Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in by picking three films that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.
This week on Thursday movie picks, we are traveling to South East Asia. I'm going to be honest: I haven't seen too many movies from this area of the world, despite some of them having rich cinematic histories. BUT! I will not let that stop me! I shall make some picks anyway!
Bwakaw (Jun Luna, 2012) This lovely, lyrical tale of a taciturn old gay man and the dog who might just melt his heart is far better and more affecting than a film with that subject matter probably has any right to be. But Bwakaw has humor and heart and a tremendous performance from Eddie Garcia in the lead. Seek it out by any means necessary, because I can't imagine a person who won't enjoy this.
Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002) I've been slowly making my way through the filmography of "Thai Joe" Weerasethakul, one of the most potent, unique voices working in modern cinema. Meaning, I've seen this one, and hope to find the time to see his next, Tropical Malady. This one does not quite have the sense of mysticism that apparently colors the director's other works (especially the Palme d'Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), but it has a magic all its own. The plot - such as it is - concerns a Burmese immigrant to Thailand as he tries to get treated for a strange rash covering his body and his landlady. But plot means little here, as Joe is really working more towards a mood. This is a S - L - O - W movie; the opening credits come 45 minutes in, and oddly enough they feel perfectly placed. But there's also a strange, special kind of alchemy that happens when you are able to get on the film's wavelength.
...and that's it! That's the extent of my knowledge of South East Asian cinema. I could tell you to go watch some Lav Diaz films, but I haven't seen them, and so cannot personally vouch for their quality.
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 telling us about them!
Well, October is over, so back to our "regularly-scheduled programming" (read: non-scary) on Thursday Movie Picks. This week: Movies centered around music. I had to re-pick this week as I missed the note on there being no films based on real-life people, so... here goes!
Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000) I can't even with this movie. One of my All-Time Favorites. Crowe's semi-autobiographical film so perfectly captures the feeling of not just a specific time and place, but of that time in one's life between childhood and adulthood. I could go on and on about the perfect cast (Frances McDormand as one of the all-time great screen mothers... Kate Hudson in a luminous star-making turn... Billy Crudup and Jason Lee with AMAZING period hair... Patrick Fugit as the most appealing narrator ever... Philip Seymour Hoffman cracking wise and dispensing wisdom....), but what I really love about Almost Famous is the feeling it conjures up, and how effortlessly it plays.
That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks, 1996) You'd think Tom Hanks would have directed more after this perfectly entertaining film about a 60's band's rise to the top. He's even great in it as the band's big-label manager. Tom Everett Scott, Jonathan Schaech, Steve Zahn, and Ethan Embry make for great distinctive personalities as the band members, and Liv Tyler makes an impression as "The Girl". And the soundtrack is to DIE. Long Live The Oneders!
Frank (Lenny Abrahamson, 2014) This isn't a GREAT film, but it does contain what is possibly Michael Fassbender's best performance as the giant-head wearing musical genius Frank, and a great performance from Maggie Gyllenhall as one of his band members - a much more typical role for her, but damn if she isn't PERFECT. The music is at points extremely weird, but also kind of perfect for what it is, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Domnhall Gleeson makes for a perfectly agreeable narrator, and the film is a good watch. But it doesn't have much staying power outside of Fassbender's performance. Also: He has a surprisingly good singing voice, if not "good" in a traditional sense.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Participate yourself by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.
This week's theme for Thursday Movie Picks correlates to the weekend's big release, the new James Bond film SPECTRE. Can I let you in on a secret? Up until Skyfall, I had never seen a Bond film. Not a single one. I'm not really sure why. I've just never been able to muster up the excitement for them.
But anyway, that's not really the point. The point is, there's much more to Secret Agents and Spies on film than Bond and his dirty martinis. Here are three of my favorites.
North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) Probably the most exciting film Hitchcock ever directed, in which Cary Grant is mistaken for a Mr. George Kaplan, a spy who, as it turns out, doesn't exist. Which is especially unfortunate for Cary after he's photographed taking a knife out of a U.N. diplomat's back. Someone else put it there, but try telling that to the police, especially when the secret government agency who created the persona of Kaplan won't get involved at the risk of exposing their real double agent, played by the gorgeous Eva Marie Saint. With James Mason as the big baddie and Martin Landau as his underling.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) Hands down the best thing Mike Myers has ever done, Austin Powers is a dead-on hilarious parody of the 60s and spy films. But you don't have to be particularly well-versed in spy films to enjoy it. It's pure silliness, but it's absolutely INSPIRED silliness. The jokes fly fast and furious from the lips of the inimitable cast (Elizabeth Hurley, Robert Wagner, and Mindy Sterling have never been better, to say nothing of Myers in his dual role as the titular spy and his arch-nemesis Dr. Evil), and the double entendres are the best I've seen in probably any movie ever. The later sequels, The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember, are basically bald rewrites of this one, but why mess with perfection?
Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996) One of the rare franchises that has kept up a pretty much even level of quality across each film, the Tom Cruise series is one of the best in film history. This is the one that started it all, and god DAMN is it fun. When Ethan Hunt's entire Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team gets killed, the agency assumes he's the mole they've been trying to find for a while. Except he's innocent, so he has to go rogue in order to prove his innocence. Cruise's "I do my own stunts" go-for-broke star power has never been put to better use than with this character, so it's no surprise that he keeps coming back to it. And given the great directors and scriptwriters that keep coming to the series, it's clear that someone behind the scenes knows what they're doing (for what it's worth, my pick for the best of the series is the fourth, Ghost Protocol). De Palma's original lays all the groundwork with flawless sequence after flawless sequence and a roller coaster pace that only lets up in just the right amounts to relieve the (at times considerable) tension.
BONUS PICK
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Guy Ritchie, 2014) It's a pity so many people dismissed this film this summer, because it was really a blast. The cool retro vibe extended from the perfect costumes and hairdos of its (unbelievably good-looking) stars to Ritchie's filmmaking, which has never been slicker or sleeker. It's ultimately a lark, but it's a great looking one, and lots of fun. Plus, between Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, and Elizabeth Debicki, there really is something here for everyone.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Be part of the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!
This week, Halloween week, we are picking Ghost Movies. There are really two kinds of ghost movies - scary and sweet. And so, I have picked two from each. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two older movies are sweet and the two newer films are scary.
I should also say that I saw Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak this weekend, and...... I was underwhelmed. I get that, in the end, it's less of a ghost story than "a story with a ghost in it" to use the film's own language, but it didn't go far enough into the gothic grandeur and melodrama for me. Disappointing, despite some absolutely fantastic elements.
The Canterville Ghost (Jules Dassin, 1944) Cowardly Sir Simon of Canterville has been cursed to haunt his family castle until one of the family's descendants performs a brave deed while wearing his signet ring. You see, he ran away from a duel and his father would NOT have him besmirch the Canterville name by being a coward. Three centuries pass full of cowardly Cantervilles, but when a soldier in a battalion stationed in Canterville Castle appears to have the Canterville birthmark, the portly Simon thinks he's finally found the one to break the curse. Based on a story by Oscar Wilde and starring Charles Laughton as Sir Simon and Margaret O'Brien as his youngest descendant, Jessica, The Canterville Ghost is all sorts of fun.
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Makiewicz, 1947) Young widow Lucy Muir (a luminous Gene Tierney) finally decides to strike out on her own and live with her daughter in a cottage by the sea. She was warned against it, but moves in anyway... only to find out that the place is haunted by its previous owner, the salty sea captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison, playing Rex Harrison as only he can). Their relationship starts off antagonistic, but soon cools into a mutual respect and then warms into.... can it be? YES!... love. With Natalie Wood as the Muir daughter Anna and George Sanders as the living part of the supernatural love triangle that inevitably forms, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is one of my favorite romances, and couldn't be more different from the classic TV sitcom it inspired.
The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) It is not long after World War II on the fog-flooded island of Jersey off the coast of England. Grace (Nicole Kidman in what is probably her best performance) has been living with her two children - who suffer from a rare disease characterized by "photosensitivity"; they could die if exposed to natural light - in a large house while her husband is away at war. Thankfully, three new servants have shown up to help her and the children. And just in time, too, as her daughter has been seeing a family of ghosts in the house and windows and doors have been flinging open by themselves. The Others is a masterpiece of restraint and mood, and also genuinely scary in moments. Even after you know all the story's twists and turns, the film is still a marvel to behold. And its final shot is one of the new millennium's most chilling, haunting images
The Conjuring (James Wan, 2014) Based on a true story from renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring is the best scary movie to hit theaters in quite some time, and it achieves that by taking horror back to basics: long takes, deep focus, a respect for craft, and care for its characters. The Perron family (led by Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston, perfectly ordinary empathetic) moves into a fixer-upper in 1971, and not long after moving in start to experience supernatural happenings. In fear and desperation, they turn to the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, both fantastic), who confirm that the house is indeed haunted. By some mightily pissed off spirits. The letter-perfect period trappings contribute to the throwback feel of the film, but what really elevates The Conjuring above most horror films of the modern day is its structure: The film does not work unless you feel for the characters, and the early scenes make us feel like part of the Perron family. When things finally go south, it's not just horrifying, it's heartrending, because we feel for these characters, just like poor innocent Regan in The Exorcist and Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby.
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.
