by ·Comments Off on To Die For (1995, Gus Van Sant)

“It simply boggles one with disbelief.” I get this movie somewhat confused with Serial Mom, but we’ve got Dan Hedaya here, and Wayne Knight, and That 70’s Dad, so we’re gonna be okay. Nicole Kidman is desperate to get onto TV, and unhappily married to Matt Dillon, so she hires the creep dirtbag youths she’s filming for an aimless documentary to bump off Dillon (the movie’s full of fake-doc material, but all the non-doc stuff looks terrific). Dillon’s family then hires David Cronenberg to murder Kidman – it’s up there with Last Night in the great DC performances (still need to see Clifton Hill).

All the thrash metal in this was unexpected. Van Sant always had an eye for the talented boys – he launched Joaquin “Leaf” Phoenix here, and Casey Affleck (and therefore Matt & Ben), and even better was Alison Folland, who went on to everyone favorite movie about intolerant Nebraskans, Boys Don’t Cry. The only movie Buck Henry wrote in the 90’s. It’s somewhat fun to watch the dummies do crime and get caught, but I started to turn on the movie, seeing successful filmmakers and actors punching down at suburbanites and their petty dreams.

by ·Comments Off on Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (2021, Kier-La Janisse)

A long doc, broken into chapters with Guy Maddin collage art in between. Begins in-depth on the unholy trilogy of Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and Blood on Satan’s Claw. Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale comes up, and I should really watch more of those, even though I disliked the first. Penda’s Fen looks cool, Rawhead Rex as cheesy as I remember it. The 1980’s films attacking heritage: The Company of Wolves, Lair of the White Worm. Paganism and witchcraft, sure. America gets a chapter, featuring Christian cults, and the “Indian burial ground” obsession (colonizers fearing being colonized, having their own homes taken away). Fear of poor people (Deliverance), racist voodoo movies, then positive shouts to Candyman and Ganja & Hess. The Fool Killer sounds cool, both as a movie and a profession. Into the global folk horror chapter, the doc started to feel long – I tuned out during Brazil and Germany, but should prioritize watching The Juniper Tree, maybe a double-feature when the next Robert Eggers film comes out. Also got my second Jacques Derrida reference this SHOCKtober.

by ·Comments Off on Irma Vep (1996, Olivier Assayas)

This is still the movie I remember from 20-some years ago (filmmaker J-P Leaud is remaking Les Vampires, Maggie Cheung is adrift between crew members, they both get too into their own madness), but I remember it being really excellent, and as the years go by, you forget the specific characteristics that made it so excellent, so it’s nice to rewatch and re-experience that. Every scene is good, but I took no notes, got no screenshots, so let’s watch it again sometime. Fun that Leaud cast Cheung based on Heroic Trio, which they watch together on DVD, and I just watched last month.

by ·Comments Off on Who is Bill Rebane? (2021, David Cairns)

Doc about a filmmaker, whose parents moved from Latvia to Chicago and invented beer nuts and 360-degree cameras/projectors, who went on to make Monster A-Go-Go.

Rebane moved his family to Wisconsin (good sidebar piece on how strange Wisconsin is) and built a studio, making “secular rapture movies” which would influence the Avengers movies (maybe). Not super interested in watching any Rebane movies right now, but I was at an airport (in Wisconsin!) and had access to this, and it’s always nice to hang out with Mark Borchardt.

by ·Comments Off on Bertrand Mandico shorts (2011-2019)

Boro in the Box (2011)

Just watched some early Borowczyk so I’m checking out Mandico’s terrific biopic. It is so reverent of Boro’s wife/actress, and so dismissive of Lenica. A bit of Cronenberg there at the end when the camera becomes a living organ.

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Memories of a Boobs Flasher (2014)

Elina Löwensohn solo show, repeats a four-minute monologue twice. It’s good to see that Mandico has had the same interests from the beginning, and The Wild Boys feature didn’t come out of nowhere but was a culmination.

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Prehistoric Cabaret (2014)

Absolutely the most GuyMaddinist shit I’ve ever seen, GuyMaddiner than some Guy Maddin films, but still with some Cronenberg edge. These are not complaints, this is what movies should be doing. The Boro camera reappears. More dialogue repetition, this one’s about a camera that is inserted into the body. In color and English, wild.

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Depressive Cop (2016)

A different sort of thing, in English again and partly filmed like a grey VHS dupe. More of those obsessions, merging with islands and becoming fruit/crab/milk. Aphex Twin t-shirt cameo.

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Blow Up, Le Cri dans l’Å“il (2019)

Let’s not forget Lynch in our list of influences. This is simply a montage of some of the best screams and yells and shouts in modern cinema, which keeps returning to Wild at Heart.

by ·Comments Off on Women Make Film (2018, Mark Cousins)

Massive, forty-part series reviewing many of the things that can be done in (narrative) cinema, and ways to do them, only using films directed by women.

It took us a half-year to get through this… I kept no notes or screenshots, so I’m happy to see a few letterboxd lists collecting the titles we saw clips from.

We had mixed results with the narrators and topics and examples, but it is always nice to learn about movies.

by ·Comments Off on The Grocer’s Son, the Mayor, the Village and the World (2020, Claire Simon)

Finally coming full circle, we watched a streaming documentary about people starting a site to stream documentaries. The team’s founder is a film nut whose dad was the local grocer, but it’s not a town of film nuts and their group isn’t doing much outreach, so instead of a doc-crazy Columbia MO situation, it just seems like some outsider weirdos in a town that has no need for them. Sturdy, observational doc by Simon, who makes pretty nice movies but I’ve missed why she’s considered a master of the art. Anyway, nobody was ever hanging out on the online chat channels T/F set up for Teleported attendees, so I had to look to twitter for a sense of film-viewing community.

by ·Comments Off on All Light, Everywhere (2021, Theo Anthony)

More focused than Rat Film, more sense of purpose, and great resonance with the Philip Henry Gosse short we watched before it. The eye and cameras, and what they cannot see: blind spots and the seer itself. Desktop film with online videos from Axon (the taser company)… community meeting where an eye-in-the-sky company president tried convincing Baltimore citizens of his project’s value while they had their own ideas about surveillance. Also a film history lesson, touching on Jules Janssen’s pre-Muybridge astronomical motion pictures using his photographic revolver.

by ·Comments Off on Lux Aeterna (2019, Gaspar Noé)

Looong split screen dialogue, Béatrice Dalle doing most of the talking, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing “themselves.” They discuss experiences on movie shoots, death by fire, nudity, and creepy producers.

Next, a producer is telling bald DP Max to take over the movie from director Dalle before the production falls apart, and a cameraman is tasked with spying on her. Meanwhile, Karl from Love is wasting people’s time, trying to get them to sign onto his own film.

The shoot ends with Gainsbourg (and Fury Road’s Abbey Lee) tied to (digitally) burning stakes when the lighting goes haywire. She and Dalle, tormented from all sides, have breakdowns as the picture devolves into flashing blue and red fields.