Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

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According to These Fists Break Bricks, none of that happens in the actual movie.

I forgot The Godfather was in there as well. I just remember the priest named, "Exorcist," in a, "let's not think about the source material too much here. It was a big movie, okay?"


When I say shallow, the laughs started to feel a bit shallow and repetitive. It didn't help that the intro credits felt like they gave away too much. This is all going off of a memory from half a decade ago. It was just a sense of diminishing returns as the movie went on. i.e. having fun with plot ideas that sounded good on paper, but then just kind of became, well sequence of light jokes. It wasn't terrible, but compared to the other movie I saw that night that seemed less trying to be a joking around fun skit, seemed like a somewhat interesting movie. One of those movie outings where based on the movie descriptions you kinda guess very wrong which one you end up enjoying more.



Ringo Starr in Son of Dracula was another movie outing that, on paper, the movie should have been amazing, but was not.


Whereas, Skatetown USA, sounded really questionable, but turned out to be a surprisingly good time.



Mystique (Findlay, 1979)



My recent viewing of Everything Everywhere All At Once (which I enjoyed on the strength of the central performances, even if the movie's constant invention wore me out by the end) got me thinking about a shift in storytelling I've noticed since the start of the pandemic. While I've largely stopped trying to keep up with new releases aside from the odd trip to the theatre, many of the ones I've managed to see strike me as having a certain self-contained, insular quality in their narratives. In some cases, like Kimi, which is set during the pandemic and features an agoraphobic protagonist, the choices are explicit, but in other cases, like Tenet (shot before the pandemic but released during) and its gleefully confounding logic, that kind of insularity is more implicit, almost ambient. I'm sure there are auxiliary reasons for this (budgetary restrictions, COVID protocols during shoots), but it's something that's stuck out to me.

Of course, this also meant that such qualities in older movies have been resonating with me as well, and Roberta Findlay's Mystique is one movie that gets much of its power from a sense of psychological isolation. Like A Woman's Torment, it takes place from a remote seaside manor (perhaps the same one, although I haven't bothered to verify) and features a protagonist retreating there for personal reasons. The heroine here, played by the great Georgina Spelvin, is photographer who is told she has a terminal illness and relocates to a house on the coast to cope. There, she meets and falls under the spell of a mysterious woman played by Samantha Fox. Spelvin is immediately infatuated, and proceeds to build their relationship through her photographic work, asking Fox to model for her and slowly becoming dependent on her affection. Yet Fox is hesitant to reciprocate (when Spelvin asks "Do you love me?", Fox responds "Does it matter?"), and quickly becomes cruel. (Fox taunts Spelvin, who finds her with another lover: "Did you ever taste semen, Alma? Mmmm, salty. Tastes better than your ****ing tea.") The relationship further deteriorates as Fox brings in more of her friends, who refuse to leave, adding to her torment. (While I'm not at all a Ron Jeremy fan for reasons onscreen and off), I will concede that he can be well cast in unsavoury roles, and is effectively used here.) But as Spelvin's psyche crumbles, one can't help but wonder, how much of this is even real?

Of the handful of movies I've seen directed by Findlay, this is easily the most polished, and has a nice fluid style that helps us slide across the layers of fluctuating reality in the film. (For the record, I don't think the lack of polish necessarily hurt her other movies. A Woman's Torment channels the roughness into psychological instability while Tenement's grimy aesthetic makes its bursts of violence additionally nauseating.) Like A Woman's Torment, the coastal location gives a certain quiet atmosphere that proves a nice counterpoint to the psychodramatics of the story, and this one also comes across as more committed in its direction of the sex scenes, which are often shot with a certain shadowy intimacy. (That doesn't necessarily make them more pleasant, as there are a few pretty ugly moments of sexual assault. While these are arguably justified from a narrative standpoint, that doesn't necessarily make them easier to watch.)

Of course, the movie wouldn't work as well as it does were it not for the central performances, and both Spelvin and Fox deliver the goods. Spelvin is one of the great unsung actresses of '70s cinema, and she brings in a lived-in, vulnerable quality to her character that grounds the movie's moody coldness in real human emotion. Listen to the slight quiver in her voice and you grasp the pain her character goes through. Fox, who is usually a warm, sympathetic presence is effectively icy, and the contrast between the two makes the central dynamic work. (One also wonders where the hell any of this range was when Fox starred in Doris Wishman's A Night to Dismember, which she apparently paid the director to do.) It also helps that they're working with a literate, intelligent screenplay courtesy of the great Roger Watkins. (Given the movie's fatalism and contempt for love, warmth and intimacy, this shouldn't be a surprise. Watkins also slides in an allusion to his pseudonym, throwing in a reference to Gustav Mahler's Kindertodtenlieder: "Hey bitch, where's the one about the dead babies? It kinda grows on you.") And in the interest of objecting reporting, I must note that Fox not only wears the same robe as she does on the poster, but also sports a top hat later in the movie, both of which earn the movie bonus points.




Updated List of 2022 Releases That Own:


Ambulance
RRR


That is all.



Updated List of 2022 Releases That Own:

Ambulance
RRR

That is all.
Have you not watched Everything Everywhere All At Once yet?



It's a list of 2022 releases that own, not 2022 releases that are just pretty good.



Victim of The Night
It's a list of 2022 releases that own, not 2022 releases that are just pretty good.
Wow. Considering people have been telling me EEAaO was like seeing The Matrix for the first time for them, that's pretty strong.



The trick is not minding
Wow. Considering people have been telling me EEAaO was like seeing The Matrix for the first time for them, that's pretty strong.
We forgive Rock for this transgression.



Wow. Considering people have been telling me EEAaO was like seeing The Matrix for the first time for them, that's pretty strong.
I thought it was pretty great. And among both my queer friends and my Asian friends (and especially among my queer, Asian friends!) I know several people who are like "This is the movie I feel like I've been waiting for my whole life!" or "Where was this movie when I was 17?!".

Not that you have to be in any of those demographics to enjoy it, but I'm seeing some profound reactions. And that includes people who went into it relatively un-hyped. Obviously your mileage may vary (and I can certainly acknowledge some flaws in the film). I can see someone finding it good as opposed to great despite falling into the latter camp myself.



It's a list of 2022 releases that own, not 2022 releases that are just pretty good.
Geez Rock, what is it with you and negging great Michelle Yeoh movies from the 21st century?






I'm also in the "pretty good, not great" camp, though a number of people I know and a few critics I follow seem over the moon about it. I will admit, it is hitting an area of independent film (just an attempt for all-out, gonzo fun) that we don't seem to have a lot of (I think on RT, it was DaMU who asked, "yes, we have our cerebral, slow burn horror movies with Robert Eggers (after the Witch) and Under the Skin, but where is this decade's Sam Raimi with their cartoon violence?" (or something to that affect). So I appreciate its existence additionally in that sense.

Since Wooley hasn't seen it yet, I'll put my brief thoughts in spoilers, just in case it gives some hint away that he hasn't already gleamed (or maybe biases him against enjoying parts that he might otherwise enjoy going in cold.

WARNING: spoilers below

When I saw it, I didn't feel it emotionally stick the very, very ending. And a lot of the comedy up to that point, not counting the effective use of coming back to what initially seemed like throw-away jokes, I felt like we had already gotten a lot of that multi-verse comedy after I don't know how many seasons of Rick & Morty (especially with that most recent season finale). And for the emotional resolution you're supposed to get accepting it all (in contrast to something like Rick & Morty), I got that in full force from the Don Hertzfeldt films from the past decade. I initially thought maybe it was merely a case of familiarity possibly deflating the sense of execution of it in this movie, but I've also heard critics who had reservations about it also say they felt the ending felt a little trite, so it wasn't just me.

I did like the return to the Racaccoonie joke, and I did like the rocks. If you want to break my suspension of disbelief during a movie though, even one at its premise says everything is possible, it's to act as if professional wrestling is a real fighting technique. Don't know why, but it always does. Martial artists flying through the air, no problem. Professional wrestling being a fighting technique, nope, just can't do it.



Geez Rock, what is it with you and negging great Michelle Yeoh movies from the 21st century?



Stu, I am a gentleman. I would never neg Michelle Yeoh. In fact I would compliment her for her work alongside Richard Ng in the 1987 film Magnificent Warriors.



Wow. Considering people have been telling me EEAaO was like seeing The Matrix for the first time for them, that's pretty strong.
I thought the Matrix was just pretty good too, haha.


I think Little Ash gets into some of the issues I had with the movie in the spoilered part of his post, but basically while the movie presented us with a lot of fun or funny shit, I never thought it really accumulated. It's one of those cases where the movie becomes unpredictable to a fault. If anything can happen, why should I care when anything does happen? And it made the pivot into a fairly conventional message feel a tad unwieldy. Also, this might seem a bit odd as a complaint given that the two movies I cited as ones that owned run longer, but I do think this one's manic pace got a little exhausting at two hour twenty or so minute runtime.



I still liked the movie, largely on the strength of Yeoh, Quan and Hong, and it is certainly inventive. But I guess I land at a 7/10.



Stu, I am a gentleman. I would never neg Michelle Yeoh. In fact I would compliment her for her work alongside Richard Ng in the 1987 film Magnificent Warriors.
And then I would win her over with the power of suspenders dancing.



I'll say I probably landed a little higher than Rock. 8/10.
I was a very different person when The Matrix premiered so I can't remember what I actually thought of it back then. I think I really liked the art direction, but wasn't as over the moon about it as other people were.