by ·Comments Off on Clive Barker’s early shorts

Salome (1973)

Girl finds a mostly-nude boy in the catacombs, they start making out but he strangles her. The vibe is a murkier, cultier Jean Rollin, with light and fog effects so heavy they turn the actors into abstract imagery. It’s content to roll along in its slow dreamy way without getting caught up in story – I suppose if you’re familiar with the Oscar Wilde play you can follow along but I’m going by a few year-old memory of the Ken Russell version. Music sounds newer than 1973, like Coil Concrete – aha, this must’ve been recorded for the late 1990s home video release, which means I am free to listen to Secret Chiefs 3’s Horrorthon during the next film.

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The Forbidden (1978)

Horrorthon mentions Faust in the dialogue clips, and if you skip the “preview” first track and start the album with the movie, the circus music that plays when the nude man (Barker?!) starts dancing around is very funny. Barker made these films and his theatrical works before writing the Books of Blood – I always thought of him as a novelist who came to filmmaking late, but I was off. This has the most nudity in any Faust film outside the pornography realm. The image processed in negative, surfaces seem to glow. The opening mathematica and later full-body tattooing recall Book of Blood, and rotating light over pins/nails predict Pinhead and Leviathan at once.

by ·Comments Off on Afire (2023, Christian Petzold)

Barbarian setup, two guys arriving at their rental house and finding someone already there, but we’ve already met these guys and the unexpected guest is Paula Beer (returning from Transit and Undine), so we’re in good shape. Leon (Thomas Schubert of A Voluntary Year) is an asshole writer who keeps offending people. Paula works an ice cream stand, is having loud sex with lifeguard Devid, so Leon looks down on them, dismisses her critique of his work before learning she’s getting a PhD in literary studies. His publisher arrives, hates the new book, then has a health emergency, and while they’re dealing with that, the nearby forest fires burn up the trysting place of bi-curious Devid and Leon’s much cooler buddy Felix. The movie escalates from microaggressions to fiery death so gradually you never see it coming.

by ·Comments Off on Porco Rosso (1992, Hayao Miyazaki)

Porco is a daredevil pilot with a broken-down plane, chasing pirates, who at least have a code of honor. The pirates team up with hotshot pilot Curtis, who falls for Porco’s girl Gina. Porco is stuck with young architect Fio until his climactic dogfight, which becomes a boxing match when both planes are incapacitated, then everyone gets back up and flees the fascist government. It’s a fun pig adventure that holds onto a nice sense of mystery at the end.

by ·Comments Off on Final Destination 4 (2009, David R. Ellis)

Funny how this keeps happening but only to groups of 18 year olds. Opening setpiece here is a racetrack pileup that explodes into the stands. Our precog final-boy is darkhaired Nick (Bobby Campo, also star of a starvation deathmatch thing) with redhead gf Lori (Shantel VanSanten, went on to star in an Oregonian ghost movie), and their buddies: darkhair Janet (Haley Webb, who went on to Blonde) and cocky Hunt (Nick Zano also of a Joy Ride sequel). As per the formula, the kids also rope in a few randos from the first scene: ally security guard Mykelti Williamson (Don King in Ali), uninterested tampon mom Krista Allen (of Henry Rollins monster movie Feast), hapless mechanic Andrew Fiscella (of some Abel Ferrara movies), and antagonist nazi Justin Welborn (The Signal).

come on now:

That’s a lotta people, so let’s start killing ’em off. Nick dreams the deaths in advance, first as the lower-mid-tier CG opening scene and subsequently via appallingly-CG symbolic visions (“it seemed real,” he says after one of those). Mom catches a lawnmower-propelled rock to the face and the mechanic is jet propelled through a chainlink fence. They rescue Janet from being carwashed to death and George from suiciding, while Hunt gets his guts sucked out by a pool. After looking up the plots of the previous films they celebrate having broken the chain, but with a half hour of movie still remaining, uh oh. I don’t get how some cowboy surviving the crash then re-dying in hospital means they’re all in danger again, but now Nick has to save his friends from an exploding movie theater while fighting off a sentient nailgun… then they’re all simply smashed to death by a runaway truck. Good pacing, one long death premonition. Between parts 2 and 4, Ellis made Snakes on a Plane. The DP also did Trick ‘r Treat and the last three Resident Evil sequels, clearly a cool guy.

the moment I realized this must’ve been released in 3D:

by ·Comments Off on Boxing Helena (1993, Jennifer Lynch)

Celebrating the start of SHOCKtober with a movie I’ve always wanted to see, and finally found in watchable quality. And in true SHOCKtober tradition, it’s bad, and I should not have bothered.

Julian Sands, still traumatized from the death of his hotmom (Meg Register of Fulci’s Demonia), hangs out with buddy Art Garfunkel and antagonizes rival surgeon Malcolm’s Dad (my second Kurtwood movie in a month), but completely freaks out when he sees Sherilyn Fenn. She’s a sensuous neighbor who spends her spare time fucking Bill Paxton (who works at “the club”), comes to Julian’s house party and takes a slow-mo shower in his garden fountain.

After Sherilyn gets run over by a truck Julian stops going to work, focuses on feeding her and amputating more of her limbs. Already kinda psycho, he starts imagining his nude mom being mad at him, and bringing home a girl to fuck in front of Sherilyn (this might have been Nicolette “no relation” Scorsese), and fending off a jealous Paxton. But it turns out the whole thing was a dream (seriously).

Nothing classically Lynchian here, all late-nite pay-cable aesthetic. Music by the guy from SPK, shot by the Twin Peaks DP, with the editor of Warlock, and bankrolled by suing Kim Basinger for dropping out of the lead role.

by ·Comments Off on Wrong Move (1975, Wim Wenders)

Adding more characters than Alice in the Cities and a backstory for Rüdiger Vogler’s travels (clearly frustrated at home, his mom gives him money to roam and become the writer he dreams of being). I wasn’t so sure about the move to color film, but I should’ve known to trust Wenders/Müller. Based vaguely on a Goethe story, very freely adapted by Peter Handke, the commentary says they wanted to show a man who sets out to find himself, but doesn’t.

The crew: Vogler, actress Hanna Schygulla (a couple years after Petra von Kant), scammy ex-nazi/athlete Hans Blech (also of Wenders’ Scarlet Letter which sounds bad), mute teen acrobat Nastassja Kinski (in her debut), and poet Peter Kern (in a couple Fassbinders the same year). The movie is definitely being weird on purpose, and the group is carefree until they meet a suicidal industrialist who ruins the vibe, then they begin to turn on each other.

now playing: Emmanuelle and The Conversation and Watch Out, We’re Mad!

Wenders belatedly realized they were shooting in the same hotel as Machorka-Muff so he paid tribute by having our heroes watch a Straub/Huillet movie on TV. This won all the German film awards that year, sharing some with Alexander Kluge & Edgar Reitz. I wrote “Alice in the Cities as mission statement, philosophy of photography and travel,” but I’m not sure I knew what I meant by that – anyway, looking forward to the third road movie and exploring some of the box set extras.

by ·Comments Off on Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar (2023, Brendon Small)

Nathan is supposed to write the song that saves the world, but never got around to it (this would make a good double-feature with Bill & Ted 3). Murderface becomes possessed by evil. That cocaine clown is back, and the producer guy with bionic eyes. Sweet ending: “We forgive you, Murderface. You bring balance to this band by sucking. You suck so fucking much we can’t live without you.”

by ·Comments Off on BlackBerry (2023, Matt Johnson)

A pretty normal corporate drama with nothing-special camerawork and fun acting. I like the section intros cut to rock songs from their era (Elastica, Strokes, White Stripes), and the score is overall good, feeling like video game music at times. But if you make time for Barbie and BlackBerry then where does it stop, do you cruise through Air and Tetris then end up postponing watching The Kingdom: Exodus because Hungry Hungry Hippos is getting good reviews?

Co-CEOs: white-haired awkward techie Mike is Jay Baruchel of Goon and balding power-businessman Jim is Glenn Howerton of It’s Always Sunny. Mike’s headbanded bestie is director Matt (seen this year in Anne at 13,000 Ft) and the tough-guy COO they’re warned not to hire is Scanners villain Michael Ironside. I assume there’s some Social Network-like detail-fudging for narrative convenience, since it’s too delicious that it ends with their Chinese-made units working poorly and buzzing like the shitty intercom from the start of the film. The Cinema Scope cover story is focused on its specific Canadianness and how the weirdos from The Dirties ended up making a big-budget bio(?)pic. We need a new name for these… productpic.

Watching the iPhone launch announcement:

by ·Comments Off on You Hurt My Feelings (2023, Nicole Holofcener)

JL-D is a novelist, husband Tobias Menzies a therapist, their son Owen Teague works at a weed store, JL-D’s sister Michaela Watkins is a decorator, her husband Arian Moayed an actor, and they’re all having work or personal crises. I thought we’d be spending 90 minutes on the husband admitting he doesn’t like the wife’s new book, but it’s actually an ensemble piece of choreographed disappointments and slights, a grown-up comedy of characters working through their feelings, absolutely unheard-of. Not feeling too grown-up myself, since I couldn’t make it through the movie without getting the Flight of the Conchords song about hurt feelings in my head.

The main cast, plus psych patient Zach Cherry: