by ·Comments Off on My Life as a Zucchini (2016, Claude Barras)

Cool stop-motion, meticulous big-headed characters, the camera rarely moving – kind of a laid-back movie. Opens with a nine-year-old accidentally killing his drunken violent mom by shutting the attic door as she’s coming up the stairs. He’s sent to an orphanage, where he befriends red-haired bully Simon and broken introvert Alice and new girl Camille and gets everyone to work together. The kids are surprisingly in-touch with their feelings for nine-year-olds. Anyway, the cop who first talked to Z after his mom’s death finally adopts him and Camille, but the movie doesn’t address how their budding young romance will be affected when they suddenly become siblings.

by ·Comments Off on A Short Film About Love / Killing (1988, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

I’ve watched these before, in their Decalogue versions, but since the extended movie versions appear on certain lists of great films, I always wanted to watch ’em and compare. It has been nearly a decade, so it’s hard, but I’d have to say I prefer the Decalogue series as an interconnected project than either of these movies individually.

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A Short Film About Love (1988)

Deep-voiced teenage creep Tomek watches neighbor Magda through the window with a stolen telescope, then tries to interfere in her life. She is dismissive, then taunts him, and finally becomes concerned after he tries to kill himself. I guess they’re a couple of doomed losers who might just end up together, but Kieslowski is up to something more twisty, closing on Magda in Tomek’s room, watching herself across the street. It’s got the mutual torment of White mixed with the surveillance of Red, set to some nice Priesner music.

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A Short Film About Killing (1988)

Another movie about a deep-voiced creep! A hanging cat in the opening credits brings to mind Cosmos, but this movie’s a slog, the most unpleasant Kieslowski I’ve seen. I covered the story pretty well last time – main difference here is that it’s longer, and the inky blackness and distorted colors of the picture comes out more clearly on the blu-ray. I love the sudden time jump from Jacek sitting in his stolen cab dreaming of escaping to the mountains, to the moment of his conviction for murder.

by ·Comments Off on Evil Dead (2013, Fede Alvarez)

Okay, we’re at a crisis point with the movie blog. I fell about two months behind, only taking basic plot and character notes on the last 25 movies, so I need to admit the next few posts are going to be very bad and just rush through them. Jumping back and forth between some recent SHOCKtober films and the Aug/Sept backlog for a while…

I’m not a huge fan of remakes of beloved classics, so ignored this when it came out, then I heard it was actually good, so took a chance. It’s actually good! An intense little horror film, splitting the difference between adding new details (prologue with a demonic-possessed girl being burned to death by her father), following the same old story with fan-service references (“does that sound… fine?”), and trying to top the original (*two* people cut their own arms off).

After the prologue we meet the doomed new gang. Eric (Lou Pucci of Spring and Southland Tales) is the glasses nerd who will discover the Book of the Dead and read the cursed passages. Olivia (Jessica Lucas of Cloverfield and Gotham) is a dark-haired nurse who is probably the first to die, though it’s hard to tell when anyone in this movie actually dies. City Boy David (Shiloh Fernandez of We Are Your Friends) is our lead cool dude who we assume will be the new Ash, but won’t be. His blonde girlfriend Natalie (Liz Blackmore of TV’s Vampire Diaries) gets bitten on the hand, tries to take care of the problem with the electric carving knife but still goes full demon.

And that leaves Mia (Jane Levy of Don’t Breathe and Castle Rock), City Boy David’s sister who was lured to the cabin as an intervention to help her get off drugs. She’s the first victim of demonic possession (of all the details from the original, they kept the tree-rape scene), then vomits demon blood onto Nurse Olivia, is locked in the basement, but I guess Mia recovers, cuts off her own hand, and chainsaws a Demon Mia to death in the apocalyptic blood rain as the cabin burns down. Some fun with camera and focus, as in the original.

by ·Comments Off on Kékszakállú (2016, Gastón Solnicki)

The credits say it’s inspired by the opera Bluebeard’s Castle, and the synopsis says it’s about the “physical and spiritual aspects of a cultural recession.” The idle rich in summertime, not at all like La Cienaga.

Lara is the teenager I recognize from film stills:

The lighter-haired girl, not as recognizable from the other still where she’s walking on a second-story deck, gets a job at styrofoam factory. She escapes on a ferry at the end.

Also, there’s an octopus. Set in Buenos Aires, even Cinema Scope called it inscrutable. It’s unlike me to use the exact same images in this post which first drew me to the movie, but they’re still what stands out. The article has some good background and analysis, and this is probably worth rewatching sometime, even if I have nothing to say about it now.

by ·Comments Off on Shiver of the Vampires (1971, Jean Rollin)

I’ve heard Jean Rollin’s movies are very bad, but I’ve also heard that they’re sensual atmospheric wonders full of naked woman, so finally I am finding out for myself. Started with Rollin’s fourth feature after Rape of the Vampire, The Nude Vampire and Requiem for a Vampire, cowritten by Bernard‘s daughter Monique Natan. The verdict: it’s bad, but it’s true about the naked women, and I also enjoyed the groovy electric guitar music.

Half the cast: newlyweds framed by mute girls:

Whatever is going on, we’ve got two women who aren’t saying a word and there’s a coffin ritual and some unhappy guys chained in a castle. I’m starting to suspect vampires. The next(?) morning newlywed Isle (Sandra Julien of Je suis une nymphomane) arrives with her guy (Jean-Marie Durand, who had a career in film doing everything except acting) and learns that the cousins she has come to visit have just died. Then the cousins show up and say no, just a joke, everything’s fine. Isle meets the two silent women and two others: widow Isabelle (Nicole Nancel of Don’t Push Grandpa Into The Cactus) and Isolde (Dominique of Rollin’s previous film), who walks out of a clock. Everyone’s a vampire, of course, and there are playful attacks and serious attacks and lots of boobs, and I think Isolde uses boob-daggers to stab Isabelle in her boobs, and despite all this bawdiness I couldn’t focus very hard because it’s all so terribly dull, the sort of thing that happens when your slow arthouse movie relies on a sense of atmosphere you failed to create. There are some freeze-frames and fun camera pans, but there’s no saving it. One of the cousins was Michel “The Ethnologist” Delahaye, at least.

The Ethnologist and his dark-haired brother in front of some vampire wall art:

I guess the groom and the two unnamed girls from the beginning help defeat the evil Isolde and/or Isabelle, then the two male cousins and the bitten Isle die on the beach as the sun comes up. It’s possible that the groom Antoine was meant to be our hero, but he also gets beaten up by a library.

Isolde and her daggers… I’m actually trying to avoid nudity in the screenshots because I know all my traffic on this post will come from guys searching for “boobs”, but with this movie it’s difficult:

Every wall in the castle where they filmed has been vandalized:

by ·Comments Off on Sleepwalker (1984, Saxon Logan)

Happy SHOCKtober!

This is pretty advanced for a low-budget hour-long mid-1980’s British horror, beginning with a closeup of a sleeping head, crossfading to a naked tree, its branches recalling the nervous system. “Just a bad dream” – Marion (1970’s TV actress Heather Page) is awakened by gentle husband Alex (Scottish filmmaker Bill Douglas). They’re having guests for dinner: her old friend Angela (Joanna David of Secret Friends) and husband Richard (Nickolas Grace of Salome’s Last Dance), who we’ll soon learn is an absolute ass. The home-cooked meal is ruined by a window blown in by the storm, so they go out to a restaurant run by the Captain from Fraggle Rock, and the bulk of the movie seems to be an extremely painful dinner conversation. Drunken sniping rules the meal, mixed with references to sleepwalking and hypnosis.

L-R: Alex, Marion, Richard, Angela:

What with the storm and the drinking and the late hour, Angela and Richard reluctantly agree to spend the night. And as the dark synth music rises, a sleepwalking Marion kills everyone in the house with a knife. Perhaps that’s what happens, anyway.

by ·Comments Off on Logan Lucky (2017, Steven Soderbergh)

The Logans (Tater Channing, Riley Keough and one-armed Adam Driver) would like to rob the Motor Speedway, so they break heistmaster Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of prison. Joe brings along his dimwit brothers (Brendan Gleeson’s son and Dennis Quaid’s son) and they get to work, avoiding Tater’s nemesis, the loudmouth sponsor of an energy-drink racing team (Seth MacFarlane?).

It’s been a month and I forgot to take notes, so I’ll make this quick. There’s light fun in watching the plan come together, then a bunch of additional fun afterwards when the plan seems to have failed, the FBI investigation by Hilary Swank and Macon Blair has come up empty, and they unveil the plan-behind-the-plan, enriching the locals who helped them along the way. Soderbergh’s return to filmmaking was fully satisfying (I couldn’t wait, so have also started watching The Knick). Writer Rebecca Blunt is the subject of some controversy. Mostly it made me wanna watch the Oceans trilogy again, but there are some suspicious user reviews of the blu-ray multi-pack on amazon.

by ·Comments Off on 1000 Rupee Note (2014, Shrihari Sathe)

Woman who lost her son receives cash from local corrupt politician, goes to the city where she is mistreated and eventually locked up for suspected forgery. Maybe it’s a subtitle thing, but they keep mentioning the “rupee note” when she actually got four. Anyway, she and her neighbor are finally released, and she throws away the cursed money. Slick-looking movie, which I had the extreme bad fortune to watch right after L’Argent.

by ·Comments Off on Staying Vertical (2016, Alain Guiraudie)

The followcam gets shaky, but not the worst I’ve seen, and I stopped noticing it as the movie got stranger. Leo, a dude with serious eyebrows who is supposed to be writing a screenplay, is instead wandering some roads and fields, failing to pick up a young guy named Yoan, then succeeding in picking up a female sheepherd – and his success is signaled by a completely unexpected cut from them talking about moving in together to a close-up birthing scene.

Leo (Damien Bonnard – I think he drowned in Dunkirk) continues to hit on the dude Yoan, who lives with the muuuch older Marcel (Christian Bouillette, in movies since 1970). And one day Leo’s girl (India Hair of Camille Rewinds) leaves forever, and Leo is stuck living with their baby and her Bluto-looking dad (Raphaël Thierry). Bluto doesn’t take this well, steals the baby and tries to leave it outside for the wolves. And Leo goes on some Ornithologist-like journey along a river to visit a new-agey friend – I didn’t really follow this part.

Soon the movie loses its marbles: everyone is attracted to Leo, his girl is shacked up with Yoan, a panicked Leo flees into the river to escape his movie’s producers, he is beaten and stripped by a homeless gang, and finally Leo makes local headlines for having sex with Old Man Marcel while assisting his suicide. A flash-forward shows everyone living semi-normally, but the movie leaves us with Leo and Bluto surrounded by wolves.

Whatever it all meant, it’s a huge step up from Stranger by the Lake, and all the partner-swapping and unusual desires and wolf-lust felt fresh and enticing. Some scenes were too dark to be legible on my TV. The 13th I’ve seen of the 21 films in Cannes competition last year, and like Paterson and Slack Bay it never played theaters here.