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 on Thursday Movie Picks, we're looking at movies with non-linear timelines. Time always moves forwards of course, but with film, we have the capability to rewind, fast forward, double back, start over... we can view a series of events in pretty much any way we want. And these movies take advantage of that.
Cloud Atlas (Wachowskis & Tom Tykwer, 2012) This wildly ambitious film, adapted from David Mitchell's Russian nesting doll of a novel, probably never should have been made. The book has such a literary conceit that it's nearly impossible to adapt to cinematic form, but God bless the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer for trying. Whole long sections of this are just thrilling arias of pure cinematic expression, linking stories hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart by the elemental forces of human experiences. The overarching story (such as it is) is about the journey of a soul as it learns over the course of several lifetimes what it means to be good. The ensemble cast is full of some spotty performances (and some even spottier makeup), but Halle Berry, Doona Bae, and a near-unrecognizable Hugh Grant have never been better than they are in sections of this.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) How this didn't win every single goddamn award walking away in 2004, I'll never know. It's a goddamn masterpiece, with career-best work from Kate Winslet, Jim Carrey, Charlie Kaufman, and Michel Gondry. Nothing I could write about it will ever top this that I wrote four years ago, so I won't even try.
The Rules of Attraction (Roger Avary, 2002) Oh those wild and crazy kids! What ever will they do to fuck themselves up next? This Bret Easton Ellis adaptation throws so much style at the wall to see what sticks, and a surprising amount of it does. Hopping back and forth between different attendees at a fateful college party and what led them to make the decisions they made there, we watch as teen heartthrobs Jessica Biel, James Van Der Beek, Ian Somerhalder, Kate Bosworth, and Kip Pardue do some VERY bad things, to themselves and to each other! The movie as a whole holds together only barely, but the best scenes (including a homoerotic bedroom dance/pillow fight to George Michael's "Faith", a rapid fast-forward through an entire vacation abroad, and one of the best, most effective suicide scenes ever put on film) really linger.
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 series hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come along for the ride by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
I have always loved museums. There's so much to see and so much to learn, and I love learning. Trying to pick movies for this week, though, proved to be a bit harder than I expected. Despite the fact that museums are GREAT settings for a movie (so much to see, and such pretty, interesting settings!), there aren't a lot of movies about, or at least set largely in, museums. That said, there are some with very memorable scenes set in museums, so that's what I based my picking around.
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Poor John "Scottie" Ferguson. After a terrible accident on the job left him with horrible acrophobia and vertigo, he's let go from the police force, and he's having trouble getting over his fear. But an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, hires him to do some private investigating work: Trail his wife, Madeleine, who has been increasingly moody and obsessed with death (mostly her own). This leads to some memorable, mostly silent trips around San Francisco, including to the Legion of Honor Art Museum. A bit of a flop on release, it has since been named the greatest film ever made (in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll), and it's kinda hard to argue with that. This is one of Hitchcock's most beguiling films, with gorgeous cinematography and a hypnotic score by Bernard Herrmann (my pick for his best work). Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak give performances for the ages as the leads - particularly Novak, whose part is extraordinarily difficult and whose performance is hugely underrated. I got to see this on a 35mm print a couple of years ago and GOOD LORD is it gorgeous on the big screen. A haunting masterwork of obsession and PTSD, and a great mystery. I love everything about this movie, perhaps especially Barbara Bel Geddes's devoted Midge.
Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980) In the opening sequence of this, perhaps De Palma's most overt Hitchcock homage in a career full of them, the great Angie Dickinson goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and follows/is followed by a mysterious stranger. Being a sexually frustrated housewife, she ends up in a cab with him and they have sex. But on her way home, while in the elevator, her throat gets slashed by a mysterious blonde woman, who is seen by high class escort Nancy Allen, who then becomes the killer's next target as well as the police's prime suspect. This sequence, largely without dialogue, is utterly mesmerizing and absolutely fantastic. If nothing else in the film quite lives up to it, at least it is a very well-done thriller, with some great cinematography and a winning performance by Nancy Allen. But it's Angie Dickinson's performance that you'll come away remembering. GOD she's good.
Ocean's 8 (Gary Ross, 2018) Debbie Ocean has just gotten out of jail, and has spent her entire sentence coming up with the perfect job: Stealing a priceless diamond off the neck of an attendee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual gala. It's a film of modest pleasures, which is something of a disappointment after the starpowered fireworks of the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-led, Steven Soderbergh-directed Ocean's trilogy. But it is pleasurable all the same, mostly thanks to the chemistry of the ensemble cast, led by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, and with standout supporting performances by Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Awkwafina.
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!
After the past few years of American politics, we all need a good political comedy, even though they may be just as painful to watch as dramas. But even when what's happening on screen is eerily, uncomfortably close to what's happening in real life, laughter is the best kind of catharsis. These are three of my favorites.
In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009) This satire of the run-up to the Iraq war, a spin-off of the brilliant British TV series The Thick of It is one of the funniest films ever made. When Minister for International Development Simon Foster (terrifically bumbling Tom Hollander) keeps digging a deeper hole for himself every time he opens his mouth around the media, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker (the shoulda-been-Oscar-nominated Peter Capaldi) is sent in to fix things. Except that American Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomacy Karen Clark (hilarious Mimi Kennedy) got wind of Foster's statements and wants him to help her as she tries to undermine Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Linton Barwick's secret war committee. It's all a tangle, and a flawless ensemble of American and British actors pull it off, giving Iannucci fantastically profane script (Malcolm's preferred sign-off phrase is "Fuckity-bye!") plenty of punch.
The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) For his first true sound film, Charlie Chaplin sure went there, didn't he? A Jewish barber just so happens to look exactly like the ruthless dictator Adenoid Hynkel (who may look rather... familiar to you), and when Hynkel orders a purge of the Jews, it may be up to the barber to save his people... and the rest of the people of the country of Tomania. One of the most important works of satire ever filmed, The Great Dictator is brilliant, and brilliantly funny.
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933) The Marx Brothers at their zany best, which is actually what makes this satire somewhat difficult to watch. They are talking about political intrigue and war, after all. But really, the hilariously on point songs and the justly famous mirror scene put Zeppo's final film with the group over the top.
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!
WELL, I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! I know I sure did. Maybe even a bit too much of one, but WHO CARES! IT'S THURSDAY! And it's time for another episode of everyone's favorite web movie series! This week: GANGSTERS. Those dapper men of crime who the movies have never stopped loving to glorify...
...and sometimes make fun of.
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) Poor, underemployed musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) unintentionally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. So they escape and go undercover the only way they know how: As female musicians in an all-girl band! Hilarity ensues as they both fall for lead singer Sugar Cane (Marilyn Monroe at her absolute peak) and have to escape mobster Spats Colombo (George Raft) and millionaire wannabe-playboy Osgood Fielding III (comic treasure Joe E. Brown). One of the funniest films ever made, Some Like it Hot is perfection on every level, with so many classic moments it's impossible to keep track.
Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994) Poor playwright David Shayne (John Cusack, one of Woody's best avatars) is not having any luck getting his latest play produced on Broadway. So when mobster Nick Valenti bankrolls the whole thing on the condition that his girlfriend Olive (Jennifer Tilly, genius) be cast as the ingenue, he reluctantly agrees. He then manages to get diva star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest, GENIUS) as the lead. But then Olive's bodyguard Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) turns out to be a secret genius, constantly making suggestions for the play that actually improve it. How will this all end for David? It's a hilarious route to get there, one of Woody's most purely funny movies. Palminteri, Tilly, and Wiest all deservedly got Oscar nominations for their hilarious performances, with Wiest winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her inimitable turn as Helen Sinclair. "DON'T SPEAK!"
Analyze This (Harold Ramis, 1999) Poor mob boss Paul Vitti (Robert DeNiro, deftly parodying himself) is having a problem: After so many years worrying about his standing in the mob and fearing for his life - and after his consiglieri gets shot right in front of him - he's started having panic attacks. So his henchman Jelly takes him to see psychiatrist Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal, perfectly cast), whose car Jelly hit in an accident. Shenanigans, as you can imagine, ensue. It's hard to believe that this perfect mafia parody came out only two months after the premiere of television series The Sporanos, which took a dramatic look at the same subject. But it did, and it was the perfect cultural moment for it. Crystal and DeNiro are clearly having a blast playing off each other, and the script by Ramis, Kenneth Lonergan, and Peter Tolan is clever and chock full of one-liner gems.
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.
