by ·Comments Off on The Invisible Man Returns (1940, Joe May)

I thought I’d be a clever boy and watch the 2020 remake followed by the 1940 sequel and see which is better. Neither really holds a candle to the James Whale movie, but remake definitely has the edge over this clunky, cheapie sequel. As far as German directors who worked with their wives, directed versions of The Indian Tomb, and emigrated to the USA in 1933 go, I prefer Lang – who made his own sequel with the word “Return” in the title this same year. Fellow German Curt Siodmak (Robert’s idiot brother) was beginning his Hollywood writing career, having wowed his home country with classics like F.P. 1 Doesn’t Answer.

Nan Grey (a soft-voiced automaton) was supposed to marry a very young Vincent Price (a full decade before The Baron of Arizona), but he’s inconveniently on death row because he killed his brother… or DID he?? (he did not). Fortunately, Price is friends with another man with a dead brother – O.G. I.M.’s bro Frank (John Sutton would also appear in Return of The Fly). Frank, not a great scientist (he lets cigar-smoking cops into his chemical lab), turns Price invisible to spring him from prison, then hopes he’ll find a cure before Vince goes mad (the movie lets this drop, Vince never starts slipping). So this time the girl’s in on the plan and the invisible man’s a good guy – kinda anticlimactic as far as horror sequels go.

I.M. sits down for a nice meal with his girl and his brother’s killer:

Cedric Hardwicke (Hitchcock’s Suspicion) likes Nan and is sadly obvious about it, seems so glad to have Vince out of the way that you almost suspect him of having murdered the brother, ah, of course he did, as Vince learns after playfully tormenting a drunk whom Cedric confided in. Movie is extremely British, and plods along… the dialogue obvious, the invisibility effects good but some other filmmaking techniques lacking (they have animals “die” by freezing the picture, a non-barking dog is overdubbed by a very-barking dog). Vince kills the killer and I suppose nobody can prove it was him, then gets his body back.

Mouseover to watch a guinea pig get visible:
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by ·Comments Off on The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)

Elisabeth Moss escapes her abusive guy and holes up with A Wrinkle in Time star Storm Reid and her cop dad (Aldis Hodge, the condemned in Clemency). The good news is the abusive guy is soon reported dead, but the bad news is he’s an “optics genius” and is actually just invisibly stalking her, after faking death with the help of his shitty brother. The first body appears at the 1hr 12min mark – that’s a minute longer than the entire original movie, in which the I.M. killed dozens. Eventually, I.M.2020 starts killing cops (and Moss’s sister), after working to discredit and destroy Moss – but not kill her, since she’s pregnant. She returns to their ultra-modern rich-tech-movie-guy house, finds that after the genius’s “death” someone covered all his equipment in giant plastic sheets but left their dog untended, grabs the backup suit and becomes The Invisible Woman. Skimming letterboxd reviews, it seems I wasn’t the only one reminded of Gone Girl (thinking of the Neil Patrick Harris scenes).

by ·Comments Off on Frantic (1988, Roman Polanski)

I grabbed Frantic back when I was watching a bunch of Polanski movies, then forgot about it… until one day, having misjudged the length of a flight due to time zone calculations being difficult while my mind is addled from dramamine, I watched the 45-minute Tarkovsky then found myself with a free hour, so as I often do when tired, I reached for the dumbest thing on my hard drive.

Ford, after telling everyone in sight that he’s after “the white lady:”

It’s quite a silly premise, though overall somewhat sturdy, with some convincing particulars for an 80’s movie. Harrison Ford’s wife (The Horde’s psychiatrist in Split) is kidnapped after grabbing the wrong suitcase at the Paris airport, so HF tracks down the drug mule suitcase owner (Emmanuelle Seigner, the future Mrs. Polanski) to unwind the conspiracy, figuring out that the captors are after a nuclear bomb triggering device. Along the way, we’ve got a woman in black on a Paris rooftop (I didn’t take Polanski for a Feuilladian) and music by the late Ennio Morricone, and nightclub scenes by Grace Jones, who must’ve sponsored this movie.

Seigner, screaming out the ass of a getaway car:

by ·Comments Off on The Steamroller and the Violin (1960, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Timid Sasha gets up, runs through a brutal hierarchy of shithead children, through all the mirrors and reflections on water that young Tarkovsky can muster, attends a disappointing violin lesson, then things are looking up when he befriends a steamroller driver from the courtyard.

I figure the kid’s gonna get beaten up at some point, and he does, so the real tension is from wondering what will happen to the violin. Will it survive, will the shithead kids destroy or deface it, or will they break Sasha’s spirit so he destroys it himself, a la young Jodorowsky in Endless Poetry? Well it’s the first one, but there’s a scene when he’s run off to watch buildings get demolished with his steamrolling buddy and the shitheads find the violin left behind, then it’s untouched when Sasha returns, so I’d like to think there’s more to that story and it got cut for time. Remarkable little movie, with beautiful color on the blu-ray.

by ·Comments Off on First Cow (2019, Kelly Reichardt)

Opens with a William Blake quote,

features Gary Farmer… and solo guitar music (by William Tyler, not Neil Young)

and has in Cookie the most self-conscious man in the West since Depp in Dead Man.

Even the trappers lining up to eat homemade “oily cakes” recalls the Billy Bob & Iggy campfire scene.

Soooo I liked it very much.

Cookie and King Lu stay together to the end, neither one taking the money and running. We already knew their fate from the surprise Alia Shawkat opening scene, but it’s still a shock to see friendship trump greed in this sort of movie. Adam Nayman’s article in The Ringer is the one to beat.

by ·Comments Off on The Trip to Spain (2017, Michael Winterbottom)

I’ve given up on the miniseries versions, if they’re even still making those, so I think I’m missing some important shots of amazing food. Besides this disappointing shortage of food footage, this is my fave of the Trip series so far… gets on with what we came to see, and saves the bulk of the wallowing for the end. I watched with subtitles while clattering about, assembling the shelves I hadn’t pieced together during Endgame, and was disappointed that all the Spanish – including names of dishes! – are subtitled “(speaking foreign language)”. The subtitlers never even figured out that this language was Spanish. Complaints aside, this movie had some choice exchanges:

Coogan on his new script: “It’s about a man looking for his daughter.”
Brydon: “This’ll be the follow-up to your film about a woman looking for her son … He should be looking for something else, you know, to avoid the comparisons. Maybe man looking for his car.”
C: “The thing is you can do man who’s lost his car. European filmmakers use huge, overbearing thematic metaphors all the time, so it could be a guy looking for his car, but actually he doesn’t realize… he’s looking for something much bigger than that.”
B: “A van.”
C: “Yeah, but the van of life.”

by ·Comments Off on Frances Ferguson (2019, Bob Byington)

Extremely sharply written movie, maybe his best of the three I’ve seen. 75 minutes of watching Kaley Wheless looking disappointed apparently doesn’t get old, since a few nights later, looking for something to play while falling asleep, I watched the first half of this again. Follows all the steps (labeled: trial, incarceration, probation, etc) after substitute teacher Frances gets caught sleeping with her hot dumb student in North Platte, NE.

by ·Comments Off on Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018, Ben Wheatley)

Family get-together/squabble movie. It’s less murdery than Wheatley’s other films, and went straight to TV, so I assumed it’d be minor, but it’s really nice, my favorite since at least Sightseers. Kill List star Neil Maskell is beardy vaping Colin, whose sister Hayley Squires (Babs of In Fabric) invites their shunned brother David (Sam Riley: Ian Curtis in Control). David arrives, everyone blows up, he causes a scene as expected, is kicked out then called back, then he flips the movie by being really nice to his parents while Colin’s rage escalates until he storms out. Shot handheld with very snappy editing. I’d had fun with the Wheatleys, but it looks like he’s got himself into Netflix Remake territory with the upcoming Rebecca… maybe I’ll catch up with The Wrong Door series instead.

Other actor highlights: dad is Bill Paterson (dad of Fleabag) and mom is Doon Mackichan, a TV comedy regular ever since The Day Today. Asim Chaudhry is behind the series People Just Do Nothing. And Richard Glover (Sightseers, A Field in England) is Lord Richard, who runs the place they’re renting for the party.

Come on, the headlamp has to be a Kill List reference:

Adam Cook in Cinema Scope 78:

It is through some seriously impressive tonal sleight-of-hand that Wheatley keeps us fixed on the comical and sensationalistic aspects of his intricate plotting only to ultimately segue into something poignant and touching … The humour comes from a keen understanding of human pettiness and the convoluted relationship between people’s actions and how they feel; so as the latter is revealed, the less funny the proceedings become, and we are left with a complex and troubling assortment of sadness, trauma, and vulnerability.

by ·Comments Off on Luz (2018, Tilman Singer)

Deliberate opening scene in an office lobby (“Is this how you want to live your life?”), then at a bar (“Are you a doctor? You have a pager”), aha so it’s a period piece. Woman in the bar wants to seduce the doctor while telling him an unnecessarily long story about her friend Luz, and their performances, the dialogue, none of it is working for me, then she takes him to the restroom and mouth-flashlights her spirit into him, and things are looking up.

In the long middle section, the doc and two other authority figures have got Luz hypnotized, re-enacting the taxi ride where the girl from the bar went missing. The doctor is freaked out and his weird influence begins to spread, until everyone in the room is somewhat possessed except the terrified soundman locked in his booth.

I honestly don’t know what happened or who is still alive at the end or why – only a few drawn-out things happen in this short movie, but they happen in multiple ways, and with cool light and sound. It’s also another pleasingly soft-looking movie (though none of the locations are interesting)… I didn’t intend to watch two 16mm movies in a row after Chained For Life, just a bit of good luck.