to the actors - Dakota Johnson continues to be a perfect vessel for audiences to project themselves onto, Tilda Swinton nails the mixture of imperiousness and groundedness that marks most great minds of modern dance, and Mia Goth is so easy to latch onto and root for as perhaps the most innocent (and thus, doomed) girl in the company. But equal compliments must be paid to Luca Guadagnino, who keeps thinking of new ways to make uninteresting plot scenes interesting. One noteworthy scene in the middle of the film is a long take of the coven members preparing and sitting down to a pot luck dinner, while a group conversation of theirs takes place on the soundtrack, clearly taking place after the dinner has finished. We never quite see who is speaking, but we don't need to. The soundscape of the film is filled with moments like this, where our ears are filled with diagetic sound that comes from an unseen source, or certain bodily exertions - breaths, laughter, cracking bones - that sound a lot louder than they should. It's some of the most stunning sound work of the year, and Thom Yorke's hushed, droning score complements it perfectly.
David Kajganich's screenplay is something of a marvel, weaving the supernatural elements into a story of different kinds of womanhood and motherhood, of how a ruined society treats women both before and after it falls. A key moment finds Madame Blanc saying that dance can never again be beautiful - a rebuke of the Third Reich's insistence that all art glorify the German nation and its people. And of course, the company's most famous piece is called "Volk," the German word for "people," and it is a violent, aggressive piece of choreography. The dancers pound on the floor and on their bodies, making the piece feel like a primal scream of femininity, perhaps its last.
In the background of everything, the period of Vergangenheitsbewältigung looms large. The process of the German people's reckoning with their culpability in World War II and the Holocaust echoes throughout the film, not only in the company's style of dance, but in the story of Patricia's psychiatrist Dr. Klemperer (played by Tilda Swinton in very convincing old man drag as "Lutz Ebersdorf"), who was separated from his presumed-dead wife during the war. When Patricia comes to him with her tales of a coven of witches at the dance academy, he is dismissive, believing she is talking instead of a rebellious political group who abide by a "constructed mythology." But as he reads her notes, and sees the academy for himself, and eventually becomes confronted with the horror of what happened to the women of his country while he watched and did nothing, he starts to believe that she may have been right.
It's a wholly unexpected thing to include in a remake of one of the most memorably violent films ever made, this melancholy story of national guilt being both weaponized and exorcised by women as best they can, but here we are in 2018, and a lot of these themes are more relevant than ever before. Guadagnino has taken the story of one girl's terror and transformed it into a tale of feminine power rising up from the ashes of a world destroyed by men, both those who abused power and those who watched and did nothing. It is a celebration of what women can achieve when they work together, and a condemnation of those who would seize and abuse power, no matter their gender. Despite its scenes of violence, Suspiria is an empowering film, reminding us of the vital importance of art, and how creation can be an act of rebellion. That a film this violent ends on a note of relative grace is a shocking glimpse of hope, however dimmed, however compromised, but still present. Hope that there is still compassion left, in even the darkest of souls.
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!
OH, technology! In so many ways it makes life easier. But at the same time, it makes it a lot easier for a lot of things to go very wrong all at once. Quite often, I think that we should pay closer attention to the bad representations of technology in the movies, because every day it feels like we're getting closer and closer to the technological dystopias of many a sci-fi future. SUCH AS...
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999) Thomas Anderson is a computer programmer by day, super-hacker named Neo by night. He is obsessed with finding the answer to one of the hacker underground's most mysterious questions: "What is the matrix?" One day, he finally finds out: The matrix is a virtual reality computer program that surrounds him and everyone he knows, making them think the world of 1999 is real. In reality, it is much farther in the future, and the world is controlled by machines we created, who grow humans to harvest them for their energy, keeping them plugged in to the matrix to keep them subdued. And if you needed the synopsis to know what this movie is about, then you must be VERY young and/or living under a rock for the past long while, because The Matrix is one of the key texts of popular culture of the new millennium. Personally, this movie means a lot to me: It was the first R-rated movie I saw in the theater. The ground-breaking special effects still hold up, and the film is still as exciting as it ever was. It's a modern classic.
Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) Computer programmer Caleb wins a contest to have a week-long visit at the luxurious home of reclusive tech CEO Nathan Bateman. But when he gets there, he discovers he's not really there to relax and enjoy himself, but rather to help Nathan test his newest AI robot, Ava. Buoyed by incredibly strong performances by Oscar Isaac, Domnhall Gleason, and especially Alicia Vikander as Ava, Garland's talky screenplay teases out so many questions about artificial intelligence and the role technology plays in our daily lives, that it's almost mindblowing. It's never anything less than compelling, and constantly swerves away from where you think it's going to go. Just as the best sci-fi stories should.
Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2015) Social media is a bitch. I am so glad it wasn't around when I was in high school. Because having to deal with anything like what happens in Unfriended would drive me insane. Basically, a group of friends get together online (via Skype) a year after one of their childhood friends committed suicide after a horrendously embarrassing video of her went viral. A mysterious, unknown individual ends up on their call somehow, and they can't get rid of them. And then the mystery entity starts taking revenge on each of the friends for their role in the suicide. And it's all seen from the perspective of one computer screen. This method makes the film surprisingly immersive (you can see internet history and file contents that fill in character background), but the nature of the story unfortunately means that not a single one of these characters are likable. Some of the jump scares do work pretty well, though.
It's the second week of my 31 Days of Horror for 2018! We got a little bit scarier this week, and I saw a couple of classics for the first time. Let's dive in, shall we?
Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983) So notorious that I had the ending spoiled for me a while back, but it still managed to surprise me. The story of a shy orphan who goes to summer camp for the first time, where killings start happening around her, this isn't exactly a subtle film. To the film's credit, it only half-heartedly tries to play coy about the killer (it's pretty fucking obvious from the jump), but it has THAT twist up its sleeve. The film gains a weird sort of authenticity from casting actual teenagers in the roles of the campers, regardless of their acting ability, and for most of the movie, it's not a horror movie at all, preferring to just hang out with these characters at summer camp. But then, we get to the end, and the film drops this ridiculously huge, film-altering twist, and then promptly freezes the frame and rolls the credits. It's a hell of a way to end things, and turns Sleepaway Camp into something much more than your average slasher: it becomes a heartfelt movie about teenage sexuality and the identity issues of adolescence. And the fact that I can say any of that about a crappy low-budget '80s slasher is kind of amazing, even if it's also kind of dire on the matter of, ya know, actual filmmaking craft.
The Stepfather (Jospeh Ruben, 1987) More of a slow-burn thriller than a true horror movie, but it does have Terry O'Quinn giving a performance for the ages as the titular character. The opening scene is also stellar (and not just because it gives us young Terry O'Quinn in the buff!), telling us everything we need to know about this character: He's fastidious, and crazy, and killed every single member of his family before shaving his face and leaving to go start another life. That life eventually leads to marrying a new woman with a teenage daughter, Stephanie, who doesn't like her new stepfather but can't quite put her finger on why... until she sees him become unhinged in the basement. It's a pretty rote thriller, but it gives us a heroine who is very easy to root for, and O'Quinn is really magnetic in the role, earning his legendary status as one of the all-time great movie psychos.
Hush (Mike Flanagan, 2016) A deaf woman is terrorized by a masked killer stalking her home in the woods. That's it. And from that simple premise, director Flanagan and writer/star Kate Siegel proceed to wrack our nerves for just over an hour. John Gallagher, Jr. is perfect as the eerily calm killer, but Siegel is the star of the show, and she is a heroine for the ages - smart and resourceful but relatably, painfully human. It's an impossible situation - how can a deaf woman gain the upper hand against someone who can hear? - and we are helpless to do anything to help her as she runs through every option available. Hush is tight as a drum, and does a near-flawless job of putting us in the protagonist's POV, even when we can hear what's going on.
Child's Play (Tom Holland, 1988) Little Andy Barclay is obsessed with the Good Guys TV show/toys. All he wants for his birthday is a Good Guy doll, who moves its head, blinks its eyes, and says four phrases! Unfortunately, his shopgirl mother wasn't able to save enough money to get one... but finds a peddler in a back alley who sells her one for cheap. Unfortunately, this particular doll happens to be the one that the Lake Shore Strangler (Charles Lee Ray, "Chucky" to his friends) did a bit of voodoo magic on before he died. His soul is now in the doll, and he is out for revenge against the cop who killed him and his partner who abandoned him. No lie, Andy is one of the most annoying children in movie history, so when Chucky starts going after him, I wasn't entirely opposed to it. The film might have been better if it had stuck with the original idea, where it wasn't clear from the get-go that the doll is evil. But as it is, Child's Play is still plenty entertaining. It's maybe the most '80s movie I've ever seen, in terms of cultural signifiers, themes, and the overall visual look, which contributed greatly to my enjoyment of this as a child of the '80s. The other big thing is Brad Dourif's performance as Chucky. When combined with the design of the doll, it makes for a perfect horror movie villain, making the fact that this became a long-standing franchise not at all surprising.
The Babysitter (McG, 2017) Young Cole is awkward and quiet and scared. He's bullied at school, but in the eyes of his hot babysitter, Bee, he's cool. and because of that, he may be falling in love with her. So he decides to stay up late one night to see what she gets up to after he goes to bed. And what he sees is her and her friends kill another boy as a sacrifice for a satanic ritual. And they need his blood to complete the ritual. This horror-comedy leans HARD on the comedy, and it's a lot of fun even if the constant stylistic flourishes reek a bit of desperation. It's fast and fun, with several hilarious comic performances. And Samara Weaving makes Bee one of the most likable Satanists ever portrayed on screen. Plus, she has FANTASTIC hair.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Clever theme title this week! I have to admit, but biggest fear, still to this day, is being alone in the dark. It's not as crippling a fear as it used to be, thankfully. When I was younger, it could take me hours to go to sleep in my own bed because of how scared I was of the darkness. The darkness is the unknown, it obscures what we know and twists it into something other. It can be difficult for movies to truly capture that, since a large part of the experience of watching a movie is... ya know...being able to see what's going on. But these movies do a good job of capturing the terror of the darkness and nighttime.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, et. al., 1937) In a deviation from my usual modus operandi, this whole movie isn't about this week's topic, or even mostly about this week's topic. BUT, the sequence above is about as perfect a depiction of being surrounded by darkness as it gets - it shows very artistically and VERY effectively how in the dark, things become something far more sinister than what they actually are, and how everything - EVERYTHING - has eyes that seem to follow you as you get more and more lost. This was the first thing I ever remember seeing in a movie that well and truly scared me.
The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999) Sometimes, it's not about the things that surround you in the dark, but the darkness itself. The absence of anything, the inability to see beyond a few inches in front of you. No movie I've seen captures that feeling quite like The Blair Witch Project, which made my entire family so afraid of the dark that after seeing it, it took all four of us to bring one garbage can from our garage to the end of our driveway. By now, everyone knows the story of the three student filmmakers making a documentary in the woods of Maryland who disappeared, leaving only this footage behind (and how the marketing was so effective that many people believed it actually was a documentary). It basically created the "found footage" genre, and has all the positive and negatives one associates with films of that ilk. But as with so many trendsetters, it became famous for a reason, and that reason is that Blair Witch gets down and dirty with our fear of the dark, and what unknowns lurk just beyond our sight and our grasp. And because it knows that when shit hits the fan, most of us wouldn't serve up a clever quip and stand our ground; we'd curse to high heaven and run like hell.
Lights Out (David F. Sandberg, 2016) One of the movies I've seen as part of my 31 Days of Horror this year, and specifically with this week's theme in mind! I don't think I would have survived seeing this in the theater, although honestly the 2013 short that it's based on is maybe better. But that's only because in service of making an entire feature, there had to be, ya know, a story to build the concept around. And the story, which is a metaphor for depression, is a bit too obvious and the film sort of runs the metaphor into the ground. BUT. The scary scenes, dealing with the ghostie who only appears in darkness, are SCARY. Had I seen this when I was younger, there would have been NO WAY I would have been able to sleep with the lights out, which is surely the exact reaction the film was going for.
I'll be honest: I'm not really a horror guy. I've never done well with blood and guts and gore, and when I was a highly nightmare-prone kid I had MAJOR issues with anything even remotely scary.
So I stayed away from horror films for a long time. Creepy, I could deal with okay, but anything really scary was a hard pass, especially if it was a slasher movie. But eventually, I grew up and got smarter about movies and started to enjoy the ones that were good at scaring you. I appreciated the roller coaster ride those films can take you on, the way they build and release tension. I started to "get" the idea of watching them and enjoying the adrenaline rush and the catharsis good horror films can bring about. And I've been trying to watch more of them.
This year, I finally decided to try to commit to the whole "31 Days of Horror" thing that many in the film blogosphere do. My schedule makes it a bit tough, but I'm doing okay so far, and I plan to, if not watch exactly one film a day, then to at least get very close to it. And I plan on doing weekly round-ups of the films I watch, since I REALLY don't have the time for full-length reviews.
Here's what I've been watching in the first week of my 2018 31 Days of Horror, in order of my watching them (titles are linked to trailers where I could find them).
The House With a Clock in its Walls (Eli Roth, 2018) I remember really enjoying this book (illustrated by the famous Edward Gorey) when I was a kid, and this doesn't quite capture the gothic grandeur of it, but it seems to be going for more of the magic/fantasy angle than the horror one. The story takes place in the '50s, where young orphan Lewis Barnavelt is moving in with his estranged uncle, Jonathan. Turns out, Jonathan and his neighbor Florence Zimmerman, are magic users, and Lewis's new home used to belong to a very, very bad warlock, who magically placed a clock somewhere in the walls of the house. That clock is counting down to something not good, and Lewis, Jonathan, and Ms. Zimmerman may be the only ones who can stop it. Aside from the delicious production design, and genial approximation of the feel of great kiddie horror flicks from the '80s, the main reason to see this is the chemistry between Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, who are having an infectious good time with this. It's enjoyable, and has some good kiddie-sized scares, but that's about as far as it goes.
The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2016) Eden and her husband David are having a dinner party. Among the invitees are her ex Will and his girlfriend Kira, and their whole former friend group, none of whom have seen much of Eden or Will in the two years since their son died and they split up. Long-simmering resentments and private hang-ups eventually explode as two new people show up, who are Eden and David's friends from some retreat called "The Invitation". And from there, things just get weirder and weirder. The tension simmers for the first three-quarters and boils over spectacularly in the last fifteen minutes or so. The careful character work of the actors (and the vicious screenplay) twists our allegiances to different characters every few minutes, never knowing who is more reasonable or trustworthy. It's not even really horror for most of it, just a taut, twisted character study. But when that last act hits... MAN does it deliver the goods.
Creep (Patrick Brice, 2015) Aaron, in desperate need of cash, answers an online ad for a day-long filming job that only requires him to drive a long way and bring his camera. But when he meets Josef, the man who placed the ad, it slowly becomes clear that something isn't right. Another one where for the majority of the running time it's more of a character study than anything else, Bryce effectively weaponizes the first-person camera to stage some terrific jump scares, and he and Mark Duplass have a great dynamic together. The end is truly horrifying, but the film doesn't utilize the cat-and-mouse games that are its best asset nearly enough. More of that and this would have been truly amazing. As it is, it's just a pretty neat idea, pretty well-executed.
Dressed to Kill (Brian DePalma, 1980) NOW we're talking! The opening sequence of this, featuring Angie Dickinson in a museum, is just stellar - a nearly nine-minute sequence with almost no dialogue. And then that woman with the razor shows up and slashes the movie into high gear. It's all a pretty overt Hitchcock homage (so overt that Hitch himself called it "fromage" instead), but it's a damn good one, updating Hitch's pet themes and tricks to a current setting and going even more dark and twisted. I don't want to give away too much of the film's plot, because it's a really fun ride that is best experienced as cold as possible. It's a nasty piece of work, and isn't exactly good for LGBTQ issues (especially at the time), but as with most of DePalma's films, it's super stylish and a hell of a ride.
Boo! A Madea Halloween(Tyler Perry, 2016) In case it wasn't already clear, yes, I'm working my way up to the scarier stuff. This one is MUCH more of a comedy than I was expecting, focusing mainly on putting the core group of old people together and letting them bounce off of each other. And I'll admit: I laughed. I laughed more than I probably should have. There's more than a hint of minstrelsy to Perry's Madea, but... when they have an extended conversation about literally beating some sense into today's teenagers, their commitment to the bit and how far they go over the top is HILARIOUS. The basic story is that one Halloween night, Madea has been called upon by her nephew to keep an eye on his seventeen year-old daughter Tiffany, to make sure she doesn't go to a local frat party. Naturally, Madea brings along her best friend Bam, her brother Joe, and their friend Hattie. Tiffany sneaks out, but when Madea calls the cops on the frat party, Tiffany enlists her friends and the fraternity brothers to play some good old-fashioned Halloween fright pranks on the old folks. It's not great. The horror elements are well-done but bland, and Madea freaking out and punching the thing that scares her in the face can only save it so many times (although to be fair, it works FAR more often than it should). It's nice to have a horror-comedy that leans more on the comedy side, but a few more legit scares would have gone a long way.
House of Usher (Roger Corman, 1960) The first of eight films Roger Corman made adapting the works of Edgar Allen Poe, this one based on the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". It is about a brother and sister who are the last of the Usher family. Brother Roderick believes the family bloodline to be cursed, and will not let sister Madeline marry her betrothed, who has come to the Usher estate to bring her home with him. I love a good Gothic, and HOO BOY this is one. Heavy with atmosphere, gorgeous production and costume design, with lies and secrets as thick as the fog that chokes the crumbling house where the action takes place. It's never more deliriously over the top than in a mid-film dream sequence that just knocks everything out of the park. This is the most subdued I've ever seen Vincent Price, and the thing often does feel as airless as that house surely must, but this sort of thing is so right up my alley that I didn't much care.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come play with us! All you have to do is pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them.
Yes, it's true! At long last I have returned to the land of the living, having finally recovered from the big apartment move. I was so exhausted the past couple of weeks that I don't know how i managed to stay awake most days, but I'm finally all moved in and unpacked in my new place (save for some books that need a place to go - I have so much more space I don't know what to do with it!), and it feels GREAT! I love my new apartment something fierce and I'm so glad to be getting back to "regular life" stuff like my blog.
And speaking of moving into a new place and taking up residence there: BODY HORROR. This week's Thursday Movie Picks theme. I'll be honest. Body horror isn't really my thing. I don't do well with creepy crawlies and gore. That being said, there are some movies that I LOVE that do kinda fall into this horror subgenre. Bear with me, as you consider....
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014) If you've seen this, you know exactly why it's here. If not, you may be confused as to how a movie about an alien with Scarlett Johansson's body seducing men for unknown nefarious purposes fits into body horror. Well, except for one scene, it's mostly subtext. What plot there is in Under The Skin concerns itself with, more than anything, this alien creature coming to grips with her outer shell of a body and what it means to be human. But this is NOT a movie that is very concerned with such silly things as "plot" - Glazer is more concerned with images and what they can do, how they can tell a story with only the barest bones of dialogue. Make no mistake: This is a slow burn of a slow burn movie, but it is so utterly hypnotizing that it remains one of my favorite theater-going experiences. If the gorgeous, frame-worthy images don't draw you in, then Mica Levi's haunting experimental score will. Under the Skin, especially that score, burrowed its way deep into my subconscious on first viewing, and has yet to make its way out. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007) You know all those stories about how mothers find superhuman strength when their babies are in danger? Well, what if a teenage Christian abstinence group spokesperson did something similar when a man tried to get near her lady parts? Well, that's what happens to Dawn (a star-making performance from Jess Weixler) - after a friend tries to rape her, her vagina sprouts teeth and... well... you can guess what happens from there. This black-as-pitch comedy follows Dawn's journey to owning her womanhood in a new, exciting way. It's kinda gross, kinda scary, and pretty damn funny - a true underseen gem.
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) If you don't think this falls under body horror, then you've never been a dancer. By now, I'm sure you know the plot: Technically proficient but emotionally stunted dancer Nina (Natalie Portman in an Oscar-winning performance) wins the coveted lead role in her ballet company's production of Swan Lake. She perfectly embodies the virginal white swan, but has trouble with the more aggressive, sexual black swan, and her anxiety manifests in increasingly baroque, scary ways, especially after free-spirited company member Lily (Mila Kunis, perfectly cast) is made her alternate. A psychosexual thriller set in the ballet world starring Natalie Portman and directed by Darren Aronofsky... and with Barbara Hershey as Nina's terrifying stage mother? Yes, this movie was clearly made in a lab just for me, and this is one of very few movies that surpassed my impossible-to-keep-down expectations. The entire thing is ingeniously shot, edited, and scored, with tremendous performances from everyone. Yes, my friends, Black Swan is, in a word, "perfect."
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves, in which participants pick three films that fit the week's theme and share a bit about them. Join us! It's fun!
Halloween Month continues on Thursday Movie Picks, and this week, we're talking Creature Features. Now, for purposes of this assignment, said "creatures" may NOT include: werewolves, vampires, zombies, or aliens. So, in other words, no extraterrestrial or supernatural creepy-crawlies. OK. Let's see if we can do this....
Them! (Gordon Douglas, 1954) Probably my favorite classic '50s creature feature, Them! is the one with the giant ants. During the height of the fears of nuclear fallout following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many B-movies exploited the mood, crossing people's ordinary everyday fears with the timely fears of science. I think Them! pulls it off the best, especially since the giant ants don't look too fake. I mean, don't get me wrong, they don't look REAL, but they don't look as far away from it as you might expect. It's just a corny, cheesy, campy, good time all around!
Creature From the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954) A fossil has been discovered in the Amazon - a possible link between man and fish. When a team goes to find the rest of the creature's skeleton, they discover that one of the creature's descendants is still alive and well - and it's coming for them! This definitely isn't the best of the classic Universal Monster Movies, but it's still fun in its way - that way that old pictures had of going "over the top" in exactly the right ways to be fun. It's a movie meant to be enjoyed with the lights off, sitting next to your date, with a big bucket of popcorn between the two of you, as you both laugh, jump, and gasp at the exact same moments.
Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984) Aw, look at that sweet little furball! Cute isn't he? He'd make a great pet, wouldn't he? There's just one slight problem.... if you get him wet, he'll multiply, and if you feed him or his offspring after midnight... well... let's just say all hell could break loose. Gremlins is hilarious fun, sending up American consumerism, dependence on technology, and old-school creature features (like my two other picks this week), and countless other things with gleeful abandon. Slightly scary and plenty funny, this is a near-perfect horror comedy, and one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies.
It's that time of year again, folks! Time for Dell On Films's Against the Crowd Blogathon - this year co-hosted by KG (of KG's Movie Rants). In case this is your first time hearing about it (this is the THIRD ANNUAL blogathon), the rules as laid out by Dell are like so:
1. Pick one movie that "everyone" loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have a score of at least 75% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you hate it.
2. Pick one movie that "everyone" hates (the more notorious, the better). That movie must have a score of less than 35% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you love it.
I had a hard time finding movies for the second part of this last year, and this year, I had a hard time finding movies for the first part. Go figure. Anyway, I wanted to come up with something a BIT more universally beloved that I hated, but discussion of this movie happened to come up recently thanks to Thursday Movie Picks and, well, let's just say I had something to get off my chest...
I HATE David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Sorry 'bout it.
But also, #SorryNotSorry.
I can at the very least concede that formally, on the level of pure technique, this is hardly a terrible movie. In fact, the cinematography in particular has a lot going for it, as does the score. But at the basic levels of construction and character, Fincher and his team make a couple of absolutely terrible decisions that the film simply cannot recover from. The first is also arguably the best part of the movie:
Fantastic, right? OF COURSE IT IS. David Fincher got his start making music videos, so it shouldn't be a shock that he can make a fantastic opening credits sequence that can stand completely apart from the movie it introduces (a trick he also pulled on Se7en). But that's actually a huge problem for the movie that follows. As anyone who's read the Steig Larsson novel will tell you, the first hundred or so pages are a SLOG, an endurance test of slowly advancing plot and character development before we even get to the mystery at the center of the narrative. So putting a sequence with this much energy right at the front of the film sets an impossible bar that the film by its very nature can't even begin to climb over until it's a third of the way through - and it's a LONG movie - and even then, won't really reach until the climax. It's a lie, a promise of things that aren't going to come, and amazing as it is, it's an awful choice.
The second thing, and I fully expect to get some pushback for this (and PLEASE DO, as long as you can refrain from nastiness), is the film's treatment of Lisbeth Salander and Rooney Mara's portrayal of her.
By the time Fincher started making The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the entire Millennium Trilogy had become a publishing sensation, and the original Swedish film had become as big of a hit as any movie with subtitles is allowed to become these days. Lisbeth Salander, the reclusive genius computer hacker at the center of Larsson's novels, had already become a bit of a cultural phenomenon in her own right. And so Fincher does what Hollywood does best: He cast a relative unknown in the role and gave her entrance in the film one hell of a big build-up, following her from behind as she walks into her office building while her boss talks her up on the soundtrack, and then shoots her entire first dialogue scene from far away, so she's completely isolated one side of the frame. Great sequence, right?
WRONG.
The sequence is ENTIRELY WRONG for the character, and it sets the stage for what is essentially an act of character assassination. In the books, Lisbeth has issues - a full subscription's worth - but she's also a strong, independent woman. She may get abused by some men in her life, but she is never EVER a victim. She is smart, resourceful, and when she is wronged, she takes her time planning her vengeance... but she's NOT a superwoman. She's not larger than life. She simply IS. As set up by Fincher and as played by Mara, though, Lisbeth becomes an all-caps CHARACTER. Not quite to the point of "look at this freaky girl! Isn't she a FREAK? But a LOVABLE ONE?" but pretty damn close. And in the film (and novel)'s most gut-wrenching scene, Lisbeth's rape at the hands of her guardian, Fincher makes no mistake that his camera views her as the ultimate victim (who later becomes a variation on the "woman scorned"), and Mara responds in kind. It's not a bad performance, but it's an utter betrayal of the character Larsson wrote in the book, lacking the subtle dimensions of the page and, it must be said, the Swedish film and its star-making performance by Noomi Rapace.
Look, I'm all for adaptations of books and plays and even other movies ACTUALLY ADAPTING the source material, but at a certain point it becomes a different piece entirely, and Fincher's film is one of the worst offenders of this that I've seen. It's dumbing down a character that the audience already knows and loves in a really base, insulting way, and I honestly thought that David Fincher would have known better.
So, in short, after that energetic blast of an opening, the film is a (well-shot and scored) slog, and its central performance is completely misjudged.
Neither of which are problems that plague my second choice of movie for this project...
I LOVE Jerome Sable's Stage Fright
Yes, I do! And not even in a guilty pleasure way.
Look, I fully acknowledge that a musical comedy/slasher flick hybrid is going to have some tonal issues to overcome right from the get-go, but... well... this movie tackles them pretty much as well as they could ever be tackled, by setting itself up as a spoof.
And yeah, that's pretty much the easiest way to deflect any criticism of your bad movie (to set it up as making fun of bad movies), but Stage Fright is just so winning, thanks to an incredibly game cast (including Meat Loaf and Minnie Driver) and REALLY clever songs:
I mean, COME ON. That's HILARIOUS. And really sweet and sincere at the same time.
As you might have guessed, Stage Fright takes place at a summer musical theater camp, where sweet young ingenue Camilla Swanson works in the kitchen with her brother Buddy. The main production at camp this year is The Haunting of the Opera, a Phantom of the Opera knock-off musical made legendary by the grisly murder of its star (Driver) on opening night, by an assailant who wore the mask of the play's main villain, the Opera Ghost, and has never been performed again.
And as you might have guessed, our heroine just so happens to be that star's daughter, ten years after her mother's murder, and as you might have guessed, she auditions for the play and (as you might have guessed) gets cast in her mother's role, much to the chagrin of the camp's owner (Meat Loaf), who, as you might have guessed, was her mother's lover. AND, as you might have guessed, this new production gets a haunting of its own - by a killer who hates musicals and sings exclusively "heavy metal" songs.
The film had me right off the bat with its opening title card: "The following is based on true events. While the names have been changed to respect the victims and their families, the musical numbers will be performed exactly as they occurred." Perfect. Just a subtle enough hint of the tone of what's to come after the more straight horror opening. And from there, all the film's disparate elements are brought together REALLY well in set-piece after set-piece, blending together horror, comedy, and good-to-great songs almost perfectly. It is a loving throwback to 80s slasher flicks and to movie musicals, playing to the conventions of both in (amazingly) groaningly obvious ways... BUT THAT'S THE POINT.
No, Stage Fright isn't GREAT cinema. And no, it may not even be GOOD cinema. But it's made with a clear love for two genres that couldn't be farther apart and manages to bring them together far better than it has any right to. Add in some winning performances (and some perfectly teen-in-an-80s-slasher-flick BAD performances), and you have a really enjoyable movie that will leave you recommending it to all the friends who have the exact same taste in movies as you do.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You should join in the action by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them - it's easy and fun!
This week on Thursday Movie Picks: THE INTERNET. Meaning, the thing that I'm writing on, and you're reading on at this very moment.
Well, I'm writing now, and you're reading in the future.
Wait. Or you're reading now, and I'm writing in the past?
Is this how time travel starts?
Anyway, there's one very specific movie about the internet that I'm sure everyone will pick this week, because blah blah blah GREATEST MOVIE EVER yadda yadda yadda.... and I just don't feel that way about it, so.... I'm just not going to pick it.
So there.
Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2015) Cyberbullying, meet the found-footage horror film. Unfriended is completely ridiculous, and honestly not all that scary, BUT when watched late at night, with the lights off, on your laptop.... it really does become almost unbearably creepy at points. The premise - a group of friends chatting via Skype become haunted by a malevolent ghost in the machine, possibly their friend who recently committed suicide after an explicit video of her was posted on Facebook - is kind of genius, and if you want an idea of what the youth of today are up to when no one's looking, this is pretty hard to beat. But... a great idea does not make a great movie.
We Steal Secrets (Alex Gibney, 2013) I mean, you COULD bother with Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, but other than Benedict Cumberbatch.... WHY? Especially when you have the real thing right here? Gibney's incredibly engrossing documentary wades deep in the moral muck surrounding the website WikiLeaks and its divisive founder, Julian Assange. It's fascinating, depressing, and deeply, deeply cynical all at once. An essential film for anyone currently living on planet Earth.
Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2010) OH, the lengths to which I will go in order to NOT pick THAT movie this week, ladies and gentlemen! I know what you're thinking. "This movie isn't about the internet, it's about cooking!" To which I can only say, "Well, yeah, but it's ALSO about BLOGGING about cooking!" I don't know that Julie Powell was the first celebrity blogger, or the first to have her blog lead to a book deal, but Ephron's deliciously entertaining trifle is as much about being a blogger as it is about being a chef, or being a woman, or being an American abroad. And as such, it really feels like the best possible choice for a blogger to pick when picking films about the internet!
I hate to say it, but it's true. From September through December so many more films I'm interested in seeing come to theaters and it's so difficult to see them all. So it's taken a while for me to see all the films I wanted to see. I wanted to get them all in before the Oscar nominations, so I could be appropriately appalled when such-and-such film wasn't nominated in such-and-such category, but that didn't QUITE happen. These are the ones I managed to get in before that point that ended up not factoring into the awards conversation, in rough order from most to least recent viewing.
Tangerine - The trans hooker comedy shot entirely on an iPhone that by now I'm sure you've all heard about, Sean Baker's film demands to be seen. Tangerine is raucous, riotous fun, but also a bit shrill. It immerses itself in a pocket of culture
that operates in a register so high-pitched that it's a wonder it isn't
only audible to dogs, but plays into it - and against it - perfectly.
The undercurrent of loneliness and melancholy (slight but still present)
grounds the film and improves it immeasurably. The performers are so natural that it almost feels like a documentary at moments. Ultimately slight, but punk
in a way that feels vibrant and necessary - this is completely unlike anything
else you're likely to see this year or next. Mya Taylor deserved a slot in that godforsaken Best Supporting Actress category.
Ballet 422 - The thing is, this is basically my jam. A fly-on-the-wall look at the creation of a new ballet for the New York City Ballet choreographed by one of its own dancers. This is so up my alley, how could I not love it? Justin Peck is a brilliant choreographer and a member of the NYCB corps de ballet (or ensemble or chorus or whatever you want to call it), and Jody Lee Lipes had unprecedented access to him and the NYCB during the creation of his first ballet, the 422nd piece of repertory in the company's history. The lack of context for just about everything may make this a bit confusing for non-dancers/arts
professionals, but as a (beautifully shot) fly-on-the-wall-style documentary, it just about
can't be beat. However, there is a real lack of tension that lets it down a
bit, and the lack of interviews leads to a poorly-illuminated creative
process. The very last scene, though, brings the difficult life of artists in general, and dancers in particular, to light in a beautiful way.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief - As with most Alex Gibney documentaries, you pretty much know going in if this is going to be for you or not. So again, I was sort of predisposed to like this one. It is a bit didactic, perhaps, but it's also illuminating on several levels. Gibney gets to the
heart of not only what Scientology's roots are, and what it is
currently, but why someone would be drawn in, and why they would leave, which makes for some pretty fascinating viewing in spots.
He is of course helped by utterly believable interview subjects and unbelievably,
ridiculously crazy/scary footage of the church's big annual gathering. I'm almost surprised this didn't make the Best Documentary nominee list. Almost.
I'll See You In My Dreams - Blythe Danner's lovely performance has gone completely overlooked this awards season, and that is a damn crying shame. Few dramas are this clear-eyed and modest in ambition yet so perfectly executed in that vein - and even less about senior citizens. There's not a thing I didn't like about this engaging, quietly affecting
little gem of a film. Even while sort-of half-watching it, it pulled me
in and accumulated poignancy all the way through, leaving me misty-eyed
and smiling. It's also a damn crying shame that the title song, which fits in so perfectly well with the rest of the movie, at a key moment, isn't an Oscar nominee. That category is always screwed up, but still.
Tom at the Farm - Strange, insinuating little thriller that, despite wearing its
influences on its sleeve, constantly goes in surprising directions. The basic story is this: Tom, a city boy in every way, goes to the country for his partner's funeral, only to find that the family doesn't know their dearly departed was gay. Except for his brother, who goes to great lengths to keep up a fantasy for his mother and forces Tom to play along. The brilliance of Xavier Dolan's film adaptation of the stage play by Michael Marc Bouchard is to make the inner dialogue of many gay men external through a menacing force. I
have a feeling it would make an interesting double feature with
Stranger by the Lake for that reason. It's slightly unsatisfying as a whole -
probably because it doesn't really end well - but it's a good ride.
Crimson Peak - How on earth Guillermo del Toro's gorgeous gothic romance didn't get included in the Oscar nominations for Production Design and Costume Design is beyond me. That said, they're pretty much the only things worth seeing Crimson Peak for. Though the film goes to great lengths to remind us that this is a "story with a ghost in it" as opposed to a ghost story, it doesn't ever go far enough with even its most basic conceits for me. I kept wanting more of just about everything the film was giving me, which is sometimes a compliment but not in this case. The idea of a house so old and precarious that it sometimes functions like a living thing is brilliant, and almost nothing is done with it (we don't even get to the title house until the halfway point of the film). The florid camerawork and design elements are certainly worth seeing, but ultimately this did nothing for me, and coming from this creative team, that was disappointing.
Trainwreck - This was my family's choice for pre-Thanksgiving viewing (I tried to get them to watch Inside Out, but the resistance to "cartoons" is strong in some people), and it plays perfectly fine at home, which is totally unsurprising coming from Judd Apatow. Amy Schumer is now a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood, and good for her because she's a funny, funny lady. HOWEVER. This was a perfectly average rom-com in every way. Just because you have a guy doing the chasing doesn't mean you've done something unique or even praise-worthy (it's been done before, and better). I laughed, sure, but most of these jokes have been told before and the sense of diminishing returns was all over this. Needed approximately 72% more Tilda, an absolute hoot as Amy's men's mag boss.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us - I promise we won't bite - by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.
Quick and dirty this week, as I haven't really seen many films involving werewolves.
The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941) What's most surprising about this Universal monster movie is that the titular beastie doesn't really appear for much of it. But Claude Rains and Lon Chaney, Jr. give the film the gravitas it needs to work on a level deeper than the script displays on the surface.
Teen Wolf (Rod Daniel, 1985) An essential piece of '80s pop culture, this undeniably fun Michael J. Fox-starrer works much better as a teen flick than a horror, even a horror-comedy, film.
Cat People (Val Lewton, 1942) Val Lewton was the king of doing a lot with a little, and Cat People is a perfect example of that (so much so that I'm not entirely sure it really fits this week's theme). We never see the mysterious monster stalking poor Simone Simon, but this is the genesis of that old horror trope "the person walking alone at night who hears something walking behind them that stops when they stop," and damn if it isn't effective.
Written for the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. It's SPOOKY for the month of October! Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.
For this week's Halloween Special Edition, the theme is Asian Horror. I will fully admit, I have not seen a whole lot of horror films in general, let alone ones from Asia. HOWEVER, I have seen just enough to have some to pick from. God bless the Criterion Collection, which introduced me to most of these. Since a bunch of people said they weren't going to participate this week due to their lack of knowledge of Asian horror, I've gone the extra mile and picked four instead of three this week.
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953) Based on two Japanese folk tales, Ugetsu is one of the most beautiful, restrained ghost stories ever put on film. It takes place during the Civil Wars of 16th Century Japan, where two ambitious peasants leave their little village to make their fortunes. The potter Genjuro wants to sell his wares to the wealthy while his brother-in-law Tobei wants to become a samurai. After their village is sacked, they decide to take their wives with them to the city, but soon Genjuro sends his wife back to the village, telling her he will return soon. Eventually the two men get what they want, but the price they have to pay...
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) Kobayashi's masterpiece tells four ghost stories (the title actually translates to ghost story). The first ("The Black Hair") is actually similar to that of Ugetsu, but the ending is more scary than sad - a man divorces his wife to live with a wealthier woman in the big city, but finds himself even more unhappy in his second marriage. He leaves his second wife and returns to his first, only to get quite the rude awakening after spending the night with her. The second ("The Woman of the Snow") involves an ice ghost who freezes men to death and bleeds them dry. The third ("Hoichi The Earless") is about a blind musician who is so talented that the underworld comes calling. And the last ("In a Cup of Tea") is based on an unfinished story about a soldier who sees a ghostly reflection in the titular drink. To call this film stunningly gorgeous is to do it a disservice. It is right up there with The Red Shoes as one of the most beautiful films ever made.
Io Island (Kim Ki-Young, 1977) The titular island is one straight out of legend - women rule and all the men who arrive mysteriously disappear. So of course a developer wants to build a tourist resort there and sends someone to investigate the strange happenings. It's sort of like a Korean version of The Wicker Man, except stranger.
House (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) This is without a doubt the weirdest fucking movie I've ever seen. If you ever need proof that everyone in the 70s was high as fuck on every drug available, just point to this nearly indescribable movie. The plot is fairly basic: Seven Japanese schoolgirls (sporting such on-the-nose names as Gorgeous, Melody, Prof and Kung Fu) go on a trip to Gorgeous's aunt's house in the country for summer break. Neither the aunt nor the house are anything like what they seem. Except that how the story is told is... well... just watch the trailer. It'll give you a pretty good idea of the utterly bizarre insanity on display. Words simply cannot describe this one. It needs to be seen to be believed.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us (ONE OF US... ONE OF US....) by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them! We regular participants don't bite.... HARD....
Continuing the special October Halloween Edition of Thursday Movie Picks, this week's theme is Villainous Children. There are only so many films with actual CHILDREN as the villains, so I stretched a bit for one of them instead of picking two of the really obvious ones. And there was another that I really REALLY wanted to pick, but to do so would completely spoil the end of the movie. So without further ado, here are my eeeeeeevil picks.
Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960) One day, all the inhabitants of the village of Midwich, England, fall into a deep sleep in the middle of the day. Some months after they all wake up, all the women of childbearing age are pregnant, and they give birth rather fast, all to beautiful blond-haired children, who have some strange characteristics. Including being able to control the minds of the adults around them. This is one of the creepiest little films I've ever seen - very much a British B-movie from 1960, but incredibly well-acted and well-shot. There's a reason it's become a classic.
Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) Eli is a sweet little pre-teen just like any other. And she's very sweet to poor little bullied Oskar. But just what is it she and her elderly caretaker do out late in the evenings? The truth is quite chilling, and not just because Alfredson's future classic takes place in a seemingly perpetual winter. This is an absolutely first-rate horror film. So of course Hollywood had to make its own version for people who don't like subtitles. I've heard Let Me In actually isn't bad, but even if you don't like subtitles, you owe it to yourself to see this one...
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007) ...and this one even more. Laura moves her family into the orphanage where she grew up in order to start a home for handicapped children, like her adopted son Simón. Simón likes their new house, even drawing pictures of his five new (invisible) friends. Typical kid stuff. But then one day during a party for the new residents and their families, Simón disappears after Laura can't come with him RIGHT THEN to see one of his friends - whom she happened to see later anyway. It'd be hard to miss him, wearing a burlap sack mask and doing nasty things. So she does what she has to to find her son. The Orphanage is a great film, full stop. Scary, deeply felt, perfectly shot and edited, and with a wonderful performance from Belén Rueda as Laura. It's perhaps the saddest horror film ever made, and it also contains the single best jump scare of the past ten years.
