Dracula. Hammer Horror hammered this one out, with an extremely ‘efficient’ script from Jimmy Sangster, who turned a story which would have been expensive to adapt into a very very cheap one. Everything is compacted down, including the geography of Europe, and the film is a beautiful crushed meringue of costume, architecture, and culture in a quite frankly bizarre hodgepodge of nonsensical yet wonderful sets and stages and acting styles (several actors appear to believe they are in a very different film). It spawned eight sequels, and the two biggest reasons are Peter Cushing, a man who seemed to perform as easily as he breathed, and Christoper Lee, the Looming Tower of Evil. Cushing combines charm, erudition, and class with a ready physical skill, and Lee is the world’s tallest and most debonair predator.
Hereditary. A great first half, and…a second half. Sound is incredibly important to horror, and it’s perfect here. There are some scenes that wobble a little over the line into the ridiculous, but there are also some knuckle-gnawing parts that feel like a cinematic panic attack. It’s slow, atmospheric, and just unpleasant, for much of its time. Very well made, excellent craft in all respects, but the finale is slightly overblown and grandiose.
Incredibles 2 was good, maybe great. Would have to see it a few more times to really tell. The story hit close to home with me choosing to stay home with the kids a few years ago while my wife worked and really climbed the corporate ladder, so I may have liked it more than I should have because of that. I also have a 15 year old, so Violet’s reaction of horror to everything Bob does was also fairly on the nose and humorous.
The set pieces were fantastic and I really like the creativity the animators use with Elastigirls’ power. There’s no “Dash running on water” scene like in the first one, however, which sticks out as the highlight of the first one for me.
The plot was predictable as hell, but it IS a movie for kids, so whatever. It was fun and the family enjoyed it, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering it’s Pixar.
The Jack Jack raccoon fight is probably the “Dash runs on water” moment for me. Or the Elastigirl motorcycle bit. Honestly, almost any setpiece in this movie would be the highlight of any other superhero movie.
True. I’m not a superhero movie guy, but I could watch these over and over. I did like the Jack Jack/Racoon fight but there’s something about that moment with dash in the first one. The laugh of sheer joy when he realizes he can go that fast is one of my favorite things ever.
Mad Max Fury Road. I picked up the Black & Chrome edition. Worth it. The cinematography is stark and hallucinatory in feel, with more clarity in most scenes, at the cost of some loss of distinctiveness in the few darker scenes. The war boys are luminous, the action still jarringly sharp, and while some detail is lost, more is brought out.
Indie double bill, with Resolution as a bonus with The Endless on BR. Resolution is a fascinating film that simply takes some thought to ‘get’. It might be during, it might be at the end, it might be the next day. However it happens though, it’s worth watching. A man goes to save his friend from drug addiction, but finds there is something following them that is not happy with that story, and wants another. Despite being very low budget, with a cast of perhaps half a dozen people, Resolution is a very fine work indeed. The way it uses narrative structure as an enemy is brilliant.
The Endless is in a similar vein. A pair of brothers escape a UFO-worshipping cult, and are lured back years later for a short visit. The film explicitly links to Resolution in a clever way, but enlarges upon what Resolution does and takes it in a different direction. Again, low budget, and sadly some of the smaller CGI effects really do not work (but the big ones are better, weirdly), with a good cast, a clever and amusing script, solid directing and beautiful cinematography, including some really disturbing use of fisheye-effect lensing. The Endless does a lot with really very little, and is scifi film up there with the likes of Primer.
You Were Never Really Here. Lynne Ramsay is a Quite Good Director. This tale of Joaquin Phoenix as hired muscle (and looking right for the part too, I might add, with no showy musculature, just a thick, solid build) recruited to find a girl and bring her home quickly accrues levels of fucked-uppedness I was not expecting. There are zero showy fights or shootouts; the violence is quick and brutal and quite often elided in a form of cinematographic shorthand. The film’s developments are vivid and eerie, in their abruptness, imagery, and grim savagery.
It’s not perfect, there’s at least one very cheap shot (in several senses), and some of the flashbacks are awful, although they’re thankfully brief. The film as a whole is a grotesque patchwork of suffering, stretched taut over just the right duration.
I thought he best gag was when Bob brought the kids to the restaurant.
Visually, the most exciting and creative bits for me were Void’s powers, especially when she was helping Elastagirl.
You know, I thought this film was great for about 45 minutes, but then it became just sort of mediocre. I thought there was too much focus on the background in general and upbringing in particular, yet somehow also not enough, because it was mostly the same jump cut flashbacks over and over. Like, what are we getting here? Hitman slice of life? Conspiracy thriller? Neither was committed to, and the conspiracy was extremely vague. I also found some of the dialogue (especially but not limited to the guy in the kitchen) incredibly hard to hear. I thought Phoenix was great, but overall I would not watch it again or recommend it to others.
I am not a fan of flashbacks. I thought the way they were done here, with different sections shown as small snapshots, is about as palatable as it’s going to get, but I think the technique itself is mostly terrible.
I thought the vagueness of the conspiracy added to its threat, although leaving it that undefined also leaves it up to the viewer as to whether they find it more threatening or less.
Dialogue was hard to hear, in the kitchen and at the end especially.
I really appreciated the way a lot of it was almost glossed over, while still giving you an unwavering look at the awful side of what resulted. It was almost True Detective-esque in places.
The True Detective comparison is apt, although in True Detective I didn’t find it annoying like I do here, and I haven’t (and probably won’t) examined exactly why. Where I kind of started to zone out was at the revelation of of a politically-connected kid sex ring. It was all a bit too “Pizzagate: the Movie” for me. I feel like it’s been done…and done…and done some more. Again, a True Detective comparison is apt, but again it didn’t annoy me in True Detective. Maybe I was just drawn in by all the occult trappings and obfuscations.
It did feel, like TD, a little bit occult despite never overtly being so. Maybe that’s down to how it was filmed too, as it had a similar style, or maybe it was just the palette.
I thought YWNRH was pretty slick but ultimately hollow. First Reformed is the Taxi Driver homage to see this year, probably because it’s from Schrader himself.
The real star of YWNRH is Phoenix’s beard.
Re:Born. Metal Gear Solid: Retired. A bunch of maverick special ops killers go after this one retired special ops killer. More people get stabbed than in a 1980s football season. Lots of CQB nonsense, in true MGS style. A slightly more pragmatic approach to the action scenes would have been more interesting.
Savageland. This is a compact, efficient film about an apparent mass murder in a small town on the US-Mexico border, and the following post mortem of events and the prosecution and trial of the alleged killer. A very skillfully made mockumentary, it’s little more than narration, photographs, some graphics, and a few talking heads. It does the business regardless. Almost an epistolary work, but in film. Very impressive, and constructs a wonderful atmosphere from very little.
Girls have gotten into My Neighbor Totoro, and hopefully we can take them to the limited theater run in a couple months. Any other Ghibli films take enough for very small children? Looked some of them up last night, thought Ponyo or Arrietty might be based on Wikipedia. Grave of the Fireflies was clearly a hard pass. My wife couldn’t even handle a movie that sad.
Neither could I.
Madame Kiki, Spirited Away, and Castle in the Sky, I reckon?
Spirited Away is the only one I had seen before, from my film critic days in the early aughts. Very good, but a tad creepy for 4. Castle in the Sky sounds promising.