Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

Well, I read a lot of children's books for work, so I have nothing against things aimed at that demographic. But it has a pretty tepid reception on the sites I mainly use as references, and even there many of the positive remarks are to do with David Tenant's narration of the audiobook edition.

I think that when you're a kid, your standards are a bit different because you haven't been exposed to as many ideas and tropes. Though I now see that it's only 160 pages, so at least it would be a quick read.

The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946

Susanne (Hildegard Knef) returns to a ruined Berlin in the wake of the end of World War Two. Having spent time in a concentration camp, she is stunned to find that a strange man named Hans (Wilhelm Borchert) is living in her apartment. Despite his claims that the apartment is now his, she declares that she’s moving back in, and the two fall into an uneasy companionship. But Hans is working through some serious emotional damage from his experiences as a German medical officer during the war, and Susanne makes a discovery that forces Hans to confront the traumatic past that’s left him addicted to alcohol and unable to function in a medical setting.

The first German film made after WW2, this film is a fascinating and compelling look at a society grappling with guilt and trauma.

I have had this movie on my to-see list for years, and it did not disappoint! On every level I found it an engaging, empathetic portrait of individuals and a society in distress.

The look of the movie is really great. It took me a little while to realize what it reminded me of, and the answer finally came to me: The Cranes Are Flying. Lots of dramatic angles and a use of dark and light that is really emotionally evocative. The film makes great use of different spaces. When the characters leave their homes, it’s always a bit of a shock to see just how destroyed their surroundings are. Any casual walk involves traversing streets covered in rubble. The apartment itself serves to show how the two characters are coping. Susanne immediately sets about cleaning and scrubbing, as if she can erase what came before. Hans, on the other hand, seems to want to bury himself--in drunkenness or literally in junk. As the characters try to get their bearings, they are constantly reminded by their surroundings about everything that happened and just how much work it will take to get back to normal.

The characters are also well-realized. Susanne maybe gets the least character development of the two. She doesn’t talk much about what she’s seen or been through. Hans gets the most character development, and it’s really interesting. While most portrayals of men with PTSD seem to focus on anger and violence, Hans fits into a different slot. He is a man who is clearly distraught and it feels incredibly real. When he has his first confrontation with Susanne and gets frustrated with her, he nearly bursts into tears in his overwhelmed state. It takes the full length of the film to learn the entire scope of what Hans experienced during the war, but it makes sense once we get the whole picture why he is such a mess emotionally.

There are also strong supporting characters. There’s a man who has a shop for repairing eyeglasses. He waits, in hope, for word of his son who was a German soldier and is currently missing. On the flip side, we meet an old military commander who served with Hans, a man who has cheerfully gone back to work in the industrial sector and seems to have no sense of guilt or regret about his participation in the war.

From a thematic point of view, I loved what this film was exploring. How can anyone with a conscience survive participating, even indirectly, in a genocide and come out the other side and live a life? Where is the dividing line between Germans who must be punished for their actions, and those who can/should be allowed to go back to living some kind of normal life? It’s a really complicated question, and for the most part the film doesn’t act as if it’s easy to untangle. In the end it maybe settles for a certainty that is a bit convenient, but overall it acknowledges that this is a messy situation, and that the people inside of that situation are grappling with various degrees of guilt, trauma, regret, and loss.

On the whole, I found this to be a powerful, memorable film with a fascinating historical context.

Lemme tell you. I've finished War and Peace, Swann's Way, speed-read Jurassic Park in three days and have read a few Jules Verne novel. And two of the best stories I've ever read are still Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.

There are definitely a lot of excellent children's books. That's just not the vibe I get off of what I'm reading about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But, hey, happy to be proven wrong. It's just that whimsy isn't usually my thing (and wasn't generally my thing as a kid).

Did you just call Swann's Way and Jurassic Park children's books?

No. You cited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH as being books you thought were great (and as good or better than "adult" books), and I'm agreeing with you that children's books can be amazing.

Oh, so when you said, "there are," you meant "out in the world."

Yes, exactly.

Takoma11: Hater of Whimsy

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Captain's Log
My Collection

That was the original thread title, but I worried it didn't convey just how much blood and angst is in here.

Ghostwatch, 1992

In this pseudo-live broadcast event, British TV host Michael Parkinson presides over a special televised event in which the idea of hauntings is explored with the help of an in-studio specialist (Gillian Bevan) and in-the-field interviews with a single mother and her two daughters who claim that their house is haunted by a mysterious figure known as Pipes. But as the broadcast goes on, strange events begin to affect the family and the TV crew covering their story.

A fun, eerie example of faux-documentary, this one is incredibly smart about when to stay subtle and when to go big.

One of my favorite horror movies of all time is the faux-documentary Lake Mungo, and it’s rare that I enjoy films of this type. Too often, the events that they portray escalate too quickly, or are simply too extreme to believe. It creates a heightened awareness of the artificiality of it all, and the suspension of disbelief that this is “real” goes out the window.

But this film is willing to take things slow and work in an ambiguous, unsettling space. Much of the spooky stuff in the first half comes in the form of the family--mother Pamela (Brid Brennan), and daughters Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson)--talking about what’s been happening in the house. They tell their stories knowing full well that they don’t have proof. When mysterious scratches appear on one of the girl’s faces, or when items fall off of a shelf, there’s always a skeptic’s question at the ready. Could the girl have scratched her own face in a nightmare? Could the shelf have simply been unbalanced? This first half nicely captures the double-edged scariness of not only weird stuff happening in your house, but also knowing that most people won’t believe you.

Things escalate quite nicely, though, in the second half. It’s in this latter part of the film that the scary happenings tread into “something real is definitely happening here” territory. It holds onto a nice thread of ambiguity, with some aspects lingering in the realm of still having plausible explanations, but steadily ramps up the overtly weird stuff. The backstory of the person (or persons) haunting the family is filled in via a combination of the show’s research and viewers calling in to add bits and pieces of information. There’s a light, glib tone to the first half of the show that begins to crumble as it all gets real.

Found footage is one of my least favorite horror subgenres, but this film shows how to do it right.

Poison for the Fairies, 1986

Flavia (Elsa Maria Gutierrez) is an only child of an upper class family. At school, she befriends Veronica (Ana Patricia Rojo), who is obsessed with witches and convinces Flavia that she has witchy powers. While the girls start out more like co-conspirators, Veronica soon uses Flavia’s anxiety and guilt as leverage to force her friend into increasingly dire situations.

Mining tension from childhood fears and poisonous friendship dynamics, this is a fantastic intersection of horror and drama.

I have this vague memory of being about the age of the girls in this movie, maybe a little younger, and having seen maybe a few too many sci-fi/fantasy movies and shows, deciding to pretend that I was getting secret messages. Yes, cringe. But at the time, it seemed like something mysterious and interesting.

Something that is very effective about this movie is the extent to which it keeps Veronica in the realm of a kid who clearly has some problems, but isn’t out-and-out evil. She’s not a pleasant person, by any means, and she definitely manipulates Flavia in very cruel ways. As we watch these manipulations escalate, we’re waiting for the moment that Flavia will snap. Something’s got to give. And yet Veronica’s motivations are incredibly human. She becomes intoxicated with power, and she’s clearly jealous of Flavia. Flavia, for her part, is oblivious to her privileges in a way that only wealthy people can be. She drops off-hand mentions about the big farm that her family owns. As they pull up, she’s just like “Oh, yeah, we own all of this.” Flavia is a nice girl, but you can understand why Veronica would have the desire to pull rank.

The heart of the movie is Flavia’s disintegrating mental state, and the way that the film portrays her isolation is really excellent. Adding to the film’s fairy tale energy, the adults in the film are only seen from the neck down. This already gives a sense of Flavia and Veronica being afloat in their own sea. As Veronica puts more ideas into Flavia’s head, Flavia’s imagination takes over and she becomes consumed by fear. Veronica manages to convince Flavia that a bad thing that happened to another character was Flavia’s fault, and so Flavia is too terrified to talk to her parents about what is happening.

Where the movie goes in its finale is terrifying and tragic. It is both unexpected and inevitable, and the lingering implications are haunting.

The understanding of how children create their own world and their own rules is very strong. It also does a great job of showing how simple events, such as Flavia accidentally running into Veronica’s elderly grandmother, can be misunderstood and blown up into something frightening. Flavia and Veronica are both well-realized characters. As awful as Veronica is, I understood her motivations and even felt a bit sad for her because she doesn’t know how to have a friendship that isn’t underpinned by power struggle and dominance.

Really fabulous.

Finally, someone else is giving this film the proper appreciation. Fabulous indeed.

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Poison for the Fairies is very good. I should watch the other movies by this director that have popped up on Shudder in the last month or so.

Three Ages, 1923

A caveman, a Roman, and a modern man (all played by Buster Keaton) all pursue a woman (all played by Margaret Leahy). But in each era, the protagonist faces opposition to claiming his lady love.

Some decent comedy gags don’t quite escalate this one into must-see territory.

There are some moments where the film allows for clever echoes in the different scenarios and the different way that Keaton’s romantic rival pulls rank. But I wish that there had been more flow and synthesis between the different time periods. For the first half, the film feels like it’s meandering.

When the gags really kick in around the second half, there’s some good stuff there. A chariot race where Keaton’s character chooses an unconventional animal to pull his chariot, a hair-raising descent down a building, and a slapstick football game.

But I have kind of a deal-breaker thing with animal handling, and I had a strongly negative reaction to the way that a cat was treated in the Roman segment which kind of detached me from the rest of the film.

Some creative stunt work and sight gags on display, but it doesn’t quite feel like it justifies its runtime.

Alice in Wonderland, 1915

This silent film is an adaptation of the book Alice in Wonderland.

This film is a somewhat lackluster adaptation that occasionally gets a bit of heft out of the creative yet terrifying costumes of some of the more outlandish characters.

Really the only thing that this film has to recommend it is the costuming and some of the set design. I was kind of in love with the costumes, which live in this space between being really fun to look at and kind of horrifying. Something about the proportions of some of them, the way that the faces are slightly flexible and yet too rigid. It’s kind of enjoyable nightmare fuel.

But outside of the costumes and sets, there wasn’t a ton here for me to love. Every scene is just like a skit from the events of the book, but they are just very plain adaptations of the book. There’s no spice here. Alice herself feels like a non-entity, simply a guide walking us through these different sequences. Compounding this problem was the fact that the version that I watched had no music, so the whole film feels very flat and emotionless.

Kind of an interesting historical curiosity, but not all that engaging.

I saw this same one a couple years ago. I even gave it the same rating.

The Lost World, 1925

An expedition sets out to find a lost explorer who supposedly has found a place where prehistoric creatures still live.

Despite a lackluster storyline, the creature effects are delightful enough to make this a fun watch.

It’s all about the dinosaurs in this film, and they are great. The stop motion is really fun to watch, with a wide range of creatures stomping around, hunting one another, falling into swamps, and other action.

Unfortunately, the human side of things is underwhelming. The characters mainly exist to be witnesses to the creature work, and they don’t do much beyond that. I didn’t find myself really clicking with any of the characters, or at all invested in the inevitable love side plot. There’s also a pretty racist dynamic with a character who is not only played by an actor in blackface, but who is also given dialect-heavy phonetic spelling on his intertitles.

The dinosaurs are an A+, the rest is whatever.

A good score might have nudged it up a bit. Watching it in total silence was pretty painful.

Pretty sure I saw this last year for this challenge, and I think I would give it about the same rating