by ·Comments Off on 8 Women (2002, Francois Ozon)

Lovely and delightful, a bunch of the greatest actresses in a color-coordinated single-location murder-mystery musical. I take it Ozon isn’t always good, but I’m thankful to discover that he was ever this good. The ending is a bit cruel (you shouldn’t shoot yourself in front of your kids).

Won a cast award at Berlin (you bet it did). Victim’s wife Deneuve appears here after a couple Ruiz films and in between a couple Oliveiras. Her weirdo sister Isabelle Huppert was also following a great Ruiz, in between a couple Hanekes. Their mom Danielle Darrieux had been playing Catherine’s mom since The Young Girls of Rochefort. Chef Firmine Richard was in an early film from the director of Indigenes which nobody appears to have seen. Suspicious new maid (they’re all suspicious, but come on) Emmanuelle Béart was a decade past La Belle Noiseuse and about to star in Story of Marie and Julien. Victim’s flighty sister Fanny Ardant looks the same as she did in the 1980s Resnais films, played Maria Callas this same year. Older daughter Virginie Ledoyen had already been murdered by Huppert in The Ceremony and more recently played the hotgirl in The Beach. That leaves young Ludivine Sagnier, who would return in Ozon’s Swimming Pool, and get to sing again in Love Songs.

Huppert’s transformation:

by ·Comments Off on Zigeunerweisen (1980, Seijun Suzuki)

Dream-logic stuff happens, shot in a dreamy way by resurgent Suzuki (his big comeback, according to people who didn’t see A Tale of Sorrow). Story of the titular sound recording where the composer’s voice can be heard on the recording is true, the characters sharing this story are a German professor, a guy named Nakasago who is maybe his colleague or maybe a random maniac he met on a beach, and the girl (a geisha in mourning and her various doppelgangers). Between them, the three lead actors have been in all the weird Japanese movies: the prof in Funeral Parade of Roses, the girl in The Human Bullet, and Naka in Farewell to the Ark, Izo, and Nightmare Detective, not to mention the rest of Suzuki’s trilogy.

Sean Rogers in Cinema Scope:

A blood-red crab superimposed on a dead woman’s crotch, a bowl of pork fat grotesquely overfilled, a tongue erotically licking an eyeball in close-up, a man buried to the neck below riotously flourishing cherry blossoms — these visual flourishes originate entirely with the filmmaker, rather than the lean and fragmented short stories by the Taisho-era modernist Uchida Hyakken that serve as the film’s source material … Suzuki and screenwriter Tanaka Yozo, who scripted all the films of the trilogy, delight in setting up mysteries that are never resolved: Did Nakasago murder the woman on the beach? Did he seduce Aochi’s wife? Did Aochi himself sleep with Sono, or was she a ghost? And can Nakasago reclaim his daughter from O-Ine, even from beyond the grave?

by ·Comments Off on SPL: Kill Zone (2005, Wilson Yip)

I think the movie wants us to root for the cops who are trying to out-brutality each other, versus drug boss Sammo Hung who had the parents of a “cute” child murdered before they could testify against him. I chose to wish righteous death upon everyone onscreen, and nearly got my wish. Each cop has his little emotional family subplot before getting killed by a white-suited knife guy, except for retiring-due-to-brain-cancer Simon Yam who unfairly gets to live to see the sequel. Sammo also survives, but has been through a lot (accidentally murdering his family using Donnie Yen as a weapon), so he’s allowed to skip the sequel. The lighting was good, anyway.

Look what happens to bad cops:

My coworkers are always asking the autocomplete apps for professional advice and they no longer trust any knowledge that doesn’t come from bots, so I finally gave in, asking a bot how this movie ends, and it gave a completely wrong answer. Brandon’s Deeper Into Movies Blog: providing more accurate movie descriptions than the autocomplete bots for almost twenty years.

You have defeated Donnie Yen, but at what cost?

by ·Comments Off on Manslaughter (1922, Cecil De Mille)

I realized just before hitting play that I meant to grab Manhandled (1924), not Manslaughter (1922), for the series I’m watching. But I haven’t ever named or mentioned this series and I’m accountable to no one, and I’ve got Manslaughter on DVD with an Alloy Orchestra soundtrack, so we’re making a substitution. Ultimately the movie is a boring morality story, but I enjoyed playing the keyboard-and-percussion score nice and loud.

Early on the movie lets us know that the cute girl is gonna be punished by society for driving her car too fast (55mph!), with ominous capitalization in the intertitles. When Joy races a traffic cop she’d previously bribed I immediately recognized the music – this is the part I used in my trailer for Variete. She does a fun little stunt that kills the pursuing motorcycle cop.

Second-billed is the upright district attorney (who does some manhandling after all), and while Joy is in jail learning how to be a good generous person (?) the DA quits his job to become a drunk, until her jail-earned Goodness puts the DA back on the righteous track.

I’m always saying this:

I like that the lawyer’s name is Dan O’Bannon. DeMille must not have been impressed with Joy – she is 13th-billed in the following year’s Ten Commandments. Dead cop Jack Mower would play a cop in House of Wax decades later. Manhandled maid Lois Wilson starred in The Covered Wagon, and the maid’s sick kid Mickey Moore went on to assistant-direct Elvis movies.

I’m always saying this:

by ·Comments Off on Blow Out (1981, Brian De Palma)

Haven’t seen this in a while… probably De Palma’s best movie, but I’d probably say that about ten different De Palma movies if I’d rewatched them this week. Sound recordist Travolta works at a movie production house with a framed poster of Squirm, rescues Nancy Allen from a car crash, and gradually uncovers her role in the “accident.” Unfortunately for everyone, killer John Lithgow has gone rogue, starts a side project murdering girls who look like Nancy so her eventual death will be blamed on the serial killer instead of politics. Nancy’s accomplice, blackmail-photographer Dennis Franz, relaxes at home watching De Palma’s Murder a la Mod, while his shadowy co-conspirators erase Travolta’s entire tape library (filmed in an Akerman spin take).

by ·Comments Off on Demons 2 (1986, Lamberto Bava)

Sally dances to Morrissey then goes to her room to watch horror movies alone during her own birthday party, relatable. She finds a TV movie about other young people uncovering demons (some idiot hellraisers a dead demon by bleeding into its open mouth) – but this is not the movie Demons. Then a demon videodromes through the TV, demonogrifies her, and she murders all her party guests then… melts(?), and her cursed acid blood plays hell on the apartment building below. Everyone acts like they’re the character in a TV commercial who needs a miracle product to perform a simple task, and no miracles are here, just the manic unstoppable demons of an Evil Dead movie.

Movie is properly disgusting – a demon child breaks into a woman’s apartment then convulses as an Audrey II-mouthed rubber alien bursts out of his chest and chases the woman around until defeated by a murphy bed. There’s an elevator shaft escape, an ineffectual parking garage showdown, and the hetero couple ends up at a quirky movie theater TV studio (which is maybe supposed to evoke the movie theater of Demons 1 but really only reminded me of Scanners 3). Among the doomed women is Asia Argento. Half the crew followed this with Dario Argento’s Opera and prospered, the other half made Graveyard Disturbance and did not. Speaking of Opera, I wrote “Argento characters never behaving like actual humans makes the movies more phantasmagorical,” and that’s sure true of the dialogue here – but I’ve never been to Italy, and what if the people there are really like this?

Hetero couple triumphant:

by ·Comments Off on Junk World (2025, Takahide Hori)

I didn’t need the little robot guy from another movie to get an origin story, but “weirdo pervert stop-motion” is one of my favorite genres, so this was great. Starts with a military unit making their way out of enemy territory, then alternates between rewinding to the same actions from a different character perspective (they took to heart the criticisms that nobody understood what happened in the first movie) and crazily escalating the action/stakes. Kickass protector robot gets injured, rebuilds itself as cuddly robot, time travels to distant past, inspires teddybear-cat creatures to create a complex civilization, then sends daughter of the teddycat leader back to the past to protect the military guys inside a red ducky powersuit.

Ducky streetfighters a Freddy-chested supermutant:

by ·Comments Off on Don’t Look Back (1967, D.A. Pennebaker)

Pretty funny that as the Beatles came to the USA playing havoc in the media with their jokey answers to interview questions, Dylan went to England to do the same. This is more of a hotel room hangout movie than expected, and Bob gets aggressive and confrontational. Joan Baez comes across a ton better than she did in the TNT Show, harmonizing with Bob on Hank Williams songs. They’re in full folkie mode, Bob not having Gone Electric until a couple months after filming.

When I said Joan comes across well I meant musically, not lighting

unrelated: guess who I’ve got tickets to see this summer

by ·Comments Off on The Big T.N.T. Show (1966, Larry Peerce)

The Stones didn’t show up this time but the crowd still shrieks annoyingly while actor David “Man From UNCLE” McCallum leads the orchestra in “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Turns out the crowd can be controlled – they shut the fuck up and focus on clapping out of time when Petula Clark starts “Downtown,” then resume yelling for The Lovin’ Spoonful’s singer looking silly hugging an autoharp. Ray Charles gets a big rocker, Bo Diddley chugs on the guitar, The Byrds dress stylishly and jangle on, and Joan Baez plays a song from Inside Llewyn Davis. Movie catches fire with the Ronettes into Roger Miller (the only one who talks to the crowd between songs). Donovan gets an appropriately pretentious intro (Dylan was wise not to accept the invitation) and after he mystifies the crowd, Ike and Tina bring the energy the hell back up for a raucous finale. Good movie.

Petula silences the screams:

Bo lets the girls rock out:

Joan kills the mood:

The Sparks Brothers say what are WE doing here?

Roger plays to the camera:

The crowd puzzles over Donovan:

Tina takes it home:

But there would be no next year: