Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
I seriously doubt I'll ever be able to call myself a fan of the works of David Cronenberg with a straight face. His works have a habit of leaving most people (myself included) cold, which I guess is his style. Prior to watching
Videodrome in full for the first time (I'd caught most of it of cable once, but didn't consider it a proper viewing), I'd say the closest I came to liking Cronenberg was with his head-popping psychic thriller
Scanners (the others were his two recent collaborations with Viggo Mortensen, both of which I was highly unimpressed with - sue me). After sitting through a theatrical viewing of
Videodrome, I think I'll be vaguely predictable and call this my "favourite".
Videodrome stars James Woods as Max, an unscrupulous television executive who discovers a mindlessly violent program (the titular Videodrome) via a pirate satellite dish. He initially intends to air it on his network for profit, but a variety of complications make him realise that what he is dealing is something far bigger and more dangerous than cheap entertainment.
I'm a bit of a sucker for films that, for want of a better word, screw with reality.
Videodrome does that amply - it constantly blurs the lines of not only reality and fantasy, but also fantasy and fantasy. It achieves this through some grotesque yet fascinating special effects - it's always interesting to watch pre-CGI horror films if only for the sake of how inventive they tend to be. The various different effects are shocking and stunning in both their impact and in their creation, and serve the plot well as Max slowly starts going insane as a result of exposure to Videodrome.
I do reckon
Videodrome is a rather good film (at least, a lot better than I initially gave it credit for) - it's got some great effects, a surprisingly twisty mind-f*** of a plot, and it's surprisingly watchable in spite of my slight aversion to Cronenberg. Not sure if it's changed my mind about him totally - we'll just see how it goes after next week when I check out
The Fly.
GRADE: B
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick, 1980
Sigh, don't you just hate it when you watch a film you thought you loved and then you feel like it doesn't live up to the hype you've given it in your mind? I felt that way a lot when I watched
The Shining today. Maybe it was the poor quality of the print (which would be going on 30 years old if I remember correctly) with its scratches and saturation of pink due to loss of pigmentation, but yeah, I don't really feel like
The Shining is as great a horror as I have in the past.
This isn't to malign it as a film - unlike Cronenberg, I've actually warmed to Kubrick's distinctly detached filmmaking style, and his work in
The Shining is actually reasonably good. The camerawork is noticeably flowing - consider the opening helicopter footage or the various sleek Steadicam shots that follow characters around the corners and hallways of the Overlook. The score may be discordant and relying on atmospheric noise or piercing jolts more often than not, but it works in a strange way. Even the random editing and irregular pacing of the film, while distracting at times, serves to create the uneasy mood that I reckon Kubrick was aiming for, rather than more conventional scares (which there are still quite a few of).
I guess it's because I've seen it quite a few times and it's starting to have less effect on me, even in a theatre. I suppose there is amusement to be gained from watching Jack Nicholson's delightfully crazed performance, and when things start becoming more and more crazy throughout the second half, it's all you can do to watch. While I may not think as highly of
The Shining as I used to (I would've given it an A- after my last viewing), it's still a reasonably good film from a cinematic genius.
GRADE: B