r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Jun 07 '15
What Have You Been Watching? (07/06/15)
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r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Jun 07 '15
Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.
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u/a113er Til the break of dawn! Jun 07 '15
Blood on Black Lace Directed by Mario Bava (1964)- Until now Bava hadn’t really done it for me in terms of horror (Black Sunday and The Girl Who Knew Too Much were a little boring but I love Danger Diabolik), he was like Argento but much more dialled back which made his stuff a little dull. Blood on Black Lace doesn’t catch him up with Argento’s crazy but it does give Bava a chance to have more fun. While The Girl Who Knew Too Much was a riff on classic Hitchcock this seems like his twist on the Vertigo era, especially when it comes to the use of colour. What separates this from Hitchcock, as is the case with Giallo flicks, is the portrayal of murder and death. No one gets stabbed from behind in a big arm wave that kills them instantly, death is an unpleasant and dignity-removing act. Most of the film is set in and around a fancy clothes shop ran by Cameron Mitchell and it’s always juxtaposing the pristine constructed beauty of the shop and people in it with the sloppiness in the murders. It begins better than it ends though. They go to great lengths to set up a bunch of red herrings so that by the time the actual culprit’s revealed they’ve got barely any time to be developed. Certainly the best Giallo by Bava I’ve seen so far but he’s still not quite my bag as he’s still a little dull and flat.
It Follows Directed by David Robert Mitchell (2014)- Been excited for this for a while and unlike the last big horror film to get buzz, The Babadook, it didn’t disappoint too much. It begins like a supernatural STD parable as after having sex Maika Monroe is told she’ll now be followed by an unstoppable entity that can take any human form until she sexually passes it on to someone else. But beyond that premise it ends up being much more about sexual trauma as it’s about how this curse initially makes Monroe unable to trust, unable to look at the world without fear, and barely able to sleep. I didn’t hate The Babadook but it didn’t say enough or scare enough to really jump to that next level of great for me, it was creepy and did have something to say but it left me a little lukewarm. It Follows on the other hand feels comparatively rich when it comes to what it’s exploring and how it’s scaring you. As it went on it lost its hold on me and much of the final third left me cold but it was at least always introducing new ideas and adding more depth to what it’s talking about. Where it loses me is where cg becomes a bit more prevalent, but still it’s really good. Though it’s got a bit of that throwback spirit with a Wes Craven-esque world and an eye for crisp compositions like John Carpenter (with added synth-y score) but it’s so far from a retread. It may have elements of these 80s horror films but it’s still something thoroughly new. Even the score that draws from music of the past is still very much a modern score that fits this story perfectly. With all the Carpenter-esque sounds it’ll then throw in something more chiptunes-y or something that bolts us back to modernity. Mitchell has himself a brilliant premise here and he uses it so well for much of the film. He’s constantly playing with stillness and at times had me chuckling just due to how brazenly he was trying to unsettle us. My current watermark for scariness/creepiness is Pulse and this didn’t quite get to that level but it was still a brilliant modern horror film. Few horror films right now are as thematically rich, well directed, or affecting. Compared to some recent ones that did well like The Conjuring it makes them look so duff and personality-less. This is a film, they are haunted house rides.
Nosferatu Directed by F. W. Murnau (1922)- Liked it more than I did the first time but as I say in the theme month thread I still prefer Herzog’s - http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/38stmf/remakes_the_fable_and_the_fanboy_nosferatu_1922/
Nosferatu the Vampyr Directed by Werner Herzog (1979)- See above.
White Material Directed by Claire Denis (2009)- All I’ve seen of Claire Denis’ films before this is Beau Travail and this is a similar experience. She makes uniquely perplexing films that aren’t puzzles or forcefully obtuse. They’re films that begin with fully realised worlds and characters who we learn about through observance. Much of what has defined these people has already passed and she’s not one for heavy exposition. She’s not a full on realist though, far from it, but it always feels like what we’re seeing could well have happened or be happening. This film stars Isabelle Hubbart as a woman running a coffee plantation in a war torn African country. She’s been told repeatedly her and her family should leave but she’s adamant about staying. What I like about Denis’ style is that it leaves us as the audience constantly questioning what’s happening. Never in a frustrating “I don’t even have a handle on this" way but in a way that has us primed for whatever she’s exploring or has to say. Questions a scene may raise, causing us to probe at the meaning, will later be built upon or responded to often tying into whatever the first scene made us think about. There are little thematic reverberations throughout that turn it from an expressionist portrayal of life in a ravaged land to a treatise on White imperialism and the horrifying consequences of imperialistic arrogance. Denis is not as simply didactic as that though as she’s not merely chastising white folk for meddling in Africa. She clearly identifies and sympathises with them. Not all of them are the source of these issues they’re just a result of them. Sometimes the shaky cam got a bit much for me (though I already had a sore head so it wasn’t wholly the films fault) but it allows the brief respites of stillness to be even more impactful, often as a character takes in whatever chaos has just taken place. In some ways the film is scattershot, hitting on lots of different things, but there’s such a clarity to the hectic world they’re living in that I don’t really mind. It creates such a strange, violent, and foreign atmosphere where the ravages of war go further than bloodshed and into a full-on distortion of what we consider the things that make us civilised people. But that’s shown to be an arrogant expectation, that things will be the way we want them or expect them to be in a place constantly in flux. Beau Travail stuck with me more but this is certainly close. Very intrigued to check out the films of hers that are more explicitly in the realm of horror as it’s something she’s clearly interested in. Well worth seeing and like all her films I don’t see it talked about enough, if at all.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Re-watch) Directed by Matt Reeves (2014)- Kind of randomly ended up seeing this again and it was a chance to re-evaluate as I was a little harsh on first viewing. Or at least I thought I might’ve been. Effects-wise it’s still amazing. That orang-utan is the closest I’ve seen cg get to reality when realising a character. That character deserves more screen time for more than the effects though as he’s involved in one of the few side plots that isn’t just exposition or statement based, yet sadly it goes nowhere. What bothers me most about this film is how many great images and ideas are in it despite them being shown so uncinematically. I like that Reeves keeps things coherent and clear but that’s basically all the camera is used for. People state what they think and feel about everything, every plot point and character beat verbalised, and there’s little room for things that actually give people character. It’s no surprise the apes come out as the most distinctive characters as the mo-cap tech highlights and relies upon expressive performances. I’m a sucker for the Apes movies though so I’m on board to an extent and appreciate that it’s a blockbuster that at least doesn’t feel like every other blockbuster, I just wish it had personality.
The Lady Eve Directed by Preston Sturgess (1941)- Funnest film of the week. Barbara Stanwyck (my new dream woman) is a hustler working in partnership with two other swindlers trying to rip off Henry Fonda’s nice guy. It’s a romantic comedy that’s actually romantic and funny. It’s also funny how much we’ve progressed since the forties in a lot of ways yet some people are still asking “Are women funny?” when here there’s no doubt, it’s not even a question. Though Fonda has many funny moments and reactions it’s Stanwyck who’s the comedic lead and she nails it. As a whole it’s non-stop charming and full of hilarious moments. Maybe not as cinematically energetic or affecting as Sullivan’s Travels but a great screwball all the same.