Movie Tab II

★

Three (2016) / To
A glacial set-up (icebergs float by faster that this) to an epic gun battle in bullet time in a hospital ward filled with undercover cops, but by then, who the hell cares? A criminal mastermind is wheeled in unconscious and wakes up on the operating table and refuses all medical treatment. He then tricks the cops into calling a phone number that sets in motion a precise, pre-planned, guns-out rescue mission. The bad guy is clearly a gifted clairvoyant, but if he can see this far into the future with this degree of clarity, why didn’t he just dodge the bullet in the first place?

★★½

Sleep, my Love (1948) - Sirk
The film suffers from an outlandish murder plot where the husband drugs his wife’s night cap, then whispers in her ear every night: you need to take a long walk on a short pier, over and over again until she sleep walks out the front door and heads for the water front. There must be easier ways to knock off your wife. The film opens with her waking up on a speeding train with no idea how she got there. On the plane ride back to New York, she meets a guy who is heading to town for a wedding; he begins hanging out with her and quickly notices the discrepancies between her and her husband’s stories.

Off Limits (2010) - Boukhrief
A cop is killed in the line of duty during a routine noise complaint. When they get back to the station their statements have already been pre-written and they only need a simple signature. They are totally screwed when the shooter miraculously recovers from his death bed because all the evidence against him was written out of the official report, being the son of a big wig with access to lawyers. A superior suggests they can save their jobs by re-introducing the fact the shooter was hopped up on sphinx---a new designer drug for people who just want to go totally psychotic for the evening. They go deep undercover during their off-hours and end up crossing line after line that shouldn’t be crossed.

Cat People (1942) Tournier
The studio RKO desperately needed a hit after Citizen Kane tanked at the box office and this is the big pot of gold they hoped for. The tense moments are merely creepy shadows on the wall. For this to work, they filmmakers should have established the rules for Miss Kitty’s transformations. The film rather scandalously hints that “cat people” is a euphemism for lesbians; she is clearly more aroused by the guy’s sultry co-worker; but the audience waits in vain for the fur to fly.

The Curse of the Cat people (1944) - Fritsch & Wise
The title suggests a great creature feature but instead delivers a quiet drama about a young girl and her imaginary friend who turns out to be the cat woman from the first film. There’s a sub-plot where the old lady in the scary house down the street befriends her because she thinks her own daughter is an imposter. The film is mildly suspenseful waiting for a big cat or even a shadow to appear but it never pans out, there’s also no curse to be found either.

Razor Blade Smile (1998) - West
A low budget, horror film with a wise cracking, big breasted, latex vampire who takes the occasional odd job as a contract killer and spends the rest of her time hanging out with fake fanged wannabes at a goth club. I liked how they slightly retooled some of the vampire myth, like she can walk around in the daylight, she just needs sunglasses. The most compelling danger for a vampire here is not misplaced wooden stakes lying around but faulty time management; they have to deliberately plan their social calendar and invent amusements, otherwise they would all die of boredom.

Proxy war (1973) - Fukasaku
This is the third installment of the Yakuza papers series and the first without a main character to really latch onto and follow. The Hiroshima gangs jockey for power and borrow some outside muscle; of course these larger gangs are merely using them to consolidate their power elsewhere. In the first film, Shozo Hirono became blood brothers with a Yakuza in prison and they truly looked out each other, whereas in this film it’s mentioned one Yakuza boss has 67 blood brothers, so at the top of the food chain it has become largely a ceremonial gesture to cement business interests and to paper over long time blood feuds. One head’s up: a staple in the series is the street executions with the faulty pistol with the small caliber bullets; meaning the man down literally has to be plugged full of lead until he stops moving.

Police Tactics (1974) - Fukasaku
The fourth installment of the Yakuza papers series. Hiroshima has become the epicenter for control of western Japan with larger, outside clans pouring in weapons and foot soldiers. With this amount of fire power, it’s only a matter of time before innocent civilians are mistaken for yakuza scum and an outraged public demands the cops do their jobs. The cops set up permanent camps right outside their clubhouses and slowly round them up one by one on technicalities. The authorities throw the book at them with forgotten incidents in their pasts. Of course, the foot soldiers get double digits of prison time while the big bosses are blown penal kisses. With the 1964 summer Olympics coming to Japan, the authorities are not going to allow roaming Yakuza to ruin their great coming out party; some of the more astute Yakuza’s see the end is coming.

★★★

Deadly fight in Hiroshima (1973) - Fukasaku
This is the second installment of the Yakuza papers series. Shoji Yamanaka was too young to join the Kamikazes during the war but he is still a man with a mission years later; always volunteering for the most dangerous jobs. He falls in love with the Bosses niece---revered because her dead husband was a famous war hero. When the boss (another dishonorable, black hearted hypocrite) finds out about their affair he kicks her out into the street. It’s not a disgrace she has to become an escort in order to survive but remarrying would bring total shame to the entire extended family, He ships Yamanaka off to another gang where he completes his apprenticeship and is recalled the moment he morphs into a feared Yakuza hitman. And as a gift to him his niece is pulled off the streets and brought back into the family fold, for a while.
The series uses the same musical riffs and punctuation for entire series with minor echoes from previous films. In the first film Shozo Hirono was warned by his blood brother that his boss may not be the great man of honor he imagines him to be, so when Hirono is given a hit his first day out of prison, he says he has to think it over. Here, when the tragic Yamanaka shows up after escaping from prison, he immediately accepts to kill a stool pigeon the boss has fingered, only to realize too late, the boss has killed two jailbirds with one stone.

Final Episode (1974) - Fukasaku
The fifth and final installment of the Yakuza papers series. Here the yakuza gangs have mutated into political organizations with the key emphasis being on good works for the community and the public’s perception of them. They’ve gone corporate. Street battles become rare. The film gains from a great central character---tapped by the boss to replace him while he goes into prison for a stint; he is given the difficult task of keeping the clan together in his absence. Of course, by the time the boss gets out, he has expanded their empire and consolidated all the power unto himself.

There are moments of black humour worked into every film. Here some foot soldiers happen upon a boss sneaking into their territory for a secret meeting and they are weaponless, until one guy remembers there is a spear gun hanging as decoration in a restaurant down the street, so they run off and return with that, then push forward the most junior guy to do the hit. When the boss emerges from his meeting, the poor guy sprints across the road, but he trips in front of him and spear guns his own foot.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) - Holdridge
A guy places an ad on Craigslist the day before New Year’s Eve in order to get someone to lock lips with him at the big countdown moment, so he can at least say he began the year full of hope. His date is much better at this than him, she programs four guys to show up at the meet and greet and chooses the most interesting prospect and he wins the day in a thin field of stragglers. They spend the day getting to know one each another’s drama.

Peppermint (2018) - Morel
A vigilante film where the villain is so powerful, he is beyond the grasp of the justice system, so a soccer mom has to take matters into her own hands. After disappearing from the grid and spending 5 years overseas training in the black arts of revenge; she returns and goes through the guy’s whole criminal organization like a desk cop goes through a party sized box of sprinkled donuts.

Sarah prefers to run (2013) - Robichaud
A character study of a young woman not too terribly articulate or self-aware; she knows that she likes running and that she has some talent---she’s always winning. What clinches her decision to accept an athletic scholarship is when an acquaintance volunteers to tag along with her to the big city and chip in with the expenses. He even suggests a marriage of convenience to grab some of the grant money available for married couples going to university. The closest she gets to seeing that he is obviously in love with her is when she asks him why has he never taken off the fake wedding ring? Her world of grey goes instantly Technicolor when a siren belts out a karaoke song that is so beautiful it makes her chest hurt. So maybe she is passionate about two things in her life, running and karaoke, well maybe a certain karaoke singer. There’s a great open ended finish where she breaks away from the pack during a race.

Missing in America (2005) - Dockterman
A former soldier living in a picture postcard wilderness, has one of the men from his platoon in Vietnam show up at his cabin for a visit, then takes off leaving his 10 year old daughter behind. She begins to thaw out his crusty old Sergeant’s heart. This feels like a Hallmark movie that slid sideways.

El Cid (1962) - Mann
This is an epic story about a knight with modern ideas who unified a medieval Spain against an African invasion. The story is nicely spooned out in bite-sized portions, alternating between scenes of palace intrigue, romance and the clanging of swords. There is a nice reversal in the romance where only months before they were planning to live happily ever after, and now his former fiancé promises to marry the first guy to bring El Cid’s stinking head to her on a platter. I always thought Charlie Heston was a bit of a mugger but here--- especially the final sequence, with his grasp of nuance and depth of suggestion he is clearly holding a master class for his fellow actors.

Love Exposure (2005) - Sion
This is a kind of lurid teen romance. Three different love-at-first-sight moments (Love exposure) form a triangle between total misfits, all deformed by the wretched relationships with their fathers and their (cult) religion. A Pastor begins to shut down emotionally after a failed romance and the only face time his son gets with him now is during confession. So the son begins to invent sins to gain his affectation. A new friend tells him, if you truly want a bible thumper’s attention, your transgressions should be sexual. So he begins taking panty shots (437 all told in the film**) of young women walking in the streets, and happily announces to his father that he is a sexual pervert. As predicted their relationship goes ballistic with his father perfectly willing to beat the devil out of him. The two girl’s relationships with their fathers are even worse.

99 Homes (2014) - Bahrani
I may have passed on this originally simply because of the horrid title: who wants to see a film about 99 homes? Big mistake! This is a succulent story with a great villain (his duplicity is breath taking) mentoring an up and comer in all his scams, who is unfortunately fixated on the dying American dream of home ownership. One can almost see civilization crumbling here where the businessmen are openly pious and law-biding in public, but once out of the kangaroo courts, they are financial outlaws looting everything that isn’t nailed down and then even going after the double dip. There is a great open ended conclusion, where the just deserts the audiences thinks is coming to the villain may not pan out.

Grand Slam (1967) Montaldo
A cheesy, euro-production, 60’s heist film where a retiring school teacher has spent his entire career across the street from a diamond exchange in Rio de Janeiro and after 30 years has hatched the perfect diamond heist. He travels to New York to meet a street thug from his youth, who is now an outwardly respectable business man. In exchange for his cut he will supply the personnel for the job. He has a filing cabinet in his office stuffed with all the best contractors in the world; all of them unknown to the Police. The best safe cracker? He pulls out a name. The world’s deadliest weapons specialist? Klaus Kinsi is tapped for the job. The plan involves seducing Janet Leigh as a Miss lonely hearts so they need the best Romeo money can buy; an irresistible French gigolo is pressed into service. This percolates along nicely.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Trachtenberg
A nicesuspense film about a doomsday prepper cobbling together a surrogate family, but he’s wound a little too tight (with a hair trigger) to enjoy a frolicking, loving family. The two other characters (one kidnapped, one volunteered) in order to survive, have to ferret out his version (he’s three parts super intelligent and one part looney tunes) of what a nice daughter and a nice son is in this little, underground world. The father has a great character tell when they are playing charades and the phrase he has to get is a famous book and movie: Little Women and he gets the first word then the guy simply points to her and he begins spewing out synonym after synonym for a girl; which is also highlighting her best feature---she is not a girlie girl, she’s a little rough around the edges and knows exactly what it takes to survive.

Victoria (2015) - Schipper
This is the tale of one Spanish girl’s epic club night. If it wasn’t written right on the title that the film was done in one continuous take (actually the best version of three run-throughs) I doubt if I would have even noticed. The film finds its shape and feel from the getting to know you dialogue while walking to the next location. Victoria is a good pianist, but not exceptional enough to grab any graduating conservatory prizes and now she is off on a sabbatical year in Berlin. This explains her lack of street smarts. She doesn’t overreact to the prison tat on one of the guys hands---he’s not a bad guy---he just did a bad thing. The night crawl forms a complete story and ends with a magical ending as they head home in the dawning light---then they tack on an extended reprise that goes for the jugular.

★★★½

A Simple Favor (2018) - Feig
This is kind of like an R rated Nancy Drew mystery (setting up the franchise?) with a single mom with a cooking vlog who discovers she also has a talent for sleuthing. The favor is single mom Stephanie volunteers to pick up Emily’s (an in-your-face trophy wife with a taste for early afternoon martinis) kid from school and ends up doing extended nanny duty. Naturally they begin to hang out together. There is also just a hint of camp---the other moms are almost like a Greek chorus of disapproval. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour just beneath the surface. I’m not sure, but when Stephanie visits Emily’s family home, there may have been a couple of beavers above the coat of arms on the wrought-iron entrance gate.

Searching (2018) - Chaganty
This is thriller with a miniscule budget that is really punching way above its weight class; the film restricts itself to images and videos accessed from various computer screens. There is a great moment when the father has to reconstruct his daughter’s life after she goes missing from the bread crumbs she has left on social media. But that only leaves a ghostly outline of intentions with the essentials left out, so he has to fill in the rest with his own fear and paranoia. When the story goes viral you can almost count the minutes it is going to take for the trolls to find him and her virtual BFF’s start popping up online. The villain’s ultimate downfall is that he simply cut and pasted the wrong image.

Battles without honor and humanity (1973) - Fukasaku
This is the first film is the Yakuza papers series. Fukasaku opens each film with an overview of the world events at that moment then frames the story as its microcosm. This film opens with a master stroke: the mushroom cloud with the title is splashed against it. The Americans had broken the Japanese codes even before the war began and knew they were defeated and looking to surrender at that point. Dropping the bomb had nothing to do with Japan and was meant instead to intimidate and threaten the next rival to their great power in the post war era. Each film always ends with a shot of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the only building left standing in a completely leveled city simply because atomic bomb exploded directly over it.

The Yamamori gang is created overnight in a mass swearing in ceremony in Kure (a suburb of Hiroshima). All these street guys are introduced with flash forward titles indicating the highest rank they will achieve in the gang. The boss is a complete phony capable of promising the moon and shedding great crocodile tears; then deliberately sacrificing or betraying his own men when it becomes expedient. It’s a kind of ironic that if the Yakuza actually had a functioning code of honor, the hero of this film, Shozo Hirono would be their poster boy---he is the only one with a hint of nobility.

Sorcerer (1976) / Friedkin
I loved the opening vignettes establishing the four characters. I read that when the film was originally released there were a lot of walkouts from the audience because they thought they had wandered into the wrong theater with a stupid foreign film playing. The film also had the misfortune of opening the same week as the original Star Wars.

The opening repeats when the hitman shows up in the South American village, and the three other fugitives immediately pee their pants and give them collectively the urgent and compelling need to get the hell out of Dodge by volunteering for a suicide mission. A graveyard of dead trucks is visited to refit two semi-functioning rust buckets to make the arduous 200 mile journey; one of the trucks is re-christened the Sorcerer. There’s also a clause where if you fail to complete the job, your share is forfeited to the other men. Notice the black-eyed bride in the church about the enter the bonds of holy matrimony while the priests count their loot in the back room; or the old bar maid in the whiskey bar, old men still tramp through the jungle from miles around to stare at her, because faint traces of that great beauty still linger in her wizened face. This is bleak, pessimistic stuff with no escape even imaginable.

Funny Games * (1997) / Haneke
This is a brilliant exposé about the emotional manipulation of cinema and the cranking out industrial widgets of fantasy. We never think about the patent absurdity that evil people are always punished for their crimes; that decent people (after going through a bit of a rough patch) ultimately triumph; that invincible super heroes (by definition) can never lose, or that true love manages always to win out in the end. A simple flip of the Hollywood template---transferring the bias to the bad guy renders mainstream film totally unwatchable. Rooting for the good guys here is a complete waste of time; the ending is never in doubt. The hunters enter the forest … Bambi’s mother is thrown across the hood of a truck---the end. It’s merely a question of how much futility (the best aside in the film) the filmmakers think they the audience can endure that determines its length. Some hostility towards the film can be expected since it openly states that a movie audience is clearly not an annual Mensa gathering, but small children that want to hear their favorite 500 word bedtime story read to them for the thousandth time because they are too lazy to read it themselves.

★★★★

The Son * (2002) - Dardenne
This is completely underwhelming unless you look everything as being symbolic and then everything kind of pops. The tools in the wood shop looks like a rack of torture instruments. The instructor doesn’t wear a support for his bad back; he wears a back brace because he is in emotional agony. The kid doesn’t say he is looking for a street address; he is lost in the world. The first tool he hands the boy is a measuring stick, something essential and priceless in life. They don’t head off to a lumber yard; this is just a pit stop on the way to Calvary. They don’t carry two heavy wooden planks; they are sharing their spiritual burden, etc, etc.

* = rewatch
** I’m being facetious here, but there’s a fricking ton.

@HashtagBrownies I nominated The Imposter for the documentary HoF. Glad other people are finding it and enjoying the wild ride it is.

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Tony Randel, 1988) -

Review found here.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (Anthony Hickox, 1992) -

Review found here.

The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg, 2011) -

Maybe the most mid-tier Spielberg blockbuster (or even the most mid-tier Spielberg movie in general) as it creates a rollicking throwback to the adventure stylings of not just the source comics but also Spielberg's most action-packed blockbusters. That being said, there's no denying that the uncannily-stylised motion-capture CGI approach is maybe a little too artificial for its own good at times.

Sharky's Machine (Burt Reynolds, 1981) -

Reynolds stars in and directs this rather middle-of-the-road cop movie where his recently-reassigned detective gets a little too involved with a case that involves shadowing a call girl. Maybe too much of a slow burn at first and the story amounts to some fairly standard big-time conspiracy stuff, but he directs it all well enough (especially when it comes time to actually bust out an action sequence or two).

Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) -

Review found here.

Session 9 (Brad Anderson, 2001) -

Review found here.

Dagon (Stuart Gordon, 2001) -

Review found here.

Mimic (Guillermo Del Toro, 1997) -

Review found here.

Listen to Me Marlon (Stevan Riley, 2015) -

A lean, straightforward documentary about Marlon Brando comprised not just of archived material from across the years but also "narrated" via a series of private recordings made by Brando himself. An interesting enough watch for an actor who I'm not all that familiar with, especially when it delves into his off-screen life.

Vampires (John Carpenter, 1998) -

Review found here.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

The Gold Rush 1925 Directed by Charlie Chaplin ★★★★
Citizen Kane 1941 Directed by Orson Welles ★★★★★
Avengers: Infinity War 2018 Directed by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo ★
Dead Man 1995 Directed by Jim Jarmusch ★★★★
Three Monkeys 2008 ‘Üç maymun’ Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan ★★★★
The Predator 2018 Directed by Shane Black ★★
Cold Mountain 2003 Directed by Anthony Minghella ★
Ballad of a Soldier 1959 ‘Баллада о солдате’ Directed by Grigoriy Chukhray ★★★★
Blow-Up 1966 Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni ★★★★
Southwest 2011 ‘Sudoeste’ Directed by Eduardo Nunes ★★★★
Mandy 2018 Directed by Panos Cosmatos ★★
Summer with Monika 1953 ‘Sommaren med Monika’ Directed by Ingmar Bergman ★★★★
Hero 2002 ‘英雄’ Directed by Zhang Yimou ★★★★
The Chaser 2008 ‘추격자’ Directed by Na Hong-jin ★★★★
Miss Oyu 1951 ‘Oyū-sama’ Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi ★★★★★
High and Low 1963 ‘天国と地獄’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa ★★★★★
Snake Eyes 1998 Directed by Brian De Palma ★★★★
Destination Wedding 2018 Directed by Victor Levin ★★★
Easy Rider 1969 Directed by Dennis Hopper ★★★★
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 1982 Directed by Terry Hughes ★★★★★
Images from the Playground 2009 ‘Bilder från Lekstugan’ Directed by Stig Björkman ★★★
The Red Spectre 1907 ‘Le spectre rouge’ Directed by Segundo de Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca ★★★
The Magnificent Ambersons 1942 Directed by Orson Welles ★★★★
Night and Fog 1955 ‘Nuit et brouillard’ Directed by Alain Resnais ★★★★
The Circus 1928 Directed by Charlie Chaplin ★★★★
Sawdust and Tinsel 1953 ‘Gycklarnas afton’ Directed by Ingmar Bergman ★★★★
Seven Samurai 1954 ‘七人の侍’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa ★★★★★
Million Dollar Baby 2004 Directed by Clint Eastwood ★★★
The Babadook 2014 Directed by Jennifer Kent ★
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Day of the Unicorn 2010 Directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi ★★★
The Man from London 2007 ‘A Londoni férfi’ Directed by Béla Tarr ★★★★★
Yojimbo 1961 ‘用心棒’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa ★★★★
Sanjuro 1962 ‘椿三十郎’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa ★★★★
Alphaville 1965 ‘Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution’ Directed by Jean-Luc Godard ★★★★★
Godard's Passion 1982 ‘Passion’ Directed by Jean-Luc Godard ★★★
Journey Into Fear 1943 Directed by Norman Foster ★★
Katatonia – Last Fair Deal Gone Night Directed by Anders “Blakkheim” Nyström ★★★★
Killing Them Softly 2012 Directed by Andrew Dominik ★★★★
Leave No Trace 2018 Directed by Debra Granik ★★★★
The Secret Life of Pets 2016 Directed by Chris Renaud ★★★
The Tree of Life [EXTENDED] 2011 Directed by Terrence Malick ★★★★★

2018 SO FAR... : 368 films
★ Terrible
★★ Bad (sometimes interesting)
★★★ Good
★★★★ Very Good
★★★★★ Great

The Black Room (1935) –
A period thriller carried by Karloff playing opposing twin brothers amidst threats from ornery townsfolk. Eeriness is hurt by some silly music, tacky early exposition, and occasional cheap sets, but it’s fun to see Karloff playing dueling personalities.

In a Glass Cage (1986) –
Immobile Nazi torturer is cared for by a former child victim. Very discomforting without too much overt violence. Everything is very good and engaging. Cinematography is standout; movie is blue as hell.

The Night Strangler (1973) –
Kolchak’s always a fun and likeable character. Campy 70s vibe, fun set at the end, and dialogue written in all caps.

Waterloo Bridge (1931) –
A heavy pre-code tragedy about a naive soldier falling for a prostitute. I really loved The Petrified Forest from the same writer, but this one didn’t hold my interest too well.

Gospodin oformitel (1987) –
Finally got around to it @MonnoM. Hope you enjoyed it.
A pretty slow art film with occasional nice atmospheric flourishes. It takes quite a while to get interesting though. Rich set designs and a unique soundtrack standout.

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Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (Rachel Talalay, 1991) -

Review found here.

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933) -

Though I'd have to revisit the others just to be absolutely sure, I'd still call this my favourite Marx Brothers movie since it still plays so much better on second viewing than the rest of them play on their first. Maybe the only film of theirs I really need.

Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) -

Idiot manchild comedy done relatively right. Got my fair share of laughs out of it but there's more than a few flat notes and it ultimately feels disposable.

Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001) -

Review found here.

Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999) -

Review found here.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) -

Review found here.

Friday the 13th (Marcus Nispel, 2009) -

Review found here.

Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005) -

Review found here.

Land of the Dead (George A. Romero, 2005) -

Review found here.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima, 2018) -

2018 has seen quite a few disappointing sequels, but I think the only reason Day of the Soldado doesn't qualify as a disappointment is that the concept of a Sicario sequel seemed so incredibly redundant that having any expectations whatsoever seemed pointless. In any case, the resulting film is a bunch of nonsense that doesn't justify its existence.

Bad times at the el Royale



Four strangers show up at a motel called the El Royale before a rainy night and everyone is not who they seem to be including the motel itself. What ensues is a twisty thriller.

In one of my other reviews I have mentioned my problem with Tarantino. He ruined it for rest of the directors to tell a lot of different types of stories. He managed to step on many different film-making techniques and made them useless for other directors. Because they will be called out if they use it and be accused of copying. He took a style of film-making that was obsolete and used it in modern setting. Audience in the current generation doesn't have any idea about the auteur directorial styles of 60s or 70s or before and if he copies them there is no one that can call him out on that because the one's who know it are in their late 70s or over.

I have been excited to see this movie for quite sometime. But this movie's hype has been tainted a bit from the get go with comparisons to Quentin Tarantino style of film making. The concept is little similar to Hateful eight and the word Royale in title reminds audience of Royale with cheese from pulp fiction. These kind of comparisons pisses me off. Can't people ever do a movie about group of criminals ever again ? So with that critique out of the way lets delve into this movie. Of course there are no spoilers until the last section of this review. 10 minutes into the movie I noticed two things. The direction of the movie seemed a little self indulgent and that can be expected from a lot of directors. But the movie starts with a very elaborated single frame shot that shows a character doing something in a room over the course of few hours with very few time lapse cuts. But the problem with the shot is that as gorgeous as it is the sequence didn't have any weight to it. Its almost like shooting a person eating his cereal for the whole duration. No matter how cleverly it was shot there is very little content there. The second thing I noticed is that the atmosphere of the outdoors of the motel is quite interesting and it has a life of its own. As I said before, all the characters in the movie enter the motel on an afternoon before a rainy night. So we see the climate changing as the movie goes along. The characters are not who they are and the trailers gave away some of the twists. But the actual reveal of each of their true identities is not intriguing enough. The most clever aspect of the movie is the way it uses the singing ability of a character.

The problem I have with the movie is that it didn't meet my expectations. That's partly because the best movies in this genre usually have a very strong and satisfying pay off. Its all about the pay off. Because this is a suspense thriller and its all building up-to something, if the pay off doesn't merit the build up then the whole movie falls apart. The best characters in the movie are Cynthia Erivo and Jeff bridges. That's partly because we spend most of the time with them. Dakota Johnson fits her part pretty well even though her character isn't fully fleshed out. The disappointing characters in the movie are that of Jon Hamm and Chris Hemsworth. From the trailers you can figure out that Hemsworth's role is that of a leader and an influencer but apart from his looks his acting doesn't convey any kind of charm or charisma. Jon Hamm is one note. Lewis Pullman character has lot of flaws in the way its written. The character of the motel is very good. Some of the twists in the movie felt very basic. They felt amateurish and are of low quality. I was able to connect the dots from the trailers. However despite all these flaws it was entertaining. I was intrigued for the most part. Its not because of the secret of the characters or the twists but it was the way things unfolded that kept me engaged for the most part. The movie was able to hold my attention until a twist happens and after that it was able to hold my attention until the next twist. There were also some socially relevant character undertones that I was able to recollect once I got out of the movie. So all in all this movie is decent theater watch for anyone who is into thriller/mystery genre and have time to kill.

Spoilers

So the movie starts with robbers having completed a heist enters a hotel room where he hides a bag of money. This whole scene takes place in a single frame. The problem with the scene is that there is not much happening there. Its just a guy hiding a suitcase very well and gets shot in the back by someone he knew.

The movie jumps back and forth in time. The transition is very organised that it doesn't feel jarring. But oddly it feels inconsequential. The whole movie could have been linear and audience wouldn't have liked it any more or less that they did this version. That's a problem. When you choose to tell a story in non linear fashion then it better be worth it. As for the characters we have an undercover FBI agent , a war veteran bell boy/in-charge of the hotel, an ex-robber coming back to collect his money, a singer looking for a better life, two sisters escaping a cult and finally the cult. The history of the hotel is much more intriguing than any of the characters in it. It is around the time of Vietnam and Nixon administration and cold war. The motel is used to spy on its customers and blackmail them to get information. It feels like a government approved facility where the positioning of the motel and the type of people who come in there are of high value to government. There is also Russian intervention in the spying. The motel is bugged to the bone. The FBI agent is tasked with getting all the bugs out of the Motel. But in his process he uncovers that there is a secret passage behind the rooms where all the characters are being watched and the videos are being sent to the management who in-turn trades that information with interested parties. So essentially he seems to have uncovered a second layer of surveillance which his superiors might have known but not him. The movie never makes it clear who knows how much about the various layers of surveillance in the hotel. The robbery plot line interweaves with this motel timeline in quite interesting manner. Before the hotel has been modified into this surveillance facility the robbery takes place and the money is stashed. After the hotel becomes what it is, Jeff Bridges comes back to get the money.

The most predictable plot-lines in the movie are Jon Hamm being an FBI agent and Dakota Johnson and her sister running away from a cult. From the trailers I was able to tell that her sister is member of cult. Even the cult is little stereotypical where in Chris Hemsworth's ulterior motives are that he just wants to sleep with his female followers. You have a bonfire scene as with any cults. I knew that in the end all the characters in the movie will be tied up by the cult and something unexpected will happen and someone worthy survives. That happens. The sudden reveal that the bell boy is a Vietnam veteran addicted to drugs and an expert shooter felt tagged in. It didn't flow with the movie. But the warmth between Cynthia Erivo and Jeff Bridges is the only thing that felt real and natural. It almost feels like a throwback to 60s films where after all the crazy stuff happens the good guys and the actual characters that lead us into the story are the ones that survive. The movie does a decent job of highlighting that a robber coming back to get his money from under the floor boards of a hotel room is the least crazy thing that happens in the movie.

One thing I noticed is that there was significant money spent in recreating the robbery when the money was stolen 10 years before the present setting. It takes place in a snowy town with ice mountains in the background. There was also significant money spent in recreating the root of trauma for the army vet bell boy by showing him in the battle. But the problem here is that both these recreations are not adding to the movie. There is something disjoint between the tone of the movie and choice of setting for these recreations. Main story-line takes place in a tropical location on a rainy day. But one of this side story takes place in Vietnam and the other in some snowy location. Both those kinda deprecate the impact of main story-line. Compare it to something like Hateful Eight where none of the story-line takes place in a tropical climate. The whole movie including the flashbacks take place in deep snow. The exteriors of the whole movie is during winter. That in a way heightens the experience and danger of the movie.

Speaking of the pay off. All Tarantino movies have a pay off that works. For example, Django Unchained had the pay off at candy-land and it is so strong that it sustained the whole way through all the shoot out. But in this movie the director cornered himself into a situation where he is forced to retrieve back to tired cliches. No matter how much of a homage your movie is, it should still stand on its own merit. This movie falls way short of that. Chris Hemsworth does nothing to convey his charm as a cult leader apart from the way he looks genetically. He brings nothing to the table. His dialogue delivery and performance is the same in every movie.In a way this movie made me understand why Tarantino uses lot of blood in the movie. There are lot of gruesome deaths in this movie but the blood on screen is kept to bare minimum. But I personally think that the more blood there is on the screen the more audience will feel the impact of violence. Without using guts if you can show audience enough blood on screen then you can influence their subconscious mind into thinking that there is something dark and disturbing happening on screen for real. I do think this movie might have benefited from a better soundtrack. 80's style soundtrack with demented undertones is the way to go. The cult leader must have been menacing and charming at the same time. Hemsworth is just hot.

step brothers is the single greatest film ever made

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China Syndrome



A news crew stumbles upon an accident at a major nuclear power facility. The bad news is its happening at a time when there is a general unrest among common public about the lack of safety measures against a nuclear explosion by the energy corporations.

First things out of the way, this movie is no all the president's men or three days of condor. There are significant plot holes and narrative mistakes in the script for this movie. It is one of those 70s movies which deals with general public paranoia about huge corporations taking over government. Of course there is truth to it. The movie has two things going for it. Its a journalism based movie and it questions the role of journalists in the corporate controlled society. It also questions the insidious ways in which huge corporations use man power and then force them to obey the corporate rules.

The news corporation and the main reporter team involved contains Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas. They are stereotypical in the sense she is a good reporter but also she wants to play the ball to get ahead. Michael Douglas is more of a behind the scenes guy who is in it for the passion and he is the truth crusader. Because guys like that get into such invisible jobs because of their pure love for their job. On screen anchors have agendas because they can be famous and be celebrities but camera crew are in it for the love of their job or money and the really good ones just love their job. The movie eases on certain security protocols in the nuclear plant just so the news crew can capture footage. This would never happen in reality.

The real heart of the movie is Jack Lemmon, a senior supervisor at the power plant and the whistle blower. Both the reporters and corporations more or less feel like institutions. Reporters are more after story and corporations are more after killing the story. But the real human character in the movie is Jack Lemmon. The movie cleverly puts him in a position of uncertainty where in he can't totally blame the corporation for not performing regular tests that would cost millions but at the same time he is not 100% sure that his doubts are warranted. It is such an interesting position he is put in that it mirrors reality. The filmmakers does a great job of giving the film a journalist flavor to it. We are immersed in the world of journalism for good chunk of time. Even the energy plant feels like a character. Its feels like something that is huge and strong and secure until it isn't. But the main problem with the movie is two fold. The power of the corporations and the danger they cause to reporters and whistle-blowers is way too kinetic in its execution. The whistle blowing aspect of it all felt rushed. That's probably called a pacing issue. Even the dangerous consequences predicted by Jack Lemmon's characters happens way too fast. He predicts there is something wrong with the plant and the moment they turn the plant back on something does go wrong thus proving that he is right all along. In reality predictions and real events don't happen that fast apart from each other. If it were to happen then it wouldn't be called predictions. It almost takes away from the seriousness of the situation. If what he predicted happened so fast then others would be idiots to not have noticed that. It's like predicting a plane with most of its engines failed will crash. Of course it will crash.

The best thing going for this movie is the way it creates a nuanced situation with several shades of grey and complexity that no single person or party can be blamed for any of it. Even the corporation heads are doing what they feel is right to stay in business. There are no antagonists. Even though they kill a reporter its all in the name of self preservation. The ending is heartbreaking because of what happens to Jack Lemmon and also how that incident brings out the humanity in Jane Fonda's stoic reporter character and a colleague of Jack Lemmon who until that point was just another foot soldier for the corporation.

Zama (2017) by Lucrecia Martel





Bronco Billy (1980) by Clint Eastwood

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Calamari Union (1985) by Aki Kaurismäki

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Shadows in Paradise (1986) by Aki Kaurismäki





Teorema (1968) by Pier Paolo Pasolini

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The Swamp (2001) by Lucrecia Martel

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TokeZa's Top 100 Movies through Space and Time

TokeZa's inane ramblings about film

Letterboxd profile

Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) -

Darkly humourous and disturbing little movie about a pompous schoolteacher being stranded in a rural Australian town and being drawn into its twisted pleasures. Has that early-'70s sense of experimentation and a foreign filmmaker's strange fascination with Australian culture (I reckon this makes for an interesting counterpart to Nic Roeg's Walkabout in that regard), plus a truly unhinged Donald Pleasence performance. Maybe one of the best Australian movies ever made.

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, 2018) -

A simple story (single father tries to find his missing teenage daughter) is given a somewhat gimmicky treatment where the entire story plays out across computer screens. At least that gimmick is executed with no small amount of seriousness and capacity for visual storytelling, to say nothing of being anchored by John Cho's solid performance.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline (Hèctor Hernández Vicens, 2018) -

Review found here.

First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018) -

Chazelle's dramatisation of Neil Armstrong's journey to become the first man on the moon adds a new level to his already-demonstrated capacity for technical flair while also charting the next step in his usual thematic concerns with trying to balance professional achievements (this time of a more immense and frightening nature) and personal relationships (to say not of his own internalised emotions that are expressed through Gosling's trademark stoicism). Still undecided as to whether or not it deserves an extra half-popcorn.

Halloween: Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002) -

Review found here.

East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) -

As far as James Dean movies go, I'd give this the edge over the bloated Giant but consider this lesser than the cool anguish of Rebel Without A Cause. It's a solid enough story and I appreciate that the direction moves in a way that goes beyond the stodginess of either its period setting or the filmmaking of the time.

Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke, 2018) -

Jia delivers another story about the consequences of crime in telling the tale of a young woman who gets a little too involved with her gangster boyfriend's way of life and pays a considerable penalty as a result. A patient film that knows how to deliver brief outbursts of violence or humour while still staying remarkably committed to the tragic dramatics that drive the film.

Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995) -

Wong delivers another delightfully weird tale of life and love on the neon-washed streets of Hong Kong, throwing the camera around with gleeful abandon in order to capture everything from Woo-style shoot-outs to endearingly earnest home videos. A welcome reminder that I need to watch more of his work.

Five Fingers for Marseilles (Michael Matthews, 2017) -

A tale of a present-day South African village being ruled over by gangsters where the group of kids who idealistically vowed to protect their home from harm have grown into embittered adults with their own baggage as a result. The heavy Western influence is played remarkably straight instead of tongue-in-cheek, which is just as well as its tale of small-town corruption and hardship.

Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018) -

Petzold adapts a Holocaust-era story involving one man's attempts to evade the spread of fascism across Europe but keeps the setting modern in an effort to draw parallels to contemporary immigration issues. Compelling from start to finish even when it dares to take breathers and allow its protagonist to get wrapped up in the affairs of various other people who face similar situations in very different ways.

First man



The true story about the life of Neil Armstrong leading up-to Gemini mission and ultimately moon landing.

This movie piqued my interest way before all the Oscar buzz and film festival chatter began. One of my most anticipated movies of 2019 is the upcoming Ford v. Ferrari movie by Logan director James Mangold. That movie stars Christian Bale and Matt Damon. When I was looking up that movie I realized that it is being made as a mission movie akin to The right stuff. Then I stumbled upon First man. Knowing Chazelle's filmography I expected that the movie would be an intense ride. The first trailer confirmed my opinions. This made me worried for Ford v. Ferrari because I felt that movie would fall short of this movie because it is given fall prestige run and that is coming in summer like Dunkirk. So, going into this movie I expected it to be a movie which starts with the space mission being this impossible thing where people are dying left and right and pressure is mounting in all directions on people involved in the program to make it happen. Ultimately once the mission succeeds, everyone gets catharsis in their own way but most importantly the lead character. One of the untapped sub-genre's in movies is the mission movie. Its a movie where people go at common goal time and again until it works. Lot of movies have this as a single sequence in the movie and then they move on to other themes. But having seen whiplash I know that Chazelle will give that treatment to this movie given that the whole movie revolves around a space mission.

Having watched First man I can say that all my fears for Ford v. Ferrari are gone. Because, this movie is not a mission movie. It doesn't have the attitude of an athlete. It is a slow paced docudrama. This movie for some reason doesn't feel organic. It feels very manipulative in its execution to get emotions in new ways. Its never a good thing when the script is written with the intention of trying to sound unique and fresh, things should just happen based on the approach taken by screenwriter as opposed to him thinking in each and every step if he is original enough. One of the things that surprised me is how much the filmmakers wanted to connect the death of Neil Armstrong's daughter with space mission. They never let it flow organically. They try and connect both things time and again.The movie is filled with young looking middle aged "oh it is that guy" type actors. That is something I hate. Another director who uses it a lot is Ron Howard. Its a tired trope that period pieces involving younger characters should avoid. You can't have bunch of slick haired guys that are capable of dirty deeds given heroic opportunities. All these guys except Armstrong are one step away from doing something dirty or creepy. Their personalities are like that. And those traits seep out in occasional looks/conversations.

When it comes to the direction, Damien Chazelle is doing something that is not quite auteurist but he is trying to carve out a niche for himself. This movie doesn't have a blockbuster budget but it does have a higher end of mid-level budget. What that does is, it gives the movie are very realistic feel. So, when the scenes take place in the house they feel small in scale and when the scenes take place in space station or on moon or in the rocket they feel large scale. If the budget of the movie is large then both the scenes feel large scale and if the budget of the movie is small then both feel small scale. So the movie switches between small scale and enormous scale scenes alternating each other. Because most of the movie takes place on earth and it makes it easier for audience to think that this movie is an art house movie but director does a good job of switching between scenes of varying scales . However, it does feel like emotional manipulation when he shows scenes of his daughter in between other scenes just so audience get that he is thinking about his daughter in these scenes. There is certain amount of Christopher Nolan copy going on in this movie. Instead of wide shots he is trying to place audience in the shoes of the characters. That's something Nolan does. Even the script is weak. Neil's wife is given no arc. She is forced to do a lot with very little dialogue. The movie feels like a glorified Wikipedia page. They just create danger for his life by showing how others around him die. But the biggest culprit is Ryan Gosling. He is playing himself. The fact that people are predicting him to get an Oscar nomination is the very definition of awards season auteur bias.

Ryan gosling is someone who I feel is an actor with very limited range. But he is just decent enough to not be a bad actor. And of course he is a movie star. That means he has some capital attached to him. You can green light a project with him as lead. So, he is either cast in roles that the director thinks he suits or the director will try to work around his limitations. In this movie it's the former. But that is an ill advised decision. The whole movie rests on his shoulders for emotional weight. But Neil's character as viewed by gosling and Damien through research and creativity is much more of a mute reserved character. So the movie is asking audience to care for a reserved character because he achieved something great in his life. Coming to think of it this does feel like a pickle. The movie can't make a big deal that he is reserved because its going for realistic tone and in reality people just don't care and just move on if someone is reserved. However there were some amateurish techniques. He explicitly portrays Buzz Aldrin as a jerk. He uses some unoriginal scenes to show how cold Neil Armstrong is towards everyone even his family. In the whole movie the only person that seems to evoke emotion in Neil Armstrong is his dead daughter.

Finally the whole Oscar buzz and campaign around this movie. Firstly, all this points to Damien Chazelle. If he was not attached to this movie then there wouldn't be any buzz for this movie. Since he has street cred from whiplash and la la land, people want to like and support him. La la land was his mount Everest. So, the next few movies that are in its blast radius will feel the effect. Critics , having revered La la land go soft on his next few movies unless he makes a piece of crap. But luckily since the movie bombed, all the critics and awards pundits in their high horses are hit with the hard cold reality of box office . This movie being a bomb will effect its Oscar chances significantly. On the contrary a movie like green book is met with skepticism because it is directed by a comedic director. So, this movie begs 2 questions. Is it worth telling a story in an expressive medium if its central character is unemotional ? and the other is, should Oscar campaign and hype be given only to filmmakers that has street cred and not to someone that's transitioning from other genre to serious prestige film-making ?

The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico, 2017) -

Picture Lord of the Flies by way of Fassbinder's Querelle and you have a pretty good idea of how this tale of delinquent schoolboys being punished with an arduous voyage to a mysterious island will play out in ways that toy with notions of sexuality and gender identity. It's kinda messy and somehow gets a little boring despite the perpetual surrealism, but it's too singularly strange to dismiss.

Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) -

This tale of a recently-divorced woman getting into misadventures comes across as a direct response to the proliferation of New Hollywood movies that lionised disconnection from the established societal order (Bonnie and Clyde being the obvious example here due to both films sharing an outlaw-couple narrative) by turning in an effectively bleak deconstruction of the same.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018) -

A tried-and-true set-up - a handful of guests check into a seemingly normal hotel where nothing is what it seems - is given a decent enough execution that offers a charmingly retro setting that's fleshed out by kitschy production design and a solid ensemble cast delivering flamboyant dialogue. However, it's been about a week since I've seen it and I've barely retained any of it, which doesn't exactly speak to it having much in the way of substance.

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) -

Review found here.

The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello, 2009) -

Another MUBI discovery, this time a blend of documentary and dramatisation that centres on the unusual but tender relationship between two former prisoners (one of whom is transgender) that started in prison and continued for decades on the outside. While an interesting subject to base a film around, the film itself left quite a lot to be desired and I had trouble really getting invested in it.

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947) -

A classic example of a run-all-night movie where James Mason's IRA (sorry, "the Organisation") ringleader is wounded during a heist gone wrong and has to evade the authorities. More than just a simple thriller, it excels better as a character study of not just Mason but also the various ordinary citizens that want to help or hinder him.

The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, 2018) -

I missed the first 10 minutes or so, which might as well be triple that in a film as rapid-fire in its fragmented use of cinematic collage as this one. Reminiscent of Histoire(s) du cinema with all the strengths and weaknesses that that entails - an overwhelming experience where the English subtitles can't keep up with the barrage of French text and dialogue, but when the chaos seems to be the point it's tolerable.

Love (Gaspar Noé, 2015) -

I think there's usually at least something of worth to be dug out of Noé's exceptionally abrasive films but with this one it seems like you have to dig much, much deeper than usual (and that was already pretty deep) to find - what exactly? Otherwise, be prepared to put up with a solid 2+ hours of annoying characters arguing with each other and having a whole lot of sex. At least he lays off the strobe light for once.

Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-wai, 2008) -

This one left me quite cold as Wong decides to apply (some of) his signature style to a fragmented wuxia story that folds in all the usual action and romance common to both the genre and his work (though the visual style is disappointingly not as freewheeling as I'd come to expect from him).

Madeline's Madeline (Josephine Decker, 2018) -

An indie dramedy about a mentally unstable teenager who is caught between her dysfunctional relationship with her mother and the demands of her interpretive dance class (especially the class's eccentric director). Takes a bit of getting used to its premise, but once it gets rolling it proves an alternately humourous and disquieting tale involving its three leads and a sobering deconstruction of the idea of artistic expression as therapeutic catharsis.

Jungle Fever (1991) –
Spike Lee’s dialogue can definitely be awkward and unintentionally funny (doubly so from himself), but it’s almost always engrossing as hell. Powerful moments, comfortable warm cinematography, and a great background soundtrack. @MonnoMYou are correct. Virtuoso dancing junky.

Straight to Hell (1987) –
Fleeing bank robbers wind up in an eccentric mock-Western town. It has a fun setting, premise, and quasi-punk feel to it, but it’s a little too goofy and tightly edited.

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) –
A wealthy older man and deceptive young woman engage in a very cerebral duel under the guise of love. There’s purported symbolism, and one of the leads is randomly played by two actresses, but it’s not heavy with Bunuel’s surrealism otherwise. Still an interesting watch though.

The Milky Way (1969) –
Most of this feels like screenwriters vicariously flexing their religious diatribe muscle, which can be interesting, but occasionally flirts with the dreaded ’p’ word. If I can be a simpleton for a moment, I think the movie is at its best when it follows the bare bones premise of two weary ‘straight man’ travelers encountering eccentrics.

Red Sun (1971) –
A fun western romp about a sarcastic cowboy (Bronson) and a ridiculously badass samurai (Mifune) buddying up to catch a train robber. The premise loses a bit of charm in the 2nd half, but still entertaining.

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) -

Review found here.

The Thing ( Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., 2011) -

Review found here.

The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997) -

A pretty standard man-versus-wild movie where a billionaire crash-lands in the Alaskan wilderness and must figure out how best to survive while also dealing with a difficult photographer who's accompanying him. Keeps a decent pace, action's not too badly shot, and ultimately worth it just for the way that Anthony Hopkins delivers the last line in this scene.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928) -

I kind of wish I hadn't already watched Bresson's Trial of Joan of Arc a while back because that also adapted the minutes from Joan's trial, but it doesn't matter when you're dealing with a film that so readily showcases the effectiveness of early cinematic technique and performance in a way that can still be seen and felt throughout the subsequent hundred years of the form's evolution.

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012) -

Review found here.

Venom (Ruben Fleischer, 2018) -

What looks on the surface like it could be a contender for one of the worst superhero movies ever made somehow isn't. That doesn't mean it's good or anything but I appreciate that it's got spots of weirdness and avoids being completely obnoxious, which goes a long way (but not far enough) toward salvaging it.

The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979) -

Review found here.

The Cameraman (Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick, 1928) -

Buster goes on another madcap adventure as a still photographer who, out of infatuation with the secretary at a local newsreel company, decides to make the upgrade to moving pictures. Plenty of great slapstick on offer and, as with all the other Keaton movies I've seen, I'm honestly amazed at some of the stuff he stages and throws himself into (especially that Chinatown setpiece, Orientalism notwithstanding).

The Guilty (Gustav Möller, 2018) -

A minimalist thriller about a recently-demoted police officer whose shift at the emergency services hotline takes a surprise turn when he gets a call from a woman who is being kidnapped. It's got a simple gimmick (single location, one on-screen character largely interacting via phone calls) but it's put to decent use in delivering its tense and twisty plot.

Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez, 2018) -

A giallo-style thriller about a masked killer who is attacking the employees of a gay porn company. It's absolutely soaked in the lurid aesthetics of its various subjects and genres, managing a solid balance of campy fun and harsh thrills (and even a genuine sense of tragedy) in the process.

The Wolverine



Logan aka wolverine has lived long enough and he is living the life of an animal with no purpose in his life. A Japanese soldier he once rescued calls for him and once he gets to Japan he is pulled into a conspiracy involving a very wealthy and powerful family and a sinister plan involving his immortality.

One of the reasons I watched this movie is because of the director James Mangold. So I was always looking for directorial choices made in the movie and the narrative of the movie. I watched it a while ago and forgot about it. But when I rewatched the movie the thing that struck me was just the breadth of Japanese aesthetics infused into the movie. One thing you need to understand is that neither James Mangold nor Hugh Jackman nor the character wolverine are huge box office draws. Even though the brand of wolverine has some box office draw, if the movie sucks or the word of mouth sucks then the movie will barely break even at box office. So this movie had to be good. When I started watching the movie I saw two things that caught my attention in the first 15 minutes. First, to heighten the emotion of the scenes James Mangold infused them with natural/real events. He opens the movie with atom bombs thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and we see wolverine with bone claws. The director infuses this scene with lot of Japanese culture. He doesn't have to do that but he makes audience feel weird because they are watching a superhero movie and they are shown an a-bomb being dropped. Second, we see wolverine getting into altercation with the locals over a bear hunt. We even see his encounter with the bear earlier. There is this weird animalistic quality to the sequence. Firstly wolverine is named after an animal and this movie shows him walking in the woods and a bear is walking few feet away from him in the same direction and so the filmmaker is trying to make wolverine feel more like an animal with no purpose walking through the woods. The encounter with bear could have been done in many ways like they could run into each other walking in opposite direction coming face to face or wolverine could have seen the bear from a distance at a right angle so it can feel more like the bear doesn't know that he is watching her but mangold choose to shoot this sequence like an encounter between two vicious beasts than could kill anything on their way but at the moment in their lives they are just lost and don't have interest in fighting anymore. Then we see him showing more compassion to the bear than humans when he gets into fight with the native hunters over the way they don't put bear out of its misery after shooting it with an arrow that makes its death slow and painful. Even the location of this whole setting is in some alaskan wilderness type village where lot of these people go hunting with bow and arrow and in their camouflage based hunting attire. Mangold is going for this very specific geographical location and for this very specific type of blue collar workers who has no regard for nature. To be honest these two choices by James Mangold are highly intelligent. Only he could have done it so subtly.

The movie then moves to Japan. Few of the characters feel little flamboyant and caricatures but upon listening to James mangolds interview for the movie he brings up an interesting point. The reasons caricatures exist is because there is some truth to them. The trick in movies is to show them without judging them. Once the the story movies to Japan I was surprised at how weird and interesting the movie became. James Mangold sort of infused the movie with Japanese aesthetics extensively. One thing that shocked me was the dynamic between the Japanese soldier wolverine saved and wolverine. It is operating on two levels. One is their relationship and how it has evolved from their previous encounter in a prison camp to the present day where the solider is very old. Secondly, the family dynamic. I was shocked at how vile the family is portrayed as. It shows the family dynamics in a very wealthy family where in the power struggle makes even a father to try to kill his daughter to get power. The movie makes the Japanese guy who wolverine saves, the bad guy. Thats a master stroke. You expect him to be grateful for what he has done but since the guy becomes wealthy and very very old he wants to live longer and he wants adamantium from wolverine. This is something that only mangold can do. I can imagine him trying to put a twist and a spin that is not conventional. In interview he says that he liked the idea of juxtaposing various concepts like the immortal man who looses his will to live, the mortal man who wants to live longer and the evil in the world shown through the family dynamic. All these starts making the movie feel more and more deeper and weighty and original.

Even the action scenes are very new and unique. There is a train fight which is very gripping and minimalist in its execution and design. Combination of samurai knife with wolverine metal claws in some fight scenes is well done. Even the movie takes time to show that even though wolverine heals he still feels the pain. Even the pre-climax fight between wolverine and samurai warriors of the family has a purpose. The fight is set in a snowy Japanese village and it makes sense that the research lab of the old man would be built in his home village. James Mangold has the ability to make the movie look beautiful and stylish yet he makes them feel semi realistic and quite frankly original. Because there are scenes in this movie where the choices made by characters doesn't feel realistic yet he shows them just the right amount before the audience suspension of disbelief alarm rings. For the most part we see wolverine traveling in cars but to get to the village he uses a bike and that is cool to look at and it creates this sense of hero disregarding his own safety to come help his lover because bike ride is much more riskier than car. But before the logic alarm kicks in among the audience he moves on from that sequence. Fight at the funeral is very interesting in terms of setting. Movie also plays with adult themes like memory , recollection and especially for a character like wolverine who lives for extremely long period of time he might have collected a lot of memories from all over the world. If I were him I would travel all over the world. It also scratches a bit on the surface of wolverine's problem with intimacy because he only brings danger. Logan deals with it much more in depth.

Negatives in the movie are the whole final act twist and also it was kinda cold decision by director to include a plotline to invite wolverine, who is in such a sad position in his life in the beginning of the movie to Japan by a guy whom he saved a long time ago only to reveal that his motive behind is to seek wolverine's immortality. It was so awkward . In the flashback there was no hints that the Japanese guy is a bad guy, he seemed like a nice soldier. The whole character of viper feels unnecessary. I get why she is there. After the old man's initial brush with a mutant when he was young, as he grew more and more wealthy and powerful , he started seeking more and more mutants. He must have come across her. He is a capitalist , so he is not looking to kill mutants but to just get what he wants from them. She did have femme fatale vibes but almost all her encounters with wolverine are confrontational in nature. It's only in her character moments that I felt like James Mangold is behaving like a commercial director and not an artist. She is a doctor and she dresses up in leather in the end. All that felt weird. its either the director being forced by studio or whatever. Even the climax fight was not great.

But in the end the movie is very well made. It doesn't feel like the work of an auteur and to be honest if a director's auteur style is boring and slow and bland ,then I would rather watch a smart, strong, innovative, cerebral movie that is very well and competently directed than an auteurs work. First man made me realize that . There were lot of scenes in that movie that could have given audience a memorable cerebral experience that they will remember long after the movie ended but all those opportunities were wasted. There was a sequence in that movie of a flight simulation gone wrong and it should have been a nail biting sequence but that was at the worst possible place in the movie. It was just added in the script at the wrong location. If James Mangold has made that movie he would have put it at exactly the right location.

Seen in October Pt.1


+
I've seen previous work by this director before (Mike Flanagan). I thought Gerald's Game was pretty good and that Hush was a total bore. I was curious as to what this film would be like.

It's actually really solid. The focus of the film switches back and forth between Gillian (Amy Pond from Doctor Who!) and Thwaites' battle with the mirror and their troubled childhood. Amy Pond gives a really good performance and her fake American accent is spot on. The first part of the film where Tim is arguing with his sister about the logic of a 'ghost' mirror was probably my favourite part of the film. The conversation is very intense and the brother's questioning encourages the audience to question the legitimacy of what we'll see throughout the rest of the film.

The horror in the film is effective as well. A pounding, unsettling soundtrack fuels every scene it is in. The film's pretty much jump-scare free, and the ones that are there just kinda 'happen', and don't have an obnoxious loud noise accompanying them. There also appears to be sprinklings of mental illness themes (a la Hereditary), such as when Amy Pond says "It runs in the family", making the supernatural elements of the film all the more ambiguous. In the past segments they seem to explore the fear that is having no control over anything: The children are left helpless as their dad turns psychotic, and are too naive to take a stand or run away. There's also some elements of paranoia: With the brother doubting Amy Pond's memory of events and the mother constantly asking about "The woman at the office".

The only thing I wasn't too keen on was the ending.


-
Quite a unique watch. A T.V. movie from 1968, only 40 minutes long, and just one part of the 'BBC Ghost Stories' collection.

It has a great atmosphere and overall tone. The constant wind blasting the main character, the wet beaches, the quaint hotel etc. Michael Hordern's performance as the stuck-up rich man is very good and really shows his character: Constantly muttering and singing to himself, giving a long-winded 'non-answer' when a man asks him about the existence of ghosts as saying yes may lower his image.

The film does have quite a big problem though, it's much too slow. Absolutely nothing of importance happens in the first 13 minutes. There's also a 3 minute picnic scene in the middle of the film which also adds nothing to the film. Quite cheeky for a film to do this when it only has a very short run-time to tell its story.

In terms of horror, it's really good. The atmosphere and tone I mentioned above certainly adds a rural feel to the whole thing. There's also no music either. The dream sequence is quite frightening: Surreal imagery, disturbing noises, loud noises etc. The ending is pretty spooky too.


-
Damn, this film is insanely anti-consumerist. The message is a very good one that I think everyone can get behind. It’s still very relevant today, what with its mentions of global warming. I enjoyed the action and the cheesy one-liners. The plot feels like it was for a different running time but was stretched out (I mean that fist-fight good lord!).



Damn, this was quite chaotic; Just the whole sense of death and destruction and all that. The sound design is absolutely brilliant.



Weird. The soundtrack is really cool, it just sounds very metal-ish and rattly. The effects all around are great, the stop motion was very cool. That final fight was quite cool aswell. The whole film all around just feels very disgusting, I think the exaggerated noises the characters make add to that. My only problem is that for the middle part of the film nothing happens; It’s just the main character going “OMG WUT’S GOING ON?!"


[RE-WATCH]
+
Got to see this in the cinema. Man, what an awesome experience. Last time I saw it was when I was young and thought it was pretty lame, boy that opinion's sure changed! The soundtrack is just fantastic, John Carpenter + keyboard = magic. There's just so many cool looking shots and so much good tension. Can't wait to see the new one.


+
A very interesting idea. I’m very interested by the themes it brings up, how this ordinary man has complete control over two other men because of a simple metal object. It did feel a little boring and repetitive towards the end though. Because of that I think this film would make a stellar remake.

Also a woman director in the 50’s?! That’s pretty cool.



Seems just like a normal 80's comedy/horror which doesn't do much to stand out from the crowd. One of those films you forget about immediately after finishing it.

I still enjoyed myself though:
-If you've played Half Life 2 and System Shock 2 you're aware of the leeches, probably my worst fear, so yeah the film kinda got to me.
-You know you're off for a great start when the first shot is aliens.
-The suspended animation room looks like a spaceship, lol wut?!
-The dude running away at a slow pace on the crutches lol
-"what is this, a homicide or a bad b movie?"
-That cat's meow echoed enough to break the sound barrier.
-Everyone clapped after she did the middle finger, she must be a real hero.
-"Screaming like banshees"
-Watching 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'? I see you're a woman of culture.
-The bus driver did the eye pop thing from Mad Max.
-'It's Miller Time!"

I think the film would've been better if it was over the course of a single night.



Ah man this was just such a nice and funny film! How am I supposed to criticize a film starring my two favourite actors? We have some good Schwarzenegger moments here (I didn’t do anything, the pavement was his enemy)



Going into Rush I was thinking 'Oh no, it's one of THESE films! (A mostly substance-less biopic that only appeals to baby boomers and middle-aged dads). During the first part of the film I was kinda feeling that, but during the 'race' scene, I started to like this film alot more. The race scenes are my favourite parts of the film: The testosterone-filled controlling of the cars and their revs so intense you can feel the vibrations on your couch. Thor was a very good casting choice, he really looks like the type of character he's playing. I thought the whole second half with Niki's fall and rise was genuinely great.

Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962) -

Review found here.

Ex Libris - The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman, 2017) -

This documentary about the eponymous library runs well past the three-hour mark but it never actually manages to get boring as it covers everything from sit-downs with famous guests to random shots of the staff going about their mundane routines.

Queen of the Damned (Michael Rymer, 2001) -

Review found here.

Maniac Cop (William Lustig, 1988) -

Review found here.

American Animals (Bart Layton, 2018) -

This true story of four college students and their plot to steal priceless books makes for an interesting enough take on the heist film, especially thanks to its framing device involving the real-life people recounting it and having the dramatisation adjust in accordance with their differing recollections.

The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller, 1964) -

A nasty and brutish little neo-noir about a sex worker who flees the big city and moves to a small town in order to start over but soon finds that to be much more troublesome than expected. Pretty solid work all around.

The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983) -

Review found here.

Apostle (Gareth Evans, 2018) -

Review found here.

Rock Hudson's Home Movies (Mark Rappaport, 1992) -

An interesting little thesis of a film that opts to comb through Rock Hudson's filmography for signs that pointed to his long-closeted homosexuality and pieces them together into a sardonically-narrated commentary upon Golden Age Hollywood that even extends into his AIDS-related passing.

Leatherface (Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, 2017) -

Review found here.

October, 2018 movies watched-

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) I think I could be underrating it.

Amelie (2001) Repeat viewing My rating is solely for quality because I do not care for this movie.

The Aviator (2004) Repeat viewing Not only am I not a fan, I don't think it's all that good.

Mandingo (1975) Part exploitation, part look at a terrible history, all good.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) Repeat viewing Maybe a step down from the last time, but still all kinds of fun.

Insiang (1976) - Insiang is a poor but beautiful young lady in the Philippines. They're both problems in this bleak and realistic film.

Incendies (2010) A really great story.

A Quiet Place (2018) + Edge of my seat the whole time.

Massacre Mafia Style (1974) The mafia, grindhouse style!

Leave No Trace (2018) - I would say it was about as good as it could have been.

The Libertine (2004) Loved the decadence; the story not so much.

The Innocents (1961) Repeat viewing I don't quite have the passion for it to be a favorite, but it's practically a masterpiece.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) - I got what I was looking for.

Total October viewings-13
Total 2018 viewings-273

★★

Lizzie (2018) - MacNeill
Poor Lizzie Borden, although rich, her epilepsy means she is not going to marry well---if at all. Her lecherous uncle has been slowly plotting to steal her inheritance out from under her. Most of the film seems to be only about supplying plenty of pre-feminist, girl power justifications for Lizzie to take matters into her own hands and go all hatchet happy on her father (a true scoundrel) and her step-mom ( Lizzie is not her favorite person in the three person household)

★★½

The Comedy of power * (2006) - Chabrol
This is a story about a fearless female prosecutor going after scandalous behaviors and big time corruption. The delightfully clueless moneymen simply toss her a few bones, assuming she is just looking for her cut in the deals. There is a great visual joke when she is first introduced (she is known in the investor community as “the piranha”) with an aquarium of swimming goldfish behind her. Once the graftsmen finally realize she is actually going to do her job and dedicate her life to putting them all behind bars; she is simply promoted out of prosecution by her bosses into another government department where her “bite” will become inconsequential.

The Flower of Evil * (2003) - Chabrol
It seems improbable during a mayoral campaign that this stately mansion and this family tree has more back-stabbing, incest, murder and patricide per square inch then in the whole of the European community combined past and present.

Violette Nozière * (1978) - Chabrol
This is a kind of French Lizzie Borden story. Violette is introduced escaping her clueless parents and her “cage” by sneaking down the stairs in her stocking feet; an innocent school girl by day and a syphilitic prostitute by night. You kind of know it’s not going to end well for her once a pretty boy latches onto her and begins to demand and she begins to fork over thicker and thicker wads of cash for his sundry expenses. Things improve in the third act when she becomes a kind of folk hero and a large part of the public rallies around her sob story as an innocent, abused young woman.

The Bridesmaid * (2004) - Chabrol
This is one twisted romance. His mother makes a gift of the stone bust from their backyard (Flora, the roman goddess for flowers and spring) and gives it to her new boyfriend. Her twenty-something live at home son immediately steals it back and hides it in his closet and falls asleep at night cradling it in his arms. His conflict is immediate he finds a flesh and blood woman who looks astonishingly like the stone head. She’s got a great character tell herself (beyond declaring eternal love the second she meets him) when she tells him: one is a truly exceptional human being if one has planted a tree; written a poem; had same-sex sex; and ended someone’s life. More enlightened minds would have grabbed their socks and made a dash for the door the moment a potential lover suggested messing with a rhyming couplets but he is clearly not one of them, he is content to laze in bed and make goo-goo eyes at her.

A Star is born (2018) - Cooper
There is a nice bit of tradecraft where Ally is introduced as the most beautiful woman in the room and in the film. What Jack actually does for a living is a bit of a head scratcher, he starts out as a jet-setting rock star whose busy concert schedule never seems to conflict with his canoodles with Ally. The extent of his decline is limited to one scene where he is demoted to playing backup guitar on some sort of tribute album and a liquid moment onstage. But then, this is a remake story where the audience knows all the beats beforehand. The torch song needed for the big finish where Ally becomes the star wasn’t really there. There is a lot of egregious product placement in the film, with a nagging suspicion that certain sponsors thought the original, fiery, two wheeled ending of our drunken hero cast their product in an unfavorable light and so it was written out of the movie to accommodate their wishes.

The Devil’s Playground (2012) - Walker
The Amish believe (rightfully) that children lack the intellectual capacity to make great life decisions and put off their confirmation ceremonies to the church until after the Rumspringa period; when the young (16 – 20) adults are allowed to mix with the outside world without religious supervision. There are some built-in difficulties for this documentary because the Amish are notoriously camera shy; being interviewed is considered vain and sinful. Amish children leave school and start working around 13, so when Rumspringa (which might be better translated as ‘the brick wall moment” rather than the “running around” period) rolls around at their 16th birthday, they hit the ground running. Fast food! Keggers! Shopping! But they stop running once it dawns on them: surviving alone in the outside world with a seventh grade education is going to be next to impossible. Their religion has a 90 per cent retention rate, but the devil is in the details.

The Wife (2018) - Runge
A painfully shy novelist allows her husband to masquerade in public as the grand old man of literature while she is content to bask in his reflected glory. The film sets-up a great dramatic, knockdown, drag ‘em out finish where all the secrets spill out into the light, but the film chickens out like a wussy little fraidy cat at the end.

Christine (2016) - Campos
Rebecca Hall (with her usual panache) plays an up and coming journalist hitting the big 3-0 in Florida. There’s a nice early 70’s reconstruction of hair styles, song riffs and ideas (the shift from information to entertainment is just happening to TV news) If this seems appealing, put this on your to-see-list and stop reading now. This character study gains immensely if you simply discover the film.

Christine always maintains her distance; she is never Chrissie or Chubs but always Ms. Chubbuck. She calls her roommate Peg, while most people would just call her mom. The film is problematic, it’s almost impossible to avoid the spoiler that precedes it and this keeps the audience at arm’s length from the story. The film inevitably becomes an armchair investigation , throwing out her possible symptoms and suggesting possible answers, but Miss-C was always the smartest person in the room, if it was just one thing, she would have simply discovered the answer herself.

★★★

Nada * (1974) - Chabrol
A dollop of cynicism and black humour are ladled into this kidnapping thriller satirizing both a group of disillusioned revolutionaries and the larger color coordinated, uniformed gang of thugs. Once their hideout is found, the official government overseer suggests to the lead investigator, the whole thing will be better resolved if we were to go in with guns blazing and just wipe the slate clean. The political fallout will be minimal with a few symbolic slaps on the wrists; this will be an easy win for the law and order crowd. The investigator is a little pissed to discover, once the dust settles that he is one of the symbolic, unemployed nincompoops. Nada means nothing in Spanish.

The Break-up * (1970) - Chabrol
A mentally unstable man attacks his wife and child one morning, sending the kid barely alive to the hospital. This is the last straw for his wife, His wealthy father immediately conspires to steal his grand-son during the divorce, since his own son is a complete dud; his grandson is going to inherit the family fortune and his training needs to begin immediately. His lawyer warns him, to take over guardianship of the child; he is going to actually prove in a court of law that she is an unfit mother. The old man begins throwing secret fistfuls of money at his problem. His lead co-conspirator realizes almost immediately, the wife is a paragon of virtue and he is going to have to manufacture the proof they need. The walls start closing in, with everyone around her directly or indirectly working for her wealthy father-in-law.

This Man must Die * (1969) - Chabrol
The inevitability of fate is suggested when two opposing archers draw back their bows and let their symbolic arrows fly worlds away: a small boy gathering seashells on the shore and a muscle car bombing down a country road until they criss-cross in a village square. This begins as a simple tale of revenge then slowly morphs into a kind of Greek tragedy. The father believes in fate and hasn’t a single doubt he is going to find and kill the person responsible for his son’s death because he is going to dedicate the rest of life to this one goal. There is a nice throwaway moment when the father finds the original car from the crime scene, but the killer has replaced the front end, repainted the car white and tries to pawn it off to him as the steal of a lifetime.

Wedding in Blood * (1973) - Chabrol
An affair between two murderous lovers is slowly discovered in a sleepy town. There is a nice shading of tones: the town square is immediately established as teeming with life, and when she sleeps over, she could sneak out under the cover of darkness but prefers to wait until first light when she could be spotted by someone. The couple flirts with disaster with their increasingly public trysts. Their exaggerated love making reveals the boredom of their lives. The moments of political satire are clearest when the detective investigating a suspicious death receives a call from “The President” telling him to lay off the investigation and the inquest is closed. When an anonymous letter arrives later telling the cops the couple are having an affair, they are forced to re-open the investigation not because they have any interest in solving it, but this will prevent a larger political scandal down the road.

Hell * (1992) - Chabrol
This is about a man quietly losing it; the story is about 7 years of their marriage. The director slices it thin in the beginning, illustrating his little breaks with reality with objective misplaced glances and reactions. Then the voice of jealousy begins to whisper in his ear until he is lost in his increasingly subjective ravings. For example, there is a black-out in the hotel and his wife innocently goes down a hallway distributing candles to the guests, but what the husband sees is her wantonly parading in and out of the men’s rooms in a fish net body stocking. Emmanuelle Beart is a wonderful foil to his madness; the girl can’t help it. She lights up any room with her smile, her summer print dresses only accentuate the sway of her hips---the slightest narrowing of her eyes is going to send him down the rabbit hole. She is so screwed.

Chicken with Vinegar * (1985) - Chabrol
This is one twisted little French town. Some men angrily threaten a woman from a sleepy suburban sidewalk because the front entrance is chained and barricaded against them, she screams back at them from an upstairs window. The postman arrives (her son) and he enters and takes his invalid mother downstairs and wheels her into their war room. He’s already been to the post office and returned with the mail; they steam open the letters (belonging to the men in the street) and gather the latest intell into their real estate scam to steal their family home, they are the last hold-outs. Pressured from all sides, the son passively accepts his mother’s growing hysteria and the bullying from the gang---but hey, it’s not all bad, he is also being sexually harassed by a co-worker (who looks like an extra from a Russ Meyer film) until he cracks one night and does a little vandalism that gets the police involved. Chicken is a French slang term for a cop.

The Butcher * (1970) - Chabrol
This is not quite a twisted romance but more of fizzled infatuation between a schoolmarm and the village meat supplier. Both are emotionally stunted; he has seen the buzzing black flies of atrocity as a soldier in two wars, and she has shut down completely after a horrible relationship. They are put together at a wedding and by the time he walks her back to her apartment above the school, he is a piece of chalk in her hands. He comes over with a jar of marinated cherries one evening and he sits at the table in one of the kiddie chairs, staring up at her while she sits in a big chair finishing off the last of her student’s homework. This is about as close to heaven as he is going to get, most of the time he is worshipping her from afar, she loves showing him the back of her head. Despite all the cops combing the countryside looking for a serial killer, she is the first to stumble upon the killer’s identity. She is really enjoying her flirtation with a homicidal maniac in the way she purposely forgets to lock the school doors at night.

The Sensation of Sight (2006) Wiederspahn
This is a delicate film with the actors creating the spark and smoulder of disconnection and estrangement in a small town. The former high school teacher almost comes out and says he pulls a child’s wagon laden with of encyclopaedias door to door as an act of penitence; he didn’t spot a suicidal kid crying out for help. The film has a wonderful opening coda: an early morning mist slowly dissipates from the warmth of dawn’s first light before a sleepy farmhouse; then several early morning risers react (or not) to a body in a field; you can either bail immediately or stay for the show because it’s 2 hours and 10 more minutes of the same.

Just before Nightfall (1991) - Chabrol
This is a psychological drama about an advertising exec who commits the so called perfect murder. Although he can be placed at the crime scene, he is outwardly too noble and respectable for the cops to even bother the great man with a routine interview. He then grows a secret desire to claim ownership for the deed and becomes a serial confessor; his mistress immediately keyed on that perverse need of his to be punished during their S&M games. The only time he is truly shocked and troubled in the film is when he discovers a lowly accountant has embezzled money from his advertising company and he is almost green with envy: why does this schlub get to go to prison and I have to walk around free as a bird? The end comes when he confesses to the wrong person.

Molly Maxwell (2013) - St. Onge
They maintain a specific point of view through-out the film concentrating on Molly; a student at a school for gifted children where everyone one is studiously dishevelled and ironic. She is bursting with enthusiasm and at the same time bewildered by all the choices in her story book life, She lets it drop every so often that she has a genius IQ (her younger brother is going to be a concert pianist) and pushed to specialize in something she chooses photography and the hunky teacher as her faculty advisor. The guy is basically a rock star, his band has broken up and he’s taking a temporary teaching gig before heading out as a solo act. This is all so cute and cuddly the film almost gets away without the audience realizing this is a story of a high school teacher having a fling with his 16 year old student.

The Sister Brothers (2018) - Audiard
Instead of hard work and a lot of dumb luck during the California gold rush, a chemist thinks there is another route to success: one can be simply be clever about it. So clever in fact that a detective is hired to hunt him down and a second team is dispatched to extract the luminous formula from his mind. I wouldn’t actually call this a western; this is more of a re-telling of the alchemist’s myth. These are not frontier men creating civilization from their bare hands, but independent contractors with highly specialized training and skills in a market economy looking for a place to call home. The detective notices whole towns spring up around what was originally a grouping of tents only a few months earlier. The chemist is less interested amassing a personal fortune then using it to build a utopian society.

The Daughter (2015) - Stone
A slow motion tragedy where an estranged son is contractually obliged to put in an appearance at his philandering father’s wedding; he’s got a thing for the hired help. He hasn’t been home since forever and when he bumps into his best friend from high school he spends most of the time hanging out with his family to escape the oppression of the big house. A chance remark from his best friend’s wife gives him a great emotional bullet he can use against his father and one that he is totally helpless against using; unfortunately he knows nothing of the other tragedies that nugget of information will set in motion.

Free Solo (2018) - Chin
This is about an elite group of rock climbers and the reveals in the film are about the specific mind set needed to dwell in that warrior space (the film even suggests their brains are wired differently) The original set-up was to have a camera crew film follow Alex Honnold up the cliff but this proved too distracting for his concentration; a fellow climber does his free solos in complete anonymity. So they opt for a single long lens across the valley and one drone camera circling him at the top, after all the problem sections are over. The climb is reduced to a precise, vertical kata, where the exact placement of each finger, each intake of breath, and each shift of weight is duly noted in advance. Alex likens it to an Olympic event where first place is a gold medal and second place is plummeting to your death. Chin is improving as a director. There’s a few shots of Alex doing pull ups in the open door of his van, then does a reveal from the inside later on that shows he is not actually working his arms but turning his fingers into steel.

Back in Crime (2016) - Alvarez
An unpretentious French crime film (the turns are more about personal connections and drama then generating suspense and thrills) where a detective returns 20 years in time to the original unsolved killing spree of the earwig killer (whose signature move is to puncture the ear drums of his victims with a screwdriver, before dumping them hog-tied and still alive into the water) He and the film doesn’t linger on the paradox of time travel but seizes on the opportunity (his life was completely ruined by the case) to nail the killer who has suddenly become active again in the present day.

★★★½

Night cap * (2000) - Chabrol
Jeanne is a little rattled when someone tells her a funny story that she was almost switched at birth and she could have grown up with famous concert pianists as parents. An aspiring pianist herself, she wastes no time in driving up to their villa and knocking on the door. Everyone in the house is immediately struck by her eerie resemblance to the second wife—Jeanne helps things along by adopting some of her mannerisms. Mika (his first and currently third wife) is so rattled when Jeanne turns around and poses like the dead woman in her portrait on the wall behind her, she drops the (drugged) thermos of hot chocolate she is holding. The husband takes her in as student and begins girding her for an upcoming competition; they immediately begin practising for someone’s funeral. There is a nice character tell when Mika is in a murderous rage when she quietly draws her shawl around her body. The famous pianist’s biggest worry is that Rohypnol is about to become a banned substance and he can no longer sleep without by being roofied senseless every night.

The Cry of the Owl (1987) - Chabrol
A visiting architect stumbles upon a secluded house in the country and becomes infatuated by the picture perfect life of the loving husband and wife he sees every night and is irresistibly drawn to meet them in person. Huge mistake. They turn out to be complete fruit loops. He invites the woman out for a polite supper and she calls off her wedding before the entrée arrives and begins falling in love with him. Her travelling salesmen fiancé becomes violent and insanely vindictive to the point of travelling to Paris to dig up dirt on him. The architect’s ex-wife is a wondrous villain who believes a day without tormenting and torturing her ex-husband is like a day without sunshine. So when the jilted fiancé shows up, she simply sets him up in a hotel room and she takes over orchestrating the misery. The voyeur becomes the voyee, being openly threatened by an unknown person while the entire community watches gleefully these increasingly violent entertainments.

Farenheit 11/9 (2018) - Moore
This is a nice pamphlet about the lack of representational democracy in America. It’s easy to become angered by some of the sketches in the film. But Moore makes a huge mistake in not including a section about the Citizens United decision which has opened the flood gates of money (which has no odor and more importantly no nationality) into their political system. The Citizens United decision now allows with majestic equality (to paraphrase Anatole France) both billionaires and beggars alike are free to spend 10 million dollars on the candidate of their choice. In a system where only graft greases the wheels of policy change, it’s an exercise in futility to suggest (as Moore does) simply sending idealistic, honest, Mr. Smith type candidates to the congressional whore house is the answer; they will be simply voted out of office by big money the next time or themselves become corrupt faster than you can say Sheldon Adelson. Moore also shoe horns the completely symbolic gesture of x-boxing or chad-whacking once every 4 or 5 years as the height of democratic participation and forgets actually working towards a better society with others in the weeks, months and years in between.

* = rewatch