by ·Comments Off on Foreboding (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

I’ve got a bit of a backlog, and sometimes I’m in the mood for a Kiyoshi movie and wonder why I never watched this one from eight years ago, and the title Foreboding sounds generic enough, and it takes me 20 minutes to realize this is the alien invasion companion piece to Before We Vanish. This starts out effectively unsettling, with elements of the paranormal social malaise from his other movies, then as it introduces the human-concept-reaping alien Dr. Makabe (the two guys in Asako I & II) it gets silly.

The fake doctor, coming for your concepts:

Kaho of Tokyo Vampire Hotel and a Gamera movie is our lead, refusing to play the alien’s games, but her husband Tetsuo (starred in Tokyo Tribe and Lesson of Evil) is happy to lead the fake doctor to people who’ve wronged him. Health Minister Ren Osugi arrives too late in the game. Humans start disappearing from the earth, somehow this all still leads to the classic movie ending of people talking and fighting in an abandoned warehouse.

Humanity’s future rests with them:

by ·Comments Off on Dredd (2012, Pete Travis)

Is this the first movie I’ve watched in full after previously watching its last ten minutes? It’s not the first time I’d watched the end of a movie and thought “this isn’t bad, I should see the rest of it” – that’d be Waxwork. This one I simply lost track, and ended up half-watching while working on something, looking up whenever someone got killed in super-slow-mo (they’re taking hummingbird-brain drugs). Some good violence, if nothing else. I noted all the important details last time – in the years since, Judge Urban has gotten involved in all the major properties, Psychic Thirlby was in Lousy Carter, Villain Headey did Game of Thrones, and the writer and DP made Trainspotting 2 together.

Zooted Dawg:

Slow-mo final boss plummet:

by ·Comments Off on Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010, Panos Cosmatos)

Coasts purely on VIBES, which is frankly losing me, everyone croaking their lines glacially, TV-Glowing too hard, all whispering portent, nothing ever happening, until the patient explodes an employee. Reminded me more than once of The Catechism Cataclysm.

The patient is Eva Bourne, and the mad doctor was appropriately in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. He smooshes the face of his wife, or perhaps his mom, who cares. In the end he falls down and busts his head.

by ·Comments Off on Outrage Coda (2017, Takeshi Kitano)

I’m starting to wonder if these movies do have continuity and they’re not just starting over every time with the same cast playing new characters. I checked my writeups for parts one and two, and still don’t know for sure – but hey, one of those cops is back in this one.

The bulk of the movie is the higher-ups of a Japanese crime family plotting against each other: Ren Osugi, Sansei Shiomi, Toshiyuki Nishida. This goes on forever, and right when you can’t take any more of it, Kitano flies in with his buddy Ichi and they shoot a hundred guys. A few women appear, all of them prostitutes. I’m making this sound bad, but of course it’s a good time, and I’m looking forward to the brand new Kitano joint.

by ·Comments Off on In the Shadows (2010, Thomas Arslan)

Criminal Trojan who looks like the intersection of Adam Scott and Nathan Fillion gets out of jail and looks up some guys he used to work with: one guy so he can get paid for the job that sent him away, and the others so he can pull off One Last Job and steal enough cash to get outta this town. But he’s being tracked by another criminal associate Meyer who looks like a hot evil version of Richard Kind. Our guy’s friend Dora knows an armored car inside man Kruger, so they enlist retired Nico (Rainer Bock of De Palma’s Passion, a sinister cop in Barbara) and pull an easy heist. But Hot Richard tracked the action and wants his piece, finally Trojan is fleeing town with a stolen car and nothing else. Watching this now because Trojan will soon return in belated sequel Scorched Earth.

Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope:

Arslan’s stripped-down approach may well deserve the epithet “masterly,” but only in the modest sense of such acknowledged forebears as Irving Lerner or Don Siegel, whom Arslan cites as an influence for his preferred style of laconic, almost “neutral” acting he likewise admires in Hollywood films of the ’30s … Although the director says that the heist sum of 600,000 Euros was simply chosen in order to remain realistic, it seems hardly a coincidence that it is slightly higher than the budget of In the Shadows itself.

by ·Comments Off on Gimme Danger (2016, Jim Jarmusch)

Intriguing structure for a rock doc, skipping the band’s rise and opening with their downfall and breakup. When the opening titles hit, the band is over and all its members are living with their parents, then we restart the story from the beginning, leading to the triumphant reunion. Mostly just the band members talking, then when they get dropped from their label we get a nice montage of more popular groups covering their songs. So, no innovative film but it’s a pleasure to spend so much time with Iggy Pop (“In the Ashetons I found primitive man”).

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Strummer (1993)

SD handicam mini-doc covering Joe and team mixing the soundtrack for Sara Driver’s When Pigs Fly. “Computers have ruined the kind of music I like. Ultimate control, that’s what people want.” One scene is just Jarmusch recounting his favorite jokes from This is Spinal Tap.

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French Water (2021)

Fashion ad starring Julianne Moore and Chloe Sevigny, lost at a party after hours, and a randomly materializing Charlotte Gainsbourg. The music was good, at least.

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Jim Jarmusch & Jozef Van Wissem: The Sun of the Natural World is Pure Fire (2012)

People in frilly pajamas float in the river, while one guitarist plucks gentle melodies and the other plays feedback. The music was good, at least.

by ·Comments Off on Curling (2010, Denis Côté)

Cote loves shallow-focus shots (so do I). Watching this reminds me that his covid movie came out a hundred years ago, and Soderbergh’s is still not out?

Odd-jobs guy is over-sheltering his 12 year-old. Each of them finds dead bodies in the snow and keeps it as a secret: dad hides his body in the abandoned motel like The Wire season 4 and the daughter hangs out and chats with hers in a frozen field. They seem nice.

Director and actor won prizes at Locarno, where it played with fellow chilly films Winter Vacation and Cold Weather.

Côté in Cinema Scope 44:

People ask me, “Why curling?” Well, first of all, curling is a collective sport, so he could get closer to his community if he would curl. The moment he hears about curling, there’s a spark in his eyes – the only positive thing in his life during the whole film is curling … The film is very simple: how do you connect with the world of the living?

by ·Comments Off on Bad 25 (2012, Spike Lee)

Quincy Jones memorial screening. Messy at the beginning then settles into a song-by-song structure. The most I’ve ever liked Kanye West was seeing him here singing “Smooth Criminal.” Origin stories of Wesley Snipes and Sheryl Crow, and MJ’s “shamon” was a Mavis Staples tribute.

by ·Comments Off on Lake Michigan Monster (2018, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews)

Very grateful that people are putting in excessive amounts of effort to make extremely silly movies. I laughed every time the soundtrack plays “what do you do with a drunken sailor,” and after watching Guy Maddin movies and reading Cinema Scope for 20 years, my brain’s pleasure sensors light up from this Canadian-adjacent content.

I guess Ryland pretends to be rich and assembles a team to find the monster, and I guess it kills team member Sean “Nessy” Shaughnessy during their third mission. There’s not much more I can tell you, since the Mets were getting trounced in game 3 of the NLCS and I was unevenly splitting my attention between these two things and drinking pumpkin beer.