by ·Comments Off on The Science of Fictions (2019, Yosep Anggi Noen)

Some poor guy “went to a forbidden place” involving a fake moon lander and got his tongue cut out, now thinks about outer space and moves in slow-motion (perfect scenario for a severe 4:3 b/w mastershot festfilm). Soon as he gets back his mom dies, but Siman works hard despite his speed condition, makes a small fortune, apparently travels through time (and through color + aspect ratios; I can’t tell when different scenes are set), and builds himself a spaceship-shaped house out of broken appliances.

The director’s latest is a D.O.A.-style mystery that nobody is watching on netflix. Lead guy starred in Noen’s Solo, Solitude, a couple other actors were in Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. Later that night I unpaused the first episode of MST3K season 4 on my laptop, and the first line I heard was “poor bastard thinks he’s a spaceman,” which is proof that I’m living in a simulation.

by ·Comments Off on Eureka (2023, Lisandro Alonso)

Viggo Mortensen is searching for his missing daughter again, this time as a killer in a b/w Western. Presumably this is a prank on those of us who wanted another Jauja, because after a half hour Viggo’s movie is shrunk down to an SD TV movie and ignored like Danny Glover in Bamako, and instead we follow a Native American cop on her rounds, and then… I think her niece gets transported by a CG stork into a dream-recounting ceremony where a young man stabs somebody then tries to escape.

Shot:

Reverse shot:

“Each story explores questions of indigeneity and its reaction or resistance to the imposition of Western law and order” – Jeff Reichert works through the cinema/myth/dream journey on Reverse Shot, and Alonso has no fucks to give in his Cinema Scope interview.

From Bamako to Dead Man:

by ·Comments Off on House of 1000 Corpses (2003, Rob Zombie)

Tourists stop at Captain Spaulding’s then foolishly decide to check out the nearby grounds of the Dr. Satan killings. Momma Karen Black was delightful – don’t think I knew who she was last time I saw this.

RIP Jennifer Jostyn (The Brothers McMullen), Rainn Wilson (Super), and the cooler and less condescending Chris Hardwick (RZ’s Halloween II). Final (but still doomed) girl Erin Daniels was on The L Word, her also-doomed dad played a cop in Humanoids from the Deep (alongside Deputy Walt Goggins), and Sheriff Tom Towles (Fortress) will sorta have his revenge in part two.

by ·Comments Off on Art Talent Show (2022, Tomás Bojar & Adéla Komrzý)

Not really a talent show, but admissions week at an art academy. A pretty enjoyable True/False doc. Vadim Rizov: “beautifully shot and consistently funny while observing a zone where inspiration and bullshit perpetually dwell side-by-side out of impossible-to-separate necessity.”

by ·Comments Off on Ham on Rye (2019, Tyler Taormina)

“Porking is the ultimate purpose.” Three teens get left behind from the pairing-up ritual set at a shabby restaurant and are now stuck for life while all their friends and classmates get raptured. It’s a metaphor, perhaps.

The people who made this are associated with the Topology of Sirens people and the Eephus people, and to me this is a cinematic universe worth exploring.

The director did a letterboxd writeup: “The good criticism and the bad criticism are both quite painful for me … Please don’t compare it to Yorgos Lanthimos.”

by ·Comments Off on South Terminal (2019, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)

It’s time for Locorazo 2019|2024, kicking off with a competition title about a doctor who becomes interesting to at least two groups of warlords. Ramzy Bedia is good as the doctor, and wherever this country is (they’re not quite saying it’s Algeria) I would get killed there immediately, so let’s not visit. His buddy who helps him escape at the end was Slimane Dazi of Only Lovers Left Alive, and his boss who does not help at all is Slimane’s Forbidden Room costar Jacques Nolot.

by ·Comments Off on The Big Combo (1955, Joseph H. Lewis)

Handsome noir about a clunky police investigation. If you can watch it like a film critic, for pure light and sound, it’s a keeper. If you care about writing and plot, it’s iffy.

Donlevy in conference with the thugs:

Villain Richard Conte looked familiar (I guess from The Blue Gardenia or Thieves’ Highway), lead cop Cornel Wilde not so much (of Shockproof). Jean Wallace was best known as Wilde’s wife. The villain’s wife-in-hiding is Helen Walker of Nightmare Alley. The villain’s pathetic hanger-on was Brian Donlevy, who is both Quatermass and McGinty, and thugs Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman were both later in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The Swedish antiquer played a general in Merrill’s Marauders, and Bettini is Ted de Corsia, who must’ve had a noirish face, appearing in The Killing, Lady From Shanghai, and Naked City.

Cornel pays a visit to Bettini:

Conte shows Jean Wallace his closet:

by ·Comments Off on Coma (2022, Bertrand Bonello)

Online/lockdown movie starring the white girl from Zombi Child who creates Barbie sitcoms, plays a Simon game that’s impossible to lose, and watches videos of her hero Patricia Coma (who starred in P. Garrel’s Sauvage Innocence).

Sometimes there’s a serial killer interview or animation or day-for-night dream-limbo or an Unfriended homage (zoom call intruder, hand in blender) or a Nocturama homage (surveillance split-screen). Bookended with over-sincere subtitle essays. “Is this horror?,” I wrote (it’s not). Bonello in Cinema Scope: “Horror films were the first kind of cinema that I really liked when I was a kid. I think I know them quite well, and was trying to put some of their codes in here.”

by ·Comments Off on Doberman Cop (1977, Kinji Fukasaku)

The hero is a pig-toting bumpkin in a straw hat (I kept wanting the my-my-Mitchell theme song to play) and the villain is a gangster who fancies himself a talent agent (see also: The Girl Can’t Help It). Rough and active camerawork, but the human action is just whatever, except for Kano who is good with the roundhouse and the high kick. Sonny Chiba’s reputation was that he could fight convincingly onscreen – China had thousands of these guys and Japan just had Sonny. The cops are idiot assholes in this except for Sonny and the one who turns out to be the serial killer.